Main Mrityu Sikhata Hun #9

These things may look upside down because we have taken life and death to be opposites. They are neither opposite nor reversed. We have only assumed them to be so and erected a false contradiction between them. The consequences have been disastrous. Humanity may not have been harmed by anything as much as by this imagined opposition. It spread to many layers of our lives. When things that belong together are cut into pieces—and not just divided, but set up as enemies—the final outcome can be nothing but a schizophrenic, deranged human being.

Understand this: if there were a village of madmen who believed hot and cold are two separate, opposing substances, life in that village would become very troublesome. Hot and cold are not two different things; they are degrees of the same phenomenon. Our experience of hot and cold is not absolute; it is highly relative.

Do a small experiment at home. We never do it, so we never learn. We simply say, “This is hot,” “That is cold,” and assume they are fixed. Place hot water in one bowl, ice-cold water in another, and in a third bowl put ordinary lukewarm water. Put one hand into the hot water, and the other into the cold. Then place both hands into the lukewarm water. Each hand will report a different news: one will declare, “This is cold,” the other, “This is hot.” So is the water hot or cold? If, at one and the same moment, the same water feels hot to one hand and cold to the other, you must understand: the water is neither hot nor cold in itself; hot and cold are relative to your hands.

Hot and cold are proportions of one thing. The difference is of quantity, not of quality. Have you ever reflected what the difference is between childhood and old age? We usually think they are opposite. But what is the difference? Merely a difference of years and days. Qualitatively, there is no difference—only in quantity. A child is five years old; if you like, you can say he is a five-year-old old man. In English you literally say “five years old.” Another person is seventy years old. What is the difference between a five-year-old old man and a seventy-year-old child? Only a quantitative difference. If childhood and old age were opposites, no child could ever become old—opposites cannot turn into each other. Can you mark a date on the calendar when a child turns old? You cannot.

It is like a staircase to a terrace. If you only see the bottom and the top steps and miss all the steps between, it will appear as if the lower and the upper steps are far apart, unrelated. But if you see the whole staircase, you know they are connected by the steps in between.

Between hell and heaven there is no difference of quality, only of degree. Don’t think hell is the reverse of heaven. Their difference is like that between hot and cold, bottom step and top step, child and old man.

So it is with birth and death. Otherwise no one born could ever die. You can only reach what is your natural unfolding. Birth grows, grows, and becomes death. Birth and death are two points of the same arc.

A seed is sown; it grows into a plant, then becomes a flower. Do you call seed and flower enemies? The flower comes from the seed and becomes a flower by development; there is growth in the seed.

Birth itself becomes death. But we have somehow fallen into the foolish notion that birth and death are opposed, that life and death are separate. We want to live; we do not want to die. We don’t see that dying is hidden within living. And the moment we decide, “We will not die,” we have made living difficult.

All of humanity has become schizophrenic. The mind is fragmented, disintegrated, broken into pieces. The cause lies in our taking life in fragments and turning the fragments against one another. We have chopped up the single human being and then declared the pieces to be enemies. We have done this everywhere. We tell a person, “Don’t be angry; be forgiving.” We do not realize that between anger and forgiveness the difference is only one of degree, not of opposition. It is the same difference as between hot and cold, child and old man. One could even say: anger attenuated to the minimum becomes forgiveness; and forgiveness attenuated to the minimum becomes anger. They are not enemies.

But all old teachings train people as if anger and forgiveness were opposites: “Drop anger, adopt forgiveness,” as though you could kill one and preserve the other. The result can only be fragmentation, confusion, misery. The same with sex and celibacy: to think they are opposites is the greatest mistake. Celibacy is sex reduced, refined to its minimum; sex, gradually diminishing, becomes celibacy. The distance between them is not a war of enemies.

Remember: there is no such thing as opposition in existence. There cannot be—otherwise no bridge would be possible between two opposites. If birth and death were separate, birth would walk on its own path and death on its own, parallel lines that never meet. How could that be?

Birth and death are mingled; two ends of one thing. When I say this, I mean: if humanity is to be saved from madness in the future, we must accept life in its totality. The whole, as a whole. We cannot carve out a part and set it against the rest.

And beware: whoever declares sex to be the opposite of celibacy and tries to cut off sex will destroy himself. His mind will remain stuck on sex, he will be in extreme tension and trouble. His life will become unbearable, burdensome; he will not be able to truly live. One moment will be too much. He falls into great difficulty.

