Prem Nadi Ke Teera #1

Both are true. In one sense death is fixed—fixed the way a watch you buy in the market comes with a guarantee: it will run ten years. But if you use the watch properly and maintain it well, it can run twenty years. Throw it around, break it, and it may not last even five days. Man’s body is a mechanism. The soul does not die; only the body dies, and the body is purely mechanical. When a child is born, the body made from the germ cells received from the parents has a certain inner capacity—how long it can run. It can last that long. But with great care and right regimen it can go to a hundred and twenty-five years; with poor care it may be finished even by seventy-five.

So age belongs to the body; the soul has no age. Therefore the question of age is not a religious question—it is a scientific one. The body is a mechanism. If an atom bomb is dropped on Hiroshima, a hundred thousand people die at once. If you looked at the lines on their palms, not all those lines would end on that same day. Among them were children and old people: one old man was about to die anyway, one child might have had seventy years ahead. Yet a hundred thousand die together. That death arrives before the time the body could have run. With proper care the body can be greatly extended.

Where there is greater provision and facility—Sweden, Norway, America—the average lifespan has become longer, approaching eighty years. It only means the body, being a machine, depends on maintenance. The soul has no age. So, rightly understood, this is not a religious question.

It is entirely a scientific question, and science is what should answer it. If religion answers, all the answers will be wrong. In fact, religions have no right to pronounce on matters of the body—though out of habit we go on doing so. The answer must be a scientific one. And remember, the body is not even a single machine; it is a composite of hundreds of machines.

It can happen that your whole body dies and your eyes still continue to serve someone else. Your whole body may die, yet your heart goes on beating in another’s body. Gradually we will be able to save separate parts of the body. It may even be that for a thousand years after your death your eyes go on seeing, being passed from one person to another. It is a mechanism; it can be used. One car breaks down; we take a part from it and put it into another. That is why I do not call this a religious question. It is a scientific question, to be asked of scientists—and they should answer it. The answer a scientist would give is what I have said to you.

Surrender, because we only appear to be persons—we are not. We only appear separate—we are not. It is a great illusory perception that we are separate. This totality of life—we are connected to it. Like a leaf may be under the illusion that it is separate from the tree. And of course it is under the illusion that it is separate from the other leaves on the same branch. This illusion arises naturally. The neighboring leaf dries up, yet this one does not dry along with it—if they were one, it too would dry. A neighboring leaf gets plucked, this one is not plucked with it—if they were one, it would be plucked too. One leaf is like a child, fresh and new; another like an old man. So it is quite natural that each leaf considers itself separate, though it is not the truth. But if the leaf looks a little within, it will see: we are joined to the same branch; the same sap flows into me and into the leaf next to me. Then the illusion, “I am separate,” will not remain. One branch appears separate from another, but if both go within, they will find they are joined to the same tree. And one tree appears separate from another tree, but if both go downwards, they are joined to the same earth.

The deeper we go, the more we discover that the “I” is an illusion. That is all surrender means. Surrender means: I, as a separate “I,” am the illusion—like a broken-off island. I am not an island; I am like the ocean, where all the waves appearing around me are not different from me. To consider oneself separate from That to which all waves belong is ego. To become one with That to which all waves are joined—that is surrender.

The whole meaning of surrender is simply this: that Vastness all around us—from which we are born, in which we live, and into which we dissolve—we do not separate ourselves from it, not even for a moment. The feeling of not separating is called surrender. It is the surrender of the wave to the ocean. The wave may, if it wishes, think itself separate; no one will come to stop it. The ocean will not say, “You are not separate.” But the wave’s sense of separateness will create needless misery. Sometimes the wave will rise, sometimes fall. If it understands itself as the ocean, then the wave will not fear dying. But if the wave takes itself to be separate, fear of death will arise—nearby waves are dying.

