Samadhi Ke Sapat Dwar #9
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Read in Original Hindi (मूल हिन्दी)
Questions in this Discourse
A friend has asked: Krishnamurti says there is no need for a guru.
But if you accept what Krishnamurti says, then Krishnamurti has, at the very least, become your guru. It is Krishnamurti who says this; you are not saying it. And if you accept Krishnamurti, what more is left to make someone a guru? What remains?
People come to me and say, “We cannot make anyone our guru, because we accept Krishnamurti.” Then you have already made a guru. What else does “making a guru” mean? You have accepted someone because you do not trust yourself; you have taken someone’s support—that alone is the meaning of a guru. The day trust in oneself arises, the need for a guru disappears. But that trust is not there yet. So what sense does it make to go searching for a guru outside?
One thing: what Krishnamurti says—that there is no need for a guru—is absolutely right; because the life-guru is within. But he too is explaining to people that there is no need. In that sense he becomes a guru, a teacher. And however much he may say, “I do not teach,” then what is it that he is doing? And however much he may say, “Do not take anything from me,” those who come to listen do take something. Whoever comes to listen, comes in order to receive; he is a disciple—that is why he has come. He is seeking a guru and wants someone to show him the path he does not know. And it is indeed true, in a deep sense, that the guru is within. Who else can show the path? The path will be found through that inner one alone. But what is a person to do in the meantime—where should he go? It is clear he is not finding it himself. And if he could find it by himself, he would have found it long ago.
Today a man came to me and said, “If many wise men say there is no need for a guru and the guru is within, why should we accept anyone as a guru?” I said to him, “You have lived without a guru until now—did you find it? If you have, the matter is finished. If you have not, then what will you do now? If it were going to happen that way, it would have happened by now. What will you do? And why have you come to me?”
Man’s confusion is great. That man said to me, “I have come to ask you whether my belief is right: that it will do without a guru. If I do not make a guru, no obstacle will come, will it?” If you are to make a guru, you go to ask someone. If you are not to make a guru, you also go to ask someone. There seems to be no way to escape the guru.
Someone is in favor of the guru—people become his disciples. Someone is opposed to the guru—people become his disciples. The one who is in favor of the guru argues that without a guru there will be no knowledge. The one who is against the guru also argues—he says, “Do not make a guru, otherwise you will not attain knowledge.” He too is explaining.
My view is that you cannot escape the guru. The inner guru is there, but you have no awareness of him. You will have to catch hold of an outer guru, search for one. But the outer guru can do only one thing. He cannot be your real guru, but by living close to him, quietly, in his presence, in his very being—by sitting and rising with him, in his words, in his silence, in his eyes, in his hands, in the stream of life flowing near you—someday you may catch the resonance of that which is within you, a glimpse. For the meaning of “guru” is simply this: one who has found his inner guru. There is no other meaning.
One who has found the life-guru has become a guru. He has become his own guru, of course, but now he can also serve as a glimpse, as a mirror, for you. A ray of him may strike you as well. The strings of his veena are dancing. If the rhythm of his dance enters you, your veena too can begin to vibrate.
Veena players say that if, in a quiet room, a veena is placed silently in a corner and in another corner another veena is gently played, with the resonance gradually increasing, a moment comes when the strings of the silent veena begin to vibrate. The resonance that fills the room catches that veena as well; its strings too begin to tremble softly. The same trembling happens, near a guru, in the guru within you. That is why surrender to the guru is so valuable. Without surrender you stand stiff, rigid. You do not loosen the strings of your veena so they can vibrate. With surrender, this trembling can happen. With surrender, you open—you open a window.
And like activates like; like influences like. Like sets like into motion. If there is a guru outside, he is not truly your guru; your real guru is hidden within. But in that hidden one, let there be some echo, some stirring, some shock, some resonance. The outer guru, by his very existence, by the way he is, becomes a call, an invocation, a magnet for your inner guru. And then you also begin to recognize, near him, what it will be like when, someday, the inner guru is found.
Vivekananda used to tell a story again and again. A lioness once leapt from a mountain; she was pregnant, and in the very act of leaping she gave birth. Below, a flock of sheep was passing, and the cub fell among them. The sheep raised him. The lion cub always believed he was a sheep; there was no way for him to know otherwise. For we come to know ourselves to be like those with whom we live. The mother who nursed him was a sheep; his companions were sheep. How was the lion to know he was not a sheep?
He learned to bleat like a sheep and ran like a sheep. He did feel a little restless, because he grew much bigger than the sheep. But that was taken to mean he was a slightly abnormal, extraordinary sheep. The sheep too thought him a sheep, because he made the same sounds, grew up with them, played with them; they saw no sign of a lion in him. He neither attacked, nor killed, nor ate flesh. He ate what the sheep ate. He spoke as sheep do. To be a sheep was his life. A bit abnormal, a bit extraordinary—taller, bigger in body, features a little different. Well, extraordinary children are born in every species, even among sheep. Because of being unusual, he suffered; he thought himself wretched, inferior. If you were ten feet tall among people who are five feet, you would walk bent and frightened—you would feel you were ill.
At the university where I was, one of my professors fell ill. Everyone said he was sick; the poor man himself said he was sick. He was growing to nine feet, taller and taller. He was very troubled; could not sleep—worry, treatment. I asked him, “What is your problem?” He said, “Nothing else, this growing tall is the problem.” “But what is the problem in that? Do you have pain, discomfort—anything you can treat? Just getting big...” “Because whoever looks at me is startled. My wife says, ‘What is happening?’ Wherever she goes people ask, ‘Is this your husband?’” He walked so bent, as low as he could!
That must have been the lion’s state. He was troubled, restless. And one day another trouble arose. A lion attacked the flock. The sheep ran, and the lion among the sheep ran helter-skelter with them. The other lion was astonished. He had never seen such a sight. What was happening? A lion running among sheep! And the sheep were bustling and running alongside him! No one was even bothered by him! And why was he running? And how were the sheep keeping such harmony with him? The attacking lion forgot about killing the sheep and even forgot his hunger. He ran and, with difficulty, managed to catch hold of this lion. If it had been a sheep, catching it would have been easy; but he was a lion, so he ran like a lion. With difficulty he caught him; the attacker was young and this one was old.
When he caught him, the captured one began to bleat, to cry, to fold his hands: “Forgive me, spare me; I will never cross your path again. Let me go.” The attacker said, “Have you gone mad? You are not a sheep.” He said, “I am a sheep—just a bit extraordinary. I am a little taller than I should be; my looks are not quite right, but I am a sheep.”
The lion dragged him to a riverbank. He cried and screamed, “Let me go! My companions have been left behind!” He was terrified: “Now I am dead, my death is near.” But somehow the older lion brought him to the riverbank and said, “Peer into the water, you mad fellow—look at your face.” The lion, the lion-who-believed-he-was-a-sheep, looked into the water with great fear. In a single instant everything changed—instantly! The bleating vanished; a lion’s roar burst forth. As soon as he saw his face in the river, a roar came. He had never known that a lion’s roar was hidden within him. In a single moment he became a lion. He had always been a lion; only the illusion broke.
This is all a guru means: he drags you to some water and shows you who you are—or he himself becomes the water and shows you who you are. You get a glimpse of yourself; you find your own guru.
The sutra says, “That ray, that line of light itself is your life-guru, your true soul—the seer and silent thinker. And the victim-soul of your lower self is wounded only in the error-prone body. Gain mastery and ownership over both, and you are safe in entering within the gates of the approaching balance.”
“And the victim-soul of your lower self is wounded only in the error-prone body.”
Whatever mistakes you have made, whatever sins, all their shadows and imprints and marks are left on your body, not on you. The experiencing of their pain, of their fruits, happens in your body, not in you. But you take yourself to be one with the body; therefore you suffer needlessly.
Whoever has identified himself with the sheep will suffer like a sheep. And this suffering is quite real; there is no point in saying it is false. When that lion was running among the sheep, was his fear any less real? Was his chest any less tight? Had he kept running, he would have had a heart attack, just like any sheep. All this is real. To say “it is illusion” does not help. It may be illusion, but while it operates it is real. And its pain is as true as any “real” pain.
What suffering would that lion be experiencing?
He is a lion, yet believes himself a sheep; hence the suffering.
Where is that suffering hidden? In his notion, in his identification.
The sins you have committed, the mistakes, the evils—they are not hidden in you; they are hidden in your delusion—and your delusion is: “I am the body.” The whole imprint falls on the body; the whole fruit is borne by the body. And because I identify with the body, I too appear to be the one who bears it. That appearance is there, and the suffering is complete. There is no practical difference.
