Dhyan Sutra #8

First of all, becoming a saint is a possibility for every human being. That someone does not turn a possibility into actuality is another matter. It is another matter that a seed may not become a tree, but every seed is inwardly destined to be a tree. That is, every seed has this possibility, this potentiality, to become a tree. If it does not, that is quite another matter. If it does not get manure and soil, and water and light, the seed may die—this can happen—but the seed certainly had the possibility.

Sainthood is the possibility of every human being. So first, remove from your mind the notion that saintliness is a special privilege of a few. Saintliness is not the right of a select few. And those who have popularized this notion have done so only to nourish their ego. The ego is gratified by declaring that sainthood is very arduous and possible only for a very few—and then asserting that only a very few can be saints. This is merely a way to satisfy the ego of some people; otherwise, sainthood is the possibility of all. For there is room and scope for everyone to attain truth.

I said it is another matter that you may not become available to it. For that, only you will be responsible, not your possibility. We are all sitting here. We all have the power to get up and walk, but we may not walk and keep sitting. Powers are known only when they are activated; until you activate them, they remain unknown.

Right now you are sitting here; it cannot even be known that you can walk. And if you search within yourself, where will you find the power to walk? A man who is sitting looks within and asks, “Where is the power to walk in me?” How will he find it? He will not find it; he will think, “Where is the power to walk?” However much a seated man searches within, he will not find any place he can point to and say, “This is my power to walk,” until he actually gets up and walks. By walking it will be known whether there is the power to walk or not. Likewise, you have to pass through the process of becoming a saint to see whether it is our possibility or not. Those who never experiment with it will certainly feel that the possibility belongs only to a few.

This is wrong. So first understand this: everyone has the right to attain truth; it is everyone’s birthright. There is no special entitlement for anyone in it.

Truth is not attained in parts. Because truth is indivisible; it cannot be broken into pieces. It is not that someone gets a little truth now, then a little more, and then a little more. It doesn’t happen that way. Truth is available only all at once. It is not obtained gradually, in sequence. It comes whole; it comes as an explosion. Yet if I say it comes only all at once, much fear arises: we are such weak people—how will we ever get it all at once!

A man goes to climb to the roof. The roof is received all at once when he reaches it, but he climbs the steps one by one. On no step is he on the roof. On the first step he is not on the roof; even on the last step he is still not on the roof. He is becoming near, but he is not on the roof.

Nearness to truth can happen gradually, but when truth becomes available, it is available as a whole. Nearness to truth comes step by step; the attainment of truth is total. It never happens in fragments, never in pieces. Remember this.

So the disciplines I have spoken of are the steps—they will not give you truth, they will give you nearness to truth. And when you come to the final step—which I have called the emptiness of feeling—when one takes the leap across that emptiness, truth is attained. Then truth is received whole, in totality; it is available in its wholeness.

There are no fragmented experiences of the Divine; the experience of the Divine is undivided. But the road to the Divine is divided into many segments. Remember this. The road to truth is gradual and divided into parts, but truth itself is not divided. Therefore do not think, “We weak people—how will we ever reach the whole truth? If it came little by little, perhaps we could manage!” No, we too will be able to attain it, because the path is walked little by little. No road is walked all at once; a road is always walked bit by bit. But the destination is always received all at once; the destination is never received in installments. Remember this.

And then you ask: What is truth? There is no way to state it in words. It has never been said through human speech. And it is not that in the future it will be said. It is not that the language of the past was too poor to say it, and a richer language will manage it. It can never be said.

There is a reason. Human language has developed for worldly dealings. Language was born for social use, not to reveal truth. And among those who created language, hardly any knew truth. So there is no word for truth. And those who found truth did not find it through language; they found it by becoming silent. When truth became available to them, they were in perfect silence; there were no words there. Hence the great difficulty: when they return and begin to speak, a space remains empty—the very space that is truth. No word can be given for it. Or if they give words, the words remain incomplete and too small.

And quarrels begin over those very words. Over those very words! Because all words are incomplete; they cannot reveal truth. They are pointers. If someone points a finger at the moon and we grab the finger, saying, “This is the moon,” trouble begins. The finger is not the moon; the finger is only an indication. Whoever clings to the indication will be in trouble.

