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CHAPTER 4
Meditation is Death and Resurrection
3 May 1970 pm in
Question 1
A FRIEND HAS ASKED IF THERE IS A DANGER IN AWAKENING THE KUNDALINI. IF SO, WHAT IS THE DANGER? AND WHY SHOULD THE KUNDALINI BE AWAKENED IF IT IS DANGEROUS TO DO SO?
There is a good deal of danger involved. Really, there is a danger of losing all that we take to be our life. As we are, we will not remain the same after the kundalini is awakened. Everything will change. Every thing. Our relationships, our emotions, our world and all that we knew till yesterday will change. All that will change is the danger.
If coal is to turn into diamond, it must die as coal. So the danger is great enough. But it is a danger for the coal as such. If it is to become a diamond, it can do so only if it disappears as coal. Perhaps you don’t know that there is no generic difference between diamond and coal. Essentially they are of the same element. Coal turns into diamond in the course of a very long period of time. Chemically there is no basic difference between diamond and coal. But the coal cannot re main coal if it wants to become diamond. So the coal faces a great danger.
The same way a man faces a danger if he is on his way to find God. He will die as man. If a river is running to meet the sea, it is facing a great danger. It will disappear, it cannot escape it. But what do we mean by danger? It means to disappear. They alone can go on a journey to God who are prepared to disappear, to die.
Death does not erase us as completely as does meditation, because death only severs us from one body and joins us with another. You don’t change in death; only your clothes change. You remain as you are. So death is not so great a danger as we all take it to be. Meditation is a greater danger than death, be cause while death only snatches your clothes away from you, meditation snatches you away from you.
Meditation is absolute death.
In the past, those who knew said that meditation is death, total death. In meditation not only clothes, but everything changes. But if a river wants to become the sea, it has to risk its life. In fact the river does not lose anything when it falls into the sea; it loses nothing at all, it grows to become the sea itself. And when coal turns into diamond, it loses nothing; it grows to become diamond. But so long as coal is coal it is afraid of losing itself. And so long as a river is a river it is afraid of getting lost. How does it know that on meet-ing the sea, it will not lose anything, it will turn into sea itself7
Man faces the same danger in relation to meditation. The same friend also asks why one should take the risk if the danger is so obvious. It is necessary to understand it in some depth.
The truth is that the more we risk, the more we live dangerously, the more we are alive. And the more we are afraid, the more we are dead. In fact the dead have absolutely no dangers to face. The one big danger that the dead don’t have to face is that they cannot die again. He alone can die who is alive. And the more alive he is, the more intensely he can meet death.
There is a rock somewhere, and very close to it a flower has bloomed. The rock can say to the flower, “How stupid you are. Why do you take the risk of becoming a flower? Don’t you know you will wither away before sundown?” There is a great danger in being a flower really. But there is no danger in being a rock. When the flower will have withered away in the evening, the rock will be lying intact in its place. The rock does not have to face much danger, because it is not that alive. The more alive one is, the greater the danger.
A person is in danger only to the extent he is alive. The more alive he is, the more the danger. Meditation is the greatest danger there is, because meditation is the door which leads to the attainment of the most profound in life – the supreme.
But the friend wants to know why one should go for it at all if there is danger. I say, one should go precisely because there is danger. And I say, don’t go where there is no danger. Never go if there is no danger, because there is nothing but death. And go you must if there is danger, because the possibility of life abundant exists there.
But we are all fond of security. We are afraid of the dangers of insecurity, we run away from it, we hide ourselves from it. And thus we lose life itself in the bargain. Many people lose life in trying to save it. They alone live life who don’t save it, who live with abandon, who live dangerously. There is danger in deed, and that is why you should go for it. And it is the greatest possible danger. Climbing Everest is not that dangerous. To reach the moon too, is not so dangerous, although only recently a few astronauts lost their way to it. The danger is great, but this danger is confined to the body; only the body is changed through death. But the danger in meditation is greater than in going to the moon.
But why are we so afraid of danger? Have you ever thought why we fear danger so much? It is ignorance that is behind all such fear. We fear that we may come to an end; we fear we may disappear; we fear we may die. So we do everything to protect, to secure, to fortify, to enclose and to hide ourselves from dangers. We do everything to run away from them; we plunge down every avenue of escape we know.
