In the past two days we have reflected on two states of the human mind. On the first day I spoke a little about non-thinking. Non-thinking is born of belief and faith; those who shut themselves inside it are deprived of knowing the truth of life. Yesterday we considered how thought is born.
Only those minds can give birth to true thought that are free of beliefs, devotions, and doctrines—those who dare to break the blind assumptions handed down by tradition and society. Only within such people does that thought arise which brings freedom and sets one in motion toward truth.
Today we will touch a little on no-thought.
Before I say what I mean by no-thought, it is necessary to say a few things about how we stand caught in the net of thoughts.
The human mind is wrapped, twenty-four hours a day, in strands of thoughts of one sort or another. A crowd keeps moving within. Sometimes we are aware of it; mostly we are not—like an inner machine running, an inner race going on. If we woke up to that race completely, we might panic; we might realize a madman is sitting inside us. If, for even an hour, the entire fabric of our mind’s thoughts came back to us in memory, a great anxiety and anguish would arise—because then we would see what is going on inside.
Very few people ever consider what is happening within them. Thoughts are so incoherent, so self-contradictory, so mutually opposed—such conflict! In this struggle, this inner war of thoughts, all the mind’s energy is consumed. And when a person’s mental energy is depleted, he becomes so weak within that no movement toward the search for truth is possible for him.
Before anyone advances in the search for truth, before he sets out to experience life, he must stop this constant drain of power—this steady weakening of energy. Freedom from inner conflict—this gathering of strength—is essential.
Perhaps it has not occurred to you; then try this: sit alone for an hour and write down—honestly—whatever runs through your mind, exactly as it runs. In that hour you will gain an inner glimpse of how your mind is woven into a web. You will find things you had never imagined could exist in you. There will be hymns—and there will be curses. There will be noble words about soul and God—and there will be obscene words. There will be the most despicable feelings and the desire to commit heinous crimes. You will find wishes that startle you. And there will be no connection among them. They will be unrelated, mutually opposed. From one thought the mind will leap to another; from one desire to the next.
If you write with complete honesty what is running in your mind for just that hour, you will be shocked. You will suspect, “Am I insane?”
As far as I can see, there is no fundamental difference between the madman and the so-called normal person. There cannot be. The madman is born out of us; he is our own growth, our development. In the condition we are in, any of us can go mad at any moment. The difference between us and a madman is not qualitative, only one of degree. If the feverish run of heated thoughts within us were to increase only a few degrees, any one of us could go mad.
Very few people in human society are truly healthy. Most are in some state of greater or lesser madness. The degree of madness that allows daily life to go on—of that we remain unaware. Only the madness that breaks our normal living do we recognize. In such a scattered state of thought, how can there be any movement toward life’s truth? I am not saying this about someone else; I am saying it directly to you. It is essential to know this fact.
The excessive race of thought, the self-contradictory, conflicting state of emotions—this is what drives a person into extreme tension, into derangement, into madness. So you should not be surprised that many whom the world regards as great thinkers go mad.
That is why, when someone says, “Mahavira was a great thinker” or “Buddha was a great thinker,” I laugh. They were not thinkers at all; they were beings who had attained no-mind. They stood at the opposite pole from madness.
Derangement is one extreme of consciousness; liberation is the other. We all sway somewhere between these two. If the tension and weight of thoughts increase, we move toward derangement. If the weight and tension of thoughts lessen, and consciousness grows still and silent, reaching a waveless state where no vibration of thought remains, we come near to freedom.
The human mind has two poles—derangement and release. Ordinarily, whatever we do carries us toward derangement. Religion and sadhana urge and invite us in the other direction.
The first thing is to wake up to the fact that we are either mad or close to it. Unless we awaken to this fact, no longing to be free of it can arise within.
Sleeping or waking, madness is slipping along inside. Any strong jolt, and it will show itself. We carry it hidden. Even the closest friend does not know what is going on inside us. A wife does not know her husband’s inner process; a husband does not know his wife’s. It all runs inside like a disease. We suppress and conceal it. But with a major shock—a loved one dies, a house burns, wealth sinks, reputation is erased—that hidden wound bursts and madness comes out.
Because of this madness, not only the individual suffers within; the whole society suffers as well. There are collective eruptions of madness—collective expressions. Sometimes it seizes crowds, whole societies, whole nations, even the entire human race. Hindu–Muslim riots, Marathi–Gujarati clashes, India–Pakistan conflicts, or any nation and people fighting—these are fevers of collective madness. What runs inside individuals, when it becomes too dense and no personal remedy remains, manifests collectively.
So let me tell you something to which perhaps you have never paid attention: during times of war, the number of people going mad decreases. In the First World War this was observed, and mental scientists were puzzled: why? During the war years, the average number of new cases of insanity fell, suicides fell, murders fell, crime dropped. Then came the Second World War—stranger still: suicides, murders, insanity dropped even more sharply. Great worry and reflections arose: why?
In a war the collective madness is discharged, so the number of individual cases decreases. The zest you too feel for war has no other cause. Whenever there is war anywhere, people perk up; their faces shine; life gains momentum and urgency. They seem cheerful. They rise early to read the paper, listen to the radio, talk of war all day. A great excitement takes over life when war happens. Why? War becomes an outlet for our personal madness. If two people are fighting in the street, you drop a thousand chores to stand and watch. Why? The madness in you gets an opportunity to vent. Wherever there is violence, hatred, disturbance, blood, murder—spy novels, detective films—what is the charm? By watching, a little relaxation comes; the inner tension eases a bit. That is why every five or ten years a major war becomes “necessary.”
Politicians may struggle, beat their heads, die trying—there will be no peace; we cannot be spared war, until the state of madness in individual minds is reduced. The pretexts will change, the causes will change. People used to fight in the name of religion; they will fight in the name of nations, of languages, of “isms” and ideologies—communism and democracy. The issues will change; the fighting will continue.
Five thousand years of history say fighting cannot be stopped. Whatever politicians say, however much they cry for peace, there will be no world peace—not until we understand that war is not a political matter. When personal madness becomes so dense across groups, when consciousness becomes so diseased that no outlet remains, madness erupts collectively.
In the Second World War fifty million people were killed. We got a little relief from that. We sat quietly for ten or fifteen years. Meanwhile the madness gathered again. Now we cannot be satisfied with killing less than a hundred or a hundred and fifty million. If this pace increases, then by the end of the century it may be that only by wiping out the entire human race will we get any relief from our madness; otherwise there will be none.
This feverish tension running in the psyche weakens life in every way. It drags life down in every way. The excuses can be anything; the excuses do not matter.
How to change this inner state? How can one move from the excessive crowd of thoughts toward the peace of no-mind? I want to tell you two or three points this morning. But first, it was necessary to say: this is the state we are in.
And remember, I am not talking about someone else. Usually when I speak, you think, “He is absolutely right; this is how it is with people.” If you think of everyone except yourself, there will be no solution. This is our arithmetic. You surely think, “Exactly right—this is how it is with my neighbor.” That will bring no solution. This concerns you, not your neighbor.
You will have to consider your own case with a little discerning intelligence: am I mad inside? If I am, then there is no difference if you become a Hindu; no difference if you read the Gita, no difference if you read the Quran. A madman reading the Quran will bring danger to the world—the danger will come via the Quran. A madman reading the Gita—danger via the Gita. A madman going to a temple— the temple becomes a source of turmoil. A madman going to a mosque—the mosque will produce quarrels. Whatever a madman does cannot give birth to peace, love, knowledge, or truth. Wherever a madman acts, unrest begins.
