Rom Rom Ras Peejiye #7

Until now, at the center of satsang has stood the true master—some saint, some mahatma; at the center of satsang has been the guru. The feeling has been: go somewhere one can find truth. But in my vision, the center of satsang is not the guru; it is the disciple. The question is not whom you should go to in order to learn; the question is whether the capacity to learn has awakened in you. It is not very important where you go; what matters is whether there is an attitude of learning within you.

If you have the capacity to learn, the whole of life becomes satsang. Getting up and sitting down, birds and trees become satsang; ordinary people become satsang. But if the learning vision is absent, then even if you live with the Divine, remember, there will be no satsang.

Satsang does not depend on someone else; it depends on your own being, on your way of living. If the eyes are open, the whole of life is satsang; the whole of life is a teaching. From birth to death, all around, the vast ocean of life is present—present in many meanings, in many forms, from many directions; and if there are doors within us, if the heart is open, then in every way its waves leave something with our lives.

But what I see is that the very idea of satsang has become: go sit with a guru and learn from him. Because of this notion the learner has become less important and the teacher supremely important. The whole “gurudom” has arisen from this. And those who are gurus also teach that without a guru there will be no knowledge; therefore come and make us your gurus. Whereas the truth is that someone who has had an experience of truth would not even conceive of becoming your guru. And even if you asked him, he would only be surprised. This race to become a guru cannot exist in the mind of one in whose life light has descended.

This race to be a guru is a race for authority and power. That is why one guru stands opposed to another. One guru has his circle, another guru his circle. And they proclaim, “Only we are the true gurus. Do not go to anyone else. All others are false.”

The whole thing has become a trade, a business—and at its center humankind has suffered great harm.

So I am eager to shift that center entirely. In satsang the guru is not important; you are important—your way of seeing, your capacity to learn, your open mind. Then the question of a particular person disappears; wherever you are in life, there is much to learn on every side.

A Muslim fakir was on his deathbed. Someone asked him, “From whom did you learn wisdom?” He said, “That is difficult. Whose names shall I take? Not a single moment in my life passed in which I did not learn something from someone. Once I was walking down the road and saw a small child carrying a lit lamp. I asked the child, ‘Son, can you tell me where the flame in this lamp has come from?’ I thought he would be bewildered and fail to answer. But what did the child do? He blew it out and said to me, ‘Now you tell me where the flame has gone.’ I touched the child’s feet; I had found a guru. I realized it was wrong to look upon him as ‘small.’ There too a mystery was present, something had taken birth. To consider him small merely because he was younger was a mistake. I had no answer. I understood that what I had asked was steeped in ignorance. And as for the answer to that question, I was as much a child as he. The illusion of my being an elder was shattered. That shattering was an extraordinary teaching given to me by a small child—he became my guru.

“Once,” the fakir said, “I was staying in a village. A woman came running, her clothes disheveled, without her veil. She asked me, ‘Have you seen a man pass by here?’ I said, ‘Ill-mannered woman, first put your clothes in order, then ask me anything.’ The woman replied, ‘Forgive me, I took you to be a lover of God, His mad one. My beloved is to come this way; I have set out to find him—after years he is to pass from here. In love I became so crazed that forget clothes, I had no awareness even of my body! But you have not been able to become such a mad lover of God that another’s clothes do not even appear to your eyes!’ I touched her feet and said, ‘Your love is deeper than mine. I thought I was God’s lover; you have shown me I am not. One to whom even another’s garments are still visible—how can he be a lover of God? One who cannot drown even as deeply as an ordinary woman drowns in the thought of her beloved!’ That woman became my guru.

“And once,” said the fakir, “I wandered into a village at midnight. All were asleep except one man sitting by a wall of a house. I felt, ‘This must be a thief. Who else would lean against someone’s wall at such an hour?’ The man addressed me, ‘Traveler, have you lost your way? Please, come stay at my house. It is very late; the inns have closed.’ He took me home, settled me to sleep, and said, ‘I must go now; my work is done at night.’ I asked, ‘What is your work?’ He said, ‘I cannot lie to a fakir. I am a poor thief.’ He left. I was amazed: I could not speak with such honesty. How many times have thoughts of theft not arisen in my mind! What vices have I not nurtured within! But I never confessed them. Even I was not as simple as that thief. Near dawn he returned, tiptoeing in so as not to wake me. I asked, ‘Did you get anything? Bring anything?’ He said, ‘No, not tonight. But tomorrow we’ll try again.’ He was cheerful, not dejected.

