Saravsar Upanishad #9

A human being’s bondage is not outside the human being. His prison is inner—made by his own hands, within himself. It seems as if we live outside; it seems as if joys and sorrows are outside; it seems as if success is outside, failure is outside—victory and defeat, gain and loss—but it only seems so; all is within. The running is within, the arriving is within, the being defeated is within. The happiness we see outside is also experienced within; and the sorrow we find outside also hides only within.
A lover may appear outside, but the knot of love is within. And if the inner knot of love breaks, then outside there is no lover at all. Gold may appear outside, but greed is within. And if greed disappears, what difference remains between gold and clay? That difference is the difference made by greed.
The expanse is outside, but the seed is within.
The Rishi has named five root diseases—five basic complexes. There are five groupings… If we divide the upādhi, the affliction, the inner ailment of man, there are five classifications. Each needs to be understood a little.
The first classification is “man-ādi”—mind, and the whole expanse related to mind. The Rishi calls mind a knot—a disease, an illness—why?
Stand on the shore of an ocean… a storm has come, waves rage high, a great gale is on… you do not see the ocean at all, you see only the frenzied dance of trembling waves. In those waves the ocean is; the waves too are forms of the ocean—arising on it, shaped by it—yet the waves are not the ocean; because the ocean can be without waves. The storm can pass, the gale subside, the ocean become calm; waves will depart, the ocean will remain.
The reverse cannot be: the ocean cannot disappear leaving the waves behind. Waves can vanish, the ocean can remain. In the ocean remaining there is no hindrance if the waves are gone; but if the ocean disappears, waves cannot remain. Therefore the ocean is the source; waves come and go.
Understand exactly this: human consciousness is the ocean; mind is the waves, the formations that arise upon it. Hence yesterday I told you, there is no such thing as a “silent mind.” Have you ever seen a silent storm? To say “silent storm” makes no sense. If it is a storm it will not be silent; if it is silent it will not be a storm. Yet we speak of a “silent mind”—this is an error of words. So long as mind is, there is restlessness. Restlessness is the very name of mind. In existence, mind and restlessness are synonymous—not in the dictionary. If you look in a dictionary, “restlessness” will not mean “mind,” nor “mind” mean “restlessness.”
Those who make language need not know existence. Those who know existence say it is difficult to say anything in language; that is why they do not make language. The experiential truth is: where there is restlessness, there is mind—mind means restlessness. Therefore the phrase “silent mind” is wholly contradictory; it cannot be. As there is no healthy disease, as there is no quiet storm, so there is no silent mind.
The sick can become healthy—remember—but the disease cannot become healthy. The sick person can become healthy, because the sick person is not the disease; the disease has come upon him; what has come can go.
It is a great wonder that the sick person can be without disease, but the disease cannot be without the sick person. Consciousness can be without mind, but mind cannot be without consciousness.
Mind is a disease. The Rishi counts it as a knot, a bondage, an illness, an upādhi.
Mind is a disease. Mind is that state of consciousness which is agitated, deranged, wavering, full of waves. When peace is attained, mind is lost; mind does not remain. When peace is lost, mind comes to be.
If we look more closely, there is a reason to call it a granthi—a knot, a complex.
Understand “granthi,” for it is a very precious word on the path of Yoga. So precious that the Jains, when Mahavira attained supreme knowledge, called him “Nirgrantha”—one freed of knots; in whom no knot remained. Let us understand this knot.
A knot is a very strange thing. You have seen many knots, but perhaps have not taken note. You tie a knot in a rope. When you tie it, does anything change in the rope—in its nature, in its being? Does its weight increase? Do its qualities alter? What happens to the rope? Nothing happens to the rope… and yet much happens. Not a grain is added or subtracted by the knot; the rope is as it was, and yet it is not as it was—the knot is in it, it is entangled. The nature has not changed in the least, yet entanglement has arisen without any change of nature; essentially nothing has changed in the rope, and yet everything has. The rope is now good for nothing; if you want to tie something, you cannot—because the rope itself is tied. The rope has lost its utility; but have its properties or dharma changed? Not at all.
