Sadhana Sutra #4

Bliss is exceedingly subtle. The voice of Paramatma is very faint. Only those can hear that voice who have freed themselves from useless noises and the fascination for them. We live in a crowd of sounds. The taste of Paramatma is very delicate. And only those will be able to savor that taste whose capacity to taste has not been destroyed by the race for stimulation.

But all the senses are eager for stimulation. And stimulation has a law: the more stimulation you give, the more stimulation will be needed. As if a man drinks a cup of wine—today he may be intoxicated, but tomorrow he will need two cups; one cup will no longer suffice. He will develop the capacity to digest one cup. One cup will no longer create any stimulation. Tomorrow two cups will be needed, but the day after tomorrow even two cups will be futile. The body will absorb that much stimulation too; then three cups will be needed.

And such a time can come when wine becomes like water—no stimulation remains in it. Then even more intoxicating poisons will have to be brought into use.

In Assam even now a small community of tantrikas keeps snakes. Because no other poison brings a kick anymore; only if the snake nips the tongue, a little intoxication comes.

In the race for stimulation we slowly become dull, inert. The stronger the stimulation we take, the less becomes the capacity of our senses to experience. Then more is needed, then still more. And this race has no end. In the end it turns the senses to stone.

If you prefer very sharp stimulations in food, then very soon your capacity for taste will die. However many chilies you take, it will all seem tasteless. What is the essence of chili? A strong stimulation to arouse taste. But that which we take to awaken ends up becoming the cause of death. If you eat without chilies, you will feel you are eating mud. The natural taste of food will not reach you now. Your capacity to taste has diminished. This will seem paradoxical: in the race for taste, the capacity for taste decreases. The taste that Buddha and Mahavira found in food cannot reach you.

That is why I say again and again that those whom we call renunciates are the hardest to find as supreme enjoyers. For whatever is their experience is the purest. If Buddha drinks only water, even in that he will taste what you cannot taste even in wine. Because the less the senses are excited, the more capable they remain, and the more skillful they become in catching the subtle.

If you are used to listening to loud bands and drums, then the soft voices of birds will not reach you. Yet they too sing. Then the faint sound of the cricket that arises in the hush—you will not even become aware of it; that too is a song. Then the wind passing through the trees—the rustle that is born there—that too is music, but it will not reach you. And even these are still stimulations. The resonance of song that arises within the heart—you will not come to know of that at all. And in the inner light, in the inner sky, the reverberation of the Omkar that resounds—you will never know it. And the one who has not heard the sound in his own heart has heard nothing. He remains deprived of the supreme sweetness of music.

So take this to heart first—before we move to the sutra—that the more the race for stimulation, the more your capacity for experience declines. That is why today there is much stimulation in the world and very little experience. Never before were there so many means of pleasure upon the earth. Even in the Puranas, when heaven is described, so many means are not mentioned. What once was only in imagination has all been fulfilled. Science has made imagination concrete. You have so many means for experience, but the one who is to experience has become utterly insensate.

A young woman from America came to me a few days ago. She said, I read your book, From Sex to Superconsciousness—From Sex to Samadhi. It is after reading it that I came to you. I have no curiosity about meditation, nor any search for Paramatma, but I am disturbed because in sex, in the sexual relationship, I do not experience any flavor at all; I do not feel any excitement. I have taken medical treatment, gone to psychotherapists for analysis, wasted thousands of dollars, but there is no juice in sex for me. I thought, since you wrote this book, I should come to you. I asked her, What experiments have you done in relation to sex?

You may not even have heard, but in America it has become very common. They have made an electrical genital organ, an electric vibrator. A genital like a man’s, but driven by battery or electricity. That girl was using an electric vibrator. If you use an electric vibrator, then your sexual organ will become altogether dead. Because no man’s organ has the force of an electrically driven organ. I told her: You have no difficulty anywhere else—the electric vibrator has destroyed you; drop it. With any sense, if you enter the race of stimulation, certainly the electric vibrator is highly stimulating—yet the natural capacity of the sense will be lost.