“I stayed at his house for thirty days. For thirty nights he went out and each morning returned empty-handed. When I asked, ‘Anything?’ he would say, ‘No, not today—but tomorrow surely; we’ll try again.’ A month later I left. Later, when I plunged deeply into the search for God and found no shore or edge—when I grew tired and despondent and thought to abandon the quest—then I remembered that thief who returned empty-handed every day and yet never lost heart: ‘Tomorrow we’ll try again.’ The repeated remembrance of that thief saved me from despair. The day I received the light of the Divine, I folded my hands and bowed in gratitude to that thief; had I not met him that night, perhaps I would have given up long before.”

Thus that fakir spoke of many from whom he had learned.

Life all around is a great school. Life all around is a vast truth. Daily it stands at our door. Our eyes are closed—and we ask: Where shall we go to do satsang? Whose feet shall we hold? Whom shall we make our guru? Life stands on all sides ready to pour out everything, to open everything—and our eyes are closed to it, our hearts shut.

So I do not say: go somewhere to do satsang. Make your heart such that satsang happens twenty‑four hours a day. In life there is everything from which one can learn, attain, know—if only some vision opens, some inner insight unfolds.

But those who go elsewhere seeking to “do satsang” will never find it, never—because their eyes were closed. Otherwise they would have found it in life itself. And if you go anywhere with closed eyes, what difference does it make? Wherever you go, whatever you seek, you will get nothing—because the doors that need to be open are shut.

So I do not say: go somewhere to do satsang. I say: cultivate the open vision that can learn. Learn from your child, from your servant, from the beggar at your door; on every side—from trees, from plants. Those who can learn, who can know, learn from anywhere. A dry fallen leaf from a tree can open your vision; your eyes can open. But preparation is needed. And in this preparation the guru has no value; the value is always of the one who has set out on the search.

So I do not say a guru is necessary for knowledge. I say the capacity to learn is necessary. In the spiritual life there are no gurus, only disciples. There are no gurus, no teachers—only disciples. And where there are gurus, understand that there will be business in the name of religion.

Today the situation is upside down. There are almost no disciples; nearly everyone is a guru.

A young man once came to an ashram. He said to the head of the ashram, “I have come to learn, to be in satsang, to search for truth, to do sadhana.” The head said, “In our ashram there are two kinds of people: disciples, who learn, and gurus, who teach. But to be a disciple is very difficult. Learning is great austerity, great labor; there will be much hardship. Do you wish to be a disciple?” He listed all the difficulties. The youth said, “No, that is too hard. Kindly tell me, then, what must one do to be a guru?” The head replied, “To be a guru, no special work is needed. One must know the trick of becoming a guru—anyone can do it. If you can speak, if you can explain, you can be a guru.” The youth said, “Then make me a guru. I can speak and I can explain.” He had come in search of truth, but he became a guru. Often people go in search of truth to do satsang—and slowly start making others do satsang, forgetting they had come to learn. In truth, there is no vision for learning in them; the simple, open heart needed for learning is absent.

For this we are considering these three days how the heart can become simple. A heart filled with knowledge will not be simple—that I said on the first day. A heart filled with imagination will not be simple—that I said to you this morning. Tomorrow I will speak further on how the heart can become utterly simple.

When the heart becomes simple, the whole of life is satsang; the whole of life is scripture; the whole of life is the guru. All scriptures are man-made; but this life is fashioned by the Divine. All teachings are composed by man; but these plants, these birds, these hills, these mountains, these human beings—this entire expanse—is of the Divine. One who cannot learn from this, who cannot learn from the Divine’s scripture—where else will he learn?

Open your heart to this scripture of the Divine. Only he can open to it who bids farewell to the scriptures of men. And when that opens—there is satsang everywhere.

Those who have seen the ocean in a storm will find it hard even to imagine that storm is not the nature of the ocean—and that there are times when there is no storm and yet the ocean is. The waves that rise in the sea are not the sea’s nature; the sea exists even without waves.

The thoughts and imaginings that arise in the mind are like the waves rising on the ocean. And remember: the wave is the ocean, but the ocean is not the wave. The ocean is present in the wave, but the ocean is not only the wave; the ocean is, even without waves. A wave, however, can never be without the ocean. Have you ever seen a wave without the ocean? But an ocean without waves can certainly be seen.

