Upasana Ke Kshan #9

Between the two of us a personality also stands. Yours stands too. So when two people meet, four meet, not two.

Yes, there are the two, and then there are the two forms of them that stand in between. And often the meeting happens only between those two forms. The two real ones don’t even come to know; they remain apart. That is why the meeting usually never really happens. Only when these two in-between forms move aside can the real, authentic persons meet. That rarely happens.

If you come to meet me, Pushpa, you too have a notion of “Pushpa”—how Pushpa should get up, how she should sit, how she should speak. You will move according to that notion. So a conceptual Pushpa will constantly stand in between, and the image you carry of my personality—there will be a conversation between those two. And the two of us will never truly speak. We can do that only when both images drop, when both are witnessing, when both can set the images aside; then persons can meet.

And this is why love brings such bliss: in some moment of love the images fall away, and the persons come face to face in a direct encounter. There is nothing else to it. For the one we love, we remove all coverings. The clothes we wear are not the only coverings; we wear the garments of personality too. Therefore in love we become naked; we keep no covering; we are as we are. Because we know the one who loves us will accept us exactly as we are. With one who does not love us, we are afraid: will he accept us as we are? No—so we become whatever he will accept.

If there is the state of witnessing, these poses begin to be seen as poses. Then it can also happen—that the witness may say, “Drop this, drop this; come, meet me; let this go”—that which stands in the middle continually. In some deep glimpse of love it sometimes moves aside...

And it seems that now, slowly, it does not move aside even in love. The stronger cultures become, the further man advances, the stronger the pose becomes. Because the whole culture, the whole society, the whole civilization stands on pose. It stands on pose! It has no connection with the inner person. And all of us, by suppressing one another, keep insisting: you—be as we want you to be; not as you are.

Yes. But only as you are can there be a relationship. With what you are not, no relationship is possible at all; because that is not you. That is only acting. What relationship can happen with that? Yet this is what we are all doing here. Everyone is doing it!

No, no, no. That is just the personality. Only the personality. It’s gone. It is the personality.

Suppose a man comes here and sets the house on fire. Although we are not the house, still, if the house is set on fire, the house will burn, and a fear will spread. But there can be two kinds of people in this building. One will start shouting, “I have been set on fire!” and run—he won’t say, “The building has been set on fire.” If he has so identified with this building that it has become himself, he will cry, “I have been set on fire.” The witness will say, “The building is on fire.” You understand what I mean, don’t you?

We too have a house in which we are living; that is our personality. And there is also a “we” who is living in it. But of that “we are” we have no clue—none at all. We have no idea who it is that is living. Nor do we ever try to find out. We decorate our house, we paint it, because the house is visible. The passerby on the road sees the house; you are not seen.

And the house of our personality is such that we cannot leave it somewhere and go away; it is always with us. So we fix the personality first, because that is what is seen, that is what gets caught in the other’s eye; nothing else is caught. Therefore the inner person often remains completely raw; nothing happens there. The outer makeup suffices; there is no need to do anything about the inner. But the day it becomes clear that we had been preparing things just to show others, and inside we missed something, we lost something—that very day religion begins.

In my view, religion begins with becoming alert to personality—with understanding the personality we have put together.

And then one day it starts feeling, “How long are we going to go on whitewashing the house!” Another amusing thing: the day this thought arises—no matter how much you paint the house, no matter how much people praise your house—you yourself know you have formed no relationship with them. They are praising only the house. This is what often happens. Often it happens.

So many have told me. A woman will come and say, “Whoever approaches me, I feel he loves only my body, not me.” And then suddenly the mind fills with revulsion. Because deep, deep down we do know that within us there is someone else as well. Yes, it can be that through the body we love that one—then the situation is very different. Then the body is simply an extension of that one, spread outward. We are not sitting out in the porch admiring the building; we have also formed a relationship with the owner. And if we have looked at the house, it is only because it is this owner’s house—nothing more than that. Do you understand?

But our penetration usually goes no further than the body, no further than the personality. And the other is so frightened that he never leaves himself completely open either. Because we have laid down so many rules, so much discipline, such an order for a person to follow that there is no end to it.

We have been taught that if I love Narayan, I must never be angry with him. How can that be? The truth is, I can be angry only with the one I love—at whom else will I be angry? But the instruction is: do not be angry with the one you love. So I swallow the anger, suppress it, and keep displaying love. Then in a few days that love will turn false; it will cease to be authentic and genuine, because authentic love includes that too.

A friend asked: many times it seems as if this man either loves his beloved or is tormenting her. You might not even be able to imagine this—but if there is love, only then can it be imagined. It may happen that a lover kneads his beloved’s flesh and blood with his fingers, or thrusts his fingers in. To an onlooker it will seem, “What a wicked man, a torturer, a sadist—why is he tormenting her? Is this love?” But if love has happened between the two, the beloved will understand.

He is trying to grasp her all the way within; his mind does not want to remain only at the level of the body. You understand my meaning? Though it is a very helpless effort, very helpless. It cannot really happen. However deep the hand goes into the body, it will still only come upon bone and flesh. But in some moment of love, it can happen—it can.

He is saying, “Not the house—you! I want to come to you, and this house keeps coming in between and I have to turn back from here.” “No; I am not willing to settle for that.”

You will be amazed that there have been such incidents where a lover, on the very first night, pressed his beloved’s throat and killed her. From the outside this event will look exactly as if she fell into a murderer’s hands. What happened!

But it need not be so. It is possible that he loved so much that matters of exploring the body, of surveying its parts, of studying its physical geography, did not concern him at all. He was so much a lover that he wanted to go straight within and said, “Come out of this house; I want to reach you.”

It is a very helpless urge. It is not even possible; it is no method. But it can happen.

And if that beloved too had love, then at the moment of dying she would have experienced a peace that you cannot give even by serving your beloved for fifty years. Because someone attempted to reach all the way within her.