You will be surprised to know that Tantra has explored even subtler experiments with the sexual organ. Even the friction of the sexual organ with another’s body is a stimulation; it is not needed. The very sexual desire that arises at your sex-center—taste that directly, without the presence or assistance of the other. That is subtler and its nectar is deeper. But even when stimulation reaches only to the sexual organ, even that is a lot of excitation. Even there you have brought the body into the state of friction. The other is not present, but the friction has begun within you—that too is gross! Tantra went further: only in feeling—no resonance in the body at all—experience sex only as feeling. That is subtler still. But even feeling involves a kind of friction. So not even in feeling! Below feeling is the layer of the unconscious, where we are not even aware of what is happening—Tantra carried the experience there. Then the profound experiences of sex that Tantra attained, no one upon the earth has attained. One has to go on diving deeper.

If you know something of mantra-shastra, you will know that a mantra is begun with utterance—Om. One pronounces, but even pronouncing becomes a stimulation, a conflict begins. Your voice goes and collides with the atmosphere; it becomes gross. But you start and then close the lips, and begin the humming within—Om. No sound is produced outside, but you savor it inside. Yet even within a friction arises. Then gradually drop even the inner humming of Om—do not do it from your side. Then take care only to listen if the humming of Om arises on its own within. Let us not do it—our doing brings friction. And within there is the humming of Omkar. When we are not doing, then it is heard. That is called ajapa-jap: we do not chant, and the chant happens.

But as we move inward into subtlety, we have to abandon the infatuation with stimulation. There is a place within which is devoid of stimulation, which Buddha called Shunya. He called it Shunya precisely because there is no stimulation there. Until that is experienced, there will be no experience of bliss.

Understand the difference now.

Pleasure is born of stimulation, and bliss is born of non-stimulation. Pleasure contains friction; bliss contains emptiness, peace.

Therefore, in the search for pleasure every pleasure turns into pain—because then a bigger pleasure is needed. Today a woman seems beautiful, but after living together for four days she will no longer be beautiful. After four days together, a more beautiful woman is needed. For your senses have agreed to that stimulation; now a bigger stimulation is required.

A friend came to me. There was deep conflict between husband and wife. I listened to them both, and then it seemed to me that there remained no bridge between them over which meeting could happen. I asked them, Tell me honestly—do you even look at one another? Do you even lift your eyes toward each other? The husband said, Since you ask, I will say: even when I am making love to my wife, the picture in my imagination is not of her; it is of some film actress. And until I think of a film actress, I cannot make love to her. He thought it was only happening to him. The wife said, Since you are saying it, I too will say—before I married you I had my lovers; unless I think of them in you, I cannot love you.

Do you understand what this means?

Neither is loving the other. And there are not two in that house—there are four. Those two stand between these two. And because of those two, there can never be any meeting between them. Yet they are compelled, because the stimulation of each has been exhausted in the other.

Through experience stimulation is exhausted; therefore pleasure, through experience, becomes pain. The pleasure you have not yet obtained seems like pleasure. When it is obtained, it becomes pain. The very moment it is got, pleasure becomes pain—because stimulations demand ever greater stimulations. And the sensitivity of your senses keeps declining. A time comes when you cannot experience anything at all—because the sensitivities of all your senses have turned to stone. Then you begin to search for Paramatma!

When a man becomes old—I call one old not by age but by this: one who has made his senses inert in the race for stimulations. This can happen in youth; it can happen in childhood. Today, in America, it is happening in childhood. There is no need to wait till old age. If enough means for stimulation are available to you, you will become inert in childhood itself. And when the senses are inert from all sides, then a man asks—Where is bliss? Where is the soul? Where is Paramatma? It is very difficult then, because for that search the sensitivity of the senses must be purified.

