Prem Nadi Ke Teera #13

Let it begin first. Once it begins, depth does not take long.

That it should be—I don't say. Yes, it can be. That it can be—I don't say; that it should be.

There is no peace there—not even apparent peace. There isn’t even apparent peace there. I call it derangement. It is madness. You were there in the morning, weren’t you? I am calling it derangement— that man is simply caught in madness.

Yes, yes. It can certainly be done. Music can be set to OM—music can be set to anything. But the effect on you will not be because of OM. The effect on you will be due to the harmony of the notes. Whatever the music, it is the rhythmic consonance between two notes that impacts you. Whether it says OM or anything else makes no difference; that has nothing to do with it.

What matters is that the impact of the notes upon the psyche be rhythmic. That’s all—rhythmicity is music. What you sing—whether a film song or a bhajan—does not matter. It is that rhythmicity which influences your mind.

This too I call only an apparent peace. It is not peace. It is not peace. But a person who sits chanting OM, OM, OM is, poor fellow, in what one would call a psychoneurotic state. He is in a condition where he needs therapy, treatment. He is in a very bad way. All his talent will die. The alertness of consciousness, its brilliance, will die. He will become dull. You will not have seen people who keep chanting Ram-Ram as talented; you will not find a genius among them. A dull mind—and slowly, slowly they will become stupid.

Because these practices are stupid. This business is so mechanical and so foolish that its total impact is bound to lead toward dullness, toward tamas—toward inertia. All such name-chanting produces a tamasic sleep. It is tamas-filled. It has nothing to do with truth.

The real world is not to be forgotten; it is to be known. Why forget?

Yes, I give this just the same value. I keep saying: just as wine is, so is this “Ram-Ram.” I don’t make a distinction between them. Go to the tavern or go to the temple—I make no difference. Yes, yes, exactly that. That’s what I say. That’s how it is.

In truth, the very moment you separate from the senses, you immediately separate from the body. That event does not happen inside the body. Otherwise it would be another matter. That event simply does not take place within the body. In fact, what we call the body is nothing but a network of the senses—the outward- and inward-going nerves. If we understand rightly, the body is merely the sum total of the senses, nothing else. There is nothing else in the body; it is the aggregate of the senses.

It is like a telephone. You pick it up and make a call. The handset you see is not the whole phone. The entire wiring system is also part of it. You see? All of that belongs to it. The exchange too is part of it. It is a whole network.

When you see with the eyes, it is not only the eye that is working; the whole network of nerves behind the eye is at work. If you withdraw from the senses, you withdraw from the body. The trans-sensory is the bodiless; you move into bodilessness. That event happens; it is beyond the body. Whenever one stands apart by separating consciousness from all the senses, one immediately finds that the body lies separate, and I am separate. Therefore, it cannot be said that it happens somewhere in the body. The happening is outside the body; it does not happen within the body.

There are counterparts. There are counterparts in the body. The happening itself does not occur inside the body. But within the body there are those parts through which the soul’s contact becomes available to the body. Like two wires connected, both touching: there is a contact field through which the electricity of one wire passes into the other. In the same way there are certain places in our body—contact fields—where consciousness and the body are joined.

These are what are called chakras. They are called chakras for this very reason—because when two energies meet, a whirl, an intense movement, is created there. Through that movement consciousness enters within. A chakra is not something static.

In English the word “center” doesn’t convey it; it is misleading. A center is static—a fixed point. Chakra means: moving, dynamic; there is movement in it. Whenever two contact fields meet, a state of movement arises. Even that state of movement cannot be grasped through the body. If you try to catch it through the body, the search becomes difficult. If you ask a physiologist—“We dissected the whole body; nowhere do we see a chakra”—there is no heart chakra found, no anything else, no ajna chakra. In that sense, it is not there.

It is like this: a bulb is glowing. We remove the bulb and smash it to pieces, then search for where that light was. We won’t find it anywhere. Then someone may say with certainty, “There was no light in this bulb—because we opened it up completely and there is no light anywhere inside.” The light was a contact coming from outside, appearing through the bulb, but not exactly in the bulb. It was coming from outside.

So the consciousness coming into our body is coming from outside, from somewhere else. There are certain places through which it enters. If sensitivity grows a little, understanding deepens, inquiry increases, those centers in your body will begin to feel very alive and whirling. Their movement will become clearly apparent. All that will be seen. But still, if you cut open the body and look, you won’t find it there. And so the yogi gets into great difficulty; it is a big problem for him. He has the direct experience that the chakra is here; then he goes to a hospital and the doctor examines him and says, “There is nothing here.”