In my view, even sex is, in essence, nothing but an attempt to enter into the other person’s interior—as far within as we can search into the innermost of the other. Therefore sex can also arise out of love—but then it will be vastly different, utterly different. Then even that is nothing more than an inner touch—a striving to touch that person’s innermost core. That is, we do not wish to agree to remain at the body; we want to go further in, and further in. You understand what I mean?

This pain, this suffering of love, is very great—its difficulty is immense. But since we never love, never really know love—we all only pose love—love never awakens in this way. And then, we have laid down rules even for love: how to love. We have made all the arrangements. So we have made everything false; everything has become a lie. And from that falseness comes great pain and great misery.

And in my own experience, if we cannot be angry with the one we love, then we have not loved at all. In fact, many times it will be that in the flash of your anger he will, for once, experience that there was love. Because such fierce anger is simply not possible toward a stranger.

They keep coming up because you fail to distinguish between two words. One word is ‘experience’, the other is ‘experiencing’. From experiencing you can never separate yourself, because there you are not separate at all. In experience you are separate—you are never one. This difference needs to be understood.

I am looking at a flower and I am immersed in the flower’s beauty; when I am immersed, what is happening to me is not experience, it is experiencing. There, the flower and I are not two things.

No. You will say that later, when experiencing has turned into experience. When the experiencing dies, it becomes experience. Experience means: the past. Experiencing means: now, here, this very moment.

Yes, the memory of an experience is an experience. It has now become a past memory. And once it becomes memory, you are immediately separate. So you are always separate from the experience. For example, today you say, “I was once a child”; you are now completely separate from that experience of childhood. How can you be one with it? That has become memory. Now you are entirely different. But when you were a child, you simply were; and when there was the experience of childhood, you were not separate.

One has to be a witness to the mind. In experiencing, the mind is simply not there. That is the difficulty: in experiencing, the mind is not there at all. Experience is mind. In fact, the sum total of all our experiences is what we call the mind. One is to be a witness of the mind. Mind means: the dead past—what is no longer, but was. Or mind means: that which is not yet, and will be.

In experiencing there is no question of a witness. If, in the midst of experiencing, you become a witness, the experiencing will be broken that very moment, destroyed, ended—it will immediately turn into experience. I am saying you can only be a witness to experience. If, even in experiencing, you try to be a witness… For example, I am loving someone and he has come and embraced me; if at this very moment I try to be a witness, the event of embracing becomes past right then. In that moment it is no longer experiencing—it has become experience. That is, the person has already embraced; the matter is finished. Even if our arms are still around each other’s necks, if you have come to know, “Yes, I am loving,” it has become an experience. Then the matter is over.

No, not at all. What I am saying is: you have to be a witness to the mind. And the strange thing is, you have become almost nothing but the mind. There is no experiencing; only experiences are happening. Even when you could be in experiencing, you are not there—you are somewhere else. For example, you stand by a flower, but you are not actually standing by this flower; you may be standing by those flowers before which you once stood.

A man says, “This rose is very beautiful.” Someone could ask him, “You say this rose is very beautiful.” The notion that roses are beautiful and the past experience come in between. So it may be he isn’t talking about this rose at all; he is talking about the experience of roses stored in his mind. And you might have to stop him and say, “Just look—see whether it is beautiful or not!”

Experiencing is what I call anubhuti, and experience is what I call anubhav.

As experiencing dies, it keeps getting accumulated. Like a snake moving: while the snake moves, the snake and the moving are one and the same, not two. It is not that there is some snake who is moving; the very act of moving is the snake—just that much unity. But behind, a line is left where the snake has passed. When it looks back, it is not one with that line; it is absolutely separate.

A snake’s skin is on it, joined to its flesh—then the snake and the skin are not two things, they are one. Then the skin is shed and the snake slips out. Now, when it looks back at the skin, the skin has become a completely separate thing. Our experience is like that sloughed-off skin.

And the funny thing is: experience can be handled conveniently because it is dead. You can pick it up and set it down as you please. You cannot treat experiencing that way. Experiencing is so alive that it sweeps you away—you are not standing there at all. So gradually we stopped caring for experiencing; we began living in experience. It is convenient. Do you understand? Convenient.

Today, if I love “Vijay,” who knows what response will come? There is no telling. The response is utterly uncertain. So I live in experience: I say, yesterday I loved; the response that came was very good, very pleasing. I live in that experience that came yesterday—and I expect the same to come today.

Remember, you cannot even imagine a repetition of experiencing; only experience admits of repetition. And the person who wants to repeat experience—his experiencing goes on dying, because experiencing cannot be repeated.

The truth is, if I have loved someone today, I will not be able to love him again in exactly the same way on this earth. I simply cannot. Because I will change, he will change, everything will change. Yet I will expect, “Great joy came—let me love in just that way again.” He too will expect, “Great joy came—let the same love happen again.” Then we keep repeating the experience, the memory. And then it turns false; a falsity stands around us which is not true. And when we are badly entangled in that falsity, then if we do it there is no juice; if we don’t do it there is trouble. Because it seems that perhaps by doing it the juice will come. Thus a web keeps being woven.

For one who lives in experiencing, there is no question of being a witness.

I am telling you this: for the one who lives in experience, there is the question of being a witness—precisely so. And it is there so that through witnessing he can be freed from experience. And the day he becomes free of experience through witnessing, on that day there is no need for the witness either. Then he will live each day. Not even, “I am seeing, I am knowing”—that is no way to live. It cannot be a way to live. Because if you are seeing and knowing, how will you live? Then he will simply live. He will not even say, “Ram is hungry.” He will be hunger. He will say, “I am hunger.” In experiencing it comes like that.

So there is a journey beyond even the witness. Witnessing is only a methodology, to break the mirage-net we have woven. Once that net is broken, the witness too has to be bid farewell.

These days I keep thinking to speak of beyond the witness. But first one must be brought as far as the witness—otherwise it is very difficult.

Yes, yes—any.