But if you understand as I am saying—and this is the fact—that sex and celibacy relate like the lower and upper rungs of a single ladder, then by stepping, step by step, on sex, one enters celibacy. It is the same energy, increasingly reduced in quantity, approaching zero. Then there is no opposition, no tension, no inner conflict. Then you can live naturally.

What I am proposing is a natural way to live, in all dimensions, with great ease. But we do not live with ease, because we have learned tricks to make life uneasy. Imagine telling someone, “Walk only with your left leg; the left is religious, the right is irreligious. Do not use the right.” And there will always be people ready to believe such nonsense. They will start cutting off the right leg and try to walk with only the left. They will never be able to walk.

Walking happens by the coordination of both legs; neither leg alone walks. True, at any given moment only one leg lifts; that can confuse you. Because you raise one leg at a time, you may think, “We walk with one leg.” But know this: when one leg lifts, the other, which is planted, supports the lift equally. The one that stands still, that waits, is as essential as the one that moves.

On the day someone becomes a true celibate, stilled sex is the very ground that supports his step—just as the right leg standing holds the left when it lifts. If there were no right, the left could not rise. Stilled sex becomes the base for celibacy. And celibacy can step forward only because sex is held in stillness. But if you cut sex off at the root, sex will indeed be cut, but celibacy will not be attained; the person will dangle in midair. This is exactly what all the old teachings have done to humanity.

Everything we see in life are right and left steps. Here everything is together, like notes in one vast music. Cut anything and difficulty begins. Someone declares black is evil. There are people who say black is bad: they won’t allow a black sari at a wedding; when someone dies, they wear black. They call white pure. As a symbol, perhaps it works. But if you try to erase black from the world, know that the moment black disappears, white becomes far less white. Much of white’s brightness comes from the black around it.

In school the teacher writes with white chalk on a black board. Is he mad? Why not write on a white wall? You could write on a white wall, but you could not read it—as the prominence of white is born of its black background. In truth, black contributes to the brilliance of white. Whoever fights black will have a pale, washed-out white.

Whoever opposes anger will have a forgiveness that is impotent, lifeless—because the force in forgiveness is anger’s energy transformed. Only one who can be wrathful can be supremely forgiving. The greater the potential for anger within, the greater the journey of forgiveness can be. The glow in forgiveness comes from the fire of anger. If there is no anger, forgiveness is dull, dead. And if someone’s sex is cut—there are ways to do that—remember: he will not be a celibate, only impotent. There is a fundamental difference. You can cut sex off, but by destroying sex no one becomes a celibate—only emasculated. Yes, by accepting sex and transforming it, by taking that energy on a further journey, one can attain to celibacy. And the radiance in a celibate’s eyes is the very power of sex—transformed energy.

So I am saying: what we call opposites in life are not opposites. Life is a very mysterious arrangement. In that mystery, apparent oppositions are set up so that things can happen. Have you seen a house being built? There is a pile of bricks, all alike. The architect builds an arch, a curved doorway, by placing bricks against one another. Set in opposition, the bricks hold each other. If he lays them all the same, there will be no arch; the doorway will collapse at once. Similar bricks have no strength unless there is resistance. Where there is opposition, strength appears. All force, all energy is born of resistance. The energy of life has arisen from such tensions. But remember, the bricks themselves are all the same; they are placed in opposition.

The divine architect of life knows: without setting the bricks against each other, life would become cold, dissolve. So he has placed them in tension: the brick of anger and the brick of forgiveness, of sex and of celibacy—set against each other. From their mutual resistance energy is generated; that energy is life. He has fitted together the bricks of birth and death; from their meeting the doorway of life is formed.

Now some people say, “We will accept only the bricks of life; we refuse the brick of death.” Don’t! If you do, you die immediately—because then only identical bricks remain, and the arch falls.

This mistake has been repeated again and again. For perhaps ten thousand years man has suffered badly from it. Someone says, “Either God or the world. If we accept God, we must reject the world.” He goes to the forest, leaves the marketplace, becomes a renunciate because he believes in God. Let him try to build the world with only God-bricks. If, by some madness, the world’s mind went astray and everyone became a renunciate, what would happen? That very day—not a day later—the earth would turn to ash.