Surrender means only this: we are parts of the Vast. Its very breath moves within us. Its very life expresses and spreads through us. Call that Vast “God,” call it “Truth,” give it any name—you and That are not separate. The day this becomes a lived seeing, that very day surrender happens. So much for “why surrender?”

And as for “how surrender?”—again, the same. If you understand your factual situation—what is true—surrender happens. If you believe, as we all do, that we are separate, then the difficulties arise: worries, sorrows, pains—they are all the mischiefs born of separateness. Death will come—to me; disease—to me. If there is defeat, I will be defeated. So I must win, I must not fall ill, I must not die. But once it becomes clear that there is no “I,” that a power far greater than me has manifested through me, will manifest, will withdraw; will be healthy, will be unhealthy; will win, will lose—let That take care of it—then instantly I become carefree. Anxiety departs.

The religious person becomes carefree; the irreligious person remains surrounded by anxiety. The irreligious person has great worries; his anxiety is very deep. The religious person has no cause for worry at all. Worry exists only so long as the “I” exists. When there is no “I,” who is there to worry, and about what, and why? The moment we understand the truth that we are joined from all sides, surrender becomes possible.

Surrender is not done; surrender is not an act. It is not your doing. If someone says, “I surrender myself to God,” he will never be able to—because the one saying “I” is still present in the surrender. And tomorrow he may say, “I take back my surrender.” What will God do then? He who gave can take back.

Surrender—sarender—is not an act; it is a happening. If understanding dawns, you suddenly find surrender has happened. You cannot do it. On the day it happens you can only say, “How foolish I was that I had not surrendered! Now surrender has happened.” And this cannot be taken back—it is a point of no return. If it has been “done,” it can be undone.

Therefore, when you ask “how,” I do not call it a doing. You will not manage surrender by doing—only by understanding. If you see that all life is interconnected: if the sun were to cool, you would grow cold; if the winds stopped tomorrow, if oxygen departed with the winds, you would depart—there would not remain even a single moment. If tomorrow the earth grows cold, you will end. We are connected every moment. Our being is not independent. Our being is, every instant, dependent on an immense power. This understanding of dependence leads you into surrender. And without surrender there is no religion at all; without surrender there is no true experience of life.

The day a person loses himself, that day he becomes worthy to attain the divine. As long as he preserves himself, he continues to miss the divine. Yet you will see a thousand kinds of religious people who think they are seeking God; who think they are worshipping God; who think they are going to attain God—but their surrender is nowhere. Then religion becomes a deception. It goes on, but brings nothing.

Rightly understood, religion, in a very deep sense, is self-annihilation. In a very deep sense. When an ordinary person commits suicide, he only finishes the body. The religious person, in truth, brings an end to his “I.” Even “brings an end” does not quite say it—he experiences it. Seeing all around, the “I” dissolves.

Lao Tzu has said: “As long as I sought God, I could not find—because I, the seeker, was present. I was there; I could not find him. When I dropped the search, and I dropped the one who searched, then I found I had been mad—what was I wandering around looking for? He was here. It was only because of my presence that he was not visible.” He has said: “When I became like a dry leaf, if the winds took me east, I went east—for I had become a dry leaf. If the winds went west, I went west. I had no destination of my own. I had nowhere to reach. If the winds laid me on the earth, I rested; if they lifted me into the sky, I enjoyed the sun.” This state is called surrender.

So, surrender is not an act. Surrender is the lived realization that we are not separate, that we are joined to the Vast. Then surrender happens. And the moment surrender happens, a revolution happens in life. Then when someone abuses you, it will not feel as if you are being abused—you are no longer there. Nor will it feel as if he could be your enemy, because he too is part of the Vast. Then anger becomes impossible; anxiety becomes impossible; restlessness becomes impossible. Then acceptance arrives for whatever happens. The result of surrender is total acceptability. Then whatever is happening is accepted. We will never again say, “It should have been otherwise.” Whatever is happening is right.