Psychologists say people come to them. A hundred years ago, before Freud, there were no doctors of the mind, only of the body. The body’s doctor would examine you and say, “This is no illness,” and you would say, “But my head keeps aching.” If there were in fact no pain, the physician could only say, “It is your imagination; there is no pain, therefore no treatment—just drop the idea.” But how to drop an idea? And does your saying so make the pain imaginary? The pain is there—and as much as any real pain.
After Freud, psychologists stopped saying “It’s your imagination.” It occurred to them that illusion, when it produces pain, produces pain just as real as any truth. Therefore saying so solves nothing. One must find a way to dissolve the illusion.
What is the way?
As long as our state of identification—“I am the body”—remains, what can we do? How to discover it is an illusion? What to do so that it becomes visible?
A few things are useful.
First: control; establish mastery.
We have no control over ourselves, no sense of ownership, no mastery. Without mastery, the body runs us. We may think we run the body, but the body runs us. It is a very amusing matter: you always think you are the owner and you are running everything. Keep a diary for twenty-four hours, and write down whether you ran the body or the body ran you; you will find the body ran you. You could not run the body at all—not even a little. If the body is running you, it is very difficult to awaken from illusion, because the one in whom the illusion resides has become your master. How will you displace him?
So first separate his ownership. Then identification can break. Establish control.
All processes of tapas (austerity) are not processes of torturing oneself; they are merely processes of establishing control.
The stomach is hungry and you say, “All right, body, I hear you are hungry—but today I have decided not to eat. Now be quiet.”
Because of old habit, the body will not quiet down easily. Many times before you have tried to quiet it; it did not quiet down. It made even more noise and then you ate. So it knows: “Just make a little more noise.” Your little children know this; the body is very old and experienced.
A little child asks his father for a toy. The father says, “I can’t buy it.” The child knows how much strength his father has: at most the father will refuse three times; the fourth time he will bend. The child begins creating a scene—stamping, jumping. He knows the limit. The father yields a little and, when the commotion gets worse, says, “All right—wait, wait two or three days.” The child says, “I can’t wait at all!” He has caught hold of the father’s hand. Now he knows a bit more pressure will do and the father will agree. It has happened many times already. Still the father’s foolishness is that he first says no and then gives in the third time, losing all prestige. Better to say yes the first time.
Freud said: say “no” to children only in those matters in which you can keep it “no,” otherwise you are destroying them. If you know beforehand that you cannot keep your “no” and the child will win and wring a “yes” from you, it is better to say “yes” the first time—you will at least remain the master. And tell children to do only those things you can make them do.
For example, a child is crying and you say to him, “Be quiet.” If he doesn’t, what will you do? And once a child discovers that you say “Be quiet,” and he doesn’t and you can do nothing, your impotence is exposed. Freud said: do not tell a child to do what you cannot enforce. Tell him, “Go out of the room.” If he does not, you can pick him up and put him out and close the door. But if you say, “Don’t cry,” what can you do? Whatever you do may make him cry even more. Once he realizes there are things you say which you cannot make happen, he becomes the master and you are gradually weakened.
If little children can see this, the body is very ancient. You have lived in bodies thousands of times, and the body has evolved fixed procedures. When you are hungry, the body will make a racket: “Now, now, now!”
Tapas does not mean torturing the body; it means only changing the control. The body is not the master—I am. Hunger is there; I hear it. Now be quiet. I am not going to satisfy hunger today. Then stick to it. In a few days’ experiment, you will find that as soon as you say, “No food today,” the body becomes quiet.
At the beginning it will not. It will try many stratagems; in the mind it will create countless thoughts; countless invitations will arrive; royal feasts will suddenly appear in many places. As you pass along a street, only restaurants will be visible; it will use every device, exert every effort because it has an old prestige you are removing.
But if you persist, if you use courage, today or tomorrow the body will understand that it has lost ownership. It will begin to follow you. Then a remarkable event happens—known only to those who gain mastery over the body. At your word, the body becomes quiet: you say “No food today,” and it quiets, because it knows there is no way to get food from this person now.
The body has its own understanding. It is a very intelligent instrument and knows your fiber through and through—what kind of person you are. It is your body, surrounding you on all sides, familiar with you in every way. Who knows you as intimately as your body does? It knows, inch by inch, by the grain, what trick makes you yield; it tries every trick. The body has its politics with you—there is conflict and struggle there too. Breaking this struggle is the first necessity; only then can identification break.
“O brave voyager to the other shore, be cheerful. Do not listen to the whisperings of Kamadeva. And in the boundless sky, keep away from the alluring powers, the malevolent entities, the hostile lhamayi.”
First: remove the body from ownership. This does not mean become the body’s enemy and destroy it. It means put it where it belongs—as a servant. There it is fit, and there it is immensely useful. Once you are master, you can take from the body such work without which the soul’s journey is impossible. The body is then a marvelous instrument.
Nowhere in the world is there an instrument as wondrous as the human body. The subtle and the vast—all is contained in it. Infinite powers are dormant in it; if they all awaken, countless doors open in your life. You are yourself a miniature cosmos. But if the body is master, you are only a slave. The condition is like tying the cart ahead and the oxen behind—then you go nowhere. You shout that a journey must be made, a destination reached, time is being wasted, but you have arranged things so that time will be wasted. Oxen tied behind, cart tied in front; in the pushing and shoving the cart breaks, the oxen suffer, and no journey happens.
If the soul is tied behind the body, there can be no journey. The soul must be in front, the body behind; then a great journey is possible. The body is a marvelous vehicle; it can be used.
Second, keep in mind that in this experiment of control, melancholy must not overtake you; remain cheerful. The body’s deepest stratagem to defeat you is to make you sad. If you are fasting, sadness will come. If a fasting person is sad, know the fast is wasted; better that he had eaten and remained cheerful. If the fasting person is sad, the point is lost; because sadness is the body’s way of taking revenge. It will wear you down. How long can you endure gloom?
So when you are to control the body, remember a second sutra: the body will send waves of gloom and try to make you sad from every side. Do not be sad; remain cheerful. If you can maintain cheerfulness, wondrous experiences happen. Because you do not know this, great obstacles arise.
Within the body there are three levels of energy. One is the small level used for daily tasks—getting up, sitting down, walking, going to the office. It is small; it tires quickly, because its capital is meager.
Suppose you come home exhausted and think, “I will just lie down and sleep. I don’t even want to speak a word or lift a hand.” Suddenly the house catches fire—your sadness and tiredness vanish. You are instantly alert; a new source of energy runs. Where did that energy come from that you did not have a moment before? This is the second source—emergency energy. When an urgent need arises, the body starts a new source; energy rushes. Now you can spend the night dousing the fire without feeling tired.
There is an even deeper source, an inexhaustible one. It becomes available only when the first two are spent and you are not afraid and you go on working, cheerfully, even further. Then a moment comes when the third source breaks open—the cosmic source. It is not “yours.” It belongs to the ocean of consciousness hidden beneath you. The day it bursts forth, then there is no way to be depleted. That day you become master of eternal life.
I see people in meditation who say, “The body gets tired.” I tell them, “Don’t worry; keep going. Only remember to proceed cheerfully, not with gloom.” Soon the second layer will break—and it does, quickly. Once the second layer breaks, they no longer feel fatigue after meditation; they feel fresh. When you have exhausted even that second layer, the third will break. After that you have inexhaustible energy; after that, infinite life is yours; after that you have come to that place where nothing ever runs out. Only with cheerfulness can you descend so deep; if you become gloomy, you will turn back.
Therefore grasp this deeply: the practice of dharma should be your exhilaration, your joy. Joy not only at the end; joy in the very first step. Not that it will come “finally” someday—let it be today. Move toward it in a festive spirit—dancing, singing, cheerful—and you will conquer the body. Because the body’s basic stratagem you have already prepared the antidote for. The body defeats you by making you sad. By remaining cheerful, you become the body’s master.
The sutra says: “O brave voyager to the other shore, be cheerful.”
This is a delightful sutra. And the very next line will surprise you; it seems the opposite: right after “O brave voyager, be cheerful,” it says, “Do not listen to the whisperings of Kamadeva.”
It doesn’t usually happen like that. Those who listen to Kamadeva’s whisperings look cheerful; those who avoid Kamadeva do not look cheerful. Go, see Jaina monks; they seem to have died before dying—no cheerfulness. What disease has befallen them? They are fighting Kamadeva.