And what is a knot? Is a knot a thing? Understand this rightly: if a knot were a thing, it could exist without the rope. You could take out the knot and set it aside, and take the rope and go your way. But a knot cannot be separated from the rope. This does not mean the rope cannot be freed of the knot. The rope can be freed, but the knot cannot be taken away and kept apart from the rope. You will not be able to place the knot aside and the rope aside.
Thus a knot is not an object; it is not a substance; it has no independent existence… the knot is only a form, only a shape—just a form; just a form without any substance in it—only form… within it there is nothing. Within, there is the rope; within the knot there is nothing. The knot in itself is nothing—bare form, mere shape.
Therefore understand: the knot does not have an objective existence; it has only a formal existence—merely formal. That is why the Rishis called the world “nāma-rūpa”—name-form; they said it has no being, it is only a knot. A knot has name and form, but no existence at all. The knot is—there is form, there is name, it is recognized, it even obstructs; it can be untied; and yet it is not. The knot is māyā. Those who know the world say: it is a name-form knot; it is a granthi.
As it is true of the world, so it is true of man. Man too is a knot—name-form. If the knot is opened, what remains behind is Paramatman. Man is only a knot, only a granthi—open the knot, and man does not remain… that which had a name does not remain, that which had a form does not remain, the one who said “I” does not remain; if the knot opens, the “I” is gone; the “I” is the aggregate of knots. These five knots we will speak of—the name of the sum of these five is “I.”
The Rishi calls mind the first knot; because mind is not, it is only a shape, a form. When consciousness is agitated, mind is fabricated—only a form. At night a dream is made; it has no existence, it is form. You go to a film; everything appears on the screen—there, it is only form, there is not a jot of substance. Being seems to be. And the amusing thing is, even a learned man can be seen wiping his eyes with a handkerchief while watching a film; a learned man can be seen crying or laughing. He knows perfectly well there is nothing on the screen, yet the form deceives as if there were reality. And for a moment, when we become attached to the form, or when we forget ourselves, then the form becomes utterly real. Next time you go to a film, try an experiment: through the entire time, try to remember yourself and watch the film. Then if tears come, it is impossible. Tears can come only in one arrangement: that you forget yourself—that you forget even that you are there, that a seer is there—and only the film remains; you become so absorbed that you do not even remember that “I am, I have come to watch”—that is forgotten; what is seen becomes all; the seen becomes all and the seer is forgotten—then tears may well come, you may weep, the mind may become sad or delighted… while on the screen there is nothing, and in the mind everything can happen.
Mind too is form. But the one seated within as the seer, the Kshetrajna, forgets that “I also am.” Just this much forgetfulness—and the seen becomes all; then the knot ties… then the knot ties… then the knot grows heavy. And for births upon births we have been sitting in that cinema hall whose name is mind. The knot has been forming, forms have been thickening.
Why do we call someone mad? We call someone mad only because he has a mind a little bigger than ours; nothing else… just a little bigger mind. We watch scenes inside; his mind is more capable; he begins to watch scenes outside as well. You too talk inwardly with your loved ones; the madman has a mind larger along the same line—he talks openly, sitting in the room, with his beloved who is not there. You do it too, only in secret, inside. His projection mechanism is stronger than yours. He is more skillful. He seats the person on the chair in front and begins to talk. Then we say, this man has gone mad.
Is there any qualitative difference between us and him? We too seat our beloved on a chair—only inside. The mechanism of our projection seems a bit weak; his is powerful. So powerful that if you—the real—enter the room, you matter less to him; the one seated on the chair, who is not, matters more.
Many poets have written something like this to the beloved… that the assembly may be full, but if you rise and go, for me none remains there; and if only you are there and no one else, then the whole world is there.
A poet is always a little mad. Hence he can see what we cannot; he can recognize what we do not; he can create what we cannot. There is a kinship between poet and madman. Perhaps the poet is an organized madman; and the madman is a disorganized poet—he knows no order. But one quality is common: they are capable of seeing what is not.
