Sakshi Ki Sadhana #3

This is a very important question, and it will be helpful for understanding the meditation we have gathered here to practice. So I would like to speak about it with some subtlety.

First, for thousands of years human beings have been told that the mind is restless and that its restlessness is a bad thing. I want to tell you: yes, the mind is certainly restless, but its restlessness is not bad. The mind’s restlessness is a sign that it is alive. Where there is life, there is movement; where there is no life, there is inertia and no movement. The mind’s restlessness is a symptom that you are alive, not dead.

One can escape this restlessness if one becomes inert. And there are many ways to make the mind inert. Most of what we call “spiritual practices” are in fact devices for dulling the mind. For example, the continuous repetition of a single word or name leads the mind toward stupor. Certainly its restlessness diminishes, but the mere diminishing of restlessness is neither an attainment nor an arrival.

In deep sleep the mind’s restlessness subsides; in deep stupor it subsides; under heavy intoxication it subsides. That is why so many monks and ascetics turned to intoxicants—the connection is there. Tired of the mind’s restlessness, intoxication was used. In India too, many sects of sadhus used ganja, opium and other drugs. Because in deep intoxication restlessness stops; in deep stupor it stops; in sleep it stops.

But simply stopping restlessness is not meaningful. The cessation of restlessness is not some great discovery. And all the efforts to stop it—these efforts diminish a person’s intelligence, wisdom, understanding. A mind made inert cannot remain bright.

So should I say that restlessness is auspicious? Certainly: restlessness is auspicious, very auspicious. But the madman’s mind is also restless. The lunatic’s restlessness is not auspicious. Restlessness is a mark of life—but deranged restlessness is not. Think of a river flowing toward the ocean: a living river will flow and move toward the sea. If a river could go mad—no river does; only humans go mad—then it too would move, but sometimes east, sometimes south, sometimes west, sometimes north, running in contradictory directions and never reaching the ocean. That movement we would call “mad movement.” Movement is not bad; mad movement is bad.

You came here—without movement you could not have come. But if your movement had been mad, you would have gone a little here, a little there, come back, wandered from corner to corner, and never arrived.

A mind that wanders like a madman is harmful; but movement itself is not harmful. A mind with no movement at all has become inert.

Understand this well. I am not against movement and restlessness. I am not in favor of inertia. But we generally know only two states: either the deranged movement of the disturbed mind, or the torpor of the man who chants “Ram-Ram” and turns his rosary. We do not know the third.

What is needed is a consciousness that is moving, yet not deranged—not mad. How to bring about such a consciousness, I will speak of. But first, understand: an excessive hostility toward the mind’s restlessness is neither appropriate, nor gracious, nor grateful. If the mind were not moving and restless, we would get entangled in some trash heap and end our life there. The mind is a great companion; it makes us tired of each place and pushes us onward.

A man hoards wealth. However much he hoards, the mind does not agree: “This is not enough—bring more.” He brings more; the mind again says, “More.” The mind is never satisfied by wealth. Nor by fame. Nor by power. This discontent is wondrous. Without it, no one would ever become spiritual.

If Buddha’s mind had been satisfied with the wealth, property, and kingdom he had, there would have been no spiritual revolution in his life. But the mind was unsatisfied and restless; palaces did not fulfill it, and it started running ahead. A moment came when the mind’s discontent became a revolution. That very discontent becomes revolution—otherwise how would revolution happen in life? If the mind were not restless, it would be satisfied with wealth, with pleasure, with lust.

There was a fakir in Egypt. The king of Egypt would sometimes go to meet him. One day the king went. At the fakir’s door, his wife was sitting. The king said, “I have come to meet the fakir. Where is he?”

She said, “Please sit, rest for a moment. He is working in the back garden; I will call him.”

But the king did not sit; he began strolling along the field boundary. She again said, “Please sit.”

He said, “You call him; I will stroll.”

She thought perhaps sitting on the field bund did not seem proper to him. She called him inside, spread a mat, and said, “Sit here.”

But he began pacing in the verandah. He said, “You call him; I will stroll.”

She went and called her husband, and on the way told him, “This king seems mad. I requested him many times to sit, but he wouldn’t.”

The fakir said, “We don’t have a place worthy of his sitting; that is why he paces. If there were a place worthy of his sitting, he would surely sit. I have seen him sitting many times.”

