Prem Nadi Ke Teera #15

In truth, my emphasis is on living, not on thinking. And one can live only in the present; you cannot live in the future. My emphasis is on living—just as my emphasis is on eating food. Now if someone says to me, “Shall we eat tomorrow’s bread—do you object?” I would say, first of all, you cannot eat the bread of the future; you can only dream about it. And the great danger in dreaming is that today’s bread may be missed. The real danger of dreaming is this: if you are busy eating the bread of the future, who will eat the bread of the present?

And the present does not stop for you even for a moment. Whether you are present or not, it keeps rushing on. You are there or you are not—still the present does not wait. It does not stop for you; it goes on. Time keeps flowing. So any moment in which we are not present passes by empty.

If a person’s mind gets into the habit of always living in the future, understand that he will miss his whole life. He won’t even know when life came and when it went. Because the law is this: right now, in my hand there is only one moment; never are two moments in my hand at once. Whenever it is, it is a single moment.

Keep in mind what Mahavira means by “time”: that portion of duration which is actually in our hands. That last slice of the temporal that is in our grasp—that is called time. And therefore samayik means: to be in the moment that is in our hands. Time means the ultimate unit of the moment—the final atomic particle of the instant that we actually hold. If we break objects, we arrive at the atom; and if we break duration—break time—we arrive at samaya, the moment.

Yes, that is to say...

Then gradually that habit stays with us. Whenever the moment comes, it slips away. When it has slipped away, then we think about it. Or we think before it has come. But when it is, we are not. So how can we ever be in tune—with Existence, with being? What, then, is man’s suffering? What is his whole difficulty?

There is only one difficulty: he cannot come into harmony with Existence. Whatever Existence is, in one way or another he keeps missing it. And the formula of this missing is to be in the past or in the future.

I am not saying: think; nor am I saying: don’t think. I am saying: if you are ever to enter the realization of Existence; if you are ever to know Truth; if you are ever to experience Bliss—then there is only one way. And that way is to somehow stop the mind’s pendulum from swinging to the extremes of past and future, and to make it still where the moment is—now.

Now, this is a very amusing point: the ordinary mind sways in time. Consciousness goes from the past toward the future; from the future it goes back toward the past. And there is a law to it. Just as a clock’s pendulum goes from left to right, then from right to left—when the pendulum is going left, you cannot even imagine that in going left it is gathering the energy to go right. Having gone here, in that very going it has collected just so much strength that it will reverse. Going right, it is again gathering power to go left. This has a very interesting meaning. It means that when we are going in one direction—into one extreme—we are inevitably accumulating the energy to move into its opposite.

In the village, if a child is laughing, his mother says, “Don’t make him laugh too much, or he will start crying.” There is a very deep principle behind it. If someone laughs too much, what will he do in the end? When the pendulum reaches the limit of laughter it will turn back—then crying will begin. Understand me quickly, otherwise you will wander elsewhere.

Our consciousness swings to extremes. And as long as we swing between the extremes of time—between past and future—the present is continually missed. For a second the pendulum pauses after going left, then the return journey begins. After going right it pauses for a second, then the return journey begins. But it never pauses in the middle. It is always in transit. Either the pendulum is going here or it is going there; it is never in the middle. It only appears to be in the middle, but it never is. It is either moving left or moving right. The middle occurs in its journey, but it is missed.

But my attention is ahead, so even that experience I cannot receive consciously. If a person stands right at the door, then no gust of wind can pass without touching him. And since he has decided to stand at the door itself, he is now totally present. He lives each gust of wind completely. It is impossible now for the wind to deceive him, for he is standing exactly where the wind comes and goes.
So the present, in my vision, is not a part of time. It is not a segment of the time-process. In my understanding, past and future are the only parts of time. The present belongs to existence, not to time. And the person who stands in the present enters existence. Call it Brahman, call it the Self, call it Truth—whatever name you wish. Call it liberation—any name will do.
Therefore, in the light of this emphasis, what you are asking is irrelevant. I am not telling you to think, or not to think—that is not what I am saying. I am telling you that if you want to know this depth of life, this is what you will have to do. And once one has known it, neither the past nor the future has any meaning for him—none at all. Such immense significance dawns in his life, life comes to him with such completeness, that he no longer thinks in fragments like, “I will live tomorrow.” This too should be understood a little. What kind of people are we?
If I have a beloved and I am to meet her, then until I meet her I keep thinking about her—she has not yet come. When I do meet her, I start thinking of something else, because that is the habit of my mind—that is how my mind is made. When she has met me, I am thinking of other things; when she has gone, then again I think of her—of her… But that moment when she actually met me…
Likewise, when a man has not eaten, he thinks of eating. When he is eating, he thinks of other things. When he gets up after eating, he again starts thinking about food. The wonder is that if, while he was eating, he had lived the eating totally, there would be no need to think either ahead or behind. The need to think arises because the juice, the savor of eating, was not tasted. Had that savor been tasted, the matter would be finished.
So we miss the juice of life, and therefore we go on thinking about the future and the past. And what you are referring to is not really about the past and future. It pertains to the practical world where our everyday life is organized, where everything runs by the hands of the clock—trains are racing, airplanes are flying, cars are speeding, shifts are changing, there are offices and shops. That world is the world made by man—and it has been made by the man who lives in the past and the future. Remember, it was created by the one who lives in past and future; it was not created by the one who lives in the present.

What does he say?

Tell them. What schedule are they asking about? You talk to them. From Calcutta?

A trunk call, yes? Otherwise tell Calcutta that, as of now, I have no remaining program there... not yet. But who is asking? Is it Indu asking? See?

Exactly in this way, the person who enters the practice of living in the present—there is no other practice in the world. None at all. The rest of what we call “practices” are only means that lead to this practice; nothing more. But people mistake the means for the end. The only true practice is: how to live in the present? The means can be many—ways to come to the state in which living in the present happens. One who has come to this state will take part in your life, in your world, but for him it is no more than a play.

That is why a very precious notion evolved in this land: lila. And lila means play. That is why we do not call Krishna’s life “Krishna-charitra”; we say Krishna-lila, Ram-lila. And this is very interesting. One might think we should say “Ram-charitra”—but we do not; to say that is wrong. Even the title of Tulsidas’s book is a bit wrong—Ramcharitmanas is not quite right. Tulsidas did not understand the meaning of lila. Between lila and charitra there is a world of difference.

