Jin Khoja Tin Paiyan #10

It is like this: you draw water from a well. Your house has its own well, my house has its own well, yet the springs within the wells are all connected to the one ocean. If you catch hold of the current in your own well and keep digging along it, on that path you will pass my well and others’ wells too, and one day you will reach the place where there is no well at all—only the ocean. Where the journey begins, there is a person; where it ends, there is no person at all—there is the totality. It starts from the individual and ends in the Absolute.

So if you take the journey’s starting point, then you are separate and I am separate. If you take the journey’s peak, then neither you are nor I am. What is, we both are only parts of that. Thus, when kundalini first manifests within you, it will at first seem personal—“mine.” Naturally so, because you are standing at your own well. But as kundalini’s manifestation grows, you will gradually find your well is not only yours; it is connected with others. And the deeper you go, the more your well will disappear and the ocean will be. In the final experience you will be able to say, “This reservoir belonged to all.” In this sense I said: in the same way, we appear separate as individuals.

From the self to the Supreme Self
Consider a leaf on a tree coming into awareness. The leaf that hangs next to it will appear as “the other.” How could a leaf on another branch of the same tree ever feel, “This is me”? Even leaving aside the other branch, how could another leaf on the same branch feel like “me”? Even the leaf hanging right beside it will seem “other,” because a leaf’s awareness is personal.

If the leaf turns inward, very soon it will find: “The petiole I am attached to is the same petiole my neighboring leaf is attached to; our life-stream is one.” A little deeper, it finds: “Not only my branch, but the neighboring branch too—both are parts of the same tree; our life-flow is one.” A little deeper still, reaching the roots, it feels: “All the branches, all the leaves, and I—are parts of one.” If it goes beneath the tree into the earth from which the neighboring tree also has arisen, it will experience: “I, my tree, my leaves, and that neighboring tree—we are children of the same earth, branches of the same ground.” And if it keeps entering, ultimately this whole cosmos becomes the farthest reach of that small leaf’s existence. The leaf was a mere tip of this vast existence. As a tip in awareness, it is a person; as awareness of the whole, it is not a person.

Thus the first awakening of kundalini will be experienced as the self (atma), and the final experience as the Supreme (paramatma). If you stop at the first awakening, fortify your well, and do not search within, you will stop at the self. That is why many religions have stopped at the soul. It is not the ultimate experience; it is only half the journey. Go a little further and even the self dissolves, and only the Supreme remains. And as I said, if you go still further, even the Supreme dissolves, and then only nirvana, the void, remains—or say, nothing remains.

Those who could take one step beyond the Supreme have reached nirvana; they will speak of the ultimate void: the place where nothing at all remains. In fact, when you experience the All, simultaneously you experience the Nothing. The Absolute is also nothingness.

Zero and Whole: two names for the same
Understand it this way: shunya (zero) and purna (the whole) are two names for the same thing; they are interchangeable. Zero is whole. You have never seen a “half zero.” You cannot cut zero in two. You can split one into two, two into two; you cannot split zero. And when you draw a zero on paper, that is only a symbol; the moment you draw a line around it, it is no longer zero.

Hence Euclid will say: a point has neither length nor breadth. But any dot you draw, however tiny, will have length and breadth. So it is only symbolic, not the real point, for a true point can have no length or breadth. If it has length and breadth, it is no longer a point.

Thus the Upanishads could say: subtract zero from zero, and zero remains. It means: you cannot take anything out of it. Even if you carried off the whole zero, still zero would remain. In the end you will find the theft was futile: you could not run off with it; it remained where it was. And what is true of zero is equally true of the Whole. In fact, there is no conception of the Whole other than that of zero.

Whole means: that beyond which no further development is possible. Zero means: that below which no further fall is possible. You cannot divide the Whole; you cannot divide Zero. The Whole can have no boundary, because wherever there is a boundary, something remains outside—and then it is not whole. Where my house ends, your house begins. If my house is complete, your house cannot be outside it. So the Whole can have no boundary, because who would be its neighbor to demarcate it? Boundaries are made by two, not one—remember this. A boundary needs two: where I end and another begins. If no one begins, I cannot end. If I cannot end, there is no boundary. The Whole has no boundary—who will make it? The Zero has no boundary—once bounded, it becomes “something,” not zero. If you understand this well, zero and whole are two ways of saying the same.

Brahman and the Void: traveling from two sides
Religion can travel from two sides: either you become the Whole, or you become the Zero. In both states you become that which is to be. The one who travels toward the Whole, who loves the positive, will say, “Aham Brahmasmi—I am Brahman.” He is saying, “All this that is—I am. There is no Thou apart from me; I have encompassed every Thou within my I.” If this can happen, then it is so.

But in the final stage, the “I” too must be lost, because how can you proclaim “I am Brahman” when there is no Thou? The proclamation of I makes sense only in the presence of Thou. And when you yourself are Brahman, even saying “I am Brahman” loses meaning, for it still accepts two—Brahman and me. Ultimately the I becomes futile, Brahman becomes futile, and one must fall silent.

The other path is: disappear so utterly that you can say, “I am not.” In one place you said, “I am Brahman”—meaning, I am all. In the other journey you say, “I am not; nothing is; all is the supreme void.” Yet even thus you will arrive there. And on arriving you will not even be able to say “I am not,” for to say that requires an I. You cannot say “all is void,” for to say that requires both an “all” and a “void.” Then again you fall silent.

So wherever the journey begins—toward fullness or toward emptiness—it leads to the supreme silence where nothing remains to be said. Therefore, where one starts is not the big question; where one arrives is what must be examined. The final destination can be discerned. If one has reached here, then wherever he came from, he went rightly. No path is wrong or right—in the sense that whatever brings you here is right. And arriving is here. But the preliminary experience, from anywhere, will start with the I, because that is our given situation.

So whether we awaken kundalini, it will first seem personal; whether we enter meditation, it will seem personal; whether we become quiet, that too will be personal—because for now we are persons. But as you penetrate within, the deeper you go, the person dissolves. And if you go outward, the person grows.

The person’s farthest edge
Imagine a man standing at a well. If he goes inward through the well, one day he will reach the ocean and realize there never was a well. What is a well? Just a hole to peep into the ocean—nothing else. If you take the water to be the well, you are mistaken; the water is the ocean. The hole through which you peep—that is the well. The larger that hole becomes, the vaster the ocean appears.

