Date:   4/24/2023 9:18:49 PM ( 19 m ago)
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URL:   https://www.curezone.org/forums/fm.asp?i=2457154

Question 1

There is none. The way is just an illusion of the mind. The mind goes on dreaming about the way to reach its goals, its desires. The way is a shadow of the desiring mind.

First you desire something. Of course desire can only be in the future and the future is not there yet. How to bridge that which is not with that which is? Then you create a way. It is imagination. It is illusion. But with the way, you become joined with that which is not, and then you start travelling. You are playing a game with yourself.

There is nowhere to go, so the way is not needed. You are already there. It is not something to be achieved; it has already been delivered to you. And deep down, religion is not a path but just a realization, a revelation - the realization that you are already there. Your hankering, your desire does not allow you to see the facticity of your own being.

So good, old bridges are broken and there seems to be no path, no way ahead. That's what I want to do to you. I want to take all the paths away. Pathless, not knowing where to go you will go in - go within yourself. If all your paths - all the possibilities to escape from yourself - are taken away, what will you do? You will be yourself.

Just think. Just meditate upon it a little. It is desire, it is competition with others, that creates the whole thing, the whole illusion. You are always competing. Somebody else is ahead of you. You would like to put him back; you would like to overtake him. You run fast. You do everything that you can do - just/unjust, right/wrong. You forget everything; you simply want to undo him, to prove him a failure. This way you are not going to achieve your innermost reality. This way you will achieve a little more decoration of the ego. You have defeated one, you have defeated thousands, you have defeated millions - and you are moving and moving and moving. More and more ego will be accumulated. You will become more burdened. You will be more lost, you will be lost in a forest.

Competition is one of the most irreligious things in the world, but that's what everybody is doing.

Somebody has a big house. You immediately start desiring a bigger one. Somebody has a beautiful car. Immediately you desire to have another, a bigger one. Somebody has a beautiful wife, or somebody has a beautiful face or a beautiful voice. Immediately the desire arises.

The desire arises with the idea that you have to compete with others and that you have to prove something against others, that you have to struggle, that you have to achieve something. Not knowing what it is, but you go on moving in a dark valley thinking that somewhere there must be a goal.

You can go on and on for lives together. That's what you have been doing up to now. You will never reach anywhere. You will be always running and never reaching because the goal is within you. But to see that, you have to drop all competition, all ambition.

And remember, it is very easy to change your competitiveness into a new competitiveness, to drop the old and to have something new again in the same way, the same ambition. You are ambitious in the world. Then you drop it. Then you become ambitious in the name of religion, spirituality; then again you compete. Then again the same ego enters in.

I have heard one anecdote. Listen to it very alertly.

Two brothers died at the same time and arrived at the Pearly Gates together, where they were interviewed by St. Peter.

He said to the first brother, "Have you been good during your life on earth?" And he replied, "Oh yes, Your Saintliness, I have been honest, sober, and industrious, and I have never messed around with women."

"Good lad," said St. Peter, and gave him a beautiful gleaming white Rolls-Royce. "There is your reward for being a good boy."

Then he said to the other brother, "And what about you?"

He sighed, "Well, I have always been very different from my brother. I have been crooked, drunk, idle - and a devil with the women."

"Ah well," said St. Peter, "boys will be boys, and at least you have owned up to it. You can have this, then." And he gave him the keys to a Mini-Minor.

The two brothers were about to get in their cars when the one who had been naughty started roaring with laughter. The other one said, "What is so funny then?"

He said, "I have just seen the vicar riding a bike!"

Your whole enjoyment is always just comparative. Comparison gives you a feeling of where you are - behind the man who has a Rolls-Royce but in front of the man who has a bike. It gives you the exact location where you are.

You can pinpoint yourself on the map, but this is not the right way to know where you are, because you are nowhere on the map. The map is illusory. You are somewhere beyond the map. Nobody is in front of you and nobody is at the back. You are alone - tremendously alone. You are unique, you are alone, you are one. And there is nobody else there to be compared with.

That's why people become very much afraid in going within because then they are moving into their aloneness, where all paths disappear, all possibilities of location where you are, disappear. All maps - imaginary, political, cultural, social - all disappear. Suddenly you are in the wilderness of your being and you don't know where you are. This is exactly what has happened: "I feel lost - there is no way back to my old life - the bridges are broken. And I don't see a way in front of me." This is what I call the beginning of meditation, the beginning of the entry within your being. Don't get scared; otherwise you will again become a victim of your dreams. Enter into it boldly, courageously, daringly. If you understand me, it is not difficult; just a tacit understanding is needed.

Of course you will never be able now to know where you are. You will be able to know who you are, but you will never be able to know where you are because "where" is always in relation with others.

"Who" is your nature; "where" is relative.

And now onward there will be no bridges with the past; and of course there is no possibility now for any bridges for the future. The past is gone, the future does not exist. The past is just memory and the future is nothing but hope. The past is just a reference and the future is just a dream. Both are gone. You will be living in the present... and the present is so vast you will be lost as a drop of water becomes lost in the ocean.

Be ready for it. Be ready to dissolve, be ready to be an annihilated.

The mind will hanker for the past, the identity, the clarity - where you are, who you are. But all those are games, language games.

I have heard one anecdote:

An Englishman touring the States remarked to a man in the West, "You have a remarkable country here. Lovely women, big cities, but you have no aristocracy."

"No what?" asked the American.

"No aristocracy."

"What is that?" asked the American. "Oh, you know," he said. "People who never do anything, whose parents never did anything, and whose grandparents never did anything - whose families have always been people of leisure."

"Oh, yeah!" said the American. "We have them here, but we call them hoboes!"

