Nahin Ram Bin Thaon #3

The stream of consciousness itself is not divided. The split into conscious and unconscious exists because of repression. First understand this well.

A child is born with consciousness one and undivided. There is neither a conscious mind nor an unconscious mind—no such two parts. But soon the division starts, because we teach the child what is right and what is wrong; what is auspicious and what is inauspicious; what to do and what not to do. And all that we brand as “don’t,” “bad”—what will the child do with it?

Calling something bad does not destroy it. We say anger is bad. The child hears and understands—but anger doesn’t vanish just because we label it bad, because anger is natural. The child has not learned anger; he is born with it, just as he is born with a body, with eyes and hands. And existence uses anger: anger is energy. Without it, the child would die. It gives the strength to struggle, to stand at the right moment, to move. Anger is an indispensable part of his journey.

We say sex is bad. But sex is not learned from books or films. Otherwise, from where would animals and birds learn it? They neither watch films nor read “obscene” literature, as the so-called saints claim is corrupting people, and yet sex is there.

The child is born carrying sexual energy. We call it bad—even those call it bad who themselves used sex to give birth to this very child. Without sex, this child would not be. He is the living embodiment of sexual energy. Every cell of his body is made of sex-atoms. His whole body is condensed sexuality. We say it is bad—what is the child to do?

For the child, nothing is yet bad or good. He has not thought. We impose thinking upon him. We are powerful: we reward what we call right and punish what we call wrong. Not only we, but the whole surrounding society calls it wrong. The child is left alone—natural, but helpless and dependent on those who condemn his natural urges. Food and clothes come from them; they can punish him. What is he to do?

If what we called wrong could end just by labeling it wrong, the child would end it. But it does not end; so he starts pushing it back—repression. Whatever parents and society call wrong, he retreats from in his mind. What is pushed back becomes the unconscious. Thus the unconscious is born.

Turning away, he avoids even seeing it, because if it is seen, there is pain and anxiety. The child creates a kind of blindness so that whatever is branded bad does not appear.

Little children close their eyes at whatever frightens them. Closing their eyes, perhaps they think what is not seen has ceased to be. The child’s logic is the ostrich’s logic. Seeing the enemy, the ostrich hides its head in the sand—no enemy is visible, so it thinks there is no enemy. What is not seen does not exist; what is seen exists. What can the child do?

We have no idea what distress small children go through. All that is called bad, they hide within and stop looking at. By turning their backs, the unconscious is born.

Hence you will be surprised: you cannot recall memories from before the age of four. If you try to go back, you hit a wall beyond which memory doesn’t proceed. Four years, five years—someone very deep might reach three, but there it stops. Those first years seem wiped out.

Yet if you are hypnotized or made to faint and then asked, it all returns. Memory hasn’t been erased; you have turned your back. Why do the first four years not come to mind?

Psychologists have long been puzzled. You were conscious then; a four-year-old is aware; experiences happen, pleasure and pain occur—why is all that gone? They found a scientific principle: we turn our backs on what we find too painful, because that’s our way to survive it. Everyone says childhood was very happy. But if it was, then those years should be vividly in memory, because we cling to joy and forget pain. Perhaps precisely because there is no accessible memory of that pain, we fancy it was happy.

Those four forgotten years constitute our unconscious. For this reason Freud and his followers—who have gone deepest into the human mind—take the first step in treating any mental illness as a return to childhood memories. All psychoanalysis is a process of going back to childhood, because the root of today’s trouble will be found there. Until the root is grasped, it cannot be uprooted. What we repressed in childhood will follow us like a shadow, coloring our personality and actions throughout life.

You may go insane at sixty, but the seed was hidden in your first four years. The tree grew and became sixty years old; the roots are in childhood.

If we can find and pull out those roots, the tree will wither and die. All psychotherapy returns to childhood.

The unconscious is created by repression; repression is born of rejection. Your tendencies are repressed in your unconscious.

And whatever we repress is powerful. It is powerful—that’s why society calls it bad; because if it is not repressed, society fears it will be so strong that society will be shattered. Whatever is powerful...

Sexual desire is the most powerful; hence society opposes it most, wants to abolish it outright. Because once sexuality is mutilated and suppressed, the person becomes a slave of society.

Look at a bull—his sexuality has not been suppressed. And look at an ox. Bull and ox hardly seem of the same species. The bull’s dignity, pride, presence, strength are altogether different; the ox is lifeless, meek. But to hitch a cart you need an ox—the bull will not cooperate. He is so strong he’ll bolt with the cart; he will go wherever he wants—into ditches and ravines perhaps. The ox will plod along; he is weak.

