And so, The Mind Creates a Dream...

Just a small coin
10 May 1975 am in Buddha Hall

Life is always in the now. There is no other moment to it. Only one moment exists – this moment – all else is just a projection of the mind. Only today is, and only today remains. Tomorrow never comes, it cannot come because it doesn’t belong to reality. Only today comes, goes on coming, because today belongs to reality.

Tomorrow is your dream. And you need a dream because you are not rooted in reality. This has to be understood. Why are dreams needed? When reality is available, why do you dream?

A man fasts. The whole day the body suffers; the hunger is there. He suppresses the hunger because he is on some religious fast, a religious ritual. To satisfy the ego he makes the body hungry – so that the ego can feel that he is religious, something special, not an ordinary man, a saint, a sage, not an ordinary sinner.

To feed the ego you make the body hungry. You starve the body. Ego is a dream – the body is the reality. The whole day you have been fasting; in the night you cannot sleep because the body goes on asking for food. It is a need, it is a necessity. You feel restless, you turn from one side to another, you cannot go to sleep. Food is a need, but rest also is a need.

So the mind creates a dream...
You are an honored guest in a great feast given by the king; you are eating delicious food, you go on eating.... Of course the body doesn’t get nourishment, but there is a false notion that you have eaten well; now you can go to sleep. In the morning you will be hungry, more than ever, but at least the dream helped you to rest and relax. One need, the need for food, could not be fulfilled, but another need, the need for rest, could be fulfilled through the dream.

If you are tense you will need dreams, because they help you to relax. If you are not HERE, you will need a dream of being THERE, because you have to be somewhere. If you cannot be here then you will feel suspended in the sky, uprooted, unanchored, just hanging in the middle. That will give you a very restless, uncomfortable feeling. So... a dream: ”I may not be here, but I am going to be there.” The dream helps you to rest and relax.

If you cannot be in the 'now', then you create a future. The future is needed. The future gives you a consoling sleep, it relaxes you. Millions of things are there which you cannot fulfill right now, and if there is no future you will be too much burdened by unfulfilled desires. A future is needed so you can at least say to yourself: ”If things are not as they should be, at least there is tomorrow. Don’t get panicky, things will be better tomorrow.” You can hope, because there is time. Hope needs space, desire needs space, ambition needs space to move.

Look at the trees – they don’t dream. They don’t need to, they are already here, in the now – fulfilled, flowering. Listen to the birds – they are singing NOW, they are not preparing to sing tomorrow. Except for man, nobody is preparing for tomorrow. This day is so beautiful, who bothers for tomorrow?

If this day is ugly and it is inconvenient to live with it, a beautiful dream of the future is needed as a substitute for reality. Otherwise you will feel so much anguish – intolerable. You will not be able to live! The more desire you have, the more future you need, the more ambitions the more future you need. For needs, this moment is more than enough. Today is enough. Jesus said to his disciples, ”Look at the lilies. Look in the field – the flowers are flowering, and they are so beautiful that even Solomon in all his grandeur was not so beautiful.”

Solomon is the greatest king in the mythology of Jews – the richest man ever on earth, and the wisest man also. The wisest, the richest, the greatest emperor in the world was not so beautiful as these ordinary lilies in the field. ”Look!” said Jesus to his disciples. ”These lilies must be carrying a secret within their hearts.” What is the secret? The secret is, lilies are here and now. Solomon may have been very very wise but he was not here and now.

All beauty is here, and all life is now.

Tomorrow is death, tomorrow is no life. But why do we live in the tomorrow? It looks absurd: How can you live in the tomorrow? – but you live there. You never live here; that’s why you look so dead.

How can one live in the tomorrow? Jesus said to his disciples, ”Take care of this moment. Live today, and tomorrow will take care of itself. Don’t worry for the morrow because the moment you are losing in worrying about tomorrow is the real moment. And tomorrow is never going to be there.”

For dreams you are losing life. Needs don’t need them, but desires need them. For example, you are hungry, you can eat; if you are thirsty, you can drink. There is not much trouble about it. There would have been no trouble and there would have been nothing like poverty in the world if man remained true to his needs. Then everybody has more than enough. The Earth has plenty. The sky is not poor, the rivers are rich, the oceans vast – life has tremendous treasures. Not a single bird sleeps without food, not a single tree remains thirsty. Everything is more than is needed. Life is affluent, very luxuriant – if you stick to the needs. But if you start desiring, then life becomes poor.