But when you call somebody an aristocrat it looks very grand. When you call somebody a hobo, suddenly you fall from the peak of Everest into the deepest valley possible. But aristocrats have been hoboes, and hoboes think of themselves as aristocrats.

I have heard...

Two hoboes were talking to each other, leisurely sitting on a full-moon night.

The first said, "What do you want to become in your life?"

The other said, "I would like to become a prime minister."

The first said, "What? Don't you have any ambition in your life?" A hobo thinking of becoming a prime minister.

Hoboes also have their values.

If you look at your past references, what are they? Language games. Somebody says that he is a brahmin. Because the society accepts that there are four classes. In India the brahmin is the highest caste and the sudra is the lowest caste. Now this type of caste system does not exist anywhere in the world; it exists only in India. Of course it is imaginary. You cannot sort out who is a brahmin if he does not say so. The blood will not show, the bones will not show - no examination, no X-ray will show who is a brahmin and who is a sudra. But in India the game has been played so long, it has become so deep rooted in the mind, the moment somebody says he is a brahmin, look at his eyes, look at his nose - the ego radiates. When somebody says that he is a sudra, look at him. The very word humiliates; the very word makes him feel guilty. Both are human beings, but just a labeling that a society has accepted destroys their humanity.

When you say you are rich, what do you mean? You have a certain account in the bank. But that too is a game, money is a game. Because the society has agreed upon something to believe in, the game continues.

I have heard about one miser who had a great treasure of gold hidden in his garden somewhere.

Every day he will go and remove a little earth and look at his bricks of gold, hide them again, will come back very happy and glad and smiling, all smiles. By and by one neighbor started suspecting because every day - it was almost a religious ritual - every day exactly in the morning he will come - it was just like a prayer - remove a little soil, look at his bricks of gold shining in the morning sun, and immediately something will flower in him and he will be so happy the whole day.

One night the neighbor removed all the bricks of gold. Instead of gold bricks, he put ordinary bricks there and covered the earth. Next morning he came. He started crying and weeping and shouting that he has been robbed. The neighbor was standing in his garden; he said, "Why, for what are you crying?" He said, "I have been robbed! My twenty gold bricks have been stolen!"

The neighbor said, "Don't be worried, because you were never going to use them. You can do the same with these ordinary bricks. Come every day in the morning, remove the earth, look at them, be happy and go back. Because you were never going to use them in the first place, so whether of gold or of mud, what difference does it make?"

You may have money. That does not make any difference. You may not have. That too does not make any difference. You may have great recognition, degrees, awards from the society, praise, certificates. That does not mean anything - it is a game. Once you look into this game through and through and you realize that in this game you will never be able to find yourself, who you are....

The society goes on befooling you and giving you some illusory ideas about who you are, and you go on trusting and believing in them. Your whole life is wasted.

So when for the first time meditation starts really working in you and starts destroying you, destructuring you - your name disappears, your caste disappears, your religion disappears, your nationality disappears - by and by you are simply nude and naked in your pure aloneness. It is scaring in the beginning because you cannot find any place to put your feet on and you cannot find any place to continue, to remain in the ego. No help, all props withdrawn, your structure starts falling.

Stand by the side, have a good laugh, and let it fall. Have a good laugh that now there is no way to move back.

In fact there is never a way to move back; people only believe so. Nobody can go back; in time there is no possibility to go back. You cannot become a child again. You cannot go back into the womb of your mother. But the illusion, the idea that it is possible will haunt you and will not allow you to grow.

There are many men I see who go on seeking their mother in their love affairs, which is foolish. Out of a hundred, almost ninety-nine men are searching for their mother. The mother has been lost in the past; now they cannot enter the womb of the mother again. Have you watched yourself? Lying in the lap of your beloved, a fantasy arises in you - as if you have found your mother.

Why are men so interested in women's breasts? The interest is basically of the search for the mother because the child knew the mother through the breasts and he still hankers for the mother. So a woman who has beautiful, round, big breasts becomes more attractive to men. A flat chested woman simply becomes unattractive. Why? What is wrong? Nothing is wrong with the woman; something is wrong with the mind. You are seeking the mother, and she cannot help your imagination. She does not fit with your illusion. How can she be your mother? She has no breasts? Breasts are the basic necessity.

You go in Indian temples in Khajurao or in Puri and you will see such big breasts that it seems almost impossible. How were these women walking? The weight seems too much. But that simply shows the search, the search to go back, to find the mother again. Then your love life will be a disturbance because the woman who loves you is not in search of a child. She is in search of a friend, of a beloved, of a lover. She does not want to become your mother. She wants to become your friend, your companion, your consort. And you are asking her to be your mother, to take care of you as your mother used to take care. And you go on expecting the mother and she goes on frustrating it.

The conflict arises.

Nobody can go back. That which is past is past. Past is past and cannot be reclaimed. This understanding makes you a grown up; then you don't hanker for it.

And remember, if you hanker for the past, you hanker for the future. Your future is nothing but your modified, renovated past. What you desire in the future is nothing but all that was happy in the past minus all that was not happy. Your future is nothing but your repainted past - closer to the heart's desire, the painful accidents dropped and the pleasant exaggerated. Once you drop the past you drop the future also because it is nothing else but the repainted past, and then suddenly you are here now.

Then I can tell you, "Look at the cypress in the courtyard." Or I can take a flower in my hand and just let you see it. And if you can see it just here-now, a mysterious phenomenon starts happening within you: a flower within you starts opening. Something spreads over your being - something existential. It is not a dream. It has no hallucinatory quality in it. It has no ideas, no thoughts, no pictures, nothing; just a tremendously austere emptiness - beautiful, but totally empty.

Don't get afraid. That's the way how one comes to meet the present and how one comes to meet oneself.

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