Look this way—search—at life all around, and you will begin to see: needlessly have I been holding onto myself and troubling myself. And that which I am guarding is like a man trying to bind the wind with a clenched fist. The tighter he clenches, the more he finds that the wind is no longer in his fist. If you want to hold air, the secret is not to clench the fist; to hold air, the secret is to open the fist. This is a very paradoxical secret. In the world, to grasp anything you must clench your fist. Only in the matter of the divine does the rule become like the air. To attain him, the ego is the most unnecessary thing. The more the ego, the tighter the fist, and the harder the attainment. Surrender is the antidote—the reverse journey of the ego. Nothing more.

(Question not clear in the recording.)

You ask about the transmigration of the soul and about karma… The truth is: the phrase “transmigration of the soul” is not accurate. But we have to make do with language. Transmigration happens only to bodies. The soul is—simply is. One body gets tired, worn out, then it is changed. The soul neither comes nor goes. The soul is; that which is, we call soul. But from our side we can make do—we can think like this. For certainly, one body is dropped, then another, a third. The entire journey is a changing of bodies. You bring clothes home and you change them; you never say your transmigration is happening. You only say clothes are coming and going; clothes are changing. You never say, “I changed clothes, so my transmigration has occurred.” What transmigration of yours? It is the clothes that come and go—the old went, the new came. You remain what you are.

Exactly so, no transmigration happens to the soul. Only the “clothes” keep changing—and the body is a deeper garment. It lasts seventy, eighty, a hundred years. That which neither enters nor leaves the garment is the soul. When it dawns that within these garments there is a resident, within this house there is an inhabitant, then it also dawns that whatever we do, the results of that doing do not reach the soul; they reach the mind.

The body changes with every birth. The mind does not change with every birth. It is an even deeper garment—like changing the coat while the shirt remains old. The mind is the deeper garment that does not change with each birth. Its journey is of thousands, millions of years. So, with every death the mind does not die. There is only one death in which the mind dies—when a man dies after samadhi. Then the mind is no more; it too dies. And the moment the mind dies, there remains no way to take on a new body.

The mind is the bridge between soul and body. Without the mind, a body cannot be taken. So you bring the mind from previous births—many births. You take on a new body, but the mind you have is old. And on the basis of that mind you also choose the new “clothes”—according to its likes and dislikes. The mind continues.

This mind is the distilled essence of all our actions done, thoughts thought, feelings felt, life lived. Call the mind our personality. Therefore our personalities are different; the soul is not different. Our personalities differ because our minds differ. This mind will go along with you—meaning only that it will not fall with the fall of this body. And on the basis of this very mind you will enter a new womb or take a new body.

This mind is the total of our entire life—of what you did and of what you did not do. Doing is an act, and not-doing is also an act. If I come into this room and steal, I have performed an act; if I come into this room and do not steal, that too is an act. Both will have an effect on my mind. What we do, and what we refrain from doing—both are constructing the mind.

Our mind is being constructed all the time. It is being created 24 hours a day. Even in sleep the mind is being formed. You saw certain dreams, I saw others—the mind was shaped. Even in deep sleep it is forming. Properly understood, the mind is the ledger of our whole life. It has been and is being formed. It will remain with you—until you break it. To break it is what is called surrender. To erase it, to wipe it away, to bid it farewell—that is what is called meditation.

Now, if you ask the knowers what meditation means, they will say: no-mind. When the mind is not, meditation happens. Kabir called it the a-mani state—the state without mind. As long as mind is, meditation cannot be. And the moment meditation happens, the craving that was there to put on new clothes, to take new bodies, departs. Life still is, but it becomes bodiless; it is no longer of the body.

“Sanchit” means only this: your past—your yesterdays. Whatever you did yesterday is present with you today. There is no way to run from it, because whatever you are is the sum total of all your yesterdays. That is your mind. Upon this mind, all is accumulated. The moment this mind is dismissed, the accumulated past is dismissed. Still, you remain. You still live. You act—but then no new mind is formed.

