Periphery and Center

WHAT IS MIND? Mind is not a thing, but an event. A thing has substance in it, an event is just a process. A thing is like the rock; an event is like the wave: it exists, but is not substantial. It is just the event between the wind and the ocean; a process, a phenomenon.

This is the first thing to be understood: that mind is a process, like a wave or like a river, but it has no substance in it. If it has substance, then it can not be dissolved. If it has no substance it can disappear without leaving a single trace behind. When a wave disappears into the ocean, what is left behind? Nothing, not even a trace. So those who have known, they say mind is like a bird flying into the sky - no footprints are left behind, not even a trace. The bird flies but leaves no path, no footprints.

The mind is just a process. In fact, mind doesn't exist, only thoughts, thoughts moving so fast that you think and feel that something is existing there in continuity. One thought comes, another thought comes, another, and they go on. The gap is so small you cannot see the gap between one thought and another. So two thoughts become joined, they become a continuity, and because of that continuity you think there is a mind. There are thoughts - no mind - just as there are electrons, no matter. Thought is the electron of the mind. Just like a crowd... a crowd exists in a sense, doesn't exist in another; only individuals exist. But many individuals together give the feeling as if they are one. A nation exists and exists not; only individuals are there. Individuals are the electrons of a nation, of a community, of a crowd.

Thoughts exist, mind doesn't exist. Mind is just the appearance. And when you look into the mind deeper, it disappears. Then there are thoughts, but when the mind has disappeared and individual thoughts exist, many things are immediately solved. First thing: immediately you come to know that thoughts are like clouds - they come and go - and you are the sky. When there is no mind, immediately the perception comes that you are no more involved in the thoughts. Thoughts are there, passing through you like clouds passing through the sky, or the wind passing through the trees. Thoughts are passing through you, and they can pass because you are a vast emptiness. There is no hindrance, no obstacle. No wall exists to prevent them.

You are not a walled pheneomenon. Your sky is the infinitely open; thoughts come and go. And once you start feeling that thoughts come and go and you are the watcher, the witness, the mind is in control.

Mind cannot be controlled. In the first place, because it is not, how can you control it? In the second place, who will control the mind? Because nobody exists beyond the mind. and when I say nobody exists, I mean that nobody exists beyond the mind - a nothingness. Who will control the mind? If somebody is controlling the mind, then it will be only a part, fragment of the mind controlling another fragment of the mind. That is what the ego is.

Mind cannot be controlled in that way. It is not, and there is nobody to control it. The inner emptiness can see, but cannot control. It can look, but cannot control. But the very look is the control, the very phenomenon of observation, of witnessing, becomes the control because the mind disappears.

It is just like in a dark night, you are running fast because you have become afraid of somebody following you, and that somebody is nobody but your own shadow. and the more you run, the more the shadow is closer to you. Howsoever fast you run makes no difference; the shadow is there. whenever you look back, the shadow is there. That is not the way to escape from it, and that is not the way to control it. You will have to look deeper into the shadow. Stand still and look deeper into the shadow; the shadow disappears because the shadow is not; it is just an absence of light. Mind is nothing but the absence of your presence. When you sit silently, when you look deep in the mind, mind simply disappears. Thoughts will remain, they are existential, but mind will not be found.

But when the mind is gone then a second perception becomes possible: you can see thoughts are not yours. Of course they come, and sometimes they rest a little while in you, and then they go. You may be a resting place, but they don't originate in you. Have you ever watched that not even a single thought has arisen out of you? Not a single thought has come through your being. They always come from the outside. They don't belong to you. Rootless, homeless they hover. Sometimes they rest in you, that's all; a cloud resting on top of a hill. Then they will move on their own; you need not do anything. If you simply watch, control is attained.

The word control is not very good, because words cannot be very good. Words belong to the mind, to the world of thoughts. Words cannot be very, very penetrating; they are shallow. The word control is not good because there is nobody to control and there is nobody to be controlled. But tentatively, it helps to understand a certain thing which happens. When you look deeply, mind is controlled. Suddenly you have become the master.

