Shiv Sutra #4

Chitta itself is mantra.
Mantra means: that which, through repeated utterance, gathers power; whose repetition becomes power. Whatever thought you repeat again and again, slowly it becomes conduct. Whatever thought you go on repeating, it will begin to appear in your life. Whatever you are is the result of certain thoughts being repeated innumerable times.
Great researches have been done on hypnosis. Modern psychology has discovered very deep layers of hypnosis. The essential key of hypnotic process is one: whichever thought you wish to transform into actuality, repeat it as many times as possible. By repetition a groove is cut; once the groove is there, the mind takes that path. As a river will flow if a channel is dug—a canal is made—so if a groove is made in the mind, of any thought, that thought begins to manifest in result.
In France there was a great psychologist—Émile Coué. He cured millions only through mantra. Patients from all over the world came to Coué. And his treatment was very small. He would simply say to the patient: go on repeating, ‘I am not ill; I am healthy; I am becoming healthy.’ Repeat at night while falling asleep, repeat in the morning on waking, repeat whenever you remember during the day. Just go on repeating one idea: ‘I am healthy, I am healthy, I am continuously becoming healthy.’
It seems a miracle that patients of the most difficult diseases were cured just by this repetition. People began to come to Coué from all over the world. But the point is very small. Ordinarily too, when you recover from illness, psychologists say the medicine works only ten percent; ninety percent is the work of repetition. You take medicine four times a day, eight times a day. Whenever you take a dose, immediately the feeling arises within—now I’ll be fine; the right medicine has been found.
In homeopathic pills there is almost nothing; yet as many people are cured by it as by allopathy. If a good doctor even gives you water, you will be cured; because the question is not the medicine, but your trust in the good doctor. Trust turns into repetition. You know a good doctor has treated you. Therefore the doctor who charges less fees may not be able to cure you; the one who charges more will. Because when your pocket is made lighter, trust increases; it feels like a big doctor. And a big patient like you needs a big doctor. Repetition.
Psychologists have made an experiment they call the placebo—the fake medicine. And the finding is astonishing. Fifty patients of the same illness; twenty-five were given the real drug and twenty-five only water. But no one knew who got water and who medicine. The patients didn’t know; all believed they were being medicated. The surprise was that as many recovered with the real drug as with water. The percentage remained the same.
That is why, whenever a drug is first discovered, many patients recover from it. Then slowly the number declines. Hence no medicine remains effective for more than two or three years. Because at the first discovery a great trust is created—now the real cure has been found! Patients all over the world are influenced. Then slowly trust decreases; because sometimes someone does not recover with it. Sometimes a stubborn patient appears who listens neither to drug nor to doctor. Because of him the faith of others also withers. Gradually the drug’s effect is lost. So every two years new drugs must be found.
Even drugs work only if they are advertised well. So publicity should be everywhere—newspapers, magazines, radio, television. Publicity is more effective than the constituents of the drug. Because it will hypnotize you. The advertising becomes a mantra. Open the newspaper and ‘Aspro’; switch on the radio and ‘Aspro’; on television ‘Aspro’; go to market and the boards—‘Aspro’. Whatever you do, Aspro follows. It becomes a headache bigger than your headache; then it defeats the headache.
Repetition creates power. Mantra means: to repeat something again and again.
This aphorism says: ‘Chitta itself is mantra. Chittam mantrah.’
It says: there is no need of any other mantra; if you understand chitta, the very process of chitta is repetition. What has your mind been doing for births upon births? Only repeating. From morning to evening, what do you do? Every day you repeat the same. What you did yesterday, the day before, that you do today; that you will do tomorrow too, if nothing changes. And the more you do the same, the more repetition becomes deep, and you will be so entangled that coming out will become difficult.
People come to me; they say, ‘The cigarette doesn’t leave me.’
The cigarette has become a mantra. They have repeated it so many times! If they smoke two packs a day, that means they repeat twenty times, twenty-four times. Repeated again and again, and for years they have been repeating; now suddenly they want to drop it. But what has become a mantra cannot be dropped suddenly. Even if you drop it, what difference does it make? The whole mind will demand it. The whole body will repeat it. It will say—‘I want it!’ That is what you call craving. Craving means: what you have made a mantra, you now wish to drop suddenly—it cannot be. Craving means: what has become a mantra will have to be broken by an opposite mantra.
In Russia Pavlov worked much on this. And Pavlov is the only man who succeeded in curing patients of craving. If you have become a patient of smoking and wish to quit but cannot, then Pavlov used mantra. His mantras were rather sharp. He would give you a cigarette, and the moment you took it in hand you would receive an electric shock; the whole being would tingle— the cigarette would drop. For seven days Pavlov would keep you admitted in his hospital, and whenever you smoked, you would get a shock. Within seven days the mantra would become deeper than the cigarette. Merely hearing the word ‘cigarette’ you would start trembling. The pleasure of smoking would be far away; a dispassion would arise. Pavlov cured thousands with the opposite mantra. And Pavlov says: those who are trapped in habits cannot be freed until they are given opposite habits stronger than the first.
Your life as it is is the result of your mind. And you go on repeating. You even want to be out of anger, but you go on repeating anger every day. The more you repeat, the stronger it becomes. How many times you swear you will not do it! And vows break, and you get angry again. The trouble has increased further. It would have been better had you not taken the vow; because now it is a double mantra. Now you know anger is greater than the vow and stronger. Vows have no value. However much you fast, your vows are worth two pennies; anger is more powerful. This hypnosis has settled. Now even when you take a vow, deep within you know it won’t work. You are repeating inside, even while taking it, that it will not happen; I take it, but it will not happen.
Never take a vow if you cannot fulfill it. Better remain filled with the one habit you carry. Taking vows and breaking them is very costly; because breaking also becomes a habit. Then you will never be able to take a vow in life. The so-called religious gurus have made you very irreligious; because they give vows cheaply. You go to a temple, to a sadhu, to a muni, and he says—‘Take some vow!’ Under his influence, in the peace of the temple; and then the ego—when the monk says so, to say ‘I cannot take any vow’ feels like great meanness; so you say—‘From today I leave cigarettes.’
I have a friend. His mind is a little cracked; but better than yours. He went to a muni—he is Jain—and the muni said: ‘Take a vow!’ He said, ‘All right, I’ve taken it.’ The muni asked, ‘What did you take?’ He said, ‘From today I will smoke bidis.’
