Samadhi Ke Dwar Par #3

The witness is not the “I.” And when I die—when I am no more, when I become zero—what remains is the witness. Therefore, no one can become a witness. If I “become,” the ego is still there. If I say, “I am the witness,” the witness has not yet been born—because the witness is that which is also seeing this thought, “I am the witness.” That which knows the “I” is the witness. Therefore the witness is never the “I.” Even the sense “I am” is a reflection of the consciousness that stands behind me.

As long as I am, the witness cannot be known. The “I” has to dissolve, has to come to an end. Only when the “I” disappears does the witness reveal itself. The witness is present, the soul is present; that which we call Brahman is present within. But it is buried under the layers of my “I.” Like water—like your river—two years ago when I came, it was covered with leaves; you could not see the water at all. The river was underneath; the leaves were on top. You would not find any sign of water; the leaves had covered everything. But move just a few leaves and the river peeps through. The witness is within—a stream without end—but the leaves of “I” have covered it on all sides. Move the “I” just a little and the witness will begin to show from underneath.

Keep this in mind; it is very necessary to understand: I can never be the witness. In the presence of the witness, the “I” is lost. I can never “meet” the Divine, because I myself am the obstacle to that meeting. Only when I am not can that meeting happen. Only when I dissolve is there attainment. And this is the greatest difficulty: How do I dissolve? I am! How am I to disappear?

If I were real, dissolving would be impossible. But I am not; I am constructed, man-made. It is only an idea that I am; I am not. Merely an idea that I am—and we have produced this idea by a certain arrangement. It is a by-product. The notion that “I exist” is only a feeling constructed in a dream. We construct many such things.

We are sitting here. We can say, “A society is gathered here.” But if people walk out one by one and later we ask, “Where is the society?”—for those who left, it was individuals who left; the society did not go out. Where is it now? We will have to say the society is nowhere, because it was only a collection of individuals. It had no independent existence. Society was just a designation, a word.

Let me explain with a small incident.
There was a monk named Nagasena. A king named Milinda invited him to his court. A chariot was sent to bring him, and Nagasena came sitting in the chariot. When the invitation was first delivered, the royal envoys said, “The king invites you; let bhikkhu Nagasena come, we will welcome him.” Nagasena laughed and said, “I will certainly come, but there is no such person as the monk Nagasena.”
The envoys asked, “Then who will come?”
Nagasena replied, “I will certainly come, but there is no such person as the monk Nagasena. Tell the king only this.”

The king said, “What madman have we invited! We invited the monk Nagasena. If he does not exist, who will come?” Then he said, “Very well, let him come.”

At the palace gate they welcomed Nagasena. He stepped down from the chariot. The king said, “So you have come; I welcome the monk Nagasena.”
Nagasena laughed and said, “I have come, yes—but there is no such person as the monk Nagasena.”

The king said, “You are playing riddles! If there is no monk Nagasena, who has come?”
Nagasena asked, “Do you see this chariot in which I came?”
“Yes, I see it,” said the king.
“Unharness the horses,” said Nagasena. They were unharnessed. “Are these horses the chariot?”
“No, the horses are not the chariot.”
“Remove the wheels,” said Nagasena.
“What do you mean?” asked the king.
The wheels were removed. “Are these wheels the chariot?”
“No, the wheels are not the chariot.”
One by one, every part was taken off. Each time he asked, “Is this the chariot? Is this the chariot?” Little by little all the parts were removed. None of them was the chariot. Nothing remained. Then Nagasena asked, “Where is your chariot?”
There was no chariot. The king said, “The chariot is no more.”
Nagasena said, “And each part you denied, saying, ‘This is not the chariot.’ So where is the chariot? It should still remain.”
The king said, “The chariot was the sum of all those parts. It had no being of its own. There were horses, there were wheels, and all the rest; their aggregate was ‘chariot.’”
Nagasena said, “I too am only the aggregate of memories and thoughts—nothing more. If I remove memory and thought one by one, then ‘I’ does not remain. What remains then is not the monk Nagasena; it is the Divine. ‘Nagasena the monk’ is only a pile of words attached upon the Divine.”