It will be there, it will be there, it will be there. Sakshi, because you live in experience. If someone says, “I live in experiencing,” then there is no question of the witness; because in experiencing there are not two—there cannot be. If I am standing in the moonlight and I am in pure experiencing, then even the moon is no longer the other—let alone the question of pain and the foot—the moon too is not other. Everything begins to overlap. It no longer remains that the moonlight is coming from the moon and reaching me; it becomes such that the moonlight is coming, and I am also going toward the moon. And these two movements mingle so utterly that who is coming and who is going makes no difference. There is no longer “the moon there and I here”; there are the moon and I—and a long expanse of both. Both are within a single circle, where there is no question of two.

In truth, the ultimate yoga is beyond the witness. But the steps one has to travel are those of witnessing. Because if we tell a person of experience, “Do not even be a witness,” then he will take himself to be one with the experience itself. And by becoming one with experience we suffer—suffer a great deal. That identification has to be broken.

In fact, all devices are, one way or another, false. The difficulty is: when the illness is false, what can a true medicine do for it? If the illness you have grasped is false, a false medicine will have to be used. And if a true medicine is given for a false illness, a double illness will result, because the medicine will itself bring illness. Only a false medicine can cure a false disease.

The witness is a device to remove our false illness called the world. When both are gone, then there is neither a witness nor anything witnessed; no one seen, no seer. Then there is being. That is existential. There, there is only pure existence. But that is far beyond the witness.

In truth, witnessing belongs to the same plane as the world. It is on that very level; it is not different from it. All medicines are on the plane of the disease. Health does not exist on the plane of disease, nor on the plane of medicine—it is far beyond both. Medicine and disease are on one and the same level; if they were on two different levels, they could not meet. All medicines are of the level of disease; hence they can cut the disease. But once the cutting happens, the matter goes beyond both, and what remains beyond—that is health, which is not immediately visible.

All religions are on the plane of the world. Whatever the state of the world may be, religion is on that same plane, not different from it—because it has come precisely to cut through that state.

If this room has caught fire and I go to the second floor to sprinkle water, then I am mad. If this room is on fire, I must sprinkle the water in this very room. Do you understand?

On the plane on which a person stands—the plane of experience—there the device of witnessing has to be used. When one is free of experience, one is free of the witness too. When the disease is gone, one is freed of all medicines.

But there are some patients—though the disease goes, they go on carrying the medicine. Then the medicine itself becomes a disease. Because for them the disease left through the medicine, the medicine too becomes a disease—they cling to it.

So there are people who practice witnessing; their experiences have departed, yet they keep clutching the witness. Because they fear, “It happened through this.” Now this has become a second disease—the witness too has become a disease.

(The audio recording of the question is not clear.)

There is no difference at all in the outline. Not the slightest difference. The outline of the subtle body is exactly the same as that of this body—only a line, faint, smoky—not solid, transparent.

In truth, it is the form of that body because of which this body has received this form.

Yes, the subtle comes first; from it the gross is formed. That is the model, that is the framework. Upon it the rest of this whole expanse unfolds.

Yes, there is indeed a link between the two. There is a link between the two. If that link breaks, then returning to this body becomes impossible. Between the two there is—joining them—a relationship. And it is at the navel. That is why, in the mother’s womb, the child is connected to the mother through the navel. The navel is the original source from where life enters us. On this side, the life of the body enters through the navel; on the other side, the life of the soul also enters through the navel.

Yes, meditating at the navel has great value. There is no better center in the body for meditation. For there the body and the soul are at their closest; one could call it the bridge—the juncture—from which the distances immediately begin.

What?

(The audio recording of the question is not clear.)
Actually, with all these things… what happens is that the experience itself is very difficult to express. Because to express that experience one has to find many metaphors and symbols. One has to find many metaphors and symbols.
In fact, when those—what we call chakras—are in full motion, when a chakra is in full motion, its state appears almost like a flower. There is no flower there, but when the inner experience happens, it feels as if something inside has opened. And this opening—that is the special quality of a flower. The very meaning of a flower is: to open, flowering. You understand?

Yes, blossoming. There is an inner experience: when a center fully blossoms, it feels as if there was a bud and it has opened into a flower. Now, how to express this outwardly? Outwardly they made a symbol of it—the lotus has bloomed. And then, as if this lotus were hanging upside down, the first experience of the chakras comes just like that—as if the flower is hanging upside down.

Yes. Hanging upside down, closed. And when it blossoms, it not only blossoms, it also rises. It is blossoming. So the second experience that happens is this: as soon as the chakra becomes active, it slowly, slowly rises upward and blossoms.

All those symbols that are used... our difficulty is that experiences are what they are, and there is no direct way to convey them. So we search for some way. You understand?

Take it this way: someone says, “There a scarlet lotus is in bloom, a red lotus has blossomed.” A red lotus hasn’t literally bloomed there. But if, in a room, everything has been painted red—everything painted red—then you will feel something a little different than you would if everything were painted green.

If you walk into this room and everything has been daubed red—painted the color of blood—then inside the room you will feel something different. If the room is painted entirely green, you will feel something else. The feeling you have on entering such a room—it isn’t “red” itself—but if red surrounds you on all sides, there will be a particular feeling that won’t arise in green. In green, a different feeling comes. You get it?

So when the lotus opens within, if there is a feeling akin to the feeling that arises when you are surrounded by red, then the one who tasted it will say, “A red lotus has bloomed.” Now the mistake will be in the “red lotus.” Because nowhere has any literal red lotus bloomed, but the feeling is as if you are surrounded by red. Every color has its own distinct impact.

You go into a forest and, seeing the expanse of green, you feel a certain joy; green is related to that. Imagine for a moment that all these trees are red, all the leaves are red, all the flowers are red, the whole thing is a forest of tesu; then your mind will feel a strong pull, a strain. There will be no relaxation; you will become tense. Do you get what I mean?

The outcome of red is tension; the outcome of green is relaxation. That’s why all revolutionaries choose a red flag—it isn’t without reason. The color is not without cause. Islam chose a green flag because the word “Islam” means peace. Peace didn’t come—that’s another matter—but they chose green. The sole reason for choosing green was that it is the most soothing, the most peaceful color. The word Islam itself also means peace. So they chose green. There were reasons for that choice.

