I have heard about a man:

"Why did you quit your last job?"

"Well, the boss said I was sacked, but I did not take any notice. He was always saying that. So I went in the next day and all my things had been cleared out of my office. Then I went in the day after and my name plate had been taken off the door, and the following day I found someone else sitting in my chair. 'This is too much!' I thought to myself; so I had resigned."

But even that is not too much to the average Joe. Every day one is sacked, every day one is being fired, every day one is frustrated, each & every moment.

Whatsoever arrangements one makes, it is destroyed every moment. Whatsoever is proposed is disposed. All hopes simply prove hopeless, and all dreams turn into dust and leave a very bitter taste in the mouth. One feels continuously nauseous, but still one goes on clinging: some day, maybe, from somewhere, the dreams may be fulfilled. This is how one goes on hanging on to the very illusory world of their own projections. Unless one becomes alert and sees the hopelessness of one's own hopes, unless one drops all hoping, one will not turn within, and henceforth, will not be able to destroy the cause.

Yoga believes in eternity, not in time. Yoga says: all always is - the past is still there, hidden in the present, and the future is also there, hidden in the present - because the past cannot simply disappear and the future cannot simply appear out of nothingness. Past, present, future, all are here-now. For us, these times are divided because we cannot see the totality. We have very small slits of eyes, senses, to look at reality. We divide. Our minds divide.

If our consciousness is pure and there is no cloud in it, we will see eternity as it is. There will be no past and there will be no future. There will only be this moment, eternally this moment.

A great Zen Master, Bokuju, was dying, and his disciples gathered. The chief disciple asked, "Master, you are leaving us. People will ask us what your message was, after you are gone. Though you have been teaching us always and always, you have taught so many things, and we are ignorant people; it will be difficult for us to condense your message. So please, before you leave, give your very essence just in a single sentence."

Bokuju opened his eyes and said loudly, "This is it!" closed his eyes and died. Now after him, for centuries, people have been asking what he meant by saying, "This is it!"

He had said everything.

This... is... it...

He had given the whole message: this moment is all there is. This moment - the whole past, the whole present, the whole future, is involved in this moment. But you cannot see it in its totality because your mind is so clouded, so dusty with thought, dream, sleep; so much hypnosis, desire, motive. You cannot see. You are not total, your vision is not total.

Patanjali says,

"Once the vision is total, past and future exist in the present, but they are not experienced in the present because they are on different planes."

The past has moved on a different plane. It has become superconscious. You cannot know your future. You are closed in your small consciousness, very fragmentary. You are just like the tip of an iceberg: much is hidden deep, just beneath you, and much is hidden just above you. Just below, and above, and the whole reality surrounds you, but you are clinging to a very small consciousness. Make this consciousness greater and bigger.

That's what meditation is all about - how to make your consciousness bigger, how to make your consciousness infinite. You will only be able to know that much reality; in the same proportion will you be able to know the reality as you have consciousness. If you have infinite consciousness you will know the infinite; if you have momentary consciousness you will know the moment. On your consciousness depends everything.

We have talked in the past about the three gunas: sattva means stability, rajas means action, and tamas means inertia. Patanjali now joins past, present, and future with the three gunas. For Patanjali, everything in life and existence is somehow joined with the three gunas, the three attributes of existence. That is Patanjali's trinity. Everything consists of three things. Stability; the past is stability. That's why you cannot change your past; it has become almost stable. Now you cannot change it. There is no way to change it. It has become permanent. The present is action, rajas. The present is a continuous process, movement. Present is dynamic and future is inertia. It is still in the seed, fast asleep. In the seed the tree is asleep, is in inertia.

The future is the potential, the past is the actual, and the present is the movement of the potential towards the actual.

The past is that which has happened, the future is that which is going to happen, and the present is the passage between the two. Present is the passage of the future to become past, for the seed to become the tree.

Now physicists say that the electron, neutron, and proton are the basic elements, and everything is made of these. Everything is made of these three: the positive, the neutral and the negative.