Psychologists say: one whose libido flows openly and naturally is cheerful; one whose libido is blocked and repressed becomes cheerless and sad. They say young people look cheerful because their sexual energy is rising; old people become gloomy because the fever of sex has fallen. Children look very happy because the sexual energy is awakening, preparing, spreading in every pore; strength is running, they are delighted—running, jumping; you cannot make them sit. The energy is dancing—first glimpses of the rising fever of sex. The young are cheerful, dancing and singing. The old are cheerless. The whole play seems to be of sexual energy. And people who fight sex are not seen to be cheerful.
This sutra is very strange. It says: “O brave voyager, be cheerful,” and immediately, “Do not listen to Kamadeva’s whisperings.”
Understand: if cheerfulness does not arise in you otherwise, you will have to attend to Kamadeva’s whisperings. That is why the next line comes immediately. If you become gloomy and the body succeeds in making you sad, you know what happens—when you are sad, sexual desire grips the mind more; then the body has just one remaining way to make you cheerful—sex. When you are cheerful, filled with joy, the thought of sex does not even arise; for the idea of joy arises only when you are not already joyful.
We ask for what we do not have; what we already have—why ask? The sad and depressed are drawn to sex; they get a small glimpse of happiness there, and that becomes their attraction. If you want to be free of this pull, you will have to be cheerful and joyous without arousing sexual desire. If joy is available without sex, sex will not pull you; there will be no need. Only a cheerful person can attain to brahmacharya; a gloomy person never can—his gloom will become such a burden that he will need a natural relief. The natural relief from gloom is sex. Hence after sex you feel relief, relaxation, lightness; you can smile.
This sutra is very deep; it speaks to a great depth of the mind. If you are sad, Kamadeva will defeat you; you will have to heed him. If you are cheerful, there is no need to listen; you can withdraw your attention from his whisperings. You are so happy in yourself that there is no question of demanding more happiness.
“O brave voyager to the other shore, be cheerful. Do not listen to Kamadeva’s whisperings. And in the boundless sky keep away from the alluring powers, the malevolent entities, the hostile lhamayi.”
“Lhamayi” is a Tibetan word; it means those souls whose bodies have dropped and who have not yet found new bodies—spirits. But a special kind: spirits who take delight in leading others astray. We can know this from experience even among the living—many such people are in bodies who are delighted if they can divert others from their path.
You may not realize it, but you too sometimes do this and become lhamayi. Someone comes and tells you, “I am meditating. These are the stages: I dance, I jump, I breathe, I chant ‘Hoo-hoo.’” You know nothing of meditation, yet you say, “What are you doing? You’ll go mad. Have you gone crazy?” As if you knew the art of going mad! As if you knew the secrets of meditation! As if you had meditated and traversed this path and gone mad—an experienced man! In this way you say, “What are you doing—want to go mad?” without realizing you are leading him astray. And if he agrees with you, you feel pleased; if he does not, you feel a little sad.
People toil mightily to persuade others: “Don’t do this; do that.” They never work so hard to persuade themselves to do something as they work on others. So service-minded! Forever busy in others’ affairs. Such souls are everywhere.
Tibetan inquiry into this is very deep. When an ordinary person dies, he is generally born again immediately; it doesn’t take long to find a new body because ordinary wombs are always available. When an extraordinary man dies—a great saint or a great sinner—it takes time to take birth because suitable wombs are not readily available; they have to be created. If someone like Hitler dies, it may take hundreds of years to find parents; he has to wait for a womb fit for him. During this waiting, he is a spirit. If a knower dies and has not yet reached the place from where there is no return, he too will have to wait hundreds of years for a fitting womb.
At the lower extreme and at the upper extreme there is waiting. Those waiting at the upper extreme we have called “devas.” Those waiting at the lower extreme we have called “pretas”—spirits. Both are waiting souls who must still take a womb. Devas, by their nature, delight in helping; pretas delight in corrupting, in leading astray. Both kinds of entities are at work around you.
This sutra says: be cheerful—and be aware that if you become sad, around you are such lhamayi spirits who, in moments of sadness, can seize you and make you do things you would never have done of your own accord.
You will have felt this: “I did not want to do that, and yet I did.” “It was not my intention—I had decided not to do it—yet I did.” And sometimes you firmly decide to do a good thing and at the last moment you change.
A woman came to me yesterday evening, weeping, very moved. She wanted sannyas. I said, “Tomorrow—tomorrow at noon.” She came today and said, “For a month I have been ready to take sannyas, and yesterday I was so full of feeling. But the moment you said, ‘Come tomorrow and take it,’ I don’t know what happened—my feeling vanished. Now I don’t want to take sannyas.” She is still weeping and saying, “I want to take it; I have been preparing and waiting for so long. I don’t know what has happened within me that now I can’t... I cannot gather the courage.” And at the same time she feels she should take it. Not being able to, she weeps.
We are not aware: around us is a vast world of thoughts, of souls, of clusters of thought. In certain moments we are seized by them and become possessed, and in that possession we do what is not our own doing. Auspicious thoughts too seize us; auspicious entities support us. Inauspicious thoughts seize us; inauspicious entities hinder.
But know this rule: the one who is very cheerful is safe; the one who is sad is unsafe. In moments of sadness, troublesome entities and thoughts catch hold of you. In states of cheerfulness and bliss, your connection is with what is higher. One who strives to remain cheerful gains the cooperation of all the divine forces in existence. One who remains gloomy becomes companion to all that is dull, heavy, stony.
When you sit gloomy, there is a crowd around you that you cannot see. When you are joyful, around you dance some blissful presences you cannot see. You are creating a circle around yourself.
Remember: the seeker should always be cheerful. If circumstances do not provide cheerfulness, find some reason and remain cheerful. Make cheerfulness a sutra.
“Be firm. You are approaching the middle gate, which is also the gate of affliction, in which are ten thousand serpent nooses.”
You are coming near the midpoint of the journey. And the midpoint is the last turning point: if you cross it, reaching the other shore becomes easy; if you get stuck there, you may fall back. At this midpoint there are ten thousand nooses—ten thousand entanglements will arise, ten thousand disturbances. All the disturbances you have created in countless births will seize you and call you back. All the foolishness you have consorted with will make one last effort: “Come back; how can you leave such old companions?”
People come to me and say, “We were not so disturbed when we did not meditate. Now that we meditate, peace seems to be increasing—and so does great restlessness.” That restlessness is your old consort.
Even in this world, if one wants a divorce, there is much trouble. In the inner realm, divorce is harder—there are very old relationships, many promises and vows: “I am always yours; I will always remain with you.” When you suddenly start leaving, you are grabbed more tightly; the knots are pulled taut. At the midpoint, ten thousand serpent nooses await.
“O aspirant to perfection, become the master of your thoughts if you wish to cross its threshold.”
“And if you would reach your destination, O seeker after the immortal Truth, become the master of your soul.”
“Fix your gaze upon that one pure Light which is free of all impressions, and use your golden key.”
“The hard labor is done. Your toil is complete. And the yawning abyss that opened its mouth to swallow you is almost bridged...”
If you cross the midpoint, the abyss that had opened its mouth is almost bridged. After the midpoint, a fall is very difficult; you would have to try hard to fall. Before the midpoint, a fall is easy; you must strive hard to avoid it. After the midpoint you would have to make great effort to fall back; otherwise no one falls back by himself. After the midpoint, a new realm opens; old companions drop away; you move from one extreme into the other.
To cross this midpoint:
- Become master of the body—first.
- Then become master of thought—second.
- Then become master of the soul—third.
Begin with the body; if you cannot own the body, you will not be able to own the mind. If you cannot own the mind, you will not be able to own the soul. As I said: conquer the body. Then, the day you feel ownership over the body has been gained, begin the same experiment with the mind. A thought arises in the mind—anger—to act. Say, “No anger; be quiet, mind.” Then stand by your word; however much the mind tries, remain at a distance and do not be angry. Today or tomorrow you will find the mind is prepared to listen. When you say, “No anger,” the mood of anger will dissolve instantly.
It happens just as my hand is raised: if I say I do not want to keep it up, it comes down. This is my hand. If I say, “Come down,” and it remains stuck up however much I say “Come down,” it means the hand is not mine.
You say thoughts are yours. You should not say so, because you cannot throw out a thought you want to throw out. You say, “May this thought not arise,” and it is not in your control. You say, “Do not come,” and it comes even more. You say, “Do not torment me,” and it torments more. You say, “I will not be angry,” and you become more filled with anger. Right now thought is the master.
The experiment you did with the body, gradually do the same with the mind. If you persevere courageously and cheerfully, you will become master of the mind too.