One has to drop the pointer, so that that toward which it points can be seen. One has to drop words; then a small taste of truth becomes possible. Whoever clings to words is deprived of the experience of truth.

Therefore there is no way for me to tell you what truth is. And if someone says he can tell you, he is in self-deception and is deceiving others. There is no way to say what truth is. But yes, there is a way to say how truth can be found. The method can be told to attain truth, the procedure can be described—but what truth is cannot be told.

There are methods to know truth; there are no definitions of truth. There are methods to know truth, but no definitions. We have discussed that method these three days. It will surely seem as if we are leaving truth itself aside. We said “truth” many times, but we did not say what truth is.

It cannot be told; it can be known. Truth cannot be stated; it can be known. You will know it. The method can be given. The experience of truth will be yours. The experience of truth is always personal. There is no communication of it, no dialogue of it, from one to another.

So I will not say what truth is—not because I want to hold it back, but because it cannot be said. Once, far back in the past, in the time of the Upanishads, someone went to a rishi and asked, “What is truth?” The rishi looked at the man very intently. He asked again, “What is truth?” He asked a third time, “What is truth?” The rishi said, “I am telling you again and again, but you do not understand.” The man said, “What are you saying! I asked three times; each time you were silent. And you say, ‘I am telling you again and again’!” The rishi said, “If only you could see my silence, you would understand what truth is. If only you could see my silence, my maun, you would understand what truth is.”

That is the way to say it. Those who have known become silent. And when truth is talked about, they become silent.

If you too can become silent, you can know it. If you are not silent, you cannot. You can know truth, but you cannot make it known. Therefore I will not say what truth is, because it cannot be said.

This is very rightly asked. If it is true that man is completely bound by his past actions, then what remains in his hands to do in the present? And if it is true that man is not bound at all by past actions, then what is the point of doing anything? Because if he is not bound by past actions, then whatever he does now will not bind him tomorrow. So if he does something auspicious today, there should be no possibility of receiving auspicious results tomorrow. If one is fully bound by past actions, then there is no meaning in doing, because one cannot do anything—he is totally bound. And if one is completely free, again there is no meaning in doing, because he will do it and tomorrow he will be free of it; what he has done will not remain with him. Therefore man is neither completely bound nor completely free. One of his legs is tied, and one is free.
Once someone asked Hazrat Ali precisely this question. Someone asked him, “In his actions is man free or dependent?” Ali said, “Lift one of your legs!” The man was free to lift either the left or the right. He lifted his left leg. Ali said, “Now lift the other as well.” He replied, “Are you crazy? I can’t lift the other now!” Ali asked, “Why?” He said, “I was free to lift one.” Ali said, “Such is human life. You always have two legs: you are always free to lift one, and one is always tied.”

Therefore there is the possibility that you can free what is bound through that which is still free. And there is also the possibility that, under the momentum of what is already bound, you bind even what is free.

What you did in the past, you did. You were free to do it; you did it. A part of you has become rigid, mechanical, dependent. But a part of you is still free; you are free to do the opposite. By doing the opposite you can break it. By doing something different you can destroy it. By doing something higher you can dissolve it. It is in human hands to wash away even past conditioning.

If until yesterday you were angry, you were free to be angry. Certainly, the person who has been angry every day for twenty years becomes bound by anger. To be bound means this: one man, who has been angry continuously for twenty years, wakes one morning and does not find his slippers by his bed; another man, who has not been angry for twenty years, also wakes and does not find his slippers by his bed. In which of the two is the likelihood of anger arising greater?

In the one who has been angry for twenty years, anger will arise. In this sense he is bound, because twenty years of habit will instantly provoke anger when what he wanted did not happen. In this sense he is bound: twenty years of conditioning will still impel him today to do what he has continually done. But is he so bound that not to be angry is no longer a possibility for him?

No one is bound that much. If he becomes aware right now, he can stop. Not allowing anger to arise is within his possibility. Transforming anger that has arisen is within his possibility. And if he does this, the twenty-year habit will cause some difficulty, but it cannot stop him completely. For the one who created the habit—if he goes against it—he is free to break it. With a few attempts he can become free of it.