But if you do not enter the well and keep moving away from it, even the well’s water will soon vanish from sight. Then only the hole and its masonry will be visible. And you will never be able to harmonize that with the ocean. Even if you suddenly reach the seashore, you will not be able to relate that ocean with what you once glimpsed in the well.

The inward journey takes you to oneness; the outward journey takes you to manyness. The initial end of all experience will be the person—the well; the final end will be the impersonal—or call it God—the ocean. In this sense I said: if you go deep, the reservoir is no longer yours; nothing remains yours. Nothing can remain.

The pain belongs to the well; the bliss belongs to the ocean.

This question arises because you think shunya means nothingness—so why practice? If there were something to gain, practice would be needed. You imagine that shunya means becoming a non-entity, so what is the point of sadhana? Sadhana seems necessary only when there is something to become. But you do not know that shunya means the whole; shunya means everything. Shunya does not mean nothing—shunya means all.

Right now you cannot conceive what it means that shunya is everything. A well might say: “If going toward the ocean only means discovering that I do not exist, then why go?” The well sounds right. It says, “If I go toward the ocean and in the end it turns out that I am not, why should I go?” But whether you go or not makes no difference. That you are not is the fact; the question of going or not going does not arise. Do not go—stay a well if you like—but you are not a well. That is sheer untruth. And that untruth will go on giving you sorrow, pain; it will bind you. In that lie there is no possibility of bliss.

Yes, the well will vanish on reaching the ocean; but the very moment it vanishes, all its worries and sorrows vanish too, because they were tied to its being a well, to its personhood, to its ego. To onlookers it may seem the well went to the ocean and was annihilated—nothing remained. But it will not seem so to the well. The well will say, “I have become the ocean.” Who says, “I am finished”? That will be said by the neighboring well who has not gone: “Fool! Where are you going? There you will be erased—so why go?” But the one who has gone will say, “Who says I am to be erased? I will be erased in one sense—in the sense of the well; but in the sense of the ocean, I will be.”

So the choice is always this: to remain a well or to be the ocean; to stay bound to the petty or to become one with the vast. But this is a matter of experience. And if the well says, “I am afraid of dissolving,” then it must sever all relations with the ocean—because in those connections there is always the danger of discovering someday, “I am the ocean.” It will have to break all its channels, because every channel runs to the ocean. Or it will have to turn its eyes away from the direction of the channels. Let it always look outward, never inward; because by looking within there is always the possibility of discovering: “Ah! I am not; only the ocean is.” So it looks outward. And the smaller the channels, the better—then entering within becomes less easy. The drier they are, the better—if they dry up completely, even better.

But then the well will die. It will think it is saving itself, but it will die.

To dissolve is very blissful. Jesus has said: Whoever seeks to save himself will be lost; and whoever loses himself, only he shall be saved.

Naturally the mind asks: “If I am going to be erased there, why go there at all? Why go there—only to be erased!” If dissolving is our very truth, then so be it. And how will you be saved by saving? If on reaching the ocean even the ocean dissolves, then how long can a little well be preserved? How long will you protect it? Soon its bricks will fall, mud will cave in, its water will dry up. If even in the ocean you cannot be saved as a separate entity, how will you be saved as a well—and for how long?

From this comes the fear of death. It is the fear of the well. It does not want to merge with the ocean because there is the fear of dissolving, so it distances itself from the ocean and becomes a well. Then the fear of death begins to haunt it, because the moment you break from the ocean, the condition of dying comes close—because life is in being connected with the ocean.

So we are all afraid of death, frightened that we might die. You will have to die. And there are only two kinds of dying: either you jump into the ocean and die—that dying is very blissful, because you will not die, you will become the ocean; or you cling to the well—you will dry up, rot, and perish. Our mind says: “Give us some incentive—what will we get that makes it worth going to the ocean? What will we get that makes it worth seeking samadhi, seeking shunya? What will we get?” First we ask, “What will we get?” We never ask that in this whole chase for getting, we have lost ourselves. Everything has been gotten—house, wealth—everything has been gotten, and we are lost; we are simply not there.

So if you must ask in the language of getting, I say: if you are ready to lose, you will get yourself. If you are not ready to lose, if you try to save, then you will be lost and everything else will be saved; many things will be saved—only you will be lost.

Intense breathing increases pranic energy.

There is a great deal of connection. Within us there are the possibilities of both life and death. The oxygen in us is the possibility of life, and the carbon is the possibility of death. When oxygen keeps diminishing, diminishing, diminishing and finally ends, and only carbon remains within you, you become a corpse. Just like when we burn a piece of wood: as long as it gets oxygen, it keeps burning—there is fire, there is life. When the oxygen is spent, the fire is spent; coal, carbon, is left behind. That is dead fire. The coal lying there is dead fire.

Inside us both are at work all the time. The more carbon there is within, the more lethargy, the more sluggishness. That is why it is difficult to sleep during the day and easy at night: at night the amount of oxygen has decreased and the amount of carbon has increased. So we fall asleep easily at night, and in the day it isn’t so simple, because there is a lot of oxygen. Once the sun rises, the ratio of oxygen in the whole air changes. As soon as the sun sets, the proportion of oxygen drops.

That is why darkness, the night, became a symbol of sloth, laziness, tamas. The sun became the symbol of tejas, radiance, because with it life comes. At night everything withers—flowers close, leaves droop, man sleeps—the whole earth, in a sense, goes into a temporary death, an interim death. With morning the flowers begin to open again, the leaves come alive again, trees begin to sway, man wakes, birds sing—everywhere the earth awakens again; those eight or ten hours of temporary death are gone; life has returned.

Within you too such a thing happens: when the amount of oxygen rises sharply within you, the powers that are asleep in you awaken—because to awaken sleeping energies oxygen is always needed, for any kind of sleeping force to be roused. Now a man is dying, right at the edge of death; we put an oxygen cylinder to his nose. We will keep him alive for ten or twenty hours. His death would have happened ten or twenty hours earlier, but we will drag it out. We could drag it out for a year or two as well, because even to his utterly depleted energies we are giving oxygen, so they cannot go to sleep. All his powers are moving toward death, sinking and sinking, and yet we keep giving oxygen.