Third is mastery of the soul. All these sutras are for mastery of the soul. But here, in this context, mastery of the soul means this much: mastery over your entire personality. Body, mind, soul—these three are your personality, your totality. Let the movement of this totality be by your command. A state comes in which the totality moves only by your command. If you wish to die this very moment, death happens this very moment—because the total obeys you. There is no easy formula for mastery of the total as there is for body and mind. But those who become masters of body and mind immediately find the key for the soul: what to do becomes self-evident. What you did for the body was on the outside; what you did for the mind was in between; what remains for the soul is to do the same at a very deep level. The essence of doing for the soul is that existence itself begins to obey your command.
What is the case now?
Right now if you say, “No harm if death comes; I will accept it,” your inner existence says, “No, we will not accept it—how can we die? We do not want to die.” Then you have no mastery there. But if the journey of body and mind is set right, by applying the same formula inwardly in a subtler way, mastery over existence becomes available.
With this mastery, you begin to see that ray of light which you are. Then fix your gaze upon it alone, and surrender yourself to its current. That ray is your life-guru. Make that ray your boat—and it will begin to move toward the divine.
People come to me and say, “We cannot make anyone our guru, because we accept Krishnamurti.” Then you have already made a guru. What else does “making a guru” mean? You have accepted someone because you do not trust yourself; you have taken someone’s support—that alone is the meaning of a guru. The day trust in oneself arises, the need for a guru disappears. But that trust is not there yet. So what sense does it make to go searching for a guru outside?
One thing: what Krishnamurti says—that there is no need for a guru—is absolutely right; because the life-guru is within. But he too is explaining to people that there is no need. In that sense he becomes a guru, a teacher. And however much he may say, “I do not teach,” then what is it that he is doing? And however much he may say, “Do not take anything from me,” those who come to listen do take something. Whoever comes to listen, comes in order to receive; he is a disciple—that is why he has come. He is seeking a guru and wants someone to show him the path he does not know. And it is indeed true, in a deep sense, that the guru is within. Who else can show the path? The path will be found through that inner one alone. But what is a person to do in the meantime—where should he go? It is clear he is not finding it himself. And if he could find it by himself, he would have found it long ago.
Today a man came to me and said, “If many wise men say there is no need for a guru and the guru is within, why should we accept anyone as a guru?” I said to him, “You have lived without a guru until now—did you find it? If you have, the matter is finished. If you have not, then what will you do now? If it were going to happen that way, it would have happened by now. What will you do? And why have you come to me?”
Man’s confusion is great. That man said to me, “I have come to ask you whether my belief is right: that it will do without a guru. If I do not make a guru, no obstacle will come, will it?” If you are to make a guru, you go to ask someone. If you are not to make a guru, you also go to ask someone. There seems to be no way to escape the guru.
Someone is in favor of the guru—people become his disciples. Someone is opposed to the guru—people become his disciples. The one who is in favor of the guru argues that without a guru there will be no knowledge. The one who is against the guru also argues—he says, “Do not make a guru, otherwise you will not attain knowledge.” He too is explaining.
My view is that you cannot escape the guru. The inner guru is there, but you have no awareness of him. You will have to catch hold of an outer guru, search for one. But the outer guru can do only one thing. He cannot be your real guru, but by living close to him, quietly, in his presence, in his very being—by sitting and rising with him, in his words, in his silence, in his eyes, in his hands, in the stream of life flowing near you—someday you may catch the resonance of that which is within you, a glimpse. For the meaning of “guru” is simply this: one who has found his inner guru. There is no other meaning.
One who has found the life-guru has become a guru. He has become his own guru, of course, but now he can also serve as a glimpse, as a mirror, for you. A ray of him may strike you as well. The strings of his veena are dancing. If the rhythm of his dance enters you, your veena too can begin to vibrate.
Veena players say that if, in a quiet room, a veena is placed silently in a corner and in another corner another veena is gently played, with the resonance gradually increasing, a moment comes when the strings of the silent veena begin to vibrate. The resonance that fills the room catches that veena as well; its strings too begin to tremble softly. The same trembling happens, near a guru, in the guru within you. That is why surrender to the guru is so valuable. Without surrender you stand stiff, rigid. You do not loosen the strings of your veena so they can vibrate. With surrender, this trembling can happen. With surrender, you open—you open a window.
And like activates like; like influences like. Like sets like into motion. If there is a guru outside, he is not truly your guru; your real guru is hidden within. But in that hidden one, let there be some echo, some stirring, some shock, some resonance. The outer guru, by his very existence, by the way he is, becomes a call, an invocation, a magnet for your inner guru. And then you also begin to recognize, near him, what it will be like when, someday, the inner guru is found.
Vivekananda used to tell a story again and again. A lioness once leapt from a mountain; she was pregnant, and in the very act of leaping she gave birth. Below, a flock of sheep was passing, and the cub fell among them. The sheep raised him. The lion cub always believed he was a sheep; there was no way for him to know otherwise. For we come to know ourselves to be like those with whom we live. The mother who nursed him was a sheep; his companions were sheep. How was the lion to know he was not a sheep?
He learned to bleat like a sheep and ran like a sheep. He did feel a little restless, because he grew much bigger than the sheep. But that was taken to mean he was a slightly abnormal, extraordinary sheep. The sheep too thought him a sheep, because he made the same sounds, grew up with them, played with them; they saw no sign of a lion in him. He neither attacked, nor killed, nor ate flesh. He ate what the sheep ate. He spoke as sheep do. To be a sheep was his life. A bit abnormal, a bit extraordinary—taller, bigger in body, features a little different. Well, extraordinary children are born in every species, even among sheep. Because of being unusual, he suffered; he thought himself wretched, inferior. If you were ten feet tall among people who are five feet, you would walk bent and frightened—you would feel you were ill.
At the university where I was, one of my professors fell ill. Everyone said he was sick; the poor man himself said he was sick. He was growing to nine feet, taller and taller. He was very troubled; could not sleep—worry, treatment. I asked him, “What is your problem?” He said, “Nothing else, this growing tall is the problem.” “But what is the problem in that? Do you have pain, discomfort—anything you can treat? Just getting big...” “Because whoever looks at me is startled. My wife says, ‘What is happening?’ Wherever she goes people ask, ‘Is this your husband?’” He walked so bent, as low as he could!
That must have been the lion’s state. He was troubled, restless. And one day another trouble arose. A lion attacked the flock. The sheep ran, and the lion among the sheep ran helter-skelter with them. The other lion was astonished. He had never seen such a sight. What was happening? A lion running among sheep! And the sheep were bustling and running alongside him! No one was even bothered by him! And why was he running? And how were the sheep keeping such harmony with him? The attacking lion forgot about killing the sheep and even forgot his hunger. He ran and, with difficulty, managed to catch hold of this lion. If it had been a sheep, catching it would have been easy; but he was a lion, so he ran like a lion. With difficulty he caught him; the attacker was young and this one was old.
When he caught him, the captured one began to bleat, to cry, to fold his hands: “Forgive me, spare me; I will never cross your path again. Let me go.” The attacker said, “Have you gone mad? You are not a sheep.” He said, “I am a sheep—just a bit extraordinary. I am a little taller than I should be; my looks are not quite right, but I am a sheep.”
The lion dragged him to a riverbank. He cried and screamed, “Let me go! My companions have been left behind!” He was terrified: “Now I am dead, my death is near.” But somehow the older lion brought him to the riverbank and said, “Peer into the water, you mad fellow—look at your face.” The lion, the lion-who-believed-he-was-a-sheep, looked into the water with great fear. In a single instant everything changed—instantly! The bleating vanished; a lion’s roar burst forth. As soon as he saw his face in the river, a roar came. He had never known that a lion’s roar was hidden within him. In a single moment he became a lion. He had always been a lion; only the illusion broke.
This is all a guru means: he drags you to some water and shows you who you are—or he himself becomes the water and shows you who you are. You get a glimpse of yourself; you find your own guru.
The sutra says, “That ray, that line of light itself is your life-guru, your true soul—the seer and silent thinker. And the victim-soul of your lower self is wounded only in the error-prone body. Gain mastery and ownership over both, and you are safe in entering within the gates of the approaching balance.”
“And the victim-soul of your lower self is wounded only in the error-prone body.”
Whatever mistakes you have made, whatever sins, all their shadows and imprints and marks are left on your body, not on you. The experiencing of their pain, of their fruits, happens in your body, not in you. But you take yourself to be one with the body; therefore you suffer needlessly.