Mind is the instrument for seeing what is not. Hence mind is a contrivance that drives one mad. Mind is only an extension of dream. This is the first knot. And the one bound by mind can never be available to himself; because there is only one arrangement for being bound by mind—and that is to forget oneself. These two cannot happen together: that you know yourself and also retain the mind. If you want to keep the mind, forgetting yourself is indispensable; without forgetting oneself mind cannot be. And if you bring remembrance of yourself, mind will be lost. If you bring awakening to the one who is the seer, then soon the seen becomes pale and only name-form remains; there is no substance in it; it no longer holds you.
So what to do? This is the first knot of mind. If within this knot we can bring the seer, this knot will break. Bringing the witness is the method to open any knot; sakshi-bhāva is the method to untie any granthi. We too very much wish to untie, therefore a curious thing happens. All want to untie their entanglements—everyone; it is hard to find someone who does not want to; yet why do they not untie?
It is often seen that those who try to untie end up tangling things worse—more badly entangled. By trying to untie, it does not seem to untie, it only knots more… and yet all want to untie… there must be some fundamental mistake.
We all want to untie, but without awakening the witness. We try to untie mind with mind itself—here the mistake happens. Mind is entanglement; hence no untangling can be by mind. And we try to untie mind by mind. As if someone tries to grasp his own hand with the same hand; as if someone tries to catch a pair of tongs with that very pair of tongs; as if someone, wearing spectacles, searches for those same spectacles—where are they? Some people do search. As far as mind is concerned, we all do the same.
Have you seen a dog catching his own tail? It sits in the cold morning sun, leisurely; its tail—its very own—lies beside it; it lunges to catch. It lunges and the tail leaps away. Naturally, the dog gets angry… and a challenge is born: this is too much! A little tail—and not in my grip! The dog jumps with more force; it jumps harder; the tail springs with equal force. A great enmity arises. But it is his own tail; the catcher is he; it is not going to be caught. He will tire. He does not know that the very leap he makes to catch the tail becomes the tail’s leap; they are not two things.
So the very mind by which you set out to untie is the instrument of entanglement. Whatever you do with it tangles more.
Know this: the more mind develops, the more the number of mad people increases; the less mind is developed, the fewer the mad. Primitive societies produce very few mad people. And sociologists say that in very ancient times, when a primitive society did once in a while produce someone mad, he was not called mad—he became venerable, because he was rare… an exceptional person. Hence in primitive society the mad one could be a prophet, he became revered; because he possessed a quality none other had.
Now we are in great trouble about the mad; now no one is ready to take a madman for a prophet; rather many are ready to take a prophet for a madman. The whole situation has reversed! And madness is so slowly becoming natural that, just as a very rich man in India can boast that such-and-such great doctor is his private physician, in America a big man now says that such-and-such famous psychologist is his private psychiatrist. Only the poor remain deprived—they cannot say they have a private psychiatrist. They must go to hospitals, where, standing amidst crowds, they must get their minds treated.
Who could ever have imagined a time when a man would proudly say… In the West people ask each other today: “Have you had psychoanalysis or not?” The one who has not feels lowly. It means he cannot afford it, because psychoanalysis is expensive; analysis of the mind is costly—it takes two, three, five years; thousands of dollars.
So the very rich say, not once but three times we have had it. The very wealthy go regularly. They have fixed hours… every week, twice, to go to the psychiatrist and keep having the mind analyzed.
That the disease of mind would become so common—no one had imagined. But there is only one reason: if you give education, give ideas, give culture, give civilization, teach each person much—the mind will develop; the knot will thicken. And when the mind develops, its projection-capacities develop too. They can develop so much that you do not feel satisfied with your own mind; you need extra prop. LSD and marijuana are such things—they make your mind even more projective. Colors you have never seen through your mind begin to appear under LSD; a beauty you have never seen spreads all around.
Aldous Huxley wrote in his memoirs that when I took mescaline the first time, the chair before me became so seven-colored that I had never seen such a rainbow. A chair! In a little while beams began to appear in it.