Today, in Europe and America, thousands of people are hanging on oxygen. And throughout America and Europe there is a great question—euthanasia: that a person should have the right to voluntary death. Because now a doctor can keep someone hanging on for many days. It is a heavy question, because if the doctor wishes, he can keep a person from dying for a long time. And the doctor’s difficulty is that if he knowingly lets him die, the charge of murder can be put on him; it becomes murder. That is, he could save this eighty-year-old man who is dying by giving oxygen. If he does not give it, it is a crime equal to homicide. So he will give it; he will keep him hanging on with oxygen. Now his sleeping forces will not be able to sleep due to the lack of carbon. You understand what I mean, don’t you?

More prana, more wakefulness

Exactly the opposite happens in pranayama, in bhastrika, and in what I am calling an intense process of breathing. You take so much life-breath, prana, into yourself that the sleeping elements in you increase their capacity to awaken; they begin to awaken immediately. And the tendency to sleep within you also breaks.

You will be astonished: about four years ago a Buddhist monk from Ceylon came to me. He had not been able to sleep for three years. All kinds of treatments were tried; they did not work. They could not have worked, because he was practicing Anapanasati yoga—keeping attention on deep breathing twenty-four hours a day. Whoever had told him this had no idea that if attention is kept on deep breathing twenty-four hours a day, sleep will bid a complete farewell; sleep simply cannot come.

So on the one hand he is attending to the breath twenty-four hours, and on the other he is being given medicines. A great problem arose for him, because a conflict was created in his body. The medicines were trying to make him sleep, and the deep-breath experiment he was continuing around the clock was awakening his energies. It was as if someone were pressing the accelerator and the brake of a car at the same time—you understand, don’t you? He was in great trouble. Someone told him about me, so he came.

Seeing him I understood he had fallen into a kind of madness—this simply cannot be. I told him, stop Anapanasati. He said, what has that to do with it? He had no idea that if you do so much breath-work that oxygen becomes so abundant that the body simply cannot sleep, then how will you sleep! Or else, I told him, drop the very idea of sleep and stop taking those medicines. You have no need of sleep. If you continue this experiment, then not sleeping will do you no harm. He stopped the experiment for eight days, and sleep began to come; he no longer needed any medicine.

More carbon, more stupor

Our inner propensity to sleep increases with the increase of carbon. Therefore, whatever things increase carbon in us lull our sleeping energies even more. Our stupor keeps increasing.

As the number of people in the world goes on increasing, the element of stupor will also go on increasing; because there will be less oxygen on the earth and more people. Tomorrow a situation could arise in which our capacity to awaken becomes minimal. That is why you feel fresh in the morning; you feel fresh when you go into a forest; you feel fresh on the seashore. In the market crowd, heaviness descends, everything becomes tamas; there is a lot of carbon there.

It is being produced continuously. But our crowds, our habit of living in crowds, keep drinking up all the oxygen. That’s why wherever oxygen is abundant you will feel exhilarated—whether it is a garden, a riverbank, or the mountains—wherever oxygen is more, you will suddenly feel uplifted, healthy. Wherever there is a crowd, hustle and bustle, a cinema hall—even a temple—you will at once feel dull there; a kind of faintness will grip you.

Rapid change makes seeing easy.
So the aim is to increase the oxygen within you. That changes your inner balance—you turn from being oriented toward sleep to being oriented toward wakefulness. And if this quantity can be raised quickly, all at once, then the shift in your inner balance is as if one pan of a scale that was down suddenly flies up, and the upper pan drops straight down. If the balance within you can be changed with a jolt, you will experience it quickly. If the pan comes up very, very slowly, you will not know when the change happened. Therefore I suggest the experiment of intense breathing—bring about such a powerful shift that in ten minutes you move from one state straight into another, and you can see it clearly. Because it is only when things change rapidly that they can be seen.

Just as we all grow old from being young, and become young from being children, yet we can never tell when we were children and when we became young; and when we were young and when we became old. If someone asked us the date on which we turned from youth to old age, we could not name it. In fact, a great confusion persists: an old man does not understand inwardly that he has grown old; because between his youth and his old age there is no gap, no intensity.

A child never realizes that he has become young; he keeps adopting the ways of childhood. To others he begins to look young; he himself has not noticed that he has become young. Parents think: he should be responsible; this should happen, that should happen. He continues to take himself to be a child—because no event has occurred with such intensity that he would know, “Now I am no longer a child; now I have become young.”

An old man goes on behaving like a young man. He cannot figure out that he has grown old. How would he know? To know it, an intense transition is needed.

If it were to happen that on such-and-such date a man turned from young to old within an hour, no one would need to tell him that he has grown old. If a child were, within an hour on such-and-such date, to become fully twenty years old and suddenly young, then nobody—no father—would need to say, “Now you’re of age; drop this childishness.” There would be no need for anyone to say it; he himself would know the thing has happened: now I am another man.

So I want just such an intense transition that you can recognize the difference between these two states: your sleeping mind, your sleeping personality—your sleeping consciousness; and this, your awakened, wakeful, enlightened consciousness. It should happen with such intensity, with a jolt—like a jump, like a leap—that you can recognize that a difference has occurred. This recognition will serve you. This recognition is of great value.

Therefore I am in favor of experiments that transform you with intensity. If they take too long, you will never grasp what is happening. And the danger is that if you do not understand, a little transformation may happen, but your understanding will not deepen from it. Many times it happens that a person comes very near to a spiritual experience—accidentally, just walking along—but because it does not come with a jolt, with intensity, he cannot catch what happened. And the explanation he then gives is never right; because there isn’t enough distance for a clear interpretation. Often you come close to a new experience, but you will postpone it; you will interpret it within your old framework, because it has happened so slowly that you never quite notice it.

I know a man who can lift a buffalo. There are buffaloes at his house. From the time a buffalo was born there, he has been lifting it every day; he would lift it and walk around. The buffalo grew a little day by day, and his capacity to lift grew a little day by day. Now he can lift the full-grown buffalo. Now it seems a miracle—though even to him it does not seem like a miracle. To others it looks like a very difficult feat—that a man can lift a buffalo! But it has been so gradual that even he does not notice. And to us it looks miraculous because, for us, there appears a great gap between the two; there seems to be no correspondence—we cannot lift it, he is lifting it!