I tell this story because our mind is so restless precisely because we have not yet given it a worthy place to sit. If we provide the place worthy of its sitting, it will sit instantly; its restlessness will dissolve. Before the Divine, the mind cannot sit anywhere; that alone is its seat. So the mind’s restlessness is a great grace upon you: it does not settle just anywhere. It will not settle before anything less than the Divine. And the day it sits, you will understand this grace: the mind brought me this far. Had it settled somewhere, I would never have reached the Divine. The mind will take you on; it will make you unsatisfied everywhere; it will not stop anywhere; it will remain restless until the moment of supreme rest arrives—until that point comes where the mind can sit. Wherever the mind settles without becoming inert—where the living, moving mind comes to rest—know that the Divine is near.

So I do not say: if the mind becomes still, you will find God. I say: find God, and the mind will at once become still. And that stillness will not be dead; it will be vibrant, deeply aware.

But we do the opposite: we try to dull the mind. By dulling the mind, God will not be found—only deep sleep, stupor, trance. The mind will merely become inert. What we call “efforts,” almost all of them are ways to dull the mind.

What I am saying is not effort. Properly understood, it is non-effort. All the efforts the mind has made up to now—drop them. Don’t start any new effort. Because any effort will be done by the mind, and no effort of the mind can make a path beyond the mind. It cannot be greater than the mind. Who will make the effort? You will. And from the state your mind is in, you cannot go beyond that by effort. The very mind will be doing it.

Hence I say: through effort you will never rise above. Drop all effort; become quiet. Effort is also a kind of disturbance. Be still—as if you are doing nothing. As non-doing deepens, you will find the mind dissolving. As it quiets and dissolves, you will sense another dimension of consciousness rising and awakening.

You may say: but this too is an effort—sitting quietly, bringing the mind to rest. A kind of practice?

No. I will say to you: it is not an effort. If I am clenching my fist and ask you, “How do I open this fist?” what will you say? You will say: “To open it, you need do nothing. Please stop doing what you are doing to clench it; the fist will open by itself.” Opening is not an effort; the moment you cease the effort that clenches, opening happens.

Or if I pull down a branch and hold it, and ask how to return it to its place—what will you say? “Do nothing to return it. Just stop doing what holds it down; it will return by itself.”

What are we doing continuously with the mind? We are doing something. If we stop that, the mind will quiet by itself. It will quiet by itself.

As I said this morning, we are constantly engaged in resistance—twenty-four hours resisting. We are fighting life in some way or other all the time. Our mind is never in a non-fighting state. This struggle fills the mind with tension, anxiety, failure, sorrow. Then, fevered and sick, we seek peace; we go to gurus and ask how to be peaceful. They say: chant Ram-Ram or Om-Om, turn a rosary, go to the temple, read this, read that, repeat this mantra or that. We start the japa without realizing: who is doing this japa? The same feverish mind, the same agitated, disturbed mind. If a sick mind does the japa, what fruit can come? All this will continue within the same sickness. No real transformation. It has never brought transformation.

I say: instead of seeking peace, understand why there is unrest. People come to me daily and say, “We want to be peaceful.” I tell them: forget that worry; an unpeaceful person cannot become peaceful. They are shocked: “If the unpeaceful cannot become peaceful, should we despair?” I say: No. An unpeaceful person cannot “become” peaceful—but if he understands the root causes of his unrest, he can be free of unrest. And when unrest is gone, what remains is peace. An unpeaceful mind cannot be peaceful; yes, it can be free of unpeace. And when it is, peace—our very nature—remains, and we stand in it.

So instead of searching for peace and making efforts, my view is: understand why you are unpeaceful. And once you see what brings unrest, you won’t need to “do” anything to drop it. Seeing that something is poisonous is enough—you don’t drink it. Seeing where the wall is and where the door is, you go through the door, not the wall. Do you make an effort not to go through the wall? Or to go through the door? No—you simply know, and you act accordingly.

The day it becomes clear where unrest resides in your consciousness, you need make no effort. Understanding alone brings a revolution; you begin to move differently.

There was a fakir in the south. In his ashram lived a young man—very argumentative, very logical, fond of debate, as “religious” people often are. We take debaters to be sages; the more one refutes, the greater we call him. That youth too was very “learned”—from morning till evening doing nothing but refuting: this scripture is right, that is wrong; this religion right, that wrong. One day, a traveling sannyasi arrived as a guest. The youth debated him too and defeated him thoroughly.