Karma binds, but it does not bind absolutely. Karma fetters, but it does not completely seize you. There are chains, but every chain can be broken. There is no chain that cannot break—and if there were one that could not break, it could hardly be called a chain. A chain binds, yet every chain carries the capacity to be opened. If there were a chain that could never be opened again, you would not even call it a chain. A chain is precisely that which can both bind and be opened. Karma is bondage in exactly this sense: liberation is possible. And our consciousness is always free. Regarding the steps we have taken, the path we have walked, we are always free to turn back.

So the past holds you, but the future is your freedom. One leg is tied and one is free. The leg of the past is tied; the leg of the future is free. If you wish, you can lift this future leg in the same direction in which you tied the leg of the past—you will go on becoming more and more bound. If you wish, you can lift this future leg in a direction opposite to the past—you will go on becoming free. It is in your hands. The state in which both legs are free we call moksha. And the state in which both legs are tied we will call the absolute lowest hell.

Therefore, there is no need to be frightened of the past, nor of past lives. The one who took those steps is still free to take steps now.

When you are a witness, there is no thought. The moment you think, you are no longer a witness. If I am standing in a garden and become a witness to a flower, I will look at the flower. Just looking, I am a witness. If I start thinking, then I am no longer a witness. The very moment I begin to think, the flower slips from my eyes; a curtain of thinking comes in between. If, seeing a flower, I say, “The flower is beautiful,” at the very instant my mind is saying, “The flower is beautiful,” I am not seeing the flower—because the mind does not do two things at once. A fine veil has come in between. And if I begin to think, “I have seen this flower before; it is familiar,” the flower has vanished from my sight. Now I am under the illusion that I am seeing.

Once I took a friend, who had returned from faraway lands, for a boat ride on the river. He had seen many rivers and many lakes, and his mind was full of them. On a full-moon night, as I took him out on the boat, he kept talking about the lakes of Switzerland and the lakes of Kashmir. When we returned after an hour, he said on the way back, “The place you took me to was very charming.”
I said, “You are speaking an utter untruth. You did not even see it. The whole time I felt that you might have been in Switzerland, you might have been in Kashmir, but you were not in the boat on which we were sitting.”
“And let me also say this,” I told him, “when you were in Switzerland, you must have been somewhere else; and when you were in Kashmir, you must not have been on the very lake you now talk about.” So I said to him, “Not only do I say you did not see the lake to which I took you; I say you have not seen any lake at all.”

The curtain of your imaginings does not allow you to be a witness. Your thinking does not allow you to be a seer. When we drop thought—set it aside—then we are witnesses. By the purgation, the drying up of thought, witnessing happens.

So when I say, “We are becoming witnesses,” and you ask, “Then who is thinking?”—no, no one is thinking; only pure witnessing remains. And that pure witnessing is our very inner being. If you abide in the state of perfect witnessing, where no wave of thought arises, no ripple of thought stirs, you will enter into yourself—just as, when no wave arises on the sea and no vibration comes, its surface becomes still and we are able to peer into its depths.

Thought is a wave; thought is a disease; thought is an excitation. When the excitation of thought is lost, the witness becomes available. So when we are witnesses, then no one is thinking. If we are thinking, we are no longer witnesses. Thought and witnessing are in opposition.

That is why, in understanding this method of meditation, all our effort has really been an experiment in letting go of thought. In what we are practicing, we are thinning thought out and setting it aside—so that the state remains in which there are no thoughts, yet the thinker is. By “thinker” I mean: the one who used to think is present, but is not thinking. When he is not thinking, then seeing—darshan—happens in him. Understand this.

Thought and darshan are opposites. That is why I said earlier: only the blind think; those who have eyes do not think. Understand: if I have no eyes and I must get out of this building, I will think, “Where is the door?” If I have eyes and must leave, will I think? I will see and walk out. If I have eyes, I will see and go; why would I think?

The fewer eyes one has, the more one thinks. The world calls them “thinkers.” We will call them blind. The more eyes one has, the less one thinks. Mahavira and Buddha were not thinkers. I hear very intelligent people even call them great thinkers. That is utterly false. They were not thinkers at all—because they were not blind. In our land we call them seers.

So, in our land, the scripture of this path is called darshan—seeing. We do not call it philosophy. Philosophy and darshan are not synonyms. Generally we translate darshan as philosophy; that is wrong. To call Indian darshan “Indian philosophy” is wholly mistaken. It is not philosophy at all. Philosophy means reflection, thinking, pondering. Darshan means dropping reflection, thinking, pondering.