Therefore, before a madman does anything, the best, most necessary thing is that he understand his madness. Is there a way to be free of it? Only then will anything he does be meaningful. Otherwise all his works will be futile. He will go to serve and create disturbance. He will talk of love and only tighten his claws around another’s neck. He will speak of love—“I love you”—and soon it will be found there is no love; none more inimical than he. He may talk peace and, shortly, draw the sword and say, “For the protection of peace, now nothing can be done without the sword.”
We have just heard in this country: to protect nonviolence, violence became necessary. If a man is mad, he will draw the sword even to defend nonviolence and say, “To protect nonviolence, violence is now needed.” Whatever a madman does leads deeper into madness.
So the first fact is to be aware of madness. And what do I call madness? A mind full of conflict, besieged by a crowd of thoughts in which nothing is clear and no choice is visible—that mind is preparing for madness, or is mad, or will be.
William James once went to see an asylum. He saw some madmen. He returned and could not sleep all night. He kept waking and sitting up. His wife asked, “What is the matter? Why are you disturbed?” He said, “I am disturbed. I went to the asylum today. A fear entered me: what happened to them can happen to me any moment. My sleep has fled. I am very afraid. My life is trembling.”
His wife said, “You are worrying needlessly. Who says you could go mad?”
William James said, “No one else says so—I see it myself. What I saw in their eyes, in their actions—the stroke that fell on them can fall on me any moment, because I too am a human being like them. Before they went mad, they were human just as I am. There is no fundamental difference between me and them. So what happened to them can happen to me.”
Afterward he wrote: the next thirty years were years of great restlessness. He lived thirty more years. “I was afraid at every moment that madness could come over me at any time.”
I would say to you as well: go to an asylum sometime and look carefully. You will see your own face there—in a larger dose. You will find, “This is me, a little further along.”
As long as the psyche is conflict-ridden, full of inner oppositions, rocking between contrary thoughts, we are in that same trembling—that vibration that can explode at any moment. What is the way? What can be done so that the mind is freed from conflict and from the crowd of thoughts?
I want to give you three sutras for contemplation.
First: we have a great fear of inward emptiness. We have been taught: never be empty—an empty mind is the devil’s workshop.
I say to you: only an empty mind is God’s home. A full mind is the devil’s house. A fear of emptiness has been instilled—never be empty, never sit empty. There is a widespread fear of emptiness. Hence none of us is ready to be empty within. We want to keep ourselves filled—with something. We wake and start reading the paper so we can fill ourselves; we don’t want to remain empty. If alone, we go meet friends, go to the club, switch on the radio or television—or read the Gita or the Quran. No one wants to sit empty, because there is a fear of emptiness within. That fear is not entirely groundless; I will speak of its reasons.
No one wants to remain empty. We want to fill ourselves around the clock. When we are utterly empty and no other way remains, we drink; or we listen to the radio; or we go to sleep. But we are not ready to remain empty.
Why? Why this fear? There are some basic causes.
The first is this: if we sit empty and the mind slowly starts to be empty within, we feel, “I have become a nobody—nothing.” We fear being nothing. We crave to be something—to be somebody.
Out of this urge to be something we accumulate wealth. The more money I have, the more I will be somebody. Then I am no longer ordinary; I am special. So we hoard wealth; we hoard fame, so that I become somebody. We collect power so that I become somebody. And we collect thoughts as well—so that I become somebody. Lest I remain a nobody—I must be something.
This race to be something leads to every sort of accumulation. The subtlest accumulation is of thoughts. The person who has many thoughts, who is crammed with ideas—we call him a scholar, a pundit. We honor him. One who has the Upanishads by heart, who remembers the Gita—we say, “Blessed.” One who knows all the scriptures—we declare worthy of worship. We mistake the collection of ideas for knowledge. So we too begin collecting thoughts: the more ideas stored in us, the more “knowledgeable” we are, the more we are “something.”
This ambition—to be something—does not let us be empty. It frightens us: if I have no collection, I will be in trouble.
Christ said, “Blessed are the poor in spirit.” A wondrous statement. We all want to be spiritually rich; why did he say that? “Poor in spirit” means a person who is empty within—who has nothing inside: no thoughts, no knowledge. But why is he blessed? Because as soon as he becomes empty, as soon as he is willing to be nothing within, as soon as he accepts nothingness, as soon as he knows, “Truly I am nothing—so why enter the race to be something? Will I ever become something by such a race? Has anyone ever become something?”—the day he fully realizes this understanding and consents to be nothing, that very day, in that space, in that emptiness, the experience of the divine, of truth, of life—whatever name we give—begins. That very day, becoming poor, he becomes truly rich. That very day, becoming empty, he is filled.
When it rains, water falls. The great, full mountains are deprived—the water runs off. But the deep hollows and trenches fill and become lakes. The empty pits fill; the filled mounds remain empty.
The rain of the divine is falling continuously, moment to moment. Life is showering every instant. Those who are empty within will be filled; those filled within will remain empty.
But we all keep filling ourselves—within and without. Outside we collect clothes, money, houses. Inside we collect thoughts, scriptures, words.
When someone becomes aware of this madness—that by filling myself I only keep myself empty; that because of this filling I will miss that which would truly fill me, intoxicate me with nectar—when such a thought arises, he leaves his house, leaves wife and children. But even then he does not leave the words and scriptures stuffed within.
Outer house, friends, relatives do not fill anyone. Inner insistences and inner ideas do. One who agrees to drop them is a sannyasin. One who drops all words and thoughts within and is willing to be empty is the true renunciate, the one free of possessions.
Non-possession toward thoughts is the first sutra. A feeling of non-grasping with respect to thought.
Do not gather thoughts. Let them go, so that only that remains within which is not thought but my soul, my being, my authentic existence. Let the turmoil of thought fall away. Let all thoughts shed, and let only that remain which is my pure being. In the solitary experience of that pure being—in that empty experience—what becomes available is truth, the soul, the divine, or any other name.
Right now our attitude toward thought is possessiveness: collect! Even as I speak here, you can carry away my thoughts. My thoughts, collected within you, will harm you; they cannot benefit you. They will only increase the crowd within. Some others were already seated there; I too will go sit there. It was already so crowded that there was no room—and one more man enters; a few more thoughts arrive—and an uproar begins within you.
Do not be possessive toward thoughts. Do not hoard them; do not cram your memory with them. Then what to do? Maintain an attitude of non-possession. Non-possession is not the same as lack of understanding. Understanding is one thing; collecting is another. To understand what I am saying is one thing; to store it is another. To understand what Mahavira, Buddha, Krishna have said is one thing; to hoard it is another. Understanding is not accumulation. In understanding, nothing is stored. Where storage is, understanding is not. The one who wants to collect is the one who has not understood. For the one who understands, the question of collecting does not arise.
We try to remember only those things we have not understood. What we have truly understood we do not need to remember. There is no question of keeping them in memory.
Let there be no urge to collect; let there be a passion to understand. From understanding, knowing is born; from collecting, pedantry. Pedantry and wisdom are opposites. A pundit is never a knower; and a knower has no reason to be a pundit.