I have heard an anecdote. I have heard that a king had built a large palace, but it had only one door, a single entrance, so the king may be secure from dangers. The palace did not have any other doors or windows, lest an enemy enter in through them. So it was more a grave than a house. But even a single door posed a danger, since a killer could enter the palace and go out of it through this door. So the king had placed a thousand armed guards at this single door.
A neighboring king came to visit when he learned that his friend had built a palace with such security devices as no other king ever had. And he was pleased to see it – he said that the palace was so secure, it had absolutely no danger from enemies. And he also said that he would have a similar palace built for himself.
When the two kings came out of the new palace, the visiting king complimented his friend once again for building such a beautiful and secure palace and said that he would have the like of it built for himself. But as he said goodbye to his friend and mounted his chariot, a beggar sitting by the side gave a ringing laugh. The master of the palace asked him why he laughed. The beggar said, “As I see it, there has been a mistake in the construction of this house. I have been sitting here since the time the house was being built. And ever since, I have been waiting for this opportunity to speak to you about it. There is a mis take – and only one mistake.”
The king wanted to know about it, and the beggar said, “The one door that you have allowed to be made is itself a danger, it is dangerous. Maybe no one will be able to enter the house, but death will certainly enter through this door. So I suggest that you get inside the house and get this door sealed with bricks from inside. Then you will be absolutely protected, since death cannot enter.”
The king then said, “You are mad. In that case death will not need to enter the palace, because I will be dead as soon as this door is sealed. The house will become a grave.” Now the beggar said, “It is already a grave, except for this door. And you too admit that it will become a grave if this door is removed” When the king nodded his head the beggar added, “The more doors were removed the more like a grave it became. Now only one door remains.”
The beggar added, “A time was when I, too, lived enclosed in a house. But then I discovered that an enclosed life was as good as dead. You, too, can see that if the only door that remains in your house is sealed, it will turn into a grave. I pulled down all the walls of the house I lived in, and now I am under the open sky. And as you say, if the house is completely closed it will be all death, so I say that it will be all life if it is open and unprotected on all sides. I repeat that when it is all open and unprotected it has become life – life abundant. There is danger enough, but it is life abundant.”
There is danger, and that is why it is inviting. And it is for this reason that you should go for it. And it is the coal, and not the diamond that faces danger. And it is the river, and not the ocean that is in danger. And it is you, and not God in you, who meets with danger. So now you think it out for yourselves. If you want to save yourselves, you will have to lose God. And if you want to find God, you will have to lose yourselves.
One night someone asked Jesus, “What should I do so that I find this God you always talk about?” Jesus said, “You don’t have to do a thing except that you lose yourself. Don’t save yourself.” The man said, “What are you talking about? What will I gain if I lose myself?” And Jesus answered, “He who loses finds himself, and he who saves, loses himself forever.”
You can ask if you have any more to ask.
It is being asked: How is it that when the kundalini begins to awaken there appear impediments in its way and that its flow is blocked? What is the reason for it? And what can we do to make it move again?
There are not many reasons but one. It is that we do not invoke it, provoke it with all our will and might, and that we do not bring in all our energy into awakening it. Our efforts are always fragmentary and incomplete; they are never total. Whatsoever we do, we do it half-heartedly. Nothing we do totally. And this is the obstruction; there is no other obstruction than this. And there will be no obstructions whatsoever, if we do things totally. But all through our lives we have gotten into the habit of going only half the way through, we never go the whole way. Even if we love, we do it halfheartedly; we love a person and we also hate him. It sounds strange that we hate the very person we love. We love a person, we want to live for his sake, and at times we also think of murdering him. It is difficult to find a lover who has not thought of his beloved being dead.
Our life is such that it is always divided, always half-and-half. And the two halves are always pulling in opposite directions. Unlike our two legs, the right and left, which move forward in the same direction, the two halves of our divided mind move in opposite directions. And that is what causes us tension and conflict. What is this restlessness of our lives, but that we are always half and half – split, fragmentary and lukewarm?