We too are piles of words. From childhood to death we go on collecting words. “My name!”—which is a lie; no one is born with a name, yet a label sticks. “My address!” Which house is mine? Whichever house I had been raised in would have become “my” house, which means I have no house. The imprint that fell on the mind from a particular house became “my home.” Which is my country? The country where I first opened my eyes would have become my country—which means I have none. The eyes first exposed themselves to a certain land; that first exposure became “my country.” Who are my dear ones, my relatives? Those upon whom my eyes first opened and whose images I captured. All these are aggregated together.

If you begin removing these one by one and keep asking, “Who am I?”—no trace will be found. When the entire aggregate is emptied, when all the parts of the chariot are taken away, then it becomes very difficult to ask “Who am I?”—no answer will come. Yet something still remains. That which remains is what was there before my birth and will be there after my death. But the “I” will scatter; it will not remain. The “I” is an aggregate.

Scientists did experiments. A chick hatches and at once runs after its mother. It knows nothing of who its mother is; why does it run behind her? We always assumed the chick must somehow know. So the scientists tried something: A chick hatched from an egg; there was no hen near it; the mother was removed. In her place they put an inflated gas balloon. The air moved, the balloon drifted; the chick ran after the balloon. Then trouble arose. It began to take the balloon for its mother, and it became difficult for it to recognize the real mother. The first exposure was to the balloon.

Then scientists concluded that the very first exposure—like a camera lens opening and catching the first image—is the “mother.” Because it is first, the attachment is profound. All exposures after that come later; the camera opens again and again. Thus a child remains bound most deeply to the mother forever; the mind took her image first, and it sits deep within.

That chick did not run after the hen; it ran after the balloon. It tried to sleep next to the balloon, as it would have tried to sleep next to its mother. Many efforts were made to make it understand, “This is not your mother,” but for it the balloon had become the mother.
The chick died, because it could never again understand who its mother was. There is a moment of exposure—an instant when our consciousness opens and catches something. From childhood our consciousness keeps opening and catching. The total of these memories becomes the name “I.” If all your memory could be taken away, to whom would you say, “I am”? It would become difficult to say who you are. The “I” is not a reality; the “I” is an album of memories, an aggregate. And as long as this aggregate appears to us as the greatest truth, the one behind it will not be known. We have taken the leaves spread over the lake to be everything; we will not know the lake. The leaves must be removed; the lake must be uncovered.

The Divine is not far away from us somewhere out there; the Divine is “far” from us only in one direction—within. It is under the heap where we have gathered the “I.” The Divine is pressed beneath the “I,” like pages held under a paperweight, quivering as the wind moves, while the stone keeps them down. All the time within us the Divine is quivering, and the stone of “I” is pressing it.

In samadhi the “I” has to be lost. The “I” disappears; the pages fly free, the quivering ceases, and what is hidden within is revealed. You will not become the witness; when you are not, what remains—the remaining—will be the witness. Hence the witness never comes to know, “I am the witness.” The “I” can never be the witness. When the “I” is not, what is, is called the witness.

So when I say, “Let the ‘I’ dissolve,” I only mean: recognize the “I” rightly—it is not truth; it is merely an aggregate of memory.

A friend of mine, a doctor, was traveling by train. It was crowded; people were hanging onto the rods outside. He fell; his hand slipped, his head was injured, and his memories were lost. He forgot even his own name. He had studied with me since childhood. I went to the village to see him. He looked at me as if he had never seen me. Those exposures had been erased; that memory was lost. He asked me, “Who are you? How did you come?” He recognized no one—neither wife, nor son, nor father. He had forgotten all. He had even forgotten himself. Ask him, “Who are you?”—he would gesture helplessly, “I don’t know who I am.”