Keep this basic alertness in life: am I chasing the collection of thoughts? What will come of collecting? All collection will be borrowed—from others. Understanding will be mine, my own. Collection always comes from others; understanding is mine. Collection is stale and borrowed; understanding is fresh, alive, young. Understanding frees; collection binds. Understanding liberates, makes you independent. Collection shackles you like chains.
Those who get entangled in the hoarding of words and scriptures become incapable of understanding. They do not understand anything—because where understanding seeks freedom and freshness—not staleness, not borrowedness—collection makes everything borrowed. When they look at life, they place their words in between. Words come in the middle; life stands on the other side.
Once, in China, a great market was held. Near it was a well. Because of the crowd, a man fell into the well. There was no parapet. He cried out, “Save me!” In the noise, who would hear? A Buddhist monk passing by heard his cry, peered in, and saw a man drowning. The man begged, “Save me!”
The monk said, “Friend, you are reaping your karma—endure it. Who can save whom? The scriptures say no one can save another. One substance cannot transform another. What can I do? And if I try to save you, I will bind new karma by interfering. Better to bear the fruit of some past sin so that the account is settled.” Scripture was speaking. Life stood before him—a man drowning—and scripture came in between. The monk said, “Keep your mind calm; with calmness all is achieved. This calamity is the fruit of your deeds; endure it, and by enduring it will be exhausted.” The man cried out; the monk went on.
Behind him came a Confucian monk. He looked and said, “Confucius has said a thousand times: if the state is not in order, great disturbances arise. The state is not in order; therefore this well has no parapet. I will go now and launch a movement to change the state, to bring revolution. Every well must have a parapet. Otherwise people get into great trouble. See—this man is dying.” The man was drowning, and he gathered people to show the error of the state. He went into the market shouting, “Friends, see—the failure of the state: no parapet on the well!”
Behind them came a Christian missionary. He saw the man drowning. He immediately remembered Christ’s saying: service to man is service to God. He jumped in at once and pulled the man out.
You may think this third man did best. No—this too was not ideal. Scripture stands in between here as well; he too did not meet life directly. He remembered what was written—“service to man is service to God”—and acted accordingly. Here too, scripture stands between; life does not.
This story was devised by a Christian missionary, but he did not see that in the third case too it is the same. In their scriptures it was written thus and they acted thus. In all three cases, scripture stands in between—not life.
To see life in its many forms and to understand it—and to act out of that understanding—this is liberating. The act that arises from understanding life is dharma. But words and scriptures erect a wall between us and life on every side. The pundit becomes incapable of understanding. That is why the priests of the world’s religions fight. How can there be many religions? If truth is one, religion too is one. Pundits are of many kinds, scriptures of many kinds, sects of many kinds. The pundit fights because he cannot understand the other; his own words obstruct him. His words stand in the way; understanding the other becomes impossible. From such unawareness quarrels arise; religious hostilities arise; religions fight across the world. The pundit cannot understand, therefore conflict is born.
Where there is understanding, there can be no quarrel. Where there is understanding, there can be no opposition. There will be love. There cannot be hatred—there will be love, in the one who can understand the other.
So remember: however many words, scriptures, ideas you collect, your understanding will not increase. Understanding does not collect. Understanding sees in wholeness. It awakens to things in their totality. In that awakening, in that awareness, inner knowing is born. That knowing is not stored; it is not accumulated anywhere. It transforms your whole being, purifies your soul, makes it new, gives it new life. Therefore it has no weight, no burden. Therefore it erects no wall between life and us.
Understand the mistake of hoarding thoughts. And remember: the less the inner crowd of thoughts and the more the arising of wisdom; the less the stockpile of ideas, and the more the liberating winds of knowing blow, the more understanding flowers—the more your life can move toward no-mind, toward samadhi.
Thus I say: the first sutra is non-possession toward thought.
If non-possession toward thought is there, inevitably a second sutra bears fruit—renouncing attachment to thought.
Right now we say, “my idea!” Which idea is yours? Let a small dispute arise, and you say: “my idea, my religion, my scripture, my Tirthankaras, my God.” How does this “mine” enter you? Which idea is yours? Dig a little, analyze a little, catch each idea and ask, “Is this mine?” You will find: it is not mine, it has come. It floated in the air and came to lodge within me. How is it mine? Not a single idea is yours. It came from somewhere, drifted in from somewhere, and became a resident within you.
All thoughts are guests. None is yours. But when we say “my idea,” a grip forms—an identity, a fusing with it. Then we begin to safeguard the idea, refuse to let it go. Whatever becomes “mine” I start protecting; it becomes my property, my treasure; a part of my very life.
It is essential to understand and awaken to this fact: no thought is mine. As soon as it becomes clear that no idea is mine, attachment to thought drops, the sense of mine-ness falls away. And where mine-ness falls away, the link between us and that thing breaks.
Mine-ness is the linking chain—the only chain that binds our mind to thoughts. “My idea!” If you are a Jain and someone abuses Jainism, your life trembles—“my religion,” and he abused it! If you are a Christian and someone speaks ill of Christianity, you stand to fight—“my religion,” and he criticized it! That “mine” is hit at once and arouses your ego. Then you are ready to die for an idea. People have made countless sacrifices for ideologies. And there are those who encourage them: “Fear not—if you die for Islam, paradise is yours; if you die for Hindu dharma, heaven is yours.”
To teach a man to die for ideas, we have taught more foolishness than to teach him to live. “Become a martyr, and fairs will gather at your tomb.” So die for an idea—die for communism or die for democracy.
When someone is ready to die, consider how deep his attachment must be. He agrees to lose his life for an idea—and the idea is utterly alien. He is ready to lose his soul, his life. And our follies are so deep that we honor him: “He did a great deed—died for Islam, for Hindu dharma, for Jain dharma.” But what is the fact? That his attachment to the idea became so deep he was not ready to lose the idea; he was ready to lose life. Life was his own; the idea utterly foreign.
When attachment goes that far, fanaticism and madness are born. Religious fanatics have filled the earth with such killing and stupidity as cannot be measured. Behind it all is one link: we cultivate attachment to ideas—“mine, mine.” Once it becomes “mine,” we are ready to die, because it becomes part of our ego.
No—if the mind is to be free, that link which makes an idea “mine” must be broken. And it takes no great effort to break it, because the link is utterly false. It doesn’t exist; it is only a thought, only imagination. No idea is yours. Tell me one that is yours. Which thought is yours? The Gita’s? The Quran’s? The Bible’s? Krishna’s? Mahavira’s? Someone’s. Which is yours? None. All thoughts are alien and borrowed.
Binding ourselves with attachment to alien, borrowed ideas lays the foundation for inner turmoil. See this truth: no thought is mine; therefore no thought is worthy of being joined so closely to me. As understanding deepens, attachment thins. As it becomes evident that all thoughts are alien, fighting for an idea becomes like fighting shadows in the air. The quarrel is much like this story you may have heard.
