Kathopanishad #10

Only through a pure mind is this essence of Paramatma attainable. In this world, apart from the One Paramatma, nothing else is. Therefore, the one who sees this world as many goes from death to death—born and dying again and again.
We must understand pure mind. The ordinary notion of a pure mind is deeply mistaken. People take a pure mind to mean a mind filled with sattvic thoughts. People take a pure mind to mean a mind established in morality. People take a pure mind to mean a mind freed from whatever we call bad, immoral, sinful.
But the Upanishad would still call that mind impure. In the language of the Upanishad, a pure mind is where neither bad remains nor good; neither morality nor immorality; neither auspicious nor inauspicious; where all the waves of thought have subsided. As long as thought remains, the mind is impure.
The mind of the so-called virtuous is impure, and the mind of the so-called unvirtuous is also impure. The impurity of the unvirtuous is bad thought; the impurity of the virtuous is good thought. A Sant is one of pure mind—where neither good thoughts remain nor bad thoughts remain. This is a little subtle, because we equate good thoughts with purity.
Good thought too is alien. Good thought too raises ripples in the mind. Good thought too brings unrest. Good thought too draws boundaries for the mind. The mind is pure only when no alien element remains there at all.
Understand it this way: there is a mirror. If a thief stands before the mirror, the mirror is impure, because the reflection of the thief is arising. If a sage stands before the mirror, still the mirror is impure, the mirror is forming the sage’s reflection. Only when no one stands before the mirror is the mirror pure.
Therefore the Sant is not a ‘virtuous man,’ nor is the Sant ‘unvirtuous.’ The Sant is beyond both.
The Upanishadic understanding of saintliness is very deep. The Upanishadic understanding of purity is exquisitely subtle. As long as any wave arises in the mind, the mind is impure. When the mind becomes wave-less, becomes like a void; when the mirror is emptied of reflections—neither the urge to do evil remains, nor the urge to do good; neither sin encircles the mind, nor merit; neither self-interest nor altruism; when nothing at all encircles the mind, then the mind becomes boundless. Then only the capacity of mind to be remains. Then there is nothing left for mind to brood upon—there is only a bare mirror, just a mirror. When the mind is only a bare mirror in which no reflection, no image, no picture, no shadow appears—the Upanishads say—only with such a mind can one know Paramatma.
This is the distinction between morality and Dharma. Morality takes an auspicious mind to be pure; Dharma takes a void mind to be pure. To be moral it is not necessary to be religious. An atheist can be moral—and often, is. In fact, it often happens that the atheist is more moral than the theist. In Russia there is more morality than in India—and Russia is atheistic! There is less theft, less dishonesty, less adulteration of goods, less cheating, less pettiness. An atheist can indeed be moral. In truth, the atheist has no other way than to be moral, for he cannot be religious. For the atheist, abandoning the bad and holding to the good is the final point.
The theist is not satisfied with that. The theist’s journey goes further. The theist says: the bad has been dropped and the good has been grasped, but the grasp itself has not been dropped. Yesterday a chain of iron was in the hand; today the chain is of gold—yet it is still a chain. Let there be no bondage with anything, no holding of anything, let no clutch remain; let the mind become utterly free of all holding.
Dharma goes beyond immorality—and beyond morality too. The conduct of a religious person is not merely moral. The conduct of a religious person is in fact beyond morality and immorality. Therefore the conduct of a religious person is very hard to understand.
The conduct of a moral person we understand. We know what is bad and what is good. The one who does good we understand. The one who does bad we also understand. But the Sant goes beyond both doing-good and doing-bad. His conduct becomes spontaneous, sahaja. He does what rises from within. He does not ponder about the good or the bad.
Then it may happen that what we used to call ‘good’ the Sant does not do. And it may happen that what society calls ‘bad,’ the Sant may do. Jesus, or Kabir, or Buddha, or Mahavira—again and again they transgress the social norms.
Mahavira stood naked! In the eyes of society, to stand naked is indecency, immorality. Society will not tolerate nakedness. There are reasons for this. Society has not only covered the body, it has also covered sexuality along with it. Sexuality is so feared that it must be hidden. The sexuality of a naked person is exposed. The body of a naked person is not veiled from the eyes of sexuality. Therefore society will not like nakedness; it will deem it immoral.