Every child is born like a bull, and society turns every child into an ox—so it can ride his chest, sit on his shoulders, yoke him.

This is why life looks so joyless, without grandeur or glory: we have turned every person from bull into ox. It has gone on so long we don’t even notice.

Society is afraid: if children are left free in their sexuality, where will they go? Will they bear society’s burdens? Sit in offices as clerks? Agree to be primary schoolteachers? Will family life be possible? Will husband fear his wife—or wife worry about her husband?

Such power is frightening; everything may be uprooted; chaos may ensue. Society is deeply afraid of power. Hence every child must be weakened.

But the weakness appears only on the surface. Inside, desire remains flaming, like embers under ash, and works from within; its heat spreads through the ash. Your outer personality has become like ash; therefore you are sad, miserable, afflicted. Without energy, no one can be happy; without strength, no one can be joyful. The pure experience of energy is bliss.

The unique Western poet William Blake said, “Energy is delight.”

Where energy wanes, delight is lost; weakness enters—and the whole society is engaged in weakening you. All that was strong and got suppressed keeps thrusting up every moment.

Therefore when you begin the experiment of witnessing, of meditation, on the one hand witnessing will remain, and on the other, flames will keep coming from those layers of the unconscious—desire will arise, anger will come. What to do?

What is repressed has to be seen. Wherever you have made yourself blind, eyes will have to be born again. You will have to walk backward against what you did: return to the very point in childhood where your energy was snatched away.

Hence all sainthood is reclaiming childhood. Jesus says: whoever is like a child shall enter my kingdom of heaven. Like a child—back in pure, undivided, unfragmented energy, where there is no conscious and unconscious, just a single, unbroken flow; where the madness of good and bad has not yet arisen; where everything is accepted; where the child has not yet thought at all—thought-free presence. This state has to be regained.

Religion is the remedy for the injustices society has done to you. What society has stolen, religion wants to give back.

Therefore religion can never be social. Religion is fundamentally revolutionary and anti-social. That is why, whenever a religious person appears—Jesus or Buddha or Mahavira or Krishna—society is against him. Society never accepts the religious person, because his very approach is rebellion: to break all the paralysis society has inflicted on you, to remove its walls and dams from your life’s springs, and to set you unbound, free, completely independent.

Thus society is intrinsically anti-religion, and religion intrinsically anti-society. Hearing this, you may be surprised: then what about Hindus, Muslims, Christians, Jains, Buddhists—aren’t they social?

Buddha is not social; Buddhists are. Mahavira is not social; Jains are. It is society’s trick to absorb rebellion into itself.

When society turns a rebellious religion from a bull into an ox—just as it did every rebellious child—when it cuts out the element of revolution, a sect is born. Sects are not religion. Christianity is a sect; Jesus is religious. Jesus the person is crucified—there is no other way. Then around the crucified Jesus, society builds a church and worships him—the revolutionary element gone; and then the pope stands in place of Jesus.

Shankara the original was insulted; but the Shankaracharyas sitting in monasteries are honored. The original Shankara is energy—vast, unchannelled revolution, a Ganges rushing to the ocean that cannot be diverted like an irrigation canal. The later Shankaracharyas in monasteries are like canals: they flow wherever you lead them; they have no freedom of their own.

Understand clearly: in the human world, religion is the greatest revolution. Society pushes you away from your original, innocent state in which you were born; religion brings you back. Zen says: find your original face. The day you were born—no knowledge of good and bad, no sense of life and death, no fear, no hate, no attachment or detachment; neither worldly nor renunciate. You were like pure water upon which not even a shadow had fallen to taint it.

To regain that purity is sainthood. Religion is the process.

So when you cultivate witnessing, whatever society has repressed will arise. Witnessing means you have removed your weight from it. Until now you were sitting on it; you were pressing it down every moment, riding on its chest. The moment you become a witness, you step aside and just watch. Everything will erupt: where there seemed ash, embers will be visible. All restlessness, anger, sexuality will rise and surround you.

Hold on to witnessing. It will not last long, because what is happening is only the result of repression. As the flames move up, the embers below will die. As the smoke dissipates into the sky, you will find a smokeless state within. A day will come when suddenly you find yourself standing alone—nothing left to see; witnessing remains, but nothing to witness: no anger, no sexuality, no hatred, no jealousy. But it will take time.