When you go inward, many events begin to happen within—how to express them? It’s difficult to express them.

In Japan they developed haiku—a form of poetry. Haiku. Narayan, do you ever read them? You should read haiku. In my view, whenever poetry truly develops in the world, it will become like haiku. If you read a great epic, at most five or ten lines will be real poetry; the rest will be rubbish. It cannot be otherwise. Poetry is such a deep experience; how can there be poetry all through something like the Ramayana? In such a big scripture it cannot be. There will be repetition, wordplay, a web of words, rhyme.

Haiku means we dropped everything and kept only the poetry. In two, three, four lines it is complete. All the non-essential is removed, only the essential is retained—the essence that cannot be omitted.

Now haiku are very strange, and very... I mention them so you pay attention to the feeling. There is this haiku—now what can a poet do? The one who had this experience is in a real bind—what should he do? He says:

A small pond
a frog arrives
plop—jumps in
all is silence...

Do you follow it? What does it mean? “A pond, a frog arrives, plop—jumps in, all is quiet, total silence.”

If someone has ever seen a frog jump into a pond—then everywhere all around becomes still... The fakir who wrote this haiku is saying: exactly so it happened. When we reached that shore, the shore of the divine, it was just like this:

A man arrives
plop—
all is silence...

Now what should he do? What can he do? So he even drew a picture: a frog sitting, and a pond... But there is a great difficulty. He is right: he is saying that everything becomes quiet—no trace of the frog, no sound, nothing... only the lake remains, and all is silence.

I hold that whenever poetry evolves, it will move closer and closer to haiku.

If a country is producing long, sprawling poems, understand that poetry isn’t really there. The larger the poem, the harder it is to keep it poetry; then rhyme will creep in, spread will creep in... The more precious the poetry, the shorter it becomes.

In Japan there is a flower, a completely ordinary flower. It grows by the roadside, anywhere, on the riverbank it just sprouts. It has some name. A fakir has a haiku: a fakir is passing by, he stops, startled. Najina—or something like that is the flower’s name. Four or five lines. He says: “Stopping in astonishment, seeing Najina for the first time in life—ah, you were here too!” He asks the flower. But you were so many that I couldn’t see you. Najina is such a commonplace flower that no one has ever really seen it, because it doesn’t “bloom” in the sense of standing out in a garden; it just keeps sprouting and sprouting. So he says: I had no idea there was such a thing as a Najina flower! It was so ubiquitous I never noticed.

Then comes the second part of the haiku, where he says: It was just like this with God. You were so abundant, you were all around, that I never noticed. One day when I came to know, I asked, “Ah, you were here too—like the Najina flower!” Such a common flower... you too were here?

But however abundant the Najina flower may be, it is still only a little; God is so, so much that He is packed tight as Himself everywhere. There is no way He is not. He says: When I recognized the Najina flower for the first time, it struck me—ah, what a great mistake! What is ordinary is forgotten; what is near is forgotten. And the second thing he wants to say is: Ah God, you were here too! I never knew you, O Najina flower. He calls God the Najina flower. Now what else can this man do? Yet he has made it clear—he has conveyed that it is such a common flower that no one looks at it. Why would anyone look?

Only the uncommon is looked at.

Many times I think what we call ugliness is merely commonness. And what we call beauty is merely the uncommon. Nothing more. Nothing else at all. What is common—so overwhelmingly present—does not get seen. What is uncommon gets seen.

Now what could be more common than God? So He simply doesn’t get seen, doesn’t get seen, doesn’t get seen.

He then says: I have been passing this way for thirty years—how many times I must have gone past this flower—and you were always, always in bloom. That flower blooms twelve months a year. It’s not like it blossoms only sometimes. You were always in bloom. What happened that I couldn’t see you? And today I stopped short, and you became visible!

These inner difficulties are such that when someone comes to know, how should he say it? And when he begins to say it, he brings in symbols. And the moment symbols come in, the trouble begins, the difficulty begins. With symbols, things are bound to get very difficult!

Yes, of course. There are colors. Because with each center you will have a different experience—very different.

Reality—absolute reality, absolute reality. In fact, whenever there is any insight, how are we to bring it into the language of the senses? Insight happens outside the language of the senses. And all language is of the senses. All words belong to the senses; the senses coined them. How can we—how can we bring it? Bringing it is very difficult. So we paint the demon black—what else can we do!

Yes, there is no way. It’s not at all necessary that demons be black; many fair ones can be great demons too. But when we paint him, we will paint him black. Because we associate the color black with fear, and not much more. With darkness, with blackness, we have an experience of fear. We have gone into the dark, into blackness, and become afraid. So if, around some person, we begin to feel fear, then however fair he may be, we will paint him black. Do you understand what I mean? That is to say, it has nothing to do with that man’s reality; it is our feeling—we feel as if we have been surrounded by darkness. Now, it isn’t that Ravana was a black man—I think he was among the most handsome people of that era. But for those with whom he had a quarrel, he became just like darkness."

The real point is, there is no color there at all. You’re not understanding what I’m telling you. There is no color there.

Take it like this: a man who lives in the desert and has never seen greenery. A man in the desert who has never seen greenery, who has only seen a burning desert. If such a person has that experience, he cannot have an experience of the color green there. He will have some experience related to the desert. He may have the experience of the night, of the stars—that can be. He may have the experience of cool sand—that can be. That is, he would say: cool sand, stars.

Now this is why there is so much use of stars in Islam; there is no other meaning, because the day is quite unbearable—only the night is good. In this land we do not give much importance to the night; the day is so beautiful that much of our life is linked with the rising of the sun. We have made the sun our God. A man of the desert cannot make the sun God. How would he? Do you understand what I mean? It is a matter of each individual’s experience.

Now a man who has never seen sky-touching trees, who comes from a land where there are only small shrubs—whatever experience he has, it will be very difficult to express it through sky-touching trees. But for someone else—one who has lived among sky-touching trees—some of his feeling can be expressed in them. Because we bring symbols from the outer world. And that is why, in all the religions of the world, colors and symbols have all become different.