Pranic energy is the fuel of Kundalini.
So I speak of intensity for this reason. And prana, the life-breath, has great value—great value. In fact, the more you fill your body with prana, with oxygen, the faster you will incline from the experience of the body toward the experience of the self. Because, if you understand well, the body is your dead end—that part of you which has died; therefore it is visible. It is the part that has become hard; therefore it is visible. It is the part that is no longer fluid; it has become solid. And the soul is that part of you which is fluid, not solid; airy, beyond grasp.

So the more pranic energy there is within you, the more awakening and aliveness there is, the more clearly you will be able to discern the distance between these two. These two—both yours—will appear utterly different: one part this, one part that—completely separate. Therefore it has very deep utility.

We don’t see it, do we! A lamp is burning: we see the oil, we see the wick; we see the match that was struck to light it. But what is actually burning—the oxygen—doesn’t appear at all. Neither the oil is of that much value, nor the wick, nor the match. But these are the visible parts, the body of it; they are what we can see. The oxygen that is burning is not seen.

I have heard: in a house a child was left alone. There was a temple to God in that house, and they kept a lamp burning there, day and night. A fierce storm wind blew up. The child thought, “Father said the lamp must not go out.” Now with such a strong wind, what could the child do? He brought a large glass vessel and covered the lamp with it. From the strong wind it was protected—but in a little while the lamp went out. Now he was in great trouble. Perhaps the lamp might have endured even that fierce wind, but how could it endure the absence of air? It died. But that doesn’t show, does it!

Within us too, what we call life is oxidation—just like the lamp’s. In truth, if we take life in scientific terms, it is the burning of the life-breath, of oxygen. Whether in a tree, in a human being, in a lamp, or in the sun—wherever the life-breath is burning, there is life. So the more you can burn the life-breath, the more intense your flame of life becomes. And your flame of life is kundalini. The more intensely it will begin to flow, the more keen it will become. So a strong impact of the life-breath upon it is decisive.

The subtle reasons for doing sadhana in caves

In truth, many factors underlie samadhi—many factors. And those who use caves for samadhi, if the other requirements are not in place, will not enter samadhi at all; they will fall into a swoon. What they will take to be samadhi will be only deep drowsiness, a state of fainting.

A cave can be rightly used only by one who, through much pranayama, has oxygenated himself to such an extent that the cave’s thin air becomes inconsequential for him. If a man has done very deep pranayama, and every particle of his blood, every pore, every fiber has become oxygenated, then even if he is buried underground for eight days he will not die. That is the only reason. The body needs a certain quota of oxygen, and he carries an extra reserve. We carry no extra reserve. So if, without understanding pranayama, you go and sleep beside such a man, you will be found dead, while that man will emerge alive after eight days. In fact, for eight days the minimal oxygen required—he has that much in store; he has already imbibed it.

So such a person can go into a cave, and then the cave will bring him benefits. He will make up the oxygen in this way; he has little fear on that score. And he is using the cave for the protections it gives—from many things. A cave gives many kinds of protection: not only from outer noise, but from many outer vibrations, from many outer waves. And rock—and certain kinds of rock—have particular significance.

Some stones, special stones like marble, do not allow certain vibrations to enter within. That is why marble has been specially used in temples. Some vibrations cannot enter that temple because of that stone. It is not so much a matter of craftsmanship; very deep experiences are behind it: some stones drink in certain kinds of vibrations and do not let them pass within; off some stones certain kinds of vibrations are reflected back; some stones attract certain kinds of vibrations. So special kinds of caves were cut in special shapes—because form, too, has great value. And that form helps in warding off particular vibrations.

But this does not occur to us. When a science is lost, great difficulty follows.

We make a car; we make it in a particular shape. If we do not, its speed will drop. The car’s shape should be such that it can cleave the air, not start fighting it. If its front is flat and it begins to fight the air, it will break its speed. If it can cleave the air—does not fight, only cuts through like an arrow—then the resistance of the air, which would otherwise obstruct its speed, will not arise; in fact, because of the cleaving, the vacuum produced behind will even help to increase its speed.

If you ever see the Allahabad bridge—you should know it was built with great difficulty. The Ganga would not allow its pillars to stand; they kept collapsing. And one pillar became impossible to make! All the pillars were completed, but that one would not stand. So you will see there a pillar in the shape of a shoe. The builder struggled mightily. He made a shoe-shaped pillar, and it absorbs the push of the Ganga. The shape of a shoe also assists you in walking; it cuts the air, it does not block it. With that in mind the shoe-shaped pillar was made; it absorbed the river’s hostile thrust.

The secret of caves’ special shapes, volumes, and stones
Caves have special shapes, special volumes. So: special shape, special stone, and special volume. A person can imprint his individuality upon a space up to a certain limit. And this becomes known in experience; there are ways by which it comes into focus: if I can saturate an eight-foot-wide, eight-foot-long square room with my presence—meaning I will sit in one spot, yet the rays emanating from my individuality can encircle and fill this much area—then this space becomes very safe. Therefore it should have the fewest possible pores, the fewest possible doors—only a single door. And it will have its own forms, and those forms will have their own special qualities: they will not let external sensations enter, and they will not let what is arising within leak out. Further, if many seekers have done their experiments in a single cave, then extraordinary benefits accrue; its value increases greatly. That cave drinks in all the special kinds of vibrations and becomes supportive for the new seeker. That is why a single cave has sometimes been in use for thousands of years.

When Ajanta was first discovered, all the caves had been sealed with earth. There was a reason they were sealed. It is not generally known why. But all the caves were found covered with earth—completely sealed. For hundreds of years there was no trace of them; the hill remained just a hill, because the earth had been filled in and trees had grown upon it. They had been sealed so that, when seekers were no longer available, the specialness in those caves could be preserved—there was no other way—so they were closed. Whenever some seeker might be found, they could be brought back into use. But they were not for visitors; they are not for sightseers. The sightseers have ruined everything; now there is nothing left there—the sightseers have destroyed it all.

So in these caves you will not gain any advantage in terms of oxygen. The advantages are of other kinds. But sadhana is a very complex affair. It has many parts. For those who have done sufficient practice, a cave can be beneficial.

And the one who sat in the cave did not sit only in the cave. At times he was in the cave; at times he was outside. What was to be done outside, he did outside; what was to be done inside, he did inside.