The joy of debate lies in defeating someone. Whether defeat is by argument or by the sword—they are the same kind of people; violence is present. In old times gurus would go from village to village seeking opponents to defeat in debate. All gestures of ego—no relation to wisdom.

The guest sannyasi, defeated by evening, departed. The youth looked proudly at his friends. His master said to him, “Look, I never said this to you, but for three years you have been here, and from morning to evening you debate and argue. Today I tell you: will you ever try being silent? You have argued so long; what have you gained? If you have gained something, tell me—I will also argue and debate. If you have not, then be silent and see. When will you be silent?”

Do you know what the youth did? He closed his eyes, sat silently for two moments, and said to his master, “These are my last words. I will not speak again.”

That was the last day; he never spoke again in his life. People came to the master and said, “This young man seems mad. First he argued endlessly—now he is utterly silent!”

The master said, “Such people are rare; such clarity is rare. He did not even need effort. He saw, and it happened. He listened, understood, closed his eyes for two moments, and saw that the peace missing in debate was present in those two moments of silence. Argument fell and dissolved.”

No effort is needed to drop; knowing itself becomes revolution. Effort is needed only where there is no knowing; it is the mark of ignorance. What we labor at becomes false.

When someone says, “I’m trying to give up alcohol,” what does it mean? It means he has not yet seen that alcohol is harmful to life, hence he is “trying.” When someone says, “I’m trying to do this, trying to stop that,” it means there is no seeing. If it were seen, the seeing itself would be the transformation. My insistence is: understand—do not worry about effort. Change that comes from understanding is natural; change forced by effort is imposed. Behind imposed change, the opposing mind remains present, never lost.

If I force celibacy upon myself, sexuality will remain within; it cannot go. That is why those we call celibates often have more sexuality in their eyes and mind than ordinary people. By effort they paste celibacy on top; inside, lust remains. Then it comes out in strange new forms, which we do not even recognize.

Do you know who imagined the ever-young apsaras of heaven? The very people we know on earth as “celibates.” They conceived of eternal youth in apsaras. They arranged heaven with all pleasures and satisfactions. They renounce here in order to get there; and what they renounce here, they prepare to receive there in a bigger way. Astonishing! What kind of people are these?

There are scriptures that say rivers and fountains of wine flow in heaven. The same scriptures say drinking wine here is sin. And they promise: whoever gives it up here will get a heaven where streams of wine flow—no sipping from cupped hands; bathe in it, dive in it, drink as you like! Surely the one who forcibly restrained himself from wine imagined these streams. Who else?

Those who forcibly kept away from women composed luscious descriptions of women’s limbs in their scriptures. Such sensuous detail that one wonders: what kind of minds are these? Sick minds. They call women the gateway to hell. I have often wondered: then women themselves must never have gone to hell, because men are not the gate. If woman is the gate, the men would go through them to hell; but where would women go? They cannot go to hell—there is no gate for them! They must be in heaven or liberation. Had women written the scriptures, they would have said, “Man is the gate to hell.” But since men wrote them, women became the gate. And those men were the very ones who had forcibly kept away from women. If sex had truly dissolved from a person’s consciousness, there would be no sharp difference between man and woman left in his perception.

Buddha was meditating on a hillside. Some youths from Vaishali went to the forest to revel with a prostitute. While they ate and drank, she escaped. Chasing her, they searched and found no one; under a bush sat Buddha. They shook him: “Sir, open your eyes—did a woman pass this way?”

Buddha said, “Forgive me. For ten years now, it has not been possible for women to appear as women to me.”

They said, “You are mad!”

He said, “I speak truth. People are seen coming and going, but as earlier women appeared separate, that no longer happens. The sense of ‘woman’ used to arise because of sex within.”

I once heard of a man returning from Europe. His wife met him at the airport. As he disembarked, an air hostess shook his hand and said goodbye. He told his wife, “This hostess is wonderful, very efficient. Her name is ...” He mentioned it. His wife asked, “How did you know her name?”

He said, “There’s a board inside with the names of hostesses and pilots.”

She said, “Please tell me—what is the pilot’s name?”

The husband was in trouble. When a man reads a board, only the women’s names stick; men’s names don’t. Magazines labeled “Only for men” are read by women; those labeled “Only for women” are read by men. This is natural. The attraction to the opposite sex keeps working in the mind, and it makes things stand out.