His mind is cracked; but he fulfilled his vow. He did not smoke bidis before. And I tell you, he profited more than the man who took the rule, ‘I will not smoke,’ and then began to smoke again. His vow too broke. His self-condemnation increased. At least my friend succeeded. His mind may be cracked; but he is better than you. At least he fulfilled a vow.
Whenever a vow breaks, self-condemnation is born, a sense of guilt arises. And as self-condemnation and guilt arise, you become meaner. And the Atman will be found by one who is an emperor within, not mean. You go farther from the Atman.
Understand the nature of mind, then this sutra will be understood. The whole art of mind is repetition. Mind is mantra. Whatever you have repeated becomes your habit. Whatever you go on repeating will keep coming into your life. Birth after birth you have repeated the same, so the same is available to you again and again. And you are bound by repeating the wrong.
What to do? First—do not be in a hurry to break the wrong. Better than trying to break the wrong is to learn a new mantra of the right. You smoke—no harm; learn meditation. The cigarette is not even a little obstacle in meditation. Learn meditation. Intensify the mantra of meditation. The day you succeed in the mantra of meditation, that day you will attain self-respect. With that self-respect and the success of meditation, dropping cigarettes will be easy; because you will have completed one creative mantra.
Do not become negative, otherwise you will be in trouble. Repentance, sin, pain and gloom will catch you. Look at your sadhus sitting in temples— all are sad. There is no laughter in their life, no joy, no cheerfulness, no exuberance; because they have used negative mantras. Negative is their discovery. They left what they thought was wrong. I say to you, do not hurry to drop the wrong; hurry to hold the right. The day the right holds you, dropping the wrong will be very easy. Do not fight disease; seek health. That is exactly what Coué tells his patients. He says: ‘I am becoming healthy’—repeat this feeling.
You can also do the opposite, the reverse. You have a headache; you can say, ‘No, I have no headache.’ But as many times as you say it, that many times you are repeating the word ‘headache’ too. And as many times as you say ‘There is no headache,’ if there is headache, what will your saying do? Deep down you know your statement is false. On the surface you may say it is not there, but the head is aching. Inside you will say, ‘It is there; it is there.’ Coué says to repeat; but the headache is there. By Coué’s saying your headache will not go; your headache will go only by your inner process. No—do not catch hold of negative words at all.
Therefore I say, do not try to renounce the world; try to attain Paramatma. Do not move in the direction of renunciation; search for the supreme rejoicing. Do not fix your eyes on what is wrong; because to drop the wrong you will have to look at it again and again. And the more you look, the more the mantra is repeated. And whatever you keep looking at, you become hypnotized by it.
All over the world much research has been done regarding car accidents; because now as many people die in car accidents as do not die even in wars. In a single year of the Second World War as many died; and today double that number die every year through car accidents around the world. The number is immense. Something must be done. Many things have come to light.
One thing that has come to light is that car accidents often happen between midnight and three a.m. Fifty percent of accidents occur between twelve and three at night. Because that time is for sleep, and the mind becomes drowsy, awareness is lost. In that loss of awareness hypnosis is easy. The driver is hypnotized; because the car’s repetitive sound is repeating the same tone again and again. Eyes fixed on the road—the same road stretches for hundreds of miles. And psychologists say that the white line drawn in the middle of the road is responsible for thousands of deaths. Because seeing that line, seeing, seeing, seeing— the driver keeps looking at it and becomes hypnotized. He is no longer conscious; he is intoxicated. Between twelve and three it is anyway the time of sleep; the car’s monotonous hum creates boredom, invites slumber, becomes a mantra. Then a single road, and at night it is drab; neither trees are seen nor mountains—only the road. And then the straight line in the middle.
Do a small experiment. Put a hen on a table. Draw a straight line. Lower the hen’s neck and align it with the line, so that the line is visible to her. Then leave her. The hen will remain there. She will not move; she is hypnotized. She will sit for hours. She got caught by the line; the line caught her.
Psychologists say the driver is caught by the middle line. Hence they say: do not make roads straight; there should be variations in the road so that the trance breaks. There should not be monotonous repetition. They also suggest that even the car’s sound change a little now and then—breaks in monotony will break drowsiness and many accidents will be avoided.
Accidents in your life too can be reduced by the hundreds. First—do not fix your gaze on the wrong; because whatever you look at enters within you. And you are accustomed to fixing your eyes on the wrong. Whatever is bad within you, that you attend to. The angry man attends to anger—‘How do I get rid of it?’ He thinks he is attending to it in order to be free; but he doesn’t know that the more he attends to anger, the more he will be hypnotized by its line. The lustful man keeps his attention on lust.
I have heard: Mulla Nasruddin became old, a hundred years old. Journalists came to meet him; he was the only man in the area to reach one hundred. They asked many questions. One question was: ‘What are your thoughts regarding women?’ Nasruddin said, ‘Do not ask me about that. Only three days ago I stopped thinking about them.’
A hundred-year-old man, and up to three days ago he was still thinking of them. Woman will hold you, because you want to get rid of her. She has become your negative mantra. Whatever you want to get rid of, from that you will not be free. If you start looking at the wrong, you are meditating on the wrong.
Mahavira has spoken of four forms of meditation—two wrong, two right. No one in the world had ever called the wrong ‘meditation’; Mahavira did. Psychologists would agree with him. He said: wrong meditations are also meditations. For example, the angry man becomes meditative, because in anger the whole world disappears. In anger chitta becomes one-pointed. Therefore in anger great power arises.
Have you ever noticed? In anger a person can lift and throw someone twice his strength. If he were conscious, not angry, he would think twenty-five times before getting into trouble with such a man—he is twice as strong. In anger one can even move a huge boulder; in a calm state he could not even think of it. In anger one can do anything; in anger all energies are aroused. What happens? The dissipated energy flowing in all directions becomes focused. As rays of the sun when collected create fire, so in anger chitta is gathered and fire is born. Mahavira even called that meditation.
Mahavira said: aarta and raudra—two wrong meditations. In grief too, a person becomes meditative. Someone dies. Then you weep, you scream, you shout—attention is fixed on one point.
Avoid wrong meditation. And you are all engaged in wrong meditation. The very trouble of your life, the basic pain and disease, is that your eyes are fixed on the wrong—what is wrong, to be dropped. And you think you are doing it in order to drop it. Because of this very meditation you cannot drop it.