A young man came to me and said that for twenty years he had been thinking of committing suicide. I told him, “Madman, why don’t you do it then? Twenty years is a long time. When are you going to commit suicide if you have been thinking of it for twenty long years? You are going to die anyway. Will you commit suicide after you are dead?” The young man was startled and he said, “What are you saying? I came to you with the hope that you will persuade me not to do it.” I then said, “Need I persuade you, when you did not do it for twenty years?” His answer was, “Whosoever I met persuaded me not to commit suicide.”
“It is because of these persuaders,” I told him, “that you are neither living nor dead. You are just half and half. You should either live or die; don’t do both things together. If you want to live then give up the thought of suicide and begin to live fully. And if you want to die then give up the thought of living and die wholly.”
The young man stayed with me for two or three days. And every day I told him this; “Now don’t think of living. If you have thought of dying for twenty years, it is better you now die.” The third day he told me, “Why do you say it? Please don’t. I want to live.” So I said, “It is not I who ask you to die. It is you who said that you have wanted for twenty years to end your life.”
Now it is a matter worth considering. If a person thinks of suicide for twenty years and yet does not die then obviously he is not living either. How can he live who constantly thinks of dying? We are
half and half. And this habit of being half and half permeates our entire life. We are neither able to become a full friend to someone nor a whole enemy to another. We are not able to be anything totally. But the wonder is that it is much more joyful to be a full foe than to be a half friend.
In reality, it is blissful to be anything totally, because whenever your total being is involved, all the latent energies of your body gather together and co operate with you. And whenever you are divided and split, you are in conflict and you fight within yourself.
Now if the awakening of kundalini is impeded in its way, it only means that on the one hand you want to awaken it and on the other you are afraid of its awakening. You are going to the temple and at the same time you don’t have the courage to enter it. You are doing both together. You are preparing for meditation and at the same time you don’t gather courage to jump into it. You want to swim in the river, you have reached the river bank, and yet you are standing on the edge of the bank thinking what to do. You want to swim and yet you don’t want to enter the water. It is as if you want to swim inside your living room, as if you want to work your hands and feet lying on a cushioned sofa and have the joy of swimming. No, you cannot enjoy swimming lying on a comfortable sofa in your living room. This is just stupid. The real joy of swimming is inseparably linked with danger.
If there is half-heartedness, it will obstruct the kundalini in many ways. That is why many friends will feel that things have come to a standstill.
If the kundalini comes to a standstill then remember only one thing... and don’t find excuses to justify it. We find all kinds of excuses: that karmas of past lives are coming in the way, that the stars are not favorable, that its time has not come. None of these things that we are wont to think are correct. Only one thing is correct: that you are not doing your best to awaken it. If there is any obstruction anywhere then think that you are not taking a full jump, and then jump with full force. Bring all your energy to it and let go of yourself totally. Then the kundalini will not be blocked at any of the centers.
The truth is that kundalini can complete its whole journey in a moment; and it can take even years. It is all a matter of commitment – whether it is total or fragmentary. If our will, our mind is total, the whole thing can happen right now, this very moment.
If the kundalini is impeded anywhere it only means that you have not invested your whole energy into your efforts. So cooperate with it fully, and bring all your energy to it. There is infinite energy stored within each one of us, but we have never exerted ourselves in anything in a big way. We always live on the periphery of life, we never dig deep into it. Never have we invoked and called our roots, the roots of our being; we have never provoked them, and that is why there are obstructions. And remember, there is no other reason than this.
Question 2
A FRIEND ASKS: WE ARE BORN WITH HUNGER, SLEEP AND THIRST, BUT NOT WITH THE THIRST FOR GOD. WHY?
It will be useful to understand this thing. The thirst for God, too, comes with our birth, but it takes long to know it. Children, for example, are born with sex, but it takes them fourteen years to know it. Desire for sex comes with their birth, but it takes them fourteen to fifteen years to recognize it.
And why does it take so much time? The desire, the thirst is there within you, but the body is not prepared for it. The body takes fourteen years to grow and mature for sex, and then the desire is awakened. Until then it is in a latent state.