Thought and reasoning cannot be without the mind, but the mind can be without thought and reasoning. And if you inquire just a little, you need not go far, you need not first become empty to know that consciousness can be empty. If, here and now, you bring a little understanding, it will be seen.

There are two thoughts in the mind; between two thoughts, is there not an empty space? As I said: “Rama came.” Between the words “Rama” and “came,” what is there? Is there not a gap? If there were no empty space between two words or two thoughts, one thought would climb over the other; it would even be difficult to recognize which thought is which. There is an interval, a gap, between two thoughts, between two words. What is that gap? Who is in that empty space? Is there not consciousness there? One thought goes, another comes; in that little empty space between, who is there? Is there not consciousness there?

There too is consciousness. Thoughts come and go; thoughts are not consciousness. That upon which thoughts come and go is consciousness. Thoughts drift over consciousness like smoke and pass; behind them is consciousness. One thought goes, another comes; in the empty space between, there is consciousness—there is emptiness.

So when one travels in the direction of silence, gradually the space between thoughts, the interval, begins to widen; the gap grows larger. From that very gap, that very empty space, it becomes evident that within there is a void too, an ocean where there are no waves. Slowly a point comes when all thoughts fall silent, all waves are stilled. Then the full experience of that ocean happens which was hidden beneath the waves and could not be seen. The waves are on the surface; the ocean is very deep. The waves cover the ocean, and the depth below is not discerned. That depth is known only in emptiness—when all the waves, whether of reasoning, or imagination, or anything else—are stilled.

But this does not mean that one who becomes empty will be incapable of thinking.

No; only when you become a zero will you be able to think rightly. Only when you become a zero will right thinking be possible. But then thought will not rise as waves; that thought will become vision, it will become insight.

Imagine a blind man. The meeting is over; now he has to go. A question arises in him: I have to leave—by which path? Where is the door? Which door? Which way should I go? All these thoughts arise inside him. If we tell him, “If your eyes are healed, you too will get up and go out the door,” even then he will get up and go—but then no thought will arise within. A man with eyes simply stands and walks out. He does not think, “This is the door, this is the exit, I must go through it.” Nothing of the sort. He sees; the door is seen, and he goes. Only if someone prompts him will he think, “Yes, that was the door and I went through it.” Otherwise even that thought won’t arise; he’ll just go out.

Thought will not be born, but there will be a seeing, an inner seeing—and it will do the work. As a person’s mind grows quiet, his insight becomes sharper and clearer. Problems do come before him, but he does not bang his head and think over them the way we do.

Why do we have to think the way we do? Because we do not see. We have to think because there are no eyes. When there are eyes there will be no thought; right through the midst of problems it will be directly seen how to pass. That will be insight. When the mind is silent and empty, insight enters life. Insight is not something smaller than thought; it is far greater than thought. Insight is always discerning; thought is not always discerning. Thought makes mistakes; insight never does. For thought there are alternatives, there is choice—two options, ten options: which one to choose? It picks one and leaves the others. For insight there are no options; there is only one. There is no choice, no selection—just one obviousness. There is no question of error. Insight never errs.

But a person with an empty mind does not become without thought; rather he becomes so full of thought that there are not two thoughts within him—only one. And where there is one, no noise is created, no conflict arises, no waves are formed. Where there are many, there is disturbance, there is storm. Our mind, which we claim is thinking, is thinking less and is more agitated, more deranged.

Try watching your mind for half an hour in solitude. Keep a sheet of paper and write honestly whatever is going on in your mind—don’t leave out anything. After half an hour, will you be willing to show that paper to anyone?

I don’t think you will. You will say, “No, I don’t want to show this to anyone. If people see it, they will catch me and take me straight to a mental hospital for treatment—‘His mind has gone wrong; look at what’s going on in his head!’”

Try writing for just ten minutes: what is going on in your head—the very thing you call thought! You will find that some madman is present within, thinking incongruent things, futile things, things that have no connection with each other. At times thinking of God, at times of the shop, at times of the dog barking outside, at times of illness, at times of this and that; and all of it so discordant and mismatched that inside it almost seems someone is insane. We hide this madman. We maintain a calm face on the outside and hide this madman within. He comes out now and then, at the right times or the wrong—if there’s a loss, if a loved one dies, the madman comes out. It doesn’t take long for him to leap out; he’s already there within.