I say to you: drop worrying about the world; meditate on Paramatma. You are angry— the whole world is angry—do not fix your eyes on anger; fix them on compassion. Bring into attention what is right. And as the strength of the right grows, energy will be discharged from the wrong. Because energy is one; you cannot invest it everywhere. If you place attention on becoming serene, then when you wish to be unquiet you will find you have no energy left—the stream has flowed toward serenity. And one who has tasted serenity—why would he desire unrest? Only he is restless who has not tasted peace. Only he who has not drunk the juice of Paramatma gets drowned, becomes entangled, in the world.
Take this well to heart. Avoid negation. Avoid the ‘no’. Do not be preoccupied with dropping the bad; because in dropping you will become hypnotized by it and you will never drop the bad. What we want to drop, we develop a grip upon.
I have heard: a man came as a guest to a hotel. The manager said, ‘We cannot give you the room. The room is vacant; but below it a man is staying—very troublesome. Even a little noise above, and he will create a scene. Because of him we keep the room above empty.’ The man said, ‘Do not worry; I’ll be in the market all day. I will return around eleven or twelve at night and go straight to sleep. At three I have to catch a train. I will barely stay three hours. There is no reason for any disturbance from me. And since you have told me, I’ll be careful.’
He returned at midnight, tired from work. He sat on the bed. He dropped one shoe with a thud on the floor; then he remembered—lest the man’s sleep be broken. He placed the other shoe quietly and went to sleep. About fifteen minutes later the man from below knocked. He opened the door—the man below was trembling with anger. The guest was alarmed—night, darkness, now what? ‘What mistake has happened? I had fallen asleep.’ The man said, ‘Mistake? What happened to the second shoe? The first fell—I said, Now it comes; and then what about the second? I can’t sleep at all; the second shoe is hanging over my head. So I came to ask—to be sure, to be at ease.’
Everyone has hung a second shoe—the shoe of negation. This to be dropped, that to be dropped, this is bad—and there are so many bad things that life seems short; you will not be able to drop them. At every step there is the bad; in every corner there is the bad; the whole life is full of the bad. And your saints merely fill you with guilt; because they keep telling you—this is wrong, that is wrong, this is wrong. From them you never receive news of the right. Because they say, until the wrong goes, how will the right come? And their talk appears logical. They say, until darkness goes, how will light be lit?
And I tell you: if you listen to them, however logical they seem, you will wander for lives and lives. By that very advice you have been wandering. Devils have not misled you; your so-called saints have. Because the talk appears logical—until the wrong goes, how will the right be found? But have you ever tried to remove darkness? First remove darkness; then you will light the lamp? Then you will never light it. I say to you: light the lamp. Do not talk of darkness; because the moment the lamp is lit, darkness is gone. Bring light; do not meditate on darkness.
No one has ever removed darkness. Evil can never be removed; good can be brought. The world cannot be left; the Atman can be found. And the moment Atman is found, the world is dropped. We are clinging to it only because something better is not visible. And until the better is seen, how will you drop the lesser? Even if you want to leave it, you will not be able to. You will fight, be harassed; you will tire yourself, exhaust yourself; but you will reach nowhere. Your life will become a futile running around. Then you will descend again into the body, and the same cycle will begin. Whoever is saved from this—saved from attending to the bad—attains the good.
Chitta is mantra—use it either for evil or for good. Repetition becomes power. You become angry—acknowledge it. However many times anger happens, do not repent for it. Do not fight with anger. As many times as anger arises, perform acts of compassion that many times.
As many times as you harm people, that many times bring benefit to people. Taste a little the juice of benefiting people. Do not punish yourself for evil; enjoy the reward of the good. Do not inflict pain on yourself for the bad; do a little good, taste its flavor. If an abuse slips out toward someone, then go and praise someone; sing someone’s virtues. You have tasted enough of the juice of abusing; now taste the juice of appreciation.
Do not wrestle with thorns—they are there. Give your attention to flowers. Once you get entangled with thorns, you will never reach the flowers. Thorns are many. And by the time you reach, you will be so bloodied that even flowers will not give you delight. The touch of flowers too will not thrill you. You will be full of wounds. Flowers too will hurt; because if wounds are already there, flowers will also pain. Do not attend to thorns; attend to the flower. And if you become immersed in the fragrance of the flower, one day you will find there are no thorns at all; because one who is lost in the flower’s fragrance—even a thorn cannot prick him.
The real point is to be absorbed in the nectar of the flowers; to be wonder-struck, awed. The real thing is to drink the wine of Paramatma; then the wines of this world will not attract you. Otherwise you will fight them and be defeated by them. Whoever fights evil is defeated by evil. The mind that fights evil makes a mantra of evil; because chitta is mantra. Understand this process of chitta: chitta repeats.
Have you ever noticed? Observe your chitta for seven days; write down what the chitta repeats. You will find a circular wandering of the mind. If you observe rightly you will see—night comes, day comes, morning happens, evening happens—so too in chitta there is a fixed time for anger; a fixed time for love; a fixed time for lust; a fixed time for greed. Exactly at those times greed grips you, as hunger grips you. But you have never observed. Otherwise you could make your twenty-eight-day calendar and you could write: ‘Monday morning—beware of me!’ Family could know at home that on Monday morning, keep a little distance from father. And it can be used; because your Monday morning... if you observe rightly for a few days, you will catch those points where, like a wheel, your mind moves. Not only the body is circular; the mind is circular too.
In this universe all movements are circular. The moon and stars move round. The earth moves round. Seasons move round. The seasons of your mind also move round. Just as women have a monthly cycle— within twenty-eight days the circle is complete—
Now psychologists say that within men also a similar chemical process occurs in twenty-eight days, as in women; because bodies are not so very different. Have you noticed that when women have their menses, they become more irritable, more quarrelsome, angry, sad, troubled, restless? Hindus were very alert. They would isolate them in rooms for three or four days. Because at that time it is not right to expect anything from them; so intense a chemical process is happening in their body that keeping awareness is difficult. They will become unconscious.
But at exactly twenty-eight days every man also undergoes something similar. Men too have a monthly cycle. There is no external bleeding; but within the glands there is a hemorrhage. So it is not visible; but every twenty-eighth day you too become sad, restless, troubled.
