Tao Upanishad #24

We hear the doctrine of Advaita: truth is one. Yet those who talk of nonduality still go on dividing body and Atman into two. Even those who hold a nondual vision accept a separateness between their body and their Atman. And once you concede a division between body and Atman, a division between the world and Paramatma becomes inevitable. The slightest assent to division fabricates duality.

Hence a strange contradiction in people: the one who believes in Advaita still lives his life according to duality.

Here Lao Tzu is laying the foundation of nonduality. Lao Tzu says: the world and Paramatma cannot be one unless there is a deep embrace between body and Atman. Until the unity between body and Atman is directly experienced, no unity can be created between matter and consciousness.

The so-called religious person will find this very difficult. But if a person is divided within, he will be unable to regard existence as indivisible. Only one who is undivided within himself can know the world as undivided. For the world is the body spread out vast, and consciousness is the vast Paramatma. If my consciousness is separate from my body, then Paramatma’s consciousness will also be separate from the body of the world. Lao Tzu says: only if body and Atman are kept as one does Advaita become possible, only then can the flower of nonduality bloom.

But how do body and Atman become separate? If we understand this, perhaps keeping them one will also be understood. When a child is born, he knows no division. There is no line of demarcation between body and consciousness. Body and consciousness grow as one single existence. But the necessities of life—civilization, culture, security—begin to create a split between body and consciousness. If the child is hungry, we have to teach him that it is not necessary to be fed exactly when hunger arises; it is necessary to learn to hold hunger back. This is life’s unavoidable arrangement. It is not necessary that sleep is granted the moment sleep arrives, nor that water is available the moment thirst arises. Therefore he must learn control. And as soon as the child acquires the capacity for control, he also becomes aware: I am separate and the body is separate. For the body becomes hungry and I hold the hunger back. The body becomes sleepy and I hold sleep back. That which I can restrain, from that I become separate.

Thus, as control develops in the child, a crack begins to appear between his consciousness and body. That crack grows daily. The larger the crack, the harder it becomes to be one with existence. Because one who finds it difficult to be one even with his own body will find it far more difficult to be one with the body of the vast world.

This deep duality arises out of life’s necessities. It is required, but it is not truth. It is useful, but it is not fact. And whatever is useful is not necessarily true. Sometimes even untruths are immensely useful. This is one such useful untruth. It has to be developed. But if our mind gets bound to it forever and we cannot be free of it, then this useful untruth becomes suicidal.

We must teach control. We must teach restraint. Needs will arise, and the ability to hold back demands must be cultivated. Gradually, that in which needs arise begins to seem separate, and that which controls the needs begins to seem separate. Intellect appears apart, passion appears apart. As soon as intellect and passion appear separate, two parts are created within us. Then our entire life gets entangled in the conflict of these two parts. The whole life becomes an inner battle. All the time, passion makes its claims while the intellect tries to impose control. Slowly, division spreads within us on all sides.

Psychologists say the lower portion of our body, the part below the navel, we begin to regard as the lower—low not only spatially but in value. We identify with the upper part, and we break off the lower part. From the waist down it begins to feel as if that is not really yours. Only the body above the waist is yours. Because the portion below gradually gets associated with passion; and the portion above gradually with intellect. Finally the intellect gets centered in the head. Therefore you recognize yourself by your face. The rest of the body we keep concealed. The reason isn’t only protection from heat or cold. The basic reason is that we wish to make our identity only with the face, not with the rest. For intellect seems to us to reside in the skull; hence the face is enough.

It is amusing: if only your face is cut off and kept aside, you will be recognized. But if your entire body is there and only the face is missing, you yourself will not be able to recognize that body as yours. Not only others, even you will not. Our identity has got linked with intellect, and we have abandoned the entire body as passion-ridden. The consequences have been profound. We will speak of those deeper consequences.

In this first sutra Lao Tzu is saying: if the intellectual and the sensory souls are bound in the same embrace, they can be prevented from separating.

If my intellect and my senses remain bound in a deep embrace, the conflict and the duality within can be prevented from arising. And if they are not bound—if I break my intellect and my passion apart inside, and destroy all bridges between them—then the inner fragmentation cannot be prevented. What psychologists call schizophrenic—a fragmented person—we all are, a little or more. When someone becomes too fragmented, he goes mad. We somehow manage to run ourselves and do not go mad. But the potential for madness keeps fluctuating within us from moment to moment. Within, we are in a deep conflict, not an embrace. There is no harmony within, no music, no rhythm. Inside there is conflict, a duel, an opposition, a hostility. A struggle with everything.