Buddha said, “Forgive me. For ten years now, unless I deliberately try to distinguish, it doesn’t occur to me to see ‘man’ and ‘woman’ separately. Someone surely passed, but whether it was a woman or a man is hard to say.”

From the mind of one in whom sex has dissolved, abuse toward women cannot arise; if she is a woman, then there won’t be condemnation of men either. If condemnation is present, know that sex is present within; celibacy has been pasted on top. Effort is dangerous: no inner revolution happens, and outwardly we look changed.

I was once with a “great” nun—great because she had many followers. In this world “greatness” is measured like wealth: the more followers a saint has, the greater he or she becomes; crowds attract crowds. She wished to meet me. We met by the sea in a strong wind. My shawl would blow and touch her. When it touched, she jolted as if shocked by electricity. She was talking of soul and God—“We are not the body; we are Brahman, the Absolute”—and yet the touch of a shawl in the wind made her whole being tremble. She could not even step aside, lest I ask why; nor could she tell me, “Your shawl is touching me—it is a great sin.” One of her disciples whispered to me, “Forgive us; perhaps you don’t know—a nun cannot be touched by a man’s shawl.”

I asked her, “Do you agree with what he says?”

“Yes,” she said. “A man’s shawl must not touch us—it is forbidden.”

I said, “I’m astonished. Because I wear it, the shawl becomes ‘male’? And because you wear it, it becomes ‘female’? And you speak of soul and God and say the body is just dust! The shawl too is dust to you? No—the suppressed sexuality within trembles even at the touch of a cloth.”

The more our mind suppresses and “practices” by force, the more trouble it creates.

So I say to you: I do not insist on effort. I insist on very natural transformation. Change produced by trying has no value. What has value is the change that comes from knowing—from within—and unfolds. What has value is the change that arrives unforced and envelops your life like a glow of light. Change dragged in by arrangement and compulsion has no worth. Any change brought by you has no meaning. The change that matters is the one that does not come from your effort, but grows like the shadow of your understanding.

So hear me: discernment (vivek) itself is transformation; knowing (gyan) itself is transformation. And knowing is not effort. Knowing is sustained awakening; it is the quietening and flowering of consciousness.

How vivek awakens and how knowing bears fruit—I will speak of that tomorrow. For now, let me add in relation to your question: dispassion (vairagya) gained by effort is false, no matter which scriptures support it. I am telling you what I see. I hope you will consider it clearly and impartially.

Dispassion born of effort is false. The dispassion that develops from living naturally is the true one. In that dispassion there is nothing to drop and no one to flee from; things fall away on their own and change happens. Like dry leaves falling from a tree—the tree doesn’t know, the leaves don’t know—so in a life where knowing matures, certain things keep falling away and changing.

Let me tell a small story to make this clear.

A woodcutter and his wife were returning from the forest. He was not an ordinary man—he was an ascetic, and in many ways he had cultivated renunciation. He had become detached from wealth and property; he had distributed all his possessions; he kept no money at home. Each morning he cut wood, sold it, ate what he needed, and gave away whatever remained before sunset—then slept supremely poor. But for five or seven days it had rained; he could not cut wood and they had gone hungry. That day, after many days, he had cut wood and was returning—he in front, his wife behind. Hungry for days, old, tired, with a bundle on his head. By the path he saw hoofprints and, nearby, a pouch. Some gold coins lay outside, others inside—the pouch had opened. He thought: “I have cultivated non-attachment by much effort; but my wife’s mind may waver—her vairagya is not so deep; she’s a woman after all.”

Men always think: can a woman ever have true dispassion? You know, there are hardly any religions that grant women a right to heaven. Some say a woman cannot be liberated unless she becomes a man in a future life. In China, until a few decades ago, women were not even regarded as having souls; they were a man’s property. We too say “stri-sampatti”—woman as property. The same stupidity persists.

He thought, “She is a woman; where could she understand dispassion? Her effort is not deep. Her mind might wobble in hunger and fear. To save her from sin I will hide this.” He slid the pouch into a pit and covered it with soil.

Before he could finish, his wife came up and asked, “What are you doing?” He also had the “practice” of never lying. Now he was in a dilemma: if he lied, it would be sin; if he told the truth, her mind might waver. Still, taking God’s name, he told the truth: “There were gold coins here. My detachment is firm; yours is doubtful. Lest hunger tempt you, I put the coins in a pit and covered them, so your mind would not be stained.”

His wife burst into loud laughter. He asked, “Why are you laughing? What is there to laugh at?”