And it would be easier if it were only the repression of one life—but it is of many lives. Who knows how many times you have been born, and how many societies have crushed you—each in different ways. Hence so many inner contradictions.

Sometimes you were a Hindu and were taught one set of right and wrong; sometimes a Muslim and taught the opposite; sometimes Jain, sometimes Buddhist. You have traveled through countless societies, learned countless rights and wrongs that contradict each other, and so a deep inner conflict and confusion have arisen.

So many people have chiseled at you that your sculpture never emerged; countless figures are cut into you. Left uncarved, your stone would have been beautiful; the sculptors have made it ugly.

Witnessing will take time. How long depends on how much repression you carry, and on how intensely you practice witnessing.

If your effort is total, the result can be quick. If lukewarm, it may take many lives—or never happen. The speed depends on your urgency, intensity, longing, and totality in remaining a witness.

If you become utterly a witness, the whole disturbance can vanish in a single moment. If your whole energy turns into awareness and within you the doer disappears and only the seer remains, then even one instant of such vision will reduce everything repressed within to ash.

You know the story: the god of desire, Kama, went to seduce Shiva, who was absorbed in meditation. As Kama spun his net of desire around him, Shiva opened one eye and looked—Kama burned to ashes. Since then he is called Ananga—bodiless.

Such a thing can happen within you. You won’t need to open both eyes—one will do. But let your entire life-energy gather in that one eye. If from that one eye you can see with your whole being, it is enough; no need even to open two. All the junk inside will burn and end.

Remember in this connection: whether anger, lust, jealousy—these are functions of your body; they are not you.

Here lies the difference between society and religion. Society thinks they are your parts, and so it tries to suppress them. Religion understands they are parts of your apparatus—your body-mind mechanism—not of your being. Therefore religion tries to awaken you. Society suppresses you; religion awakens you. Because religion knows: the more awake you become, the freer you are of desire; society believes: the more you are put to sleep and suppressed, the more you are free of desire.

No society was ever formed by Buddhas. Buddhas are born alone; there is no society of Buddhas. Therefore no society’s rules are wise.

Society is formed by the vast crowd of the uncomprehending. The blind make the rules—and if a child is born with eyes, they will promptly operate on him. They will say: this child is malformed—eyes don’t exist; he has eyes. Remove them! Or at least teach him to keep them shut: nobody sees, so seeing is a crime. They will fill the child with guilt that seeing is sin. If you look, you are a sinner. Either your eyes must be removed, or you must agree to keep them closed.

Society is composed of the blind. Those with eyes have no society; the seers are solitary. Kabir said: saints have no crowds; the saint goes not in a herd. He has no party; he is alone. The height is so great only the solitary can reach it; the crowd cannot. It is so rare and arduous that once in a while a single person reaches it; all others remain below.

The foolish make the rules—and they think themselves wise. The first axiom of the ignorant is: you are the body. The first axiom of the wise is: you are not the body. You are other than the body—unique and separate. You are in the body, but not the body; the body is a house you dwell in, garments you wear, a tool; or a chariot, and you the charioteer.

From this single point the whole trouble arises. If you are identical with the body, then bodily faults must be cut out. But cutting does not cut; it only hides—and hidden, it breeds disease.

Freud says ninety percent of the mental illnesses known to psychology arise from the repression of sexuality. Modern medicine says at least fifty percent of physical illnesses are psychological. Psychologists say ninety out of a hundred. And know this: at least three out of four people suffer from some kind of mental disorder. Freud says ninety percent of mental illness is due to repressed sexuality.

When we suppress, pathology sets in—like a kettle on the boil with stones on the lid and the spout blocked, while the fire burns below—there will be an explosion!

Every day you take in food; the body labors; breath brings life into you; blood forms; sexual energy is produced. Food fuels the fire; breath fans it; the fire manifests as sexuality—and we repress it. The stove blazes; you supply plentiful fuel—and you place stones—the stones of religion, morality, conduct—on the lid so not even steam can escape, yet the fire below is kept burning. What will happen?

An explosion. The person becomes pathological, insane. Madness means explosion—the kettle blown to pieces, fuel scattered, water everywhere.

Because of this, some so-called religious people—who are not truly religious—do not lift the stones off the lid but remove the fuel. So the monk eats less—out of fear of sexuality. Food becomes sexual energy; food gives energy. So the monk fasts: if there is no new energy, there will be no explosion of steam.

But the monk becomes weak and joyless. Hence it is hard to find a cheerful monk—laughing, delighted. Mostly they are dull, decrepit, like ruins. They eat just enough to survive; any extra, and sexuality will form. Sex is overflow; it is surplus energy seeking play.