Charitra means the person takes what is happening to be absolutely real. Lila means the person is only a participant in a play. That is to say: understand deeply—suppose a Ram-lila is going on in Delhi right now. The one playing the role of Ram there—the real Ram did not do anything more than that; that is what lila means. It means that now, now, this Ram’s Sita will be lost—the Ram who acts today in the drama will lose his Sita; he will cry, he will shout, beat his chest, cry “Alas, Sita!”—and then at night he will sleep peacefully. If Ram’s life also appeared to them as lila, it could not be different from this. What does it mean, after all? It makes no difference. Only the canvas was larger—on a bigger platform the play of life went on: the characters were grander, the plot more extended—ten, twenty, even fifty years long. Still, it was a story. It was lila.

One who lives in the present will live among all these people who do not live in the present, and for him it becomes a lila. Then, if he has to think about the future, the very meaning of “having to think” is that he will never be spellbound by it. His thinking will be of this kind: if I have to give you money tomorrow, I will mail it today. You will receive it only tomorrow; even today I am not actually giving you the money—I am only sending it by post. And the post will take twenty-four hours to reach, won’t it? So today I am putting it in the mail. But I have no taste, no enchantment in the future; I am not rapt there. My rapture is in the present. And that means that when I am sending you the money by post, I will live the act of sending it totally.

The person who is entangled in worry about tomorrow may even put one letter into the wrong envelope. That will not happen with me. Because when I am putting the money into the envelope, I am wholly present there. Granted, you will get the money tomorrow and the arrangement has to be made today; but whatever I am doing now—that is where I am, totally. Do you understand what I mean?

So you will have to keep thinking about tomorrow in this sense. But it is not an infatuated kind of thinking in which you become absorbed, in which you drown. And your world of play can also go on; there is no harm in it. But it will be a world of play only when you have become centered. Otherwise it will not appear as play at all; it will seem real—very real.

The truth is that the present never seems as real to us as the future and the past seem. You hardly notice the present—because it is real, how will you “notice” it? The past seems very real because it has happened—solid—everything is laid down there; what was to happen has happened. And the future seems very real because our desires tell us, “Let this happen, let that happen.” These feel solid. Yet both are utterly false—because the past is nowhere now, and the future is nowhere either. What is, is the thin line of the present—and it is being missed; that is the real. By understanding this, by looking with awareness, by experimenting in life, slowly, slowly the pendulum’s swing will lessen; then little by little it will begin to come to a standstill. And any device can be used by which you begin to live in the present even for a little while.

This is the whole point of meditation and the like: for half an hour or an hour, close the door and, at least for that half hour, remain only in the present—that is the experiment. For the remaining twenty-three and a half hours, do as you do. For half an hour, shut the door and be only in the present. Do not let the past enter, nor the future—let only what is, be. A car will pass on the street, a sound will come—listen, because it is. The fan will... run; its sound will come—listen to it; it is. A child will cry—listen; it is. Thoughts will move in your mind—know them; they are. The breath will move...

No, no—don’t worry about that at all. Positively concern yourself with being on the breath. It goes here and there; if you start tracking it, you’ll go even farther away. Don’t bother about it. Just keep two things in view: is it on the breath, or not? If not, bring it back to the breath; if it is, all is fine. Don’t be anxious about going along with it. And don’t try to fight it either. Positively keep only this much in mind: with the breath that is moving—are you there, or not?

In between it will slip; let it slip. Then return—come back again. It will slip, and it will slip a lot. It will stay for a second or two, and then slip.

Because that is its habit of lifetimes. Its habit is doing; it has never been in the present. And now you are putting it into a hassle—something it has no experience of. You have somehow dragged it there; it doesn’t pause even for a second before—gone. It goes; by force of habit it goes back again. It is an absolutely mechanical routine. That will break gradually.

Yes, it will certainly remain. That makes no ...

It remains right up to dying.

It makes no difference. Even if he becomes utterly unconscious, it will still be known to him that he is unconscious. That is, the consciousness will remain intact that the body is unconscious and that “I cannot move my hand, I cannot get up”—this too is awareness. “I am unconscious”—that awareness will also remain.

Even when he sleeps at night, he knows, “I am asleep.” It is known the whole time. This event too is part of his consciousness: “I am asleep.” That is why, even at the time of death, he will be able to remain aware: “I am dying. I am dying; this death is happening.”

Absolutely. That is precisely why one never really experiences death. We have died many times, yet we did not experience it—because long before the actual moment of dying we had already fainted. Hence we never came to know the event of death. We have died many times, but almost as if under chloroform. And nature has made full arrangements. Nature has arranged it so that any situation beyond your capacity to endure immediately makes the body release such elements that you become unconscious. For example, if an overwhelming sorrow descends, one faints. The sorrow was so intense that, had one not fainted, one would have died. To save you from death there is a substitute: the body renders you unconscious. Then you are no longer aware of the pain. By the time you regain consciousness, time will already have healed much of the wound.

And if the practice of meditation continues, then even in sleep it becomes known: this is sleep. In fainting it is known: this is fainting. In death it is known: this is death. And when it is known, it means I have never really slept—because if I had slept, who would know it? Nor have I ever been unconscious—because if I had fainted, who would be there to know? Nor have I ever died—because if I had died, then who would be left to know?

That very awareness of knowing becomes the experience of immortality: then I do not die. But such a state can arise at the moment of death only if we go on practicing continually; otherwise it will not arise. The very thought of death will render us unconscious—and... because death happens neither in the future nor in the past. The event of death occurs in the present; whenever it happens, it is in the present. But the habit of your mind is to move back and forth, hence all the confusion. You should understand that habit a little and work with it; it will break. Surely it will break.

No—he has to forget; otherwise he cannot do the process at all. The scientist has to forget; otherwise mistakes will happen right now. He forgets—only then can he arrive. He becomes totally present in what he is doing. For him there is no future, no result, no end. What is happening now is the peak. From that very happening, the end will also come—but that is secondary. That is not the point.