She said, “It is a big matter. I had thought your attachment to gold was gone. But it is not. Do you still see this as gold? You are throwing mud upon mud and thinking you have done something great!”

This woman had made no effort; something had become visible to her. She had seen that gold is dust, and the matter was finished. For the husband, it still appeared as gold, and by repeated effort he had kept himself away. In such a state gold appears even more enticing; the attraction intensifies. Wherever he looks he will see gold; even a little will shake him—because he has held himself back by force. Forced restraint creates a sick longing, not dispassion. It is more harmful than attachment.

But when things are seen and experienced, then a different change happens—effortlessly. I do not ask you to make effort. I say: awaken discernment; bring the mind toward quiet, and look—at things, at life. You yourself will begin to see that life is like a dream. You won’t have to practice saying it. You won’t have to sit and repeat daily, “The world is false, Brahman is true.” Whoever keeps repeating it has not seen; otherwise why repeat? Seeing is enough—and it brings revolution.

So I would like you to begin seeing, not striving.

But thousands of years of secondhand teachings bind us to the old groove: “Make effort—otherwise vairagya will not arise. If you are in attachment (rag), how will dispassion arise? So cultivate dispassion; turn away from attachment.”

I say: no. If you run from attachment to cultivate dispassion, attachment will live within that dispassion. Instead, wherever you are, live with eyes open. Live with eyes open even in attachment. If attachment is futile, you will see it. Then dispassion will not have to be brought; it will begin to shed like ripe leaves. Wherever you are, one day you will find dispassion has arrived. Vairagya comes; it cannot be imported. Sannyas comes; it cannot be forced. How does it come? Wherever the eye of seeing becomes clear, it arrives by itself. As a bullock-cart moves, tracks appear behind; wherever knowing awakens in life, the tracks of dispassion arise naturally. Vairagya is the shadow of knowing, not the fruit of effort. And whatever is truly significant in life flowers from knowing, not from effort. Effort can make you act a part, become an actor, a hypocrite—but genuine revolution in life has never come from it, nor can it.

That is what I wish to say on this matter. If there are more points, you may ask; we can explore them in these two days.

There are a few more questions. I will speak to one or two of them, then we will sit for meditation. The questions that remain, I will address tomorrow.

It must appear to him that these two are opposed. Let me tell you: there is no opposition between them. Only upon attaining the Divine does it become known that life has no goal; before that it cannot be known. To come to such a state of consciousness where there is no goal, where no goal remains—that itself is the supreme goal. To arrive at such a state of life that no other goal remains—that is the supreme goal. There is no other meaning to attaining God. No other meaning.

Ordinarily we take the aim of life to be to get something—someone to get wealth, someone to get fame, someone this, someone that. But however much wealth you acquire, still the goal remains ahead; it does not end—more wealth is wanted. However much fame you gain, still the goal remains—more fame is wanted. Whatever you go on getting, the goal keeps remaining ahead. Therefore none of these can be the final goal, because after them the sense of goal does not end; it persists.

Alexander was on his way toward India. He had the idea that he must conquer the whole world. On the way he met the Diogenes I spoke of this morning. Diogenes asked him, “If you conquer the whole world, what will you do then?”

He said, “That question hadn’t occurred to me. Since you ask it, I am quite frightened, because truly, beyond that nothing is left—there is no second world for me to conquer. If I conquer the entire world, I shall be in great difficulty. What will I do then? I haven’t thought about it. For there is no other world beyond that to go and conquer.”

Still, Diogenes said, “But then what will you do after all? Think of something!”

He said, “Then I will rest. Then I will stop conquering. Then I will rest in perfect peace.”

Diogenes burst out laughing and said, “Then you are mad! If rest is what you want, I am resting already. Why all this running about? Come and lie down beside me; in this little place, this hut, there is room enough for two. If in the end you are going to drop all seeking and all conquering, why so much hustle? Come—begin now! Why waste so much time?”

Alexander said, “What you say is very right. But it’s very difficult; I have already set out and come halfway. It isn’t proper to turn back halfway.”

Diogenes said, “You are absolutely mad! Until now no one in the world has ever completed the journey; everyone has to turn back halfway. Because wherever one reaches, the journey still stretches far beyond.”

So there are two kinds of aims in life. One kind never gets completed, for even if you fulfill them, new aims arise. And there is another aim in life: when it is fulfilled, all aims end; beyond it there remains nothing to be done. The name of that aim is God.