If Mahavira and Buddha abandon their palaces and flee, that is the outer event. The inner event is that they are moving away from the places of stimulation, so that the purity and naturalness of the senses can be regained. They run toward the forest—meaning, they run toward nature. So that the doors of experience within us, upon which much garbage has piled up, may be cleared. When that clears away and we begin to become subtler, only then will we hear that which can be heard only by subtle senses. And we will see that which can be seen only with subtle eyes. It is in this context that this sutra is given.

The first sutra: Remove the desire for stimulation.

Remove the desire for stimulation. This does not mean that the sutra is anti-sense. In truth, your desire for stimulation is the murder of the senses. This sutra is a sutra of purification of the senses, not their enemy. If you remove stimulation from taste, then even a dry loaf will yield such a taste as cannot be found in the feast of palaces. Because taste does not depend upon the bread, upon the food; it depends upon the one who tastes. It depends on you—how much you can experience, how deeply you can descend into experience.

Without removing the desire for stimulation, no one can enter the realm of sadhana. Because sadhana means we leave the gross and set out in search of the subtle. But you will have to search for the subtle! Are you capable of experiencing the subtle? Do you have the capacity to meet the subtle?

If that capacity is not there, if the eyes are blind and cannot see, then even if the subtle is present it will not be seen. You have to become progressively pure. You have to become so pure that even if some event happens at the center of your innermost being, you at once have a sense of it, an awareness of it.

Understand: the sense that we give more stimulation to becomes dead. And because it becomes dead, we have to give it more stimulation; thus we make it still more dead. A vicious circle is created. Then you need a new taste each day, a new woman each day, a new man each day, a new house each day, a new car each day—every day something new. But how long does that newness last? For a little while there is a ripple, because that stimulation is not yet familiar to our experience; for a little while it feels good. Then, in a short time, everything becomes old. Everything that is new will become old. And the more dead the senses are, the sooner it will become old. Therefore nothing will give satisfaction; rather, everything will give dissatisfaction. Then what will be the path of fulfillment?

The path of fulfillment will be—do not attend to objects; attend to your own capacity to experience. Then very few things will give great fulfillment. Even from nothing, bliss can be attained—because you see that even by having everything, bliss does not come. Even from nothing, bliss can be.

There was Diogenes in Greece. He left everything; he was a great thinker. In Greece he alone became naked like Mahavira. He became naked. He kept only a begging bowl for alms and for drinking water. Then one day he saw a villager, as he passed through a village, drinking water cupped in his hands. He instantly threw away his begging bowl. The villager asked, What have you done? He said, It never occurred to me that when water can be drunk from one’s hands, why should I be deprived of that joy? The bowl is inert; the water falls into that dead thing—I feel nothing of it. I will take the water into my cupped palms; my hands too will experience the touch of water, its coolness, its life-giving vitality, and the love of my hands will enter the water—so the water will become alive, and that is what I will drink. And when Diogenes, for the first time, drank water from his hands, he began to dance and said, How foolish I was—to drink water through a dead object; as it passed through that, the water too became dead. The warmth of the hands, the heat of the hands, could not reach the water—and that was an insult to water as well.

I tell you of Diogenes because all our senses have become like dead begging bowls. Whatever we take through them becomes dead. Food, as long as it is seen on the plate, looks beautiful; as soon as it enters the mouth, it becomes ordinary. Our mouth makes it ordinary. Music that enters the ear becomes ordinary. Flowers that the eyes see become ordinary.

We make everything ordinary, whereas the world is utterly extraordinary. The flower you see on the tree—such a flower has never bloomed before. The flower is utterly new. To find another like it upon the whole earth is impossible. Such a flower never was in history, and never will be again. Yet even the happening of such a unique flower our eyes make ordinary—they say, All right, it is a rose; we have seen thousands.

Those thousands seen before have made the eyes blind, and what is present before us is not seen. What connection has this flower with the thousands?