Van Gogh—a great Western painter—painted a picture called “The Chair.” No one agreed to believe his chair until Huxley wrote his memoir. He painted one and a half centuries ago. Because his chair was so multicolored—as chairs are not. He had drawn a rainbow. People said, mere imagination! Is there anywhere such a chair? But when Aldous Huxley wrote his mescaline memoir and said that under mescaline the chair before me vanished, and such an unearthly, transparent, seven-colored chair stood there… that in that moment had I died it would not have seemed I missed any experience; the experience of the chair was so profound, so intense…! After his experience of the chair it occurred to people that if a man like Huxley, taking mescaline, can see such colors in a chair, it is no wonder that a painter like Van Gogh, without mescaline, could see such colors in a chair. But Van Gogh died mad, because mind became anarchic… he began to see what is not; he began to project what spreads outwards from within and is imposed upon the outer.
We too continue the same work in small ways. When a man who loves money holds a rupee, do not think that what you see is all that is; he sees something that one who never loved money can never know. It is visible only to him.
I knew a gentleman: even someone else’s currency note, when he would take it in his hands, he would hold as a lover might his beloved! He would look at it, turn it over with such care as no poet has ever looked at a flower. From his face everything seemed to drip onto that rupee. A rapport arises between them, a relationship beyond imagination. People call him miser, because he cannot spend money; spending money is impossible. But we do not know in what poetry he lives! What poetry he experiences, we do not know. His condition is the same as that of a poet.
We honor the poet, we do not honor him; only because the poet does not rob us, he robs us of money; otherwise there is no difference. We say to the poet, fine, dream in the sky, no harm; he does not snatch anyone’s dreams. This man too dreams—in the rupee; but he seems a bit troublesome, so society will despise him, be angry: he is bad, sinful. Yet between him and the poet there is no difference. Only this: the object of his poetry is money. His romance is with the rupee.
Therefore the one who loves the rupee cannot love anyone else. Then no other love is needed; he is in such a great love that now wife, son, literature, religion—everything is secondary.
Mind becomes a knot because, in the spread of mind, the seer is forgotten.
When this man is looking at the rupee it is impossible to suppose that the man even exists; only the rupee exists—and within him there is no one who is seeing; it is not clear to him that I am the one who sees and the rupee is separate from me—he does not feel so. The man becomes the rupee.
Mind means: whenever consciousness forgets the seer, forgets the sakshi, then, becoming wavelike, it is seized by upādhi—this is the first knot.
“Prāṇa-ādi”—the Rishi names the second knot. Prāṇa… we are all very badly enamored of prāṇa. Attraction to prāṇa means jīveṣaṇā—the lust for life: live! Live by any means! Without asking why. No one asks why—just live. As if living in itself were sufficient.
A man begs on the road—his knees are broken, his hands and feet have decayed, he lies in the gutter, rotting, maggots have set in—ask him if he would like to die and he will look at you with anger. And he is not committing any error; for however many maggots, the jīveṣaṇā does not rot; that craving to live is within him as much as within you. Perhaps even more; because the flame of a dying lamp flares up; and before dawn the darkness deepens. Perhaps, seeing death very near, he is making his utmost effort to live in a way you have never made. You can wait for tomorrow; for him there is no tomorrow. To live… at any price. And it is a marvel that man can be persuaded to live at any price. Therefore so many disturbances could happen in the world; otherwise they could not.
For five thousand years we could rub the shudras on the ground like worms; there is no other reason but this: that jīveṣaṇā is so strong that in any situation man will want to live. Millions were kept as slaves like animals—not only because the world had many wicked people. There is a deeper reason: any man can be made willing to live on any terms, because the lust for life is so strong. So strong that if someone says: crawl; all your life you cannot rise above your knees, you must drag yourself on your knees—the man will agree: better than death. Anything is better than death.
Jīveṣaṇā means: anything is better than dying. To live… on any terms we agree.
If the lust for life is so— and it is—then man cannot go on the inner journey. He will remain bound to body, bound to mind, bound to prāṇa—bound so tightly that he cannot even move backward; he will clutch everything so hard lest anything slip from his grasp, lest he be lost.