In the West there have been thinkers; the West has philosophy. They have thought about what truth is; they think about it. In our land we do not think about what truth is; we think about how truth can be seen. That is, we think about how the eyes can open. Our whole process is to open the eyes, to open vision.

Where there is thinking, logic develops. Where there is seeing, yoga develops. Thought is allied with logic; darshan is allied with yoga. In the East logic did not develop; we had no love for it. We regarded it as a game—a children’s game. We searched for something else: darshan, and for darshan, yoga. Yoga is the method by which your eyes open and you see. For that seeing, witnessing is the practice. As you become a witness, thought grows thinner; and a moment will come of nirvichar—no-thought—not “thoughtless.”

There is a great difference between thoughtless and no-thought. Thoughtless is below the thinker; no-thought is far above the thinker. No-thought means there are no ripples in the mind, and the mind is tranquil; in that tranquility the capacity to see is born. Thoughtless means he does not know what to do. I am not telling you to become thoughtless; I am pointing to no-thought. The thoughtless one doesn’t have a clue; the one in no-thought simply knows—he sees. Witnessing will lead you toward knowledge, toward the self.

The experiments with breath and meditation that we have undertaken are only to awaken witnessing—so that in any way we can taste that moment when we are, and thought is not. If even for a single instant that pristine moment is available, when we are and thoughts are not, you will have attained an extraordinary treasure in life.

Move in that direction; strive for it; gather your total energy in yearning for that moment when consciousness is, but thought is not.

When consciousness is free of thought, truth is seen. When consciousness is filled and burdened with thought, truth is not seen. As the sky, when clouded, hides the sun, so when the mind is clouded with thoughts, the self’s being is concealed. If you wish to see the sun, the clouds must be dispersed and dissolved so that the sun can peek through. In the same way, thoughts must be removed so that the self’s presence can be recognized and experienced.

This morning, as I was leaving the building, someone asked me, “Is keval-gyan possible in this age?” I said, “It is.” He then asked, “If keval-gyan is possible now, can you tell me what question I want to ask you?”
If he understands keval-gyan to mean telling what the other wants to ask, he is in great error; even a street juggler can deceive him. A roadside two-paisa showman can tell you what is in your mind. And if ever someone with keval-gyan agreed to such a thing, he would not be a knower of keval-gyan at all.

Keval-gyan does not mean telling you what is running in your mind. You have not understood the meaning of keval-gyan. Keval-gyan means the state of consciousness where no object of knowledge remains and no knower remains—only the power of knowing itself remains. The very word keval-gyan says it: where only knowing remains.

As it is now, whenever we know, three things are present: the one who knows—the knower; that which is known—the known; and the relationship between the two—knowledge. Knowledge is bound and burdened by the knower and the known. Keval-gyan means the known dissolves—the object disappears. And when the known dissolves, where will the knower be? He was bound to the known. When the known dissolves, the knower dissolves. What remains then? Only knowledge remains. In that moment of pure knowing there is the sense of liberation and of freedom.

So keval-gyan means to experience pure knowledge. What I have called samadhi is the experience of pure knowing. These are different names in different traditions: what Patanjali called samadhi, the Jains called keval-gyan, and Buddha called prajna.

Keval-gyan does not mean telling what is going on in your head. That is very easy—a simple thing. That is ordinary telepathy, thought-reading; it has nothing to do with keval-gyan. And if you are curious to know what is going on in the mind of the person next to you, I can show you the way to find out. I will not tell you what is going on in your mind, but I can show you a way for you to know what is going on in another’s mind—that is easier.

Earlier I described an experiment of resolve: throw all the breath out and pause a moment—do not inhale. At home, try it for two or four days on some small child and you will understand. Exhale completely; sit the child in front of you; when no breath remains within, then with full force make the resolve and, with eyes closed, try to see what is going on in the child’s mind. Tell the child to think of something small—say, the name of a flower. Don’t let him tell you; just ask him to think of the name of a flower. With eyes closed and breath thrown out, deepen the resolve to see what is going on in his mind.
Within two or three days you will begin to know. If you can catch even a single word, then it makes no difference; later you can catch sentences. It is a long process. But do not imagine that you have become a knower of keval-gyan! This has nothing to do with keval-gyan. This is man-paryaya-gyan—reading the modes of another’s mind. For this you need not be religious, need not be a monk.