Emerson has written that on seeing this rose it occurred to me: this rose knows nothing of thousands of flowers—neither of those to come nor of those that have gone. This rose is directly present to Paramatma. And this flower is blissful for this very reason—there is no comparison. But when I look at it, the thousands I have seen come in between. The eyes become clouded; the unique event of this flower goes to waste. There is then no experience of beauty, no strings of the heart are plucked, not a single hair thrills.

We are living in an extraordinary world. All around, the Vast is present in uncountable forms. Supreme beauty is happening here; supreme music is playing; there is no end to the Nada. Yet like the deaf and blind we pass through all this. Nothing touches us. We are dead corpses. We have turned our senses into tombs, and we are sealed within them like coffins. We pass by—nothing touches, nothing is experienced. And we ask, Where is bliss? We ask, Where is Paramatma? And He is all around. Inside and out there is none other than Him. And there is no moment that is not a moment of bliss. Only an experiencer is needed. And that experiencer we kill in stimulation.

My definition of renunciation: renunciation is the science of supreme enjoyment. Only the one who knows how to leave can truly experience. Drop the futile so that the meaningful may be experienced. Drop stimulation so that the subtle may be perceived.

There is a saying in China: when a musician attains the supreme music, he breaks his vina and throws it away. Quite right. Those who said so must have understood well. For even the strings of a vina create stimulation. And when someone attains the supreme music, even the strings of the vina become an obstacle. Then he breaks them and discards them. Then he listens to that music which already is, which does not have to be produced, which is playing all around. There is no moment when it is not playing. Because we cannot hear it, we have to produce music upon the strings of instruments. Owing to the weakness of our senses we have to take the help of strings. The strings are not producing music; they are producing only noise—organized noise. But since we have become very weak and cannot hear anything, we concern ourselves with the music produced by strings and instruments.

In Japan the Zen fakirs give their seekers one meditation again and again. They say, Listen to the sound that can be produced by the clap of one hand. They make one meditate on this for years. Everyone has heard the sound of two hands clapping; but the Zen master says: meditate upon the sound of the clap that is produced by only one hand—the clap that does not need two hands. Utter madness! Where has a sound ever been produced by a single hand? Yet the Zen fakir says: listen—one day you will hear; go on listening.

There is a Nada that is born without friction. That very Nada we have called Omkar. In it no two hands clap; it does not arise from collision, from impact. It already is. It is the very mode of life; it is playing along with life. But it has become very subtle. We become aware only when something strikes loudly. If nothing is striking, we think nothing is happening.

Yet much is happening, silently. Whatever is profound in life is happening in utter silence. Seeds are splitting in the earth—no sound. Plants are growing—no sound. The stars are moving—no sound. The sun is rising—no tumult. But within a subtle existence—what appears to us as silence—there too is a music, the music of silence, the music of the void. For that, our senses must be capable.

Remove the desire for stimulation. Learn from sense-born experiences.

What learning? Do not kill the senses; enliven them. Make the senses more sensitive. If each sense can experience in the purest way, then through each sense Paramatma will be experienced. Then His taste too can be savored.

This may sound absurd—to speak of the taste of Paramatma! You will say, What are you saying? We have always said there is the vision of God. The reason is not that Paramatma has no taste. The reason is that most seekers of the world have purified only the eyes in their search. There is no other reason. Since they have purified the eyes, they have said: darshan, vision. We even named our entire search darshan, philosophy—sight. This is due to the eyes; man is eye-centered.

And this is not only in this land, it is so everywhere. In the West too, the one who knows is called a seer—one who sees. But why? No one says, the taster. No one says, the hearer of the Divine! No one says, the fragrance of the Divine!

It sounds strange. Yet if the eye can see, why can the nose not smell? In the seeing of the eye we find no obstacle. But if I say, the taste of Paramatma, it seems an obstacle. The only reason is that all the other senses—other than the eyes—become gross more quickly.