Now there are countries where there is no lotus at all—what will you do then! A person there has no idea of the lotus; so how can he experience that the chakra is a lotus flower? That is, the lotus must at least exist. Outside, he will choose something else; that will be his own choice—we do not know what he will choose. In his world, whatever comes closest to the lotus, he will choose that. But the foolish will fight; they will be ready for quarrel.

So one should not be so rigid; one should not be rigid with poetry. Because poetry is not mathematics. And experiences are so diverse.

Take, for example—have you ever thought about it?—the religions born in the desert: their God is very wrathful and very vengeful. Whichever religion—like the Jews or the Muslims—their God is a blazing flame. A little mischief and he declares, I will roast you; I will tear you apart, lay waste to villages, spread fire—he talks like that. This has nothing to do with God.

But a man who lives in the desert—his greatest fear is exactly that; he can think only in that language. He can think only in that language! He never thinks in the language, say, of an Indian Vedic rishi: if his God is displeased, he appears like a flash of lightning. Where in the desert will lightning flash! So his God is one who will frighten you by flashing lightning; he will pour down so much water, bring such a flood that you will drown and be ruined.

But if the God of the desert were to say, I will bring so much water, the people would be delighted—What are you saying! This is very good. Please get angry and bring water.

So God is not saying anything; it is the experiences of the one living in the desert that will be expressed—his own experiences will be expressed!

Now, whoever the people in the desert are, they will form their own visions, their own concepts. And according to those visions and concepts, there will be all the symbols, the icons, the scripture. A tribe living in the forest will have a different scripture and different symbols. A people living by a river will have other symbols. Those who live by the sea will have other symbols. And we will never be able to reconcile them. And I say, why even reconcile them? If there is just a little understanding, it will occur to you that there is no need to reconcile; no need at all.

Recently I was in Ludhiana. Someone sent in a written question. He had asked some other questions too, and one of them was: “I have heard that those who attain knowledge become tranquil like the ocean.” So I told him, it seems you have not seen the ocean. You have not seen the ocean. He said, I have not. I said, and you say, tranquil like the ocean! You have no idea of the ocean. Where is tranquility in the ocean! There is tumult there all the time! There is noise and uproar all the time—where is tranquility! Where did you learn this? He said, I have never seen the ocean. I said, this tranquility like the ocean… you should think a little before you write; it doesn’t happen like that.

What happens is that all our symbols come from where we are, from what we have known, what we have seen. They come from there. And it never even occurs to us—other symbols never come to mind. And because of that, great differences arise.

The experience is the same. There is no difference in the experience. The experience is the same.

(The audio recording of the question is unclear.)

It is running so loudly that no one moves, but…

A great deal is moving, but the scope of its movement is so vast that it doesn’t even occur to the mind. A great deal is moving.

We tend to think of life as though it were mathematics—as if it were a straight line. We imagine that when we travel a path, if it sometimes turns left and sometimes right, we complain, “What kind of path is this? First it turned left, then right, and now left again—what kind of path is this?” One path may be straight, never turning at all. Another takes a thousand bends and still reaches somewhere. That too goes somewhere; the straight path goes somewhere; both go. In life, no path is straight—nor can it be. And the day it becomes straight, life will become unbearable, very frightening.

Imagine a straight road that runs clear across the country from one corner to the other—perfectly straight, with no turn anywhere. All the trees along it are the same color, the same height, the same shape. Identical gas stations appear on all sides, and day and night cars roar along it... I am saying to them: such a road would become monotonous and unnerving. Life has devised many devices so that it never becomes monotonous and frightening for you. Life has used all opposites.

And what I am saying is this: in my view, those we have called religious teachers so far have tried to harmonize with mathematics, not with life. If they grasp one point, they keep holding only that frame of reference and proceed to deny everything opposite or different from it.

But I hold that life is so wondrous that what we oppose is, in some sense, connected with what we support. When we say there is no technique, no method—no way to reach the divine—if we look closely, even that is a method. It is also a way. Its name will be the no-method, the negative method.

That is why the Zen masters did something very beautiful. They say: “effortless effort.” They use utterly opposite words together. Effortless effort. Now you will ask, “How can both be said?” They reply, “Both must be said.” Because there are many who are making no effort—and they have not arrived; and there are many who are making effort—and they too have not arrived. Now what shall we do?

If we say, “No effort is needed,” people say, “Fine—then we are not making any effort anyway; so will we arrive?” The Zen master says, “No, you will not arrive.” Then another person says, “But I am making great effort.” And the Zen master says, “You too will not arrive.”

Then the question arises: How will one arrive? He says: Make effort in such a way as if you are not making it. This is a little difficult to grasp. Walk in such a way as if you are not walking. Walk so that walking is happening, and yet no one is walking. Speak in such a way as if you are not speaking: outwardly speaking is happening, while inwardly a speechless one sits. Eat in such a way as if you are fasting—or, yes, food is being eaten, but there is no madness about eating. Do you get what I mean? Life is like this: if you cannot find a bridge between the two opposites, you will go astray somewhere.

A disciple of Gurdjieff also goes astray, because he clings to method: “If we do this method, everything will happen.” Life is too vast for anything to happen by a method. A devotee of Krishnamurti also goes astray, saying, “We will not take up any method and everything will happen.” Life is so vast that if you do not take up a method, nothing happens either.

And what I am saying is fundamentally different from both. I am saying: hold a method in such a way as if it were no method.

Herrigel went to Japan; there he learned archery. After three years he became frustrated. Then his master said, “You should go; it won’t happen with you. We are tired—exhausted with you. We tell you: shoot the arrow as if you are not shooting. And whenever you shoot, you are the one who shoots.” Herrigel says, “My aim has become perfect—I don’t miss even one. I hit a hundred percent. What more do you want?” The master replies, “We don’t care about the target; our target is not the target—it is you! Our aim is at you.” Herrigel says, “If my aim is accurate, why are you after me?” The master says, “I will not give you a certificate. You have utterly failed. It is true your aim lands, but your gaze is fixed on the target; our gaze is fixed on you. The target is being hit; you are being missed. What have we to do with the target? We want to teach you that the bow can be released in such a way that you are not the doer. The bow shoots. It happens. There should be a happening. Yes, the bow is lifted, the bow is drawn, the bow is loosed—why do you keep coming in the middle again and again?”