If you are hungry you can eat and feel satiated – and there is nothing like satiated hunger. It is a deep prayer, a gratefulness. I tell you, not by fasting will you become religious, but when hunger is satisfied. In that moment of satisfaction a gratefulness, a gratitude arises, a prayer. You feel fulfilled.

You can thank God. Never by fasting do you become religious. How can you become religious by destroying your body and being violent towards it? That is the way of the murderer, the torturer, the sadist, the masochist, the somehow perverted.

When you have eaten well, eaten rightly and the food suits you, in that moment a prayer arises, not only from your mind but from your body also. Satiety is a prayer. You were thirsty and you have drunk to the full. Now suddenly nothing is needed. You are absolutely perfect in that moment. You are a god, a fulfilled god. No thirst... what else is lacking?

If you stick to the needs – and this is my message, that a religious man sticks to his needs. He is never against needs and never for desires. Desires are false needs. For example, if you are hungry you can eat right now, but if you are desiring a Rolls Royce, how can you get it right now? If you are ambitious for a big palace – Rome is not built in one day, a big palace will need time. You will have to exploit money. You will not only have to exploit others you will have to exploit your own needs also, because you will have to accumulate money. You will sleep hungry, because tomorrow – the palace, and when the palace is ready, then you are going to eat. How can you eat without a palace?

Tomorrow comes the Rolls Royce, and there is nothing wrong in being a little hungry for a few days, starving your needs; otherwise how are you going to have a Rolls Royce?

A Rolls Royce is neither a thirst nor a hunger, it is simply a foolish desire. When it is not there you will be waiting for it and destroying your life, and when it comes you will feel nothing has come. And you waited so long, and you killed yourself so much. The Rolls Royce is there, but you are already dead. There is no real need for it; that’s why it can never satisfy. Satisfaction comes out of real dissatisfaction.

Contentment comes out of real hunger, real thirst. You were dying, you could not do without it; only then contentment happens. Desires need the future; they cannot be fulfilled right now. If you want to be the president of a country, how can you be the president right now? You will have to pass long ladders of ambition, much time will be needed. By the time you reach, if death has not reached before, you will be already dead. People become presidents when they are already senile, past their sixties, becoming seventy, just ready for the grave. Then they enter the presidential house. And the whole life wasted, – for nothing. Even if your picture is in all the newspapers, what does it matter?

How does it satisfy? Birds are happy without newspapers, trees are happy without the radio and the television. If trees are happy and birds are happy, and they don’t bother a bit for the tomorrow, why can’t man be happy right now?

The whole of religion, real religion, is the message to drop desires and to fulfill needs. And needs are simple and beautiful. Thirst is beautiful – it comes out of nature – and then being satisfied is also beautiful. It gives a balance, a subtle tranquility. A silence happens to your whole existence.

You are at rest; no dream is needed.

If you live in the moment totally, then there is no need to worry for the future. A rightly lived childhood brings you to a right, ripe youth – flowing, vital, alive, a wild ocean of energy. A rightly lived youth brings you to the very settled calm and quiet life. A calm and quiet life brings you to a religious inquiry: What is life? Living is not enough, one has to penetrate the mystery. A calm and quiet life brings you to meditative moments. Meditation brings you to renounce all that is useless now, just junk, garbage. The whole life becomes garbage; only one thing remains always eternally valuable, and that is your awareness.

By the time of the seventieth year, when you are ready to die – if you lived everything rightly, in the moment, never postponing for the future, never dreaming for the future, you lived it totally in the moment whatsoever it was – nine months before your death you will become aware... you have attained that much awareness, you can see: now death is coming.

Many saints have declared their deaths, but I have not come across a single instance when the death was declared before nine months. Exactly nine months before, a man of awareness, uncluttered with the past... because one who never thinks of the future will never think of the past. They are together, the past and future are together, joined together. When you think of the future it is nothing but the projection of the past; when you think of the past it is nothing but trying to plan for the future. They are together. The present is out of them. A man who lives in this moment - now and here - is not cluttered with the past and not cluttered with the future. He remains unburdened. He has no burden to carry, he moves without weight. The gravitation doesn’t affect him. In fact, he doesn’t walk, he flies. He has wings....