Mahavira stood naked. Great trouble ensued. Villages drove Mahavira away. Stones were thrown at him in place after place. He was condemned at every turn. And Mahavira was silent. Naked, silent, he did not even speak. He gave no answer—why naked? why stand here? what is the point? So he appeared even more unintelligible.
But the nakedness of Mahavira is not immorality. To call the nakedness of Mahavira moral is also difficult. Mahavira’s nakedness is utterly natural—innocent like a small child. There, neither morality nor immorality. Mahavira has become so simple that there remains nothing to cover. Whoever still has something to hide is complex. Whoever wants to conceal anything carries a certain complexity. Mahavira has become simple. In that simplicity there has come a limitlessness—he feels no attraction to carry the load of garments. But ordinary society will deem Mahavira’s nakedness immoral. It is very difficult to understand Mahavira’s saintliness.
Jesus passed through a village. A prostitute came and placed her head upon his feet, and tears began to flow. With her tears she washed his feet. The moral men of the village said it is not proper to let oneself be touched by a prostitute. They told Jesus to forbid her to touch him. Even for a saint, the touch of an ordinary woman is prohibited; and this is a prostitute. Jesus said: Of all who have touched my feet, none has touched them with such purity. People have washed my feet with water; this woman has washed them with the tears of her very soul.
Among the charges for which Jesus was crucified, this was one too. In the eyes of the common morality of his society, this went against the code.
A woman was brought to Jesus—for she was an adulteress. And by the law of the Jews, a woman who commits adultery is to be stoned to death. Jesus was staying just outside the village. People came and said: this woman is an adulteress. There is solid evidence. Not only evidence—she herself has confessed. So there is no question. And the ancient scripture says it is just and proper that such a woman be stoned to death. What do you say?
Jesus said: the ancient scripture speaks correctly. But only those have the right to cast the first stones who have never committed adultery, nor even thought of it. You lift the stones. Who is there who has not done it or not thought it? The great scholars and elders, the village headmen—their faces fell; they slipped away into the crowd. Slowly those who had come with stones dropped them and ran back to the town. This too was counted among Jesus’ crimes—that he saved an adulteress.
Jesus’ behavior does not fit into the usual framework of morality. It is natural, spontaneous. He does what arises in his consciousness. He does not think whether it tallies with society’s concepts or not. That thinking is done by the moral person.
A religious person is an altogether unique phenomenon. This does not mean the religious person necessarily becomes immoral. His conduct is free of both morality and immorality. Sometimes it will coincide with morality, sometimes it will not. But this is not his intention—that it should match or not match. For as long as we think, ‘May my conduct match some concept,’ our conduct will be untrue; then it will be hypocrisy; then action will not rise from within, it will be weighed on outer scales. Then action is not the expression of the Atman; it is imitation of society.
The moral person imitates society. Therefore those whom you call ‘sadhus’ are usually moral, not religious. And whenever a person truly becomes religious, your difficulty begins—because you cannot immediately fit his conduct into your molds. Your patterns—your frameworks of thought—are smaller than he is. All frames shatter.
The Upanishad calls that mind pure in which the waves of morality and immorality have vanished; where the mind has become utterly empty, void; where no alien element remains. Thought is an alien element.
If someone mixes water into milk, we say the milk is impure. But here is the amusing point: what if only pure water was mixed—then is the milk pure or not? Still the milk is impure. Even if pure milk and pure water are mixed, the two purities together make the milk impure.
Impurity is not about whether what you added was pure or impure. Impurity is that what you added is alien—a foreign element. What you added is not milk; it is water. It may be pure. The entry of an alien element is impurity.
If anything from outside the mind enters the mind, that is impurity. Whether what came is a pure thought or an impure thought—makes no difference. If something from outside enters the mind, impurity has occurred. If nothing from outside comes into the mind—if the mind is alone, in itself—then it is pure. This key to purity must be well understood.
And that is why, when the Upanishads were first translated and annotated in the West, Western thinkers said the Upanishads do not seem moral. Deussen, in his famous translation, expressed the doubt that the Upanishads give no moral instruction. As in the Bible: do not steal, do not lie, do not commit adultery—there are no such straightforward moral commandments in the Upanishads. Deussen’s doubt is right; his interpretation is not. He is right that there are no direct commands like the Ten Commandments—do this, don’t do that—in the Upanishads.
The Upanishad is not concerned with ‘doing.’ It says: become thus. Doing is secondary, deeds are secondary; being is the reality. The Upanishad does not say: do the good, don’t do the bad. It says: become filled with Paramatma—then good will flow from you, and it will not be your worry. Then evil will not happen through you, and you will not need to suppress it.