Herrigel says, “If I don’t come in, how will the bow be lifted? How will it be drawn? What absurd madness are you speaking? I have to come in.” And the master says, “As long as you keep coming in, it will remain a doing; it will not be a happening. It will remain an act, not an event. And we have no concern with the arrow. You could have learned that in the West. To shoot an arrow, to hit a target—you could learn it anywhere. We wanted to teach something else. We wanted to teach you so that the arrow flies, it flies through you—and yet you are not, your absence is there, your presence is not. You should not be there—why do you keep coming in the middle again and again? The arrow is enough.”

In the end, Herrigel panicked. He said, “At least give me a certificate so I can show in Germany that I learned archery from someone.” The master said, “I cannot. I can only write this much: this man stayed with me for three years, but he could not succeed. His aim began to land, he became very skilled at the target—but the skill for which we sit here to know did not happen.”

The last day arrived. He said, “I will leave tomorrow. I will come for your blessings and then go.” The next morning he went. The master was teaching other students to shoot. Herrigel went and sat on a bench. Today there was no question of learning—today was the last day, farewell. He had come to ask forgiveness: I made a mistake, I troubled you for three years, nothing could happen. He sat quietly on the bench. Today there was no question of shooting. Today he was not there. The effort to shoot that had run for three years, and the ego—“I must shoot and return victorious, successful”—none of it was there. Today all had broken, finished. He sat silently on the bench. The other disciples were shooting.

Then the master lifted a student and showed him how to shoot: “Shoot like this.” The student lifts the bow, draws it, releases—and suddenly it appears to Herrigel: “Ah! Why did I not see this until now? This man is utterly absent!”

He goes, takes the bow and arrow from the master’s hands, draws, releases. The master pats his back. He tears up the certificate he had written out. He says, “You did it! The arrow flew—it was not shot. You came as if you were not; you were not there. That was the only work. And I thought perhaps on the very last day it might happen—because as long as you were trying, how could it?”

So when we say—when I say—I continually speak of both. I keep speaking of both and for this reason: I say method is necessary, and yet no one ever arrives by method. This is what I am saying to them: method is necessary, and yet no one ever arrives by method. Discipline is necessary, and no one has ever been perfected by discipline. Practice is necessary, and by practice you will attain nothing.

And when I say this, I mean: do the practice, but drop the practitioner. I mean: make the effort, but do not let the ego thicken within because of effort; then effort becomes effortless effort. And that is why I must speak both. Because my experience is that both statements have always happened—but one-sidedly. What Krishnamurti is saying is not new.

That is the consummate Vedanta.

This attempt too has been made. It is a long endeavor, continuing unbroken from the Upanishads until now.

Yes, yes. Buddha went through both processes. He first... and on the other side too the effort goes on: like Zen, Yoga, Patanjali—these are all engaged in the effort that by method it will happen; do this and it will happen. Buddha did both. But that was from their side. With method the first understanding that comes is: only if we do something will it happen. If we don’t do, how will it happen? He tried—and it didn’t happen. And what happened with Herrigel happened with Buddha too: after trying everything, he got tired and defeated, and one day he decided, “If it doesn’t happen, let it go. Understand that it won’t happen.” And that very night it happened. The tension dropped—the doer too. For the first time in six or seven years he slept. For six or seven years he hadn’t slept, because that restlessness—“let it happen, happen, happen”—kept holding him. That night he slept; he said, “It doesn’t happen—let it be.”

And the event of “not happening” came to him like this: by the Niranjana... I too was there on that riverbank where he went down to bathe—the river that flows near Bodh Gaya, the Niranjana. He went in to bathe. But he had become so emaciated from austerities that the current was strong and he was holding the root of a tree to steady himself, yet he couldn’t climb up.

For six years he gave himself every hardship possible in the name of method: fasting, headstands, asanas—whatever could be done to the body, he did. And the body had become so wasted that he could not climb out.

Suddenly it occurs to him: a simple river, the Niranjana—I cannot cross it; a simple ghat of the Niranjana—I cannot climb it; then what of the vast river of life and its great banks! It is beyond my capacity. With so little strength this will not be. This cannot be.

He came and sat leaning under a tree, and that day he decided to drop even this doing, to drop even this attaining. Now it will not happen. The matter is finished. Perhaps it cannot happen at all. That night he slept in peace, because there was nothing left to do.

Imagine the moment when there is simply nothing left to do. Even then you will still be! A man earns wealth—that is doing. Then one day he leaves wealth, becomes a sannyasin, says, “We will earn God”—that too is doing. The worry continues, even more so. For wealth can be earned; that is not so difficult. But this earning of religion—where is it to be earned?

Now he too has been defeated. One should say: at that point Buddha is in total frustration. The first frustration had not been total; it was half. That was: wealth and all that turned out useless. But still God could be attained, the soul could be attained, liberation could be attained. That frustration was half; there was still hope of attaining the other half. The ego was half dead, half alive. It was still saying, “We will attain that too; it is nothing, there is no substance in it; we will get the other.” Today even that has died. In one sense, the man named Gautam Siddharth died while crossing the ghat of the Niranjana—because now nothing at all remained for him to obtain. And a man survives by the hope of attaining. That hope of achievement is our very existence: we will get, we will get, we will get. Because only in getting does it seem that we are, we are. The more we get, the more we are; the less we get, the less we are. But that day the whole matter ended. This man’s case became total.