Where did the “I” go? But he is still there—where did the “I” go? That which was constructed, the aggregate, was gone, scattered, lost. The brain was injured, and the center where memory was gathered broke. With the breaking of that center, everything scattered. If the center breaks through injury, a person becomes deranged—because he does not know the inner, and what he thought was “I” is also broken. He is in difficulty.

But if we dissolve the “I” through understanding—through insight—then the inner is known. Without understanding, it can be broken—there are ways to break it. Now many methods of brainwashing have been invented. In China they have experimented vigorously. A person’s mind can be wiped, the way we erase a tape to make it blank; similarly the brain’s memory can be wiped. A very dangerous invention in human hands. If your enemy, if a government has the power, it can wash your brain clean; you will forget who you are, what your ideas and memories are. You will have to learn from A-B-C again, build a new “I” again.

The “I” is not our real essence. Our real essence is behind the “I.” But as long as our gaze is fixed on the “I,” it will not turn behind.

Therefore samadhi is to turn the gaze away from the “I” and take it inward. Samadhi means: If I am not, then what is? To know that. If I am not, then what remains? To know and recognize that.

When Buddha’s death drew near, his beloved ones—monks who loved him, disciples and devotees—gathered in their hundreds of thousands, and they began to weep. Buddha asked, “For whom are you weeping? For that which never was, or for that which will still remain?” A very strange question! For that which never was, or for that which will remain—who are you weeping for?
A monk said, “We weep for you. You are close to death; you are near to disappearing.”
Buddha said, “That which is near to disappearing never was. Only that can disappear which has not truly been; that which is cannot be made to disappear.

“We have built hydrogen bombs, but we cannot annihilate even a grain of sand. We cannot send it outside of existence. It remains. What is, remains. Only that which is not can be destroyed. Constructions can be destroyed, aggregates can be destroyed.

“We can destroy a chair, because a chair is an assembly. Four pieces of wood, nailed together—we made it stand. The chair was not; it was only a construction. It can be destroyed. But the substance of the chair cannot be destroyed. Even wood can be destroyed, because it is also an aggregate. But the deeper elements of the wood cannot be destroyed. If they too can be destroyed, then they are also aggregates, and we will have to go deeper still. Electrons cannot be destroyed; energy cannot be destroyed. That is truth. That which cannot be destroyed is truth. That which always was and always will be is truth.”

We have to find within ourselves that which cannot be destroyed. But we will only find it when we first recognize that which can be destroyed. If we identify with what is destructible and take it to be “I,” then it becomes very difficult—we will not find truth.

Why do we fear death? Because that which we have taken to be “I” will die; no one can save it; its end is certain. It is mortal. That which we have understood as “I” will die—that is why we are afraid. And we do not know that which does not die; therefore we are not fearless. Samadhi leads to fearlessness. It gives the vision of that which will not perish, which cannot perish.

But remember: the “I” can never be the witness, and the “I” can never meet the Divine. So do not insist on “meeting God.” Do not go on thinking that I—this A-B-C named person—will meet the Divine. My meeting will never happen. Because as long as I am, the Divine cannot be. And when I am not, then He is. Until now no one has “met” the Divine—because meeting implies two. Of the two, only one remains. When I remain, He does not; and when He is, I am not. There has been no meeting.

Kabir has said: “His lane is very narrow; two cannot enter it—only one can.” As long as I am, He is not; when He is, I am not.

The witness can remain; I must be lost. That is why I said: if you deepen the feeling “I am dissolving, I am dying,” what remains will be the witness.

You can dissolve precisely because the sense “I am” is itself only the result of a feeling; it is not a truth. If I sit here and feel that the house is disappearing, the house will not disappear, because the house does not depend on my feeling. No matter how intensely I keep feeling, “the house is disappearing, the house is disappearing...” when I open my eyes I will find the house where it is, because the house is not made of my feeling. But if I feel that I am disappearing, I will disappear, because my being is nothing but my feeling. Therefore it can be erased by another feeling—by the opposite feeling.