Whoever has identified himself with the sheep will suffer like a sheep. And this suffering is quite real; there is no point in saying it is false. When that lion was running among the sheep, was his fear any less real? Was his chest any less tight? Had he kept running, he would have had a heart attack, just like any sheep. All this is real. To say “it is illusion” does not help. It may be illusion, but while it operates it is real. And its pain is as true as any “real” pain.
What suffering would that lion be experiencing?
He is a lion, yet believes himself a sheep; hence the suffering.
Where is that suffering hidden? In his notion, in his identification.
The sins you have committed, the mistakes, the evils—they are not hidden in you; they are hidden in your delusion—and your delusion is: “I am the body.” The whole imprint falls on the body; the whole fruit is borne by the body. And because I identify with the body, I too appear to be the one who bears it. That appearance is there, and the suffering is complete. There is no practical difference.
Psychologists say people come to them. A hundred years ago, before Freud, there were no doctors of the mind, only of the body. The body’s doctor would examine you and say, “This is no illness,” and you would say, “But my head keeps aching.” If there were in fact no pain, the physician could only say, “It is your imagination; there is no pain, therefore no treatment—just drop the idea.” But how to drop an idea? And does your saying so make the pain imaginary? The pain is there—and as much as any real pain.
After Freud, psychologists stopped saying “It’s your imagination.” It occurred to them that illusion, when it produces pain, produces pain just as real as any truth. Therefore saying so solves nothing. One must find a way to dissolve the illusion.
What is the way?
As long as our state of identification—“I am the body”—remains, what can we do? How to discover it is an illusion? What to do so that it becomes visible?
A few things are useful.
First: control; establish mastery.
We have no control over ourselves, no sense of ownership, no mastery. Without mastery, the body runs us. We may think we run the body, but the body runs us. It is a very amusing matter: you always think you are the owner and you are running everything. Keep a diary for twenty-four hours, and write down whether you ran the body or the body ran you; you will find the body ran you. You could not run the body at all—not even a little. If the body is running you, it is very difficult to awaken from illusion, because the one in whom the illusion resides has become your master. How will you displace him?
So first separate his ownership. Then identification can break. Establish control.
All processes of tapas (austerity) are not processes of torturing oneself; they are merely processes of establishing control.
The stomach is hungry and you say, “All right, body, I hear you are hungry—but today I have decided not to eat. Now be quiet.”
Because of old habit, the body will not quiet down easily. Many times before you have tried to quiet it; it did not quiet down. It made even more noise and then you ate. So it knows: “Just make a little more noise.” Your little children know this; the body is very old and experienced.
A little child asks his father for a toy. The father says, “I can’t buy it.” The child knows how much strength his father has: at most the father will refuse three times; the fourth time he will bend. The child begins creating a scene—stamping, jumping. He knows the limit. The father yields a little and, when the commotion gets worse, says, “All right—wait, wait two or three days.” The child says, “I can’t wait at all!” He has caught hold of the father’s hand. Now he knows a bit more pressure will do and the father will agree. It has happened many times already. Still the father’s foolishness is that he first says no and then gives in the third time, losing all prestige. Better to say yes the first time.
Freud said: say “no” to children only in those matters in which you can keep it “no,” otherwise you are destroying them. If you know beforehand that you cannot keep your “no” and the child will win and wring a “yes” from you, it is better to say “yes” the first time—you will at least remain the master. And tell children to do only those things you can make them do.
For example, a child is crying and you say to him, “Be quiet.” If he doesn’t, what will you do? And once a child discovers that you say “Be quiet,” and he doesn’t and you can do nothing, your impotence is exposed. Freud said: do not tell a child to do what you cannot enforce. Tell him, “Go out of the room.” If he does not, you can pick him up and put him out and close the door. But if you say, “Don’t cry,” what can you do? Whatever you do may make him cry even more. Once he realizes there are things you say which you cannot make happen, he becomes the master and you are gradually weakened.
If little children can see this, the body is very ancient. You have lived in bodies thousands of times, and the body has evolved fixed procedures. When you are hungry, the body will make a racket: “Now, now, now!”
Tapas does not mean torturing the body; it means only changing the control. The body is not the master—I am. Hunger is there; I hear it. Now be quiet. I am not going to satisfy hunger today. Then stick to it. In a few days’ experiment, you will find that as soon as you say, “No food today,” the body becomes quiet.
At the beginning it will not. It will try many stratagems; in the mind it will create countless thoughts; countless invitations will arrive; royal feasts will suddenly appear in many places. As you pass along a street, only restaurants will be visible; it will use every device, exert every effort because it has an old prestige you are removing.
But if you persist, if you use courage, today or tomorrow the body will understand that it has lost ownership. It will begin to follow you. Then a remarkable event happens—known only to those who gain mastery over the body. At your word, the body becomes quiet: you say “No food today,” and it quiets, because it knows there is no way to get food from this person now.
The body has its own understanding. It is a very intelligent instrument and knows your fiber through and through—what kind of person you are. It is your body, surrounding you on all sides, familiar with you in every way. Who knows you as intimately as your body does? It knows, inch by inch, by the grain, what trick makes you yield; it tries every trick. The body has its politics with you—there is conflict and struggle there too. Breaking this struggle is the first necessity; only then can identification break.
“O brave voyager to the other shore, be cheerful. Do not listen to the whisperings of Kamadeva. And in the boundless sky, keep away from the alluring powers, the malevolent entities, the hostile lhamayi.”
First: remove the body from ownership. This does not mean become the body’s enemy and destroy it. It means put it where it belongs—as a servant. There it is fit, and there it is immensely useful. Once you are master, you can take from the body such work without which the soul’s journey is impossible. The body is then a marvelous instrument.
Nowhere in the world is there an instrument as wondrous as the human body. The subtle and the vast—all is contained in it. Infinite powers are dormant in it; if they all awaken, countless doors open in your life. You are yourself a miniature cosmos. But if the body is master, you are only a slave. The condition is like tying the cart ahead and the oxen behind—then you go nowhere. You shout that a journey must be made, a destination reached, time is being wasted, but you have arranged things so that time will be wasted. Oxen tied behind, cart tied in front; in the pushing and shoving the cart breaks, the oxen suffer, and no journey happens.
If the soul is tied behind the body, there can be no journey. The soul must be in front, the body behind; then a great journey is possible. The body is a marvelous vehicle; it can be used.
Second, keep in mind that in this experiment of control, melancholy must not overtake you; remain cheerful. The body’s deepest stratagem to defeat you is to make you sad. If you are fasting, sadness will come. If a fasting person is sad, know the fast is wasted; better that he had eaten and remained cheerful. If the fasting person is sad, the point is lost; because sadness is the body’s way of taking revenge. It will wear you down. How long can you endure gloom?
So when you are to control the body, remember a second sutra: the body will send waves of gloom and try to make you sad from every side. Do not be sad; remain cheerful. If you can maintain cheerfulness, wondrous experiences happen. Because you do not know this, great obstacles arise.
Within the body there are three levels of energy. One is the small level used for daily tasks—getting up, sitting down, walking, going to the office. It is small; it tires quickly, because its capital is meager.
Suppose you come home exhausted and think, “I will just lie down and sleep. I don’t even want to speak a word or lift a hand.” Suddenly the house catches fire—your sadness and tiredness vanish. You are instantly alert; a new source of energy runs. Where did that energy come from that you did not have a moment before? This is the second source—emergency energy. When an urgent need arises, the body starts a new source; energy rushes. Now you can spend the night dousing the fire without feeling tired.
There is an even deeper source, an inexhaustible one. It becomes available only when the first two are spent and you are not afraid and you go on working, cheerfully, even further. Then a moment comes when the third source breaks open—the cosmic source. It is not “yours.” It belongs to the ocean of consciousness hidden beneath you. The day it bursts forth, then there is no way to be depleted. That day you become master of eternal life.
I see people in meditation who say, “The body gets tired.” I tell them, “Don’t worry; keep going. Only remember to proceed cheerfully, not with gloom.” Soon the second layer will break—and it does, quickly. Once the second layer breaks, they no longer feel fatigue after meditation; they feel fresh. When you have exhausted even that second layer, the third will break. After that you have inexhaustible energy; after that, infinite life is yours; after that you have come to that place where nothing ever runs out. Only with cheerfulness can you descend so deep; if you become gloomy, you will turn back.
Therefore grasp this deeply: the practice of dharma should be your exhilaration, your joy. Joy not only at the end; joy in the very first step. Not that it will come “finally” someday—let it be today. Move toward it in a festive spirit—dancing, singing, cheerful—and you will conquer the body. Because the body’s basic stratagem you have already prepared the antidote for. The body defeats you by making you sad. By remaining cheerful, you become the body’s master.