Temples, mosques—these were once sought out in this very sense: that there is a collection of a particular kind of vibrations and pulsations there; and those vibrations and pulsations can be used. Somewhere, suddenly, at some place, you may find your thoughts have changed all at once. You will not recognize it; you will suppose that some difference has happened within you. You will suddenly go near some person and find that for a little while you have become a different person; some other facet of you has surfaced. You will think something has happened within you, it is only a mood. It is not so; it is not that simple.

Even the dead bodies of great beings are valuable
And for that there are astonishing… Take the pyramids, for example. So much investigation is going on—which has nothing to do with the point. Even now research asks: Why were the pyramids built? What are they? What was the purpose of building such enormous pyramids in that desert? How much labor was spent! How much power went into it! And to make such huge tombs merely to bury human corpses is utterly pointless.

All of them are places built with a special meaning for sadhana. And for the purposes of sadhana the bodies of special people were also placed there.

Even now in Tibet there are mummies of seekers one or two thousand years old, kept safe very deep inside. A body that has been near a Buddha is no longer an ordinary body. A body that has been related for eighty years with a soul like Buddha’s—that body too does not remain ordinary; that physique absorbs certain things and catches such vibrations as are unique—of which it is hard to say whether they will ever occur again in the world.

After Jesus died, his body was placed in a cave, to be buried in the morning. But that body was then not found. And this is a great mystery for the Christian: What happened? Where did it go? Then there is the story that he was seen somewhere, he appeared. So resurrection occurred; he was revived. But then when did he die? After being revived, what is the story of his life? Christians have no account of it. In fact, Jesus’ body is so precious that it was immediately taken to those places where it could be kept secure for a very long time. And no public news of this could be made, because preserving that body was very necessary. Such a man appears only rarely.

So the mummies in the pyramids, and these pyramids—their shape, their angles…

In deep meditation, the need for breath diminishes.

Yes, yes. In fact, in fact, when the breath awakens in full intensity, and because of that intensity a gap arises between you and your body, your asleep part and your awakened part begin to appear different. The moment you start traveling toward this awakened part, then the body no longer needs oxygen—the body. Now it is appropriate that it falls completely asleep; now it is appropriate that it becomes utterly inert, lies there like a corpse. Because your life-energy is no longer flowing toward the body; your life-energy has begun to flow toward the soul.

The need for oxygen belongs to the body; it is not the soul’s need. Do you understand? It is the body’s need. Therefore, once your life-energy starts flowing toward the soul, the body needs only the minimum oxygen—just enough to keep it alive, that’s all. Anything more than that will become a hindrance. Hence your breath will go on becoming thinner and thinner behind you. Its use was to awaken something within you; once that has awakened, it has no further use. Now your body needs the barest minimum of breath. There will even come moments when the breath will stop completely—there simply won’t be any.

The disappearance of breath in samadhi
In fact, when you reach the exact balance, the point of perfect equilibrium—which we call samadhi—the breath stops. But we have no real understanding of what it means for the breath to stop. If we try to experience it now, we will forcefully stop it—and that is not the experience. One thing is that the breath is moving and we hold it: that is one kind of experience. Our two familiar experiences are: breath going out, breath coming in; going out, coming in. But a point comes when the breath is half out and half in, and everything becomes still.

So there will be moments in meditation when you will feel, “Has the breath come to a standstill? Has it stopped? Might I die?” Such moments will surely come. The deeper you go, the more the pulsations of the breath will diminish; because at that depth you have no need of oxygen—it was needed only at the very first knock.

It is like this: I put the key into the lock. The lock opens; now I won’t walk around inside with the key still stuck in the door. The key has become useless; it remains stuck at the lock, I go inside. You may ask, “You used a key at first, so why aren’t you using it inside as well?” The key was only needed at the doorway.

Until the kundalini has awakened within you, you will have to use the key of the breath with force. But the moment it awakens, that device is no longer needed; you set out on the inner journey. And now your body will ask for very little breath. You are not to stop it; it will on its own become slower, slower, slower, slower. And in between there will be moments—glimpses—as if everything has stopped, everything is utterly still.

Samadhi is not the experience of life, but of existence
In truth, that very moment when the breath is completely still—neither going out nor coming in—that moment of supreme balance is samadhi. In that moment you will know existence, not life. Understand this distinction clearly! Not life, but existence. Knowledge of life is bound to the breath; life is oxidation; it is a function of breath. But in that moment you will know that existence where even breath is unnecessary, where there is only being; where stones are, mountains are, the moon is, the stars are—where everything is motionless; where there is not even a ripple. In that moment the vibration of your breath will also cease. There, breath has no entry, because life has no entry there. That which is—beyond! Beyond life as well!

And remember, that which is beyond death will also be beyond life.

Therefore we cannot call God “alive”—for to call that alive which has no possibility of dying is meaningless. God has no life; God is existence. We have life; when we are outside existence we have life; when we return into existence, that is our death. A wave rises in the ocean—that is the life of the wave. Before it rose there was no wave, there was the ocean—no stir, no wave. The wave rises: life begins; the wave falls: that is the wave’s death. But the ocean’s waveless existence—the one that was there before the wave arose and will be there after it subsides—the experience of that existence, that tranquility, is samadhi.

So samadhi is not the experience of life; it is the experience of existence; it is existential. There, breath is not needed. There, breath has no meaning. There, there is no question of breath at all. There, at times, everything simply stops.

The problem of a samadhi-immersed person returning
Therefore, when a seeker reaches a deep state, he often needs others to keep him alive; otherwise he can be lost. Otherwise he can be lost—he may not return from existence.

Ramakrishna would often reach such a condition. Sometimes it would take six days; he would be in no state to return. Ramakrishna is greatly honored, but the man who gave Ramakrishna to the world—we do not even know of him. A nephew of his was with him. He kept saving him again and again. He would stay awake whole nights, forcibly pour water into his mouth, make him drink milk, massage him when the breath would start to choke. He kept bringing him back. Vivekananda made Ramakrishna known to the world, but the one who saved him—of him we hear nothing. He did all the hard work; years of labor. And Ramakrishna could have gone at any time—because it is so blissful there, why return?