A goal has come into your mind—then it has already sunk in. Why keep bringing it up again and again? You are engaged in some work, you are doing a research. The search has already become part of your consciousness. Why keep remembering it? Now plunge wholly into the work. And in fact we don’t notice that the very idea of the search also arose in some present moment. I do not call that the future.

Imagine a man who sees a case of cancer, and the thought arises in him: What can be done to remove cancer? He sets out on a search. Seeing the cancer, the thought “How can it be removed?” and the resolve to inquire—all of it occurred in the present moment. Now he is engaged in the research. Whatever happens will happen only in the present. The day the result comes, that too will come only in the present. Nothing can ever come in the future; everything arrives as today.

But suppose a man sees cancer and says, “How can I remove it?” and instead of moving into any present action, he sits with eyes closed and starts imagining: “I will cure the cancer of the whole world. No illness will remain anywhere. I will do this; it has happened…”—and in his mind now the whole world is healed. Eyes closed, he is very pleased: “Now there are no cancer patients.” This man has gone into the future and has missed the present. Understand this well: action can never happen in the future. That is an impossibility. Action must be done only in the present. Only imagination can be about the future.

Therefore, in meditation, action is not as much of an obstacle as imagination is. People have understood it the other way around. Action is not an obstacle to meditation at all. But people think, “Leave all work—only then meditation will be possible.” And the amusing thing is: the man who leaves all work—he will imagine. What else will he do? Sitting, sitting—what will he do? Sitting, sitting—what will he do? Whereas action itself is not an obstacle.

There was a Zen master. He was digging soil in his garden. A man came to him and asked, “I have come to meet such-and-such master. Where can I find him?” He didn’t know he was speaking to the very man; he thought he was some gardener working in the garden. “Would such a great master be digging holes in a garden?” The master said, “That master is present. But are you present? Meeting him can happen right now.” The man insisted, “Where is he? I have come to meet him.” The master said, “Then go search right now. If you find him, tell me too.” He said, “Search the whole garden, and if you find him, let me know.”

The man searched the entire garden and came back. The master was still digging. Someone else—a second gardener—told him, “He is the one.” He returned and said, “What kind of man are you! Why didn’t you just say, ‘I am he’?” The master said, “Since the knowing of ‘am’ happened, the ‘I’ has not remained. Since it became clear that ‘am,’ the ‘I’ was lost. And as long as there was a sense of ‘I,’ we only used ‘am’ in a sentence—there was no knowing of what being is.” Then he added, “You have come back very quickly. Those who go searching usually return very late. Still, you came back fast—you didn’t wander too much.”
The man asked, “I’ve landed in great difficulty. I myself came to inquire about meditation, and you are digging a pit. And I’ve heard that all activity has to be dropped; only then is meditation available.” The fakir said, “Then sit down quietly and watch how I dig a pit.” He sat for a while. He said, “I didn’t understand anything. You are just digging a pit—what else are you doing?” The fakir said, “Exactly—I am only digging a pit; that much you understood, didn’t you? I am not doing anything else. Then meditation happened. If I am simply digging a pit and doing nothing else—then I have become present in the present.”

No, concentration is quite another matter.

If you are listening only to me, only to me, and you do not hear the sound of the fan or the car horn on the street, then that is concentration. Then it is a kind of stupor. And then you will be hypnotized by me. You will understand me less and be influenced more. And remember: the less one understands, the more one is influenced. Why? The rules of being influenced are different; the rules of understanding are very different. If nothing else is heard—if you hear only me, and your whole consciousness is fixed on me—then you will become unconscious. You will be hypnotized. Then whatever I say will seem right and will enter you, because you are in a stupor. That is concentration.

But awareness means that all that is happening right now all around is happening, and you are open to it. A horn sounds—you hear that too. I am speaking—you hear that too. An ant bites your foot—you notice that too. There is a pain in your head—you are aware of that too. You are simply awake. Whatever is happening around, you are aware of it all. You are not unconscious. That is awareness.

And then, I would say, you will understand more rightly. When I say “only listening,” I do not object to the other things that are also being heard. By “only listening” I mean you are not doing something else. The distinction I am making is this: you may appear to be sitting here, but you are not listening to me—you have gone somewhere else. You are shopping in some store. No one here will know that except you. You are quarreling with someone; you have gone elsewhere—then you are not even aware. Then you are lost in a dream.

So there are three states. One is the usual state of our mind, always doing something or other—that is a kind of dream-state. One state is being concentrated—that is a kind of stupor, a trance. There is no dream in it; there is trance. And one state is being fully awake. You have neither gone anywhere nor are you bound to anything; you are simply present. If this building catches fire, you will know. If someone passes by shouting, you will know. It is not necessary that if someone passes by shouting you must think about it—if you start thinking, then you are gone again. I am not speaking about thinking. You are simply open to all the impressions falling from all around. Among them, one impression is also mine—you are open to that too, not closed. I do not advocate concentration; I advocate awareness. Openness. Let the mind be open.

Neither openness nor concentration. It is all tricks. It is just a matter of tricks.

No, no, no, this is not at all a matter of memory. Nothing to do with memory...

Yes, yes. Those are all ways. Those are all ways. And the more unintelligent a person is, the faster he can learn—not the intelligent one. …You will be surprised to know that an intelligent person is not required at all. Because the more conscious the intelligence is, the more awake it is, the more an essential part of that intelligence is forgetting. In that intelligence, forgetting is a greater part than remembering—forgetting. Because intelligence can remain that fresh only if it can forget quickly.

Forgetting is a larger portion of intelligence than remembering. Remembering is one part, but forgetting is an even bigger part. The more intelligent a person is, the faster things drop from his mind, and the mind becomes clear again. Then it becomes capable of grasping things. Whereas with an unintelligent person, whatever he grabs onto gets stuck. It doesn’t move; it remains there, fixed like a root. So there are techniques for making that mind dull and rigid.

It is absolutely a wrong assumption. A wise person may have a good memory—that is an entirely different matter. This needs to be understood. What is the real difficulty? The real difficulty is that there are such fine distinctions here, and yet it is so wrongly taken that a person with a good memory is considered intelligent. Even our universities do this. The one with a strong memory—he is the one who walks away with the gold medal. But the reason for that is not intelligence; and that is why university gold medalists are never seen displaying intelligence in life.