In the West a new movement is running—especially in America—to increase sensitivity. Because America has begun to feel that human sensitivity has vanished; sensitivity has died. We touch, but our touch is dead. We see, but our eyes are stone-like. We hear, but only sounds fall upon the ears; the heart receives no sensation. We also love, we also speak of love, yet our love is utterly lifeless. There is no heartbeat in the heart of our love. Our love is paper-thin. We do everything, and yet it seems that in whatever we do there is no sentience. Sensationless, inert, mechanical—we get up, we sit, we walk; we do it all. Sensitivity must be brought back. Psychologists are saying: if we cannot bring sensitivity back to man, we will not be able to save humanity on earth beyond this century. Until now individuals went mad; now people will go mad collectively. Sensitivity must return. But how should sensitivity return? And why was it lost?

You too will remember—if any memory of childhood remains in you—that if a flower had blossomed in the garden, it appeared to you in childhood in a way that it no longer does. The flower still opens as before, but you no longer see it. The same sun rises as in childhood, but the rising sun no longer creates a dance in the heart. The moon still ascends; you may lift your eyes and glance, but the moon does not touch you. What has happened?

What Lao Tzu is saying: the embrace has broken. Intellect and the sensory plane have become two. Sensation is in the senses; intellect experiences that sensation. If the two are torn apart, sensation ceases. The senses grow dull and no message reaches the intellect. And the poetry of life, the music of life, the flavor of life—all dries up.

Children seem to live in a paradise on the very earth on which we live. The only reason is this: as yet no distance has arisen between their sensory soul and their intellectual soul. When they eat, it is not only the body that eats; their whole soul rejoices in the food. When they dance, not only the body dances; their soul dances too. When they run, not only the body runs; their soul runs too. They are still united. Division within them has not begun. They are still in nonduality. They are not two; they are one.

Therefore the joys a child can experience, we cannot. The love a child can experience, we cannot. It should have been the other way: that we should experience more, for our capacity and treasury of experience is larger. But we cannot, because the very process by which experience happens has broken within us. Sensation happens on the body. When I touch your hand, it is my hand that touches your hand. If my hand itself is dead…

Among Mahatma Gandhi’s three gurus, one is Henry Thoreau. It is said of Henry Thoreau that when people touched his hand, it felt as though they were touching the hand of a corpse. Friends have written in their memoirs that if you touched Thoreau’s hand with your eyes closed, it would be hard to say whether you were touching a wooden hand or a real one. Perhaps Thoreau’s hand had become even more insensitive; but ours too is much the same.

Let the hand be sensitive, let it be alive. Let each hair of the hand, each atom, each cell be filled with electricity when it touches—only then can the intellect receive the joy of that touch. If the hand lies dead, no message reaches the intellect. And if no message reaches the intellect, the intellect has no direct means. The senses are the doors of the intellect, and the body is the instrument of the soul, the body is the soul’s extension into the gross world. If we become enemies of the body, we sever our relationship with the world. In the measure that our relationship with our body breaks, in that measure our relationship with existence breaks. Then we live, but a distance remains between us and existence. Wherever we go, we remain far from existence. Even in love there is distance. In compassion, distance. In friendship, a distance across which we stand—and to cross over is very difficult.

Lao Tzu says: this duality arises within us out of the distance created between our intellect and our senses.

But this distance has its use. It must be created for a time. And for a time it must also be broken. It is proper to use it like a staircase. That is why Jesus said: Only those will enter my kingdom of heaven who become like children. Again like children. Once again as sensitive as children. Those for whom each experience descends into the very depths of life—only they will enter my Lord’s kingdom.

The child has a nonduality, but filled with ignorance. The same nonduality is needed again in the sage, filled with knowing! The child has an innocence, but it is ignorant innocence. In the sage the same innocence is needed again, but luminous—with prajna. Knowing, awakened innocence must be re-established.

The child’s nonduality will break, for it is not the child’s attainment. Circumstance and struggle will break it. But it is not necessary that a person die with nonduality broken. Before dying, nonduality can be re-established. And when it is established again, it is richer than the first, because experience adds a thousand dignities to it. What can be done so that nonduality is bound within? How to become one inside? In Lao Tzu’s path there are very simple means of becoming one within. Let us first speak of one method, then go deeper into its practice.

