Awareness, Not Knowledge

 

In India there are a few very, very poisonous snakes, cobra and others. When a cobra bites a man, the only problem is: if you can keep the man awake for thirty-six hours, the body itself throws the poison out of it. The blood circulates and purifies itself; the poison is thrown out of the system. But the only point is for thirty-six hours the man should not fall asleep. once he falls asleep, then it is impossible. So when a cobra bites a man in the forests of India or among primitive tribes where no other medicine exists, the whole village gathers together.

Once I was in a village and it happened, and I watched the whole phenomenon -- for thirty-six hours. It was beautiful, because that is the whole process of becoming aware. The problem is that the poison makes the man sleepy.

He feels a tremendous urge to fall asleep. It is not ordinary sleep -- tremendous urge to fall asleep. He cannot be allowed to sit; people have to prevent him, hold him. Sitting or standing he has to be shocked, and continuously a situation is to be created -- drums and bands and singing and dancing all around, and howling and screaming and shouting -- so he cannot fall asleep. The moment his eyes are closed he is to be shocked out of it, again and again. He is even to be beaten.

A moment comes after twelve hours, it becomes almost impossible for him to be awake: you go on shouting, he doesn't listen; his body becomes limp, you cannot hold him -- standing or sitting. Then he has to be beaten hard; only that keeps him awake. If thirty-six hours are complete then the poison is thrown by the body and the man remains alive. If he falls asleep, even for a few minutes, the man is lost.

The whole effort of yoga is like that. Many methods have to be used to remain alert, and because of this many things have gone wrong. For example, fasting: fasting is a method to remain alert -- it has nothing to do with the body. When you are fasting you cannot fall asleep easily. To fall asleep, the body needs food. When you have overeaten, you fall asleep immediately. If you have overeaten, immediately you feel that now you cannot move. you cannot do anything. Consciousness is being lost. The whole energy of the body moves into the stomach, it leaves the head where it remains conscious, because the food has to be digested, and that's the first thing to be done -- immediately. It is the first necessity. The whole body energy concentrates near the stomach and you start feeling sleepy.

In a fast, if you have ever fasted, you will feel that in the night you cannot fall asleep. You turn again and again; something is missing. The body energy is completely free -- there is no need to digest anything. The free energy moves all over the body. It is no longer concentrated in the stomach. In fact it is available, so your mind goes on functioning: you remain alert. Sleep is difficult. Fasting is a way to create awareness. If you fast for a long time, you will attain to a certain duality of awareness which is difficult to attain while you go on eating. It can be attained, but it will take a longer time. Fasting is a shortcut to achieving it.

But, somewhere, something went wrong. It always happens with sleepy people. You give them something: they become addicted to it. They forget the goal -- the method becomes the end; the means becomes the end. Now there are thousands of Jain monks continuously on fast -- and nothing happens. I have been wandering all over the country meeting so many types of people. I have asked thousands of Jain monks, "Why do you fast?" They say, "Because it purifies the body." Absolute foolishness.

It may purify the body, but that is not the point at all. It may be good for health sometimes, not always. If you have too much accumulated fat in the body, it will be helpful to purify it; it reduces fat. If you have eaten too much for so many years that you have accumulated many toxins in the body, it helps to purify. But that is secondary; that has nothing to do with religion. It is naturopathy, not religion.

But why should a Jain monk purify the body? He's not ill. He's not poisoned. He has completely forgotten the goal. The goal was awareness. Now he keeps on doing the means, using the means, not knowing the goal. He simply suffers. So the fasting is no longer a fasting; it is just a starvation. And this has happened many times -- almost always it happens -- because things are given to sleepy people. They cannot understand the goal; the goal is far away. They cling to the means.

You must have seen pictures, or if you have not seen pictures you can go to Benares and see people lying on a bed of thorns. That was the oldest method of creating awareness, very old, ancientmost. "To create awareness" -- it has nothing to do with a feat. It has nothing to do with creating an impression on others. The man should not be there on the streets of Benares; he should be hidden in a forest, deep, where nobody reaches, because it is not an exhibition. But now it has become an exhibition.