Observe a little. Then you will find your mind has a circle, which completes in twenty-eight days, in four weeks. And in that circle, as you deepen the process of observation, you will discover the exact points of what happens when. Then you will be very surprised. Then you will find that you do not get angry because of someone else; you get angry because of your inner causes—the other is only an excuse. Then you will not put responsibility on the other. Then when you are angry you will ask forgiveness of the other—‘Pardon me; my condition, my season is not right. It is a coincidence that you were in front; had it been someone else, the trouble would have been poured on him.’
Through self-observation you will easily understand that the mind moves in a circle. It is a mantra. And if you do not understand it, you will go on wandering in that circle. Therefore Hindus called the world a wheel— it turns. And you do the same things again and again. Do not think you are doing something new; all are doing the same. When first you fall in love, you think perhaps such a unique thing has never happened in the world. It is happening every day. The same all have done. Animals are doing it, plants do it, man does it. It has not happened only to you; it has happened to all. Anger too has happened the same to all.
Outside this circle there is only one thing—meditation, which does not happen by itself. All else will happen by itself; you need do nothing. Sit on the wheel and it goes round by itself; bound to it, you will go round. Only one event is outside this circle—that you jump out of the wheel; that is meditation. It does not happen by itself. It happens to some Buddha.
The great historian of the West, Arnold Toynbee, calculated that so far, in the entire history of humankind, only six people have gone beyond this wheel. If not six, sixty—still the number is not very large. It is an extraordinary event. Neither love, nor anger, nor greed—these are ordinary events; they happen to all, to animals too. This does not make you human. The key of being human will be forged the day you step out of the mantra of chitta; out of this circular wandering of chitta. Let this wheel of mind be broken and you be beyond—it is meditation.
Meditation is not circular. Meditation is a state; mind is a movement. Meditation is the name of stillness; mind is the name of meandering. And the wandering is not even to new places—again the same, again the same. Like the bullock of an oil-press you go round. If you look consciously, it will be understood. This is not a theory; it is a fact. This is not a doctrine of philosophy—this circular wandering of your mind, the mind being like a mantra. It is a fact of your life.
Those who tried to understand life discovered it. It is not a conclusion reached by thought; it is a fact found through experience. You too can find it by experience. I say so; therefore there is no need to believe. Shiva says so—there is no need to believe. You have eyes. Close your eyes and watch the mind for a few days; you will be astonished. You will find you are tied to this wheel. And the whole of nature is tied to the same wheel. Your humanness is not declared in this; your dignity is not in this. Your dignity lies in going beyond. In that very moment you attain Buddhahood, you attain Shivahood.
‘Chitta is mantra.’
Repetition is the nature of chitta—repetition. Therefore in the world of chitta nothing ever new happens. In the world of chitta nothing original ever happens; there everything is stale and old—leftovers! You ruminate the same again and again. Have you seen a buffalo ruminating? It eats, then brings the food back up and keeps chewing. Chitta is ruminating. Whatever you take into chitta as food, chitta then ruminates it. Read a book; it will start running in chitta. If you go from hearing me, it will run in the mind for twenty-four hours. A cycle has begun. Chitta will chew it, digest it, repeat it. But in chitta nothing new is ever born. The original never happens in chitta. And the Atman is originality. Paramatma is supreme originality. He is ever-fresh. Nothing fresher than that. He is not available through chitta. The mantra of chitta must be broken.
Understand these sutras well: ‘Chitta is mantra.’
‘And effort is the seeker’—the second sutra.
Effort means: the endeavor to go outside this wheel of chitta. One who has gone out is siddha; one who is endeavoring to go out is sadhak. And a great effort will be needed—only then will you get out. As much effort is needed as you have put into binding the chitta. But the great difficulty is that you see through the same chitta. So whatever you see, the chitta colors it with its own hue. This is the great difficulty. I am speaking to you; you are listening; but you are not listening, your chitta stands in between. Whatever I say, chitta will throw its own color upon it and adjust it to suit itself; its meaning will change.
Mulla Nasruddin, drunk, boarded a bus. An old woman, whose hair had turned white, felt pity. Mulla was young; his mouth smelled of alcohol. The old woman said, ‘Son, have you any sense? You are traveling straight to hell!’ Mulla jumped up and said, ‘Stop, brother! I boarded the wrong bus.’
If your chitta is soaked in alcohol, it will color everything. He thought the bus was going to hell. Your chitta is doing this twenty-four hours. Therefore the most complex thing is to try to listen by putting aside the chitta. That is the meaning of ‘listener’, of ‘right listening’—that you remove the chitta and listen directly.
‘Effort is the seeker.’
You will have to endeavor. A great endeavor will be needed. By lying in laziness you will not get out of this wheel. How will anyone lying pass beyond the circle? Lying, the wheel will keep turning, and out of fear that you may fall, you will clutch it more strongly.
If you have ever seen bird-catchers in the forest catching parrots, they use a very simple trick. The same trick your chitta is using on you. They tie ropes. Parrots come and sit on them; because of their weight they hang upside down. One cannot sit on a rope. The parrot sits on the rope, due to weight turns upside down, hangs inverted, becomes frightened, and in fear clutches the rope hard—lest he fall! Now he is in trouble. If he lets go, he is afraid he will fall. There is no need to hold anything—they are caught by themselves. The fowler will come and pick them up. The parrot has forgotten he has wings; there is no reason to fall, no fear. But once you are hanging upside down on the rope, the fear arises that if you get off the wheel, what will happen? You will be lost, you will wander!
A character of Hemingway says in a novel: ‘I accept suffering rather than nothingness. I will choose suffering rather than nothingness.’ You will not like to be empty. Even hell is okay; at least it is full. The parrot is hanging. He is afraid that everything will be lost. He suspects he is trapped. But being trapped is okay—at least better than falling. You yourself are holding this wheel. The wheel is not holding you. Mind is not holding you. If mind were holding you, then Buddhas and Mahaviras could not be born; because it would hold them too. Where would they run? The mind would hold them.