If once surrender happens, the mind is no longer constructed. Surrender stops—ends—the process of mind-building. Then you live as if you are only an instrument of God. You live as if you are not the doer; the Doer is That. You live as a flute; the notes are His. Then the mind is not formed.

The mind is formed only so long as one is ego-centric. So long as we are centered in ourselves, the mind is formed. When we begin to say “Thou,” the mind is not formed. Then if good occurs, it is His; if bad occurs, it is His; everything is surrendered to That. If you are a thief, then He is the thief; if you are a saint, He is the saint. You are no longer in between. And the day this moment dawns in a person—that He is doing, I am not—then the revolution occurs than which none is greater.

The person who says, “I am doing good deeds,” will also accumulate; his ego will form—yes, he will have a golden ego. The one doing evil says, “I am doing evil,” and he will have an iron ego. There is no other difference. Many times, the golden ego proves worse than the iron—because the iron one one wants to drop; the golden one one wants to protect. If you want to keep a prisoner in jail forever, do not put iron chains on him, put golden chains—he himself will guard them.

So whether deeds are good or bad—both bind. Both accumulate. Only non-doing does not accumulate. Deeds accumulate; non-doing does not. Therefore non-doing is the only sadhana. But non-doing does not mean running away from work—because running away is also a deed. If someone says, “I am leaving the world,” that too is karma.

Non-doing has only one meaning: surrender. That whatever is being done, I am not doing—God is doing. Live by knowing this, not merely by believing it. If you try to live by belief, a great mess will result. Believing makes no difference—belief too is of the mind; the work is still ongoing; “I will surrender” is still the “I” doing it. No—when you come to know and live it, then karma departs; the accumulated past departs; the mind departs. What remains is pure existence. Call it what you will—Brahman, moksha, nirvana—any name.

Yes, the mind remains the same, and after a person dies all the memory remains with them. But layers settle over it. Imagine we don’t clean this room for seven years: today dust will come, and it will keep coming every day for seven years. After seven years, when we return, the top layer will be today’s, and below it the earlier layers will be pressed down. The seven-year-old layer will still be there, but buried very deep. It’s possible the top layer won’t even know that seven years of dust lie underneath.

So the mind is traveling, and the journey is progressive. Every day you add something to it. Yesterday gets buried under today; then today will be buried under tomorrow. The previous birth gets buried under this birth, and the one before that under two births, and so on—down into what psychologists call the unconscious. Sometimes it happens that you are yourself your unconscious, and such a vast distance opens within that, even if you reach out, you cannot touch those depths. You don’t even know they are there. And reaching there is dangerous too.

A person cannot bear the full weight of the memories of even one life; one can go mad under that burden. So nature has made perfect arrangements. If you were to retain even the memories of the last twenty-four hours without forgetting any of it, you would go insane. Nature is constantly sorting: what is useless it throws into the trash, down into the basement of your mind. What is useful, it keeps—very little, not all.

If we ask, “From the whole of last year, what memories are left in your mind?” perhaps two or four items have remained worthy of remembrance; the rest has been discarded. This sorting goes on all the time in your brain. It is necessary; otherwise life would become impossible. Because you have to live tomorrow, and if yesterday is too strong it will interfere with tomorrow. So it has to be moved aside. What is essential will be kept; the rest will be removed. If memories of your past birth were to remain on the surface, this life would become very difficult.

It may be that your present wife was your mother in a past life—then you would be in a great dilemma. Such dilemmas do arise. The one who is a friend in this life may have been an enemy in the next; the enemy there may be a friend here. Therefore forgetting is necessary—forgetting, but not erasing. Forgetting means only that it is pushed into deeper layers.

If you wish, and undertake special methods, it can be awakened. There are techniques for it. One can recollect; one can enter those layers and know the whole journey through all births: not only your human births, but your animal births, and not only animal but even your tree-lives. Those memories too remain with you. If you were ever a stone, those memories are there—the knocks and kicks by the roadside; falling from mountains; being swept away in rivers—those memories are stored within you. One can descend into them.