People come to me to learn meditation. Inevitably a moment comes in meditation when one passes through death while living; inevitably that moment comes within when it seems death has begun to happen: now as if I am dying. People come to me and say: we came to learn meditation; we did not come to die. And what is happening within? It seems as if we might die! I tell them: that very moment is precious—die within; do not be afraid; consent to it too. Then you will never die. But they ask me: is there any other device? This inner drowning, this disappearing—is there some other, simpler way…?
No, there is no other way. Meditation is the experience of death—by one’s own will. Death will come anyway, but then meditation will not be experienced. Many times death has come… how many times have we not died! And how many times will we not die still! We will keep dying, because the lust for life can do nothing else—death and birth, death and birth, death and birth! Jīveṣaṇā exhausts you… and the work of living never completes; the taste of life is not had. The body runs out; the lust for life does not. Then it grabs a new body—goes on grabbing… and each time one must die. It is the jīveṣaṇā that dies again and again; yet it does not die—so strong it is, it is reborn again and again.
In meditation too the same happens as in death, but in death it happens by force. Therefore at death people become unconscious; most die unconscious. And the one who dies unconscious is destined to be born again; the one who can die consciously—his rebirth ends. Why do we die unconscious? Not because unconsciousness is inevitable in death. We die unconscious because life has a built-in safety device.
People sometimes say to each other: I am suffering unbearable pain. This is utterly untrue. Because no one suffers the unbearable. Before pain becomes unbearable, one becomes unconscious. This is a built-in inner safety—when pain crosses your capacity to bear, you faint. Unconsciousness itself means the pain has crossed the limit of endurance; now one cannot remain conscious; only by being unconscious can it be borne. Thus we faint.
Hence we use anesthesia in operations. In surgery one is first made unconscious, because unbearable pain will occur; anesthesia beforehand is proper and useful. Nature too has an inner surgical arrangement: whenever pain becomes unbearable, we faint. Therefore no one has ever experienced unbearable pain. All the pains you have experienced were bearable; otherwise you would have fainted.
Death is the greatest surgical operation… consciousness is extracted from an entire body. In other operations, on the operation table, all are partial: sometimes a bone is removed, sometimes a part, sometimes a piece—death separates the whole consciousness from the body… and since that consciousness clutches the body so tightly that unbearable pain is possible, one faints. Only one like Buddha does not die unconscious.
And another curious thing happens: the one who does not die unconscious easily has foreknowledge of his death. That too is an inner arrangement: your body apparatus fully comes to know that death is approaching, but you are not told—because if you knew, you would die before dying. If it became known you will die in seven days, then those seven days would be such a dreadful death as cannot be measured. Therefore you are not trustworthy; even your body does not inform you; your body hides it from you. The one who can die with awareness comes to know.
On the day of his death Buddha says: now I depart; is there any last thing you want to ask? As for asking—people began to weep and wail. Buddha said: do not waste time; you can do that later, there is no hurry; my time is running out—do you want to ask anything? But they were so overwhelmed… what to ask, what to seek? These are leisure-time matters—asking and all. And what kind of man is this Buddha! Is this the time? Ananda says, no question comes to mind.
Buddha asks three times, then says: then all right; you do your work, I do mine.
He walks behind the tree, arranges his seat, sits; he closes his eyes. And the story says: he began to enter death slowly. The first stage complete… Buddha spoke of four stages of death. Those are the very four stages of meditation. He completed the first, completed the second; he was completing the third when a man came running from the village, saying: I have heard today is the day of Buddha’s death; I have something to ask.
The monks said: now be quiet; you have come too late; now he has already entered on the inner journey.
