The_Tradition of the Upanishads and the Secrets of Meditation

Lastly, I am not a Hindu, neither am I Mohammedan nor a Christian - a homeless wanderer. I do not belong to the tradition of the Upanishads outwardly, so I have no investment in them. When a Hindu comments, or when a Hindu thinks about the Upanishads, he has investments; when a Mohammedan writes about the Upanishads, he has anti-investments: they cannot be true and authentic. If one is a Hindu he cannot be true about the Upanishads; if one is a Mohammedan he cannot be true about the Upanishads. He is bound to lie. But the deception is so subtle that one may not even be aware.

Man is the only animal who can lie to himself and can live in deceptions. If you are a Hindu and are thinking about the Upanishads, or a Mohammedan and thinking about the Koran, or a Christian and thinking about the New Testament, you will never be aware that you cannot be true. Your being a Christian is the barrier. You cannot be true! One must not belong; only then is the response true. Belonging disturbs, perverts the mind, distracts and projects things which are not, or denies things which are.

So to me, that is not a problem, and for you, also, I would suggest that when you are reading the Koran, listening to the Upanishads or to the Bible, do not be Hindus, Christians and Mohammedans at all - just being is enough. You will be able to penetrate deeper. With concepts, with dogmas, you are never open. And a closed mind can create deceptions of understanding, but can never understand.

So I belong to no one, and if I am responding to this Upanishad it is simply because I have fallen in love with it. This, one of the shortest Upanishads, "Atma Pooja", is a rare phenomenon. So something about this rare Upanishad. why I have chosen to talk about it.

Firstly, it is the shortest; it is just seedlike - potent, pregnant, with much in it. Every word is a seed with infinite possibilities. So you can echo it and reecho it infinitely. And the more you ponder over it, the more you allow it to go in, the more newer significances will be revealed. These seedlike words show that they were found in deep silence. Really, this looks strange, but this is a fact. If you have less to say, you will say more. If you really have something to say, you can say it in a very few lines, few words - even a single word may be enough. The less you have to say, the more words you will have to use. The more you have to say, the less words you can use.

Now it has become a known fact to psychologists that words are used not to say, but to hide. We go on talking because we want to hide something. If you want to hide something you cannot be silent, because your face may say it, your silence may indicate it. The other may become suspicious that you are hiding something. So a person who has to hide something will go on talking continuously.

Through words you can deceive; through silence you cannot deceive.

The Upanishads really have something to say, so they say it in seed form - in sutras, in aphorisms.

This Upanishad has only seventeen sutras. They can be written on a half page. On one postcard this whole Upanishad can be written - on one side! But it has a very potent message, so we will take each seed word and try to penetrate it, to be in a living response with it. Something may begin to vibrate in you. And it can begin because these words are very potential, they have much. If their atoms could be broken, much energy would be released. So be open, receptive, in a deep trust, and let the Upanishad work.

Now we enter into the "Atma Pooja - Worship of the Self - Upanishad":

"AUM": this word "AUM" is very significant - significant as a sign, as a symbol, as a secret key. So first we must decode it.

AUM has five matras, five steps. The first step is A, the second is U, the third is M. These are gross steps. When we utter AUM, A-U-M. These are three words. But utter A-U-M [long], and in the end the M resounds - "mmmm...". That is a half step - the fourth. Three are gross and can be heard. The fourth is half gross. If you are very aware, only then is it heard; otherwise it is lost. And the fifth is just never heard. When the sound of AUM vibrates and the vibrations go into the cosmic emptiness, when the sound has gone and a soundlessness remains, that is the fifth. You utter the word AUM, then A-U-M is heard very clearly, then a lingering sound of "mmmm..." - half a step - and then soundlessness. That is the fifth. These five steps are just signs towards many things.

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First, the Upanishads know that human consciousness has five steps. We know the three gross ones - the waking, the dreaming and the sleep. These are three gross - A-U-M. The Upanishads call the fourth turiya. They have not named it because it is not gross. The fourth is that in which one becomes aware of in deep sleep also. If you have been deep in sleep, in a deep dreamless sleep, if in the morning you can say, "I have been in a deep, deep sleep," then someone, some thing within you that has been aware and remembers somehow that there has been a very deep, dreamless sleep - but a witness was there. That witness is known as the fourth. But the Upanishads say that even the fourth is not the ultimate, because to be a witness is still to be separate. So when the witness also dissolves, if only Existence remains, without a witness, that is the fifth. So this AUM is a sign for many things - for many things - for five bodies in man. The Upanishads divide them into anamaya, pranamaya, manomaya, vigyanamaya and anandamaya - five sheaths, five bodies.