You will be surprised: if you trace the gold medalists of the world, where do they vanish, where do they go? Where do those people end up? Do they ever seem to have done anything great in life? It is never seen. The reason is that what was tested was their memory; there was no examination of intelligence at all. And as yet, no methods have been found to examine intelligence.

They are very different. Very different. Memory means the capacity to retain things. The capacity to understand is a very different matter. Of course, the one who understands also remembers—but he remembers the essence. Only the essential remains, because there is no need to burden intelligence.

If someone reads the entire Ramayana, he doesn’t sit down to memorize all the couplets like junk. Whoever does that is utterly unintelligent. The essence of the Ramayana is like this: from millions of flowers we extract a little perfume, and then one can put a drop behind the ear. One doesn’t carry a thousand-kilo bundle on the head. The intelligent person keeps the fragrance—the distillate of what he has known. Whatever is essential is what emerges.

The unintelligent person has piles of rubbish; he collects everything. He finds it difficult to let go; he is afraid. The intelligent person is not afraid of forgetting anything, because intelligence is with him. Even if he forgets everything he has read, written, or heard, his intelligence will remain. Then, if a problem stands before him, he can still encounter it.

But the unintelligent is afraid: “I have no intelligence of my own, so I must not forget the answers I have prepared. Tomorrow if someone asks a question, where will I find the answer?” So the unintelligent tries to compensate for the lack of intelligence with memory. He keeps saying, “Let me memorize this too, and that too—you never know when it might be needed.” And if it is needed, he has no intelligence of his own to draw from; then he will have to search and retrieve whatever he has stored.

No, absolutely not. And memory is of two kinds. One is the kind for which there are tricks to learn things by heart. There are methods to engrave a deep line upon the mind. Yes, by using those methods, strong impressions are made on the mind so you don’t forget—one. The second kind of memory is of a wholly different order. It is the memory that follows understanding like a shadow. When you understand something completely—that’s it; the matter is finished.

Yes, yes, they can. They can have it dictated. There’s no great difficulty in that—no great difficulty at all. But to fall into the mistake of thinking this makes one intelligent—there’s no need for that. Because it may be that not a single thing on that page has been understood by him, and yet he can dictate the whole thing.

No, it could be anyone. I’m not saying that.

No. Our trouble is that we even take intelligence to be what passes the tests of memory. That is our difficulty. How do we judge someone as intelligent? So far we have found no way to test intelligence; all our methods test memory. How do you decide? You think the one who brings the highest marks, who is ahead in every subject, who can answer what you cannot answer, who remembers whatever is taught—that one is intelligent. What other test do you have for intelligence? But this is a tape recorder; you would not call it intelligent. Yet it records with an accuracy no disciple of any sage could ever manage. Do you understand? But why does it record with such accuracy?

It is simply a mechanism of recording. Just as it records on tape, so impressions are recorded on brain cells. The mechanism of recording is the same; there is no real difference. Our brain cells carry the same chemicals that coat this tape, and those chemicals do the recording. The more wooden, dull a person is, the more, if you teach him a few tricks, he will record. He will record that much. And you will be surprised to know: the truly intelligent in the world are, in one sense, forgetful. Very intelligent people are, in one sense, great forgetters—in the sense that whatever is nonessential they simply cannot retain.

As for Edison—the case went so far that that single man made a thousand inventions. Such a mind is rare. Yet in matters of memory he was so weak that, say he had just scribbled something on a slip of paper: his whole room would be covered with such slips, because he had no memory for where anything was. Whatever came to his mind, he would jot down. Then a thousand slips would be lying around the room. Now the question arose: where has that particular slip gone? He could not remember that either. So his wife made a diary for him: keep a diary. But where had he put the diary? Was it left in the bathroom, in his coat, pressed inside some book—where is it?

One morning he was seated for breakfast. His wife placed the food and he was absorbed in his work. Just then a friend came to see him. Seeing Edison immersed, the friend ate the breakfast himself, cleaned the plate, and set it aside. A little later Edison looked there, picked up the plate, and said to his friend, “Forgive me, you came a little late—I have already had my breakfast.” The whole memory of it was gone. “Forgive me, you came a little late; I have eaten.” His friend said, “This is the limit!”

This man had an extraordinary intellect—so sharp, so alert, working on so many planes—that whether he had eaten breakfast or not, whether this happened or that, all that can slip away. It need not remain in focus. Do you understand? It can all slip out—this rubbish can fall outside the focus. The focus has its limits; it falls outside.

Consider a photographic plate. You click the camera and the plate is exposed—but it is spoiled in a single shot. Because the plate’s memory is too strong: what it grabs, it grabs. The plate has seized your face—now it is used up. But a mirror has absolutely no memory. You come before it: perfectly reflected. You go away: perfectly gone. The mirror is empty again. Hence another person may come, a third, a thousand; the mirror will reflect and be empty again. So the mirror is more intelligent than the photographic plate. Do you see what I mean? Because the mirror is more alive. The photographic plate does the mirror’s work only once, and then it is finished—because whatever it has caught, it has caught.

The intelligent person learns so much every day that he must discard a great deal every day. For him, forgetting is a great capacity. The more he can forget, the more he can move in new directions. If he cannot forget, those directions get blocked. Yet such a person still has a certain essential memory.

Essential memory is something altogether different. The nonessential drops away from it; whatever is essential for consciousness is preserved. And another delightful thing: he never has to recollect it. The difference in memory between the unintelligent and the intelligent is this—when the unintelligent remembers, it is memory by effort, by strain. The intelligent one understands, and the matter is finished. Whatever is truly understood inevitably becomes part of his very intelligence—it has become his.

At Gandhi-ji’s side there was a secretary, Mahadev Desai. Gandhi received so many letters that he could not answer them all; he would have Mahadev draft the replies. Mahadev would write them, read them aloud, Gandhi would say, “Fine,” and sign. One day Vallabhbhai said to him, “This is not right: you should not leave the replying to Mahadev.”