So at that moment of existence it is entirely possible to be lost. It is a very fine line from where you can cross to the other shore. To safeguard against that, schools were created; to safeguard against that, ashrams came into being. Those sannyasins who did not create ashrams could not go very deep into samadhi. Those whose renunciation was that of the wandering mendicant, forever roaming, could not go very deep; because to go that deep you need a group, a school; you also need other people who know how to protect, otherwise one can be lost at any time.

They made a small arrangement: “If we stay too long anywhere, attachment will arise.” But for the one in whom attachment arises by staying longer, it will also arise by staying a little—only a difference of quantity, what else will it be? If in three months it is stronger, in three days it will be a little less. Only the measure will differ; nothing else will really change.

So in those who keep only wandering, yoga gets lost, samadhi gets lost—samadhi cannot be preserved there, because samadhi needs a group. A person can enter samadhi, but his return is quite another matter. Up to meditation the individual has no difficulty; after the moments of samadhi a great deal of protection is needed. And it is precisely then that, if he can be saved, he can bring tidings of that realm—where he took a peep, where he had a tiny glimpse. If we can bring him back, he can bring a little news from there. Whatever tidings we have received are thanks to those few who returned a little from there. Otherwise we would have no news of that realm at all. It cannot be thought about; there is no way to think it. And often the one who goes there finds it difficult to return; he may be lost there. It is the point of no return. It is that place from where one leaps and meets the abyss; where the path breaks and no way back is visible. At that time great care is needed.

These days I constantly wish that whenever I orient you toward samadhi, on that day the individual is no longer what is precious; on that day a school is immediately needed that can take care of you—otherwise you are gone—and can bring you back; and can have the experience you have gained kept safe. Otherwise that experience will be lost.

The rhythmic breath of the naturally samadhi-immersed person

It becomes very rhythmic, very cadenced, musical. And many things happen. One who is in sahaj samadhi twenty-four hours a day, whose mind does not waver, does not wander here and there, remains just as he is—who does not “live” in the ordinary sense but simply is, abides in existence—such a person’s breath takes on a rhythm all its own. And when he is doing nothing—not speaking, not eating, not walking—then the breath becomes for him a state of great bliss; then just being, just the movement of breath, gives a savor no other thing can give. It becomes very musical, very resonant with inner sound.

A little taste of that experience can also be had through arranging the breath. That is why breath-regulations arose: that if one who is not established in samadhi moves his breath in the same rhythm and meter as the breath of one established in effortless samadhi, he will have an experience of peace. Hence many systems like pranayama came into being. They were devised by observing the rhythmicity of the breathing of many who were in samadhi. There will be some result, and it will help.

And the breath of one established in effortless samadhi becomes extremely minimal—the bare minimum. Because what we call “life” no longer remains as meaningful as existence itself becomes meaningful. Within this person another dimension has opened—the dimension of existence—where breath and such are not needed. He lives there, he abides there; only when he relates to us is he using the body; otherwise he is not using the body. And whatever he has to do in order to relate to us—eating, putting on clothes, sleeping, bathing—these are arrangements for relating to us; for him they no longer have meaning. And for all this, only as much life-energy as is needed is the amount his breath moves. It becomes very minimal.

Therefore he can live even in places with very little oxygen. He can live in places with very little oxygen.

Seekers dwelling in airless spaces
That is why in old temples or ancient caves there are no doors and gates. In today’s world this seems very surprising, because all those old temples appear completely contrary to the science of health—no windows, no doors, nothing. They are caves; there is no particular provision visible for air to come and go.

The one living inside had little use for it. He did not want much air to come in and go out, because the vibrations that air brings inside destroy the other astral, subtle vibrations within; by their impact they burn them up. So he was protecting them. He was not eager to let much of it in. But today this is not possible, because for it one first needs a long discipline of breath—or the state of samadhi.

Anapanasati: a precious experiment

A great deal. In fact—this is very amusing and worth understanding—whatever functions of life there are, if you take your attention to any one of them, its speed increases. The functions of life are going on outside your attention. For example, your pulse is beating. When your doctor checks your pulse, it is not exactly what it was before he checked; it goes up a little, because your attention and the doctor’s—both—have gone to it. And if a lady doctor is checking, it will go up even more; because even more attention goes there. You understand, don’t you? It isn’t exactly what it was; a slight difference appears. Try this experiment: first check your own pulse; then keep your attention on the pulse for ten minutes—how it is beating—and check again; you will find its vibrations have increased.

In truth, whatever processes are running inside the body are running outside our attention. The moment attention goes to them, their speed will increase. The presence of attention works like a catalytic agent to increase their speed.

So anapanasati is a very precious experiment. It is the experiment of paying attention to the breath. It is not to decrease or increase the breath; as the breath is moving, you are simply to watch it. But by your watching, it does increase. You saw it: you became the observer and the pace of the breath went up. Its increasing is inevitable. There will be consequences from its increase, and there will also be consequences from the seeing. But the fundamental aim of anapanasati is not to increase it; the fundamental aim is to see it. Because when you can see your breath, slowly, slowly, with continuous and unbroken seeing, the breath begins to become separate from you. Whatever you turn into the seen, at a very deep level you become different from it.

In fact, the seen and the seer cannot be one; at once they begin to be different. Whatever you make into the seen, you begin to become different from it. So if you make your breath the seen, and for twenty-four hours—walking, rising, sitting—you keep watching it—going, coming; going, coming—you go on watching and watching; your distance will go on increasing. One day you will suddenly find that you are standing apart and the breath is moving; far away from you its coming and going is happening. Then that event happens: through it, the experience of being separate from your body occurs.

Therefore, if you begin to watch any of the body’s movements—while walking on the road, keep in mind: the left foot lifts, the right foot lifts—just keep watching your two feet for fifteen days, and you will suddenly find that you have become separate from the feet; now you will feel the feet being lifted separately, and you remain purely the watcher. Your very own feet will begin to feel completely mechanical—rising, moving—and you are utterly separate.

Therefore such a person can say: the one who is walking does not walk, the one who is speaking does not speak, the one who is sleeping does not sleep, the one who is eating does not eat. Such a person can say this. His claim is not wrong, though it is very difficult to understand. If he is a witness while eating, then while eating he does not eat—this is what he comes to know. If he is a witness while walking, then while walking he does not walk, because he is the witness of it.

So anapanasati is to be used, but the journey is in another direction.

Full breath, full life.