Two pundits in a village stood by a riverbank. Having spent their lives in pedantry, they had no field, no cow, no buffalo. Yet both cherished the idea of a field. They thought, “We will buy land across the river.” One said, “Fine—we will both get land there, but make sure your animals never enter my field.” The other said, “Animals are unreliable; they may get in. We can’t keep chasing after them.” The first said, “Then our friendship will be broken. I cannot tolerate it if your animals enter my field.” The other asked, “What will you do?” “I will slaughter them right there.” “Well then,” said the first, “here is my field, and here are my buffaloes. Where is your field?” He drew a line on the ground with his stick: “Here is my field.” The other drew a circle beside it: “Here is mine.” The first drove his “buffaloes” into the other’s “field.” The other drew two lines: “My buffaloes have entered—now do what you will!” The first “killed” the buffaloes. The buffaloes were only lines on the ground, but the two grappled. The case went to court. “Where are these fields? Where are the buffaloes?” asked the magistrate. “Leave that aside,” they said. “We are about to buy the fields—and we are about to purchase the buffaloes.”
Such is the quarrel over ideas: over fields that exist nowhere, buffaloes that exist nowhere. Only shadows—yet we can give our lives for them.
There must be a deep stupidity in human life, or this could not be. Those martyrs who died in the name of ideas and religions must have been utter ignoramuses, or this could not be. Every fight for ideas is foolish. It arises from attachment. From attachment, thoughts stick to us and gather inside. Then, when we try to drop them, our very life trembles. Others taught us those thoughts, and yet our life shakes at the prospect of letting them go.
Bertrand Russell wrote, “When I think—and in moments of deep understanding—it seems to me that no person greater than Buddha has lived. But then I grow afraid, and in my mind arises: ‘Greater than Christ? That can never be. No one can be greater than Christ.’ I think and understand everything, but I cannot get free of this.” Thoughts seize us so strongly they become more important than understanding. I am not saying Christ is small or Buddha great—these are mad comparisons. No one is small or great. But thoughts grip so deeply, attachment becomes so deep, that they become greater than understanding. We are ready to lose understanding rather than lose the idea. That is a symptom of madness. We should always be ready to lose a thought for the sake of understanding, never lose understanding for the sake of an idea. But we constantly sacrifice our total understanding for the most trivial of thoughts.
When India and Pakistan were partitioned, the people who killed Hindus, and those who killed Muslims—what kind of people were they? People like us—us. People who went to the mosque daily, read the Quran; people who read the Gita. But just this notion: “I am a Hindu,” “You are a Muslim.” Two petty ideas—propaganda drilled in since childhood—that they had learned. For those, they forgot the mosque, forgot the Quran, forgot the Gita, and began thrusting knives into chests. People like us. We can do it even now, right here. The person sitting next to you—you can stab him. All your understanding will vanish. Let only one thought come—“Hindu dharma is in danger,” or “Islam is in danger”—and your entire understanding will be lost.
Ideas have become more important than understanding because we have given them such deep attachment. This attachment must be cut at once. It is not difficult to cut, because it is purely imaginary. The chain exists nowhere except in imagination. The renunciation of attachment to thoughts is essential.
First: a sense of non-possession toward thought. Second: the renunciation of attachment to thought. And third: a neutral witnessing toward thought.
The third sutra is the most important. The other two are its preliminaries, its primary preparations. The third sutra is: a neutral, witnessing attitude toward thoughts. To the extent a person attains neutral witnessing of thoughts, to that extent he becomes thought-free. If his witnessing becomes total, all thoughts depart; he becomes perfectly without thought and attains samadhi.
What do I mean by neutral witnessing?
Have you ever stood by a riverbank? You sit or stand, and the river flows by; you simply watch. Or sat and watched a line of birds flying across the sky? You sit, and the birds pass by. Not one of them is yours; none is your friend or foe; none do you desire or dislike. You simply watch—neutrally. The birds keep flying. With just such neutrality, the ordered flocks of thoughts moving within must be seen. Sit and only watch. Thoughts come and go. No thought is yours; no friend, no enemy; no thought good, none bad. The birds of thought keep flying, and you sit far away, silently seeing. No relation with them. As when people are walking on a road and you stand aside watching. A neutral seeing of thoughts—as a witness, like a man standing far away. No attachment, no good or bad, no mine or not-mine. A continual practice of this—continually standing in neutrality—gradually weakens thoughts.
The more neutral you become, the more you stand apart while the stream of thought circles on, the more you will be surprised: gaps appear between thoughts; they come less often; the crowd begins to thin. We had invited them—therefore they came. They were not accidental; they were guests by invitation. We called them, lodged them, claimed them as our own—therefore they stayed. The day we no longer claim them, the day we become indifferent and neglectful toward them, the day we are neutral—then there remains no reason for them to stay. They gradually thin and dissolve.
If, steadily, you cultivate this stance of standing far and neutral toward thoughts, one day, suddenly, you discover: there are no thoughts—and you are alone. In that moment there is being—no smoke of thought. There is the light of being—no smoke. That day the purest being remains; there is no cloud of thought. In that thought-free state, that which is, is known. In that moment, that which we call the divine, truth, the source of life—whatever we name it—is recognized. In that moment, that which is the life of your life is known. That which never dies—the immortal—is known. Before that, nothing is truly known.
No-mind is the door to truth. The state of no-mind is the door to the divine. And to be thought-free, one must become a witness in every way.
Witnessing is difficult. We very quickly identify; we do not remain witnesses.
In Bengal there was a great scholar and thinker—Vidyasagar. He went to see a play. He was very learned, had written many books and commentaries. No scholar like him had been in Bengal. He went to the theater. In the play a villain was tormenting a woman, pursuing her. Vidyasagar, a very decent man, could not bear it. A moment came when the character finally caught the woman. Vidyasagar stood up, took off his shoe, and threw it. It was a play—but he forgot that. Sitting in the front, he hurled the shoe and said, “Stop, you scoundrel!” The actor must have been wiser; he picked up the shoe, touched it to his head, and said, “I have never received a greater prize. That someone like Vidyasagar forgot it was a play—this proves the excellence of my acting!”
We forget even that a drama is a drama—when what is necessary is to know that life is a play. We forget that theater is theater; it appears like life. Whereas it is necessary that life appear like a play—only then can we be neutral, only then can we stand apart. Thoughts moving on the inner screen must remain a drama if you are to stand far from them. But our condition is such that even drama quickly becomes part of life; we take it to be real. We cry and laugh even in the theater; we wipe tears there. When moving images on a screen can so veil our being, remaining neutral becomes very difficult. Yet, with continual awareness, discrimination, mindful remembrance—with that meditation—it is not impossible.
So slowly, slowly learn to be neutral in small things. Walking on the road, stop suddenly for a moment and simply watch neutrally: what is happening? In your family, for a moment become consciously neutral and see: all of this is a play. Anywhere, anytime, stop for a little while and see: all is a play. Little by little your capacity for witnessing will grow; then, on the plane of thought, you will be able to witness. The day you can witness on the plane of thought, that very day a new realm, a new door, opens before you. For the first time you will become acquainted with life. Before that, we are acquainted only with death.
On the first day I said, regarding death, that we are almost corpses—dying—and we know nothing of life. Life is locked within us; the door is sealed. Without breaking that lock, it is hard to enter within and know life. That lock is thought. That lock is our identification with thought. That lock is our attachment to thought. That lock is our possessiveness toward thought. If these grow thin in every way—if the race and turmoil of thoughts cease and consciousness becomes quiet, waveless—then in that waveless consciousness we can know life.
Immortality sits within each one. The primal energy of life is hidden within each. But very few become acquainted with it. Yet anyone who makes the effort, who longs and labors and resolves—can become acquainted.
Whatever there is to ask about this, I will speak in the evening.
If you try to understand what I have said about thought, non-thought, and no-thought, there can certainly be some result.