In the West a great deal of work is being done. Many psychic societies are devoted to telepathy and thought-reading; scientific rules are being formulated. In a hundred or a hundred and fifty years, every doctor will use it, every teacher will use it. Every shopkeeper will use it to know what the customer will like—and it will all be used for exploitation. And it is not keval-gyan at all; it is only a technique. The technique is not yet widely known, so it seems special. Experiment a little and you will be surprised how much can be understood. But it is not keval-gyan. Keval-gyan is a very distant thing.

Keval-gyan means to experience the ultimate state of pure knowledge. In that state there is the taste of the nectar of immortality, and what I have called sat-chit-ananda—truth, consciousness, bliss—is realized.

No, it is not possible. Samadhi is the doorway. Suppose someone asks, “Is it possible to enter this house without a door?” What would we say? We would say, “No, it’s not possible.” And if he breaks through a wall and comes in, we would say, “That became the door.” So what is a door? If we say there is no way to enter this house except through the door, and he breaks a wall and comes inside, we will still say, “That became the way, that became the door.” But to enter this house without a door is not possible. However you come, you will come through a door. If you are sensible, you will walk straight in; if you are foolish, you will break a wall somewhere.

Without samadhi there is no path. Samadhi is the doorway to the Divine, to truth. And without a door, I don’t see how one could go! No one has ever gone anywhere without a door.

Remember this; do not think it will be possible without samadhi. Our mind is such that it keeps hoping there might be a cheaper route—meaning a path on which one need not walk at all. But on every path, one has to walk; only by walking do paths become paths. Yet we want a door through which we need not enter and still arrive. There is no door where you arrive without entering.

But our mind has many weaknesses. One is that we want to do nothing and yet receive something. Especially regarding the Divine, our notion is that if it can be had without doing anything, then it is worth considering. In fact, it may even happen that if someone is ready to give it to you without your doing anything, you would still ponder whether to take it or not!

Once it happened, there was a monk in Sri Lanka. Every day he would speak of moksha, nirvana, and samadhi. Some people had been listening to him for years. One day a man stood up and asked, “I want to ask: so many people have been listening to you for so many days—whose nirvana has happened among them, whose samadhi has happened?” The monk said, “If you wish, your samadhi can happen today. Are you willing? If you are, I truly say I will see that you attain samadhi today.” The man said, “Today!” He said, “Let me think a little, perhaps… Today?” He said, “Let me think a bit. I will come back and tell you.”

And if someone were to say to you as well, “I can unite you with the Divine right now, this very moment,” I don’t think your heart would instantly say yes. Your heart would start deliberating. Truly, your heart would think hard: to meet or not to meet! Even if God were available for free, we would still hesitate. So when there is a price to be paid, hesitation is very natural. The mind keeps hoping it will get it for free.

We want to get for free that which, in our own mind, has no value. That is, we want to obtain without price that which we do not value. And we are willing to pay only for what we do value.

If even a little regard for the Divine arises in you, you will find yourself ready to give your all. Ready to give everything—and even after giving all, if only a single glimpse is had, you will be willing to receive it.

But such weak people give clever people a chance to exploit them. All over the world a kind of religious exploitation goes on. Since you want to attain without doing anything, people stand up who say, “By our grace you will get it. Worship us, touch our feet, repeat our name, keep faith in us—you will get it.” And the weak, for this reason, have faith in them, touch their feet, and waste their lives.

Nothing will be gained; this is only exploitation. It is only exploitation. No guru can give you God. A guru can show the path to the Divine, but you have to walk the path yourself. No guru can walk for you. In this world no one can walk for anyone else. You must move with your own feet; you must walk on your own legs. And if someone says—and there are many who do—“We ask only one thing of you: have faith in us, and we will do everything else,” they are exploiting you. And because you are weak, you give them the opportunity to exploit you.

As for the religious hypocrisies that run in the world, the reason is not that there are too many hypocrites; it is that your weaknesses are too many. If you were not weak, no religious hypocrisy could stand. Because if a person has even a little self-effort, even a little sense of the glory and dignity of their life, and someone says to them, “By my grace I will get you God!” they will say, “Forgive me; what greater insult could there be to me than this—that I should attain the Divine through your grace!”