The renunciate does not know that he lives only because someone sits in a shop and runs worldly affairs. There, one foot is planted, therefore this foot can rise. The renunciate’s life-breath comes from the worldly. He is deluded that he lives by himself. He abuses the worldly and says, “Abandon the world and become renunciates.” He does not see he is prescribing mass suicide—his own included. With identical bricks alone, all collapses.

On the other side are those who say, “There is no God; only the world, only matter.” They too have tried to build a world with only material bricks. They too have reached great trouble; they too face suicide. If matter alone is, and there is no God, then the element that brings meaning, pull, aspiration, ascent—the very flavor of life—disappears. Without that, where is meaning? Life becomes utterly meaningless.

Hence in the West there is much talk of meaninglessness. Sartre, Camus, Kafka, Marcel—today almost all Western thinkers say life is meaningless. Shakespeare’s line has become apt: “A tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.” If you lay only matter-bricks, meaning is lost—just as if only renunciates remained, the world would lose its grounding.

It is a strange fact: the renunciate’s step rests upon the worldly man, and the worldly man’s step rests upon the renunciate. In truth, left depends on right, right on left. This dependence seems like opposition, but in depth it is not. They are two legs of one person, by which a single being stands and walks.

Without understanding this so-called opposition correctly, no one can ever know the whole truth of life. Whoever says, “We will cut away half,” has not yet found wisdom. You can cut half, but the other half will die too—because its life was inseparably fed by the half you cut.

I have heard of two fakirs who argued endlessly. One believed it proper and necessary to keep a little money for emergencies; the other insisted, “What need for money? We are renunciates; money is for the worldly.” Both argued well; both seemed right.

The great secret of this world is that for these opposing bricks set in the arch, one can argue convincingly for either side. You can point and say, “See, it is built of my bricks,” and the other can say the same. Life is so vast that few develop enough to see the whole arch; most see only the bricks before their eyes. So one says, “It is made of renunciation, of Brahman, of the soul,” and another says, “It is made of matter, of dust—dust unto dust.”

One evening the two fakirs ran to a riverbank as dusk approached. The boatman was tying up his boat. “Don’t tie it,” they said, “please take us across now. It is urgent.” The boatman said, “I’ve finished my day’s work. I’ll take you in the morning.” They pleaded, “We cannot wait. Our master—the sage with whom we lived and learned—is near death. Word has come he will pass before morning. He has called for us.” The boatman said, “I’ll take you for five rupees.” The fakir who believed in keeping money laughed and said to the other, “Friend, what do you say now? Is money meaningless or meaningful?” The other only smiled.

The first took out five rupees and paid. They crossed. On the far bank he said, “Tell me, without money could we have crossed?” The other laughed, “We did not cross because we had money; we crossed because we could let it go. Had you clung to it, how would we cross?”

Now it became difficult. The first laughed too. They went to their dying master and told him: “Today it is perfectly clear. He says we crossed because we had money; I say we crossed because we let it go. We both stand firm on our principles—and both seem right.”

The master laughed: “You are both fools. You are doing what people have always done—seeing only half the truth. It is true you could disembark because you let the money go. But it is equally true you could let it go because you had it. It is true you crossed because you had money; equally true that had you only ‘had’ it, and not been able to part with it, you would not have crossed. Both statements are true. Together they make life—and there is no contradiction between them.”

On every plane we have split life into such oppositions. Each side can argue, for each holds half of life—and half is not a small thing. It suffices for argument. Therefore argument solves nothing; one must seek the whole.

I certainly teach death, but that does not mean I am against life. It means that the door to knowing life is death. I do not see life and death as opposites. Whether I call it the art of dying or the art of living, it amounts to the same thing; it depends on the angle from which you look.

You may ask: Why then do I not call it the art of living?

For some reasons. First, all of you are overfull of attachment to life—unbalanced attachment. I could call it the art of living, but I won’t, because you already cling to life. If I say, “Come, learn the art of living,” you will rush here to reinforce your attachment. So I say, “The art of dying,” to bring balance back. Learn to die, and life and death will stand equal—like right and left legs. Then you will attain the supreme life.

In the supreme life there is neither birth nor death; yet what we call birth and death are its two legs. If there were a village inclined to suicide, where people lusted for death and no one wished to live, there I would not talk about the art of dying. I would speak of the art of living. I would say to them what I say to you of death: “Meditation is the door”—but I would call it the door to life. I would say, “Come, learn to live; for if you cannot learn to live, you will not even be able to die. If you wish to die, I will teach you the art of living; learn to live and you will learn to die.” Only then would those villagers come.