But you can descend only when, in this life, you are utterly at ease and quiet. Otherwise the explosion will be so great that it will be beyond your capacity to manage—like touching a wasp’s nest. Better not to touch it; pass by silently. Until this life is so tranquil that nothing can disturb you, wait; then you can enter that turbulence. To awaken those memories is of great value—but it has a price.

Buddha and Mahavira both made this an integral part of their meditation and discipline. They called it jati-smarana, remembrance of past births. They said every seeker must pass through it. Because if even two births are remembered, you change at once. In the last birth you amassed a great deal of wealth—and then died. Before that too you gathered much wealth—and died. Again before that—you collected wealth—and died. Then in this life it becomes difficult to chase wealth with the same madness, because you know: in the end you die, leaving it all. In that birth you told someone, “I cannot live without you.” Before that, you told someone else the same thing, and before that, yet another. Now, in this life, it becomes very hard to say, “I cannot live without you,” because you have been living across births. So such remembrance can be useful—but its prerequisite is a very quiet mind; otherwise, it can also be dangerous.

Generally that is how it has happened. It is not necessary that it must be so, but generally it has been so: most of what has been done in the world has been done by those who have not surrendered. Yet this is not the whole truth. Yes, they have given comforts. Trains were not made by those who surrendered. Airplanes were not made by those who surrendered. But those who have surrendered have given human beings something far greater than comfort, greater than super-conveniences: they have given bliss. They too have given something. And there is a certain quirk with super-conveniences: they appear to be super only as long as you don’t have them. Once you have them, they no longer feel that way.

Bliss has the opposite arithmetic. As long as you don’t have it, you cannot even recognize it; only when you have it do you know. Pleasure and convenience are pleasures and conveniences only for those who don’t yet have them—only for them. The one sitting in a palace does not feel the palace’s comfort at all. The one standing out on the road does. And here is the strange thing: if the man on the road gets into the palace tomorrow, he too will stop noticing those comforts.

Pleasure and convenience are like drums that sound good from a distance; up close they never quite register. As you come near, they vanish. In fact, the mind has a peculiar knack: it finds inconvenience in every convenience—again and again. It goes on doing so. This is why the scientists who provide conveniences are tired and worried now: “We keep giving conveniences, yet man does not become happy. After every convenience he only asks for a bigger one. ‘Give us something greater.’ We have tried giving so many, but nothing fundamental has changed.”

Those who have surrendered have also given, but what they give is very subtle. They give not pleasure or convenience, but bliss. And there is another feature with bliss. With comforts—yes, with comforts—a person discovers fresh inconveniences every day, even within comfort. Until you have a car, the Ambassador gliding down the road looks like great convenience. The day you have it, you say, “The door doesn’t shut right; it rattles. The seat isn’t good; there’s noise when it moves. It smells of petrol.” From that day on, the man inside the car keeps complaining about the Ambassador. The man outside keeps asking for an Ambassador, and the man inside keeps complaining about it.

A mind fixated on comfort will ferret out discomfort in every convenience—because the mind hasn’t changed. You just sat the man who was outside the car inside it; the man is the same. He was finding inconveniences on the road, not knowing that someone trudging in the jungle, without even a road, sees enormous convenience in a road. Bring him from the jungle to the road, and the “convenience” evaporates. He then feels a car is the real convenience. The man in the car imagines the airplane has the real convenience—no bumps. Ask the passenger in the airplane; his inconveniences have only grown subtler. A mind that hunts comfort will always find discomfort. A mind that seeks bliss will find bliss even in inconvenience, even in sorrow, even in pain. Once you discover the key to bliss, you can find it anywhere.