Lao Tzu held: whatever you do—rise or sit, eat or sleep—be totally united and absorbed in it. If you are walking on the road, become the walking. Do not keep even so much distance that “I am walking.” Of the practice of witnessing, about which we have so often spoken, Lao Tzu says: witnessing too will not take you to nonduality. At a certain point, even witnessing must be dropped. Krishnamurti speaks of awareness; that too will not lead to nonduality. At a point, that too must be dropped. Lao Tzu says: not awareness, not witnessing, but unity—absorption. Whatever you are doing, become that. If you are walking, become the very act of walking; let the walker not remain. If you are eating, become the very act of eating; let the eater not remain. If you are seeing, become the eyes; let the seer not remain. If you are listening, become the ears. In whatever you are doing, be so wholly one that no distance remains inside. No distance at all. And if inner distances break in action, then between intellect and passion, between sense and discrimination, between Atman and body, a bridge is created. They become bound in an embrace.

Tantra has called this embrace the inner maithuna—when inner consciousness and inner passion become one. Tantra has called intellect the male principle and the body’s nature the female principle. And when the inner female becomes one with the inner male, bound in embrace, then Param Samadhi bears fruit.

It is of this embrace that Lao Tzu is speaking. Whatever is done, let not two remain within the doing. Let even the smallest act drown me completely. Even in the smallest action, let my absorption become total. Let me not remain behind. My remaining is the duality. My becoming wholly one is to become beyond conflict. Then the embrace flowers.

But this process has to be spread over the whole of life. And for now it is difficult to spread, because there are certain mechanical, bodily, systemic distances that have arisen within us. Until those distances break, this practice of absorption remains difficult. Let us understand those distances. They have become mechanical. Until we break these mechanical arrangements and bring in something new, only the experiment of absorption will yield nothing. Indeed it may happen that when you do some work, your very idea to be totally absorbed becomes the cause of duality. The very idea of absorption will not allow you to be absorbed. If you eat with the idea “I will remain totally immersed in eating,” you will not be immersed; this idea will keep you outside. There are mechanical errors within. It is necessary to understand them.

If you watch a small child asleep in a cradle, a fact you may not have noticed—but you should—is that the child’s belly rises and falls, not his chest. He breathes, and the belly moves up and down. The chest stays at rest. We, we breathe the opposite way. When we breathe, the chest rises and falls.

Lao Tzu’s statement—precious, and now science agrees with him—is: the moment a distance appears inside between the sensory and intellectual consciousness, breath ceases to come from the navel and begins to come from the chest. The greater the distance, the higher the breath comes and returns. So the day a child’s breathing shifts from the belly to the chest, know that a gap has entered between his sensory soul and intellectual soul. Even later in life, when you sleep at night, your breath again starts from the belly, the chest becomes quiet. In sleep you cannot maintain your distances. In unconsciousness, distances disappear, and the natural process of breathing begins.

The primary source of breath—Japanese has a word for it; our language has none—is called tanden. Two inches below the navel. If breathing is right, the point two inches below the navel—the Japanese call it tanden—connects with the breath. The more tense a person is, the farther he moves from the tanden.

The higher you breathe from, the more filled with tension you are. The lower you breathe from, the more you are in relaxation. If breath moves from the tanden, there will be no tension in your life. The systemic reason for the child’s lack of tension is breathing from the tanden. Whenever you are relaxed, suddenly notice: your breath will be moving from the tanden. When you are full of tension, depressed, anxious, troubled, agonized, restless—then notice: your breath will be coming from very high up. Breathing from high up is an indication that you have moved very far from your original nature.

But there are reasons we teach people not to breathe from the belly. One insanity spread over the whole world is that the chest should be big, expanded. So to enlarge the chest one fills breath into it, not below; and returns it from the chest. This madness of enlarging the chest produces a great disturbance within.

If you have seen pictures of Japanese or Chinese monks, or a picture of Lao Tzu, you will be surprised. Even the statues of Buddha in China and Japan will surprise us, because they do not match the Buddhas we have made. In our statues the belly is small, stuck to the spine; the chest is big. In the statues of Japan and China, even of Buddha, the belly is prominent, just like a child’s. The child’s chest is at rest; the belly is a little rounded because breath moves upon it.

This idea of enlarging the chest creates a dangerous inner condition: the sensory and the intellectual… Tao accepts three centers: one, the tanden—the navel center; second, the heart center; third, the head center of intellect. The navel is the deepest center of existence. After that, less deep is the heart. Least deep is the intellect.

Hence the intellectual is farthest from existence. Even those who are heart-oriented are nearer than the so-called knower. One who knows only intellect lives on the surface. His accounting is complete; his mathematics is neat; his logic is clear. But he never descends into depth, for in depth there is always danger—logic and calculation are lost there. He lives on the surface where everything is tidy. If you descend into the heart, logic and mathematics and all neatness are lost. Therefore the intellectual fears the heart, for with the heart comes chaos, the illogical, the birth of raga—feeling. Love may arise, bhakti may come, something for which logic has no explanation. So the intellectual lives by the head and does not enter below.