But your village is the other kind. No one wants to die; all want to live and cling so hard they wish death would never come. Therefore, out of necessity, I must speak to you of dying. It is not my fixation; because of you I speak of the art of dying.

I often tell a story. One morning Buddha entered a village. The sun was just rising. A man came to him and said, “Listen, I am an atheist; I do not believe in God. What do you say—does God exist?” Buddha said, “God? There is only God; nothing else.” The man said, “I had heard you were an atheist.” Buddha replied, “You must have heard wrong. Now you have heard from me—I am supremely theist. There is only God.” The man stood bewildered under a tree. Buddha moved on.

At noon another man came. “I am a theist,” he said, “an utter believer, an enemy of atheists. What do you say about God?” Buddha said, “God? There is not, and cannot be, any God.” The man cried, “What are you saying? I heard a religious man had come to the village. I came to ask about God—and you say this?” Buddha said, “Religious? Theist? I am supremely atheist.” The man stood stunned.

Their confusion is understandable. But with Buddha was a disciple, Ananda. His life was in turmoil. He had heard both replies. By evening he was beside himself: “What is happening? In the morning he is supremely theist; at noon supremely atheist.” He thought, “When the crowd is gone, I’ll ask.” By evening the matter grew worse. A third man came, an agnostic: “I don’t know whether God is or is not. No one knows; perhaps one can never know. What do you say?” Buddha said, “Since you don’t know, I don’t know either. Better to be silent in this matter.” The man was shocked: “I heard you were enlightened, that you know.” Buddha said, “You heard wrong. I am supremely ignorant. What knowledge?”

Imagine Ananda’s plight. Night fell; all left. He clutched Buddha’s feet: “Will you kill me? What are you doing? I have been more disturbed today than ever. What are you saying? Morning one thing, noon another, evening a third. You have given three answers.”

Buddha said, “I gave you no answer. I answered them. Why did you listen? It is not proper to listen to what is addressed to another.” Ananda said, “How could I not listen? I was present; my ears were not closed. If you speak, one listens—sin or not.” Buddha said, “I gave you no answer.” Ananda said, “Perhaps—but I am in trouble. Give me an answer now. What is the truth? And why did you say three different things?” Buddha said, “I had to bring three people into balance. The morning man was an atheist—and alone, the atheist is incomplete. Life is built of opposing tensions. A truly religious man contains both: in one aspect atheist, in another theist. He holds both polarities and harmonizes them. That harmony is religion. One who is only a theist is still incomplete; balance has not come. So I had to balance him whose one pan had grown too heavy; I placed a stone on the other side. I wanted to shake his certainty, because certainty is a kind of death; the pilgrimage of inquiry must continue. The noon man was a theist; I had to say I am an atheist, for his pan too was heavy and unbalanced. Life is balance. Whoever attains balance attains truth.”

So when I say to you, “Learn the art of dying,” I say it because your life-pan has become too heavy. Your clinging has made everything rigid; you have lost balance. Invite death too; call it in as a guest. Let us live together.

The day life agrees to live alongside death, life becomes the supreme life. The sting of death lies in fleeing it, in fear. When someone embraces death, death is defeated. The one who embraces death becomes death-conquering. What can death do to one already willing to disappear?

There are two kinds of people: those whom death seeks, and those who seek death. Death chases those who run from it, hunts them down. Those who seek death—death runs from them. They search through eternity and cannot find it. What kind of person do you wish to be—one who flees death, or one who embraces it? The one who runs will go on losing; his whole life will be defeat. The one who welcomes death wins that very instant; his life becomes a journey of victory.

This needs a little understanding, because it will be useful for meditation and also for the art of dying. His question is precious. He asks, “What is this tangled mind?” But a mistake creeps in here. We say, “tangled mind, restless mind, confused mind.” That is where the mistake happens. What mistake? We are using two words: “tangled” and “mind.” The truth is, there is no such thing as a “tangled mind.” The state of tangling itself is what is called mind. There isn’t a confused mind; mind is confusion. It is not that there is an unquiet mind; the very name of unquietness is mind. And when unquietness is gone, it is not that the mind becomes quiet—rather, the mind is no more.