This AUM is a cosmic sign. This is just a sign, but it is also a symbol. What does it mean when I say it is also a symbol? When someone goes deep into Existence, to the roots, to the very roots, then thoughts are no more there, the thinker is no more there, objectivity is no more there, subjectivity is no more there - but, still, everything is. In that thoughtless, thinkerless moment, a sound is heard. That sound resembles AUM - just resembles it. It is not AUM; that is why it is a symbol. We cannot reproduce it. This is the approximate resemblance. That is why it has been likened to many sounds, but it is always nearer to AUM.

Christians and Mohammedans have represented it as AMEN. That sound which is heard when everything is lost, and only a sound vibrates, resembles AUM. It can resemble 'amen'. In English, there are many words - omnipresent, omniscient, omnipotent. That OMN is the sound. Really, "omniscient" refers to one who has seen the AUM, and AUM is a symbol for all. "Omnipotent" means one who has become one with AUM, because that is the potentiality of the whole cosmos. "Omnipresent" means one who is present in the sound of AUM, and that sound surrounds all; it overflows all.

The OMN in omniscient, omnipresent, omnipotent, is AUM. AMEN is AUM. Different seekers, different persons, have come with different resemblances, but they always somehow resemble AUM. This is a symbol - a symbol of a universal sound. Modern science thinks in terms of electric particles as the foundational units of Existence - but the Upanishads think not of electrical particles, but of sound particles as the basis.

Science says that sound is a modification of electric vibrations, that sound itself is nothing but electricity. The Upanishads say electricity is nothing but sound modifications. One thing is certain - that somehow sound and electricity are convertible. Which is basic? Science says electricity is basic, the Upanishads say sound is basic. And I think this difference is simply because of their approaches. The Upanishads reach to the Ultimate Reality through sound, through mantra. They use sound to reach soundlessness. By and by, the sound is dropped; by and by, soundlessness is achieved. Ultimately, when they reach to the bottom, they hear a cosmic sound. It is not a thought; it is not a created sound. It is just in the very nature of Existence that it sounds.

That sound they have called AUM. They say that when we say AUM, it is just a resemblance - a very far, far-off copy. It is not true, it is not that which is known there, because it is created by us. It is created by us! It is just like a photograph of something: it simply resembles. My photograph simply resembles me: it is not me.

I have heard about the Dutch painter, Van Gogh.

A sophisticated lady met Van Gogh on the street and said, "I have seen a portrait of you, and it was so lovely and so beautiful that I kissed it."

Van Gogh asked, "Did the portrait reply?" The lady said, "No! How can the portrait reply?"

So, Van Gogh said, "Then it was not me!"

A photograph can resemble: it is not real, mmm? - nothing is wrong with it: it is enough that it resembles, but one should not mistake it for the real. So AUM is just a symbol - a symbol of something it resembles - like a photograph.

AUM is also a secret key. When I say a secret key, I mean that because it resembles the ultimate sound, if you can use it and, by and by, go deep with it, you will reach to the ultimate door - because it resembles. And it will resemble more if you do certain things with it. For example, if you utter AUM then you have to use your lips; your body mechanism is to be used. Then it will resemble less, because a very gross mechanism has to be used and it perverts. It changes AUM into a gross thing. Do not use your lips. Create the sound of AUM in yourself only through your mind. Do not use your body. Then it will resemble more, because now you will be using a more subtle medium. It will give a finer photograph, more close to the real.

Do not even use mind: first use the gross body, then drop it; then use your mind - just create the sound of AUM inwardly; then even stop that, and let the sound echo itself. Do not make any effort: it comes. Then it becomes AJAPA - then you are not creating it; you are just in the flow of it. Then it goes even deeper and it becomes even more real. You can use it as a key. When it becomes effortless - when it is not with your body, nor with your mind, but when the sound just flows in you - you are very near.

Now only one thing has still to be dropped - the one who is feeling this AUM. The 'I' - the ego - that feels that "AUM is surrounding me." If you drop this also then there is no barrier, and the copy, the photograph, drops into the real, the original. So it is also a secret key.