No, the mind is not holding you; out of fear you are holding the mind. And you hold it so strongly and yet you go to saints and ask how to be free of mind! There is no need to ask anyone for freedom from mind. It is enough to understand that you are holding it. No one other than you is responsible for your life. But holding has become comfortable now; because you have always held it, it has become a habit, it requires no effort. To release will require effort. If you have kept your fist clenched for lives, opening it will be difficult. The fingers have become stiff; the hand is fixed. That is all. A little effort is needed so that the muscles become alert again, blood starts flowing in the fingers, and you become able to open. What has been bound can be opened—that much is certain. Otherwise, how did you bind it? The fist closes because it can open. It must have been open sometime; only then was it closed; and it can open again. But if you have kept it closed too long, opening becomes difficult. That is the only obstacle. Therefore effort is needed.
Effort means: labor will be needed to let go of the chitta. And the chitta will keep persuading you again and again—what are you doing! What madness are you up to! Because if you let go, the chitta dies.
‘Effort is the seeker.’
Until you become a seeker, you will not make effort. You do make a little effort; but it is always half-and-half. And a half-hearted effort is meaningless. It is like holding the wheel with one hand and letting go with the other; then catching with this and releasing with that. Nothing will come of it. No; half measures are useless.
A businessman said to his wife in the evening: ‘A big client is coming— a deal of millions. I am going. I’ve invited him to dinner at the Taj.’ He went. He returned at midnight—after eating and drinking. The wife asked, ‘Anything happened?’ He said, ‘Fifty-fifty, half and half.’ She said, ‘Well, at least something!’ Later she thought, what does half-and-half mean? She asked, as he was about to sleep, ‘What do you mean by fifty-fifty?’ He said, ‘I reached; the client didn’t come.’
Whenever you are half-and-half, it is just like that. Nothing will happen; there is no fifty-fifty. Everywhere you are half; you are not whole anywhere. Wherever you become whole, revolution begins to happen. Then you boil. Then at a hundred degrees you vaporize. Then water becomes steam. Then you do not flow downward as water flows; you rise upward like steam. Then your direction is no longer downward, but upward.
‘Effort is the seeker.’
You will have to drop laziness. People come to me and say, ‘The morning meditation is a little tough; coming at six is difficult.’ You do not understand what you are saying. If getting up at six is difficult, then waking beyond mind will be terribly difficult. If getting up at six is so hard for you, how will you leap out of the wheel of life? A small habit—that you have not been getting up at six! For two or four days laziness will clutch you. But you let laziness win, and at the price of laziness you are ready to lose meditation; then meditation has no value for you. If it had value, you would not raise such a question.
Someone comes and says, ‘Four meditations cause fatigue; can I drop two?’
You can drop all four. Because the four tire you; the two will tire you half, but they will. And I know that if I give your mind the concession to drop two, tomorrow you will come and ask, ‘Shall I do only one?’ Because the same mind! You will get tired even with two.
If you live by that formula, today or tomorrow you will choose laziness; because in doing anything some effort will be required. Remember—life is effort; death is rest. If you want to die, nothing is needed. If you want to live, something must be done. And if you want to live vastly, vast endeavor is needed. If you want to attain Paramatma, little attempts will not do. Let your whole life become effort; stake yourself, grain by grain. If you save anything, you will miss. Here only a total stake can save you. That is why so few attain. There is no reason except laziness.
Even when you meditate, you do it as if no one should bump into you; as if you should not get tired. Why do it at all? Who asked you? But you are not clear. You live in a haze where everything is dim. Even you are not sure how you came here. How did you come? Someone else was coming; you tagged along. ‘Let’s see.’ ‘Let’s see what others are doing.’
You are being pushed and pulled like this. And this has been going on for endless births. But by being pushed, no one reaches the goal. The goal is not an accident that you will reach somehow. The goal is a purposeful journey. The goal is the labor of taking the stream of your whole life toward one direction. The goal is a resolve. The moment resolve happens, your mind falls into one current; energy is collected.
The energy within you is immense. You think your energy is so little that you tire so quickly—that is your mistake. In the human body there are three levels of energy. One is the upper level used for daily work; like you keep some small cash in your pocket for pocket-expenses. That is not your whole wealth; for small errands—going to the market, bringing little things— a few rupees.
Mulla Nasruddin once was passing through a village. It was dark outside. Four men caught him and attacked. He fought so terribly that he floored all four. Somehow they managed to subdue him—somehow! When they put their hands in his pocket there were only seven coins. They said, ‘This is too much, Nasruddin! For seven coins?’ Nasruddin said, ‘I did not think you were fighting for seven coins. I have five hundred rupees hidden in my left shoe.’ But they did not dare remove his left shoe; because for seven coins he had fought so furiously. They said, ‘Namaste! Some other time.’
Your daily energy is no more than those seven coins. It is for daily routine—getting up, sitting, eating, digesting, sleeping, work; the upper layer; pocket-cash. When you begin meditation, it gets spent. It is quickly spent; because meditation it has never done. It is a new order. If you listen to it and stop, you will never meditate. Do not listen to it. If you go on doing, soon you will find the second layer of energy is engaged.
Often you experience it. You were about to sleep at night; such sleep was coming that your eyelids could hardly open— suddenly a fire broke out in the house. Can you sleep then? Will you say, ‘I feel sleepy’? No—sleep disappears. From where did this energy come? Just now you were dozing; if someone had asked you to read the Gita, you would have said, ‘Brother, it’s difficult.’ But the house caught fire! The Gita could be left, but the house caught fire! Now you are running, jumping, extinguishing. And even after the fire is out, that night you will not sleep. You will remain awake; however much you try, sleep will not come. What happened? The second layer, which is not the energy of daily routine—the conserved layer—broke open. With its breaking you were so filled with energy that sleep disappeared.
If you continue the experiment of meditation, do not tire, soon the second energy will be available. As soon as it becomes available you will find that no matter how much you meditate, you will not tire; nothing inside will be spent. This is also the second layer. There is a third layer. This second is your treasure too; it can also be exhausted—not as easily as the first. One day this too will be spent, if you go on with great practice. Then the third layer breaks. That layer is not yours—it is Paramatma’s; it never exhausts. But if you are lazy you will not reach the second; there is no question of reaching the third.
Paramatma is supreme energy; hidden within you.
The first layer is of your mind, the second of your Atman, the third of Paramatma. Exhaust the mind, and the energy of the Atman becomes available. Exhaust even the Atman and the energy of Paramatma becomes available— which is eternal; for which there is no way to exhaust. Then you are one with the Vast.
Therefore Shiva says: ‘Effort is the seeker.’