The Upanishadic view is: as long as I have to suppress the bad, it still exists in me. As long as I have to strive to do the good, it is not yet my real wealth. Until then everything is false, hypocrisy; only on the surface. Until then no inner flame has been kindled.
So the Upanishad says: let your being, your existence, your Atman be transformed—and your conduct will follow like a shadow. One does not have to keep turning back to see whether the shadow is following; one does not have to manage the shadow; one makes no special arrangement for the shadow. The shadow follows. So does conduct.
As your inner being is, such is the conduct that follows you. Therefore, change conduct—or change the Atman? Ordinary scriptures say: change conduct. Extraordinary scriptures say: transform the Atman. Ordinary scriptures are written considering the grasp of the ordinary person. Extraordinary scriptures are written with an eye to the ultimate possibility of man. The Upanishads are extraordinary scriptures—the final word beyond which there is no further word.
Only through a pure mind is this essence of Paramatma attainable. In this world, apart from the One Paramatma, nothing else is.
The moment the mind is purified, the One begins to be seen. Because of the impurity of mind the world appears broken into many, for the more impure the mind, the more fragmented it is. Imagine a mirror that you break into fifty pieces. Where once a single reflection arose, now there will be fifty reflections. The mirror that used to report ‘one’ will now report ‘fifty.’ Break it into five hundred pieces and there will be five hundred reflections—each shard is now a mirror.
Perhaps you have entered such a hall whose walls are set with countless fragments of mirror: stand in the middle and you will see millions of reflections. If there were one mirror, there would be one image. If there are millions of shards, there will be millions of images.
The more impure the mind, the more it gets divided into pieces. In that fragmented mind the world appears as many. When the mind is pure and becomes a single mirror, the world too appears as a single existence.
‘One Paramatma’ is not a thought. ‘One Paramatma’ is the realization of a mind that has become one. Therefore the question is not to search for Paramatma. Whoever searches for Paramatma goes on a wrong journey. The real question is to search for the unity of the mind. People ask: where is Paramatma? The very question is futile; it should not be asked. The only worthy question is: how can my broken, fragmented mind become whole? become one? For whenever the mind becomes one, the glimpse of the One begins. As the mind is—fragmented or integrated—so will be your experience of existence.
Mind is a mirror in which we see existence. If existence appears in fragments, know that your mind is broken—disintegrated. Until this mind becomes integrated, gathered, the world will continue to appear broken.
Therefore the real question is not the search for Paramatma, but the search for a pure, unified mind.
Only through a pure mind is this essence of Paramatma attainable. In this world, apart from the One Paramatma, nothing else is.
There is only One. And this perception of the One is not merely a religious realization; at its peak, science also arrives at the same perception. If we look at the five-thousand-year journey of science: five thousand years ago the scientists said there are five elements. Even now in India the phrase has entered our language—panch tattva; the body is made of five elements, the world is made of five elements—this was the discovery of ancient science: five elements. As analytical methods became subtler, more and more ‘elements’ were discovered.
What we once called elements, today’s science does not accept as elements. Water is not an element—because water is a compound of oxygen and hydrogen; it is a combination. Oxygen and hydrogen are elements. Step by step science reached ninety-eight elements. In those, your ancient five elements were not included. Neither earth, nor water, nor air, nor fire—none of these were elements; they proved to be combinations.
But five thousand years ago we had no way to investigate. So water was an element—because we had no method to break it down and see whether it is a compound or an element. An element means that which is not made by combining with anything else, that which is in itself. Water did not turn out to be such. Then there were ninety-eight elements; then they increased to one hundred and twelve. It seemed the number of elements would go on increasing.
But suddenly, in the last twenty years, the one hundred and twelve elements have vanished and one underlying element remains. Because behind each element further search was carried on. First water was split—oxygen and hydrogen appeared. Then oxygen was split—electricity appeared. Hydrogen too was split—again electricity appeared. Everything was split—finally, electricity. And now science says the whole world is a net of electricity. All is its play, all is its form.
Science reached the One through matter; Dharma reached the One through consciousness. Therefore science will call it electricity, and Dharma will call it Paramatma. The journeys differ; the conclusion comes close: that all is the expansion of One.