Those who surrendered have given a great deal, but we don’t notice it because we are seekers of comfort. In our language, it has no currency. What meaning does “bliss” have? Put a car in front of a man and say, “On the other side is bliss,” and ninety-nine out of a hundred will choose the car, not bliss. “What use is bliss? And what is it, anyway?” Bliss is not a solid thing you can stand next to a car. A car is solid. Or place millions in wealth on one side and say, “On the other side stands God.” God is not visible; wealth is. The man will say, “Let me take the wealth first; I will look into God afterward.” His choice will be for wealth.

So we do not notice what we do not ask for. We notice what we do ask for. But the Western countries have begun to see that what Buddha, Patanjali, Jesus, Krishna have given is far more valuable than what our scientists have given. They are beginning to see it because their conveniences have reached the limit—the saturation point. We are poor; we hardly have conveniences. So we still feel that those who provide conveniences have done the great work. It won’t take the world long to outgrow this. And those who truly surrender are very few—almost none. What the surrendered give is so subtle that it cannot be measured or weighed or recorded. It is extremely fine.

If I hit your head with a stone, it will leave a mark. If I place my hand on your head with love, it leaves no mark. On the street, if there’s a bruise, everyone will ask, “What happened?” But if love’s hand has touched your head, no one will ask, for there is nothing visible anywhere. Nothing is visible.

That is why the gifts of the surrendered do not show. They are like that loving hand. Only those who experience them can know. But the mischief-makers—their deeds are like the stone’s blow; they are visible. Hence we do not write history about Buddha, Mahavira, and Krishna. What history would you write? We write history of Hitler, Genghis Khan, Mussolini. Their blows are of stone; they show clearly. The subtler a thing is, the harder it is to grasp; therefore it doesn’t enter our reckoning. Yet truly, the real gifts are theirs. And you will recognize them only when your race after comfort has run its course.

So I do not say, “Stop.” Run! Learn by experience that all conveniences, when gathered, become inconvenience; that all pleasures, when attained, turn into pain. Until you get them, they seem otherwise. That’s why the happiest of the happy are those who don’t get pleasures; and the most miserable are those who do. Poor nations appear more cheerful; rich nations less so. The forest-dwelling tribal seems more carefree than the city-dweller. Though he has nothing, he has everything; and though the other has everything, his hope has died. He sinks into sadness. Whenever a society touches the pinnacle of prosperity, history begins—immediately. There is nothing left to obtain, and the mind grows desolate. It is like this: we were running toward the mountaintop thinking that, upon reaching it, we would get everything. Those still running are delighted. The one who reaches and finds his hands empty becomes instantly dejected. Something like that.

I am not saying man should be denied conveniences. I am saying: he should have them—fully, and quickly—so that he becomes free of them, and comes to know that there is nothing in them. Nothing at all.

What the surrendered have given is not visible. What the non-surrendered have given is apparent. But the ultimate value belongs to what is not visible; what is visible does not retain its value for long.

If I love someone, what is seen is the body. If my love is only for the body, it will last two days. Soon this visible body will become forgettable. But if something invisible, too, is part of my love, then it will endure—because the invisible never runs out.

Whatever the senses can grasp is destined to be exhausted. What the senses cannot grasp is inexhaustible. But this accounting becomes clear only much later, when conveniences go flat and a ray of bliss touches you. Then you understand what Buddha gave. Then you understand what Einstein gave. And here is the irony: Buddha can be blissful without Einstein; Einstein cannot be blissful without Buddha. Even Einstein grew restless at death, after giving so much—restless because he had no glimpse of bliss. Buddha can be blissful without anyone; but even if you have all conveniences, you cannot be blissful without Buddha. That event must happen.

Conveniences are necessary; they are not the end of life. They are the road, not the destination. They should be there; but if there are only conveniences, life becomes meaningless. Even a life with inconvenience is then a bit more meaningful. If you don’t have a big house or a big car, at least you keep running after them; there is some juice in that. You don’t realize that if we made a rule that whatever a person wants be given to him immediately, you would find that in five minutes he would commit suicide—for nothing would be left to do. He would become utterly futile.