The eye is the most fluid sense in the human body. Understand it thus: the eye is the least bodily part of the body—almost bodiless. That is why when we look into someone’s eyes, we can look right through. Hence a deaf man does not lose as much as a blind man loses. When the eyes close, eighty percent of experience closes. Through the other senses we take in twenty percent; through the eyes, eighty percent. Therefore we do not feel as much pity for the deaf as we do for the blind. There is a reason: look how much he is losing! With the loss of the eyes, eighty percent of experience is lost. Thus, being eye-centered, we said: the vision of God.

But it is not necessary. If you purify your sense of taste, His taste will be known through taste. If you purify the experience of your hands, His touch will be known. Purify any one sense, and the perception of Him will come through that sense. If you purify all your senses, Paramatma will shower upon you from all sides.

Sadhana is purification of the senses. And the sutra of purification of the senses is—

Remove the desire for stimulation, learn from sense-born experiences, and observe.

What is observation? That the more the stimulation, the more the sense dies. The less the stimulation, the more the sense wins, awakens, becomes alert.

In this way the lesson of Atma-vidya can be begun, and in this way you can set your foot upon the first rung of the ladder.

What we have to experience lies hidden within. And the search for stimulation is outward. So the more the stimulation, the farther we go from ourselves. Thus it is a strange thing: a man descends upon the moon, yet has no concern to descend within. That too is the search for stimulation—of whatever kind.

The longing to reach the moon is very ancient. Since man has been, he has longed to reach the moon. Children, as soon as they are born, stretch their hands toward the moon. For endless ages man has thought he might reach it. But do you know what happened? When for the first time man landed on the moon, there was tremendous excitement in the whole world; especially in America, since their man landed—so even more excitement. People sat glued to their televisions. But after two hours the excitement was over. Man landed, people switched off their televisions. Then their routine resumed—back to the everyday. For twenty-four hours there was talk—and the matter ended! For thousands of years man had been eager for this excitement, and it ended in two hours! He reached the moon—now what? For a moment it felt that some great event was happening; then all was as before, and the world went on as usual. So great a journey of victory, a dream dreamt for aeons—and it became old in two hours!

Man’s mind makes everything old. And the farther we go outward, the harder it becomes to experience the inner.

The first lesson of Atma-vidya begins with the senses: do not go into stimulation—and you will be able to come near yourself. Do not search the distant—and you will be able to unveil the near.

Remove the longing for progress.

The longing for progress is equally fatal—perhaps more so—than the longing for stimulation. This will sound strange, because we think spirituality too is, after all, a longing for progress: we want bliss, we want liberation, we want Paramatma—this too is the desire for progress.

But understand a basic difference.

There is a progress that comes from your desire. And there is a progress that comes only when you have no desire. There is a progress that comes from your effort; and the progress that comes from your effort will never be greater than you. It cannot be. Your act cannot be greater than you. The act is always smaller than the doer. Whatever you do will be a work smaller than you—it has to be. How can you do something larger than yourself? And when you are the doer, the work will not be greater than you. However great the work, you will remain greater than it. However beautiful a painting one may create, the painter remains greater than the painting. However sweet a music one may produce, the musician remains greater than the music. What you do cannot be greater than you. The act is always smaller than the actor.

This is a difficult thing. It means that even if you accomplish a spiritual progress, it cannot be greater than you. It will be smaller than what you are. Then you are in a great bind. You cannot escape yourself; you will remain—and always remain greater than whatever you attain. Even if you attain Paramatma—mind you, I say if by your effort you attain Paramatma—then He will be smaller than you. He must be, since He is attained by your effort; He cannot be greater than you.

Therefore you cannot attain Paramatma by effort, because He is greater than you. To attain Him there is another way—He can be had by dropping effort.

The sutra says: Remove the longing for progress. Bloom and unfold like a flower. The flower has no awareness of its blooming.

One does not even know when the bud becomes a flower.

Yet it is eager to open its soul to the winds.