The sutra says: “O brave voyager to the other shore, be cheerful.”
This is a delightful sutra. And the very next line will surprise you; it seems the opposite: right after “O brave voyager, be cheerful,” it says, “Do not listen to the whisperings of Kamadeva.”
It doesn’t usually happen like that. Those who listen to Kamadeva’s whisperings look cheerful; those who avoid Kamadeva do not look cheerful. Go, see Jaina monks; they seem to have died before dying—no cheerfulness. What disease has befallen them? They are fighting Kamadeva.
Psychologists say: one whose libido flows openly and naturally is cheerful; one whose libido is blocked and repressed becomes cheerless and sad. They say young people look cheerful because their sexual energy is rising; old people become gloomy because the fever of sex has fallen. Children look very happy because the sexual energy is awakening, preparing, spreading in every pore; strength is running, they are delighted—running, jumping; you cannot make them sit. The energy is dancing—first glimpses of the rising fever of sex. The young are cheerful, dancing and singing. The old are cheerless. The whole play seems to be of sexual energy. And people who fight sex are not seen to be cheerful.
This sutra is very strange. It says: “O brave voyager, be cheerful,” and immediately, “Do not listen to Kamadeva’s whisperings.”
Understand: if cheerfulness does not arise in you otherwise, you will have to attend to Kamadeva’s whisperings. That is why the next line comes immediately. If you become gloomy and the body succeeds in making you sad, you know what happens—when you are sad, sexual desire grips the mind more; then the body has just one remaining way to make you cheerful—sex. When you are cheerful, filled with joy, the thought of sex does not even arise; for the idea of joy arises only when you are not already joyful.
We ask for what we do not have; what we already have—why ask? The sad and depressed are drawn to sex; they get a small glimpse of happiness there, and that becomes their attraction. If you want to be free of this pull, you will have to be cheerful and joyous without arousing sexual desire. If joy is available without sex, sex will not pull you; there will be no need. Only a cheerful person can attain to brahmacharya; a gloomy person never can—his gloom will become such a burden that he will need a natural relief. The natural relief from gloom is sex. Hence after sex you feel relief, relaxation, lightness; you can smile.
This sutra is very deep; it speaks to a great depth of the mind. If you are sad, Kamadeva will defeat you; you will have to heed him. If you are cheerful, there is no need to listen; you can withdraw your attention from his whisperings. You are so happy in yourself that there is no question of demanding more happiness.
“O brave voyager to the other shore, be cheerful. Do not listen to Kamadeva’s whisperings. And in the boundless sky keep away from the alluring powers, the malevolent entities, the hostile lhamayi.”
“Lhamayi” is a Tibetan word; it means those souls whose bodies have dropped and who have not yet found new bodies—spirits. But a special kind: spirits who take delight in leading others astray. We can know this from experience even among the living—many such people are in bodies who are delighted if they can divert others from their path.
You may not realize it, but you too sometimes do this and become lhamayi. Someone comes and tells you, “I am meditating. These are the stages: I dance, I jump, I breathe, I chant ‘Hoo-hoo.’” You know nothing of meditation, yet you say, “What are you doing? You’ll go mad. Have you gone crazy?” As if you knew the art of going mad! As if you knew the secrets of meditation! As if you had meditated and traversed this path and gone mad—an experienced man! In this way you say, “What are you doing—want to go mad?” without realizing you are leading him astray. And if he agrees with you, you feel pleased; if he does not, you feel a little sad.
People toil mightily to persuade others: “Don’t do this; do that.” They never work so hard to persuade themselves to do something as they work on others. So service-minded! Forever busy in others’ affairs. Such souls are everywhere.
Tibetan inquiry into this is very deep. When an ordinary person dies, he is generally born again immediately; it doesn’t take long to find a new body because ordinary wombs are always available. When an extraordinary man dies—a great saint or a great sinner—it takes time to take birth because suitable wombs are not readily available; they have to be created. If someone like Hitler dies, it may take hundreds of years to find parents; he has to wait for a womb fit for him. During this waiting, he is a spirit. If a knower dies and has not yet reached the place from where there is no return, he too will have to wait hundreds of years for a fitting womb.
At the lower extreme and at the upper extreme there is waiting. Those waiting at the upper extreme we have called “devas.” Those waiting at the lower extreme we have called “pretas”—spirits. Both are waiting souls who must still take a womb. Devas, by their nature, delight in helping; pretas delight in corrupting, in leading astray. Both kinds of entities are at work around you.
This sutra says: be cheerful—and be aware that if you become sad, around you are such lhamayi spirits who, in moments of sadness, can seize you and make you do things you would never have done of your own accord.
You will have felt this: “I did not want to do that, and yet I did.” “It was not my intention—I had decided not to do it—yet I did.” And sometimes you firmly decide to do a good thing and at the last moment you change.
A woman came to me yesterday evening, weeping, very moved. She wanted sannyas. I said, “Tomorrow—tomorrow at noon.” She came today and said, “For a month I have been ready to take sannyas, and yesterday I was so full of feeling. But the moment you said, ‘Come tomorrow and take it,’ I don’t know what happened—my feeling vanished. Now I don’t want to take sannyas.” She is still weeping and saying, “I want to take it; I have been preparing and waiting for so long. I don’t know what has happened within me that now I can’t... I cannot gather the courage.” And at the same time she feels she should take it. Not being able to, she weeps.
We are not aware: around us is a vast world of thoughts, of souls, of clusters of thought. In certain moments we are seized by them and become possessed, and in that possession we do what is not our own doing. Auspicious thoughts too seize us; auspicious entities support us. Inauspicious thoughts seize us; inauspicious entities hinder.
But know this rule: the one who is very cheerful is safe; the one who is sad is unsafe. In moments of sadness, troublesome entities and thoughts catch hold of you. In states of cheerfulness and bliss, your connection is with what is higher. One who strives to remain cheerful gains the cooperation of all the divine forces in existence. One who remains gloomy becomes companion to all that is dull, heavy, stony.
When you sit gloomy, there is a crowd around you that you cannot see. When you are joyful, around you dance some blissful presences you cannot see. You are creating a circle around yourself.
Remember: the seeker should always be cheerful. If circumstances do not provide cheerfulness, find some reason and remain cheerful. Make cheerfulness a sutra.
“Be firm. You are approaching the middle gate, which is also the gate of affliction, in which are ten thousand serpent nooses.”
You are coming near the midpoint of the journey. And the midpoint is the last turning point: if you cross it, reaching the other shore becomes easy; if you get stuck there, you may fall back. At this midpoint there are ten thousand nooses—ten thousand entanglements will arise, ten thousand disturbances. All the disturbances you have created in countless births will seize you and call you back. All the foolishness you have consorted with will make one last effort: “Come back; how can you leave such old companions?”
People come to me and say, “We were not so disturbed when we did not meditate. Now that we meditate, peace seems to be increasing—and so does great restlessness.” That restlessness is your old consort.
Even in this world, if one wants a divorce, there is much trouble. In the inner realm, divorce is harder—there are very old relationships, many promises and vows: “I am always yours; I will always remain with you.” When you suddenly start leaving, you are grabbed more tightly; the knots are pulled taut. At the midpoint, ten thousand serpent nooses await.
“O aspirant to perfection, become the master of your thoughts if you wish to cross its threshold.”
“And if you would reach your destination, O seeker after the immortal Truth, become the master of your soul.”
“Fix your gaze upon that one pure Light which is free of all impressions, and use your golden key.”
“The hard labor is done. Your toil is complete. And the yawning abyss that opened its mouth to swallow you is almost bridged...”
If you cross the midpoint, the abyss that had opened its mouth is almost bridged. After the midpoint, a fall is very difficult; you would have to try hard to fall. Before the midpoint, a fall is easy; you must strive hard to avoid it. After the midpoint you would have to make great effort to fall back; otherwise no one falls back by himself. After the midpoint, a new realm opens; old companions drop away; you move from one extreme into the other.
To cross this midpoint:
- Become master of the body—first.
- Then become master of thought—second.
- Then become master of the soul—third.
Begin with the body; if you cannot own the body, you will not be able to own the mind. If you cannot own the mind, you will not be able to own the soul. As I said: conquer the body. Then, the day you feel ownership over the body has been gained, begin the same experiment with the mind. A thought arises in the mind—anger—to act. Say, “No anger; be quiet, mind.” Then stand by your word; however much the mind tries, remain at a distance and do not be angry. Today or tomorrow you will find the mind is prepared to listen. When you say, “No anger,” the mood of anger will dissolve instantly.