You will see people lying on the bed of thorns and you will not see even a single spark of awareness in their eyes or face; on the contrary, you will feel them to be very, very dull, insensitive -- unintelligent, idiotic. This is a miracle, because the method was to create awareness. What has happened? They completely forgot for what it is: it became an end in itself. They have "learned the trick." And if you have to learn the trick, you have to become insensitive; only then can you lie down on a bed of nails or thorns. The body should be dull so that it doesn't feel much. It should be dead so the thorns or nails cannot harm it. You should gather a thick dullness around your body, insensitivity.

Now just the reverse was the goal: to become more sensitive, to feel the body in all its sensitivity. If you lie down on a bed of nails or thorns you will feel every pore of the body. The whole body in pain -- and the pain gives you a shock, and the pain awakes you, makes you alert. It is not to be practiced. If you practice it, by and by the body learns the trick. Then the body becomes dead; the body starts creating dead spots so that wherever the nail hits the body a dead spot arises.

The body has to protect itself. Then you will see the man Lying on the nails absolutely unaware -- more unaware than you. If you lie down on the bed you will scream with pain. You are more alert; you are more sensitive. He is Lying down happily; he even sleeps on it. His body is more stony. He has lost something which is needed -- awareness. Now just the reverse has happened.

And this is so in all the practices of religion: they become rituals. I came across a man who has been standing for ten years. He has not slept; he will not sit; he simply stands -- one of the old hatha yoga methods to create consciousness, because the body will need sleep. The body will say, "I want to go to sleep." How long can you stand? After a few hours, or a few days, you will feel a tremendous urge to sleep. To overpower that urge, to bypass it, and to remain alert -- that is the use of the method.

But I came across this man. He is very famous, thousands of people come to pay respect to him, but they don't know what they are doing and to whom they are doing. That man has become completely dull. He has stood so long, his legs have become almost dead parts. Now he cannot bend them. They have become as it happens in a disease called elephantitis: the legs become like elephants'. His whole body weight has moved to the legs. He is a thin man. The upper part has become very thin and the lower part has become very thick and heavy. He is distorted. His face is in a distortion.

You can see that he may have tortured himself very much -- but he has not become alert; rather, through the torture, he has become attuned to it, acclimatized, immune. Now it doesn't bother him. He has lost consciousness through it rather than gaining.

So remember, these are all methods: to discriminate between the seen and the seer, to discriminate between the real and the unreal are just methods. The goal is awareness.

Patanjali believes in gradual growth. He says the goal is reached in seven steps. I say it is reached in one step, but Patanjali divided the same one step in seven parts to make it easier for you, nothing else. You can jump six feet, seven feet, in one jump; you can walk the same space in seven steps. Patanjali does not believe in taking a 'jump' because he knows you are all cowards; you will not be able to take the jump. You can be persuaded, in fact seduced, by and by to take small steps. You can take small steps because with small steps you can make sure that there is no danger. The jump is dangerous because you don't know where you will land. With a small step you can look around and feel safe; you can step slowly; and you always know that if something goes wrong you can always step back. It is only a question of a small space. But you cannot jump back if something goes wrong. The jump is a tremendous change, radical.

Patanjali always looks at you whenever he says something. Now -- immediately - - after describing how to attain awareness, immediately he says,

So don't be worried, don't be afraid. you can go slowly.

What are these seven steps? The number seven is very very important. It seems to be the most important number. From so many paths and so many ways that number bubbles up again and again. If you ask Gurdjieff, he says there are seven types of men. Those seven types are seven steps. If you ask the esoteric Kabbala or old Egyptian mysteries, they say there are seven bodies in man. seven layers of bodies. Those seven layers of bodies become seven steps. If you ask yogis, they say there are seven centers in man. Those seven centers become seven steps. Somehow, seven seems to be very, very important. And you will come across this seven again and again, but the basic meaning is the same.

There are two possibilities: One, you take a jump, a sudden jump, as Zen Masters require you to do, as I always hope that you will be able to do. In the jump those seven steps are covered in one step. but much courage is needed. Not only courage, but irrational courage is needed because you are moving in the unknown. The difference is vast between you and the valley & where you will land. You cannot even imagine. It is from the known to the unknown. There is no gradual growth, but a sudden flare-up. The other possibility is: divide the space into seven steps so that you can move slowly, so your cunning mind, clever mind, can be satisfied.