The bud is only eager to open—there is no effort. No exercise, no pranayama, no yogasana—the bud does nothing. It is only thirsty, only eager—that the fragrance within pour into the winds. That eagerness does not become effort; it remains pure waiting. The bud only waits: the sun will rise, the breezes will come—then the bud will become a flower. But there is no effort to become a flower; it does not enroll in any school, does not go to any guru, does not learn any method, any technique, any tantra-mantra—it does nothing; it only waits.

You too, in the same way, remain eager to open your soul to the Eternal. But let there be no longing for progress; let the Eternal itself draw forth your strength and your beauty.

Understand this difference. Do not try, from your side, to grasp the Eternal. How will you search for it? You have no clue to it; where will you search? You will look along the paths you already know. And upon those paths you would already have found Him—if He were there. What will you do beyond yourself? Whatever you do will remain confined within your boundaries; it will not establish relationship with the Boundless.

Let the Eternal itself draw forth your strength and your beauty. For by the attraction of the Eternal you will move forward in purity and will flourish. But the powerful craving for personal progress will only make you inert and hard.

So do not try to trap Paramatma in your fist; your fist is too small—He will not fit into it. The more tightly you clench your fist, the more you will find that He is outside. Your fist will remain empty. You will find that nothing but yourself ever fits into your fist.

There are two ways of growth. One way is—striving, resolve, effort, endeavor, labor. In this, you are the master. Whatever you do, you plan it. Whatever you then gain is your own play.

Certainly much can be gained through effort, labor, resolve. But whatever you gain will be smaller than you. And whatever is gained thus is called the world. That which is gained by resolve and labor—that is samsara. In it your ego is strengthened; it is the search of your ego.

There is another way of gaining: that which is received through surrender, through letting go, through waiting, through prayer. Not by labor, but by relaxation. When you are in rest, it happens. When you are in prayer, it happens. When you leave yourself at His feet, when you surrender—then it happens. When you do not swim but float with the current of the river—then it happens. It does not happen by you; you only keep yourself open, and it happens by Him who is vaster than you. You only do not hinder.

The search for the spiritual is, in its essence, not effort, but effortlessness.

The Zen masters have said: effortless effort. They have said it well. It is not practice; it is leaving oneself in His hands. Then wherever He takes, whatever He does—whether He dissolves or preserves—we are in consent with Him. We are only eager that He be met. Our eagerness is our preparedness. We will not resist; we will not obstruct His effort. We will become like a piece of iron, so that His magnet may draw us. The piece of iron does not go toward the magnet; it cannot go—the magnet draws it. The iron need only not resist—this is enough. Let it be willing to be drawn—this is enough. If called, let it rush—this is enough. What device does a piece of iron have to run on its own?

Paramatma is the cosmic magnet. Become like a piece of iron.

This sutra says: do not desire progress; only harbor a deep longing. Do not demand, do not scream and shout, do not make plans, do not spread the net of your desires. Do not instruct Him what He should do. Do only this much: say to Him—do whatever You will. We are ready. Your readiness is your sadhana. And growth will occur. In truth, only then will such growth happen that is greater than you.

In the world, whatever we gain is smaller than us. In the spiritual, whenever something is gained, it is greater than us. And that is why the devotee says: it was received as His prasad, not by our effort. The reason is simply this: by our effort, nothing great can be had—only the petty. We are petty. It was received as His prasad, by His grace, His compassion.

What the devotee says has substance. He is really saying: what could our effort have done! It did not come by our effort. But even he has made one effort. Do not think that then it will come to you someday on its own. If it were to be so, it would already have come. You too have made no effort. Do not take from this that you need not do anything. Because that effortlessness is also a kind of doing—that letting go is also an act; that surrender too is a sadhana. Do not think, Very well then. Many think like this. They think: if it will not come by our effort, then when it has to come, it will come—so we will sit. This is not the meaning of the sutra.