The more intellectual a man, the higher his breath. By the height and depth of breath one can know the type of man. The more heart-oriented, the deeper the breath.

But Lao Tzu says: even the heart is not the last depth. One must go deeper. He calls it the tanden. Breath should move from the navel. One whose breath moves from the navel connects with existence as a small child does.

“When one brings his life-breath, through his own one-pointedness, to the ultimate pliancy, he becomes soft like a child.”

Bring your breath to the ultimate pliancy! Pliancy means tensionless fluidity. If you are tension-free, empty, your breath will inevitably return to the navel center. Sit relaxed and quiet in a chair sometime: you will immediately notice—breath has begun to move from the navel. But you must let go.

But we do not let go. Is the reason only that we wish to enlarge the chest? No, not only that. The reasons are deeper. The biggest reason—which may not even occur to you, yet you will quickly see it when explained—is this: when does a child first become aware of his body?

Freud’s discoveries are valuable here. Freud says: the child first becomes aware of his body when he touches his sexual organ. Then the mother and father stop him: “Wait, don’t, don’t touch.” If the child touches his nose, his eyes, waves his hand, the mother is delighted. If he kicks his legs, she rejoices. But if he touches his genitals, the mother becomes restless and upset. For the first time the child discovers that there is a part of the body that is not to be touched, a dangerous part, a sinful part. He gathers this looking into the eyes of the parents. The parents learned it from their parents. The guilt is traditional. The guilt itself is nowhere in reality. But a division in the child’s body has begun. Slowly the parents’ hints, their condemnation, their criticism, their anger will tell him: there is a part of the body which is not one’s own. Thus even when you grow old, your genitals never truly become part of your body. They cannot. A distance remains.

And once a distance arises with the genitals, the portion below them becomes taboo. The portion above becomes accepted, the one below rejected. As soon as this division occurs, breath will begin to move from higher up. There are reasons: the point called the tanden—if breath reaches there, it affects the genitals. Hence, as soon as we get the notion that the genitals are not ours, our tanden contracts, is suppressed. We begin to live in fear that breath might reach the genitals!

Do you know that in the night every man has at least twelve to eighteen erections—in sleep. Freud thought it happens because people’s sexuality remains unfulfilled, and when they dream sexual dreams the genitals stiffen. But as research has gone deeper it has become evident: Lao Tzu is closer to truth.

Lao Tzu says: in sleep the breath strikes the genitals, the tanden, therefore erection happens. It is not necessary that any sexual dream be going on. If it is, the erection will happen; if not, it can happen still. Twelve to eighteen times is normal. The total reason is simply this: in sleep the breath flows fully; flowing fully, it strikes the tanden. The point of tanden and the point of semen-energy are close, at the boundary. The very strike of breath activates semen. That is why during intercourse you cannot breathe from the chest. In the moment of intercourse you have to breathe from the belly. Therefore the breath quickens and pushes with force inside.

If you can keep the breath calm, ejaculation will stop. Therefore in Tantra there are experiments: if breath can be kept calm, intercourse can happen without ejaculation, and can be prolonged for hours. But then the breath must not reach the tanden.

Thus as soon as the child gets the notion that the genitals must be rejected, condemned, sinful, his breath starts from above. Because the breath’s strike upon the tanden produces sensation in the genitals—and that sensation is pleasurable. Because it is pleasurable, he is eager and curious toward the genitals. But the eyes of the parents and society are full of sorrow. Then a distance begins. Eventually even pleasure becomes a sin. While enjoying, we all feel guilty.

It is amusing: whenever you find yourself happy, you will find a guilt within. Hence some people take great pride in being miserable, for they are not guilty. A happy man feels a little guilty, because with his first experiences of pleasure, guilt became associated. So we live, but we live divided.

If breath does not reach the tanden, even impotence may result. Physicians of the Tao say: the impotence of many men arises merely because breath does not reach the tanden. Let me tell you something curious: wrestlers often become impotent. The reason? The wrestler breathes from the chest; he breathes so much from the chest and draws the belly in so much that the possibility of breath reaching the tanden is closed. So the wrestler looks very virile, very male, but manliness becomes less. The breath-link between him and his manhood is broken.

Breath can flow from the tanden only when you have also accepted your sexuality. If you reject it, breath cannot flow from the tanden. In fact, until you accept your total passion integrally—accept it childlike—nonduality cannot be created within. And it is a wondrous joy that as soon as one accepts passion in its totality, one becomes free of it. In conflict, passion increases, it does not decrease—writhes, yet is never fulfilled; burns, yet is never satisfied. It becomes pain, becomes hell, but there is never freedom from it. Reason will tell us: move farther away from that in which we are entangled. The farther we go, the wider the inner distance grows.