So he eats little, once a day perhaps, and from that removes the most vital elements; he eats dry, bland food, merely to keep the body going.

Fuel removed, the fire no longer burns—only smoke and a little warmth; the water stays lukewarm. Life goes on—not frozen, but never boiling; no steam, and thus no music of steam.

Zen praised the kettle’s gentle humming; Russian poets sang of the samovar’s murmur. In a quiet morning, before people and birds have stirred, the kettle’s hum is worth hearing. But that hum ceases if fuel is insufficient.

So a humming, singing monk is rare. His life-stream has thinned; he lives half-dead. He walks, sits, stands—but is tired even before doing anything, because the flow of life-energy has stopped.

If the Earth were full of such gloomy monks, even that would be dangerous, because a gloomy man cannot bear others’ joy; he wants everyone else gloomy too. He makes the joyous feel guilty, as if joy were a sin. The sick always look upon the healthy with envy and try to spread the notion that health is somehow sinful.

You will be surprised to know Leo Tolstoy, an advocate of such morbid asceticism, wrote: to be healthy is a kind of illness; to be healthy is to be ill. He also said: whoever seeks spirituality should abandon the desire for health; he should be willing to be sick—poor in energy, minimal in everything—prepared for that.

Thus in the name of spirituality two things can happen: either remove the fuel so steam won’t form, or keep increasing the weight on the lid so steam cannot escape. In one case you produce the deranged—exploded; in the other, the morbid—dead before dying. Much of what passes for monkhood is divided into these two unhealthy directions.

But look at Buddha, at Mahavira: neither morbid nor deranged. Mahavira’s body is so beautiful—joy and dance in every pore. See his statue: no more beautiful form could be imagined.

But stand his followers next to him, and you will feel uneasy—their fuel has been removed; they look sick. There is none of Mahavira’s effulgence. And without effulgence, what kind of nonviolence can there be? The unhappy will always be violent; they will want others unhappy too. Until they make you all gloomy, they will not be at ease.

So the so-called sorrowful monks try to make others sorrowful: take vows, renounce this, give up that. If you don’t, they look at you as the worst sinner imaginable. In their eyes you will see condemnation—the sign that their lives are not healthy but distorted.

A real saint’s very presence is an endless dance; his humming goes on. Sit near him—even if he sits silent—and you will feel someone is dancing. Even in his silence you will hear poetry. When he walks, if you have ears to hear, you’ll hear ankle-bells around his feet. His every movement seems like music being born on the veena of life. His whole being becomes musical and artful.

Only then is life a celebration. Only then can one say, “Thank you, God.” How can a gloomy monk feel grateful? If he met God, he would complain: “What sort of life have you given? A burden! Stop this game!” He can complain, not give thanks. Gratitude arises only in one who has known blessedness.

Witnessing is the path to that blessedness. Do not remove fuel—life is fuel. Do not diminish energy; increase it, because energy is bliss, and God is supreme energy.

You will not find God by becoming anemic. Only when your energy flows, breaking all dams, will you find him. When you rise in flood and drown the banks, then you will reach.

How will dry rivers reach the ocean? They become little puddles here and there; sand heaps block them; they dry up. You too will become like those puddles if you remove fuel.

Increase life-energy; let it reach its boundless beyond. There is no end—life-energy is infinite. You cannot overdo it; however much you increase, it will still be too little.

A river seeking the ocean needs abundant water and great surge. It must overflow with power so it neither becomes puddles nor gets lost; it will break all dams and drown all banks—but it will reach the ocean.

To reach the ocean, you too must become a little oceanic. Only the similar meets the similar. If God is supreme energy, you cannot reach him enervated. If he is vast, you cannot reach him attenuated. Become somewhat like him. If God is life, how will you—half-dead—travel to his temple?

Look around: God is dancing everywhere—flowers bloom, songs flow, life is full of jubilation.

Our festivals come now and then. Once a year we celebrate Holi, we become colorful, throw colors on each other. Once a year Diwali comes and we light lamps in the darkness. But our lives are drab; therefore man has to manufacture festivals. For animals, birds, plants, rivers, waterfalls there is no Diwali or Holi—because the whole of life is Diwali and Holi.

Man is so sick he is satisfied with one Diwali—just a consolation. That day we wear new clothes, light lamps, burst crackers—and then return to our prison of sorrow. On Holi we sing and dance, breaking all limits, rules, etiquette, disciplines—just for one day the river flows. But how will the ocean be reached by flowing one day? It’s only a pretense to console oneself.