You have listened to me with such love and stillness. For that, many, many thanks.
Osho's Commentary
Only those minds can give birth to true thought that are free of beliefs, devotions, and doctrines—those who dare to break the blind assumptions handed down by tradition and society. Only within such people does that thought arise which brings freedom and sets one in motion toward truth.
Today we will touch a little on no-thought.
Before I say what I mean by no-thought, it is necessary to say a few things about how we stand caught in the net of thoughts.
The human mind is wrapped, twenty-four hours a day, in strands of thoughts of one sort or another. A crowd keeps moving within. Sometimes we are aware of it; mostly we are not—like an inner machine running, an inner race going on. If we woke up to that race completely, we might panic; we might realize a madman is sitting inside us. If, for even an hour, the entire fabric of our mind’s thoughts came back to us in memory, a great anxiety and anguish would arise—because then we would see what is going on inside.
Very few people ever consider what is happening within them. Thoughts are so incoherent, so self-contradictory, so mutually opposed—such conflict! In this struggle, this inner war of thoughts, all the mind’s energy is consumed. And when a person’s mental energy is depleted, he becomes so weak within that no movement toward the search for truth is possible for him.
Before anyone advances in the search for truth, before he sets out to experience life, he must stop this constant drain of power—this steady weakening of energy. Freedom from inner conflict—this gathering of strength—is essential.
Perhaps it has not occurred to you; then try this: sit alone for an hour and write down—honestly—whatever runs through your mind, exactly as it runs. In that hour you will gain an inner glimpse of how your mind is woven into a web. You will find things you had never imagined could exist in you. There will be hymns—and there will be curses. There will be noble words about soul and God—and there will be obscene words. There will be the most despicable feelings and the desire to commit heinous crimes. You will find wishes that startle you. And there will be no connection among them. They will be unrelated, mutually opposed. From one thought the mind will leap to another; from one desire to the next.
If you write with complete honesty what is running in your mind for just that hour, you will be shocked. You will suspect, “Am I insane?”
As far as I can see, there is no fundamental difference between the madman and the so-called normal person. There cannot be. The madman is born out of us; he is our own growth, our development. In the condition we are in, any of us can go mad at any moment. The difference between us and a madman is not qualitative, only one of degree. If the feverish run of heated thoughts within us were to increase only a few degrees, any one of us could go mad.
Very few people in human society are truly healthy. Most are in some state of greater or lesser madness. The degree of madness that allows daily life to go on—of that we remain unaware. Only the madness that breaks our normal living do we recognize. In such a scattered state of thought, how can there be any movement toward life’s truth? I am not saying this about someone else; I am saying it directly to you. It is essential to know this fact.
The excessive race of thought, the self-contradictory, conflicting state of emotions—this is what drives a person into extreme tension, into derangement, into madness. So you should not be surprised that many whom the world regards as great thinkers go mad.
That is why, when someone says, “Mahavira was a great thinker” or “Buddha was a great thinker,” I laugh. They were not thinkers at all; they were beings who had attained no-mind. They stood at the opposite pole from madness.
Derangement is one extreme of consciousness; liberation is the other. We all sway somewhere between these two. If the tension and weight of thoughts increase, we move toward derangement. If the weight and tension of thoughts lessen, and consciousness grows still and silent, reaching a waveless state where no vibration of thought remains, we come near to freedom.
The human mind has two poles—derangement and release. Ordinarily, whatever we do carries us toward derangement. Religion and sadhana urge and invite us in the other direction.
The first thing is to wake up to the fact that we are either mad or close to it. Unless we awaken to this fact, no longing to be free of it can arise within.
Sleeping or waking, madness is slipping along inside. Any strong jolt, and it will show itself. We carry it hidden. Even the closest friend does not know what is going on inside us. A wife does not know her husband’s inner process; a husband does not know his wife’s. It all runs inside like a disease. We suppress and conceal it. But with a major shock—a loved one dies, a house burns, wealth sinks, reputation is erased—that hidden wound bursts and madness comes out.
Because of this madness, not only the individual suffers within; the whole society suffers as well. There are collective eruptions of madness—collective expressions. Sometimes it seizes crowds, whole societies, whole nations, even the entire human race. Hindu–Muslim riots, Marathi–Gujarati clashes, India–Pakistan conflicts, or any nation and people fighting—these are fevers of collective madness. What runs inside individuals, when it becomes too dense and no personal remedy remains, manifests collectively.
So let me tell you something to which perhaps you have never paid attention: during times of war, the number of people going mad decreases. In the First World War this was observed, and mental scientists were puzzled: why? During the war years, the average number of new cases of insanity fell, suicides fell, murders fell, crime dropped. Then came the Second World War—stranger still: suicides, murders, insanity dropped even more sharply. Great worry and reflections arose: why?
In a war the collective madness is discharged, so the number of individual cases decreases. The zest you too feel for war has no other cause. Whenever there is war anywhere, people perk up; their faces shine; life gains momentum and urgency. They seem cheerful. They rise early to read the paper, listen to the radio, talk of war all day. A great excitement takes over life when war happens. Why? War becomes an outlet for our personal madness. If two people are fighting in the street, you drop a thousand chores to stand and watch. Why? The madness in you gets an opportunity to vent. Wherever there is violence, hatred, disturbance, blood, murder—spy novels, detective films—what is the charm? By watching, a little relaxation comes; the inner tension eases a bit. That is why every five or ten years a major war becomes “necessary.”
Politicians may struggle, beat their heads, die trying—there will be no peace; we cannot be spared war, until the state of madness in individual minds is reduced. The pretexts will change, the causes will change. People used to fight in the name of religion; they will fight in the name of nations, of languages, of “isms” and ideologies—communism and democracy. The issues will change; the fighting will continue.
Five thousand years of history say fighting cannot be stopped. Whatever politicians say, however much they cry for peace, there will be no world peace—not until we understand that war is not a political matter. When personal madness becomes so dense across groups, when consciousness becomes so diseased that no outlet remains, madness erupts collectively.
In the Second World War fifty million people were killed. We got a little relief from that. We sat quietly for ten or fifteen years. Meanwhile the madness gathered again. Now we cannot be satisfied with killing less than a hundred or a hundred and fifty million. If this pace increases, then by the end of the century it may be that only by wiping out the entire human race will we get any relief from our madness; otherwise there will be none.
This feverish tension running in the psyche weakens life in every way. It drags life down in every way. The excuses can be anything; the excuses do not matter.
How to change this inner state? How can one move from the excessive crowd of thoughts toward the peace of no-mind? I want to tell you two or three points this morning. But first, it was necessary to say: this is the state we are in.
And remember, I am not talking about someone else. Usually when I speak, you think, “He is absolutely right; this is how it is with people.” If you think of everyone except yourself, there will be no solution. This is our arithmetic. You surely think, “Exactly right—this is how it is with my neighbor.” That will bring no solution. This concerns you, not your neighbor.
You will have to consider your own case with a little discerning intelligence: am I mad inside? If I am, then there is no difference if you become a Hindu; no difference if you read the Gita, no difference if you read the Quran. A madman reading the Quran will bring danger to the world—the danger will come via the Quran. A madman reading the Gita—danger via the Gita. A madman going to a temple— the temple becomes a source of turmoil. A madman going to a mosque—the mosque will produce quarrels. Whatever a madman does cannot give birth to peace, love, knowledge, or truth. Wherever a madman acts, unrest begins.