Lao Tzu says: enter the embrace; accept your sensuousness in its total form. In acceptance you become its master. In acceptance, conflict dissolves. In acceptance, fruition comes into your hand. The intellect that wholly accepts its passion goes beyond its passion. But this going beyond is not possible through struggle or conflict. It is possible through conflictless acceptance. Bringing the life-breath to ultimate pliancy is the first experiment. Those who enter Tao’s sadhana first cease to take breath from the lungs and begin to take it from the navel. Which means: when breath goes in, the belly rises; when breath goes out, the belly falls; and the chest remains loose, quiet.

Perhaps men might agree to this, for not all men are mad to be wrestlers. Women will agree with greater difficulty, for they are seized by a greater madness: that the breasts be firm, shapely, large. So women never agree to breathe from the navel.

Therefore you can find Taoist monks; finding Taoist women is rare. Men who followed Tao and attained supreme bliss can be found; women are hard to find. The sole reason is that woman has been gripped by a disease of wishing the breasts to be big. It is not natural. Truly, the rounder and more shapely the breast, the more difficult it is for the child to suckle. So it is not biological. Because the rounder the breast, when the child feeds, his nose presses into it and he suffocates, becomes panicky.

Psychologists say that when men see shapely breasts, they too become anxious—the root cause is the childhood experience of suffocation. If perfectly shapely breasts appear before you, your breath is disturbed. No apparent reason for such panic. But when a child feeds from a round breast, his nose naturally jams into it and he panics. That panic settles deep. Psychologists seek many reasons for the woman’s desire to show large breasts. Whatever the reasons, the broad, deep result has been: no woman is ready to breathe from the navel. And if one cannot breathe from the navel, childlike simplicity is impossible. The pliancy and fluidity come with that breath alone.

So first: let your breath move from the navel. Walking, sitting, keep watch that the breath is moving from the navel. Tao’s pranic sadhana has three parts. First, the breath moves from the navel. Try this for three weeks and you will be amazed: how many of your angers have dissolved, how many envies have disappeared, how many tensions are no more; your sleep grows deeper, your personality begins to balance. Breath is not a trivial matter—the whole system of prana is linked to it. As the breath, so the order or disorder in your pranas. You cannot breathe rhythmically in a moment of anger; and if you breathe rhythmically, you cannot be angry. Breath must become perturbed for anger to arise; only then the body heats, only then glands can release their poisons.

So the first sutra: slowly bring the breath to the navel; let the chest have no work.

Second, in Tao’s pranic sadhana: always be attentive to the outgoing breath; do not attend at all to the incoming. When breath goes out, expel it as completely as possible; and never draw the breath in by your own effort. Let it come as it will. Leave the incoming to the Paramatma; and as for sending it out, expel as deeply as you can. The results are wondrous.

We are all very eager to inhale, not to exhale. If you observe, our emphasis is never on exhaling, always on inhaling. And this is not only about breath; our whole life depends on taking, never on giving. One who emphasizes exhaling and not inhaling will find his whole personality turning toward giving; taking will lessen.

By examining a man’s breath, one can say whether he delights in taking or in giving—inevitably! Breath cannot be deceived. A miser never enjoys exhaling—only inhaling! Psychologists say a miser not only hoards money, he hoards everything. A miser lives constipated—in every way. He holds on to all things. In ninety out of a hundred cases, constipation is the result of the mind’s miserliness. The desire to hold onto everything ends up holding even the stool. He holds the breath too. He fears to give. He is eager only to take.

But the law of life is: the more you give, the more you receive. If you are miserly with the outgoing breath, you will not be able to receive. From where will it come? Only stale air will collect inside. Only carbon dioxide will gather. There are some six thousand alveolar sacs in your breathing apparatus. We breathe into at most fifteen hundred or two thousand. Four thousand remain filled with carbon dioxide. We never empty them. We collect filth within. We live on the surface while within layers of impurity build up.

Tao says: empty the breath out; do not worry about taking in. Taking will happen by itself—emptying is enough. And the more you empty, the fresher air will enter. This emphasis on emptying is also because, with this change of emphasis, the possibilities of giving expand throughout your life. All our anger is because we will not give, we want to take. All our hatred is because we will not give, we want to take. Our jealousy is because we will not give, we want to take. What is the whole entanglement of our life? That we have no desire to give and an immense desire to take. One who cannot give, will receive nothing. One who can give, receives a thousandfold. And whatever we give—if we give iron, we receive gold. Empty out carbon dioxide and prana, oxygen, fills within. This is the formula of the whole of life.