Thoughts are there but they are no more masters of you, they cannot do anything to you; they simply come and go. You remain untouched just like a lotus flower amidst rainfall: drops of water fall on the petals but they go on slipping, they don't even touch. The lotus remains untouched.

That's why in the East lotus became so much significant, became so much symbolic. The greatest symbol that has come out of the East is the lotus. It carries the whole meaning of the eastern consciousness. It says, "Be like a lotus, that's all. Remain untouched, and you are in control. Remain untouched and you are the master."

Few things more about the mind before we can enter Patanjali's sutras. From one standpoint, mind is like waves - a disturbance. When the ocean is calm and quiet, undisturbed, the waves are not there. When the ocean is disturbed in a tide or strong wind, when tremendous waves arise and whole surface is just a chaos, mind from one standpoint... These are all metaphors just to help you to understand certain quality inside which cannot be said through words. These metaphors are poetic. If you try to understand them with sympathy, you will attain to an understanding. But if you try to understand them logically, you will miss the point. They are metaphors.

Mind is a disturbance of consciousness, just like an ocean with waves is a disturbance. Something foreign has entered - the wind. Something from the outside has happened to the ocean, or to the consciousness - the thoughts, or the wind, and there is a chaos. But the chaos is always on the surface. The waves are always on the surface. There are no waves in the depth - cannot be because in the depth the wind cannot enter. So everything is just on the surface. If you move inwards, control is attained. If you move inwards from the surface you go to the center; suddenly, the surface may still be disturbed but you are not disturbed.

The whole yoga is nothing but centering, moving towards the center, getting rooted there, abiding there. And from there the whole perspective changes. Now still the waves may be there, but they don't reach you. And now you can see they don't belong to you, just a conflict on the surface with something foreign. And from the center, when you look, by and by, the conflict ceases. By and by, you relax. By and by, you accept that of course there is strong wind and waves will arise; you are not worried, and when you are not worried even waves can be enjoyed. Nothing is wrong in them. The problem arises because you are also on the surface. You are in a small boat on the surface and strong wind comes and it is tide, and the whole ocean goes mad.

Of course, you are worried; you are scared to death. You are in danger. Any moment the waves can throw your small boat; any moment death can occur. What you can do with your small boat? How can you control? If you start fighting with the waves you will be defeated. Fight won't help. You will have to accept the waves. In fact, if you can accept the waves and let your boat, howsoever small, move with them not against them, then there is no danger.

That is the meaning of Tilopa - "loose and natural". Waves are there; you simply allow. You simply allow yourself to move with them, not against them. You become part of them. Then tremendous happiness happens. That is the whole art of surfing: moving with the waves - not against, with them - so much so that you are not different from them. Surfing can become a great meditation. It can give you glimpses of the inner because it is not a fight, it is a let-go. Once you know that even waves can be enjoyed - and that can be known when you look the whole phenomenon from the center.

Just like you are a traveler and clouds have gathered, and there is much lightning, and you have forgotten where you are moving; you have forgotten the path and you are hurrying towards home. This is what is happening on the surface: a traveler lost; many clouds, much lightning... Soon, there will be tremendous rain. You are seeking home, the safety of the home. Then suddenly you reach home. Now you sit inside, now you wait for the rains, now you can enjoy. Now the lightning has a beauty of its own. It was not so when you were outside, lost in a forest. But now, sitting inside the house the whole phenomenon is tremendously beautiful. Now the rain comes and you enjoy. Now the lightning is there and you enjoy, and great thunder in the clouds, and you enjoy, because now you are safe inside.

Once you reach to the center, you start enjoying whatsoever happens on the surface. So the whole thing is not to fight on the surface, but rather slip into the center. Then there is a control, and a control which has not been forced, a control which happens spontaneously when you are centered.

Centering in consciousness is the control of the mind. So don't try to control the mind. The language can mislead you. Nobody can control, and those who try to control, they will go mad; they will simply go neurotic, because trying to control the mind is nothing but a part of the mind trying to control another part of the mind.