You should know, there are some illnesses that never get cured by treatment. They don’t get cured because the illnesses are false while the treatment is true—and then the person becomes even more ill. If a true treatment is given to a false illness, trouble will arise. If a man has actually been bitten by a snake, the injection given for snakebite will benefit him. But if a man has not been bitten at all and the idea has arisen that he has been bitten—maybe a mouse bit him, or a snake in a dream—then giving him the injection becomes very dangerous. The injection will be more dangerous than the supposed snakebite. A false illness needs a false cure.

I have heard: One night several people were guests at an inn. One man rose at four in the morning and went on his way. People from different places were staying there; they had eaten dinner that night. A year later that man returned to the inn. The innkeeper saw him and said, “You’re alive!” The man said, “What do you mean? Why wouldn’t I be alive?” The innkeeper said, “But all the others who ate that night died. There was food poisoning; the food had become poisonous. You being alive is a surprise! By morning everyone was found dead. You had left at four.” Hearing this, the man fell down right there. They shook him a lot, but he was already dead. He had eaten a year earlier! Food poisoning! Died a year later! He can die. But such a sickness cannot be treated. If the food had indeed been poisoned, there could be a treatment. Now how will you treat this man? It is very difficult to treat him. His illness is false. A false illness needs a false treatment.

What I am calling the experiment of samadhi is a false treatment, not a real one—because your illness is false. The “I” is a false illness. To erase it, a correspondingly false treatment will have to be used. If a real thorn is stuck in my foot, then I must bring a real second thorn to remove it. But if no real thorn is embedded, and only the notion has arisen that a thorn is stuck, then do not bring a real thorn to remove it; otherwise you will create an unnecessary wound. When there is no thorn stuck, then a false thorn is needed.

All the processes of religion are false processes, because the disease of irreligion is false. All yoga is a false process. All sadhana is a false process. They are false because the disease we are trying to remove is false. There is actually no person there who is ill. If the “I” were real, we would have to find a real sword and cut the “I.”

There is a precious incident from the last part of Ramakrishna’s life. All his life Ramakrishna had been devoted to the worship of Kali. In his final moments he began to feel, “Is this all? Is this the ultimate truth?” A sannyasin was staying there—Totapuri. He said, “How long will you remain entangled in Kali and so on? All these are imaginations.”

Ramakrishna said, “What should I do? How am I to rise above this imagination?”
Totapuri said, “Close your eyes and get rid of Kali.”
When Ramakrishna closed his eyes, the form of Kali would stand there; he had practiced only that all his life. He said, “How can I remove her? She does not go; she does not dissolve.”

Totapuri said, “Then pick up a sword and cut her into two.”
Ramakrishna said, “Where am I to raise a sword inside? Where is the sword?”
Totapuri said, “When by imagination you have erected Kali within, then take up a sword of imagination and cut her in two. From where did you bring Kali inside? She was erected by imagination only.”

Ramakrishna would go within, but he could not muster the courage to raise the sword. How to raise a sword against Kali? So many days he had cultivated and adorned her! A devotee becomes very weak before God—especially before an imagined God—because he himself has made him; now how to erase him? He would grasp the sword and it would slip away. Again and again he said, “It doesn’t happen.” Then Totapuri said, “Do it once and for all; otherwise I will go. Don’t entangle me in this children’s game.”

So Totapuri sat with a shard of glass and said, “Close your eyes, go inside, and I will cut your forehead with the glass. And when a stream of blood starts to flow here and the glass cuts the skull, then gather courage once and strike with the sword.”

Ramakrishna gathered courage, and when Totapuri cut his forehead, he too cut Kali within. Kali fell in two pieces. The sword was false, the Kali was false. Ramakrishna became empty. Later he said, “The last barrier—the last barrier—fell.”

What we call “I” is also false. To bring down that “I,” false means have to be employed. If it is understood that it is false, then there is no need of any means at all. But we do not understand, so then means have to be used.

Therefore for one who understands there is no meditation, no samadhi, no yoga. For the one who understands, there is nothing in the world; he has nothing to do. But the great difficulty is: we do not understand. Not understanding, some false treatment has to be undertaken, and with a false treatment the false illness has to be broken. When both illnesses take their leave, the empty space that remains—that alone is truth.