And what is gained by another’s grace—can it not be snatched away by that other’s displeasure? What is obtained through grace can be taken away when that grace is withdrawn. It would only be a deception that the Divine is attained and then snatched away, and that someone else can give it.

No one in this world can give another the Truth or the Divine. It has to be attained by one’s own effort and one’s own sadhana. Therefore, not even for a moment—not even by a hair’s breadth—allow this thought into the mind; this weakness proves fatal. And because of this weakness, you yourself break, and you give hypocrisy, frauds, and bogus guru-dom the chance to spread. They are untrue; they have no value. And they are harmful and poisonous.

There is a question that…

I have told you earlier: if the energy of anger arises, we can transmute it creatively. I also told you that the energy of sex can be transmuted. Ego is not a power in the way anger, sex, greed and the like are powers. Ego is not a power in that sense.

Anger arises at times; the sexual urge at times becomes strong; greed at times seizes your consciousness. Ego—until samadhi happens—is always with you. It is not a power; it is your state. Understand this difference.

Ego is not a power; it is your condition. It never “arises”; it is there with you. It stands behind all your actions. Many things arise because of it, but it itself does not arise.

Because of ego, anger may be born. If you are egoistic, you will be more prone to anger. If you are egoistic, you will be more fame-hungry, greedy, hankering for position. All these things will arise in you because of ego. Ego gives rise to these energies within you, but ego itself is a state of your mind. And as long as there is ignorance, there is ego. When knowing comes, the ego dissolves, and in its place there is the vision of the Self.

Ego is a veiling curtain wrapped around the soul. It is not a power; it is ignorance. Through that ignorance many energies are born. If we use them destructively, the ego-state becomes stronger and stronger. If we use those arising energies creatively and constructively, the force of ego grows weaker and weaker; the ego-state grows weaker. If all the energies that arise are used creatively, one day the ego disappears. And when the smoke of ego has vanished, you discover beneath it the flame of the soul.

The smoke of ego surrounds the flame of the soul. When the mind becomes smokeless, when all the smoke of ego has dispersed, when all the layers of the “I”-sense have fallen away, when not even the remembrance arises that “I also am,” then in the depth the attainment happens.

Ramakrishna used to say: Once it happened that a salt doll went to a fair by the seaside. A fair was on, and a salt doll went to see it near the ocean. At the shore it saw the vast, unfathomable sea. Someone on the way asked, “How deep might it be?” The doll said, “I will go and find out right now.” And the salt doll jumped into the water. Many days passed, many years passed, but the doll has not returned. It had said, “I will go and find out,” but being a doll of salt, the moment it jumped into the sea it melted and disappeared—and it never found the ocean floor.

The “I” that sets out to seek God, or the depth of the sea, dissolves in the very act of seeking. It is only a doll of salt; it is not any power.

So if you set out to search for God, at first you think, “I am going to search for God.” But as you go on entering, you find God is not being found; rather, the “I” is dissolving. A moment comes when the “I” becomes utterly nothing—then you discover that God is found.

This means the “I” will never meet God. When the “I” is not, then God is. As long as the “I” is, God is not.

Therefore Kabir has said, “The lane of love is extremely narrow; two cannot pass through it.” The lane of love is so narrow that two cannot be there. Either you can be, or God can be. So long as you are, God cannot be. Where you dissolve, there God is.

This ego of ours is only our ignorance. Because of this ignorance, many of life’s energies are misused. If we use them rightly, ego will not be nourished and will gradually wither.

So those three experiments I have spoken of for the purification of life—purification of the body, of thought, and of feeling—if these three experiments continue, in doing them you will find the ego has dissolved. Anger will not dissolve in that sense; ego will dissolve. The energy of anger will continue in new forms. No “energy of ego” will remain. When ego dissolves, nothing is left behind—no residue. Anger or sex do not dissolve in that sense; they are transformed. They remain present in other forms. The energy of anger remains; it functions in another way. It may become compassion, but the energy is the same.

And in this world, those who are very angry—if their energy is transformed—they can be filled with just that much compassion, because the energy takes a new form. Energy is not destroyed; it takes new forms. As I said, those who are very sexual are the very people who attain to brahmacharya, because their sexual energy is transmuted and becomes brahmacharya for them.