Therefore, before a madman does anything, the best, most necessary thing is that he understand his madness. Is there a way to be free of it? Only then will anything he does be meaningful. Otherwise all his works will be futile. He will go to serve and create disturbance. He will talk of love and only tighten his claws around another’s neck. He will speak of love—“I love you”—and soon it will be found there is no love; none more inimical than he. He may talk peace and, shortly, draw the sword and say, “For the protection of peace, now nothing can be done without the sword.”
We have just heard in this country: to protect nonviolence, violence became necessary. If a man is mad, he will draw the sword even to defend nonviolence and say, “To protect nonviolence, violence is now needed.” Whatever a madman does leads deeper into madness.
So the first fact is to be aware of madness. And what do I call madness? A mind full of conflict, besieged by a crowd of thoughts in which nothing is clear and no choice is visible—that mind is preparing for madness, or is mad, or will be.
William James once went to see an asylum. He saw some madmen. He returned and could not sleep all night. He kept waking and sitting up. His wife asked, “What is the matter? Why are you disturbed?” He said, “I am disturbed. I went to the asylum today. A fear entered me: what happened to them can happen to me any moment. My sleep has fled. I am very afraid. My life is trembling.”
His wife said, “You are worrying needlessly. Who says you could go mad?”
William James said, “No one else says so—I see it myself. What I saw in their eyes, in their actions—the stroke that fell on them can fall on me any moment, because I too am a human being like them. Before they went mad, they were human just as I am. There is no fundamental difference between me and them. So what happened to them can happen to me.”
Afterward he wrote: the next thirty years were years of great restlessness. He lived thirty more years. “I was afraid at every moment that madness could come over me at any time.”
I would say to you as well: go to an asylum sometime and look carefully. You will see your own face there—in a larger dose. You will find, “This is me, a little further along.”
As long as the psyche is conflict-ridden, full of inner oppositions, rocking between contrary thoughts, we are in that same trembling—that vibration that can explode at any moment. What is the way? What can be done so that the mind is freed from conflict and from the crowd of thoughts?
I want to give you three sutras for contemplation.
First: we have a great fear of inward emptiness. We have been taught: never be empty—an empty mind is the devil’s workshop.
I say to you: only an empty mind is God’s home. A full mind is the devil’s house. A fear of emptiness has been instilled—never be empty, never sit empty. There is a widespread fear of emptiness. Hence none of us is ready to be empty within. We want to keep ourselves filled—with something. We wake and start reading the paper so we can fill ourselves; we don’t want to remain empty. If alone, we go meet friends, go to the club, switch on the radio or television—or read the Gita or the Quran. No one wants to sit empty, because there is a fear of emptiness within. That fear is not entirely groundless; I will speak of its reasons.
No one wants to remain empty. We want to fill ourselves around the clock. When we are utterly empty and no other way remains, we drink; or we listen to the radio; or we go to sleep. But we are not ready to remain empty.
Why? Why this fear? There are some basic causes.
The first is this: if we sit empty and the mind slowly starts to be empty within, we feel, “I have become a nobody—nothing.” We fear being nothing. We crave to be something—to be somebody.
Out of this urge to be something we accumulate wealth. The more money I have, the more I will be somebody. Then I am no longer ordinary; I am special. So we hoard wealth; we hoard fame, so that I become somebody. We collect power so that I become somebody. And we collect thoughts as well—so that I become somebody. Lest I remain a nobody—I must be something.
This race to be something leads to every sort of accumulation. The subtlest accumulation is of thoughts. The person who has many thoughts, who is crammed with ideas—we call him a scholar, a pundit. We honor him. One who has the Upanishads by heart, who remembers the Gita—we say, “Blessed.” One who knows all the scriptures—we declare worthy of worship. We mistake the collection of ideas for knowledge. So we too begin collecting thoughts: the more ideas stored in us, the more “knowledgeable” we are, the more we are “something.”
This ambition—to be something—does not let us be empty. It frightens us: if I have no collection, I will be in trouble.
Christ said, “Blessed are the poor in spirit.” A wondrous statement. We all want to be spiritually rich; why did he say that? “Poor in spirit” means a person who is empty within—who has nothing inside: no thoughts, no knowledge. But why is he blessed? Because as soon as he becomes empty, as soon as he is willing to be nothing within, as soon as he accepts nothingness, as soon as he knows, “Truly I am nothing—so why enter the race to be something? Will I ever become something by such a race? Has anyone ever become something?”—the day he fully realizes this understanding and consents to be nothing, that very day, in that space, in that emptiness, the experience of the divine, of truth, of life—whatever name we give—begins. That very day, becoming poor, he becomes truly rich. That very day, becoming empty, he is filled.
When it rains, water falls. The great, full mountains are deprived—the water runs off. But the deep hollows and trenches fill and become lakes. The empty pits fill; the filled mounds remain empty.
The rain of the divine is falling continuously, moment to moment. Life is showering every instant. Those who are empty within will be filled; those filled within will remain empty.
But we all keep filling ourselves—within and without. Outside we collect clothes, money, houses. Inside we collect thoughts, scriptures, words.
When someone becomes aware of this madness—that by filling myself I only keep myself empty; that because of this filling I will miss that which would truly fill me, intoxicate me with nectar—when such a thought arises, he leaves his house, leaves wife and children. But even then he does not leave the words and scriptures stuffed within.
Outer house, friends, relatives do not fill anyone. Inner insistences and inner ideas do. One who agrees to drop them is a sannyasin. One who drops all words and thoughts within and is willing to be empty is the true renunciate, the one free of possessions.
Non-possession toward thoughts is the first sutra. A feeling of non-grasping with respect to thought.
Do not gather thoughts. Let them go, so that only that remains within which is not thought but my soul, my being, my authentic existence. Let the turmoil of thought fall away. Let all thoughts shed, and let only that remain which is my pure being. In the solitary experience of that pure being—in that empty experience—what becomes available is truth, the soul, the divine, or any other name.
Right now our attitude toward thought is possessiveness: collect! Even as I speak here, you can carry away my thoughts. My thoughts, collected within you, will harm you; they cannot benefit you. They will only increase the crowd within. Some others were already seated there; I too will go sit there. It was already so crowded that there was no room—and one more man enters; a few more thoughts arrive—and an uproar begins within you.
Do not be possessive toward thoughts. Do not hoard them; do not cram your memory with them. Then what to do? Maintain an attitude of non-possession. Non-possession is not the same as lack of understanding. Understanding is one thing; collecting is another. To understand what I am saying is one thing; to store it is another. To understand what Mahavira, Buddha, Krishna have said is one thing; to hoard it is another. Understanding is not accumulation. In understanding, nothing is stored. Where storage is, understanding is not. The one who wants to collect is the one who has not understood. For the one who understands, the question of collecting does not arise.
We try to remember only those things we have not understood. What we have truly understood we do not need to remember. There is no question of keeping them in memory.
Let there be no urge to collect; let there be a passion to understand. From understanding, knowing is born; from collecting, pedantry. Pedantry and wisdom are opposites. A pundit is never a knower; and a knower has no reason to be a pundit.