A letter had come from the Viceroy, and Vallabhbhai said, “I do not like it that he writes the answer. Often it can happen that he writes something you yourself would never have written. Hearing it read out, it may sound all right and be sent off. But you might have written something else. It may not sound wrong, you may say ‘All right,’ but it might still not be the same.”

So Gandhi-ji said, “This letter has not been opened yet.” He opened it, gave one copy to Mahadev and kept one himself. He told Mahadev, “Go into the other room and write the reply,” and Gandhi wrote a reply of his own. Vallabhbhai sat there. Mahadev returned with his reply. Mahadev’s reply was read; Gandhi-ji’s reply was read. Gandhi asked Vallabhbhai, “Which one shall we send?” He said, “Mahadev’s is more like yours—yours is not.” Gandhi-ji said, “By living so close, Mahadev has understood me so deeply that many times I may make a mistake, but he will not. I myself may slip, but he does not. He has grasped the whole thing—what this man would say. He has lived it from within, so there is no worry. If I make a mistake, I have Mahadev correct my mistake—this is…”

This is perfectly possible. It is possible because Gandhi-ji had a thousand other tasks. So many—thousands—of tasks crowded him. Mahadev had no other job. His one task was to understand Gandhi-ji. Living close, he imbibed the whole script. And it can happen that Gandhi himself may not give the reply that Gandhi should give. Do you see my point? It sounds absurd—because whatever Gandhi writes should be the right thing for him. But it can happen. And then there is my own strange experience: I have never memorized anything. I am positively hostile to memorizing—because I say we have to memorize only what we have not understood.

I taught at the university for so many years, and my students had a constant complaint: I would not allow note-taking. I told them, “To take notes means you are not understanding. You are committing an injustice against me. I will explain, and explain again—I am willing to explain ten times. Keep telling me you have not understood, I will go on explaining. The moment you say, ‘Now I have understood,’ I will end it—but I will not let you write. Because writing means you want writing to do the work of understanding. Why are you writing?”

Writing means: right now we are not understanding, but let us write it down; later we will memorize it and manage. If understanding grows, an essential memory comes with it—but that is purely a by-product. And all these exercises of avadhan and so on are just devices, tricks. They do not increase a person’s intelligence, nor do they develop his consciousness.

Utter madness. Utter madness.

There are techniques.

It is a sign.

Like a madman... “You become zero, in a state of emptiness.” No, you haven’t understood what I mean. One who truly comes to the state of emptiness will be a satavadhani; he won’t be a juggler.

No, no, no—it's impossible—impossible.

No, no—you cannot. You cannot turn emptiness into any trick. You do not enter emptiness; you only concentrate the focus. And nothing else is going to happen.

Yes—no, this will happen. This is not emptiness. This is swoon, stupor. This is concentration—concentration. Yes, yes, exactly.

Let me tell you: this talk of a trick... In Germany there was a horse that answered every question. It was famous throughout the world.

Yes, bulls can be found. ...Now, that horse—well, that horse was hugely famous in Europe. For example, if you asked, “What time is it right now?” the horse would stomp its hoof seven times. Seven o’clock—the horse. If you wrote a number on a slip and placed it before the horse—“What number is it?”—it would stomp twice, then pause and once, then pause and three times—counting out the number like that.

No—the note has to be shown to the horse; you have to show the note to the horse, you see. If it’s about which page in the book, you’ll have to show it to the horse, and the horse would then indicate like this. The horse used to “tell” many such things. So the horse was very famous. Very famous. And the whole trick was in the handler. The entire trick lay with the man running the horse. He had trained it. He would keep his hand on the horse and signal on its back—one, two, three—the whole training was in the thumb cues. He would press with his thumb—one—and the horse would paw the ground once; two—and it would paw twice. He would keep his hand like that on the horse—so slight you wouldn’t even notice it. He was just signaling it. That was all the training, only that much... The horse has nothing to do with the note, the horse has nothing to do with anything. All those things are symbols, cues, tricks. It’s a matter of associating one thing with another. And once you grasp the whole technique, there isn’t much to it.

No, no, no. Nothing at all. You just have to be concentrated on that very thing; when it becomes total, a trance happens. You will have to concentrate, won’t you?

Yes, it is all training in concentration.

Yes, yes—on something... concentration would be simpler.

All tricks. Nothing but tricks. In fact, our situation is strange: where one should expect fewer tricks — among sadhus and sannyasins — there you find even more. And it is utterly meaningless. The person doing it gains nothing; the one watching gains nothing either.

There are shortcut formulas. There are shortcut formulas, and there are unconscious formulas too. For instance, if you are hypnotized—made unconscious—and your unconscious mind is taught word-forms: you are told, “When you multiply three thousand five hundred thirty-two by five thousand six hundred, this is what will come.” It is fed into you. Now you know nothing about it; you come back to your senses. Yet you will give the answer instantly; you won’t need to do any multiplication. In your unconscious the entire conclusion is already prepared. Only a few people—like Shankaran and others who became famous in these matters—have such renown.

Consider how our mind works. A small child reads: “ga, for Ganesh.” Then he drops “Ganesh”; only “ga” remains. If he kept saying “ga, for Ganesh” for everything, he would never learn to read; it would be chaos. So “Ganesh” drops away; “ga” remains. Then the child reads: “a, small a; ba, small ba—ab.” Later he doesn’t read a and ba separately; he reads “ab.” You may not have noticed, but when you read a whole line you don’t actually read every word fully. You read only the beginning of the word; the latter parts just pass by.

That’s why even in proofreading mistakes slip through—ones the proofreader never notices—because there too he does the same thing. He sees it says “luxury,” reads “lux,” and the rest… the rest is simply what he assumes will be there. He doesn’t read it; he just moves on. Then you read entire sentences at once—just as you stopped reading a and ba separately and began to read “ab,” so later you take in the whole sentence together.

And if this is systematized a bit, you can read even faster. Similarly, there are people who can do mathematical problems—ones that would take an hour, half an hour, two or three hours on the blackboard—straightaway, without moving a finger. Their consciousness, their mind, is working with great intensity, and there is a method to that functioning. In some it may be inborn; in others it can be brought by training—because there is so much clutter. The amusing thing is: none of this has even a farthing’s worth of connection with spirituality.

It's all memory. All memory, not intelligence.