It is like this: we are all sitting here thinking. If I ask you, “Are you thinking?” you will say, “Yes.” But if we open the skull right now, no thought will be found. Then we could say you were lying. Where are the thoughts? We open the skull and look. And if someone wanted to prove it, he could prove: no one ever thinks—everyone is lying. Because whenever a skull is opened, no thought is found. That we accept it is another matter.

If we refuse to accept it, no one could prove that thoughts exist. Opening the skull gives nothing; the thought disappears completely. Yet you have a firm experience of it—you are experiencing thought. I know that thought is within, but it is not graspable in the body. Exactly in the same way, there is experience of the chakras. And the whole arrangement of life is profoundly related to the chakras.

If the chakras can be rightly understood, it would greatly help in transforming the whole process of life—greatly help. It may be that you toil your whole life and just one of your chakras is sluggish, and all your effort goes to waste. It is as if you keep pushing a door while the key is in the lock and the door is locked, and you don’t even know that a door has a lock. You are only pushing—you are laboring uselessly. Someone intelligent will come, and knowing, will turn the key; with a wave of the hand, the door will open.

Many times we keep doing a lot of useless labor. If we come to know a little about the contact fields, we can move through them very quickly—move at once. Lately I am thinking of devoting an entire book to this, so that the whole matter can be brought clearly into view.

It is centered differently. Therefore, whichever chakra you focus on, the energy begins to enter right there. If someone finds pleasure at the sex center, his soul will gather around it. He will keep repeating the same, and he will not even know that there were other centers left empty—where contact could also have happened. And this is what usually happens: most people live and die in just one or two centers—most people.

For example, if someone is very intelligent, an intellectual, he lives only at the chakra of intellect. All his power, his whole soul, gathers there. So it may happen that a scientist does not feel the need to marry; sex does not even arise as a question. The reason is not that he has attained celibacy; the only reason is that his entire soul has moved to that center of intellect from where it does not return toward sex. The question drops because all his being is collected there. Only one kind of work remains for him. And each of these chakras has its own distinct journeys.

Whichever chakra you are working upon, only the experiences belonging to the plane of that chakra become available to you. It’s like this: from here, if the angle of my eye is straight ahead, I will see what falls straight on the wall. If the angle is upward, I will see what is in the sky. If it tilts downward, I will see what is on the ground. Everything is present, but I will see only what matches the angle of my eye.

Our centers are the centers of our perception. We know only that which is our center. Therefore we have no idea what happens on another center. And when a person of another center tells us something, we say, “What madness is this? This cannot be. It simply cannot be.”

Take a small child. His sex center has not yet become active. He cannot even imagine how people are troubled, tormented, and mad for sex. If someone tells him that the world is going mad over this, he will say, “What’s the need? What’s the issue?” His sex center has not yet awakened; he is not looking at the world from there.

The moment a center becomes active, experiences belonging to its plane begin to arise for us. And when all the centers become active, one experiences life in its totality—and then something utterly new happens. Consider two directions: on the ground draw a straight horizontal line, and then draw a vertical line from the earth toward the sky. The person who goes along the horizontal line will never be free of the ground. He may walk and walk, he may traverse millions of miles—he remains on the earth, because the line he has chosen runs on the earth. The person who undertakes the vertical journey—like an airplane lifting up—his vertical journey begins only at the point where the ground is left behind; it does not begin before that. The horizontal journey runs on the ground. So it does not matter how far you go: if you say, “We’ll walk a thousand miles and be out of it,” you are mistaken. After a thousand miles you are still on it—because your path is horizontal.

There are these two ways in the centers as well. Ordinarily we live horizontally. Take the sex center, for instance. We keep moving horizontally on and on across the sex center; it never goes beyond sex. One woman comes, one man comes; a thousand women come, a thousand men come—no difference. A thousand lives—no difference. The horizontal line simply continues. On that path, whatever you encounter, you relate to it only through sex. It goes on increasing, but you never go beyond it. You may say, “We will pass through many experiences and thus get out.” But you will not get out—because your journey is horizontal.