The thirst for God, too, comes with birth, but the body is not ripe and ready. And as soon as the body is prepared the thirst is aroused. The kundalini provides that growth, that maturity. But you can ask why it does not happen by itself. It does happen sometimes on its own, but this thing needs to be under stood carefully.
In the evolution of mankind certain things happen first to individuals and then to groups. For instance, if you go through the whole of the Vedas then it does not seem that there was any awareness of fragrance or smell during the times of the Vedas. In all the scriptures of the world that are contemporary with the Rigveda, there is no mention of the sense of smell anywhere. Flowers are of course mentioned, but not fragrance. Those who know say that until the times of the Rigveda man’s sense of smell had not awakened. Subsequently it awoke in the case of a few individuals. Even today, smell does not have any meaning for many people; only for a few persons it has meaning. In fact the sense of smell has yet to awaken fully in all people. The more developed communities have more of it, and the less developed ones have much less of it. There still exist a few tribes on this earth who have no word for fragrance in their languages. So the sense of smell first came to a few individuals and gradually grew and became part of the collective mind.
Like the sense of smell, many other things came into man’s awareness only gradually. They did not exist in the past. Man’s awareness of color makes an astonishing story. Aristotle in his books has talked of only three colors. Until the time of Aristotle, people in Greece had been aware of only three colors; they did not know of any other colors. It was over a long period of time and very gradually that some other colors became visible to them. And don’t think that even today there are only as many colors as are seen by our eyes. There are many more than these, but we have yet to be aware of them. Our sensitivity is not that developed yet. That is why sometimes under the influence of LSD or mescaline or hashish or marijuana, some new colors become visible to our eyes, which we had never seen before. And colors are legion. But it is only gradually and over a long span of time that we become sensitive to them.
Even today, there are any number of people in the world who are colorblind, who have no sense of color. If there are a thousand persons sitting here, at least fifty of them should be blind to one color or another, although they themselves may not be aware of it. And a few persons may be such as cannot distinguish between the green and the yellow. Leave aside ordinary people, even some great and distinguished persons have been found to be colorblind.
A man like Bernard Shaw could not tell the green color from the yellow. And until the age of sixty he did not know that he could not distinguish between green and yellow colors. He came to know of it on his sixtieth birth anniversary when someone presented him a suit of clothes as a birthday gift. It was green in color, but the suit lacked one thing – a tie. The friend had forgotten to buy a tie along with the suit. So Shaw went to the market to buy a tie matching the suit, and he asked for a tie with yellow color. The shopkeeper politely said that a yellow tie will not match with a green suit. Shaw was surprised to hear it and insisted that the color of the tie and the suit was the same. It was now the turn of the shopkeeper to be amused, and he asked, “How are they the same color, sir? Are you kidding?” for he knew that Shaw was very good at jokes. He said, “It is just a joke perhaps that you
say that the suit and the tie have the same color. They don’t; the tie is yellow while the suit is green.” But still Shaw insisted and inquired curiously what the yellow color was.
It was then that Bernard Shaw had his eyes examined and the doctor confirmed that he was blind to the color yellow.
There was a time when yellow was not visible to human eyes. This is the latest addition to the list of colors known to man. Some other colors are new, too.
Music does not have meaning for everybody. It has meaning for only a few persons. And only a few persons appreciate its nuances very deeply. For the rest it is nothing more than sound and noise – signify ing nothing. Their awareness and appreciation of musical notes has yet to develop and deepen. In fact, up to now music has not been the collective experience of mankind.
So far as God is concerned, he is a very very distant experience who transcends all senses, who is beyond all senses. He is the ultimate experience; there is nothing beyond him. That is why very few become awakened, though the potentiality to be awakened lies within everybody and it comes to him with birth.
But whenever a person in our midst is awakened, his awakening, too, becomes a factor for stirring the latent thirst for God in many people. Whenever a man like Krishna rises in our midst, his very sight, his very presence begins to awaken in us what has been asleep so long.
The thirst, the hunger for God is with each one of us, and it comes with our birth. But it is not allowed to awaken, it is suppressed. And there are many reasons for it. The most important among them is that the huge crowds that surround us, the vast masses of people among whom we live are completely devoid of that thirst. That is why when this thirst begins to rise in someone, he immediately suppresses it, because it seems to be a kind of madness to him. In a world where people all around you are filled with the hunger for money and the hunger for fame, the hunger for religion looks like madness. And it makes people all around suspicious about the man hungering for religion, they think he is going out of his mind. So man suppresses himself. This hunger is not allowed to rise, it is suppressed from all sides.