William James, a very great psychologist, once went to a mental hospital. He saw all kinds of mad people. I would also urge you—once in a while go and see a madhouse. Looking at the mad you will come to know your own condition: Where am I, and how far am I from them?

William James went. He returned completely dejected. He had gone very cheerful, eager to see the mad; he came back sad. He couldn’t sleep that night. The next day his friends said, “Since you returned yesterday you’ve been very down—what’s the matter?”

William James said, “Perhaps I will never be happy again in this life.”

They asked, “Why? What happened?”

William James said, “Seeing those madmen, one thought occurred to me: the same things are going on within me too. How long can I keep a lid on it? When these poor fellows couldn’t manage and one day the structure broke and what was inside came out—couldn’t that happen to me too? If it could happen to them, why not to me? I didn’t come with any special decree from God that I won’t go mad. So I am frightened—I too could go mad. Because what is visible on the outside in them is present on the inside in me. This is what scares me—that I might go mad!”

Later William James wrote to a friend: “It is very good that we have built mental hospitals and locked the mad inside. Whether or not it is in the madmen’s interest, it greatly benefits those outside. Because they don’t have to see the mad, and they remain assured that they themselves are not mad.”

Is this the condition of our minds? And we call this thought? We call this thinking?

What kind of thinking is this! It is derangement. Thought exists where the mind is silent and still. There things are seen; there the directions for life are clear; there the signals are unmistakable; the path is plain. There is no reason for regret or for turning back.

But inside we are entangled—utterly tangled, not at all resolved. And we call this thought. No, it is nothing like thought. The mind is running continuously: asleep it is running, awake it is running, sitting it is running—just running, without cause. This running mind is mad.

We are all sitting here. If some people, while sitting, kept moving their legs and waving their hands, what would we say? We would say, “Is something wrong with them? If you’re sitting, what need is there to move your legs? If you were walking, then moving your legs would make sense. Why uselessly jiggle your legs while sitting? Why move your hands?”

We know not to move our hands or legs; we sit quietly. When it is time to walk we move our legs; when we sit, we stop. And we don’t say, “If we don’t keep moving our legs while sitting, how will we move them when it’s time to walk?” When we walk, we’ll move them; when we sit, we’ll stop them.

But the brain keeps running all the time—it never stops. Surely the condition of the brain has become distorted; the brain has become ill. This sick brain is what gives us sorrow, pain, anguish; it turns life into a hell.

And when you learn to make the mind empty, then if thought is needed, you will be able to think—and think well. Because the mind will be quiet, and in a quiet mind energy gathers. Power is not wasted; it accumulates. A problem comes—the problem remains small; the mind has great strength and opens the knot at once.

Our condition is the opposite. A small problem comes, and the mind has no strength left; it has been squandering energy in useless running. A tiny problem arrives, and we get stuck, we start crying, beating our chest—“What to do, what not to do?”—and then we begin searching for a guru: “Which guru shall we go to? Let’s ask him; perhaps he will help.”

If the brain steadily gathers quiet power, no one needs to go to any guru. It is most undignified to carry petty problems to someone else. It only announces that we have no strength left in our own mind to see and solve our own problems. We wander about with trivial, petty issues and ask others—this is very degrading. It declares that our mind is bankrupt. And bankrupt it is—and that very bankruptcy we call thinking. We claim these waves are our nature, that this turbulence is our nature, that this madness is our nature.

Madness is no one’s nature. Just as illnesses come upon a man, but illnesses are not his nature, so too disorders come into the mind, derangements come, but they are not our nature. Our nature is perfect silence. And how shall we know that our nature is perfect silence? Because even a person utterly restless and surrounded by thoughts wants to be quiet. What we long to be—that is our nature. We never long to be anything contrary to our nature. No one wants to be restless. Can you find someone who says, “I want to be restless”? No one wants to be unhappy, afflicted, anxious. What does this mean? It means that at his center he rejects whatever is opposite to his nature. He says to worry, to sorrow, to agitation, to unrest: “We do not want this.” We want to be peaceful, we want to be blissful, we want to attain happiness, to attain light, to attain freedom. Why do we want these? Our nature demands them. And what we have become is something wrong; we deny it, we reject it, we want to rise above it.

Zero—emptiness—is our nature. And the one who attains to emptiness attains an extraordinary capacity for thought, because he becomes quiet. In silence energy gathers and is conserved. At the center of silence, energy and power collect so wondrously that whatever its explosion touches fills life with great light.