There is another journey: the vertical. Vertical means you don’t go through and through one center; you move from one center to the next—one below, then the one above it, then above that, and so on. You are moving upward, center by center. Understand it this way: the ground of man’s spiritual life is sex. It is his ground. Upon it he can travel horizontally for infinite births; it will make no difference—no experience will take him beyond it. From that same center there is another journey that is vertical, which connects to the center above.

And once the vertical journey begins—just as you rise above the sex center—you find at the higher center bliss a thousand times greater than sex. The moment that bliss is experienced, there is no question of going down again. The man will laugh; he will say, “What madness!” And once he knows that by leaving one center he has found so much more, his search naturally turns upward.

The horizontal journey, too, is because of the lure of pleasure. A man enjoys a woman and feels great pleasure; then he thinks, “If I enjoy many women, I will get more pleasure.” So he moves from one woman to another, one man to another, changing and changing. “If in one life I got this much, then in ten lives I’ll get much more.” The previous experience pushes him forward—horizontally. In exactly the same way, if his momentum once carries him from one center to the next, he discovers what it means to leave a center—to rise so much higher, to gain so much more.

When an airplane rises a thousand feet, vast open sky appears; the dirt and stench below are left behind; the slums are no longer visible. Rise another thousand feet, and the open sky comes closer and closer. Each center you ascend, the expanse opens that much more. My own understanding is that from each center to the next, the intensity of experience increases a thousandfold. But even there, if you take hold of the horizontal, you will get into trouble.

Often the yogi does exactly that. He reaches some center above sex—and then his journey turns horizontal again. He is lost once more. Now he has risen a little above the ground—say four feet—and he begins to speed along. They have even made some cars now that can travel four feet above the earth. They will still run over the earth, with a four-foot gap; the potholes and rough patches won’t bother them; roads won’t be needed. They can go without roads—but they will still go horizontally. The journey remains the same.

So if a man gets a little taste of bliss at any other center, he may start moving horizontally on that level—and be lost again. Therefore, as many centers as we have, just so many paths of wandering we have. If you go vertical through them, fine. If you move horizontally, you are gone. And the horizontal journey never ends. You can roam for infinite births—on and on—and reach nowhere.

Sadhana means the mind does not remain horizontal; it becomes vertical. The beginning of sadhana means the mind no longer travels along the straight flat path; it travels toward the sky. About the lamp—when you asked me what to make, I said: make a lamp. The lamp is a symbol of the vertical journey. Make it your symbol. You cannot make a lamp travel horizontally—there is no way to make it move like that. Its flame always rushes upward. That is why fire became a symbol—deeply meaningful in many ways.

It became a symbol because perhaps it is the only thing whose journey is never horizontal—always vertical: up, up, up. That constant sense of rising—that is it. And from one center to the next, the bliss increases a thousandfold.

And when you pass through all seven centers—seven centers. Understand that the sex center is number two; it is not number one. Sex is center number two. From there you can also descend to center number one; if you go below it, you fall into coma, into unconsciousness. Below that, there is no consciousness. Plants live there, stones live there, animals and birds live there. They live at the center one below the sex center. They sometimes come up to sex, but then they fall back to their own center below.

That is why sex in animals and birds is periodic; in man it is not periodic. The only reason is this: pushed by seasons and nature, they somehow manage to reach up to sex; when their work is done, they fall back to the lower center. Some people say, “The animal is better than man.” No “better” or “worse” is involved. The simple reason is that the animal cannot remain constant at the sex center. He touches it sometimes, then falls back again.

For man the sex center is constant; therefore man is not periodic. He is filled with sex twenty-four hours a day—he lives at that center. He can also fall below it: if someone grossly dissipates sexual energy, he can drop beneath—even into coma—below the level of animals and plants. Some people mistakenly take this to be samadhi. It is a faint, stupefied samadhi.

It is not samadhi. One can fall into it. Falling into it, man becomes one with nature, not one with the divine. Falling below, he becomes like matter. He too becomes “one,” but he knows nothing of oneness. He simply sinks into great inertia, deep sleep.

You will be surprised: in sleep, too, you descend below the sex center—in sleep as well. You reach the level of vegetation, animals, birds, stones—yes, you go into sushupti, deep sleep. You have dropped below that center. Sometimes you come up to the sex center; otherwise you fall back below. Sex is center number two. And there is, in a corresponding way, another “number two.”

Opposite to sex, the corresponding center is Ajna. If you go above it, you reach the center from which the door to the divine opens. Just as descending below sex brings you to the center whose door opens into nature, ascending above Ajna brings you to the threshold from which the door opens into God.