Effort—continuous, deep, ever deeper effort—is the sadhak. Effort must go on until the third layer breaks and you attain that supreme energy. Then you are siddha. Then rest is possible. Prior to that, rest is suicide.
The third sutra: ‘Guru is the means.’
This search for life—you will not be able to do it alone; because alone you are closed within your circle. You cannot even see outside it. You do not even know there is anything beyond. You—shut in your shell—think this is life. Someone from the outside has to give you the news, one who has known the vast life beyond. You are imprisoned in your house. You do not even know that outside there is open sky, the moon and stars. Someone who has seen the sky must knock and say, ‘Come out! How long will you sit inside?’
First you will ask, ‘Is there such a thing as outside?’ That is what people ask—‘Is there such a thing as God? Such a thing as the Atman?’ And you want someone to prove, while you sit inside the house, that the sky exists. How will he prove it? From within the house, how can the sky be proved? You will have to walk along. He who says the sky is, you will have to take a few steps behind him; because the sky can be shown, it cannot be proved—there is no way to prove it. And if someone tries to prove the sky within the roofed house, you can defeat him. You will say, ‘What are you talking about? There is a roof. Here nothing is seen; there are walls. What proof is there that anything is outside? Bring a little piece of the sky inside to show me.’
But the sky is not an object that can be brought in; that we cut a piece and bring it in to show you a sample so that you may go outside. No fragment of Paramatma can be brought to show you; you will have to go.
Therefore Guru is the means. Guru only means: one who has experienced; who has known; who is freed from the prison. Only he can give you the news that you are in prison; only he can give you the news that there is a way out; only he can show you the path—‘Come behind me; even in this prison there are doors through which one can go out. In this prison also there are doors whose guards are asleep. In this prison there are doors whose guards are very alert. If you try to go out from there, you will fall into greater trouble. Now at least in the prison you are relatively free. If you try to exit where the guards are alert, where the main gate is, you will be thrown into a solitary cell; the prison will become even smaller.’
And remember, in trying to go out through negation you will fall into the solitary cell. If you fight evil, you will be thrown into greater evil. That is the main gate; but no one has ever gone out through it. No one ever will. Because the main gate must be guarded; all security kept there. But in this prison there are secret doors too; doors where there is no guard—because prisoners never attend that side. Prisoners always attend to the main gate.
I have heard that in a French prison during the days of revolution, the prisoners revolted. If prisoners do not revolt, it is fine. There were some two thousand prisoners and about twenty guards; they could escape any time. What can twenty guards do? They had never revolted because prisoners never unite. Prisoners are each other’s enemies. There is not enough simplicity to be together. There is no way to make friendship; they are enemies to one another. So twenty guards were enough. Then they revolted; prisoners united. The head jailer became frightened—‘What to do?’ The first thing he did was to tell the guards to forget the main gate. ‘Go and stand at small windows and doors.’ The guards said, ‘This decision is very wrong.’ The jailer said, ‘You do not worry. Leave the main gate.’
The main gate was left unguarded. Not a single guard there. But no prisoner could escape; because guards were posted at the small doors where there was never any guard. Where always there was guard, from there guard was removed. If they had tried, all could have gone out.
Later the guards asked the jailer, ‘We do not understand; the trick worked.’ He said, ‘A revolt means someone from outside has entered within. Some open man has reached inside these prisoners—someone who knows. And one who knows will try to get them out through the smaller doors. One who does not know will always try the main gate. So until yesterday we guarded the main gate because the ignorant were inside. It seems some guru has reached within.’
In life, the door of fighting evil looks like the main door. Your mind says: first destroy evil, only then will saintliness be obtained; first drop the wrong, only then will the path be made for the right; first take the world out, only then will the throne of Paramatma be empty. That is the main door. The guru will not tell you to go out through it. Because no one ever gets out from there; guard is terrible there. And those who try to go out that way are thrown into smaller, darker cells.
As I see it, your sadhus and monks are shut in worse prisons than you. You have no eyes to see, therefore you cannot. The householder is troubled; but your sadhus are even more troubled. You at least have a small courtyard where you experience a little freedom; even that yard is taken away from them. They are inside the prison; but even the freedom an ordinary prisoner gets within the jail they do not have. They are confined to solitary cells twenty-four hours.
Monks and sannyasins come to me; their mind is utterly sick and deranged.
A Jain muni told me: ‘I am sixty, forty years a monk; yet a constant doubt remains in the mind—perhaps I made a mistake! Perhaps the ordinary worldly man is enjoying and I am suffering in vain!’
This doubt arising is natural for an intelligent man. He is not foolish; he is intelligent. It is natural for this doubt to arise. Because he sees he has not attained anything; these forty years have been spent fighting anger, sex, greed; nothing has been gained. And anger is not gone either; it is only suppressed. You can hide from others; how will you hide from yourself? You know inside. Suppressed, you appear virtuous; you do not commit the crime; but the criminal is present within, and can act any moment; given a chance, he will act. The prison has become smaller. The little outer freedom to move is gone; it is a solitary cell.
Whoever tries to get out through the main gate will be bound even more. But there are secret doors. The secret doors the guru can indicate. There are keys with which secret doors open. Only one who has gone out can take you out.
Scriptures can accompany you to keep reading within the prison; but cannot take you out. Because who will interpret the scriptures? You will. Who will understand them? You will. You will understand in your way. If you were intelligent already, there would be no need for scriptures. It is certain you are not intelligent. And when a fool interprets scripture, he falls into more trouble.
No—you need a living scripture. Guru means: living scripture. Seek a living person who can give you the path.
Shiva says: ‘Guru is the means.’
Other than that there is no means. And if you try with your own hand to solve, the danger of getting more entangled is greater. Because mind is a very subtle mechanism. Often it happens that we think we will fix it ourselves. Often it happens that your watch stops and you feel like opening it and fixing it. Everyone feels like that. The more foolish a man is, the quicker he feels like it. A small child will certainly open it; because he doesn’t see what difficulty there is. It used to run; now it doesn’t—let’s see.
A watch is not a very complex device. But if you try to repair it yourself, your condition will be like what I have heard: one day Mulla Nasruddin went to a watchmaker. He put on the table a watch that was in pieces—fragmented. The watchmaker first looked at the watch, then at Nasruddin. Nasruddin said, ‘I am surprised how it fell from my hand!’ The watchmaker said, ‘I am surprised why you picked it up! Now nothing can be done. And this did not break by falling.’ Nasruddin said, ‘I made a little effort to fix it.’ He said, ‘Take it away. It cannot be repaired now.’
