Towards a Total Flowering of Consciousness__

Anger has come to you: don't do anything for or against it. Don't indulge in it, don't suppress it - meditate on it. Close your eyes and meditate on the fact of anger. When I say meditate, many things have to be understood. Don't judge. Don't say anger is bad; don't say it is good, don't do anything.

Anger is there just like when a snake has come in the room - just be aware. Is the snake a god to be worshipped? No! Is the snake an enemy to be killed? No! Just be aware that the snake has come. Use this snake as an object for being aware.

Just like this anger has flashed within you - be aware, be conscious, remain alert, and don't do anything! Just remain alert, because the moment you begin to do anything you cannot remain alert. You have such a small quantity of energy that if you begin to act that energy moves into action. Don't do anything. Be silent and quiet - alert. Use your total energy capacity to be just alert to the fact that the anger is there. And suddenly you will become aware that the focus of your consciousness is growing - you are penetrating into the unconscious. Your light of the conscious is going deep into darkness. And the more you penetrate into the darkness of the unconscious, the more conscious you are.

This is a long effort, arduous; arduous because it will create very deep inconvenience. You will feel very uneasy. Try, and you will come to know. You can do two things. either you can act out your anger - it is easy, you are relieved. whatsoever the consequence may be, for the moment you are relieved; you are relieved of an inner unconscious tension. Or you can fight with your anger. If you fight with it, then again you are relieved because in fighting anger the same energy is being used which is used in being angry.

Remember this, that one who is fighting with his anger is really changing only the object. I am angry with you. I was going to fight with you, but I turn this whole fight against my own anger, I invert it. I was going to fight with you, but I am a moral man, I am a saint, I am a religious man, so I cannot fight with you. But I have to fight with someone, so I fight with myself, I fight against my anger. The same energy and the same release will happen. I have fought, and there will be a deep satisfaction.

The so-called satisfaction seen on so-called saints' faces is nothing but a deep satisfaction from fighting and winning. And really, it is more cunning, because to fight with someone is to create a long series of consequences. If you become both, if you divide yourself in two - the good one who never becomes angry, and the bad one, the unconscious one, who gets angry - if you divide yourself in two, you can fight forever. Outwardly you will become a saint, but inwardly you are just a volcano, just a deep turmoil and nothing else - a disease inside, a constant conflict.

Those who fight with sex will have to fight continuously with sex; those who fight with anger will have to fight with anger continuously. It is a constant fight. There is no silence within - there cannot be. That's why we divide ourselves into two: the bad one and the good one. You have two parts within you. Remember, the bad one is the unconscious and the good one is the conscious. And once you take your unconscious as the enemy, you can never change and transform it. Then there can be no mutation - because the unconscious is not the enemy. That is your energy, your source, your biological source of energy. You can never be healthy divided in yourself - you will become a disease.

Don't fight, don't indulge. Both are easy. Both are easy! The only thing which is very uncomfortable and uneasy, is to remain alert. The whole mechanism of habit will force you to do something: "What are you doing? Do something! Anything will do, but do something!" This habit has to be broken.

So the first thing is to recognize and realize that you are unconscious. The second thing is that whenever the conscious begins to manipulate you, be aware, and remain aware and alert. A very simple, passive alertness is needed.

If you are alert, two things happen: the energy that was going to be used as indulgence or as suppression will become part of your alertness. Your alertness will be strengthened through that energy. That energy will move to your alertness; you will become more alert. That energy will become a fuel to your consciousness. You will be more conscious, and for the first time the unconscious will not be able to force you. For the first time unconsciousness will be incapable of manipulating you. And once you know the feeling of this freedom, that the unconscious cannot manipulate you - without any fight, without any struggle, without any conflict - then your consciousness has become stronger.

And, by and by, the filed of consciousness will grow and the field of unconsciousness will shrink.

your human iceberg will have gained one part more: you will be two parts conscious, eight parts unconscious. This is a long journey, and by and by you will become three parts conscious, seven parts unconscious. As you gain more it is just like reclaiming land from the ocean. The unconscious is a vast ocean; you have to reclaim land inch by inch. But the moment you reclaim land, the ocean shrinks back. A day comes, just like it came to a Buddha or to a Jesus, when you are conscious all the ten parts and the unconscious has disappeared. You are just light inside and no darkness.

This is the flowering. And for the first time you become aware of your immortality. for the first time you are not now a seed. For the first time now for you there is no becoming - you have become a being. If this expression can be allowed: You have become a being! Now you are a being!

In this enlightened state of being, there is no suffering, no conflict, no misery. You are filled with bliss. Inside you are bliss, outside you are compassion. You have become sensitive to everything.

Because of that sensitivity, a Buddha is compassion outside; inside a deep silent pool of bliss and outside a compassion. Buddha's lips are smiling with a deep bliss, and his eyes are filled with tears - in a deep compassion.

That's why you can work both ways. If you grow in consciousness, you will grow in compassion; if you grow in compassion, you will grow in consciousness. But to grow in compassion is very difficult - because you can again deceive. So the only right path is to grow in consciousness, then compassion comes as a shadow. Otherwise you can deceive and your compassion can just be a facade, a deception. Your compassion can again be an unconscious act. Then it is sentimental, emotional - not existential. Then you can weep, you can sympathize and you can serve. But this is going to be again an unconscious thing. The surest and most certain path is to grow in consciousness.