That is exactly the meaning of sattva, rajas, and tamas: the positive, the neutral, and the negative - and everything is made of these three. Just the proportions differ, otherwise these are the basic elements that the whole existence consists of.

                          ... but a different mind will see the same object in a different way.

For example, a woodcutter comes into the garden - he will not look at the flowers, he will not look at the greenery; he will be looking at the wood and the possibilities for the wood - which tree can become a beautiful table, which tree can become a door. For him, trees exist only as material for furniture. Potential furniture, that's what he will see. And if there comes a painter he will not think of furniture at all. Not even for a single moment will furniture enter into his consciousness. He will think of colors: the green, the red, the white, and thousands of colors all around. He will think of painting, of bringing these colors to canvas. If a poet comes he will not think of painting, he will think of something else. A philosopher comes and he will think still of something else. It depends on the mind. The object is always seen through the mind; the mind colors it.

A few anecdotes...

The tramp happened to call at the house of a temperance man. "I want to ask you a question," said the man to the tramp. "Do you ever take alcoholic drinks?"

"Before I answer," said the tramp, "I want to know whether it is put as an inquiry or as an invitation."

It depends... the answer will depend on the question. The tramp is trying to be safe as to whether it is an invitation or an inquiry. His 'yes' and 'no' is going to be dependent on what it is. When you see a certain thing, you don't see the thing as such.

Immanuel Kant has said that a thing in itself cannot be known, and he is right in a way. He is right because whenever you know a thing, your mind, your prejudice, your greed, your concept, your culture, your religion, are all there looking at the thing. But Immanuel Kant is not absolutely true because there is a way to look at a thing without the mind. But he was not aware of meditation at all.

That's the difference between Western philosophy and Eastern philosophy. The Western philosophy goes on thinking through the mind, and the whole effort in the East is how to drop the mind and then see things, because then things appear in their own light, in their intrinsic qualities. Then you don't project anything.

He was the laziest man in the entire town. Unfortunately, he had a bad accident: he fell off his couch at home. A doctor examined him and said, "I'm afraid I have some rather bad news for you, sir. You will never be able to work-again."

"Thank you doctor," said the lazy one. "Now what is the bad news?"

For a lazy man it is not bad news that he will never be able to work again in his life. This is good news. It depends on your interpretation. And always remember, all interpretation is false because it falsifies reality.

The man lay on the psychiatrist's couch in a state of nervous tension. "I keep having this recurring, horrible nightmare," he told the psychiatrist. "In it I see my mother-in-law chasing me with a man- eating alligator on a leash. It is really frightening. I see the yellow eyes, the dry scaly skin, the yellow, decaying and razorsharp teeth, and smell foetid heavy breath."

"It sounds pretty nasty," agreed the psychiatrist understandingly.

"That's nothing, doctor," continued the man. "Wait till I tell you about the alligator!"

Your mind is continuously projecting something. The reality functions as a screen and you go on working as a projector. A man who is learning how to be aware will learn how to drop his projections and look at facts as they are. Don't bring your mind in, otherwise you will never be able to know reality. You will remain closed in your own interpretations.

But still, Patanjali is not saying the same things as Bishop Berkeley. Berkeley says that things are absolutely dependent on mind. He says that when you go out of your room everything in the room disappears. If there is nobody to see, how can things exist? And, in a way, it is difficult to disprove him because he says, "When you come back into the room again, things appear. When you go out, they disappear because a mind is needed to interpret them."

Berkeley is saying that things are nothing but interpretations. So when you go out, of course your interpretation goes with you and there is no thing left in the room. It is very difficult to prove that he is wrong, because if you come back into the room to prove, you have come back, so things have appeared. But people have tried.

One man tried to find a few things which even Bishop Berkeley would be forced to believe.