Before he dies, exactly nine months before, he will become aware that death is coming. And he will enjoy and he will celebrate and he will say to people, ”My ship is coming, and I am only for a little while more on this bank. Soon I will be going to my home. This life has been beautiful, a strange experience. I loved, learned, lived much, I am enriched. I had come here with nothing and I am going with much experience, much maturity.”

He will be thankful to all that has happened – good and bad both, right and wrong both, because from everything he learned, not only from right, from wrong also. Sages that he came across, he learned from them; and sinners, yes, from them also – they all helped. People who robbed him helped, people who helped him helped, people who were friends helped, people who were enemies helped. Everything helped. Summer and winter, satiety and hunger, everything helped. One can be thankful to all.

When one is thankful to all and ready to die celebrating for this opportunity that was there, death becomes beautiful. Then death is not the enemy, it is the greatest friend, because it is the crescendo of life. It is the highest peak that life achieves. It is not the end of life, it is the c1imax. It looks like the end because you have never known life. To one who has known life it appears as the very crescendo, the very peak, the highest peak.

Death is the culmination, the fulfillment. Life does not end in it; in fact life flowers in it, it IS the flower.

But to know the beauty of death one has to be ready for it, one has to learn the art. That’s why I go on saying that I am here to teach you how to die. A master is a death. He allows you to die in him.

He helps you to die every moment to the past, and he helps you to live an uncluttered moment – this moment.

This small parable is beautiful. It says:

Money is a symbol of the future. Why do you accumulate money? – for the future. Money is future, money is hidden future; that’s why people who don’t live in the present will always cling to money.

They can afford to lose love but they cannot afford to lose money, because love is not a promise for the future. It may be good right now but what will you do in your old age? Be miserly, accumulate money, because in the future money will be helpful.

Why are people so mad after money? It is a symbol of future. Money is future. Money is condensed future in a coin, in a note. It is a promise for the future. Every note says, ”I promise that this much amount of money whenever demanded will be given to you.” It is a promise for the future.

Misers never live here-now, they cannot. They live in their money. Uwais is an enlightened master. He was offered some money. It is a symbol, a symbol for the future. He was offered some future – let me put it that way.

Already I have a coin, I don’t need it. Right now I am living, he said. And right now it is enough. I have a coin. What coin? This moment is the coin. It is a single coin, a very small coin. You can live it herenow, it is not of much use for the future. It is such a small coin, you will look foolish if you gather it for the future. A moment is so small, it is a coin. Time is a promissory note, a thousand rupee note, a one lakh rupee note, a one crore rupee note. Time is big money. A moment – it is just a drop, a small coin.

The other must not have understood. Difficult, difficult when you talk to a man like Uwais. He has a different language, you have a different language; communication becomes impossible.

And he was looking at the coin, thinking of the coin; he did not understand what Uwais is saying. He said, ”How long will it last you?” The present moment, how long can it last? It is such a small coin.

It will be finished.

”Don’t think of the moment,” say the wiser ones. They say, ”Think of the future.” Say the wiser ones: ”Don’t think of the immediate, how long will it last you? Think of the future.”

And I tell you, these ”wiser” ones are the poisoners of humanity. They have poisoned your mind completely... because the immediate is all that is there. The immediate moment is the only reality that is there. Howsoever small, it is the only reality. And your promissory notes, howsoever big amount they promise in the future, are simply promissory notes. The future never comes. No governor-general of the reserve bank can give you the guarantee for the future. Future? – who can guarantee it? who can predict it? How long will it last you? It is nothing, just a moment.

The wiser ones say, ”Don’t live the momentary life.” They say, ”Think of the future.” They say, ”Don’t live just here and now, look ahead! Think of the long range – not only of this world, of the other world also. Think of heaven and hell, moksha, Brahman, nirvana.” And I say to you, these wiser ones are poisoners. The real wisdom consists in being here and now because for the real wisdom that is the only existence, there is no other existence. It is the only existence there is.