But in the realization of science there is no transformation of life. Whether the elements are one hundred and twelve, or five, or one—through science, nothing in you changes. One hundred and twelve elements or five— you remain as you are. One—still you remain as you are.
But through the process of Dharma—arriving at the One—you are wholly transformed. In approaching the One you have to change your mind. The scientist need not change himself; he experiments with tools—he remains untouched. The religious person is his own laboratory; he changes nothing else—he changes himself. And as he changes, he comes closer to the One. When he becomes completely pure, only the expanse of the One remains.
Therefore science does not lead to bliss. The greatest scientist is just as unhappy as a village rustic—perhaps more, because even to be unhappy requires a certain intelligence. The scientist cannot transform himself within. Without religious transformation, the One is never attained.
Science is labor with matter; Dharma is labor with oneself. As soon as the mind is purified, nothing remains but the One. And the one who sees this world as many is born again and again, dies again and again.
There is but one cause of our birth and death: we do not see the ocean that we are. We go on seeing ourselves as little streams. Streams will arise and vanish, arise again and vanish again. The ocean remains.
As you have known yourself, so will your destiny be. If you think you are a little stream—summer will come: you will dry, turn to vapor, rise. Then the rains will come: you will fall again, become a stream again, gush forth, flow—then summer. Just a continuous making and unmaking. That is all birth and death mean.
But if you can see yourself as the great ocean, it is ever. It neither arises nor disappears. It does not become small or big. No flood ever increases it, no lack ever decreases it. It is as it is. And even our oceans are small; the ocean of consciousness is infinite—there, nothing becomes less or more.
Therefore the Upanishads have said: from the Full, even if you take the Full, the Full alone remains. Take away as much as you will, not a grain is reduced; add the Full to it, nothing is added. Infinity means: subtract anything, add anything—no difference occurs. Nothing can be added, nothing can be subtracted.
Whoever has seen himself like that great ocean…
So there are two steps. The first: the mind becomes pure. With the purification of mind, the vision of the One arises. But remember: even in the vision of the One, the presence of two still remains—one, that which is seen; and two, you who are seeing. The first step: let the mind be purified; then the One is seen. But to see the One still implies a second—the seer. Two are there.
The second step: even that pure mind be lost. No need remains for it either. Let the mirror itself be shattered, destroyed, not remain—and the distance the mirror was creating between two is gone. Then only the One remains. But even of that One it will not be known that ‘it is One.’ Hence in this land we called it Advaita. Because to say ‘One’ does not sound right—saying ‘One’ invites the suspicion that there may be a knower of the one. At ‘one,’ counting begins. We preferred to say ‘not-two.’ We deny the count. We say: it has no number. It is not two—that much is clear. What it is, we do not say. What it is not—that we say.
Understand this: regarding Paramatma, no positive statement can be true. Only negative statements—neti, neti—are true. We can only say what he is not; we cannot say what he is—he is too vast for any word to reveal. Yet what he is not can be said. So we say, it is not two. We say, it is not sorrow.
Someone asked Buddha: in your Mahaparinirvana, will there be bliss? Buddha said: that I do not know. I can only say there is no sorrow—dukkha-nirodha. We can negate. We cannot say ‘it is light’; we can only say ‘there is no darkness.’
This via negativa is fundamental. Whenever the Vast is to be indicated, you cannot point and say ‘here it is’—whatever you can point to becomes small. If I say ‘here is God’ and point a finger, I draw a boundary. That which the finger can point to cannot be the Vast. To indicate Paramatma, one must close the fist: nothing can be pointed out.
All pointers are but small crutches for understanding—like a cripple uses a staff. A crutch is not a leg; the cripple only waits for the day his legs are healed so he may throw the crutch away.
All words said about Paramatma are crutches, not the truth. The moment you know, you must throw them away, as a cripple discards his crutches. To carry them thereafter is unawareness.
‘The Supreme Person—of the measure of a thumb—abides in the heart-sky at the center of the body; he who governs past, present, and future. Knowing him, one condemns none. This is that Paramatma of whom you asked.’
This is a somewhat debated doctrine. The debate has been long: what is the size of the Atman? Where in the body is its seat? The Upanishads hold that it is of the measure of a thumb—angushthamatra—and that it abides in the heart-sky at the body’s center.
The Jains say this is strange—‘of the measure of a thumb’? The Atman—of the size of a thumb! The Jains hold that the Atman pervades the whole body and is of the body’s size.