Understand it this way: a storm has arisen on the ocean, the sea is turbulent, and you say “a restless storm.” Someone will say, “Restless storm? Kindly just say there is a storm, because restlessness is what a storm is.” And when the storm is gone, do you say, “Now a quiet storm is blowing”? You say, “Now there is no storm.”

So understand the mind in the same way: mind is just the name of restlessness. And when peace arrives, it is not that a peaceful mind remains; mind does not remain at all. No-mind—the state of no-mind—arises. And when the mind is not, what remains is called the self. When the storm is not, the sea still remains. When the storm dissolves, the ocean remains. When restlessness—mind, confusion—dissolves, what remains is the self.

Mind is not a thing. Mind is only the name of disorder, of chaos. Mind is not a faculty, not an entity. The body is an entity, and the self is an entity. Mind is the name of the unrestful relation between the two. And when peace happens, the body remains, the self remains—but the mind does not.

There is no such thing as a peaceful mind. The mistake comes from our language. We say: unhealthy body, healthy body—and that is fine. An unhealthy body exists, a healthy body exists; when illness ends, a healthy body remains. But with mind this is not true. There is no “healthy mind” and “unhealthy mind.” Mind as such is unhealthy. The very existence of mind is confusion. The existence of mind is illness, is disease.

Therefore do not ask how to make a confused mind peaceful. Ask how to be free of the mind—how this mind can die, how we can end it, bid it farewell, how it may no longer be.

Meditation is the way to finish with the mind, to bid the mind goodbye. Meditation means going beyond the mind. Meditation means stepping aside from the mind. Meditation means the mind not remaining. Meditation means: wherever we are entangled, to step out of that entanglement. The very moment you step out, the entanglement quiets—because it becomes entanglement only through our presence. If we withdraw, it departs.

Understand it this way: two people are fighting. You come to fight with me, and the fight is on. If I withdraw from that fight, how will it continue? It will end, because it could continue only with my participation. On the plane of mind we are standing right where the whole commotion is happening; we don’t want to leave, yet we say we will calm it. It will not be calmed. Kindly step aside—just step aside. In your stepping aside, it becomes silent. So meditation is not a method to pacify the mind; it is a way of getting out of the mind—slipping away from where the waves of restlessness are flowing, returning from there.

Exactly the difference I have been explaining. If someone is doing meditation, he is trying to quiet a restless mind. What will he do? He will try to make the mind silent. But if someone is being in meditation, he is not trying to quiet the mind; he is simply slipping out of the mind.

Outside the sun is blazing. One person, out in the sun, makes arrangements—opens an umbrella. In the outer world, umbrellas can be opened and one can stand in their shade. But no umbrellas can be opened in the mind, because in the mind only umbrellas of thought can be raised. They change nothing. It is as if a man stands in the hot sun, closes his eyes, and thinks, “There is an umbrella above me; the sun is not striking me now.” But the sun keeps beating down. It makes no difference. This man is trying to pacify the sun. This is trying to do meditation. Another man, when the sun grows harsh, simply gets up, goes inside the house, and rests. He is not trying to pacify the sun; he is moving away from it.

Doing meditation means effort—an attempt to change the mind. Being in meditation means no attempt to change—silently sliding into oneself.

Keep this difference in mind. For if you try to do meditation, you will never enter meditation. If you make an effort, if you strain—if you sit rigid and say, “I must meditate today. Whatever happens, I will quiet the mind!” Who is saying this? Who will do it? You? You are the unrest—and you will bring in the peace? Now you have tied one more problem around yourself. You sit stiff, saying, “Whatever happens…” The more you stiffen, the more troubled you become, the more strained, the more tense.

No. That is why I say: meditation is relaxation. Do nothing; loosen. Understand it with a small sutra—keep it as a final pointer about meditation.

One man swims in a river. He says, “I have to reach there.” The current is fast; he thrashes his arms and legs, swims, tires, gets exhausted, yet goes on swimming. This man is making an effort—an effort to swim. Swimming is an effort. Doing meditation is also an effort. Then there is another man who says, “Not swimming—just floating.” He surrenders himself to the river. He doesn’t even flutter his limbs; he lies in the water. The river flows—and he flows with it. He is not swimming at all; he is only floating. Floating is not an effort. Floating is no-effort.