That is why, the more affluent a nation, the higher its suicides. America has more suicides than India; India has more than the tribal Bastar. The tribal has no reason to kill himself, because his life is full of hope. Suicide comes from despair, and despair comes when what you had pinned your hopes on is finally obtained and turns out to be empty. “We ran in vain. We wasted time and energy—and in our hands, nothing.”

In my view, comfort, property, pleasure have one distinguishing feature: once attained, they become futile; as long as they are not attained, they seem meaningful. Therefore I say: attain them. If you accept this merely on hearsay without experiencing it, there will be trouble. Go and get them. Try fully. And see in your own life. Everyone gets something or other. It need not be a car or a mansion. When you don’t have a wristwatch, you worry that if only you had one, you would be so happy. For a night or two, when you finally get it, you can’t even sleep; in the night you feel like checking the time two or three times. After four or six days, you find the whole thing is over. Now you need something else to bring joy.

Whatever you obtain—be it a bicycle, a pair of shoes, clothes, a spouse—whatever you get, look closely. When you didn’t have it, how much hope you invested in it; and when you got it, how much of that hope blossomed. You will be astonished.

But we don’t look that closely. As soon as one thing goes flat, we instantly latch onto another. We get no chance to see; no gap. The watch becomes meaningless; then we need a car. The car becomes meaningless; then an airplane. The airplane becomes meaningless; then something else. We never turn back to see that everything we desired has turned out to be empty.

If this becomes visible to you, your very desiring will seem futile. Desire itself will be revealed as the only futility. You will say, “Everything else is fine; one thing is certainly useless—desire.” The day this dawns, the search for those who have surrendered will become meaningful in your life. Not before.

Yes, yes—I’m not saying no.

Yes.

Yes, yes—they do.

Those who surrender are so few. And if those who surrender were to become many, there would be no need for conveniences at all; life itself would be suffused with ease. The other is only fulfilling your demand. It’s like this: we say a man is a doctor—he is curing the sick. But he cures only the sick. If tomorrow people stopped being ill, whom would the doctor treat? We would tell the doctor, now you may take your leave. He is needed only because he is the maker of conveniences; he exists because of your need. You are producing him.

You say, “We want a big house,” so the architect draws the plans for a big house. Tomorrow you will say, “It’s not a matter of a big house, it’s a matter of a big heart. We’ve tried living in big houses; now even a small hut will do—but the heart must be big.” Then the architect will say, “I’m out of work,” because he has no blueprint for enlarging the heart. So he will go on giving you bigger and bigger houses—and how big he is making them! He has given you hundred-and-fifty–storey buildings so you can touch the sky. But the man sitting on the hundred-and-fiftieth floor is just as troubled as he was on the first floor—perhaps even more. And now where is he to go? He has climbed into the sky—now where? Now they tell him, “We’ll get you to the moon.” He starts pinning his hopes on going to the moon.

In Tokyo, for 1975, a company has begun issuing tickets for the moon. Those who want them can buy the tickets now. They say in advance, “We’ll get you there in 1975.” Those who have nothing left to do on earth buy those tickets; and the one who fails to reach the moon—his misery will be endless. The amusing thing is that now the poor man will be the one who couldn’t reach the moon—terribly poor. He will weep and cry, “All our joy is being taken away; some people are going to the moon.” And those who go to the moon are the same as the ones who were living on earth—and the earth is far more beautiful than the moon.

But what is near is not seen. There is nothing on the moon—nothing but dry, barren rock. Yet now the moon has become very beautiful because it is in the grip of a few. Only a few can go; it will cost hundreds of thousands. A few will go. When they return, there will be plaques outside—“Moon-returned.” There will be receptions in their honor. Though no one will ask them, “What did you get there that you didn’t get on earth?” No one will ask them that. It was just the same.