Keep this basic alertness in life: am I chasing the collection of thoughts? What will come of collecting? All collection will be borrowed—from others. Understanding will be mine, my own. Collection always comes from others; understanding is mine. Collection is stale and borrowed; understanding is fresh, alive, young. Understanding frees; collection binds. Understanding liberates, makes you independent. Collection shackles you like chains.
Those who get entangled in the hoarding of words and scriptures become incapable of understanding. They do not understand anything—because where understanding seeks freedom and freshness—not staleness, not borrowedness—collection makes everything borrowed. When they look at life, they place their words in between. Words come in the middle; life stands on the other side.
Once, in China, a great market was held. Near it was a well. Because of the crowd, a man fell into the well. There was no parapet. He cried out, “Save me!” In the noise, who would hear? A Buddhist monk passing by heard his cry, peered in, and saw a man drowning. The man begged, “Save me!”
The monk said, “Friend, you are reaping your karma—endure it. Who can save whom? The scriptures say no one can save another. One substance cannot transform another. What can I do? And if I try to save you, I will bind new karma by interfering. Better to bear the fruit of some past sin so that the account is settled.” Scripture was speaking. Life stood before him—a man drowning—and scripture came in between. The monk said, “Keep your mind calm; with calmness all is achieved. This calamity is the fruit of your deeds; endure it, and by enduring it will be exhausted.” The man cried out; the monk went on.
Behind him came a Confucian monk. He looked and said, “Confucius has said a thousand times: if the state is not in order, great disturbances arise. The state is not in order; therefore this well has no parapet. I will go now and launch a movement to change the state, to bring revolution. Every well must have a parapet. Otherwise people get into great trouble. See—this man is dying.” The man was drowning, and he gathered people to show the error of the state. He went into the market shouting, “Friends, see—the failure of the state: no parapet on the well!”
Behind them came a Christian missionary. He saw the man drowning. He immediately remembered Christ’s saying: service to man is service to God. He jumped in at once and pulled the man out.
You may think this third man did best. No—this too was not ideal. Scripture stands in between here as well; he too did not meet life directly. He remembered what was written—“service to man is service to God”—and acted accordingly. Here too, scripture stands between; life does not.
This story was devised by a Christian missionary, but he did not see that in the third case too it is the same. In their scriptures it was written thus and they acted thus. In all three cases, scripture stands in between—not life.
To see life in its many forms and to understand it—and to act out of that understanding—this is liberating. The act that arises from understanding life is dharma. But words and scriptures erect a wall between us and life on every side. The pundit becomes incapable of understanding. That is why the priests of the world’s religions fight. How can there be many religions? If truth is one, religion too is one. Pundits are of many kinds, scriptures of many kinds, sects of many kinds. The pundit fights because he cannot understand the other; his own words obstruct him. His words stand in the way; understanding the other becomes impossible. From such unawareness quarrels arise; religious hostilities arise; religions fight across the world. The pundit cannot understand, therefore conflict is born.
Where there is understanding, there can be no quarrel. Where there is understanding, there can be no opposition. There will be love. There cannot be hatred—there will be love, in the one who can understand the other.
So remember: however many words, scriptures, ideas you collect, your understanding will not increase. Understanding does not collect. Understanding sees in wholeness. It awakens to things in their totality. In that awakening, in that awareness, inner knowing is born. That knowing is not stored; it is not accumulated anywhere. It transforms your whole being, purifies your soul, makes it new, gives it new life. Therefore it has no weight, no burden. Therefore it erects no wall between life and us.
Understand the mistake of hoarding thoughts. And remember: the less the inner crowd of thoughts and the more the arising of wisdom; the less the stockpile of ideas, and the more the liberating winds of knowing blow, the more understanding flowers—the more your life can move toward no-mind, toward samadhi.
Thus I say: the first sutra is non-possession toward thought.
If non-possession toward thought is there, inevitably a second sutra bears fruit—renouncing attachment to thought.
Right now we say, “my idea!” Which idea is yours? Let a small dispute arise, and you say: “my idea, my religion, my scripture, my Tirthankaras, my God.” How does this “mine” enter you? Which idea is yours? Dig a little, analyze a little, catch each idea and ask, “Is this mine?” You will find: it is not mine, it has come. It floated in the air and came to lodge within me. How is it mine? Not a single idea is yours. It came from somewhere, drifted in from somewhere, and became a resident within you.
All thoughts are guests. None is yours. But when we say “my idea,” a grip forms—an identity, a fusing with it. Then we begin to safeguard the idea, refuse to let it go. Whatever becomes “mine” I start protecting; it becomes my property, my treasure; a part of my very life.
It is essential to understand and awaken to this fact: no thought is mine. As soon as it becomes clear that no idea is mine, attachment to thought drops, the sense of mine-ness falls away. And where mine-ness falls away, the link between us and that thing breaks.
Mine-ness is the linking chain—the only chain that binds our mind to thoughts. “My idea!” If you are a Jain and someone abuses Jainism, your life trembles—“my religion,” and he abused it! If you are a Christian and someone speaks ill of Christianity, you stand to fight—“my religion,” and he criticized it! That “mine” is hit at once and arouses your ego. Then you are ready to die for an idea. People have made countless sacrifices for ideologies. And there are those who encourage them: “Fear not—if you die for Islam, paradise is yours; if you die for Hindu dharma, heaven is yours.”
To teach a man to die for ideas, we have taught more foolishness than to teach him to live. “Become a martyr, and fairs will gather at your tomb.” So die for an idea—die for communism or die for democracy.
When someone is ready to die, consider how deep his attachment must be. He agrees to lose his life for an idea—and the idea is utterly alien. He is ready to lose his soul, his life. And our follies are so deep that we honor him: “He did a great deed—died for Islam, for Hindu dharma, for Jain dharma.” But what is the fact? That his attachment to the idea became so deep he was not ready to lose the idea; he was ready to lose life. Life was his own; the idea utterly foreign.
When attachment goes that far, fanaticism and madness are born. Religious fanatics have filled the earth with such killing and stupidity as cannot be measured. Behind it all is one link: we cultivate attachment to ideas—“mine, mine.” Once it becomes “mine,” we are ready to die, because it becomes part of our ego.
No—if the mind is to be free, that link which makes an idea “mine” must be broken. And it takes no great effort to break it, because the link is utterly false. It doesn’t exist; it is only a thought, only imagination. No idea is yours. Tell me one that is yours. Which thought is yours? The Gita’s? The Quran’s? The Bible’s? Krishna’s? Mahavira’s? Someone’s. Which is yours? None. All thoughts are alien and borrowed.
Binding ourselves with attachment to alien, borrowed ideas lays the foundation for inner turmoil. See this truth: no thought is mine; therefore no thought is worthy of being joined so closely to me. As understanding deepens, attachment thins. As it becomes evident that all thoughts are alien, fighting for an idea becomes like fighting shadows in the air. The quarrel is much like this story you may have heard.
Two pundits in a village stood by a riverbank. Having spent their lives in pedantry, they had no field, no cow, no buffalo. Yet both cherished the idea of a field. They thought, “We will buy land across the river.” One said, “Fine—we will both get land there, but make sure your animals never enter my field.” The other said, “Animals are unreliable; they may get in. We can’t keep chasing after them.” The first said, “Then our friendship will be broken. I cannot tolerate it if your animals enter my field.” The other asked, “What will you do?” “I will slaughter them right there.” “Well then,” said the first, “here is my field, and here are my buffaloes. Where is your field?” He drew a line on the ground with his stick: “Here is my field.” The other drew a circle beside it: “Here is mine.” The first drove his “buffaloes” into the other’s “field.” The other drew two lines: “My buffaloes have entered—now do what you will!” The first “killed” the buffaloes. The buffaloes were only lines on the ground, but the two grappled. The case went to court. “Where are these fields? Where are the buffaloes?” asked the magistrate. “Leave that aside,” they said. “We are about to buy the fields—and we are about to purchase the buffaloes.”