Who are you who is trying to control? You are also a wave, a religious wave of course, trying to control. And there are irreligious waves. There is sex and there is anger and there is jealousy and possessiveness and hatred, and millions of waves, irreligious. And then there are religious waves: meditation, love, compassion. But these are all on the surface of the surface. And on the surface, religious, irreligious doesn't make any difference.

Religion is at the center and in the perspective that happens through the center. Sitting inside your home you look at your own surface. Everything changes because your perspective is new. Suddenly you are control. In fact, you are so much in control that you can leave the surface uncontrolled. This is subtle. You are much in control, so much rooted, not worried about the surface... In fact you would like the waves and tides and the storm - it is beautiful, it gives energy, it is a strength - there is nothing to be worried about it; only weaklings worry about thoughts. Only weaklings worry about the mind. Stronger people simply absorb, the whole, and they are richer for it. Stronger people simply never reject anything. Rejection is out of weakness - you are afraid. Stronger people would like to ab sorb everything that life gives. Religious, irreligious moral, immoral, divine, devil - makes no difference; stronger person absorbs everything, and he is richer fo it. He has a totally different depth Ordinary religious people cannot have; they are poor and shallow.

Watch ordinary religious people going to the temple and to the mosque and to the church. You will always find very, very shallow people with no depth. Because they have rejected parts of themselves, they have become crippled. They are in a certain way paralyzed.

Nothing is wrong in the mind, nothing is wrong in the thoughts. If anything is wrong, it is remaining on the surface, because then you don't know the whole and unnecessarily suffer because of the part and the part-perception. A whole perception is needed, and that possible only from the center, because from the center you can look all around in all dimensions, in all directions, the whole periphery of your being. And it is vast. In fact, it is the same as the periphery of existence. Once you are centered, by and by you become wider and wider and bigger and bigger, and you end with being brahman, not less than that.

From another standpoint, mind is like dust a traveller gathers on his clothes. And you have been traveling, and traveling and traveling for millions of lives and never taken a bath. Much dust has collected, naturally - nothing wrong in it; has to be so - layers of dust and you think those layers are your personality. You have become so much identified with them, you have lived with those layers of dust so long they look like your skin. You have become identified.

Mind is the past, the memory, the dust. Everybody has to gather it. If you travel, you will gather dust. But no need to be identified with it, no need to become one with it, because if you become one, then you will be in trouble because you are not the dust, you are consciousness. Says Omar Khayyam, "Dust unto dust". When a man dies, what happens? - dust returns unto dust. If you are just dust, then everything will return to the dust, nothing will be left behind. But are you just dust, layers of dust? Or, is something inside you which is not dust at all, not of the earth at all? That's your consciousness, your awareness.

Awareness is your being, consciousness is your being, and the dust that awareness collects around it is your mind. There are two ways to deal with this dust. The ordinary religious way is to clean the clothes, rub your body hard. But those methods cannot help much. Howsoever you clean your clothes, the clothes have become so dirty they are beyond redemption; you cannot clean them. On the contrary, whatsoever you do may make them more unclean.

It happened:

Mulla Nasrudin came once to me, and he is a drunkard. Eating, drinking tea, his hands shake, everything falls on his clothes, so all his clothes were stained with tea and pan, and this and that. So I told Nasrudin, "Why don't you go to the chemist and find something? There are solutions and these stains can be washed."

So he went. After seven days he came back; his clothes were in a worse condition, worse than before. I asked, 'What is the matter? Didn't you go to the chemist?" He said, "I went. And that chemical solution wonderful - it works. All the stains of tea and pan gone. Now I need another solution because that solution has left its own stains."

Religious people supply you soaps and chemical solutions how to wipe, how to wash the dirt, but then those solutions leave their own stains. That's why an immoral person can become moral, but remains dirty, now in moral way, but remains dirty. Even sometimes the situation is worse than before.

An immoral man is in many ways innocent, less egoistic. A moral man has all the immorality inside the mind. And new things that he has gathered: those are the moralistic, the puritan, egoistic attitudes. He feels superior. He feels he is the chosen one and everybody else is condemned to hell. Only he is going to heaven. And all the immorality remains inside, because you cannot control mind from the surface - there is no way. It simply doesn't happen that way. Only one control exists, and that is the perception from the center.