The world we have created has no place for God, and we are responsible for it. Because, as I said, it is dangerous to allow God to have a place, so we don’t give him any quarter. The wife is afraid lest God should enter her husband’s life, because with his coming the wife may disappear, she may become meaningless for him. The husband is afraid in the same way that if God came into the life of his wife, his own place as her veritable God – the substitute God – would be in jeopardy. The substitute God would be nowhere. That is why we have allowed no room for God in the world we have made, because God would be a disturbing factor here. If he comes, he will disturb, he is bound to disturb something or the other; he will upset many things. Here sleep will be gone; there something else will happen, and elsewhere certain things will have to be changed. We will cease to be what we are. That is why we have kept God out of our world.
But just in case the thirst for God arises by chance – to ward off that danger – we have created false gods, stone idols, in our houses, and we worship them, so that the thirst is not directed toward the real God. We have substitute gods all over. This represents man’s worst cunning and his greatest
conspiracy against God ever. These man-made gods symbolize the most formidable conspiracy against religion and God that was ever hatched. And it is on account of this that man’s thirst for God is not allowed to be turned into a quest for God – instead it gets lost around temples and mosques which have nothing worthwhile. And when man finds nothing in temples and mosques, he is disappointed and it seems to him that his own home is better than them. He then says, “What is there in temples and mosques?” So he returns home after visiting them. He does not know that temples and mosques are inventions of great cunning and deception.
I have heard that of an evening the devil returned home dejected and depressed and said to his wife, “I have been rendered absolutely jobless; I have now nothing in hand to do.” His wife was taken aback, as all wives are when their husbands go out of jobs, and she asked, “You are jobless? How could it be? How could you, of all people, lose your job? It is just impossible, because your job is eternal. The work of corrupting people will go on forever. It is such that it can never come to an end. How come you lost it? What is it that made you jobless?” The devil said, “I have been rendered jobless in a very weird way. My job has been taken over by the temples and mosques, by the priests and pundits. I am not needed at all. What else did I do except to deflect people from the path that goes to God? Now no one walks on that path; temples and mosques are there to deflect them from it. So I don’t get the opportunity to lead them astray as I used to do for so long.”
The thirst for God is there as ever. But we begin to educate people about God from their early childhood and that is what harms. Before actually knowing God, an illusion is created that we know him. So everyone thinks he knows God. Before the thirst is awakened we are made to drink water, and this creates boredom and fear. It is because of our wrong teachings that we develop a distaste for God; we lose all interest in him. We stuff our heads so badly with the Gita, the Koran and the Bible, we cram our minds so heavily with the sayings of the saints and mahatmas, that it becomes nauseating and we want to get rid of it sooner than later. So the question of reaching to God does not arise.
Our whole social set up, our entire system is anti God. And that is why the thirst for God is so difficult to arise. And even when it arises, the person concerned appears to us to be crazy; he is immediately thought to be a mental case. It is so because he is now so different from the rest of us. He begins to live in a different way; even his way of breathing changes, his whole lifestyle changes. It is a sea change. He ceases to be one of us; he becomes a stranger to us.
The world we have built is anti God. And it is a solid conspiracy against God. And we have succeeded so far, and continue to succeed to this day. We have thrown out God, we have ousted him completely. And the irony is that we have ousted him from his own world. And we have raised a barricade which has no opening from which God can re-enter our world. So how can the thirst arise?
Though the thirst does not arise, though it is not even known, yet a kind of inner restlessness, an undercurrent of agony pursues us throughout our lives. One achieves fame, and yet he feels an emptiness inside. One amasses wealth, and yet he is missing something, something still remains unattained. One finds love, and yet it seems that something remains to be found, he remains unfulfilled. What is that something which seems to be missing every time one attains success in life?