Thus Lao Tzu’s second sutra: always throw the breath out; forget about taking it in. Taking is not your work; nature does it. You only pour it out, discard it, remove it. Leave empty space; it will be filled. If your emphasis is on exhaling and not on inhaling, the mind becomes utterly pliant. For inhaling creates tension, a forcing. Exhaling brings only lightness. Exhaling makes you weightless. Filling is a burden; emptying removes the weight.

So the second sutra: release, do not take in.

The third sutra of Lao Tzu: the center becomes the navel; the emphasis is on exhaling; and third—do not think of yourself as separate from this coming and going of breath. When breath goes out, know that I have gone out; when breath comes in, know that I have come in. Become one with the prana.

What do we do? We say: breath came into me, breath went out of me. Lao Tzu says exactly the opposite: with the breath I went out; with the breath I came in. I am outside, I am inside. With breath I enter this body; with breath I go into the vast body beyond. Walking, standing, sitting—if you can keep this remembrance: with breath I went out, with breath I came in—let this become a japa. Slowly, slowly, like a chant it begins to resound within: with the breath I go out, with the breath I come in. If this ceaseless process of breath becomes a japa of going out and coming in, nonduality ripens, nonduality is experienced.

If these three are done carefully, Lao Tzu says: “When one brings his life-breath, through his own one-pointedness, to the ultimate pliancy, he becomes soft like a child.”

Then he becomes childlike soft. The greater the softness, the greater the life. The less the softness, the greater the death. Becoming hard is the door of death; remaining soft is the gate of life. Soft, like a newly sprouted shoot. It looks weak, but that weakness is its strength. The old may look strong, but not stronger than the child—because death draws near. The harder he becomes, the closer to death. The child appears utterly weak, yet in his weakness is great strength, for life will still spread and grow in him.

Pliancy! But this is not possible without the experiment on breath. If it becomes possible with breath, it becomes possible in all aspects of life. Our breath affects our personality from every side. Your breath is your mirror. What you do with breath shows what you are doing with yourself. By the way you breathe, one knows the kind of person you are.

When someone came to Lao Tzu for sadhana, Lao Tzu would say: stay with me a week; let me see how you breathe, how you exhale. A seeker would be astonished: we have come for Brahma-knowledge, for truth—and this man speaks of how we breathe in and out! For seven days Lao Tzu would watch the man in many states—sleeping, waking, working, walking, in anger, in love—and observe the arrangement of his breath. Until he understood the breath, he would give no sutra of practice. Through breath alone the whole of sadhana can be arranged.

Keep these three sutras in mind. You have heard the Japanese word harakiri. We translate it as suicide. But the Japanese meaning is deeper. Hara means the center, the supreme center—the source from which life arises. If someone pierces that very center with a dagger, that is called harakiri. Therefore not everyone can do harakiri. If you wished to, you could not. To do harakiri one must recognize the hara—where that center is.

I have just spoken of the tanden, two inches below the navel. If you go on breathing from the navel, slowly you will begin to remember a spot two inches below. The same spot, when it becomes so clear that the whole body feels like a circumference and that alone the center—when the whole body seems a circle and that alone the center—when day and night, waking and sleeping, your remembrance of that center continues and like a lamp a flame begins to glow there, then it is called the hara. For one in whom that flame glows within like a lamp—there is no death for him.

Harakiri means: breaking the body at the center. Then that flame dissolves into the supreme Flame.

This hara, this center, is not in your intellect; not even in your heart. It is near the navel. That is why, in the mother’s womb, the child is not connected to the mother by the skull, nor by the heart—but by the navel. By the navel he is joined and remains alive without breath and without heartbeat. Which means neither heart nor intellect is indispensable for life. Without heartbeat the child remains alive; without breath he remains alive; but without the navel he cannot.

Therefore, as soon as we separate the child from the mother, the first act is to cut the connection at the navel. Until that connection is cut, the child cannot breathe; his individuality will not arise, he will not stand separate. He is linked to the mother; that link must be cut. When we cut the link, for the first time his body will need to breathe, the heart to beat, the blood to flow. The child will begin to walk life on his own feet.

Understand it like this: there is a thread from the navel joining us to the mother, and from the very navel there is another thread joining us to Paramatma, to existence. Let us understand the other end of the navel—the other aspect—from which we are joined to existence: that is called hara. And Tao says: one who finds that hara, that center, becomes simple—like a flower, like the stars of the sky, like children, like the eyes of animals—fluid and simple.

If this fluidity and simplicity are like water, then in the third sutra Lao Tzu says: “When he dusts off and wipes clean the excessively mysterious scenes of imagination, he becomes without taint.”