For Buddha, even death is a journey—a conscious journey. It is not death that is coming upon Buddha; it is Buddha who is going into death. Understand this difference: it is not death that is coming upon Buddha. Death comes upon us; we thrash about and it comes. Buddha is going into death step by step. The monks said: no… do not call out loudly…
The man said: but I cannot wait; I must ask; who knows after how many births such a person as Buddha will again be available; and my question…
So they said: but fool! For how many days has Buddha remained in this village? He said: that is not the point… for thirty years I have known him, he has been passing through this village, but at the shop there was crowd, customers; at home a child was ill; sometimes the girl’s marriage— I thought sometime… at leisure… conveniently… but now there is no way, he is on the verge of dying. And Buddha returned from behind the tree and said: do not stop him; I was only in the third, I had not reached the fourth… and let this ill report not remain in my name that I was alive, a man came to ask, and returned unanswered. Let him ask.
This too is a dying. But this dying is available only to the one who has learned to die in meditation first. The stages of meditation are the stages of death; because meditation too detaches you from the body and takes you where the center of consciousness is, and death too detaches you from the body and takes you where the center of consciousness is. But in death you have become unconscious, because it is against your will; in meditation you are conscious, because it is a movement of your own will.
Prāṇa—the second… jīveṣaṇā is our second knot.
The third knot is “icchā-ādi”—desiring, vāsanā, craving, thirst.
Have you known a moment when there was no desire within you? If, even for a single moment, you come to a state in which you can say: in this moment there is not a single desire in me—at that very moment you become Paramatman. People say, where is God? We must seek him; we greatly desire to attain God. Because of desire you will not attain. Even so small a desire is not small, it is enough.
What is the meaning of desire? What do we call thirst? I have no relish in what is; I have relish in what ought to be. That is desire. And when that is, even then I will have no relish, because then it will be present; my relish is in what is not present. Forever ahead… ahead… my relish is ahead.
Desire is always taut towards the future and keeps missing the present. And whatever is, is now and here.
Therefore a person possessed by desire is bound by a knot… the more desires, the more knots; the bigger the desires, the bigger the knots. And we are only heaps of desires—all unfulfilled, for no desire is ever fulfilled. Desires upon desires—and we are their heap. We are only demand—thousands of beggars standing within; each desire is begging. Nothing is received; within there is a pile of begging bowls; all are empty and we keep running on. And every day we keep collecting new bowls.
No old desire gets fulfilled, but new desires continue to be gathered; because begetting desire is very easy, fulfilling desire is impossible. Whatever is seen around becomes a desire—this too must be, that too must be—and the fun is that among all the desires we have made, not one has been fulfilled; and all these unfulfilled desires keep piling up. Then we become nothing but a begging bowl—a beggar!
Buddha called his renunciates “bhikshu.” He made a fine joke. This is very ironical. He said it in jest, but the jest is deep and serious.
Buddha goes to a town, takes the begging bowl and goes to beg; the great rich man of the town, the chief merchant, says: why? A person as beautiful as you—Buddha’s body was perfectly proportioned; perhaps at that time it would be hard to find one so beautiful—someone like you begging on the street with a bowl? You are worthy of being an emperor. I do not ask who you are—your caste, your religion, your lineage; I will give you my daughter in marriage; and you shall be master of all my wealth, for she alone inherits my riches.
Buddha said: if only it were true that I am a beggar and you are the owner! Seeing that you all, who are beggars, take yourselves for owners, I have taken the bowl in hand; for it does not seem right to call myself the owner when you all do. We are beggars; for in a world where beggars take themselves for owners, there it is only proper that the true owners understand themselves as beggars.
A unique event happened on this earth. Very few emperors have been born in the world who could dare to beg. And India is the only land where a person like Buddha and Mahavira walked the street with a begging bowl—the only one! Absolutely alone! But this is an intimation of inner sovereignty. And it is a great sarcasm upon us all. A heavy sarcasm.
Those within whom begging bowls, and only bowls, are piled up—live in the illusion of being owners; and those within whom all thirst has vanished—take the begging bowl and go out on the street. It is psychodrama. A very delightful satire. And we cannot understand even the satires of a Buddha; this becomes a great hindrance.
Vāsanā, icchā, tṛiṣṇā—asking… asking… and asking. The one who goes on asking will wander only on the outer journey. Within, only the one comes who stops asking.
So “icchā”—desire—has been called the third knot.
For today, only this much.
Two sutras remain; we will speak of them tomorrow morning.