It didn’t merely seem so; it is. The “I” is a hypnosis. What we call “I” is a hypnosis we ourselves have created. To break this “I,” we must give it a contrary, anti-hypnotic suggestion and shatter it.

The I is our hypnosis, nothing more. It is our delusion that “I am.” What is, is the vast, the boundless. What is, has no limits. What is, was before “me” and will remain after “me.” But “I am” is only a hypnosis. It is a habit of life we have gripped since childhood—a makeshift habit we cling to.

If you have ever seen a hypnotic experiment you would be amazed: under hypnosis, whatever we accept becomes true for us; the mind agrees to whatever we concede. Hypnosis produces “truths” in our consciousness that in fact are not there.

We all live like this. If a woman or a man begins to look very attractive to you, you may think there is real beauty there. But the beauty is projected by you—hypnosis. Every country has its own habits of beauty, and beauty takes that form. In parts of Africa some tribes shave a woman’s head like a nun’s and consider it very beautiful. The shinier the skull, the more beautiful she is. You would run at the sight and never return, but there someone may go mad for her. After all, a shaven-headed woman! Here, we shave a nun’s head precisely so that no man is enchanted—so that you are not attracted in any way. We try to make monks and nuns “ugly” according to our rules, so you won’t be hypnotized. Yet if our nun went to Africa, she might find many lovers.

One tribe thinks thin lips are beautiful; another thinks the wider the lips, the more beautiful. So they widen the lips—hanging stones from them since childhood so they stretch. When the lips become so wide that nothing else on the face is noticeable—only lips—then the woman is supremely beautiful and finds lovers.

It is worth pondering: is what we call beauty really there, or is it our hypnosis—an acquired habit?

You know this: fifty years ago the cactus was not considered beautiful. If someone planted dhatura in his yard, we’d call him crazy. Now the cactus has become very bourgeois, very refined. If a home has no cactus, it is uncultured. The properly educated must have a thorny plant in the house. Fifty years ago the rose was beauty; now the cactus has taken the rose’s place. It told the king, “Step down from the throne! You sat long enough; now the laborer rises—I’m coming up.” The cactus, long a poor shudra, now says, “Make room!” The rose has stepped aside; the cactus has arrived. Now the cactus looks very beautiful, which it never did before. Was the cactus ever beautiful? No. It’s a new habit, a new hypnosis. We grew bored of smoothness; we began to crave roughness. Now roughness pleases. We tire of all things and keep creating new hypnotisms. What we call beauty is our hypnosis.

In China a flat nose is beautiful; high cheekbones are beautiful. In our country, if cheekbones are high, being considered beautiful becomes difficult. What is beauty? Our imposed sentiment. That is why there are thousands of kinds of beauty on earth. There is no person who would not be considered beautiful somewhere, and none who would not be considered ugly somewhere else. These are our projected notions. Something appears beautiful because we have begun to see it as such; whatever we choose to see beauty in becomes beautiful.

A friend of mine went to the Soviet Union. His hands were very delicate—he had never done any labor. Feminine hands: if you held his hand with your eyes closed, you’d think it was a woman’s; only on opening your eyes would you see it belonged to a man. It was his first visit to Russia. The man who received him at the airport shook his hand and then abruptly pulled his own hand back. My friend was surprised: “What happened?”

The man said, “Please be careful about your hands. In Russia we consider such hands the hands of an exploiter—a bloodsucker. Your hands have no worker’s calluses. Whoever you touch will pull their hand away in disgust. You are not a good man.”

Here, whoever touched his hand would exclaim, “Blessed you are—such beautiful hands!” In Russia he told me, “I began keeping my hands in my pockets. After two or three people pulled away as if they had touched the hand of a wrong man, I stopped offering my hand.”