So the meditation I speak of is like floating, not like swimming—flowing, not striving. Remember: one man swims, and a leaf floats in the river. Look at a swimmer and at a floating leaf. The leaf has its own kind of grace: no trouble, no obstruction, no quarrel, no conflict. The leaf is very intelligent. What is its intelligence? It has climbed into a boat—it has made the river itself its boat. It says, “Wherever you go, I agree; take me.” In this way it has broken all the river’s power, for the river can do it no harm: it does not oppose it. It does not stand in resistance; it says, “I flow.” So the leaf is utterly royal. Why royal? Because it is not trying to become a king—it is simply flowing. Wherever the river takes it, it goes.

Keep in mind the floating of a leaf. Can you, too, float like that in the river? Let even the idea of swimming drop; let the mind drop, let feeling drop. Can you float?

Have you noticed? A living person can drown, but a dead person rises to the surface! Have you ever wondered why? The living can drown, but the dead never drowns—he immediately comes up. What is the difference? The dead has arrived at no-effort. The dead says, “Now I do nothing.” He cannot do anything—even if he wanted to. So he rises and begins floating. The living can drown, because the living struggles. He gets tired in the struggle, and in that exhaustion he sinks. The river does not drown you; the struggling drowns you. The river cannot drown a dead man at all—because he does not fight. If he does not fight, there is no question of his energy being exhausted. The river can do nothing to him; he will float.

So the meditation I speak of is not like swimming; it is like floating. One has to let go. That is why when I say, “Leave the body relaxed,” it means: let the body carry you; don’t grip the bank of the body. Let go—begin to float. I say: leave the breath, too. Where will we go then? When you leave the body, you go within. When you grasp the body, you move outward. If one clings to the bank, how will one enter the river? You can only come out to the shore. When you let go of the bank, you cannot come out to the shore; you go into the river.

Within, a current of life is flowing—the divine current of consciousness, the stream of consciousness. We are clutching the bank—the bank of the body. Drop it. Drop the breath as well. Drop thought too. All the banks have been let go. Where will you go now? You will begin to be carried by the current. And if someone lets himself go into the current, he reaches the ocean.

The currents flowing within are like rivers. When one begins to flow in them, one reaches the ocean. Meditation is a flowing. Whoever learns to flow reaches God. Do not swim. Whoever swims will wander astray. At the most, the swimmer will leave this bank and reach that bank. What else can he do? A poor man, if he swims a lot, will become a rich man—that’s about all. The one with a small chair, if he swims a lot, will end up on some chair in Delhi—that’s about all. But this bank, too, takes you outside the river, and that bank too. The bank of Dwarka is just as outside as the bank of Delhi. It makes no difference.

The swimmer can only reach banks. But the one who flows—no bank can stop him, because he has surrendered himself to the current. The current will carry him, carry him, carry him—and deliver him into the ocean.

To reach the ocean is the goal. Let the river become the ocean, and let the individual consciousness become the divine. Let each drop dissolve in That. Then life’s ultimate meaning, life’s ultimate joy, and life’s ultimate beauty are attained.

The art of dying is the art of flowing. This final word: the art of dying is the art of flowing. For the one who is ready to die does not swim; he says, “Now take me wherever you wish. I am willing.”

In these four days I have spoken entirely in this context. Some friends felt I was only answering questions. So they kept writing: “You should speak; don’t answer questions”—as if someone else is answering them. But the pegs become more important, the clothes less important.

They say, “You tell the clothes; why are you hanging them on pegs?” What am I hanging on pegs? On your questions, what else can I hang except what I would speak! Whether I speak, or I answer questions—what difference does it make? Who will give the answers? Who will speak?

But our mind is like this. I have heard: there was a circus. Its keeper of monkeys used to give four bananas every morning to the monkeys and three in the evening. One day the market had fewer bananas in the morning. So he said, “Today, monkeys, take three in the morning; we’ll give four in the evening.”

The monkeys went on strike. They said, “That can never be. We need four bananas in the morning.” He said, “Brothers, we’ll give four in the evening; take three now.” They said, “This has never happened. In the morning we always get four bananas. We want four now.” He said, “Have you gone mad? In total you’ll get seven bananas.” They said, “We don’t know that much arithmetic. We will take four now. We have always gotten four bananas in the morning.”