This AUM is miraculous. It is as foundational to mystics as Einstein's formula of relativity is to physics. That formula is three things: a sign, a symbol and a secret key - and AUM is also three things. But, basically, it is a secret key. Unless you open the doors, it is useless to go on thinking about it, futile, wasting time and life and energy. Unless you are ready to open the door, what is the use of talking about the key? Even if you understand all the implications, all the philosophical implications, it is meaningless. So AUM is always put in the beginning, and it is always put in the end. The Upanishads always begin with AUM, they always end with AUM. This is the key!

AUM TASYA NISHCHINTANAM DHYANAM AUM

If you enter the house, the first thing to be used is the key; and again, when you come out, the last thing to be used is the key. So enter! Use the key! But if you begin to contemplate on the key and continue sitting at the door, then the key is not a key for you but a barrier. Throw it! - because it is not opening anything. Rather, it is closing. And you are constantly thinking about the key.

One can go on thinking about the key without using it. There are many who have pondered, thought and contemplated about what AUM means. They have created structures, big structures on it, but they have never used the key. They have never entered the palace. It is a symbol, it is a sign, BUT basically it is a secret key. It can be used as a method to enter into the Cosmic, as a method to drop into the oceanic. The subtler it becomes, the deeper, the nearer it goes to the real; the grosser, the less.

The first sutra:

We live in a world of three dimensions. One dimension is "I / it" - the world of things - I and my house; I and my furniture; I and my wealth. This is the realm of "I / it". A world of 'it' surrounds me.

Then there is another dimension, "I / thou" - I and my beloved, I and my friend, I and my family - a world of persons. This is the second realm.

Then there is a third realm, "I / That" - 'I' and the Universe. The Upanishad says, "Meditation is the constant contemplation of THAT" - neither of 'it', nor of 'thou', but of 'That'. That means the Whole. It is not a thing, not a person: it is a That. But why use "That"? Whenever we say "That", it means something that transcends, something that is beyond, something that is not where we are - neither in our relationships with things, nor in our relationships with persons.... "That" - without any name, because if you give it a name - for example, if you call it "God" - it becomes an "I / thou" relationship. If you call it "father" or "mother", then you bring it to the second dimension. If you say there is no God, then you have to live in a one-dimensional world -- "I / it".

"That" is not a thing. Theists are ready to say it is not a thing, but they say it is a person. The Upanishads are not even ready to call it a person, because to make it a person is to limit it and to make it a person is to make it finite. They simply use the word "That". They say, "It is all, but we cannot name it because it has no form, no limitation. It is the ALLNESS." Then what to call it? They do not call it "God", they do not call it "Divine", they do not call it "Lord" - they do not call it by any name. There is no form, no name They simply use the word "That", and continuous contemplation of That is meditation.

If you can remember That continuously, then you are in meditation. When you are with things, remember That; when you are with persons, remember That. Wherever you are remember That - the All. Never see the limited as limited: always look deep and feel the unlimited. Never see the form as the form: always look deep and see the formless in it. Never see the thing as the thing: go deep, feel it, and the That will be revealed. Never see any person cased in his personality. Penetrate deep and feel that which goes beyond - the within beyond.

The continuous contemplation of That is meditation - no ritual, no method, no technique, simply continuous contemplation. But it is arduous, because one has to remember continuously, with no gap, no discontinuity, not even a single moment's forgetfulness. Remembrance continuous - constant, without any gap. It is the most arduous thing to remember continuously. We cannot remember continuously even for a few seconds.

Just begin to count your breath, and remember how many breaths you can count while continuously remembering, constantly remembering the process of breathing - the incoming, the outgoing breaths. Remember, and count. You have counted three or four, and then you miss. Something else comes in, and you have forgotten. And then you remember, "Oh, I was counting, and I have counted only three and I missed!"

Remembrance is the most difficult thing - because we are asleep. We are deeply asleep! We are walking in sleep, talking in sleep, moving, living, loving, doing everything in sleep, in a deep somnambulism - a deep, natural hypnosis. That is why there is so much confusion and so much conflict, so much violence and so much war. It is really a miracle how the human race has survived - so much sleep, and still we manage somehow!