Russia’s hypnosis has changed. Now they say: there must be calluses, the imprint of labor. If there is no stamp of labor, you are not a good man. If Mahavira or Buddha went to Russia, they would be in trouble—their hands bear no worker’s calluses. And we? We say, “Lotus feet! Your hands are like lotuses; your feet are like lotuses.” In Russia they would say, “Your feet? Of a killer, a butcher. Your hands? A rogue’s hands. These hands won’t do here!” Since 1917 the hypnosis changed; a new one was created, and they live under it.

Beauty is our hypnosis. Ugliness too. Our lives are full of hypnotisms we don’t even notice—and when we don’t notice, we go on living in them. If a man starts plucking out the hair of his head, you’ll send him to an asylum; but if he becomes a Jain monk, you’ll touch his feet. What’s this? The same man, plucking hair: if he is not a Jain monk, he is mad; if he is, it is acceptable. Why? Because those around a Jain monk have been hypnotized for thousands of years by hair-plucking; they say, “This is a mark of austerity.”

If you don’t bathe, your wife will throw you out of the house. But if you become a Jain monk and don’t bathe, the same wife will touch your feet: “You are a supreme ascetic; you don’t bathe.” Not bathing has been held in hypnosis a long time: “Bathing is for enjoyers; a renunciate does not bathe. What need has he to adorn the body?”

Whatever hypnotizes us grips our mind.

Now there are only two ways. Either we understand and become free of all hypnosis—understanding can bring liberation. If in his behavior, walking, sitting, thinking, a person searches out, “I am living hypnotized,” the hypnosis begins to crack. But if we cannot understand, then we need an anti-hypnosis, a counter-hypnosis.

Those who can attain prajna, understanding, never need any meditation or samadhi. But those who cannot—who say, “A thorn is stuck, truly stuck; how can I accept it is false?” and yet no thorn is in their foot—for them we will have to devise another thorn, also false, to remove the first.

So what I spoke of last night is indeed hypnosis—necessary to destroy your prior hypnotisms, to bid them farewell, to create the opposite condition. But if you feel, “No, I don’t need a contrary hypnosis; I can understand that this is hypnosis and be free through understanding,” nothing is more auspicious. If you can be free through understanding, nothing is higher.

I have heard of a man paralyzed for two years. He could not move or get up. Doctors failed. He would have recovered if the paralysis had been real. It wasn’t. That was the doctors’ trouble: how to cure a disease that isn’t there? But how will the man believe this? If your hand won’t move and your leg won’t move, how will you accept that the illness is false?

One midnight the house caught fire. Everyone ran out. The paralyzed man also ran out. He hadn’t moved for two years. When he reached outside, the family cried, “You too came out?” He fell straight to the ground: “How can I walk? How did this happen? I can’t understand it. I am paralyzed!”

If this man can understand, he will come out of paralysis. If not, we will have to set a false fire so he runs out. If he insists, “My paralysis is real,” then we must arrange such a fire that he runs. If he understands, the matter is finished; no need to set fires. Just understand!

But it is very difficult. Difficult because we fall in love with our illnesses. We want to be rid of physical diseases, but we clutch mental ones tightly. Why? Because our very being depends on our mental diseases.

The greatest disease is the I, the ego. If that goes, where will we be? So man is afraid; he clings to his “I.” If in a crowd your foot brushes his, he says, “Can’t you watch where you’re going? Don’t you know who I am?” He himself doesn’t know who he is, yet he says to another, “Don’t you know who I am?” He is protecting his I, protecting it. He accumulates wealth. The poor man too wants to display his I, but he lacks means—that is his trouble. The rich find means: supports for the ego. He says, “Here is my I, and here are my supports.” He builds a big house. A big house is not necessary to live in, but it is very necessary to display a big I. One might live quite well in smaller houses, perhaps more comfortably than in a mansion, and yet...

Recently I stayed as a guest in a home with at least a hundred rooms. Husband and wife alone. The whole mansion empty. Fifteen or twenty servants employed merely to keep it clean. I asked, “So many rooms, so many servants just to keep empty space clean! Why? For your living this is far beyond need.”