It is a beautiful dialogue. Uwais said: Guarantee me that I shall live longer, longer than this moment, this small coin. Can you guarantee me that I will live the next moment? Can you guarantee me that I will live tomorrow? If you cannot guarantee me that then please let me live today. If you cannot guarantee the next moment, then howsoever small this moment is please let me live it right now.

Once lost, it is lost forever, and you cannot guarantee the next. So why should I waste my small coin for bigger coins which cannot be guaranteed?

Future is never; only this moment is. Don’t listen to so-called wise ones who are really foolish. Listen to life! And listen to existence. It is better to go to the trees and listen how they live, go to the animals and watch how they live. Look all around, except at man. Man is perverted. Look at existence and see how existence lives – it lives moment to moment, with no planning for the future. That’s why it is so beautiful, it is so ecstatic. Its ecstasy knows no boundaries. From one moment it flows into the other, but it never thinks of the other. One moment lived totally automatically brings another moment, with more possibilities – because the other moment is not coming from somewhere else, it grows out of you as leaves grow out of trees.

If the tree has been healthy, lived really, then out of beautiful trees come beautiful leaves, beautiful flowers and fruits. It need not worry about them.

Have you seen any tree sitting like Rodin’s statue of ”The Thinker” with the hand on the head, wrinkles on the forehead, thinking how to bring fruits, how to flower this season again? where to go? who are the experts to ask? where to find a guru?

It doesn’t bother. Even if gurus come to them and talk to them they won’t listen. They will say, ”Go somewhere else, find some stupid human being. Here no gurus are needed. We are already okay, absolutely okay.”

When the time comes the tree flowers. When the time comes it is laden with fruits. When the time comes, fruits are ripe, ready to fall, die into the earth, create new seeds, new trees – and the circle goes on and on and on. It is eternal. From each moment is born another moment – it comes out of it. Live it as totally as possible, because through that totality another will be born.

This small coin of the moment seems to be enough for me because who can guarantee that there is going to be another moment for me to live? If you can guarantee it, I will accept your gift.

Nobody can guarantee the future.Only the present is. Live it as deeply, as ecstatically, as dancingly as possible, because from it will come the next.... I don’t talk to you about the next life because I don’t talk about even the next moment. The next life will come, I know. It comes, it always comes, why bother...? You live this life totally and the next will come out of this. If this has been beautiful the next is going to be better than this.

This moment will decide the fate of the next moment that is going to follow. There is no other way.

Death is the only guarantee. This moment lived well is the only guarantee for the next moment which is going to follow it, because it is not following really, it is coming out of it, it is an outcome. You are growing each moment. Don’t leave gaps, otherwise those gaps will hang around you. They will be holes in your being. In those holes will be wounds, and they will color your whole life to come.

Die to the past. Die to the future and live in the present.

Death is the only message that I would like to give to you – and if you can allow, millions of things will become possible to you. Let me repeat the Sufi saying: Simply trust. Do not the petals flutter down just like that? Trust life.

Trust this moment here and now and allow things to take their own shape.
You need not worry, there is no need to worry. Trust life, simply trust.

Do not the petals flutter down just like that?

Go and see a rose, and by the evening the petals are fluttering down towards the earth, going to rest. They lived their day. They enjoyed, they enjoyed the strong wind, they took the challenge, they rose high to the sky. They have spread their fragrance to the four winds – the winds have taken it already to the corners of the earth. They loved the sun, they played with it a little while. Their day is over. Now they don’t cling. Now they don’t hesitate to fall. They are ready.

A beautiful life creates a beautiful death, because death is nothing but the whole life condensed again in a seed.

Now the petals are falling. Evening has come. The sun has set, the night will take over. The death has come, the petals are falling towards the earth. They don’t hesitate. They don’t know where they are going, they don’t know whether there is any earth down there or not – maybe it is a bottomless abyss – but they don’t doubt, they don’t hesitate.

When you have lived your life, trust arises. It arises – it is an afterglow of a lived life.

Petals falling, fluttering down towards the earth. Simply trust – do not the petals flutter down just like that? And everything – God, moksha, nirvana – everything, I say to you, becomes possible.

Just trust. Just like that.
Just Like That, Chapter 10