It's not really a matter of numbers. I mean, you can call them seven, nine, ten... In truth, there are at least a thousand centers. But only the very powerful ones are counted. Many count five, some count seven, some six—this is not the issue. Beyond that comes the center from which the journey proceeds further. This is about undertaking a vertical journey.

Do not avoid it.

The danger of stopping exists at every chakra. Wherever we arrive there is plenty of delight; and where there is delight, there is danger.

There is a very old Sufi story. A man went into the forest. He said to an old fakir, “I am starving to death. I cut wood and sell it; I have no other means. I live only by selling wood. I chop all day and still cannot earn enough to eat; the next day hunger stands up again.”

The fakir said, “Go a little further.”
He asked, “A little further?”
“Yes,” said the fakir, “a little beyond where you cut wood.”

He went a little further and was overjoyed. He found a copper mine. He brought copper and sold it; provisions were arranged for many months. After that he didn’t go back to meet the fakir. Many days later the old man saw him; he was very happy. He said to the old man, “Many thanks! I am living in great joy.” The old man said, “Fool, you can go a little further too.”

That day he went a little further and found a silver mine. He said, “I was such a fool to get stuck at copper. But copper was working well enough. I was a woodcutter; my total experience was that a day of chopping brought a day’s food. Copper brought in enough for three months in a day. I had found great wealth; the matter seemed finished.”

He became very happy with the silver. For a year or two he didn’t appear. He would meet the old man on the road, now in great pomp, riding in his chariot. The old man said, “You look very pleased.” He said, “Very pleased indeed. Great is your grace.” The old man said, “You could go a little further as well.” He went a little further and found a gold mine. He said, “I was a fool to stop at silver. I would have wasted my life. What I hauled for a year will now come in a single day.”

Then he was not seen for many years. When the old man was near death, he went to his house to tell him, “You are stuck there; you can still go a little further.” The man said, “Why don’t you tell it all at once?” The old man said, “What can I do? You keep stopping.” He went again, and he found a diamond mine. Now there was no question left at all. If the old man sometimes knocked at his door, the guards would drive him away: “Go away; the master cannot see you now.” “As you wish.” One day the old man was calling out as the master was coming out; the guard scolded him. The master said, “Don’t scold him. It is this old man who arranged everything.” The old man said, “I am close to dying, and I have come to tell you: you can go a little further.”

The truth is that whenever we pass through an experience and then a bigger experience comes, we stop immediately. Every great experience is a stopper.

And remember, there is a place where there is no experience at all—and one has to reach there. One has to reach where there is no experience. And beyond that there is no “further.” But all experiences stop you—every experience. In fact, if someone says, “Go further,” he will seem wicked, harsh, because we are savoring great juice there, and he says, “Not here—further.” If he tries to break our attachment there, to shake us, we will refuse.

And, what’s more, note this: suppose in one life someone rises from the sex center to the second center. If he does not move to the third, then in the next birth he will start again from the first. When one leaves the body, one falls one center down—not two. If someone rises from the sex center up to center number two and remains there throughout life, then in the next birth he will begin again from sex. And if he reaches number three, then in the next birth the journey will begin from number two.

And therefore, therefore there is danger. That is why it often happens that a man, over many lifetimes, goes from number one just up to number two, and then keeps falling back—each time he reaches number two he feels happy, then ...unclear... he slips back again, and then it all becomes futile.

By “waste” I mean that one has to begin the journey anew from the very same point.

Fulfillment cannot happen. Short of the Divine, fulfillment is impossible. Contentment can happen. By contentment I mean a placated, managed contentment—one talks oneself into believing that everything is fine, that now where is there to go...
That will remain. Until you have gone beyond the last center, there will only be contentment.

The moment one is outside the last center, the mind is gone. The one who keeps saying, “Go further,” is gone. That very one who had been telling us incessantly—he was saying it only so that we would go up to there. Hence: further, and further...

...It is not available even in the Bible proper. There were other traditional sources—the secret lore of the Bible—from which it came. And it is this: everywhere they say, write it down that this place is to be crossed, not to be stopped at. In life, every place is to be passed through. And a point arrives which is no place at all. There, there is no question; you are not there either. No one is there. In such a movement, the question of “further” does not arise.

Absolutely not, absolutely not. Absolutely not at all.