A watch is a simple device, not very complex. The mind is a very complex mechanism. You do not know the complexity of mind. There is nothing more complex in this world than mind.
In your brain there are some seven hundred million cells. And each cell—each single cell—can store ten million bits of information. Psychologists say that all the libraries in this world can be stored in a single human brain. Each cell can store ten million bits of information. There are seven hundred million cells. In your small skull, all the knowledge on earth can be stored. The skull is small, hardly a kilo and a half in weight, and seven hundred million filaments that cannot even be seen by the eye. The filaments are very fine.
That is why operations of the brain remained difficult for long. Now brain surgeries have begun. But even now there is danger; because when you go to cut something, a thousand other filaments are cut. So subtle are they. You insert the instrument, the tool into the skull—while moving in and out millions of filaments are cut. There is no need even to insert any instrument; if you only do headstand for half an hour every day, your brain will be damaged. You will not find headstand practitioners very intelligent; because such a flood of blood breaks the delicate filaments—like a flood.
Man’s brain developed because he stood upright and the flow of blood toward the head decreased. Animals’ brains did not develop; because their skull and body are on the same level. They have thick nerves; not fine fibers. Man’s entire glory and excellence is that he stood upright. By standing, the pull of gravity draws blood downward and the lungs have to pump to send it up to the head. Very little reaches the head. Therefore fine filaments developed. If a flood comes, big trees may survive; what of tiny plants? The filaments are so subtle that a little acceleration of blood destroys them.
In this web of seven hundred million, if you open it yourself, it is impossible to hope any benefit; harm is certain. And many people sit opening their brain— they begin to meditate by their own mind, begin to do postures; they collect something from books, hear something, catch wind-blown words, begin to do something. From that, except harm, there is never any benefit.
A Buddhist monk was brought to me. He had not slept for three years. All kinds of treatments had been tried; sleep would not come. He had defeated all tranquilizers. If one does not sleep for three years, you can imagine his condition. He was almost deranged. I asked him… no doctor had asked. Doctors began treatment; examined the body—blood pressure, heart condition—checked everything and began treatment. That was not his disease. The gentleman was practicing a meditation—the ancient Buddhist method Vipassana. He had read Vipassana directly from scripture. A guru considers each disciple. Or if he develops a group method, he considers the group. But scriptures cannot consider you—who will read? Anyone will! Scriptures live for thousands of years.
So he read a very old method of Vipassana and began to experiment. Then he got a taste; because the method is very precious—Buddha himself used it. But you do not know where to stop when you get the taste; because too much taste becomes poison. He got so much taste that he began to practice it inside for twenty-four hours. If you keep practicing something inside twenty-four hours, sleep will be lost. Because if you exert so much inside, there is no possibility of sleep. Then for years he continued the experiment; the filaments through which sleep comes broke. Now there is no way to bring sleep. Even the doctor cannot do anything. A doctor can help only if filaments are present; then the tranquilizer can relax them and you sleep. But if the filaments are broken, what can a doctor do?
I told him: for one year drop all kinds of meditation. Be as lazy as you can. Do not even talk of meditation. Do not read scriptures. Sleep as much as possible. Lie down, rest; eat well, drink well. For a year become utterly worldly.
He said, ‘I did not expect this from you. You speak such words? You are corrupting me?’ I said, ‘If you think it is corruption, then take it as such. Do this for a year, then come to me.’
Exactly in three months he was fine. Then I had to give him a new method. And even a method must be given thoughtfully—how much you can do. And then, gradually, the tempo should increase. And the entire arrangement of chitta must be taken into account.
Therefore Shiva says: ‘Guru is the means.’
Do not become your own means; otherwise you will spoil things. First, find a living person. There is difficulty; because to accept a living person as guru hurts the ego. That is why people relish scriptures more; because scriptures do not hurt the ego. You can throw the scripture away; it can do nothing. Wherever you place it gently, there it lies; it can do nothing.
You cannot behave so with a guru; your ego will have to give way. You will have to bow. Even when you bow to scripture, it is your whim; you remain the master. When you like, you change; you say to the scripture, ‘Move aside.’ The scripture can do nothing. But the guru is living. There you must bow. And a living person—he hurts deeply.
Therefore people first look into books; when they are tired of books, then they seek a guru. And often it happens that books spoil them so much that their eyes are so distorted by words they cannot recognize a guru. Even if you go to a guru you go with the recognition you borrowed from books. You have read in a book how a guru should be.
No book can tell how a guru should be. Any book can tell regarding some guru. If someone has written a book about Kabir, it tells about Kabir—that such was Kabir. Kabir will not be born again. The features belong to Kabir, not to ‘guru’. If you are Kabirpanthi and filled with Kabir’s book, you will search for Kabir’s qualities in a guru. That guru you will never find. Because Kabir will not be born again.
A Digambara Jain will not accept anyone as guru until he stands naked. That was Mahavira’s whim that he stood naked. That is not my whim. Now he is searching for Mahavira, who is no more. And the interesting thing is—when Mahavira was, perhaps this very man was troubled because he stood naked. In the scriptures current at that time this feature was not there. Before Mahavira, the Jain Tirthankaras were clothed. So even the Jains were not ready to accept Mahavira; because standing naked seemed indecent. Then the scripture said: a guru will not be nude; that is unbecoming. So they rejected Mahavira. When Mahavira died and scriptures were made, then they carry Mahavira. Now if Parshvanath appears in clothes, they will say, ‘How can this man be a guru!’
Remember, the scriptures speak about some one guru, and that one never happens again. Gurus are unique, unmatched. If your eyes are filled with scriptures, you will never recognize a living guru; because scriptures report that which has happened and will not happen again. Those who accept Mahavira—if they go to Buddha they reject him. They say, ‘He may be a great man; but not Bhagwan—because he wears clothes.’