That is an inner thirst which we have sup pressed, which we have not allowed to rise, to grow and
to be sated. That thirst raises its head every now and then; it turns into a question mark on every path we tread. And it says to us, “You achieved so much fame, and yet you achieved nothing; you achieved everything and yet you are empty.” That thirst aches and hurts us, that thirst disturbs and torments us from every vantage point in our lives. But we deny it and busy ourselves in our work with greater vigor so that its still small voice is not heard.
That is why one who is engaged in making money goes headlong into it, and one running after fame begins to run at a gallop. They plug their ears so that they don’t have to hear that they have found nothing in the pursuit of their ambitions. We do everything in our power to prevent the thirst from arising. Otherwise a day will come when children in this world will be born with the thirst for God as they are born with Hunger, thirst and sex. Such a world can be created, and it is worth creating. But who is going to do it?
It is only a number of people seeking God who can create such a world. But to do so it is necessary that all the conspiracy against God, as is evident up to now, is foiled and defeated.
There is thirst indeed, but man can devise artificial means to suppress it. For thousands of years in China, women were made to wear shoes of steel so that their feet could be as small as possible. Small feet were considered to be a symbol of beauty. The smaller the feet, the higher the rating of the girl’s family’s status. So their feet remained so small that women could hardly walk. While their bodies grew their feet remained stunted and small. They could not walk. And the women who could not walk were called ladies belonging to royal families. The poor man’s wife could not afford it, because she needed to have large feet so that she could walk and work. Only aristocratic women could do without walking; they walked with the help of others. Although they were cripples – it was nothing short of the state of a cripple – they were thought to be smart and beautiful. In today’s China no woman will accept it. She will say they were an insane people who accepted it. But the custom lasted for thousands of years.
When a thing becomes fashionable and popular, it is difficult to see through its stupidity. When thousands of people follow it, when a whole crowd is behind it, you don’t judge it, evaluate it. When a whole society was making its women wear steel shoes, all the women took to it. And if someone did not conform to the practice she was condemned as a mad woman, she was looked down upon as a poor and degraded woman. She would not get a good and handsome husband; she would not be married into a well-to-do family. A woman with large feet was considered vulgar, uneducated and uncultured. It was thought that only peasant women had large feet; the feet of the elite had to be small. This concept had crippled the women of China for thousands of years, and they had no idea that it was sheer madness to wear steel shoes; but the practice endured long. And only when it was abolished could they see through its madness.
In the same way, so far as God is concerned, the mind of the whole of humanity has been perverted, crippled. Man’s thirst for God, his thirst to reach him has been destroyed in every way; it is not allowed to arise at all. And even if it arises, substitute gods are invented and we are told that if we want God we should go to the temple, we should read the Gita, the Koran and the Bible, and we will find him. In reality, nothing is found in scriptures except words, and nothing is found in temples except icons of rock. And then man thinks that perhaps his thirst itself was false.
And then this thirst is such that it comes and goes. By the time you reach the temple it is gone. By the time you read the Gita, it has disappeared. Slowly slowly it is inhibited and enervated. And
ultimately it dies when it is not allowed to be satisfied and sated. Eventually it withers away. It is like physical hunger. If you go on a fast for three days you will experience acute hunger on the first day of the fast. The hunger will be more acute on the second day, and the most acute on the third. But on the fourth day, if you continue to fast, the hunger will begin to decline and it will be less acute on the fifth day. On the sixth it will be much less. And after fifteen days the hunger will cease to be. And if you fast for a whole month, you will no more know what hunger is. You will grow weaker and weaker, you will be increasingly emaciated, and day by day you will lose weight as you will consume your own flesh to survive, but hunger will disappear completely. Because if hunger is not allowed , to be satiated for a whole month, it will be dead for sure.
I have heard... There is a short story by Kafka. He writes that there is a circus with different types of performers and any variety of games and acrobatics and entertainments. The owner of the circus has engaged among the troupe of performers a person who is adept in fasting. This man presents his shows on fasting, and he has a hut to himself. People visit the circus to watch many things – like feats of trained animals, strange and wild animals – and they also come to watch this fasting man, who is an object of great attraction. He can live without food for months. Once he went without food for a full three months at a stretch. So people come to watch him too. But there is a limit to it.