But there are entanglements in that too—an ant may die and become an elephant. If the ant dies and becomes an elephant, then in the ant’s body the Atman was of the ant’s size, and in the elephant’s body it becomes of the elephant’s size!
So the Jains had to evolve a notion that the Atman is elastic—expands and contracts. In a big body it becomes big; in an elephant it expands to elephant-size, in an ant it contracts.
But the Upanishad asks: is the Atman some substance that can expand and contract? And the Jain philosopher asks in return: if expansion and contraction are not possible, you say it is of the measure of a thumb—then is the Atman some material of thumb-size? What of the ant? How will a thumb-sized Atman enter an ant? The ant will be inside the Atman, not the Atman inside the ant!
For thousands of years the debate has continued with no end, because the very foundations of the debate are faulty. If we use the language of science a bit, it becomes easy.
A lamp is lit. The flame of the lamp is small, but its light fills the whole room. However large or small the room, however many walls, the light suffuses. The lamp burns small in the room, but the limit of the light is set by the room. The lamp burns. The Upanishadic notion of ‘of the measure of a thumb’ is, in truth, the notion of the lamp’s flame—like the flame of a lamp, thumb-like. The light fills the whole body. Whether the body is large or small makes no difference.
Like the lamp’s flame. The flame can be small or large. This thumb-sized Atman is said in reference to man. The ant’s lamp is small; its flame will be small. The elephant’s lamp is large; its flame will be large. But the property of light is one—whether a small flame, a large flame, or a great sun—the quality of light is the same. And the walls of the body, however many, and the chamber however large, are filled by that light.
Upon the metaphor of the lamp’s flame is the notion of the thumb-sized Atman.
Your whole body is filled with that light. Your fingertips are not reached by the Atman—it is the light of the Atman that reaches there. That much light is enough to animate your body; by that energy you live. In a dying man the light begins to dim. The body slackens. The lamp’s flame is preparing to leave the house.
Secondly, this mention of the thumb-sized Atman in the heart-sky is not to be taken literally. It is not proper to handle such statements with literalism. They are only pointers. It does not mean precisely ‘of a thumb.’ It is an indication.
In this body, exactly in the center of the heart is the point of contact with the Atman. The Upanishadic vision is: the Atman is everywhere; Paramatma envelops all. But though Paramatma envelops all, within you the point of contact with Paramatma is a tiny place in the heart’s center. From there you are plugged into the Divine.
You fix a bulb—at one small point it is fitted. Behind it is an immense current. If you fit a five-candle bulb, five candles worth of light shines. Fifty-candle, then fifty; five thousand-candle—then five thousand. The infinite current is behind. But your bulb draws as much as its capacity allows.
Our Atmans are the same in essence, because all are connected to Paramatma. The junction within us where we are joined to Paramatma is what we call Atman. Then, according to our capacity—our candle-power—we draw more or less light from the source. Someone is of five candles; a Buddha is of five thousand candles—he radiates that much light around him.
We are connected to the Great Source. The ant draws a little candle-power; man a little more; a Buddha far more. The Source is the same.
The Upanishad speaks of that contact-point of the Great Source within you—that tiny place like a thumb where you are joined to Paramatma. And as you become pure, more and more power from that Source will become available to you. It depends on your purification. When you become utterly pure, the Great Source begins to be revealed through you.
Those whom we have called avatar, tirthankara, Buddha—these are ones who purified themselves to such an extent that nothing of themselves remained; the Great Source began to manifest through them. Then we did not deem it right to call them ‘human’—we remembered them by the name of that Source itself, with which they became one.
‘The Supreme Person of the measure of a thumb abides in the heart-sky at the body’s center; he who governs past, present, and future. Having known him, one condemns no one. This is that Paramatma of whom you asked.’
‘The Supreme Person of the measure of a thumb is like a flame without smoke. He who rules past, present, and future is the same today and the same tomorrow—ever eternal. This is that Paramatma of whom you asked.’
A flame without smoke—worth understanding. Any flame you light has smoke with it. Why is there smoke? Is smoke the doing of the flame? Is there anything in the nature of flame that causes smoke?
No. Smoke arises because of the fuel. Smoke has no relation to the nature of flame. The wetter the fuel, the more smoke. Dry the fuel—less smoke. Light wet wood—the smoke will be all you see; the flame hardly visible. Dry wood—less smoke, the flame shows. Perfectly dry—smoke nearly disappears. So one thing is clear: smoke is related to the fuel, not to the flame.