Look at nature: there God celebrates Diwali and Holi every day. Colors splash daily; flowers bloom daily; the old leaf cannot even fall before the new is born. Celebration never stops. Stars, moon, and sun burn every day—Diwali is every moment.

Such is the life of a religious person—every moment full of festivity. With wonder that he is, and breath by breath, thanksgiving.

This will be born from witnessing. In witnessing, do not remove the fuel—you are not to be enervated. Do not place stones on the lid—you are not to become deranged. No explosion that shatters you into pieces.

Witnessing means: stand a little apart and watch whatever is happening. This burning fuel is beautiful; these flames are unique. Life ablaze like fire is lovable. The song of boiling water, the hum, the bubbles, the rising steam—everything is beautiful, everything is to be accepted. Remove the lid; let steam be free; let the fire burn; and you stand aside and watch.

A wondrous discovery happens: you find it is all happening in the body—fuel, water, steam. You are surrounded by it and yet beyond it. The day you see that you are beyond that which surrounds you at every moment, transcendence has happened. Then anger will not make you angry; lust will not afflict you. Even if you move into sex, you will remain apart. Then you will know: it is God’s will—if sex is to happen, so be it. If you display anger, even anger will be play, acting. If necessary, you will allow it to happen; but not for a moment will you identify. The tendency and you will remain separate.

To live in the world and not be of it; to live in the body and not be the body; to pass through the river and keep the feet dry—that is the formula of witnessing.

A Zen master was bidding farewell to a disciple. “Go into the world,” he said, “share what I’ve told you, give what I’ve given you.” As the disciple descended the temple steps, the master called out, “Remember—cross the river, but let your feet not get wet!”

The disciple froze. “That’s a problem—if I cross the river, my feet will get wet. If I must keep them dry, better not cross.” He thought of turning back.

The master said, “Come back. If you do not understand even this, you are not ready to go. Go back to your meditation. Cultivate witnessing, because that is what it means.”

It means exactly this: to cross the river and keep your feet dry. If you avoid the river, you are weak; if your feet get wet, you are lost.

It is difficult. But as witnessing matures, it becomes simple. Be only the seer, not the doer. If anger arises, watch; if lust arises, watch; if jealousy arises, watch. Know you are the one who sees; you are not what is seen. Drop your connection with the seen, connect with the seer.

As the first glimmer of this comes, you will find the world runs on its own energy. It does not need your participation; you are not needed. The body runs without you. The body feels hunger, asks for food, and the body itself picks up the food and puts it into itself. You unnecessarily interfere. Heat is felt; the body experiences pain; the body itself moves into the shade of a tree. You need not meddle. You could just see: the body felt heat and sweat; the body felt pain; the body got up and sat in the shade.

If only you could see the body distressed by heat, moving to the shade, and you remain the witness, not the doer—you are free. There is no other freedom. Then whatever society repressed will fall away.

But what nature has given will not fall away. What society thrust upon you artificially will drop through witnessing; what nature has given will remain but become pure. Understand this, otherwise seekers get into difficulty. They think, “I am not yet free of this or that—so nothing is happening.”

Freedom happens from what others imposed on you; not from what you brought with you. That frees only when the body is dropped.

We call him jivanmukta who is free of society and social conditioning, with nothing repressed within. But nature still continues with him. Even a liberated one feels hunger—and should. In fact, his hunger is of a quality you have never known—because all is pure. Witnessing is pure; he stands apart.

Often you suffer from false hunger because there is no witnessing. If you eat daily at one, seeing the clock at one brings hunger. The clock might have stopped last night; it shows one, but it is actually eleven—still the false sight of one can create hunger. Wait a little and it will disappear—because only false hunger can vanish. If it were real, it would grow.

You sleep at ten every night; at ten you feel sleepy. This sleep is mental—a habit. If you don’t sleep for ten minutes and start working, the sleep vanishes and may not return all night. If it were real, it should increase—ten thirty, eleven—more and more. But it is habit, identification.

Therefore a saint’s hunger will be of a quality unknown to you; so his sleep; so his bodily pleasure.

Yet whether pleasure or pain, hunger or thirst, sleep or wakefulness—the saint stands apart. That is his saintliness. The body is allowed to function; he sees the body moving on its own. The doer in you is mere interference—obstruction. You step in and create trouble; you do not let the body move in its simplicity.