It happens just as my hand is raised: if I say I do not want to keep it up, it comes down. This is my hand. If I say, “Come down,” and it remains stuck up however much I say “Come down,” it means the hand is not mine.
You say thoughts are yours. You should not say so, because you cannot throw out a thought you want to throw out. You say, “May this thought not arise,” and it is not in your control. You say, “Do not come,” and it comes even more. You say, “Do not torment me,” and it torments more. You say, “I will not be angry,” and you become more filled with anger. Right now thought is the master.
The experiment you did with the body, gradually do the same with the mind. If you persevere courageously and cheerfully, you will become master of the mind too.
Third is mastery of the soul. All these sutras are for mastery of the soul. But here, in this context, mastery of the soul means this much: mastery over your entire personality. Body, mind, soul—these three are your personality, your totality. Let the movement of this totality be by your command. A state comes in which the totality moves only by your command. If you wish to die this very moment, death happens this very moment—because the total obeys you. There is no easy formula for mastery of the total as there is for body and mind. But those who become masters of body and mind immediately find the key for the soul: what to do becomes self-evident. What you did for the body was on the outside; what you did for the mind was in between; what remains for the soul is to do the same at a very deep level. The essence of doing for the soul is that existence itself begins to obey your command.
What is the case now?
Right now if you say, “No harm if death comes; I will accept it,” your inner existence says, “No, we will not accept it—how can we die? We do not want to die.” Then you have no mastery there. But if the journey of body and mind is set right, by applying the same formula inwardly in a subtler way, mastery over existence becomes available.
With this mastery, you begin to see that ray of light which you are. Then fix your gaze upon it alone, and surrender yourself to its current. That ray is your life-guru. Make that ray your boat—and it will begin to move toward the divine.
Osho's Commentary
O brave traveler to the other shore—be glad. Give no ear to the whisper of Kama-deva. And keep far from the luring powers in the boundless sky, from malevolent souls, from the spiteful lhamayin.
Be firm. Now thou approachest the middle Gate—the Gate also of anguish—in which are ten thousand serpent-nooses.
O seeker of perfection, become master of thy thoughts if thou art to cross its threshold.
And, if thou wouldst arrive at thy goal, O seeker of the amrit Truth, become master of thy soul.
Fix thine inner gaze upon that one pure Light, free of all impressions. And use thy golden key.
The hard task is done. Thy labor is fulfilled. And that vast Patala which yawned to swallow thee is almost bridged...
If man is seen from his center, man is God. If man is seen from his circumference, man is the world. Grasp man from the outside—he is matter; from the inside—he is living light.
Man is the meeting of two—the formed and the formless.
And in that lies man’s anguish, and in that lies his ecstasy. His pain is that he is made not of one, but of two opposite principles—hence the constant strain within, the pull, the tension. Matter draws downward to itself; the soul draws upward to itself. And humanity gets caught in-between, is bound, is entangled.
If there were only one element, there would be no tension. In the dead there is no tension; the body is at rest. In one established in Samadhi there is no tension either; only the soul remains. When a dead body lies, the body alone remains; when the realized one lies, within only the soul abides—the body is forgotten. So long as both are there—and we waver between them—there will be anxiety, strain, sorrow, restlessness. Nowhere will a shore appear near. And both pull toward themselves—and naturally they must. Matter pulls downward; the soul longs to rise upward.
Understand it thus: as though there were a clay lamp, and in it a flame alight. The clay lamp belongs to the earth; the flame goes flying toward the sun—upward. Have you ever seen fire running downward? Fire runs upward; it belongs to the sun. The clay lamp lies below, bound to the ground.
Man’s body is of clay. The indweller is of light. The indweller longs to rise above, while the body pulls below. And man is the joint of these two. Therefore, so long as man remains man, he will be restless. While remaining man, there is no solution.
Two ways alone resolve it. Either man consents and accepts the body wholly, abandons the upward journey—then those who live very low lives, though there be much disturbance without and others create many troubles for them, yet within, in one sense, they are quiet. Go to a prison and look into the eyes of the criminals—you will find their eyes more at ease than those of monks sitting in monasteries. The reason is: they have dropped the fight and are ready to fall downward. That which is the upper note they have suppressed, and have attuned themselves wholly to the lower. Or else you will find peace in the eyes of that person who has conquered the lower, and whose entire life has become only the journey upward.
With one there is peace; with two there is unrest.
And we are in the two. To be human is to be between. Understand this sutra from this angle.
“Leaving aside in man the pure and radiant essence of Alaya, all else is earthen.”
“Alaya” is a word Buddha loved. Alaya means house. But Buddha uses it in a vast sense. He says there is one house of all consciousness, one Alaya, a storehouse. All the consciousnesses in this whole existence are rays of one house, rays of one sun. And there is one center for them all—its name is Alaya.
Within man, leaving aside the pure and radiant essence of Alaya—that which has come to you from Alaya—everything else within you is clay. Only that ray which has reached you from Alaya is not clay; the rest is clay. And if you gain no hint of that ray, you go on taking your earthen body itself as your being. Then life becomes the rising of clay and the falling of clay.
The ray has become exceedingly difficult to find—because the clay is much and the ray is very subtle and small. The proportion of clay is immense. That which is the ray of life is very dim and very fine. Your soul within is extremely subtle; your body is gross. The gross is visible, is felt every moment. The subtle—its very sound does not reach you. Even to hear it, the ears must be prepared. To hear it, one must search with great attentiveness. And wherever attention goes, that alone is heard by us. You are listening to me—then you hear nothing else. If a bird is cooing, you do not hear it. But if you give attention, instantly you will.
Sitting in a room reading a book—a clock is ticking on the wall—you do not hear it. Then you close the book and attend, and at once the tick-tock begins to be heard. When you were not attending, the clock had not stopped. But without attention the tick-tock is a soft sound; it does not strike. If a hammer were beating, perhaps you would hear; it is gross. The tick-tock is very subtle. Attend finely, you will hear; otherwise you will not—you will remain engaged in your work. Wherever we turn attention, that dimension begins to be heard, to be seen. We become sensitive to it. Yet even the tick-tock of a clock is gross. Do you hear the beating of your own heart? It is going on, but only if you sit utterly still and attend will it begin to be heard.
Even the heartbeat is gross; it is not subtle. That inner ray of the soul is supremely subtle. A ray—what blow can it give? And you are entangled in so much futile noise; such gross sounds surround you, that unless attention is withdrawn from all this and one sits in silence within, perhaps no glimpse of the inner ray will come.
Therefore we go on speaking of the Atman, but we gain no clue to it. We only know that the body is, and that clay will merge into clay. Afraid of perishing, frightened, we feel like believing that there must be a soul. We want that the soul be, and that we not die. But wishing is not the question. That of which we have no knowing—even if it is, what difference does it make? And that of which we do have knowing—even if it is not—still it will trouble us.
Knowledge is existence.
That which we do not know is as good as not. Whether it is or it is not—what difference does it make? That which we do know—that is; even if it is not, it will still influence our life. If you take a dream to be true, your life will be influenced by it. And if you take this whole life to be a dream, you will remain uninfluenced by it.
Your existence is in your belief; as you take it, so it becomes.
This inner ray is so subtle that until our attention is fully withdrawn from the gross, it will not be heard. There can be many devices to hear it; many there are. In my view the most useful is this: first, raise a total storm around yourself. Therefore the experiments in meditation I give you are all stormy. Raise the full storm—let as much clamor arise as can. Let every gross sound be allowed. Let nothing remain quiet on the outside—let everything become uproar, let madness stand all around—then stop suddenly. In the contrast, on the backdrop of this storm, perhaps for a moment the ray of peace will become visible. In the opposite, seeing is easy. But then the opposite must be taken to the extreme.
Those who explore the art of relaxation have discovered a fundamental law—highly scientific. If someone tells you, “Let the body go limp, relax,” what will you do? How will you let go? Just lying down is not relaxation. Relaxation is a very unique state, of which you have no direct taste. You know waking, which is effort; you know sleep, which is fatigue. You do not know relaxation. Waking is toil, sleep is the falling of weariness. Hence the laborer sleeps deep—not that he knows deep relaxation, but that he becomes deeply tired. The rich cannot sleep—for they cannot tire. Our sleep is fatigue; only the meditator’s sleep is relaxation. We fall into sleep in proportion to our exhaustion. The body gives up—no more labor can be done—and it falls.
Between fatigue and labor—in the middle—there is a point, which is relaxation.
But how to enter relaxation? We can revolve only in the two—we can labor, we can tire. Between them is a space—how to find it? When is the moment of relaxation?