You are sitting in a train and the train is moving, and you are not looking at the wheels, but still they are, because the train is moving. Nobody may be looking at the wheels, but you cannot deny that they are, otherwise you would not reach from one station to another. And all the passengers are inside the train but nobody is looking at the wheels, but wheels are. Of course, he was also worried about things because if all things disappear, then how will they come back again? Finally he decided that they exist in the mind of God, so even when you are not there God is looking at your furniture.

That's why it remains; otherwise it would disappear.

Berkeley's philosophy is very logical in a way. He believes in the mind, and he does not believe in matter. He says matter exists just as things exist in your dreams. In your dream you see a palace; it exists there, as real as anything you have ever seen. By the morning, when you open your eyes, it is gone. But when you dream it again it is again there. He's a perfect mayawadin -> a perfect believer in illusion, that the world is illusory.

But Patanjali is very scientific. He says that the thing is not your interpretation, though whatsoever you think about the thing is your interpretation. The thing in itself exists. When nobody comes into the garden - the carpenter, the woodcutter, the painter, the poet, the philosopher; nobody comes into the garden - still flowers flower, but without any interpretation. Nobody says they are beautiful, so they are not beautiful, they are not ugly. Nobody says they are white or red, so they are not red or white, but still they are.

Things exist in themselves, but we can know things in themselves only when we have dropped our minds. Otherwise, our minds go on playing tricks. We go on seeing things which we desire. We see only that which we want to see. It happens every day here: I talk to you; you listen to that which you want to listen to. You choose that which helps you. Your own mind is strengthened by it. If I say something which goes against you, there is every possibility you will not listen to it. Or, even if you listen to it, you will interpret it in such a way that it does not create any irritation in your mind, that it is absorbed, that you make it a part of your mind. Whatsoever you hear has to be your interpretation, because you listen from the mind.

Patanjali says: 

Right listening means listening without the mind, right seeing means seeing without the mind; you are simply aware.

Now, one thing more: when you look at an object, your mind colors the object and the object colors your mind. That's how things are known or unknown. When you look at a flower you say, "Beautiful."

You have projected something on the flower. The flower is also projecting itself onto your mind: its color, its form. Your mind gets in tune with the form and the color of the flower; your mind gets colored by the flower. That's the only way to know a thing. If you are not colored by the flower, the flower may be there but you have not known it.

Have you watched?  Let's say you are in the marketplace, and somebody says, "Your house is on fire!"  You start running, you pass by many people. Somebody says, "Hello, where are you going?" but you don't listen. On another day, at another time, you would have listened, but now your house is on fire.

Your mind is totally directed towards your house. Now your attention is not here. You are not getting colored. You may pass a beautiful flower, but you will not say 'beautiful', you will not even recognize that the flower is there - impossible.

I have heard...

One man, a very great philosopher; his name was Ishwar Chandra Vidyasagar. The Governor General was going to give him an award for his services, his learning, his scholarship, but he was a very poor man. He lived in Calcutta, a poor Bengali, and his clothes were not such that he should go wearing those clothes when the award was to be given to him.

So the friends came and they said, "Don't be worried, we have ordered beautiful clothes for you."

But he said, "I have never used anything more costly than these clothes. Just to take an award, should I change my whole way of life?"

But the friends convinced him and he became ready. The same evening he was coming home from the market, just walking behind a Mohammedan who was walking with great dignity - very slow, with grace - a very beautiful man. And then a servant came running to that Mohammedan and said, "Sir, your house is on fire," but the Mohammedan continued the same way.

The servant said, "Have you heard me or not? Your house is on fire! Everything is burning!"

The Mohammedan said, "I have heard you, but just because the house is on fire I cannot change my way of walking. And even if I run, I cannot save the house, so what is the point?"

Ishwar Chandra listened to this dialogue between the servant and the master. He could not believe his eyes, he could not believe his ears: "What is this man saying?" And then he remembered: "I am just changing my clothes and going in borrowed clothes just to receive an award?" He dropped the idea. The next day he appeared in his ordinary poor clothes. The Governor General asked, the friends asked; he related the story.