Which means: a smokeless flame can only be one that is without fuel. Otherwise, with any fuel some sort of smoke will be produced. Even the purest fuel—spirit alcohol—will produce a faint smoke, whether or not the eye sees it. For wherever something burns, two things are present—fire and the burning matter. That burning matter will produce smoke.
Smoke is carbon dioxide. Whenever anything burns, carbon is produced. If we could find such a flame as is without fuel…
Amusingly, for the past three hundred years the great scientific academies—Royal Society in England, the Academy in France, America’s academy, the Soviet Academy—receive hundreds of claims every year: we have discovered a fuel-less fire. All these claims prove false.
The search is ancient. Some nations—France and England—have made a rule: no such claims are to be entertained; too much time is wasted. Hundreds apply for patents claiming they have discovered fuel-less energy. It’s an old dream; for the day we discover fuel-less energy, we shall have discovered a great power. Fuels are being depleted. If we go on burning petrol at this rate, scientists say that in five thousand years not a drop will remain. And it seems everything depends on petrol. Petrol is limited.
As we burned wood, forests disappeared, and now we lament—there is no rain, soil erosion, the land is being destroyed. In Pakistan five thousand children are born every hour and an acre of land is destroyed each hour. Children do not come with an inch of land, and every hour an acre is lost to erosion—because the forests are gone. Trees hold the soil with their roots. Without trees, the earth loses its grip and crumbles. Cut all the forests, the soil will dissolve and be lost.
Trees hold the earth; they do not only take nourishment from earth—the earth too takes support from trees. And trees are constantly drawing elements from the sky and giving them to the soil. Remove them—the earth becomes barren.
So the search for a new energy is great—wood is gone; coal we drag from the earth and exhaust; petrol we draw and exhaust. Someday these fuels will end—and man will die. You cannot imagine what will happen when petrol is gone: no planes, no cars. In our country the trouble seems less, but in America or Russia life without a car is unthinkable. Without petrol no way is seen.
So some enthusiasts make false claims of discovery. After much thought some governments decided not to accept such applications—fuel-less fire cannot be discovered.
But the Upanishad says: within man a power is at work that is fuel-less. Paramatma is a fuel-less flame; therefore smokeless—no smoke is produced in it.
You will say: this is hard to understand! Ask medical science and it will not agree. It will say: you live because you take fuel from food. Stop food and life will stop. You take fuel from breath—oxygen enters; if it does not, you die. In every way you take in fuel. So why call the inner Atman a fuel-less flame?
For this, deep search is needed. In this century there have been examples—previous centuries had many—but even now, though difficult, a few such people appeared.
In Europe there was a woman, Newman, who lived thirty years without food—and perplexed medical science. She did not lose even a single ounce of weight.
In Bengal there was a woman who died in 1950; she lived forty years without food—perfectly healthy, healthier than common folk, never ill, youthful strength till her last breath—and her weight did not fall.
An accident occurred: her husband died. In grief and love for him she gave up food. But she did not die; instead, ailments she had before disappeared after giving up food. A miracle—she lived forty years without food.
In the West a new discipline is emerging that thinks: food is a habit, not a necessity. Man does not draw fuel from food—it is only a habit, an addiction. As we say alcohol is an addiction, cigarettes an addiction—some thinkers suggest food too is an addiction, not a need; man can be without it.
Jain scriptures say that before their first tirthankara, Rishabhadeva, people lived without food. This legend may be true. And Rishabhadeva first devised the use of grain. He may be the first scientist of our food habit. Perhaps people had forgotten the art of living without food, and food had to be discovered. Whether one can live without food depends on the art of breath.
But still one point remains: these women did breathe. Breath can provide nourishment. Trees live on breath. Why not man? You will be surprised—if you think the wood of a tree, its leaves, its fruit are drawn from the earth, you are mistaken. They are drawn from the sky.
Botanists made many experiments in the last century. It was always believed trees draw from the soil. A scientist planted a sapling in a pot. He carefully weighed the soil. The sapling grew into a large tree; then he cut and weighed it—it weighed tons. The soil in the pot was exactly as before—not reduced by even an ounce. Where did the weight come from? All drawn from the air, not from the soil. Otherwise, with so many trees, the earth would be hollow by now! The earth remains as it is. Trees draw from the sky—from the sun’s rays and the air. Then why can’t man live so?