But we are asleep. Our behaviour is not a behaviour which can be called alert, attentive, aware - we are not. For a single minute. we cannot be aware of ourselves. Try it, and then you will feel how much asleep you are. If I cannot remember myself continuously for one minute, for sixty seconds, how deeply asleep I must be! Two or three seconds, and then sleep comes and I am not there: I have moved. The consciousness has been dropped, the unconscious has come in. There is a deep darkness, and again I remember that I was trying to be aware.

P. D. Ouspensky was working with Gurdjieff on his method of self-remembering. The first time he met Gurdjieff he said, "What do you mean by self-remembering? I remember myself: I am P. D. Ouspensky."

Gurdjieff said, "Close your eyes and remember that you are P. D. Ouspensky, and when you forget, tell me. Be frank!"

Only three or four seconds passed, and Ouspensky opened his eyes and he said, "I began to dream. I forgot that I am P. D. Ouspensky. I tried three or four times. I said within myself, 'I am P. D. Ouspensky, I am P. D. Ouspensky, I am P. D. Ouspensky,' and then a dream broke in and I was not aware."

So Gurdjieff said, "This is not self-remembering - that you are P. D. Ouspensky. Firstly, you are not P. D. Ouspensky, and, secondly, this is not remembering. When the remembering comes, you will be the first to deny that you are P. D. Ouspensky."

For three months Ouspensky tried hard, very hard. The more you try, the more you become aware how hard it is. The more you try, the more you begin to feel that "I have been asleep all my life."

This is just a mechanical awareness that we have. We can move with it, do the routine, but can never go deep. For three months, when he tried and tried and tried and then became aware, a new pillar of consciousness came into existence. When he could feel and be aware constantly, then Gurdjieff asked him to come with him and to move on the street.

So Ouspensky said, "For the first time, on the street of a big City, I became aware that everyone is asleep, everyone is moving in sleep. But I had moved in the same street and was never aware. And I saw every man asleep - just with open eyes." He became so afraid that he said to his teacher, "I cannot go further; I must go back. Everyone is so asleep that anything can happen here. I cannot move."

Just sit by the side of the street and look at people's eyes moving. Then you will become aware that everyone is closed within himself. He is not aware of what is happening around him. Someone is talking with himself, someone is moving his hands, making gestures; he may be in some dream.

Lips are moving, everyone is talking within; no one is aware of what is happening around him. All are moving just automaton-like. They are going to their homes; they need not even remember where their homes are - they just move automatically. Their legs move, their hands move, their car wheels turn, they reach their homes, but this whole process is just a sleep - a mechanical routine. Tracks are there, and on those tracks they go on moving. That is why we are always afraid of the new - because then we have to create new tracks. We are afraid of the new because for the new the routine will not do, and for some time we will have to be a bit alert. We are always fixed in our dead routines and are, in a way, dead. A sleeping person is really dead. He cannot be said to be alive.

Only for moments, for a few moments in the whole life, do we become aware, and those moments are either in deep moments of love, which are rare.... It happens only to a few people, to very few.

And when it happens, everyone else will feel that that man has gone mad - because he becomes so different, because he comes to see things in a different colour, with a different music, with a different light. He begins to look around, and he sees a different world! Of course, he has gone mad for us, so we can forgive him because "he is mad". He is "in a dream". Really, the contrary is the case: we are asleep, and for a moment he has become aware of a deeper reality. But he is alone, and that awareness cannot continue because it is just an accidental happening.

It is not by his effort that he has attained it. It has just happened. It's just an accident. He will go to sleep again, and when he goes to sleep then he will feel that he has been betrayed by his lover or beloved, because that magic is no more there. That magic came because he became aware of a different world. In this world there are different worlds. He became aware and now he is asleep again, so he feels he has been betrayed. Every lover feels that he has been betrayed. No one has betrayed him. Only in a sudden awakening he has seen a different world, with a different beauty, with different sounds, and now he is again asleep. That glimpse is lost and he feels he has been betrayed. No one has betrayed him. It is only that suddenly he became aware.

One becomes aware either with love or with death. If you are suddenly in the grip of death, you will be aware. In sudden accidents - the car speeding uncontrollably down the hill - you will become aware, because there is no future and the past has ended. Only the present moment - this moment of dropping down the hill - is all. Now a different dimension of time opens. You are here and now for the first time. Dreams are not possible because there is no future. You cannot think about the future.