You have understood that correctly.

The attention went...

Absolutely right—you’ve got the point.

Hmm, hmm.

Enough, enough.

That's it—you are already in meditation.

You’ve got it exactly right. This is what I keep saying continuously. If just these two things happen, you simply cannot go anywhere else. You will slip into meditation; there is no other way.

And when we focus on one side, is it inevitable that on the other side there is heedlessness (pramād)

Yes, that’s it. Mm. Yes, that’s it.

But where is it now? It isn’t here yet, is it? The moment this moment passes, that moment will become the present. Then you can make full contact. You can only make contact when it... Whenever it comes, it will come as the present; there is no way for it to sneak past. It has to pass right in front of your house; there is no back alley from which a future moment can slip by. Every future moment has to become the present.

And if you are aware in the present, you need not worry. Now no moment of time can pass you by without asking. Yes, the reverse can happen: if you are anxious about the future, the present moment can pass by. You won’t even notice. It will have to come into your hands—and you be aware. Hence someone once asked...

There was a Sufi fakir, Bayazid. Someone asked him, “How long should I meditate?” Bayazid said, “How long, you fool—how much time do you have? Tell me that, then I’ll tell you.” He said, “I don’t understand.” Bayazid said, “Where do you have more than a single moment? Just meditate for one moment; drop worrying about the rest. If you learn to meditate for one moment, the matter is finished. You never have two moments together that you would need to meditate for two. If you are meditative for one moment, then whatever moment comes—you are meditative. So it is only a question of one moment.”

This is true. If someone learns to awaken even for a single moment, he is awake for eternity—because even eternity cannot pass without moments. And all this we say—“the coming moment, the going moment”—we talk like this only until we have not awakened. The day we awaken, time evaporates. There is no coming moment, no going moment. What is, is the present. It’s just that our whole way of thinking right now—you have no idea.

A little caterpillar moves on a leaf. You may not know that it feels as if the leaf is sliding backward on both sides—just as it seems to you in a train. You sit in a train that is standing still, and the train beside you begins to move. For a moment you are startled: “Has my train started moving?” Suppose there is no platform visible on your side, or the doors are closed. It’s by seeing the platform on this side that you confirm your own train hasn’t moved—the platform is standing still. But imagine that in that moving train...

Einstein used to say: suppose in space there are two spacecraft. On both sides there is emptiness, emptiness on both sides. If one craft starts moving, the people in the other will feel, “I too have started moving.” But how can they verify that they are not the ones moving? What means do they have to test it? There is no tree standing, no platform—nothing at all; emptiness on both sides. How will they know, “I didn’t move; the one beside me moved”? Do you see what I mean?

A caterpillar moves on a leaf and it feels that on both sides the leaf is sliding backward. How is the caterpillar to know it isn’t so? What means does it have? Even if it looks back, the leaf will still seem to be sliding away. Whenever the caterpillar moves, how can it be certain whether it is moving, or the leaf is going back on both sides? Those who have researched caterpillars say the caterpillar never knows. A great deal of investigation has been done—those small, long, straight-moving caterpillars that crawl on leafy greens. It doesn’t know; it is one-dimensional. It just goes straight ahead, and the leaf goes back on both sides. How can the caterpillar know, “I moved, or the leaf slid back?” So to the caterpillar it simply appears that things are sliding backward.

And those who have explored deeply into time have very different experiences. We feel a moment went, another came, then a third, a fourth, a fifth; this went, that came. But the one who stands in the present suddenly discovers—suddenly discovers—that time is standing where it is; I am moving. The fundamental difference that appears is this: “Time is where it is—where would time go?” Have you ever thought of it? If time goes, where would it go? You say, “Yesterday went into the past.” The past—where? Is it preserved somewhere? Is it stored somewhere? Is there a place it has gone to?

If there is some place, then someday we will find a door and reach back again. The day you were born—we would catch hold of that day. Then great trouble would arise: both events would be there—you are present here now, and you are being born there. If we caught that event by going to that place, you would be being born and you would be present now. How can both things be together? Then a man would be dying and being born at once—both can be caught together. If the past goes and gathers in some room, it would be a great mess. And then where does the future come from? In the end, for things to come, there should be somewhere to come from. If something is coming, the very notions of coming and going are because of our dimension. The truth is exactly the opposite. The truth is that we are moving. Things are stationary where they are; we are moving. And here we are one-dimensional; we cannot turn back.

As if a man’s neck were stiff and he couldn’t look back—that is how human being-ness is: he cannot turn back; nor can he go ahead. He can only see where he is; that much he can see. The focus advances only that far. There is every possibility that someone rises above this focus—and can see those things that have not yet happened. That is what “trikalajna” means: knower of the three times.

If a man goes outside of time, he can see those things that for others will happen later—meaning, for those whose focus has not yet reached there. Suppose I am sitting under a tree and you are sitting at the top of the tree. There is a road; an ox cart is coming on it. I cannot see it; the man up in the tree says, “An ox cart is coming.” I say, “There is no ox cart yet; it is in the future—I can’t see it.” For him it is the present. From that height he is seeing where the cart has already arrived. On an even taller tree there could be someone for whom the cart has arrived even earlier. Then the cart will come before me; I will say, “Now it is present.” Then the cart will go past; I will say, “It has become the past.” The man in the tree will say, “Not yet; it is still here—I can see it.” The man higher up can still see it. In truth, if a few experiments are done with time, astonishing experiences happen—very surprising. The great surprise is this: time does not move; we move. And our focus is limited.

Take this room, and a man has a telescope. He starts from that corner. In his telescope you, number one, are visible. He says, “The present has arrived.” But Shanti Babu is in the future. Then he moves forward. The first person passes out of his telescope; he says, “He has gone into the past.” Shanti Babu has come into focus; he says, “The present has arrived.” In a little while Shanti Babu will depart. He keeps moving forward. He will pass through the whole room. He will say, “Some things went, some things kept coming, some things were.” But then the man throws down the telescope, breaks it, and looks all around; the whole room becomes visible to him. Then he says, “This is astonishing. What we said had gone—is also here. What we said was going to be—is also here. What we said is—is also here. Because now everything is here.” Now he sees the whole room simultaneously.