In fact, there is no person whose entire lungs receive oxygen. If there are some six thousand pores in the lungs, then in a healthy person—one whom we would call completely healthy—it reaches only a thousand, fifteen hundred pores.

And the very difference between a healthy and a sick person is that the sick person manages to take in even less—still less. For the very ill we have to give oxygen from outside; he cannot get it in. If we leave it to him, he will die. We can even, if we wish, measure the healthy and the sick by the amount of oxygen that is going within—how much is entering inside. Therefore, if you run you will become healthy, because the amount of oxygen will increase; if you exercise you will become healthy, because the amount of oxygen will increase. Anything you do that increases the amount of oxygen will become an enhancer of your health. And anything you do that reduces the amount of oxygen will become an accomplice in bringing your illness.

But you are never taking as much as you can; and the question of taking more than the full amount you can take does not arise—you cannot. When your lungs are completely filled, you cannot take more. Even that much you will not be able to take; even that is a very difficult matter. Even that you will not be able to take.

Absolutely, they will be supportive for meditation. Because whatever is present in the air—and there is a great deal, not only oxygen—all of it is meaningful for you, for life; that is why you are alive. On any planet or satellite where the air does not contain these things in such proportions, life cannot happen. All of it is the possibility of life. So there is no need to worry about it. There is no need to worry about it. And the more intensely you breathe, the more beneficial it is, because in that intensity oxygen will be able to enter in greater measure and become a part of you. The rest will be thrown out. And whatever things are there in whatever proportion, all of them are useful for your life; there is no harm in that. There is no harm in that.
The experience of lightness and its expression.

Yes, you will feel light. You will feel light, because what we call the sense of the body—our body-consciousness—is our heaviness. What we call heaviness is nothing but the sense of the body. That is why even a sick, thin person feels burdened, while a healthy person, however heavy in weight, feels light. The awareness of the body that we carry is our load. And that body-consciousness, the sense of the body, exists in the same measure as there is discomfort in the body. If there is pain in the leg, you become aware of the leg; if there is pain in the head, you become aware of the head. If there is no discomfort anywhere, the body is not felt at all.

Therefore the very definition of a healthy person is: one who experiences bodilessness; one to whom it does not seem, “I am the body.” Then understand, that person is healthy. If any part appears to him as “this is me,” then know that part is ill.

So to the extent that oxygen increases and the kundalini awakens—when kundalini awakens you will begin to have spiritual perceptions that are not of the body. And all burden belongs to the body. Because of this, lightness begins immediately. Great lightness will be felt. Many will feel as if they have risen above the ground. Not everyone rises; once in a while—one or two in a hundred—it happens that the body lifts a little. Generally it does not lift, but many will have the experience. When they open their eyes they will find they are sitting just where they were.

But why was there the experience of having risen?

In fact, such weightlessness was felt, such lightness, that when we express lightness in the language of images, how will we say it? Our deeper mind does not know words; it knows pictures. So it cannot say, “I became light”; it creates an image: “I rose from the ground.”

The pictorial language of the unconscious
Our deeper, unconscious mind knows only images. That is why at night, in dreams, there is no language—only pictures. Everything in a dream has to be converted into images. That is why our dreams are not understood in the morning: the language we speak upon waking is not present in the dream, and the language we experience in the dream is not there in the morning. The translation from dream to life is so vast that it would need very great interpreters; otherwise it is not translated.

Now, a person is very ambitious—how will he experience ambition in a dream? He will become a bird. He will fly higher and higher in the sky; everyone will be below him. When ambition appears in a dream, it appears as flight—someone is flying. Some people will keep seeing dreams of flying. That is a dream of ambition. But the word “ambition” will not be there. In the morning the man will say, “What is it that I keep dreaming of flying?” But his ambition becomes flying in the dream.

In the same way, in the depths of meditation there will be a pictorial language. When lightness is experienced, it will seem as if the body has risen. Because “the body has risen” is the only picture that can be made of lightness—no other picture can be made. And sometimes, in a state of very great lightness, the body does lift too.
The process of bodily transformation

Yes, it can be felt—absolutely it can. Absolutely.

There is no need to hold on to it, but it does arise; it is natural.

Keep up the effort to the very end.

When it starts happening naturally, there is no question. Then there is no question; no question at all. Then even the question is out of place. Once it begins to happen, there’s nothing to talk about.

But until it has happened, many times the mind feels like believing, “Now drop it—now it’s done! Why keep asking again and again? It’s been so many days we’ve been asking!” As long as the mind says, “Drop it—what’s the use now?”, keep going; because the mind is still there. The day you suddenly find there is no question of doing anything—even if you wanted to, you couldn’t—because you can ask ‘Who am I?’ only so long as you don’t know. The day you know, how will you ask? That would be an absurdity: how could you keep asking once it is known?

I ask, “Where is the door? Where is the door?” Now I’ve found: here is the door. Will I still ask, “Where is the door?” I won’t even ask, “Should I now ask where the door is?” It makes no sense. We can only ask about what we don’t yet know; the moment we know, the matter is finished.

So the moment the experience of ‘Who am I?’ showers upon you, your world of questions is gone. And as soon as you leap into that realm, there is no question of doing; then whatever you do, it will all be that. If you walk, it will be meditation; if you sit, it will be meditation; if you are silent, it will be meditation; if you speak, there will be meditation. Even if you go off to fight, there will still be meditation. That is, what you do then makes no difference. It makes no difference.

Stake everything.

If you do, it will be beneficial. The question is not whether the breath moves or not; if it doesn’t, there’s no harm. The real question is: did you make the effort or not! If it doesn’t move, it doesn’t move—what can you do? But don’t abandon the effort. Your effort alone is meaningful. The big issue is not whether it happened or not. Did you do it! Did you stake yourself completely—did you not hold yourself back anywhere?

Otherwise the mind is very protective. It says: Now it’s not happening, now drop it. The trouble with our mind is that every day it finds a thousand ways to say: now this just isn’t happening, now the breath is completely choking, now you’ll simply die—now give it up.

Don’t listen to that. Say instead: if it chokes, great bliss! If it cannot come, that’s another matter; that is not in your hands. But from your side, make your full effort; put yourself totally on the line. Don’t save even a grain of yourself in it. Because sometimes that tiny bit of holding back stops everything—just that grain of holding back! No one knows when the camel will sit under the last straw. You have loaded a lot of weight on the camel, but not yet enough for it to sit. And it may be that just the last straw—a small blade of grass—and the camel sits. For in the end, balance is decided by the smallest straw.