By God we do not mean that Rama stands there with bow and arrow, so that is God; or that Krishna stands playing the flute, so that is God; or that Christ hangs upon the cross, so that is God. No. God means: to come to such a state of supreme rest in life that afterward nothing remains to be attained. God is the experience of such bliss in life that after it no craving to get anything remains.

So they ask: Could it also be that life has no aim? This is true. In fact life has no aim. And so long as we run after aims, so long we remain deprived of life; we do not come to it. But there is also a way of living such that no goal, no longing, no desire, no ambition remains in it. That way of living is the path to God; and to arrive at that state is to attain God.
So there is no contradiction between these two points. The one who has asked must be thinking there is a contradiction. There is no contradiction; these two are one and the same. Whenever a person becomes so quiet that no desire or craving remains in his life, then he lives as the winds blow, as the rivers flow, as flowers bloom on the trees, as clouds move across the sky. The day a person begins to live in such a way that no strings of desire and passion remain to pull him—he lives in bliss and in peace.
There are two ways of living. One way is that desire pulls from the front, and we move. As if someone had tied and was dragging us—just so desire pulls us. All of us move in this way: something is tugging from ahead. Some wish is pulling—one wants to become a minister, another a governor, another a president—some craving is pulling him. Some desire keeps tugging from the front; he is dragged toward it like a yoked bull. That is one way of life: life dragged by desire. The other kind of life is not dragged by desire, but is showered from bliss.

Let me tell a small incident to make the difference clear.

You have heard of Tansen. Akbar was deeply impressed by Tansen—by his music, by his art. His ability and genius were astonishing. One night Akbar asked Tansen, “Friend, many times a question arises in my mind, but from shyness I don’t ask; tonight I will. There is no one else here—only you.” Tansen was returning after singing a raga; Akbar stopped him on the steps and said, “I want to ask this. I cannot even imagine that anyone could play or sing better than you. But another thought occurs: you must have had a guru. You must have learned from someone. Then perhaps he plays better than you—perhaps! Is your guru alive? If he is, I would like to see and hear him.”

Tansen said, “My guru is alive, but it is very hard to hear him. Because he does not sing or play for any reason; he sings and plays without cause. If someone asks him to sing or play, he laughs. He says, ‘I don’t even know how.’ No temptation can persuade him to perform. He never sings or plays because someone asks; when he is in a certain mood, he dances, he sings, he plays. His music is causeless—without any aim or goal. So to hear him is very difficult, very rare. Sometimes he sings at three in the morning, sometimes at two. Where will you go to hear him? How will you hear him?”

Akbar said, “Whatever it takes, I want to hear him. Hearing you has only made the longing stronger.”

Tansen made inquiries and learned that in those days—Haridas, a sadhu who lived on the banks of the Yamuna—would sometimes sing around three in the morning. From two o’clock that night, Tansen and Akbar sat hidden outside the hut. Perhaps never before, nor since, has an emperor listened to someone’s music in secret. Around three, Haridas began to sing, began to draw melody from his tanpura. He kept singing—and Akbar kept weeping. When the song ended, Akbar still sat there. Tansen nudged him and said, “The song has ended—let’s go back now, or we might be caught at this theft!”

Akbar started as if woken from a sleep, wiped his tears, and returned with Tansen. He was silent the whole way. As they entered the palace, he said to Tansen, “I used to think you had no equal. Now I think, before your guru you are nothing. Why is there such a difference? Such a gap?”

Tansen said, “It is very clear. I play because I will get something by playing—I will gain something. I play because there is a desire that will be fulfilled. For me, playing is not a complete act—a total act. Playing is a means; what is to be gotten is something else. My gaze remains fixed on the getting; so playing becomes a job. With the gaze fixed on gain, the beauty and bliss cannot be there in the playing. My guru plays not because he has to get something, but because he has already received something. Let me repeat the difference: my guru plays not because he has to get something, but because he has already received something. And what has been received wants to be shared, wants to spread. The joy that has come to him wants to scatter and be distributed, to ride the winds and be flung far and wide. Bliss is first; music flows from it. With me, music is first; I hope bliss will flow from it.”

There are two kinds of people. Those dragged by desires—their life is driven by some goal, some wish, some ambition. In such a life there can be neither peace nor joy; it will be a life of burden. There is another kind of consciousness that has come upon a very deep bliss. Such a one still lives, still breathes, walks, stands, sits—but now all his acts become acts of sharing that joy. Now he has nothing to get; something is to pour out and be scattered.