And man in any case lives through the trees—eats their fruits, their grains. And trees make fruit drawing from the sky; so the man can live directly without the tree as intermediary.
Mahavira must have known such an art. In twelve years he took food only three hundred and sixty days—sometimes three months, sometimes four, sometimes five without food. Look at his statues—you cannot say he was starving. His body is powerful—most powerful. Jain monks fast four months and become bones— they know nothing of Mahavira’s art. Mahavira must have known a secret—drawing fuel directly from breath.
These two women at least prove man can live without food. But without breath? There are evidences of living without breath—and some most astonishing recent ones.
In 1880 a Sufi fakir in Egypt went into Samadhi and said: open my grave after forty years, in 1920. Those who buried him died; people almost forgot. After forty years, by chance, a man found an old newspaper and read the report: a man is being buried today, to be opened in forty years. He informed the authorities; the grave was opened—and the man came out alive. He had lived forty years without breath—and lived another year after that.
In India many yogis do experiments of three weeks or three months. Three weeks proves little, because in a small pit there is enough oxygen to last three weeks. But for forty years, in a small grave, oxygen is impossible.
Many animals—the Siberian bear—when six months of night fall in Siberia, everything frozen, sleep with breath suspended. After six months, when the sun rises, day returns, ice melts, the bear breathes again. If a bear can live six months without breath, why not man?
In our land frogs too bury themselves without breath; when rains stop, they sleep in the earth, breath suspended, all processes halted, yet they do not die. When the rains come, they wake. It is a long sleep; it can be without breath.
Within man—in all life—there is an element that runs without fuel. This fuel-less flame, the Upanishad calls the smokeless flame.
‘The Supreme Person—of the measure of a thumb—is like a smokeless flame. He who governs past, present, and future is the same today and the same tomorrow—eternal.’
That can never perish. For that which has no cause for its life, has no cause for its death. That which needs no fuel, no food, which is sufficient unto itself—there is no means to destroy it. If you depend on something, you will perish—if that on which you depend perishes, you cannot remain.
Paramatma is self-born, self-complete, self-fulfilled; dependent on none. Therefore the world flows on; existence goes on. It is neither ever destroyed nor ever created.
This is that Paramatma of whom you asked.
‘As rain that falls upon a high peak runs to the many places of the mountain, so too the one who, seeing devas, asuras, humans and others as separate from Paramatma, goes serving them, runs after them—wandering in their auspicious and inauspicious realms, through many higher and lower wombs.’
‘O Nachiketa of the Gautama lineage! As pure rainwater, merging with other clear waters, becomes the same, so the Atman of the knower of Paramatma becomes Paramatmamaya.’
Many and One—two visions. The one who sees many is blind—he has the vision of the blind. The one who sees the One has eyes—his eyes are open. He does not see petty walls—he sees the element that pervades all.
Yama says: Nachiketa! The one who knows the One, like streams of rain running and merging into the ocean, becomes one with the ocean, becomes ocean-like. The one who sees the One runs and merges into the ocean of Paramatma.
Our pain is only this: our flow has stopped. We have frozen—become rigid, like a stream turned to ice. It cannot flow, cannot reach the ocean. Warmth is needed to melt it; sunlight is needed to melt it. A melting is needed so it can flow towards the ocean. We have all frozen in our bodies like ice. Tapascharya, sadhana are devices to melt.
All the experiments we do here have only this intention: that you melt a little, become fluid, start flowing; let a flow arise. The ocean is not far. But if you remain frozen—even a slab of ice lying on the shore of the ocean cannot merge with it. Melt, flow a little.
And our ego is very stony—it does not allow melting. It stops us; it says: what are you doing? You are going to disappear. Hold yourself together! The one who holds thus will remain rigid.
In the experiments of meditation, melt yourself. That is why I insist so much: dance, jump, become fluid like a small child. Remove the ego from the path and let the body become fluid. Let the body’s energy flow—let it not remain frozen. Become heated within. Breathe deep so that oxygen strikes hard. Roar with vigor so that there is a shock to the kundalini. Become ardent within—ignite the fire, let the arani rub. Let the hidden flame begin to burn within you.
As this flame burns—so long as ‘you’ remain, a little smoke will remain, because you are the fuel. The instant you disappear, the smoke disappears. Only the smokeless light remains. To the one who experiences the smokeless light, nothing else remains to be experienced.
Now, prepare for meditation.