But when ego dissolves, it does not become anything else, because it was only ignorance. There is no question of its transformation; it was only a delusion. As in the dark someone mistakes a rope for a snake; and on going near sees it is a rope, not a snake—and if you ask, “What happened to the snake?” we would say nothing happened to the snake, because there never was a snake. There was no question of its transformation.

In the same way, ego is the outcome of a mistaken understanding of the Self. It is a delusion about the Self, an illusory, misleading perception. Just as a snake appears in a rope, ego appears in the Self. When we come closer to the Self we find: there is no ego. It will not be transformed into something else—the question of transformation never arose. It was not there; it only seemed to be.

Ego is ignorance, not a power. But if there is ignorance, it makes you misuse your energies. In ignorance, what will happen? Ignorance can cause the misuse of energies.

So remember: there will be no conversion of ego, no culmination. Ego will simply dissolve. In that sense it is not a power.

One more question, finally.

It would have been better had you asked, “What need is there for the soul to dissolve into bliss?” It would have been better to ask, “What need is there for the soul to become healthy?” It would have been better to ask, “What need is there for the soul to step out of darkness into light?”

The need for the soul to merge with the Divine is simply this: life is not fulfilled by sorrow and pain. In no condition can life accept suffering; it longs for bliss.

Separated from the Divine, life is misery. In the Divine, it becomes bliss. The question is not about God; the question is about your inner rise from sorrow to joy—your ascent from darkness to light. And if no such need is felt by you, then by all means remain at ease in your suffering.

But no one can remain at ease in suffering. By its very nature, suffering pushes you away from yourself; by its very nature, bliss draws you toward your own being. Suffering repels, bliss attracts. The world is suffering; the Divine is bliss. The need for union with the Divine is not a religious need; it is an intrinsic, existential need.

Therefore, it may happen that someone in the world denies God, but no one denies bliss. That is why I have begun to say there is no atheist in the world. Only one who rejects bliss could be called an atheist. Everyone is a theist—in this sense, that everyone thirsts for bliss.

There are two kinds of theist: the worldly theist and the spiritual theist. One places faith in the world, believing that through it joy will be attained. The other has faith that through the growth of the spiritual life joy will be attained. Those whom you call atheists are theists with respect to the world. But their search is also for bliss—they too are seeking joy. And if not today, then tomorrow, when it becomes clear that there is no lasting bliss in the world, there will remain no path except to become eager for the Divine.

Your search is for bliss. No one is searching for God. Your search is for bliss. Bliss itself is what we call God. We call the state of total bliss “God.” The moment you are in total bliss, in that very moment you are God. That is to say, the moment no need of yours remains, in that moment you are God. Total bliss means no need remains. If any need remains, suffering remains. When no need remains in you, then you are in total bliss—and only then are you in the Divine.

Let me put it this way: there are needs; therefore there is a need to be in God. The day no need remains, that day there will be no need to be in God—you will be God. Everyone wants to be free of needs. So if one longs for such a moment of freedom—where there is no bondage of any need; where one simply is, undivided and complete, with nothing left beyond to attain, nothing left to remove or renounce—that undivided, total state is God.

By God I do not mean some gentleman sitting up there somewhere, whom you will behold, who will shower grace on you, and at whose feet you will sit and then go to heaven and have a good time. There is no such God anywhere. And if you are searching for such a God, you are deluded. Such a God will never be found. No one has ever found him till today.

God is the ultimate state of bliss of consciousness. God is not a person; it is an experience. That is to say, there is no “face-to-face” with God—not in the sense of an encounter, as if you go and bump into him, he stands before you and you gaze upon him. Whatever you gaze upon in that way is imagination. When consciousness drops all imaginings and all thoughts, then suddenly there is a revelation: of this seamless whole—this entire world, this universe—one is but a living part. One’s pulse becomes one with the pulse of the whole. One’s breath becomes one with the breath of the whole. One’s life-energy begins to move with the whole. No difference, no boundary remains.

In that instant one knows, “Aham Brahmasmi.” In that instant one knows that what I had known as “I” is an indispensable part of the entire cosmos. “I am the cosmos”—that experience is what we call God.

That completes your questions. After that, for a little while, those who are eager to meet in private for two or four minutes may do so. Whatever they wish to ask in private, they may ask in private.