Let breath become pliant, return to the center—and then throw away the whole net of imagination!

How many nets of imagination we have woven—not only in the name of the world, but also in the name of religion. Countless gods, countless heavens and hells we have created out of imagination. We have not known; we have no recognition—only imagination is stuffed within. Our imagination is a library, in which the imaginations of ages are stored. Life after life, we have gathered innumerable webs of fancy, and live entangled among them.

But all these webs are in the intellect. If someone tries to cut them with the intellect, he will not succeed. It is necessary to go below the intellect, to go deeper, to stand at the center of existence. As soon as one comes to the navel, he becomes strong enough to break the imaginations and throw them away. Some people keep trying to fight intellect with intellect. One argument can be cut by another, but remember: the second argument will capture you. One fantasy can be cut by another, but then the second will hold you. The real difficulty is that the very intellect with which you cut must itself be cut, or nothing will be cut.

So people keep cutting—replace one religion with another, one guru with another, one doctrine with another, one scripture with another. Some get into a worse plight: they think they have given up all scriptures and then they invent their own—which will be even poorer; another’s would have been better.

This difficulty has arisen with Krishnamurti and his disciples. Krishnamurti said: break all the nets of imagination. It sounds good—break them. But then a man puts himself at the center and begins to weave his own. Until you step away from the center of imagination, you will keep weaving. Imagination is so marvelous that it fills itself even negatively. Krishnamurti says there is no guru, and the listener says: we will not accept any guru—and deep inside starts accepting Krishnamurti as the guru, without even knowing it.

A friend came recently. He said to me: we do not accept any guru, because we listen to Krishnamurti. Because we listen to Krishnamurti, we accept no guru. I asked him: if this idea has arisen from listening to Krishnamurti, then he is a guru. The idea is not yours. Earlier you accepted others’ ideas; now also you are accepting another’s. He said: no, we do not accept Krishnamurti as guru. I said: then why do you go to listen? What need is there to listen now? He said: we go to understand. I said: what else does guru mean than one from whom we understand? And what else does guru mean than one to whom we go for understanding?

If a man keeps standing in the intellect, he will grasp even the contrary through the intellect. Nothing unnatural in it; natural. No, the real issue is not to cut the net with intellect, because intellect will spin a new one; it is to step away from the intellect. How to make the jump away?

Two experiments have been made to step away from intellect. One: leave thinking, fall into feeling. Like Meera; Meera does not think, she falls into feeling—dances, sings, does kirtan.

But feeling does not take one very deep. It takes deeper than the intellect—so it is better than intellect. Anything is better than intellect. It takes deeper. But what Lao Tzu says goes deepest. He says: feeling too is not far from the intellect. We move where even feeling does not remain, thought does not remain; neither intellect nor heart, neither jnana nor bhakti. We move where consciousness becomes without any modification—pure existence remains.

For this pure existence the whole rubbish of imagination must be swept away.

But who will do this? If you give the task to the intellect, you will fall into error. The intellect will sweep it away and spin new nets. Remember: the new nets are more dangerous than the old. The old you at least feel like dropping; the new you feel like clinging to and guarding. New gurus are more dangerous than old; new scriptures more dangerous than old—because with the new there is the clinging of novelty. If someone gets the notion “I am capable of cutting all nets,” that very ego, standing at the center of intellect, becomes the biggest net.

No, we must move below. It is delightful: if you begin to breathe from the navel, you will not remain egoistic. You will not have to do anything to drop ego—you will not remain. Ego is such a big tension that if breath moves from the navel it cannot hold; everything inside becomes so peaceful.

Lao Tzu used to examine his disciples. He would set a question; they would bring a correct answer; and Lao Tzu would tear it up and throw it away, for he would place his hand on their belly and say: the question was wasted, the answer is wrong. A young man once said to him: are you mad? I have written exactly what you taught! Lao Tzu said: that is quite right—but the breath of what you have written is not from the navel. Such an answer can arise from within only when the breath moves from the navel. You have brought it from listening; you have written it with the intellect. There is no experience of it within you.

When Chuang Tzu, his greatest disciple, arrived, Lao Tzu explained all and he listened. When the time for his test came, as other disciples would bring their papers to answer, he came empty-handed and sat. Lao Tzu said: today is your examination; I will ask; you have brought nothing to write with? Chuang Tzu said: if I am not the answer, what use are the answers I might write? He took off his clothes and lay naked before him. He said: look at my breath.