This just happened: a friend in Amritsar had been meditating for three days. He is an educated doctor. But nothing was happening. On the last day—I had no idea what he had been doing or not doing; I didn’t even know him—on the last day I said: when we heat water, at a hundred degrees it becomes steam. And if you turn back even from ninety-nine degrees, don’t think, “We brought it to ninety-nine—what was one more degree!” It will remain water. Even at ninety-nine and a half it will remain water; even if a hair’s breadth is left, it will remain water. Only when that last hair’s breadth is crossed, when it goes beyond a hundred, does it become steam. And you can’t complain about this.

That very evening he came to me and said, “What you said was good. I had been thinking, well, slowly-slowly—if not much, at least a little will happen. That’s how we think! But when you said it, it struck me: this is right. If you heat to ninety-eight degrees it’s not that a little water will turn into steam and a little won’t—nothing will. For even a single drop to rise, it rises only at a hundred degrees; its flight begins only at a hundred. Before that it cannot cease to be water. To stop being water it must complete the journey—right up to the last inch.”

He said to me, “It was good you said this; today I put my total energy in. I’m amazed: for three days I had been wasting effort; I would get tired and nothing would happen. Today I’m not even tired—and something did happen. I kept the point of a hundred degrees in mind the whole time; I didn’t leave even an inch. I said to myself, ‘From my side I will not hold back—I’ll give it everything.’”

Between those to whom it isn’t happening and those to whom it is, there is no other difference—only this. Only this.

And keep one more thing in mind: often it seems your neighbor is exerting more than you and still nothing happens to him. But his hundred degrees and your hundred degrees are different. If he has more power…

One man has five hundred rupees and he stakes three hundred; you have five rupees and you stake four—you will move ahead. It won’t be decided by three hundred versus four, but by the proportion of the whole. If you put in your whole, you are at a hundred degrees. And everyone’s hundred degrees will be different. It is a question of how much of one’s total is staked. If you put in your five rupees, you will win; and even if he stakes three hundred or four hundred, he won’t. He has five hundred—until he puts in all five hundred, he is not going to win.

Caution at the critical point

Therefore, in the final sense, keep this always in mind: don’t protect yourself; don’t think anywhere, “Now it’s enough—this much will do.” The moment you think that, you start turning back.

And often it is from the very point where the event is about to happen that this occurs—because the mind starts to panic right there: “Now steam is forming, now steam is forming. Enough now—this is boiling; water is turning into fire; what’s the point—turn back.” That very moment is precious when your mind says, “Let’s return now.” When the mind begins to feel, “Now it’s dangerous; now the time to break is near; now to dissolve, now to die.” As soon as it senses danger—so long as there is no danger it says, “Go on, enjoy”—but as you near the boiling point, just before it, it will tell you, “Enough; you’ve put in all your strength; it just doesn’t happen.” At that very moment be alert. That is the moment to put in everything. Missing in that one moment can make you miss for years. And sometimes it takes years just to reach ninety-nine degrees. And sometimes you reach—and immediately miss. The smallest thing can make you miss. Therefore don’t hold back. Otherwise it won’t happen. It simply won’t happen.

All these things people say—yes, all of them—are nothing but our fears. There will be an effect; why wouldn’t there be? Of course there will be an effect. The whole point is for there to be an effect.

Yes—then watch that too! Let them snap; what’s the use of saving them? They’ll snap anyway—what will you do even by saving them?

Then you will die in ignorance if you keep trying to save the pulse—if you cling to mere survival. What can you do? Our trouble is this: we stay anxious about protecting things, but what comes of protecting them?

Yes. Even if that were truly there, there would be something to it—and then you wouldn’t be afraid of losing it. But that too is not there. Often a naked man lives in fear that his clothes might be stolen, because it gives him a secret thrill: “Look, I’m not naked at all—may my clothes not get stolen!” If you genuinely have clothes, you don’t worry so much about them being stolen. They are only clothes; if they’re stolen, they’re stolen. Drop this fear.

This doesn’t mean your nerves will snap. They can snap from fear, but not from meditation. They do snap from fear. Yet we are not afraid of fear. They will snap from worry, from anxiety—we’re not afraid of that. They will snap from tension—we’re not afraid of that either. We are afraid of meditation, where there is no question of anything snapping—and even if something were to snap, it could be mended.

But we nurture our fears. And those fears make a convenience for us: “Let this not happen, let that not happen.” We make all the arrangements for retreating. So I say, why go at all? This wavering is dangerous. I say, don’t go—drop the whole matter; don’t even bother about it.

Dilemma is the seeker’s only enemy.

Yet we want to do both. We want to go, and we also don’t want to go. Then the dilemma sucks the very life out of us, and we suffer needlessly. Hundreds of thousands suffer without cause. They want to seek God, and they also want to be safe lest they might actually find Him.

These are double troubles. Our whole misery is like this: what we want to do, on another plane of the mind we also don’t want to do. Dilemma is our very breath. We simply cannot do what we want to do. The day it is just so—what you want to do, you do—on that day there will be no obstacle. That day life becomes a flow. But our condition is such that one foot we lift, and the other we put back; one brick we place to build the house, and another we remove. We enjoy the placing, and we also enjoy the crying that the house isn’t getting built. All day we build; all night we dismantle. The next day the walls are back where they were, and then we start crying again, “It’s so difficult—the house just won’t get built.”

This difficulty must be understood within. And you will understand it only like this: “All right—if it’s going to break, let it break.” If it doesn’t break for thirty or forty years, what will you do anyway? You’ll hold a job in an office, eat your daily meals, have a couple of children—or not; there will be a husband; this will be, that will be; that’s all. And if you leave these, then those poor ones will go on fearing that their nerves might snap. You’ll go on doing just this. What else will you do?

If even a little of this dawns on us—that in the life we are trying so hard to save, what is there that is worth saving?—then we can stake everything; otherwise we cannot. And this must become very clear within: in each thing you are trying to save, what is there in it worth saving? What is there to save? And even if you save it, where does it remain saved? If this is clear, you won’t have any difficulty. If it breaks, it breaks. It doesn’t break—so far it hasn’t. If you break it, you will be a new happening.

Yes, the record will be broken.