Now, this Mohammedan had a certain awareness, a certain awareness which cannot be clouded by anything, a certain wakefulness which is not easily disturbed. Ordinarily, everything colors you and you color everything. When this coloring stops, this reciprocal coloring stops, things start appearing in their true being. Then you come to see reality as it is. Then you come to know, 'This is It'. Then you come to know that which is.

These sutras are just indicators that unless a state of no-mind is achieved, ignorance cannot be destroyed. Awareness is against ignorance, knowledge is not against ignorance. So don't become parrots, and don't rely only on memorizing. Don't cram; try to see. Become more capable of seeing things as they are. The Vedas, the Upanishads, The Koran, the Bible, cannot help much. You can become great learned scholars, but you will remain, deep down, just fools. And when ignorance is decorated by knowledge then one clings to it. One does not want to destroy it. In fact, ego feels very happy.

You will have to choose. If you choose the ego, you will remain ignorant. If you want awareness, you will have to become aware of the tricks the ego goes on playing with you.

This morning, contemplate what you know and what you don't know, and don't be easily satisfied.

Go as deep as possible into what you know and what you don't know. If you can decide that this you know and this you don't know, you have taken a great step. And that step is the most significant step a man can ever take because then the pilgrimage starts, the pilgrimage towards reality. If you go on believing that you know many things, and you don't know them, you are deceiving yourself and you will remain hypnotized by your knowledge. You will waste your whole life in drunkenness.

Ordinarily, people live just like they are deeply asleep, walking in their sleep, doing things in their sleep, somnambulists.

Gurdjieff took Ouspensky and his thirty disciples to a very faraway place, and he told his thirty disciples to be absolutely silent for three months. He told them to be so silent that they should not communicate even through eyes or gestures. And thirty persons were to remain in a small bungalow as if there were not thirty people, but as if each one was living alone. After a few days a few people left, because it was too much, impossible.

Gurdjieff was a hard task-master. If he saw somebody smiling at somebody else, immediately he was expelled because he had communicated; the silence was broken. He said, "Live in this house as if you are alone. There are twenty-nine other people, but you are not concerned with them - just as if they are not."

By the time the three months ended only three persons were left; twenty-seven had left. Ouspensky was one of those three persons. Those three persons became so silent that Gurdjieff took them outside the bungalow into the town, moved them in the market-place, and Ouspensky writes in his diary, "For the first time I could see that the whole of humanity is walking in sleep. People are talking in their sleep. Shopkeepers are selling things, customers are purchasing things, great crowds are going here and there, and I could see that moment that everybody is fast asleep; nobody is aware."

Ouspensky said, "We felt so uncomfortable in that mad place that we asked Gurdjieff to take us back to the bungalow. But he said, 'That bungalow was just an experiment to show you the reality of humanity, and you also have lived the same way. Because now you are silent you can see that people are just drunk, unconscious; not living really, just moving not knowing why, not knowing for what.'"

Watch yourself, meditate over it, and see whether you are living in sleep. If you are living in sleep, then come out of it.

Meditation is nothing but an effort to gather together the small consciousness that you have, to gather together, to crystallize it, to make all sorts of efforts to increase it more and more, and to decrease unconsciousness. By and by, consciousness becomes higher and higher: less and less dreamy; less and less thoughts come to you, and there are more and more gaps of silence. Through those gaps, windows will open to the divine. One day, when you have become really capable & you can say, "I can exist for a few minutes without any thought or dream interfering with me," for the first time you will know. The purpose is fulfilled.

From deep sleep you have come to deep awareness. When deep sleep and deep awareness meet, the circle is complete.

That's what samadhi is. Patanjali calls it kaivalya - pure consciousness, alone; so pure, so alone that nothing else exists. Only in this aloneness does one become blissful. Only in this aloneness, one comes to know what truth is. Truth is your being. It is there but you are asleep.

Awaken.