Remember: if true breathing from the navel has not begun, and you have merely been trying to do it, then the moment someone places a hand on your belly, your breath will immediately shift to the chest. Instantly! As soon as you become conscious, it goes to the chest. Only if one has become simple like a child does the breath keep moving from there no matter what anyone does. When a doctor takes your wrist to feel the pulse, do not think the pulse is exactly what he reads. The doctor should reduce it a little; it is not that much. It increases by his holding your wrist. It increases because you become conscious; you get nervous. Tension rises. So when the doctor diagnoses, he should not think the illness is exactly so much; it appears somewhat more because the inner anxiety has increased.

Chuang Tzu lay down and said: look at my breath. His belly rose and fell. He lay like a child. Lao Tzu said: you have passed. I need ask nothing now. For the answerer is present within you.

Consciousness must be moved from the intellect and taken toward the navel.

All our conditioning, our education, society—all are engaged in taking consciousness toward the head. It is useful, as I said. But one day we must return from that utility. To lose the original center at any cost is dangerous; to find it at any cost is cheap.

So understand Lao Tzu’s sutra as a sutra of practice. Watch your breath and attempt a transformation of it. A revolution in breath will be a revolution in you. As breath becomes deeper, your depth will increase; your shallowness will end. The day breath settles at the center, that day you will meet the world at the point of nonduality.

One who comes to his own center comes to the world’s center. One who drowns in his own center becomes one with the vast center. Then a supreme embrace of nonduality flowers. As the breath becomes deeper and moves further inwards, new veils of mystery and new doors of truth begin to open. What is hidden within the human is what is spread out in the vast. One who descends deep within rises high in the Supreme.

The Christian mystics have said: as above, so below. The Indian seers said: what is hidden in the microcosm is in the macrocosm. Plotinus said: Man is the measure of all things. If man descends within, he descends into the vast. Man is a small vastness, a miniature cosmos. Whatever is in the vast is within him—everything! By reaching his own center, a person reaches the center of the universe.

So Lao Tzu says: the one who fulfills these three in the sadhana of prana…

Remember, Lao Tzu’s pranic sadhana differs from Indian pranayama. Indian pranayama is intellectual, organized, effortful. In it prana is arranged by the intellect. Lao Tzu’s pranayama is natural. Do not impose an order by the intellect; rather, break even the order the intellect has imposed till now and rediscover the natural movement of prana—the spontaneous flow we were born with. Thus there is a fundamental difference between Indian pranayama and Lao Tzu’s pranic sadhana. Lao Tzu’s is deeper, because pranayama is ultimately man’s arithmetic: block the left nostril three times, then the right three times, hold inside so long, hold outside so long—this much rechaka, this much kumbhaka—this is all mental. It has uses and benefits; but these pertain to the body. By these, a person can attain excellent health and even power. But Lao Tzu’s pranic sadhana is utterly different. Through it one attains Nature, the Prakriti—that which existed before our thinking and will remain after our thinking is gone.

Therefore prana-yoga, Indian pranayama, can be dangerous without a guru—because it is planning, order, discipline. Lao Tzu’s pranic sadhana can proceed pleasantly even without a guru; there is no reason it cannot. Because in Lao Tzu’s method there is less to learn, more to unlearn. We need only drop what we have learned wrongly; the natural will reveal itself. No new discipline is to be imposed; all disciplines are to be broken and Nature given a chance to move as it wishes.

As I said, until you accept your body—and accepting the body means accepting your sexuality—you will never be able to attain sensitivity with the body. As long as you go on condemning something within, how will you embrace? If you have built walls within, leave aside meeting another—you will not be able to meet yourself. One who is afraid even of meeting himself, by what reason will he be fearless before meeting Paramatma?

Accept what is within—accept it as a gift of Paramatma. Drop condemnation. There is no sin, no crime. What is within is a part of the Divine. Accept it. The very moment all-acceptance arises within, all obstructions between body and consciousness break, and body and consciousness become a single fluid stream. Then the body is your own part—spread outside. And the soul is your own body—gone within. Then the body is solid soul, and the soul is liquid body. Then the body is visible Atman, and the Atman is invisible body. Then they are two poles of the same thing. The day this is known, the whole world becomes one. That day the difference between stone and Paramatma disappears.

Those who carved the images of Paramatma out of stone were very wise. They gave a message: until the stone itself appears as Paramatma to you, know that you have attained nothing. There is no other purpose in making God’s image in stone. It is an indication: when even a stone appears divine, what place will remain where you do not see the Divine? The first mark of a religious man is total acceptance. From total acceptance comes peace. From total acceptance comes rest. From total acceptance comes childlike innocence. For such innocent eyes, the world becomes Brahman.

Enough for today.

Now for five minutes let us become childlike in kirtan, and then take leave!