What society has imposed dissolves through witnessing. What nature has given becomes pure, refined. What nature has given will only cease when the body ceases. Thus the jivanmukta is free of society; when he becomes free of the body, we call it ultimate liberation—parammukti. Then he is free even of nature. Only pure witnessing remains.

Buddhists speak of two nirvanas: nirvana and mahanirvana. Nirvana happened to Buddha when he was about forty—he knew, “I am the witness.” Still hunger and thirst happened, water was needed, sleep at night, walking by day, fatigue, illnesses and health—Buddha lived forty years after nirvana. Then came mahanirvana—great nirvana.

Mahanirvana means the body too is gone. First society goes; then nature goes. When both are gone, pure Brahman, pure self remains.

Let society go first. Sannyas is the declaration that, “I begin to free myself from society.” It does not mean going to the forest—because you can carry society into the forest. If here you were a Hindu and you remain a Hindu in the forest, you have carried society’s conditioning with you.

Renunciation of society does not mean going away from it—there is nowhere to run. It means freedom from what society has imposed—return to pure childhood; becoming fresh and light like a child again.

The day you are wholly free of society, your nirvana happens. The first event: you and nature appear separate. Society had been a bridge; it falls away. On one side you; on the other, nature. On one side Purusha; on the other, Prakriti. Then the play is delightful.

The play of pure Purusha with pure Prakriti is full of rasa. Hindus call it the rasa-lila—the dance of Krishna among the gopis. It is the play of nature and the witness. It is a beautiful myth. Krishna is Purusha—the witness realized; the gopis dance around, enticing him—but he is not enticed. The day the bridge falls and society is gone...

And it is hard to find anyone more anti-social than Krishna. However much you worship him, secretly you fear him. If Krishna suddenly appeared, you wouldn’t introduce him to your wife—dangerous man! You wouldn’t want your children near him—he is a mischief-maker. Worship from afar is fine; closeness is risky. Krishna has removed the social element entirely; he is utterly non-social.

This dance-story happens the day you wipe away society’s conditioning and become childlike again. That is why Krishna is often depicted as a child. He lived to eighty, yet we don’t paint him old. Not that he didn’t age—of course his teeth fell, his body weakened, his back bent, he needed a staff—but we cannot imagine Krishna tottering with a stick. It is not fitting, because though his body aged, Purusha remained always childlike—fresh as new leaves.

Hence most paintings and songs about Krishna—by Surdas and others—are of his childhood. That is the nature of pure Purusha: simple, innocent, childlike.

Krishnamurti calls this child-state “the state of unconditioning”—sanskar-shunya—free of society’s conditioning, where no line drawn by another remains; consciousness unmarked.

Even then, nature’s play continues around you—the rasa-lila goes on—because your being a witness does not instantly stop nature’s function; nature has momentum.

You pedal a bicycle; then you stop and say, “Enough; no more.” Still the bicycle goes a little distance; the energy already imparted keeps it moving. If there is a downhill, it may go far.

Therefore those who attain nirvana before thirty-five find it hard to keep the body going, because before thirty-five, life is uphill; thirty-five is the peak. Often those who attain realization before thirty-five—who stop pedaling—see nature’s dance end quickly; if they must keep the body going, not for desire but for compassion, it is very difficult. Hence those like Shankara, who attained early, often departed early.

Those who attain after thirty-five find the bicycle moves on by itself—life is downhill; Buddha and Mahavira lived to eighty.

The body will continue even when you are a witness; its dance, hunger, thirst will continue, and you will stand apart and watch. Before, you were the doer; now you will be the seer. Before, you were a participant; now you are a spectator; therefore, you no longer worry about results. As a participant you cared for outcomes; as a witness, whatever the outcome, it doesn’t matter. This is what Krishna tells Arjuna: drop concern for results, drop the desire for fruits—be a witness; let nature do what it does; you stand apart.

First you are freed of society and conditioning; then one day nature too becomes quiet. How long will the gopis dance? They will tire.

The Sankhya sutras say: when Purusha becomes the seer, Prakriti dances vigorously, entices, tries every trick—because she too feels pain in your distancing. Your withdrawal brings her play near to stopping. She uses all means to entangle you back. But if you stand firm as the witness, the sutras say, the dancer-prakriti tires, sits down, forgets you—you are outside her domain.

Then mahaparinirvana: no body returns; the soul merges into the vast ocean—both is and is not. Not, because no center of “I” remains; is, because what exists in this universe cannot be annihilated. Centerless, it merges into the great void.

You will not remain as you, but as God—that is the goal, the search.

Enough for today.