So the art of relaxation says: first lie down, and fill the whole body with as much tension as you can. Like this hand of mine—if I must bring it into relaxation, first I will stretch it, nerve by nerve, fill it so full of tension that no further tension is possible. As much as I can pull the hand, tauten every hair, every patch of skin; within, the nerve, flesh, marrow, blood—let all be stretched. And when I reach the point where I know no more tension can be created, then I let it go all at once. The muscles that were tight will suddenly become loose, and their step-by-step loosening you can feel. If you attend to the hand carefully, you will find it going down stair by stair into relaxation—and then it will come to a place where it stops, below which it cannot go. That will be the moment of relaxation. And to know this relaxation, one must first create the backdrop of tension.
Exactly the same law is for meditation: first, let the storm within rise to the full. As much doing, as much kriya as is possible—bring it all. Leave not a grain. Whatever madness is within you—throw it all out. Become a storm, a whirlwind, a gale—and then stop all at once. Step by step, you will come to that point where you find: now there is rest.
Only in that moment of rest will you perhaps, for the first time, feel the touch of the inner ray. It cannot be said when—it is supremely subtle, so very gross rules do not work. But it will happen. It has happened to many; it will happen to you. It will happen on that day when the tuning is right—your storm utterly stilled, and the center standing in perfect silence. Suddenly the ray will touch—you will, for the first time, be the soul. You always were—but what meaning in being that of which there was no awareness? And the moment that ray, ever-present, becomes visible and enters experience, that very day the body is gone. Not that you will die—the body will walk, rise, sleep—but you will not be the body. Your identification has changed.
Till yesterday the body felt ‘I am’; today that is gone. Today that secret ray within the body—you have become that. Now let this body remain—it has its utility, its needs; they will be fulfilled. But this body is now nothing more than a house. And even this house is an inn, a rest-house, where one is for a little while. The real home has now become that from which the ray came. And only when the ray returns to its source, to its origin, will the fundamental ground of life and the supreme mystery be known.
Therefore Buddha called it Alaya—the real home—to which the source returns, the primal origin; as if the Ganga were to return to Gangotri. So the day you take hold of your ray and reach that great Sun from which it came—as a wanderer, after years of wandering, suddenly comes home—then the same dance of rejoicing will begin to appear in your life. You have found your real home. The Paramatman is the real home, and we are his wandering rays. Yet we are that—however far we may roam. The ray, however far it goes from the sun, is still of the sun.
This sutra says: “Leaving aside in man the pure and radiant essence of Alaya, all else is earthen, all is clay. Man is its crystal ray—a line of light inwardly exquisite, immaculate, stainless—upon the low ground a form of clay.”
Yet in its own nature—exquisitely immaculate, stainless!
A few qualities belong to the ray. One quality of the ray of light is that you cannot defile it. There is no way to make it dirty. Have you observed—a clear, pristine lake reflects the sun. The sun’s rays dance on its breast—wave upon wave turning to gold. The very same sun dances on a filthy pond. There is stench, filth, mud, refuse—so ugly you do not wish to go near; all is dirty. The sun’s ray dances there too. Do you think the ray dancing on the pure lake is pure, and the ray dancing on the filthy pond becomes impure? Can impurity enter the ray? Can the filthy pond make the ray dirty? Is the golden image of the sun formed in a filthy pond defiled?
The nature of light is to be immaculate; it cannot be made impure. So too within you—that ray of the supreme Light is stainless and immaculate, whatsoever sins have been done. Even if you have gathered filth for births upon births, all that is joined to the clay—to the pond. Not a trace of it touches the ray of light. It is pure; to be pure is its nature.
Understand this well. Some things can be purified or defiled; purity is not their nature. Water you can make dirty or clean. Purity is not its very nature; it can change. Light you cannot make dirty. To be pure is its nature; there is no way for it to be impure.
There is no such thing as an impure soul. Purity is the soul’s nature—purity itself is the soul. So take note: whatever you may have done, whatsoever has happened, the soul has not become impure. But this does not mean you may go on doing anything. This meaning has been taken.
Therefore, in this land where the soul is so much discussed, man has become so dirty—more so than in those lands where the soul is not discussed. Stranger still: in lands where there is no belief in the soul at all, man appears less impure than here.
It sounds odd. When Westerners, influenced by India’s books, come to India, the Indian man wipes out their influence. They come thinking they are going to the land of rishis, sages—and return having lost all hope. For the man they meet here has nothing to do with rishis and sages.
How has man here become so impure, so petty, so unclean? What is the cause?
The cause is this great sutra. It will sound strange that I say so. Not the great sutra itself—but whatever falls into our hands, we extract the wrong from it. This country was given the sutra by Buddha, by Mahavira, by Krishna: “You are immaculate, you are pure, purity is your ultimate nature. There is no way for you to be impure.” They said it so that you be filled with hope; so that, taking hold of this ray of hope, you journey toward that pure nature. We said, “Very well then—if nature is pure, what harm in committing sin?”
We did not think this out knowingly; the unconscious absorbed it. We became easy about sin. “If we cannot be impure, why fear impurity? And if we are pure anyway, this convenience of sinning—why lose it?” This sank into the unconscious. Thus, while holding the supreme knowledge of the soul, this land became most low and mean in the human sense.
Do not take this sutra to mean that you are already pure, so the matter ends. Take from it only this much: that within you is an unknown ray—which you are not. You, as you are, are impure. You are the filthy pond. And you have no taste yet of that ray which this sutra speaks of. The Upanishads sing it, the Gita extols it—but that ray of the soul you are not yet. You can be—but on one condition: that your identity with this filthy pond be broken. If the pond keeps growing, the breaking of identity becomes harder—it grows stronger still. If I say it thus it will be right: as you are, you are dirty; and as you can be—and as your ultimate destiny is—you are forever pure. Then we have two points. As I appear now, I am unclean; but my destiny, my intrinsic, deepest nature, is never impure.
So that which I appear to be now—I must drop. And that which I truly am, yet is unseen—I must attain. Otherwise what has happened in this country will go on happening: saints, sannyasins, the wise keep explaining; thieves, sinners, the corrupt, the black-marketeers sit and listen—and inside they say, “Exactly so, Maharaj! Where is impurity? The soul is utterly pure.”
I know a sannyasin—among the few great knowers India has had—Kundakunda. This monk gives discourses on the scriptures of Kundakunda. Those who gather to hear him—their faces alone show they have nothing to do with Kundakunda. A guild of thieves—the good thieves, for the bad are in jail and have no chance. The guild of good thieves gathers there. They give generous offerings, build temples, open ashrams, arrange pilgrimages. One of his devotees asked me, “Why do so many wealthy men come here to hear Kundakunda? What relish can they have in Kundakunda?”
I told him: “Only one relish. Kundakunda proclaims, ‘You are ever pure; you cannot be impure.’ All these thieves, hearing this, feel greatly assured: ‘Ever pure—exactly right!’ So they steal a hundred—and donate ten from it: ‘Kundakunda, you spoke well; your word has reassured us. We were needlessly troubled, anxious, pained, remorseful. You wiped it all off, washed it clean.’ They donate ten percent—and get ready to steal another hundred. Now there is no fear, no worry; their trust in Kundakunda is firm. And Kundakunda is right. But these thieves understand utterly wrong. What does it matter what Kundakunda says? What the listener understands—there lies the result.”
Therefore, understand this sutra with care. It does not mean you are already all right. You are completely wrong. And that which is right within you—you have no glimpse of it yet. So it would not be correct to say that you are that. Rather, it is proper to say: only when you utterly disappear will you come to know That which is ever pure. When this filthy pond is effaced, then the ray will shine forth. It is pure—but, joined with this pond, it is lost; only the pond remains.
“That very light-ray is thy life-guru and thy true Self—the seer and the mute thinker.”
Man seeks a guru—and, naturally, seeks outside. For we search only outside. Whatever we seek—we seek outside. To seek wealth—outside; to seek religion—outside. To seek the guru—outside. Our seeking is outward. Our eyes run outward, our hands stretch outward, our feet hurry outward. We know nothing of the within. So we seek even the guru outside. There seems no other way—who will tell us of the within?
And the guru is within. That ray of life—this is thy life, this is thy guru. For if you come upon this ray, the path is found. If you follow this ray, you will reach the great Sun. If remembrance of this ray happens, then we belong to the Sun. This ray of life is thy guru, thy true Self. Yet we must seek the guru outside—because we seek everything outside. In the intricacies of life there is this intricacy too: the guru is within, and we must search without. What does this mean? Does it mean then that the guru should not be sought—that there is no need of a guru at all?