This sutra says, "What are the flowers for the worship? - to be filled with consciousness." And when you have flowered into consciousness, only then can you be accepted. Then and only then do you enter the temple of the divine - not with flowers, but with your own flowering. Then you have become a flower.

Every one of you must have seen Buddha sitting on a flower, Vishnu sitting on a flower, Ram standing on a flower, but you might not have understood the symbol. Those flowers simply say, "These are flowered human beings. They have come to a deep flowering." You might have heard that the seventh chakra in yoga is sahasrardal kamal - the one-thousand- petalled lotus on the seventh chakra in your head. That seventh chakra is the last stage, the peak, the Everest of consciousness. The first chakra is muladhar - the sex center, and the last chakra is sahasrar. Sex is the most unconscious thing in you, and the sahasrar is the most conscious. These are the two poles.

We live around the sex center, move around it. Whatsoever we do is related with sex, howsoever distant it may look. Your earning money, your accumulating wealth, may not look at all related with sex, but they are related. The more wealth you have, the more sex you can have; it becomes more possible. The more power you have, the more sex you can have; it becomes more possible.

You may forget completely, and ends may become means and means may become ends; that's another thing. One person can go on accumulating wealth for his whole life, and he may completely forget for what he is doing it. But every power search is for sex. We move around the center of sex, we are bound to because unless we grow in consciousness we cannot go beyond it. That is the most unconscious-rooted center, the lowest, and for that reason the deepest and the most unconscious.

The higher you move in consciousness, the further you go from sex. And then there is a flowering of a different type. The whole energy moves to the seventh - sahasrar. And when the whole energy comes to the seventh chakra, it becomes a flower - one-thousand-petalled. Mm? - this is a beautiful imagery. It means with unlimited, infinite petals, the flower opens.

This sutra is not just a symbol - really, no symbol is just a symbol - it indicates a reality. And whenever you come to the state of Samadhi, to the seventh chakra state of consciousness, you have a subtle sense of flowering inside, as if something has burst open. Now you are not a bud - you are a flower. Come with this flower to the Divine temple: this is the meaning of this sutra.

Flowers purchased from the market will not do. I say "purchased from the market", because now even to grow them has become impossible. It seems that flowers grow in shops, they are produced.

Purchased flowers will not do; outside flowers will not do. Your own flowering is needed, and only that can be accepted. This is arduous, long, but not impossible. It is the only challenge for man; all else is just childish stupidity. To be fully conscious is the only challenge! To go to the moon, to move to some further star, is all childish - because you can go to the moon but you remain the same, you remain the seed. Unless you become a flower, you have not moved. With an inner flowering, you mutate, you change, you are born anew.

Effort is needed, much effort is needed. And if - and this is a big IF - IF you are ready to take the first step, the last is not very far. But the IF is concerned with the first. If you have taken the first step, half the journey is completed. The first is the most difficult. To recognize that you are unconscious is very ego-destroying; it is very shattering, shocking. But if one is ready to take this shock and welcome it, the last step is not very far.

Really, Krishnamurti has said that the first step is the last. Mm? It is in a way, because one who takes the first will take the last. Mahavir has said that if you have taken the first you have reached, because for one who is ready to take the first there is no problem. The journey has started.

To start is always difficult. To reach is not so difficult because one has to move only one step at a time. A thousand-mile journey is completed only by taking one step at a time. No one needs to take two steps simultaneously; no one is required to. If you have taken the first step you have taken one step, and only one step is the needed thing. Now go on taking one and one added to one, and you can complete a thousand-mile journey. We are all sitting only thinking and brooding about the first step. Some are just brooding, some are dreaming that they have taken the first step already.

Someone was here to meet me a few days before. He said, "I am very much advanced, so don't start with me from A-B-C." This is the mad type of man.

So I asked, "First relate to me how much you have advanced. What have you gained?" So he said, "I see visions of Krishna. Sometimes I dance with him in my visions. I have visions of very beautiful places - lakes, hills." Whatsoever he said was just dreaming, so I said, "If this is what you mean when you say that you have advanced very much, then it is very difficult to even proceed because you are simply dreaming.

You have not even taken the first step." The first is the most difficult: to recognize this, let this fact penetrate deep. Howsoever painful, welcome it - only then can something be done. If you recognize it you will become humble, if you recognize it you will become simple, if you recognize it you will become childlike - then there is much possibility, then much opens.

And then the second step: be conscious. Whatsoever happens in the inner mind, be conscious about it. Don't act! Don't be in a hurry to act. Remain with the fact - alert. And see that this alertness works miraculously. It is a miracle. Observe the unconscious, and there is a sudden change. The quality, the very quality of the mind changes the moment you become an observer inside, a consciousness inside. The very quality of mind changes! The seed is broken asunder and the plant is born.

Of course, it is delicate, very delicate. And one has to protect it continuously for many, many days, for many, many years and sometimes for many, many lives. ut once begun, once the seed is broken, the plant will become a tree - and one day there is flowering.

That flowering is the concern of religion. To make man a flower is the whole concern of religion.

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