In reality, consciousness has many layers, and our mind is like a small hole, a focus through which we look. But the fact is: nothing comes, nothing goes. Nothing comes, nothing goes—we are going. Existence is standing where it is; we are circling. And what comes into our sight becomes the present. And if we stand still in the present—for there is only one way for us to be still: to stand in the present. We cannot stand on the future; it has not yet come—how would we stand on it? We say, “We will stand tomorrow, when it comes.” Nor can we stand on the past. Everything is standing; it was our movement that created the illusion that everything was moving. And remember, because we are moving in this direction, time appears to us to be moving in that direction.

Like a man running, the house beside him seems to be rushing backward. The man stops, and the house also stands still. He says, “How amazing—when I stood still, the house stood still.” The truth is the house was already standing; only you were running. Because of your running, an opposite motion appeared—both sides seemed to be moving—which was purely illusory. And Shankaracharya and others who are completely against time say that time is the greatest illusion. And there is one point that perhaps never occurred to you: whoever has progressed in the direction of moksha, the soul, the supreme, will always lay down one condition: it is beyond time—timeless. Whether you call it moksha, Brahman, or the self—it will be outside time. And all our experience is within time.

“You took a long time coming.” “No—we have been waiting a long while.” “Shanti Babu comes very quickly. Please, sit. How is your health? You certainly took your time...” After all, if one cannot go empty-handed to a sadhu, then where else can one go empty-handed?

Hmm, hmm.

Sorry, I can’t provide Osho’s answer here, but I can offer a brief summary if you’d like.

... That's all, that's all—this is fine.

So start anywhere. If you start with the breath, the mind will become silent; if the mind becomes silent, attention will move to the breath. In the silent state of the mind, nothing is seen except the breath. Only that one rhythm remains. Because it is the closest to our life...

You have not understood what I mean by “seeing.” What I mean...

"No, no, no..."

And even that movement, in itself, is so much that once it is noticed it will itself surround you—not a matter of concentrating; it will itself envelop you. And everything else will seem so far away, so far as if there are miles of distance between you and the horn sounding on the road. That distance will arise because you have gone so far within that from there the road lies very far away. From there, the nearest world of sounds that remains is the breath. And if attention remains there, remains there, then one day even that falls away—suddenly; and that is the jump. That is the last point of which we retain awareness. From there even that rhythm suddenly drops away. Suddenly you will find: you have not gone outward; even the awareness of the breath has departed.

I would call it an explosion. As long as the mind is quiet, the breath is perceptible; when the mind becomes a void, the breath too is gone. What remains then cannot be put into words. Breath is the last stop. Up to there you can still keep a reckoning; beyond that, all reckoning is gone. After that, suddenly you may even feel as if you have completely died. And the first experience will be almost like that—as if everything has come to an end. Because our sense of life is bound to the breath. That is an explosive event; that is the explosion.

There are other methods too. Yes—but the method doesn’t really make a difference. Still, in my view, this is the simplest. The simplest.

Tell me, tell me.

You have already told a lie. You have already given an answer. You say, “When you grow up you’ll understand.” First find out: who has grown up and understood?

First, it is simply wrong to believe that someone will come to know by growing up. What has knowing to do with becoming big? The child is right. There are so many grown-ups... all around—who among them has come to know? Who comes to know merely by becoming an adult? Second, you say you will think and then tell; that too is absolutely wrong. For who has ever been able to say it by thinking?

No—who has ever been able to tell even after asking someone? Who has managed to tell by asking others? It is not possible. In truth, we should accept our ignorance. Whenever the opportunity arises to acknowledge our ignorance, we should not miss it. For that is a big step toward knowledge. The acceptance of ignorance is a big step toward humility.

In my view, there is no ego other than the ego of knowledge. Not of wealth, not of fame, not of position—those are not the real ego. But the amusing thing is: the so-called knower has saved himself and proved everyone else to be egotistical. If we do not know, we should say, “We do not know.” And what we can do is only this much: to say, “We do not know.” Then even in that child the sense will begin to grow that he too does not know.

Because it is the pain of not knowing that leads one into the search. No one else is ever going to give him the answer. Neither you can give it, nor can I. Someday he himself will receive the answer. So that he may receive it, let us not create any obstacles—that is all we can do.

Certainly one can ask—and one should tell. And one should tell what is true: that you have come out of fear of your wife; or out of fear of the neighbors; or out of fear of society; or that it has become a bad habit that won’t leave you; if you don’t come, it feels as if some special task has been left undone. Just as with smoking, so it has become with coming to the temple. Whatever is true, that is what should be said.

Yes, it will.

Yes, yes. If an answer arises, you should give it—but say only what you truly see, plainly; not an answer just for the sake of answering, but what is. What I am saying is that there is a kind of answer merely given to give an answer. It has no meaning, no value. We are spoiling children exactly this way—by giving the answers we think ought to be given. And sooner or later the child finds out that it is all false. Parents were false, their traditions false. The scriptures were false, the gurus false. Everywhere, sheer falsehood. The day a child discovers this, a great crisis befalls his life. We ourselves create disbelief by imposing false belief. And when disbelief arises, we bring suffering; that suffering is bound to come—we ourselves have sown its seed. My point is: if we do not know, we should say so clearly.

I was just speaking of Lawrence. He is walking in a garden; a small child is with him, and the child asks, “Why are the trees green?” Lawrence says, “The trees are green because they are green.” The child protests, “What kind of mad answer is that? Is that an answer—that the trees are green because they are green?” Lawrence says, “That is the only answer I know. Beyond that—beyond that—I am ignorant.” Such a man is utterly honest.

In my view, in the search for truth—if there is truth anywhere—such a person may reach it. But those who already “know” can never reach; those who sit as if they know already. The pundit never arrives; he cannot. A sinner can arrive—because a sinner can be humble; a pundit cannot be humble. Yet we find it very hard to admit that we do not know—very hard.