It has already happened, it has already happened. If surrender happens, desire will cease. If desire ceases, surrender will happen. They are two sides of the same coin; there is no difference between them—none at all.

Yes, absolutely. In fact, biologists say that memory is in the brain, in the cortex—it is part of the body. Being part of the body, the memory that is in the brain will die with the body. But biologists have not gone deeper than this. What they call “brain,” we have never called “mind.” From our perspective, the brain is merely the mechanism, and the mind is its active force.

It’s like a lamp that is glowing. Anyone seeing it will say, “There is electricity in the bulb. Break the bulb and the electricity breaks.” He can even offer proof: smash the bulb and it goes dark. Yet even so, he is not saying the right thing. His proof is solid and we may not be able to deny it, but still he is not right. The bulb is not electricity; the bulb is only a mechanism through which electricity is manifested. Even when the bulb breaks, electricity remains; electricity does not break with the bulb. Only the means of its manifestation ceases.

So the brain is a mechanism. Memory is stored in it. The mind is its active power. The mind, too, preserves a counterpart of memory. And that is why it often happens that you say, “It’s on the tip of my tongue, but it just won’t come.” If it’s on the tongue, why doesn’t it come? On whose tongue is it? You say, “On my tongue,” and yet you yourself can’t recall it. Somewhere there has been a dislocation. A dislocation between mind and brain. The mind is saying, “I know it,” but the brain is not functioning in parallel as it should. There is a dislocation. So you light a cigarette, or you go for a walk in the garden, and suddenly it comes— the dislocation has vanished. You relax. The connection between mind and brain is reestablished. Then the mind says, “I was telling you all along—it was right on the tip of the tongue.”

It was not on the tongue. The subtle, inner mind was saying, “We know this person,” but the mechanism was not responding with the details—when we met, where, how—those details were not being supplied. That’s all. This mind will go with you. The brain will break. In a new body, when there is a new brain, we will again have to train the brain. Training will happen, and then the mind will once again start taking work from it.

Sooner or later biology will also say this. But science moves step by step—and that is how it should move. Science cannot take leaps; it should not. Religion takes leaps; it should. In fact, religion always takes a leap ahead of science. What science will prove in one or two thousand years, religion begins to say two thousand years earlier. It is prophetic. It begins to tell us what is not yet verifiable in the laboratory, but someday will be.

So ordinary memory resides in our brain. But corresponding to it, there is our parallel mind, in which subtle memory resides. These subtle memories will go with you. And those subtle memories can be awakened—there is no difficulty in this. None at all. But for now, given the present pace of science, especially biology—biology’s pace is very slow. One could say biology is the most underdeveloped science at present. Among the developed sciences only physics, and after it chemistry, have truly developed.

It is quite interesting that only physics has developed in a way we can call properly scientific. The result of physics developing rightly is that whatever man thought about the physical world has turned out to be wrong. What he believed till now—that there is matter—physics says there is no matter; it is energy. Only one science has developed rightly.

And the experiences and findings of the science that has developed rightly have come very close to religion. The less developed a science is, the greater its distance from religion. It has to be so. Do you get my meaning? Because religion takes a far-reaching leap—an insight. It speaks of tomorrow: “It will be so.” But only when tomorrow comes will there be proof, no? At present biology is the least developed, and psychology even less developed.

Therefore biology… But biology is now advancing rapidly. In the last twenty years the speed of biology’s growth has been astonishing—and natural. Because as soon as we complete the exploration of matter, we turn to the exploration of living matter. Before that, we cannot do it. Once the exploration of matter is done, then we can explore living matter. And from the exploration of living matter, proclamations even more astonishing are going to emerge than those that came from the study of dead matter.

The entire set of human assumptions will be transformed. Many of religion’s experiences will be verified closely, almost. But they will not be verified exactly as the religious people said; there will be some differences. For prophecy is one thing, and experiment is quite another. There will be small adjustments in the details. But the essential experiences are going to turn out almost right. It is only a matter of time.