He sat leaning under the tree. A village girl came, bringing kheer as an offering to the tree. The tree was a peepal, a tree considered divine. Evening had fallen, the sun had set, and the full moon had risen. And there, in that light, sat this emaciated, utterly exhausted, ultimately frustrated man—sitting like a statue. Even the wish to move his hands and feet was gone. When nothing can be done, the whole issue is finished. The ego too is finished. Sitting statue-like—thin, pale. In the moonlight she felt as if the deity of the peepal had appeared! She had come to offer kheer to the deity of the peepal.

On any other day he would have said, “I won’t take it,” because he had rules—how much to take, at what times to take. Today there were no rules. Now night is day as well, and day is night. On any other day he would have asked, “Who are you?” Today he does not even ask whether she is a shudra girl—who she is, what she is, what she has brought, whether it is fit to eat or not. There is no more ascetic discipline.

The girl sets down the plate of kheer and says, “Please accept this!” He hasn’t even the mind to refuse. So he quietly takes the kheer. Not to refuse, not even to accept... he says nothing; he simply takes the kheer. He is hungry; he is tired; he takes the kheer and goes to sleep. For the first time in many years he sleeps. Around five in the morning his sleep breaks, his eyes open—the last star is sinking... and he receives what was to be received!

It came at the moment when he was in total relaxation, doing nothing.

But even such a state could arrive—because of the doing.

Yes. If you understand what I mean—you won’t think that you can just go today, lie down under a peepal tree, have someone bring you kheer, relax with the kheer, and then at five in the morning open your eyes and say, “Let it happen”—it won’t happen. Only when, behind it all, the method has been exhausted and defeated does the no-method prevail.
So all that I keep talking about is method—knowing that the day you are defeated by the method, that day your ego will also break; on that day the happening can happen. It will happen only when the method is no more; before that, it cannot happen.

But what can one do? One has to carry these two opposites together. On one side I will keep talking about method, and the whole time I will keep denying method. It will go on like that. All the while I will tell you: do this, do this, do this; and all the while I will say that by doing, nothing has ever happened and nothing will ever happen. Then it becomes difficult to understand me.
Gurdjieff is easy to understand, because Gurdjieff says it will happen through method. Krishnamurti is also easy to understand, because he says it will not happen through method. It is a little difficult to understand me, because I say: you will have to work with methods—and it will not happen through methods.

Yes, so a little difficulty is bound to come, a little difficulty is bound to come. But that’s how it is—what can you do? That’s how it is—what can you do?

Is it possible to be without thought?

Yes, there is a difference. You can be without thoughts; that is not the same as thoughtlessness. Being without thoughts can happen once in a while. The whole reason for that kind of thought-free state is simply this: a kind of numbness sets in—of the brain. Understand this difference.

You are sitting, not walking; another person is also sitting, not walking. But he is paralyzed—he too is not walking. Both are seated. Yet I would say he is not really “sitting”; he is being made to sit. You are sitting. He is only paralyzed. Though both people’s legs look the same—he is sitting, you are sitting—no one could tell by looking who is truly sitting. You are sitting because you could also get up and walk. He cannot walk at all; so what is the point of calling it “sitting”? Do you get what I mean? I wouldn’t even say he is sitting; he simply cannot walk.

It is the same with the brain—brain, not mind. When your brain gets tired and a kind of numbness takes hold. As when someone has died and you are so exhausted you just lie there; your brain cannot function, so you do not function—not because you have entered a state of non-doing. It simply means the brain has become paralyzed. It happens many times—in sorrow, in great joy, in any unforeseen shock, something you never expected that suddenly occurs.

Suppose a dog walks in here and says to you, “Tell me, Praveen, how are you?” Instantly your brain will stop, go numb. You never expected a dog to come and say, “Tell me, Praveen, how are you?” The very hearing of it and you will go numb. This will be without thought. This will be without thought. For a moment you will be without thoughts—the jolt is so strong that thought comes to a standstill.

What we are calling thoughtlessness, thought-free-ness, is something far greater. It does not mean the brain is tired. The brain is fully alert, fully active; no accident has happened, no shock has been received. But from within, that stream of thinking—you have bid it farewell.

A man is lying paralyzed; he is not resting—do not remain in the illusion that he is resting. He simply cannot walk, cannot get up—what rest would that be! Rest is for the one who can walk.
So the right state is this: we are in a condition to think—we can think; we are not thinking.

Not doing it—that is one thing. But if one simply cannot do it, and therefore is not doing it—that is another thing. There is a fundamental difference between the two.

No, the point is not the same.

***
He raised a very good question in the morning; he said that in a country like Sweden, where there is every kind of comfort and every kind of individual freedom—the maximum freedom in life.

In truth, the very question of suicide can arise only for a happy person; never for an unhappy one.
Understand this a little.

As far as suicide is concerned, a miserable person cannot even think of dying; he continuously thinks only of living. The unhappy person keeps thinking: How can I live, how can I live, how can I live? If there is no house—how do I get one? No clothes—how do I get them? No wife—how do I find one? The unhappy person feels, “I’m in so much pain, and if I get these things—wife, house, car, money—then I’ll be able to live.” His whole mind is engaged in removing his suffering. Do you get my meaning? And to remove suffering, one has to live; otherwise, how will you remove it? Suffering cannot end today; you will have to make arrangements, make efforts—earn money, fall in love, build a house—then the suffering will end.

So poor nations and afflicted nations are not suicidal.

Animals, for this very reason, are not suicidal: their whole twenty-four hours are spent just arranging to live. Where is the luxury to die? Where is the leisure? An animal goes out in the morning and spends the whole day somehow arranging his bread and butter. Where is the time to die? When there isn’t even time to live, where is the time to die?

A laborer leaves in the morning, returns at night tired and worn out, falls asleep, and in the morning leaves again. To die, you need leisure! Death is the last luxury of a happy person. To die, you need a certain comfort, don’t you? But there is no comfort!

A poor person cannot die—cannot commit suicide. If you want to keep suicide rates low, keep the world poor. Keep people harassed. Let them be entangled, entangled, entangled in their troubles. Don’t let them find time even to live; dying will be a far-off matter. The thought of dying comes to the one who has already lived.