It happens that in a certain town the circus tarries on for six or seven months. Spectators come to watch the man on his fast for a fortnight or a month, but then their interest wears away. That is why it is said that showmen and saints should regularly change their places. If they stay in one place for long, they will be in difficulty. How long will people stand them? So it is fitting that they go from one town to another after every two or three days. When they visit a new town, people flock to them again. In another town they are again very entertaining.
The circus of Kafka’s story stays too long in that town, and as a result visitors stop coming to the fasting performer. They forget his hut completely. And the man is so emaciated through long fasting that he cannot go to the manager and inform him about his situation. He is so weak that he cannot even rise from his bed, so he keeps on lying and lying there. And as the circus is very big, he is actually forgotten.
After a lapse of four or five months someone suddenly remembers him one fine morning and makes inquiries about him. Now the manager becomes anxious, lest the fasting man might be dead. He rushes to his hut, but is pained to find no one there except the bundle of hay on which he lay. There is no trace of the man himself. When the manager calls out his name, there is no answer from him. He is so worn out that he cannot speak. Then the manager removes the grass bed and he is aghast to see the fasting man reduced to a bare skeleton. But his eyes are safe and alive.
The manager says to him, “My friend, I sincerely apologize for forgetting you, but are not you equally crazy? If people had ceased to visit you, you should have resumed eating.” The man replies, “But now my habit of eating is dead; it is finished. I don’t feel hungry at all. And I am no longer a performer; I am trapped in the performance itself; I am a helpless prisoner in its hands. I am no longer play-acting, but really don’t have any hunger. In fact, now I don’t know what hunger is, because what they call hunger no longer happens to me.”
What has happened to this man? If you go on a long and protracted fast methodically, hunger will surely die and disappear. So we don’t allow our hunger for God to awaken, because God is the
most disturbing factor in our life. Nothing in the world can be more disturbing than him. That is why we have taken all precautions against him, and made all arrangements to keep him away. We have blocked his way from all sides and in a very planned manner, so that he does not enter our world even surreptitiously.
Nevertheless, every person is born with thirst for God. And if it is given opportunity and facilities to awaken, all other thirsts – like the thirst for riches and the thirst for fame – will just disappear. Then no thirst other than the one for God will exist. All of them cannot go hand-in-hand. So in order to save these other thirsts – thirst for riches, thirst for power and prestige, thirst for sex – we have to withhold and suppress our thirst for God. Because if the divine thirst arises and holds the stage, it will first eliminate and then assimilate in itself all other thirsts, and will singly hold the stage. God is very jealous. When he appears, he holds the stage alone, all by himself. Then he will not allow others to fool around him. When he chooses to make you his abode, his temple, all petty gods and goddesses will have to leave; they cannot live there any longer. As you see any number of them enthroned in the temples – monkey god Hanuman is there and so are many other gods and goddesses; all of them will vanish. God will not allow them to live there any more. When God will come, he will turn out one and all. He alone will sit on the throne. He is very, very jealous.
Question 3
A FRIEND HAS ASKED: IS NOT WHAT AN INDIVIDUAL DOES REALLY DONE BY GOD HIMSELF?
This is a right question. So long as an individual does a thing it is not done by God. So long as an individual feels that he is doing, it is not God’s doing. The day the individual knows that he is no more, he is not the doer, it is just happening, his action becomes God’s action; it belongs to God. But it does not become God’s action as long as an individual thinks that it is he who is doing. The day doing turns into a happening, the day the individual really experiences it as a happening, God takes over; then he does everything through the individual. If you ask the winds, “Are you blowing?” they will say, “No, we are being blown.” If you ask the trees, “Are you growing?” they will say, “No, we are being grown.” If you ask the waves of a sea, “Are you rushing to the shore?” they will answer, “No, we are being rushed to the shore.” These are acts of God.
But man says, “I am doing.” It is here that he departs from God. It is here that his ego takes over and he is enclosed in his ego. And it is here that man stands apart from God as a separate entity. God takes over the very day man comes to realize that the way the winds blow, the sea waves rush, the trees grow, the flowers bloom, the stars move, he too is being moved; there is someone within him who moves and speaks, he is not separate. That day, and only that day, God is the doer.