So these friends keep writing: “You speak; don’t answer questions.” I will speak—what will I speak? Questions are pegs. On them I hang what I have to say. Whether I speak or answer questions, what difference does it make! But it seems to us, “No, you should speak,” because we are used to four bananas in the morning. In every camp there used to be four discourses and four question-answers, and this time it happened that I did all question-answers.

It makes no difference. Keep the arithmetic of seven. Add it up in total. Don’t count one by one that four in the morning, three in the evening—or three in the morning, four in the evening. Seven! And I have given the seven bananas. If you get tangled in the counting, you might go away disappointed. So I have said this at the end: I have given the seven bananas. What I had to say, I have said.

Now let us sit for the night meditation.

Spread out a little. We will not talk. Quietly, those who need to go may go; those who wish to meditate may sit. Do not talk. Friends who need to leave should go quietly, and those who wish to sit should sit quietly. Those who want to lie down may lie down. Yes—those who are still standing, either sit or go; no one should stand around like a spectator.

Close your eyes. See—one has to prepare to flow, to prepare to die. Close your eyes… let the body go loose… let the body go loose… let the body go loose… let the energy flow inward… and feel as if you have let go of the bank of the body. Keep letting the body become completely loose. Then I suggest: experience with me.

The body is relaxing… the body is relaxing… the body is relaxing… the body is relaxing… Feel: the body is becoming utterly relaxed, as if there were no life at all in it. You have to let go of the bank of the body completely and go within. As someone leaves the bank of the river and is carried into the current, in the same way, leave the bank of the body. Feel: the body is relaxing… the body is becoming utterly relaxed… the body is relaxing… the body is relaxing… the body is relaxing… Let go completely—if it falls, let it fall… leave the body completely loose… The body has relaxed… the body has relaxed… the body has relaxed… the body has relaxed…

The breath is becoming quiet… feel: the breath is becoming quiet… the breath is becoming quiet… the breath is becoming quiet… the breath is becoming quieter and quieter… Let go of the breath too… move back from it. The breath has become quiet… the breath has become quiet… the breath has become quiet… the breath is becoming quieter and quieter… Let go, and move inward.

Thoughts are becoming quiet too… let go of your grip on them as well… thoughts are becoming quiet… thoughts are becoming quiet… thoughts are becoming quiet… thoughts are becoming quiet… thoughts are becoming quiet… thoughts are becoming quiet… thoughts are becoming quiet… move within, and more within—let go completely of all holding: of the body, of the breath, of thoughts. Sink utterly and let yourself go, like a dry leaf beginning to float in a river. Let go… let go… the body relaxed, the breath relaxed, thoughts have become quiet.

And now, for ten minutes, keep watching within—stay awake within and keep watching. As if a flame of a lamp is burning inside and you are looking at it. Let only knowing remain, only seeing remain. The body will feel as if it is lying far away. The breath has become quiet; that too will seem far away. If a thought comes, it will seem to circle from very far away, and then slowly it will go. Keep watching—become the witness within. For ten minutes, remain only as the witness.

The mind has become quiet... the mind has become quiet... the mind has become utterly quiet. And let yourself drop deeper... and inward... and inward... as if someone were descending into a deep well—let go like that. Drop all holding. Remain only the watcher. Within, we are seeing. The mind is becoming quiet and empty... the mind is becoming quiet and empty...

(Silence, solitude, stillness...)

The mind is becoming quiet... the mind has become quiet... the mind has become empty. Within, let a flame of knowing remain lit—we are knowing, we are seeing.

(Silence, solitude, stillness...)

The mind has become quiet... and let go—drop every grip completely. Look within; the body will appear far away, as if a corpse were lying there. Outside, as if all has died; inside, life remains. Only the flame of life remains within. See it—see that emptiness, that peace, that flame. As you keep seeing, a current of bliss begins to flow within, and into every particle, every hair, every breath, bliss starts streaming. See it—as if a spring of bliss bursts forth. Keep looking within; remain the seer.

(Silence, solitude, stillness...)

Slowly take two or four deep breaths... slowly take two or four deep breaths. The breath will seem very far away, the body will seem far away, and the mind will become even more quiet. Slowly take two or four deep breaths. Then slowly open the eyes. Those who are lying down or have fallen will take a few deep breaths, then open the eyes, then rise gently. Rise very slowly, very gently.

Our final meeting is complete.