We will speak a little more on this tomorrow morning—because tomorrow I have to speak about emptiness itself.

This doubt is very auspicious, most welcome. But perhaps my words have not been heard properly; that is why this doubt has arisen. For I keep saying that one should not have faith in anyone’s words. That includes me. I am not saying: drop faith and belief in everyone else’s words and then have faith in mine. I too am other, a stranger, the second. Whatever I am saying may be true for me; it does not thereby become true for you. Naturally, you must doubt it and reflect upon it. Certainly you must not accept it blindly. One should not accept anyone’s statement—anyone’s. That includes me; it includes all.

Whenever we place our faith in another, what does it indicate? That we do not have faith in ourselves. Faith in another is a proclamation of self-disbelief. The person who lacks trust in himself puts his trust in someone else. And if one does not even trust oneself, what value is there in one’s faith in another? What meaning does it have?

In life one must discover one’s own strength—and one’s own truth. And one must labor upon oneself with full trust and vigor. Beyond that there is no companion, no support. Each person is his own support.

But the teachings of thousands of years have bred great meekness, great inferiority. And all those teachings say: have faith in someone else. Whenever a person starts having faith in another, his trust in himself withers—inevitably. And when inwardly he becomes faithless toward himself, all his steps become weak, his strength breaks, he becomes fearful, his courage is destroyed. His nerve to explore the new, to tread new paths, collapses. He becomes utterly poor in spirit, utterly devoid of self, lying at someone’s feet.

Those feet may be strong, they may be powerful—but what has that to do with you? Your own faltering steps are your companions, not another’s sturdy steps. You have to travel on your own weak feet; no one has ever traveled on someone else’s. You must see with your own eyes; when has anyone ever seen through another’s eyes?

There is an old story. An old man had lost his eyesight. His friends and family said, “Get your eyes treated.” But the old man said, “What need have I for eyes? I am eighty years old. I have eight sons, eight daughters-in-law, and my wife—there are thirty-four eyes in the house. So if my two eyes are gone, what difference does it make? Aren’t thirty-four eyes enough in a home?”

His arithmetic was right, but perhaps he knew nothing about life. And often arithmetic and life do not tally. Life is very unreasonable. In life two and two are not always four. Life is very unreasonable, very mysterious; it is not a clean ledger like mathematics. He calculated that when there were thirty-six eyes in a house, things ran fine, so why wouldn’t they run with thirty-four? His thinking seemed correct; the math was perfectly in order. The children agreed, the friends agreed: eight sons, eight daughters-in-law, one wife—there were plenty of eyes in the house. What difference does it make if two eyes are missing?

But not even fifteen days had passed before it became clear that without those two eyes, nothing was there. One night the house caught fire. Everyone in the house was asleep. The old man was asleep too. Those who had eyes got out of the fire; the old man remained inside. He thought a lot—surely one of those thirty-four eyes would come. But it did not even occur to those thirty-four eyes until they had got themselves out of the blaze. Once they were safely outside, then it occurred to them: “Ah, the old man, the elder of the house, is still inside! What now?” But there was no way back in. The eyes were outside; the one without eyes was left within. And only then did the old man realize—when his body began to burn and he ran screaming about the room, bumping into the walls—that when a house is on fire only one’s own eyes can be of use, no one else’s. But by then it was too late; there was no remedy. The house became his funeral pyre.

In life too there is much fire, and in life too no one else’s eyes are of any use to anyone. For talk it is different—“I love you, my eyes will do for you.” Conversation is one thing; life—its flames, a house on fire—is another. And in the house of life the fire burns every day. But most people realize it only when the time has passed and the house begins to turn into a pyre; only then do they see that they had no eyes of their own.

One person walks by Krishna’s eyes, another by Rama’s, another by Buddha’s, by Mahavira’s, by Mohammed’s. Those eyes are not even present now. No one can walk by those eyes. Yes, if you want worship and ritual, that is another matter. But to live life is different—you need your own eyes.

So there is no need whatsoever to have faith in me. No need at all to believe my words. My appeal is precisely this: let no one, even by mistake, believe my words. Think, reflect, understand. After thinking, reflecting, understanding, experimenting—after searching with neutrality, after analysis—if something appears to you to be of use, that is different. But then it is no longer belief; it becomes science. Seek it, test it, break it open—impartially; without believing, without disbelieving, without faith, without unfaith—examine anything with an unbiased mind, investigate it, recognize it, measure it on the touchstone of discernment, experiment with it. And if then something seems right—seems right by your own experience and insight—then it is no longer mine; it has become yours. After such testing and experimentation, whatever it is becomes yours; then it is no longer mine. I have no relation to it, no connection with it, no responsibility for it. I am not responsible, not answerable for it. You know; it is your business.