A certain Jain gentleman has written a book. He is a good man; but goodness does not make one understanding. The wicked are foolish; the good can be foolish too. Here foolishness is so deep that goodness does not change much. He is a good man; therefore he has a kindliness toward all religions. So he wrote a book—‘Bhagwan Mahavira and Mahatma Buddha’. People in Poona know him. He first brought me to Poona. An old disciple of Gandhi. Gandhi inflated him with the idea that all are one. So he wrote the book; but inside is the Jain mind. I was a guest at his house and asked, ‘I understand the rest, but why this difference—Bhagwan Mahavira and Mahatma Buddha?’ He said, ‘It is like this: Bhagwan can only be Mahavira. At most we can accept that Buddha is a mahatma, but not Bhagwan.’ ‘Why?’ ‘He is clothed; Bhagwan is nude!’
There the difficulty begins. And it is not a difficulty only with Jains; it will be the same with all. Therefore a Jain can never accept Rama as Bhagwan; he stands with Sita—this is problematic. A Jain cannot conceive that being Bhagwan and a consort standing by! A Bhagwan will leave everything. One who has become free—why a woman with him now? So even a precious woman like Sita is lost to the Jain; she does not fit his mind.
As for Krishna, they consign him to hell; because not one—sixteen thousand women! There is no more qualified candidate for hell than this. So the Jains have put Krishna in hell. Out of fear— because the whole caste are traders, they are afraid of Hindus—there should be no quarrel. Perhaps that is why they believe in non-violence.
Often the timid believe in non-violence; because to believe in violence one needs some courage to fight. Neither will we kill nor be killed. The principle is fine—do not kill anyone; live and let live. But the desire is to live; it is not for the sake of the other.
Out of fear they have applied another trick. They have put Krishna in hell; and then, out of fear—since it is necessary to put him in hell, he does not fit their doctrine—yet out of fear, because they must live among Hindus, they accept that in the next cycle he will be the first Tirthankara. A compromise. This is the shopkeeping mentality— arithmetic. Now Hindus cannot be angry: ‘Brother, no harm. Our principle is saved and quarrel avoided.’
If you search for the guru through scripture, you will never find him; because by the time scriptures are written, the one for whom they were written has disappeared. And every guru is distinct, different, of his own style. You cannot find another like him. Mahavira cannot be found again; nor Krishna; nor Buddha. And you are searching for them; therefore you wander. And when they were there, you were searching for someone else. You go on missing.
If you want to find the guru, put the scripture aside. And if you want to find the guru, seek the presence of a person; sit in his satsang. And do not go carrying your own principles; do not go with your measuring tapes. Let your heart meet heart; do not let the intellect come in between. If you allow the intellect in between, the meeting of hearts will not happen, and you will not recognize the guru. The recognition of the guru comes through the heart, not through the intellect. And whenever you look with the heart, setting the intellect aside, immediately something happens. If your chemistry is such that a union is possible with this guru, the union will happen instantly—not even a moment’s delay. You will find you melted in him and he melted in you. From that day you become his indivisible limb. From that day you are his shadow; you can walk behind him. Through the heart the guru is found. And without the guru there is no means.
‘The body is the oblation.’
And remember—this which you call the body, which you have assumed to be everything, this body is nothing but havis, the offering. As in a yajna one must offer oblations, so in meditation you will have to lose this body bit by bit. Other offerings are futile. By pouring ghee, by pouring grain, nothing happens. You will have to put yourself in; only then will the fire of your life burn. Stake this whole body. If you try to save it, the yajna will not burn; fire will not be born. Stake your whole body.
‘The body is havis. Knowledge is food.’
And for now you live by gross food. Food goes into the body; it is necessary for the body. Bodha, jnana, dhyana, awareness—this is the food of the Atman. Until now you have fed only the body; your Atman is starving. Your Atman has been on fast for births; the body is well-nourished, the Atman is starving to death.
Knowledge is the food of the Atman. So become as awake as you can; as filled with jnana as you can. Jnana does not mean scholarship, it means awareness. As much as you can, be awake—let Turiya deepen in you. As much as you can be full of awareness and discriminative intelligence, the stream of life will run in your soul.
Your Atman has almost dried up. You have given it no food. You have forgotten that it needs nourishment. Your body is eating; your Atman is fasting. That is why many religions used fasting. Make the body fast for a few days and feed the soul. Reverse the process.
But it is not necessary to starve the body. Give the body its need; but do not let your whole endeavor be exhausted in filling the body. Let a large part of your endeavor go to generating jnana; because that is the food of your soul.
‘Knowledge is food. By the absence of vidya, dreams arise.’
If this knowledge does not flow within you, if the inner flame is not fed, then dreams arise in your life. Then cravings arise. Then your life wanders in darkness. Then you live in imagination. Then you only go on thinking.
I asked Mulla Nasruddin: ‘Where are you planning to travel this year?’ He often travels. He said, ‘I travel only once in three years.’ I asked, ‘What do you do the other two years?’ He said, ‘One year I spend thinking over the last journey I made— savoring its juice. And one year goes in planning the next journey.’
Even then Nasruddin travels at least once in three years; you do not travel even once. Half of your life goes in thinking of the past and half in planning the future; the journey never begins. Either you wander in memory—which is a dead dream—or in imagination—which is a dream of the future, which has not yet been born. You are cut in two; and in between is the present—there is life; you remain deprived of it.
Knowledge will awaken you—to the here and now, to this very moment. Knowledge will bring you into the present. The past is lost; it has gone. You are carrying the ashes unnecessarily. The future has not yet come; you cannot bring it. When it comes, it comes. The present is here. What is present is truth. Dream means: wandering in what is not present.
Remember this sutra: ‘By the loss of vidya, dreams arise.’
When knowledge is not within you, when the soul is not awake, you get lost in dreams. Past and future become everything; the present becomes nothing. And the present is all. As you awaken, the past diminishes, the future diminishes, the present expands. The day you are fully awake, only the present remains. That day there is no future, no past. And when there is no past and no future, all the diseases of chitta, all repetitions, all circles are destroyed. Then you are here—pure, clear, immaculate, fresh as the morning dew. Then you are here—like a lotus flower. If in this moment you become wholly present, you are Paramatma.
In this moment you are not present at all; therefore you are body, you are mind, but not Atman. Meditation is only the effort to pull you from the past into the here, from the future into the here. Neither go ahead nor go behind; stand here. Here, now, in this very moment, to stand utterly still and aware is meditation. From that, vidya is born. From that, the ultimate flowering of life, the supreme Samadhi and bliss will be attained. One who misses that, misses all. One who attains it, attains all.
Enough for today.