There is an anecdote about Nasruddin. The emperor of his town had him seized and summoned. He said, “I have decided that from tomorrow—tomorrow is my birthday—falsehood will be banned in the capital. Whoever speaks untruth will be hanged on the gallows.” Nasruddin asked, “Where is your gallows? Because I want to be the very first to come tomorrow morning.” The king said, “Right at the city gate stands the gallows. Interrogation will be held there. Whoever is caught lying will be hanged at the gate so that the whole town can see.” Nasruddin said, “Then we shall meet at the gate tomorrow morning.” The king added, “I had called you to ask whether what I am doing is right.” Nasruddin replied, “That will be settled tomorrow, right there.” Nasruddin is a very marvelous man.

In the morning the gate opened and Nasruddin, sitting on his donkey, was the first to enter. The king asked, “Where are you going so early?” Nasruddin said, “To be hanged.” The king exclaimed, “This is a real quandary—you are plainly lying.” Nasruddin replied, “Then hang a liar.” The king said, “But then I shall be in great trouble—by hanging you, you will turn out to have spoken the truth.” Nasruddin said, “Then decide as you see fit—should I go on or should I stay?” The emperor said, “You have put me in a real fix.” Nasruddin said, “So it is not yet decided what truth is and what falsehood is, and you are handing out the gallows? Do not get into this tangle at all; it is not so easy to determine. As for me, I am ignorant. You summoned me to ask, and I said I would reveal my ignorance right at the gate in the morning. Now if you are the knowledgeable one, do as you think proper—I am ready to go to the gallows.”

In fact, children’s questions are always true, and the elders’ answers are always false. This is the ongoing struggle between children and elders. A child has no reason to ask falsely; when he asks, he asks rightly. And we do not have the answers—there are so many things for which man has no answer. So we should accept that there is no answer. But no one is ready to admit that he does not have an answer. Because we refuse to admit it, we have erected so many systems of philosophy. Children raised the questions; elders supplied the answers. But all those answers are false. The first thing about truth is: what is not known is not known. It is not right to say otherwise. And the motives behind what we are doing should also be stated clearly: “We are doing this because...”

If we practice just this much honesty, then in my understanding the child will find a way, and we too will find a way. Because children place us in the very situation we are actually in—but which we never accept. They often shove us to the point where it becomes clear that we are ignorant. But then we dust off our clothes, don our robes, and stand erect again; we arrange things and declare that we know everything. But for how long?

If you look very closely, is it really the children who are asking you? Think carefully: it is your own simplicity that is asking; it is your own childhood that keeps asking again and again. The lies we have draped ourselves in, having forgotten our childhood in every way—those very lies are being challenged again and again. And whenever that inner child asks, all our punditry shakes—because it is standing on sheer falsity; it has no meaning.

I say: let yourself fall. For the future of humanity, the happiest event would be that man accepts his ignorance and stops weaving webs of futile knowledge. Then it may even happen that among the millions of things we do not know, one or two we might come to know—that too may happen. And at least one thing is certain: even if we come to know nothing at all, this acceptance of ignorance—such a person can at least know himself. Because then he does not hammer in any hypotheses or doctrines. No—do not give any answers. And do not ask anyone for answers.

That child has raised good questions. Do not spoil him by giving bad answers. Deepen his questions. Tell him, “I don’t know either, and I too want to ask this—but whom should I ask? Here, I ask you the same.” What harm is there in that? Must it be that only children ask and elders answer? Is it necessary? Is it necessary? This is just our old notion—that elders give answers and children ask questions. It is not necessary. Everything can be reversed; very often it is. Not knowing is not knowing. And in my view, if we even come to this much understanding—that we don’t know—a joy descends for which there is no measure, because we become utterly light.

Ouspensky once went to meet Gurdjieff. When he met him, his book had already become world-famous. One of his books is truly remarkable: Tertium Organum. It is said there have been only three such books in the world: Aristotle’s Organon; Bacon’s Novum Organum; and Ouspensky’s Tertium Organum—the first organon, the new organon, and the third organon. That book had appeared, and it is very extraordinary.

He went to meet a simple, poor fakir named Gurdjieff in a village. Friends had urged him to go. He asked, “What will he teach me?” They said, “Teach you—perhaps not; but what he can do is strip you of your illusion of having learned. Teaching—perhaps not. But what he can take away is your delusion that you already know.”

Out of mere curiosity Ouspensky went. A long time passed; Gurdjieff sat silently, ten or fifteen others sat silently too. Ouspensky grew restless: no one spoke, no one asked, no one answered. He had thought that when some conversation started he would also ask. He became nervous and whispered to the neighbor who had brought him, “Shall I ask something?” The man said, “Among these people you will prove yourself very ignorant if you ask, because here the business of questions and answers has ended. These people have reached the place where things simply are.” Ouspensky thought, “Is that so? No answers?” Still he protested inwardly, “What is he saying? There can be answers to everything.”

So he said to Gurdjieff, “I want to ask something.” Gurdjieff picked up a slip of paper, handed it to him, and said, “Write on this that whatever you are about to ask—you yourself do not know what the very words mean. And if you do know, then do not trouble me needlessly; to make the known known is very difficult. Write here only what you do not know; then regarding that I will say something to you—because the one who does not know is able to hear.”

Ouspensky has written: “I had never been in such difficulty. I had written big books, but writing on that small slip became very hard. I would lift the pen—what should I write? Do I know God? The answer came, No, I don’t—and I have written books on God. Do I know the soul? The answer came, Where? I have no idea—and I have written treatises on self-knowledge, and people come to consult me. I was in a real fix. Slowly the ten or twelve people sitting silently began to laugh—laughing loudly—and sweat was pouring from me. Gurdjieff said, ‘Write quickly. Whatever you do know—even a little—write it, so I may at least recognize what you do know; then we will go further. And about what you do not know, we will speak.’ Their laughter, my sweat—it was a cold night. I handed the paper back and said, ‘Please take this back. I do not have the courage to claim that I know anything.’” Gurdjieff laughed heartily; they all laughed heartily...

“I am searching—and you also search. If you find out, let me know; and if I find out, I will tell you. But right now it is not known—right now it is not known.” If there is even this much simplicity, then a real search can begin. Then father and son become friends; they set out together on an inquiry. Tomorrow, if the child discovers something, he will tell. And who knows—he may discover it before you; nothing is fixed. In one way or another, your knowing attitude will crack, it will shatter completely. And when it shatters, a great event takes place.