But there is no need to have faith in me at all. There is no need to have faith in anyone. What is needed is thought and discernment. We have been raised for thousands of years under the intoxication of faith, and humanity has wandered from here to there because of it! Now what is needed is that we walk in the light of discernment, search, test; and if life has been given, then live it. Why should we believe in anyone’s borrowed words? Who am I that you should believe my words? What need is there to believe me? Whoever tells you, “Believe my words,” is your enemy, not your friend—because instilling the habit of belief shuts the possibility of awakening discernment within.

I am not your enemy; how then can I say, “Believe in me”? I will say: think, inquire. Whatever I have said or will say—I am not saying it so that someone may believe it, not so that someone may become a follower, not so that someone may become a disciple. There is no such purpose in it. All that is very childish. Someone becomes someone’s guru, someone becomes someone’s follower—what could be more immature and childish? What childish nonsense! Do these things have any meaning in life, that someone should make someone a follower and someone else become a leader? Is there any sense in it?

We are all little children; hence there are leaders in the world and hence followers. If a little maturity arises in the world, a little reflection, then there will be neither leaders nor followers. There will be friends, fellow seekers—companions, collaborators, partners. Those who know will tell others—not so that someone may believe, but because whatever I have known becomes my duty to share. It may be that in some way what I say becomes meaningful in someone’s thinking, in their analysis. What I say may, in their search and research, prove meaningful in some way. If so, good; otherwise there is no reason for anyone to accept it, nor any reason to believe it.

So please—let no one believe. But keep one more thing in mind: one should avoid believing, and one should also avoid disbelieving. For belief is one kind of mistake, disbelief is another kind of mistake. I have not said: disbelieve in Krishna, Mahavira, Buddha. I have said: do not believe.

But we have become habituated to think in this language: “Do not believe” means “disbelieve.”

No. Disbelief too is a kind of belief; disbelief is also a form of belief, the negative form. One man believes that God exists; another believes that God does not exist—this too is belief, though we call him a disbeliever. One man says, “What Rama says is true”; another says, “Whatever Rama says is false.” Both have believed; both are blind.

The one who seeks truth says, “I do not know—so how can I believe, and how can I disbelieve? The knower can believe; the knower can disbelieve. I do not know, so I will listen, understand, reflect, analyze, search, try to understand; I will neither believe nor disbelieve.” The seeker of truth avoids both banks of belief and disbelief and travels in the river itself. He stays free of the banks—of this shore and of that—and journeys in the midstream, the current of discernment that leads to the ocean.

The atheist moors his boat to one bank—the bank of disbelief. The theist moors his boat to the other—the bank of belief. Between the banks of belief and disbelief flows the current of discernment. Whoever stops at any bank becomes a stagnant pond, is lost; his journey ends.

So be a river, not a bank. Do not tie yourself to a shore—neither to this one nor to its opposite; rather, travel in the middle, between the two banks, and then one day you will surely reach the ocean. Whoever halts at the bank never reaches the sea. Do not become a lake; become a stream. The believer and the disbeliever become lakes, ponds—closed, stagnant. Their journey ceases; they go nowhere.

Very few people on this earth are free like rivers, unbound to the banks, traveling between them. Only those few come to the fragrance of truth. But anyone can. If there is understanding, what difficulty is there in becoming free of the banks? We bind ourselves with our own mind; we can free ourselves by our own mind. So neither believe nor disbelieve. See with an impartial mind, understand, think—and out of that seeing and understanding something will emerge that gives life a path, a light.

Now we will sit for the night’s meditation. There are a few more questions; I will discuss them tomorrow afternoon—no, tomorrow night.

Move a little apart. Last night only a few people lay down; today I hope a few more will find the courage to lie down. By tomorrow night we hope that almost everyone will be lying down.

Yes, move—move to the aisle. Move to the aisle; it is very beautiful, clean—move there. There is space at the back; move back. No one should be touching anyone else, no one should be in contact with another. Sit or lie down as you wish, but let no one touch anyone. Move quickly, so that the lights can be put out.