Mind is like a dust gathered through millions journeys. The real religious standpoint, the radical religious standpoint against the ordinary, is to simply throw the clothes. Don't bother to wash them, they cannot be washed. Simply move like a snake out of his old skin and don't even look back. This is what exactly yoga is: how to get rid of your personalities. Those personalities are the clothes.

This word "personality" is very interesting. It come from a Greek root persona. It means the mask that actors used in ancient Greece, in drama, to hide the face. That mask is called persona, and you have personality out of it. Personality is the mask, not you. Personality a false face, to show it to others. And through man lives and many experiences you have created many personalities, clothes; they have all become dirty. You have used them too much, and because of them the original face is completely lost.

You don't know what is your original face. You are deceiving others and you have become a victim of your own deceptions. Drop all personalities, because if you cling to the personality you will remain on the surface. Drop all personalities and be just natural, and then you can flow towards the center. And once from the center you look then there is no mind. In the beginning thoughts continue, but by and by, without your cooperation, they come less and less. And when all your cooperation is lost, when you simply don't cooperate with them, they stop coming to you. Not that they are no more; they are there, but they don't come to you.

Thoughts come only as invited guests. They never come uninvited, remember this. Sometimes you think, "This thought I never invited," but you must be wrong. In some way, sometime - you may have forgotten about it completely - you must have invited it. Thoughts never come uninvited. You first invite them; only then they come. When you don't invite, sometimes just because of old habit, because you have been an old friend, they may knock at your door. But if you don't cooperate, by and by they forget about you, they don't come to you. And when thoughts stop coming on their own, this is the control. Not that you control thoughts - simply you reach to an inner shrine of your being, and thoughts are controlled by themselves.

From still another standpoint, mind is the past, the memory, all the experiences accumulated, in a sense: all that you have done, all that you have thought, all that you desired, all that you dreamed - everything, your total past, your memory. Memory is mind. And unless you get rid of memory, you will not be able to control mind.

How to get rid of memory? It is always there following you. In fact, you are the memory, so how to get rid of it? Who are you except your memories? When I ask, "Who are you?" you tell me your name. That is your memory. Your parents gave you that name some time back. I ask you, "Who are you?" and you tell about your family: your father, your mother. That is a memory. I ask you, "Who are you?" and you tell me about your education, your degrees: that you have done the degree of Master of Arts, or you are a Ph.D., or you are an engineer or an architect. That is a memory.

When I ask you, "Who are you?" if really you look inside, your only answer can be, "I don't know." Whatsoever you will say will be the memory, not you. The only real authentic answer can be, "I don't know," because to know oneself is the last thing. I can answer who I am, but I will not answer. You cannot answer, "Who are you?" but you are ready with the answer.

Those who know, they keep silent about this. Because if all the memory is discarded, and all the language is discarded, then who I am cannot be said. I can look into you, I can give you a gesture; I can be with you with my total being - that is my answer. But the answer cannot be given in words because whatsoever is given in words will be part of memory, part of mind, not of consciousness.

How to get rid of the memories?

Watch them, witness them. And always remember that, "This has happened to me, but this is not me. Of course you were born in a certain family, but this is not you; it has happened to you, an event outside of you. Of course somebody has given a name to you. It has its utility but the name is not you. Of course, you have a form, but the form is not you. The form is just the house you happen to be in. The form is just the body that you happen to be in. And the body is given to you by your parents. It is a gift, but not you.

Watch and discriminate. This is what in the East they call vivek, discrimination. You discriminate continuously. Keep on discriminating - a moment comes when you have eliminated all that you are not. Suddenly, in that state, you for the first time face yourself, you encounter your own being. Go on cutting all identities that you are not: the family, the body, the mind. In that emptiness, when everything that was not you has been thrown out, suddenly your being surfaces. For the first time you encounter yourself, and that encounter becomes the control.

The "control" word is really ugly. I would not like to use it, but I cannot do anything because Patanjali uses it - because in the very word it seems somebody is controlling somebody else. Patanjali knows, and later on he will say that you attain to real samadhi only when there is no control and no controller. Now we should enter into the sutras.