They laughed. In their smile their ego spread wide. Through their laughter they said, “We are not ordinary people who can live in one room; a big man must live in many rooms. We are not ordinary people to sleep on one bed; a big man must sleep on many beds. We are not ordinary people to go to the market in one set of clothes; a big man must wear many together.” Their smile spread and said without words, “We can afford it.”

We feed the disease of I from all sides. Hence a small chair hurts, because on a big chair the I can display itself grandly. On a small chair one must shrink to show the I. Yes, before those on smaller chairs he can puff up a little; when one higher enters, he at once droops and wags his tail. He thinks, “When will I reach that place where I need wag my tail before no one, and everyone wags theirs around me?”

Thus the race: how to become president, prime minister! And once there, one will not leave until death, because on leaving one falls. Then it becomes even harder to shrink the I. Once it has expanded, contracting it becomes agony, a great trouble to bring it back to size. So when a minister steps down, his great pain is not so much losing the ministry as this: the minister’s ego had expanded; now it must contract.

In a village I was a guest, traveling a road with a man who had been chief minister of that state. He is now “former,” and he was with me. The car broke down on a deserted road at night; few vehicles passed. A non-stop bus used to go by. He said, “No worry, we’ll have it stop. It doesn’t stop, but we’ll make it stop.” Former chief minister—he thought he could. At a checkpoint a policeman was sleeping; he woke him and said, “That non-stop bus must be stopped here; our car has broken down.”

The constable—Brahmin, and even now being a Brahmin is very useful for being chief minister—said, “Maharaj, very difficult; it won’t stop.”

“What are you saying?” he retorted. “It won’t stop? Don’t you know who I am?”

“I know very well. Whom would I know if not you? But you are former,” said the constable. “You are former. I recognize you well. But the bus won’t stop; it’s non-stop.”

The ex-chief minister glanced at the constable, then at me. His ego suffered a pain that day like never before. He shrank at once when the man said, “You are former; I know you well. But the bus won’t stop.” A constable made the chief minister wag his tail. The constable too should sometimes get his chance. Often he must have circled around them; today he circled them. The ex-minister wished, had it been the old days, he would have asked Mother Earth to split and swallow him. I said, “Don’t ask Mother Earth anything; let’s return. Fine—he got his turn; you had yours. Let everyone have one.”

This ego is a disease we love; we protect it. Whoever tries to break it we take as an enemy. How then will we break it? Our mental illnesses are dear to us. Our mental illusions we have erected, nurtured, watered, fertilized, labored over—how shall we now shrink them?

For samadhi, either understand that the entire journey of ego is an auto-hypnosis that I am unnecessarily imposing on myself—then no meditation is needed. But if this cannot be understood, then I say we should begin the opposite experiment: cultivate the feeling of erasing the I. Perhaps in the very way we made it, we can unmake it. If it has been built by feeling, it will be erased by the opposite feeling. Then an empty space will remain.

Therefore I am both against and in favor of hypnosis. I am against hypnosis if it leads into delusion; I am in favor if it breaks old delusions and brings you into emptiness. I am against positive hypnosis and in favor of negative hypnosis. It is hypnosis to say “I am this,” and it is also hypnosis to say “I am nothing.” But I am against the hypnosis “I am,” because it leads away from truth; I am in favor of the hypnosis “I am not,” because it brings you nearer to truth.

And remember, the road is the same for going far and for coming near; only the direction has to change. If I have to come to you, I must turn my face toward you; if I have to go away, I must turn my back. It is the same road. The path you took from home to here is the very path you will take back. Do not think, “How can we return by the same path? That road leads away from home!” No—by that same road you will come home, with this difference: when you went away, your back was to home; when you return, your face will be to home.

Hypnosis is taking us far because we have turned our back to ourselves; hypnosis will bring us near if we turn our face toward ourselves.

So I oppose hypnosis that is used to strengthen any imagination, and I support hypnosis that dissolves imaginations and leaves you choiceless.