Such a life is a life that has found the divine. In such a life there is no goal anymore. In truth, life has no goal. But as long as there are many goals—this goal of wealth, that goal of fame, that goal of position—as long as there are many goals, life will be tormented and miserable because of them. When we say, “to attain God,” do not think that attaining God is another goal. No. To attain God means to be free of all goals. Understand this! Attaining God is not a goal like attaining wealth or fame. But the so‑called sadhus and renunciates have made God into just such a goal. They think, “We have to get God.” But a mind filled with the urge to get will never find God. God is found by the mind in which the urge to get has dissolved. The one who has agreed to, and is content with, not getting—he, in that very moment, comes upon God.

Remember the story I told last night. A mind full of the urge to get can never get. The one in whom the desire to get has gone, gets. To say “to get God” is only a slip of the tongue; God is not a craving of ours to be obtained. Yes, God is come upon in that moment when the mind stands in desirelessness.

How can the mind come into desirelessness, into a state of not wanting anything?

By the very method I call meditation. Through that understanding, continuously, the mind’s cravings become thinner and thinner; and a moment comes when you feel there is nothing to get. There is no motive to get anything, no wish to get; the mind is quiet, silent. No ache, no tension of getting encircles it. In whatever moment—even for a single moment—the mind comes into this state, in that very moment you will find the nearness of the divine available. In that very moment you will find that all the walls between me and That have fallen—I have become That. To go in that direction, you need to keep kindling awareness, developing discrimination, and taking meditation deeper and deeper.

There are a few more questions; I will speak about them tomorrow. Now we will sit for the night’s meditation.

There is no difference in the meditation. First of all, sit very comfortably and let the body go loose. Let there be no tension in any part of the body. And don’t worry—let it go completely limp; let no limb be taut.

Second, let the eyes close very gently; don’t close them—let them close. Let the lids sink softly.

And sit with a very light heart—no seriousness; you are not going to do some big task. We are going to spend a few moments, two or ten, in a playful mood, silently, in stillness. Keep no expectation that some great peace will come, some great bliss will be had. Keep no expectation. Drop all expectation. Become absolutely light; set aside the whole burden from the mind. And keep in mind, after closing the eyes, that there is no tension on the brain, the face is not drawn—leave it utterly loose. Let no furrow remain on the forehead—leave it utterly loose. Remember: as you were when you were a small child, sit just that light and buoyant.

All right! Let the body be loose; let the eyes close. Become completely light, erase yourself—you are not. Now listen. There will be sounds all around: crickets are calling; the hush of the night will speak. Listen to it peacefully, without any resistance. You are only a witness—in this quiet night, in this cricket‑singing night, you are only a witness. Just listening, doing nothing. As you listen, the mind will become silent; as you listen, the mind will grow quiet; as you listen, an inner hush will begin to descend, and it will feel as if the silence‑filled night outside has entered within too, and you have been submerged in it. Listen.

For ten minutes, completely let yourself go and see what happens. You have nothing to do; things will happen by themselves. Little by little the mind will become quiet, will grow silent. Then there will be a great emptiness; you will be submerged in it; you will not even know that you are—only this silence will remain. Listen—calmly, without any tension, without any resistance—listen to the night resounding all around.

As you keep listening, the mind keeps falling silent. The mind is becoming silent… the mind is growing quiet… let it happen—let go completely. You are not; let go—drop yourself entirely; drop every hold. The mind is becoming quiet… your own breath will begin to be audible; everything will be heard; and within, such stillness will come…

The mind will keep falling silent… the mind will keep falling silent… the mind will grow quiet… the mind will become utterly silent… let go, simply let go, simply let go. The mind will sink, will become silent—let go, let go, simply let go; drop every grip; let what happens, happen.

See—the mind has become quiet, how quiet it has become, how quiet it has become. Keep sinking into this peace, keep dissolving into this peace, lose yourself in this peace.

The mind has become quiet… the winds remain, the night remains, the cold night remains—and you have dissolved. You are no more; the night is, the winds are, the sounds are. You are no more; the mind has become absolutely silent.

Slowly take a few deep breaths… slowly take a few deep breaths… even the breath will seem to bring great peace; the life‑force within will become quiet to the very depths. Then slowly open your eyelids…