Now the person who has become comfortable in every way, who is living well and has lived—what is he to do now? The first question that arises before him is: What do I do now? All that was to be obtained has been obtained. And pleasure is more boring than misery ever is. Happiness is more boring than misery, more suffocating. What to do, what to do, what to do? The food is good, the wife is good, the house is good—now what to do, what to do? Now it’s a great difficulty: where to go? For there can’t be a better house than this; where will you get a better wife? Now what? This creates boredom. Only comfort breeds boredom.

You won’t find any animal bored, sitting there jaded—no dog sitting in a funk of boredom. He is always immersed in his instincts. There is no question of boredom. You won’t find the village man bored either. The more intelligence develops, the more comfort develops, the more boredom arrives. Boredom is a very human quality; non-human beings cannot have it.

So the more intelligent, prosperous, thoughtful a person is, the more bored you will find him. Everything starts to bore, everything starts to suffocate. Everything has been attained—what should he do now? In such a state, for the first time the thought arises—he will ask, “What is the meaning of life?”

The unhappy person never asks that. He doesn’t ask what the meaning is. For him the meaning is clear: he hasn’t got bread, he hasn’t got a house, he hasn’t got a woman. The meaning is obvious. The happy person has got everything, and he asks, “What is the meaning of life?” He has food, he has a wife, he has a house, he has money. Now, sitting at leisure in his chair, he asks: What is the meaning? What am I living for? Tomorrow morning it will be the same—there will be tea, there will be the wife, I will sit again in this chair, as I have for twenty-five years. Then what is the point of living? Tell me, what are we living for? Because this is repeating day after day. Now he is frightened of it.

When the question of living begins to arise, then the second question arises: then why not just die?

And there’s a curious thing: the one who has had all the sensations wants to use one more sensation—to see what it is to die. That is the last sensation—one that only the luxurious can afford. It is the ultimate thrill. He says, “All right, I wasn’t born by my own choice—I don’t know how that happened. I didn’t become young by my own choice—I don’t know how that happened. But I can die by my own choice... a definitive act. At least I can die! No God can interfere in this, no power in the world can stop it. In being born I had no hand, in becoming young I had none, in becoming old I had none, but I can die.” So he wants to try that too. This is the final thrill.

Ordinarily, we feel a thrill watching someone else die. But the comfortable man also wants to watch himself die. The ultimate pleasure makes a man suicidal. And if, at the peak of comfort, we fail to discover new kinds of suffering, then within two hundred years man will finish himself off.

That is why, after discovering old pleasures, it is very wise to discover new sufferings. For example, suppose you’ve got bread—but you haven’t got poetry; then the new suffering of poetry should immediately arise—otherwise there will be trouble.

The old kings and princes did exactly this: they created new sufferings. They wanted music, poetry, dance—they created all that. These were new kinds of suffering: “Such-and-such dancer is not available; she is in another king’s court.” What has happened now is that we’ve commercialized everything and collectivized it. Vijay Anand makes one dancer perform, and the whole country watches. Now no one has a private claim on Hema Malini; everyone sees her. The problem is over. Which means that... but there was a time when I could make Hema Malini dance in my court and you could not. Then someone was miserable and dying because Hema Malini was dancing in someone else’s court. Now she dances in every poor man’s court—there’s no question left. So we have... you understand?

So the big problem now is: how do we generate new sufferings? They will come. Someone will start going to the moon, someone to Mars. A ticket will cost one crore rupees; one man will be able to buy it, and the one who doesn’t have a crore will be miserable: “How can I go to the moon?” Suicides will drop at once. Do you get my meaning? We are eliminating all the old miseries, and we aren’t able to generate new ones—then a problem will arise immediately.

We will have to create new sufferings. I am saying that for life to move, it needs both legs: pleasure and pain. But sometimes, you will say, it also happens that a very unhappy person ends his life. Yes, sometimes a very unhappy person also ends his life—but not because he is very unhappy. He ends it for a subtler reason. The very happy man ends his life because there is no further possibility of pleasure—why live till tomorrow? And the very unhappy man ends his life because he sees no hope of attaining happiness tomorrow, no possibility left.

Yes. Basically they are one and the same point; both end up standing at the same place. One has reached there through the extremity of sorrow: all his hope has withered; he says, “Now no happiness is going to come, so why live anymore?” The happy man says, “Now all pleasures have been had; now there is no further pleasure to be had—so why live anymore?” In my view there is no difference between the two. At the extreme of suffering too, a person gets bored, because then there is nothing but suffering. Then if even the hope of attaining happiness is no longer there… if some hope remains, he will not die yet. If even that hope is gone, he will say, “All right, the matter is finished,” and he will die.

But to reach the extreme of suffering is very difficult, because a person’s capacity to endure suffering is endless. Therefore very few sufferers reach the extreme. Hope keeps lingering; it simply does not die. Very few people can be brought to the extreme of suffering. Do you understand?

And also keep in mind that the sufferings people usually take to be sufferings—the sufferings of the poor—no one ever dies because of those. You have never seen someone commit suicide because of hunger; very difficult. Because of illness; very difficult. Yes, someone may commit suicide because of love. In fact, love too is a luxury of wealth and pleasure. Because of those things, no one commits suicide. Whenever the possibility of a new tomorrow disappears for you, death will seize you. Then you begin to seek the possibility of the new even in death.

It is my view that we should create new joys every day; but we should seek new sorrows and new directions—of adventure, of hope. And one who understands these two truths—who understands both—becomes a third kind of person. For that person there is no problem. Are you getting my point? One who understands these two truths is a totally different, third kind of person. For him there is simply no problem.

Yes—there aren't any yet.

Yes.

Yes—then it simply means he did not try in the right way. No one is putting any obstacle in this.

No—that is, you should go up one or two more floors and try again. It doesn’t mean someone is putting up an obstacle; it means that what you did had a methodological slip somewhere. Somewhere there was a methodological lapse. That is, it’s a fault of the method—no one is obstructing you. No one is obstructing you! You made a mistake in the method: you jumped in such a way that you survived. That’s all there is to it.