People come to me and I ask them, "Would you like to take sannyas without thinking, or you would like to think about it?" Rarely it happens somebody says, "I am fed up with thinking." Maneesha said that when she came. The very first day she came to me I asked, "Would you like to take sannyas? With thinking? Would you like first to think about it, feel safe? Or are you ready right now?" She said, "I am fed up with thinking." Rarely it happens somebody says "fed up with thinking." In almost all the cases it happens that they say, "We will think."

And they miss an opportunity, because if you think, you continue. If you decide it, then it is no longer a jump. If your reason first feels safe, tries to feel safe, all security, tries to understand everything; then it remains a modified form of your being. Then your past goes on playing a part in it. And sannyas means dropping the past; it is not a modified state of your past. It is total revolution: it is radical. So those who say, "We will think," miss something. They come. They think about it for a few days, then they come. then they take sannyas -- but more was possible, more was available. They simply missed it. If you can take the jump, then take the jump. If you want to move slowly, you can move, but you will miss something.

I have seen this happening. The people who are courageous for sudden enlightenment, they achieve to a peak that is never reached by gradual growers. They also reach to the peak, but they reach so gradually, they divide the whole space in so many parts, that it never becomes ecstasy. They reach the same peak..

You must watch. A Meera dances, a Chaitanya's mad and dances and sings. Yogis? No, they never dance, they never sing, because they reach so gradually that it is never such an exhilarating experience, never. They reach so gradually, in parts they achieve the ecstasy. They achieve it in so many doses -- small doses, homeopathic doses -- that before another dose is given the first dose is gone, they have absorbed it, digested it. Then the second dose is given -- that too is absorbed before the third comes. They cannot dance. You cannot see a yogi dance. He has missed something. He has reached the same peak, but in the path something is missed.

I am always in favor of the sudden, because when you are going to reach, why not reach dancing? When you are going to reach, why not reach in a deep ecstasy of being? Yogis look businesslike -- calculating, mathematical -- not mad like lovers. But both paths are open. It is for you to choose.

It is just like you have won a lottery -- ten lakh rupees -- and then one rupee is given to you, then another one rupee, then another one rupee; by and by you get it, but you are never allowed to have the ten lakh rupees and you are never allowed to know that you are going to have ten lakh rupees. You will attain to ten lakh rupees, but a millennium will pass -- and you will always remain a beggar: one rupee in the pocket. Before you use it, the other will not be given; when you have used it, the other will be given.

Sudden enlightenment has a beauty, a wild beauty about it: that suddenly you are given the ten lakh rupees -- you can dance! But if your heart is weak it is better to move slowly.

I have heard, it happened:

A man was always purchasing tickets for lotteries and, as it happens, he never got any prize. Years passed, but it had become a routine. Every month he would go and purchase a few tickets from his salary.

But one day it happened. He was in the office and the wife came to know that he had attained his goal -- ten lakh rupees. She became afraid because he was a poor man, just a hundred rupees per month salary he gets. Ten lakh rupees will be too much. It will be so much that it can kill him.

So what to do? She ran to one of her neighbors who was a priest in a church. He was a wise man, and she couldn't think of anybody wiser, so she went there and told the priest, "You have to do something. He will be coming from the office, and if he comes to know 'ten lakh rupees' so suddenly, it is certain he will not survive. I know him well. He is a miser and he has never seen more than a hundred rupees. He will go mad or he will die, but something is going to happen. You come and save him."

The wise man said, "I will come. Don't be afraid; I am coming."

He planned, as all calculators plan. The man came home. The priest was sitting there. He said, "Listen, you have won a lottery. You have won in the lottery one lakh rupees."

He thought this will be a small dose -- he divided it in ten parts. By and by he will say that no, not one, two. When he will see that he has absorbed the shock, he will say three.

The man said, "One lakh rupees? Is it true? If it is true, I will give half of it to you for your church."

The priest fell down and died. Fifty thousand rupees! He couldn't believe it. It was too much.

So you have to choose; the choice is yours. If you feel the heart is strong, come with me. If you feel the heart is weak and there is possibility of heart failure, move with Patanjali. He is a mathematician. He gives to you in slow doses, but remember, you will miss something. You will reach to the same state of affairs, same state of being -- silence, blissfulness -- but ecstasy will not be there. You will sit under a bodhi tree, silently; but you will not be able to dance like a Meera or like a Chaitanya. And that dance has something in it. It always happens to sudden achievers.

Enough for today.