Such is the quarrel over ideas: over fields that exist nowhere, buffaloes that exist nowhere. Only shadows—yet we can give our lives for them.
There must be a deep stupidity in human life, or this could not be. Those martyrs who died in the name of ideas and religions must have been utter ignoramuses, or this could not be. Every fight for ideas is foolish. It arises from attachment. From attachment, thoughts stick to us and gather inside. Then, when we try to drop them, our very life trembles. Others taught us those thoughts, and yet our life shakes at the prospect of letting them go.
Bertrand Russell wrote, “When I think—and in moments of deep understanding—it seems to me that no person greater than Buddha has lived. But then I grow afraid, and in my mind arises: ‘Greater than Christ? That can never be. No one can be greater than Christ.’ I think and understand everything, but I cannot get free of this.” Thoughts seize us so strongly they become more important than understanding. I am not saying Christ is small or Buddha great—these are mad comparisons. No one is small or great. But thoughts grip so deeply, attachment becomes so deep, that they become greater than understanding. We are ready to lose understanding rather than lose the idea. That is a symptom of madness. We should always be ready to lose a thought for the sake of understanding, never lose understanding for the sake of an idea. But we constantly sacrifice our total understanding for the most trivial of thoughts.
When India and Pakistan were partitioned, the people who killed Hindus, and those who killed Muslims—what kind of people were they? People like us—us. People who went to the mosque daily, read the Quran; people who read the Gita. But just this notion: “I am a Hindu,” “You are a Muslim.” Two petty ideas—propaganda drilled in since childhood—that they had learned. For those, they forgot the mosque, forgot the Quran, forgot the Gita, and began thrusting knives into chests. People like us. We can do it even now, right here. The person sitting next to you—you can stab him. All your understanding will vanish. Let only one thought come—“Hindu dharma is in danger,” or “Islam is in danger”—and your entire understanding will be lost.
Ideas have become more important than understanding because we have given them such deep attachment. This attachment must be cut at once. It is not difficult to cut, because it is purely imaginary. The chain exists nowhere except in imagination. The renunciation of attachment to thoughts is essential.
First: a sense of non-possession toward thought.
Second: the renunciation of attachment to thought.
And third: a neutral witnessing toward thought.
The third sutra is the most important. The other two are its preliminaries, its primary preparations. The third sutra is: a neutral, witnessing attitude toward thoughts. To the extent a person attains neutral witnessing of thoughts, to that extent he becomes thought-free. If his witnessing becomes total, all thoughts depart; he becomes perfectly without thought and attains samadhi.
What do I mean by neutral witnessing?
Have you ever stood by a riverbank? You sit or stand, and the river flows by; you simply watch. Or sat and watched a line of birds flying across the sky? You sit, and the birds pass by. Not one of them is yours; none is your friend or foe; none do you desire or dislike. You simply watch—neutrally. The birds keep flying. With just such neutrality, the ordered flocks of thoughts moving within must be seen. Sit and only watch. Thoughts come and go. No thought is yours; no friend, no enemy; no thought good, none bad. The birds of thought keep flying, and you sit far away, silently seeing. No relation with them. As when people are walking on a road and you stand aside watching. A neutral seeing of thoughts—as a witness, like a man standing far away. No attachment, no good or bad, no mine or not-mine. A continual practice of this—continually standing in neutrality—gradually weakens thoughts.
The more neutral you become, the more you stand apart while the stream of thought circles on, the more you will be surprised: gaps appear between thoughts; they come less often; the crowd begins to thin. We had invited them—therefore they came. They were not accidental; they were guests by invitation. We called them, lodged them, claimed them as our own—therefore they stayed. The day we no longer claim them, the day we become indifferent and neglectful toward them, the day we are neutral—then there remains no reason for them to stay. They gradually thin and dissolve.
If, steadily, you cultivate this stance of standing far and neutral toward thoughts, one day, suddenly, you discover: there are no thoughts—and you are alone. In that moment there is being—no smoke of thought. There is the light of being—no smoke. That day the purest being remains; there is no cloud of thought. In that thought-free state, that which is, is known. In that moment, that which we call the divine, truth, the source of life—whatever we name it—is recognized. In that moment, that which is the life of your life is known. That which never dies—the immortal—is known. Before that, nothing is truly known.
No-mind is the door to truth. The state of no-mind is the door to the divine. And to be thought-free, one must become a witness in every way.
Witnessing is difficult. We very quickly identify; we do not remain witnesses.
In Bengal there was a great scholar and thinker—Vidyasagar. He went to see a play. He was very learned, had written many books and commentaries. No scholar like him had been in Bengal. He went to the theater. In the play a villain was tormenting a woman, pursuing her. Vidyasagar, a very decent man, could not bear it. A moment came when the character finally caught the woman. Vidyasagar stood up, took off his shoe, and threw it. It was a play—but he forgot that. Sitting in the front, he hurled the shoe and said, “Stop, you scoundrel!” The actor must have been wiser; he picked up the shoe, touched it to his head, and said, “I have never received a greater prize. That someone like Vidyasagar forgot it was a play—this proves the excellence of my acting!”
We forget even that a drama is a drama—when what is necessary is to know that life is a play. We forget that theater is theater; it appears like life. Whereas it is necessary that life appear like a play—only then can we be neutral, only then can we stand apart. Thoughts moving on the inner screen must remain a drama if you are to stand far from them. But our condition is such that even drama quickly becomes part of life; we take it to be real. We cry and laugh even in the theater; we wipe tears there. When moving images on a screen can so veil our being, remaining neutral becomes very difficult. Yet, with continual awareness, discrimination, mindful remembrance—with that meditation—it is not impossible.
So slowly, slowly learn to be neutral in small things. Walking on the road, stop suddenly for a moment and simply watch neutrally: what is happening? In your family, for a moment become consciously neutral and see: all of this is a play. Anywhere, anytime, stop for a little while and see: all is a play. Little by little your capacity for witnessing will grow; then, on the plane of thought, you will be able to witness. The day you can witness on the plane of thought, that very day a new realm, a new door, opens before you. For the first time you will become acquainted with life. Before that, we are acquainted only with death.
On the first day I said, regarding death, that we are almost corpses—dying—and we know nothing of life. Life is locked within us; the door is sealed. Without breaking that lock, it is hard to enter within and know life. That lock is thought. That lock is our identification with thought. That lock is our attachment to thought. That lock is our possessiveness toward thought. If these grow thin in every way—if the race and turmoil of thoughts cease and consciousness becomes quiet, waveless—then in that waveless consciousness we can know life.
Immortality sits within each one. The primal energy of life is hidden within each. But very few become acquainted with it. Yet anyone who makes the effort, who longs and labors and resolves—can become acquainted.
Whatever there is to ask about this, I will speak in the evening.
If you try to understand what I have said about thought, non-thought, and no-thought, there can certainly be some result.
You have listened to me with such love and stillness. For that, many, many thanks.