For example, I am against the hypnosis of sitting and repeating, “I am Brahman, I am Brahman, I am Brahman.” But I am in favor of, “I am not, I am not, I am not.” What is the difference?

In asserting “I am Brahman” you are doing a positive, constructive hypnosis without knowing. You don’t know that you are Brahman, yet you impose it upon yourself; you may become hypnotized and feel, “I have become Brahman.” That will be illusion, not truth. To be Brahman you need not hypnotize yourself—because you already are that. If all hypnotisms drop, you will know, “I am Brahman.”

But you have created another hypnosis: “I am this—I am her husband, his father, someone’s son; I hold this post; this is my wealth, my prestige, my title.” These are all imagined decorations. I support the hypnosis of negation: say, “I have no name; I am nobody’s father, nobody’s husband, nobody’s son—I am nobody, I am nobody, I am nobody,” until a moment arrives when nothing remains. The instant you see that you are nothing at all, an explosion will occur within and you will know, “I am Brahman.” You will not have to think it—it will happen. It will happen by itself. You only empty the place: clear the temple of all idols; the one image that remains will be the Divine. After you remove every image you have placed—your own images—whatever remains is God. The idols you placed are the works of your own hands; they have no value.
So that friend has rightly asked: it is hypnosis. But it should be called de-hypnotization—hypnosis used to break hypnosis, to erase it. The thorn is unreal, meant only to remove the unreal thorns. And if you come to understand that the thorn is unreal—therefore it is not—then there is no question at all; the matter is finished. Then no question remains for you. But if the matter is not finished, then the thorn will have to be taken out; it is pricking. Unreal, yes, but it pricks, it truly gives pain. A second thorn will have to be found; then the two thorns will remove each other. Minus and plus will meet and become zero. Once they are cut away, zero remains. In that zero, the direct encounter with the Self can happen.
There are questions still left; we will talk about them tomorrow morning.
But what does not become clear through questions and answers can become clear through experiment. So those who truly want to know—not merely to listen; who truly want to descend—not into words but into truth itself—are invited for the evening. For the evening, please keep two or three points in mind.
Set out from home already in silence. On arriving there, wherever you are to sit, sit quietly with your eyes closed. Come prepared from home itself, so that by the time you arrive your mind is fully ready. And in that one hour do not speak to anyone, do not worry about anyone, do not look toward anyone. In that one hour you are alone. And in that one hour, to the fullest of your capacity, put your whole strength into cutting all your hypnotisms, removing the false thorns. There is nothing surprising, no reason why the unveiling should not happen today itself. Time is no obstacle. And do not hold the notion that the deeds of past lives will obstruct. Do not hold the notion that fate will stop you. Do not hold the notion that I am not worthy, not eligible. To attain the divine, everyone is eligible. To attain the divine, everyone is a worthy vessel. And to attain the divine, no obstacle ever arises from any karma of any birth.
Just as if a building were filled with darkness—darkness of thousands of years—and I were to say to you: light a lamp. You might say, It is the darkness of thousands of years; how will it vanish by lighting a lamp today? We would have to keep a lamp lit for a thousand years; then it will vanish.
No. Whether it is the darkness of a thousand years or of millions, once a lamp is lit, it is gone. Darkness has no layers. A day’s darkness is as dark as the darkness of countless births.
Ignorance has no layers; the very moment the lamp of knowing is lit, all ignorance vanishes. It makes no difference—no difference at all—how many births a person has wandered in ignorance, has lived in darkness. The lamp is lit and the darkness is gone. Until the lamp is lit, there is darkness. And remember, darkness cannot prevent the lamp from being lit. Darkness has no power at all to stop the lamp from being lit. Darkness is utterly impotent; it can do nothing.
Ignorance, too, is impotent; it can do nothing. So do not think it will happen some other time. If you bring your energy to it, it can happen today, here, now.
So tonight is an invitation to all who, with a little courage, wish to descend into the zero—so that the meeting may happen with that which is our true being.
I am grateful for the way you have listened to my words with such peace and love. And in the end, I bow to the God seated within everyone; please accept my salutations.