The meaning of the sutra is that it will not be attained by your effort—but you will have to make so much effort that you do not create any hindrance. Otherwise you are hindering. Right now you are standing with your back turned. The situation now is that the sun has risen, and you are sitting inside with all doors and windows shut from every side. The sun will not rise by your effort, nor can you, by your effort, bring the sun inside the house. But you can close the door; you can keep Him out. You have no power to bring Paramatma within, but you are powerful enough to keep Him outside—you can keep the door shut.

And Paramatma is not aggressive that He would break your doors and enter. He will wait; He will sit upon the steps outside and wait for you to open. And you can sit inside for lifetimes. So keep the door open. Do not say, the moment you open the door, that since it is open He should have already come. It is only a possibility—that if your door is open, He will not turn back when the moment is ripe.

And nothing happens unripe. When the moment comes—your door is open, He stands at your door, and you are turned toward Him, eager, thirsty, waiting—when your waiting is complete and the door is fully open, the event happens. If you think your door is open and He is not coming, then understand: either the door is not open—you are dreaming that it is—or you have opened it only a little, and you are not truly eager that He should come. Perhaps you are frightened within that He might actually come. We are afraid—for if He comes into life, then your life can no longer remain what it is. It will be utterly transformed.

In Lanka it happened that a Buddhist monk spoke to people for fifty years. He was enlightened. The day of his death drew near. He said, I have been explaining to you for so long—do this, do this, do this. But you do nothing. Before I die I will give you one last chance. Now I will not tell you what you should do to attain Nirvana. Now I ask: if any of you are eager to receive Nirvana, I am giving it—stand up.

Thousands of his disciples had gathered. Their master was dying. All began to look at one another—to see who would stand. They had never thought that Nirvana would stand suddenly at the door like an accident. One man only raised his hand and said, But let me first say—not now, not today. Just show the path—if ever needed! I do want Nirvana—some day, certainly—but not now. There are many tasks unfinished; many promises to keep; I must marry off my son; my wife is ill—so not now, be so kind. But I say this much: some day I do want Nirvana—so show the path.

If Paramatma were to be found today—here and now—you would be greatly troubled. A moment before you were troubled that Paramatma does not come easily—you could enjoy the pleasure of worrying. But if He were available here and now, you would fall into another worry—caught! How to return home now? If Paramatma is found, then who will complete all those webs you have left behind? And those webs appear to you greater than Paramatma. You will choose them. You will say to Paramatma: what is the hurry to attain You? This is a matter of the Eternal. There are many births—some day we will attain You. What is the haste? But those tasks are not of the Eternal. They belong to the world of time—if done in time, they are done; if missed, they are missed. For them there is the world of time; and You are the Eternal—we will attain You anyway some time.

So your effort is needed to this extent—a negation, a no-saying—that you do not erect barriers.

The experiments in meditation that we do here—all of them are experiments in breaking obstacles. All methods are for breaking obstacles; no method can bring Paramatma. Paramatma is not found by any method. If something can be captured by a method, what kind of God would that be!

Paramatma cannot be found by any method. He flowers in the unmethodical. But methods can break your obstacles. The locks of the doors and windows can be broken. The keys have rusted away and been lost, for who knows how many births you have kept them shut. Now they even seem like walls; you cannot even tell there is a door—because you have never opened them. You threw the keys away in such a place that even if you searched you would not find them—because you are afraid you might find the key and, by mistake, open the door!

All methods are negative—they are for breaking.

People ask me: How will this help? If someone breathes deeply for ten minutes, dances like a madman, shouts hooo—will Paramatma be found by this?

No, Paramatma will not be found by this. But you will be broken by it. And your breaking is the first necessity for His happening. By this, you will be undone. It is a device to dissolve you—not to get Him. Yet only if you dissolve can He be found; so it is indispensable.

So these mad methods I am having you do—they are to undo you—so that your cleverness melts, your prudence melts, your ego dissolves, your deadness is gone. Whatever structure you have made of yourself—let it crack and melt; let you be lost; become simple; let your doors open. Then, some day, at the right moment, His advent happens.