The past is just ending. Between these two, for this moment, in this calamity, you have become aware. So love and death are the only moments when we become aware, but they are not in our hands. They are not!

So when the Upanishad says "the constant contemplation of That", it means that if you can remember continuously, constantly, in everything, in every event, that whatsoever is, is That - inside, outside; if everything becomes just a symbol for the remembrance of That, then the consciousness will explode, the sleep will not be there, you will become conscious and aware. That consciousness, that awareness, is meditation.

There are two more things. "Continuous" means without any gap - not a single moment's gap. But this is difficult, because then your life will be impossible. If you go on continuously remembering Him, how can you live, how can you move, how can you eat? That problem arises if you begin to remember His name, if you begin to remember "Ram", "Jesus" or something else. If you begin to remember His name, if you give some name to Him, and begin to repeat "Ram-Ram-Ram", then your life will become impossible, because either you can remember "Ram" or you can move on the street.

One soldier was brought to me, a very sincere man, a very devoted one. He was trying continuously to remember "Ram". Someone, some guru told him to remember "Ram" continuously. He became so much absorbed with that repetition that outward life became impossible - impossible! He could not sleep because he had to remember "Ram". So if you are repeating "Ram-Ram-Ram" inside, you cannot go to sleep. This constant activity will not allow it. He could not move on the street because someone may be honking a horn and he could not hear. He was surrounded by his own repetition - closed. He became insensitive.

He was a military soldier, so his captain brought him to me and said. "He cannot even listen. I say, 'Left turn!' and he is standing and he is looking. He is absent. What is he doing?" The captain told me, "It has become impossible! This man has to be hospitalized."

I asked the soldier, "What are you doing?"

He said, "I can tell you but not my captain. My guru has given me a mantra to repeat continuously, so I am repeating 'Ram-Ram-Ram'. And now the repetition has gone so deep - for three years I have been repeating continuously - that I have lost sleep. I cannot see what is happening, I cannot hear what is happening around me. A great barrier has come between myself and the world. I am enclosed within my repetition of 'Ram'."

He asked me, "How can I do both? If I have to repeat it continuously, then I cannot do anything else. So tell me what to do. If I do anything else, then this repetition breaks. Gaps are bound to come there."

This is not the way to proceed. It is not meant here. This is why the Upanishad is not giving any name, any form, but is simply saying "That". It is possible to remember "That" continuously, because you are not to remember His name. Rather, you have to feel "That" in everything you are doing - just carrying water from the well!

One Zen monk, Bokuju, was asked, "What do you do continuously?"

He said, "I don't do anything continuously. Whatsoever I am doing, I am doing it totally. When I am carrying water from the well, I am carrying water from the well. When I am chopping wood, I am chopping wood. When I am sleeping, I am sleeping."

The questioner asked, "Then what are you DOING?"

Bokuju said, "I am not doing anything. When I am chopping wood, He is chopping wood. When I am carrying the water, He is carrying the water. And He is the water which is being carried, and He is the wood which is being chopped. Now He is and I am not! So everything has become a worship and everything has become a meditation."

This whole Upanishad is concerned with how to make your whole life a worship. This Upanishad is absolutely anti-ritualistic: no ritual is needed; only a different attitude, a remembering of "That" - doing, non-doing, but remembering "That". And when I say "remembering That," it is not a mental remembering. You are not to remember, "Okay, this stone is That." If you have to remember in this way, that "this stone is THAT," then it is not remembering, because still two exist - this stone and That. When the Upanishad says, "constant contemplation of That," it means the stone must drop!

ONLY THAT IS! That is a deep realization, a constant realization.

Begin to feel. Do not touch a thing without feeling the That; do not love anyone without feeling That; do not move, do not even breathe, without feeling That. It is not that you have to impose That on everything: you have to discover That in everything. Mm? - the distinction must be clear. You are not to impose That on everything. You can impose; that will be just a trick. You have to discover!

Seeing a flower, you can impose and can say, "Oh, that flower is That!" No, do not impose, do not say anything! Just remain silent near the flower. Look at it, be in deep sympathy with it, in a deep communion with it. Forget yourself. Just be a passive awareness there, and the flower will flower into That. The That will be revealed.

So go on discovering That! That is what is meant by "constant contemplation". And, constant contemplation of That is meditation.

 

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