It is an illusion that we are doers. And it is this illusion that makes us unhappy and miserable. It is this illusion that works as a wall between us and God. And the day we cease to be doers, ali illusions cease. Then God alone remains.
In fact, even now God alone is. It is not that because you are a doer you become it. I don’t say this; I don’t mean to say so. When you think that you are a doer you are in illusion. Even now God alone is the doer, but you are not aware of it. It is like this: tonight you go to bed in Nargol and you dream in sleep that you have reached Calcutta. You have not reached Calcutta; howsoever you dream
about Calcutta you are still in Nargol. But in dream you have arrived in Calcutta, and you are making inquiries about how to return to Nargol, whether by railway train, or by air ways or by walking. You are inquiring about the route through which you would return and about the guide you will take with you. And you are looking into the travel map. And suddenly your sleep is disturbed and you wake up to find to your surprise that you have not gone anywhere, that you are still in Nargol. And then you don’t ask about the routes and you don’t look into the travel maps. Then you don’t ask for the guide. And if someone were to ask you about your intention to leave Calcutta you will just laugh and say that you had not gone to Calcutta, you had only thought of it.
When a man thinks that he is a doer, he is not a doer in reality; it is only a thought, an idea, a dream. He is just dreaming that he is a doer. In fact everything is happening. And if this dream disappears, then what you call knowledge or enlightenment happens.
Even when you say that God is making you do a thing then also you are in illusion, the old illusion continues. Because then, too, you remain an entity, a separate entity, and there is a distance between God and you. Now you believe that there is God, but besides him you are also there. Now you believe that God is the director and you are the doer.
No, when you will really wake up from your sleep in Nargol you will not say that you have now returned from Calcutta; you will simply say you had not been there at all. The day you will wake up from the slumber of the ego, in which you dream that you are a doer, you will not say that you do as God directs you to do. That day you will simply say, “God alone is, I am not.” You will say, “In fact I never existed; it was a dream that has come to an end.”
And we can go on dreaming for countless numbers of lives, infinite numbers of lives. There is no end to dreaming. And the most amusing thing about dreaming is that when you dream it seems to be absolutely true. You have dreamed any number of times. You dream every night, and the next morning you come to realize that it was a dream and that it was false. But when you dream again tonight you will not know that it is a dream, and that it is untrue. You will again know that it is wholly true. And tomorrow morning you will again say on waking that it was not true at all. How poor is our memory! What you see as false in the morning becomes true once again in the night when you resume dreaming. And the awareness you have in the morning is lost again and again.
Undoubtedly it is not a deep awareness, it is all superficial. It is not even skin deep. Deep down the old illusion continues to recur. We know and understand things only superficially. Someone reads a book which says that whatever we do is all God’s doing, and for a moment he superficially understands that he is not the doer, it is all God’s doing. But the old “I” continues, who now says, “I am not the doer.” This understanding will vanish in a moment. Give him a hard knock and he will be wild with rage shouting, “Don’t you know who I am?” He will forget that only a little while ago he had said, “I am not the doer, I am not; God alone is.” A hard knock and he will forget everything. All his understanding will disappear in a split second, and more than once he will yell at you, “How dare you hit me? Don’t you know who I am?” God and his talk of God will take leave of him, and his “I” will be back in its seat.
I have heard that a monk spent thirty long years in the Himalayas. He spent his time in great peace and solitude, and he forgot all about his ego. For the ego to exist the other is necessary. How can the ego live if the other is not there? The other is a must for the ego; it cannot live all by itself. When
you look in the eyes of the other with arrogance, your ego comes alive. If the other is not there, what will you do with your sense of self importance, with your arrogance? How will you make it felt? To whom will you say, “I am.” To say it, a “you” is needed – the other. To prop up an “I”, which is false, another false entity is needed; it is the “you”. Without the other the ego cannot exist. A network of lies is needed for a single lie to live and thrive. But truth stands alone; it needs no props what soever. A lie cannot stand alone, it needs many props, all made of lies and lies alone. To prop up the lie of “I” you need so many other lies like “you”, “he” and “they”. It is only then that a lie can be sustained.
The monk was alone in the mountains without any other. There was no “you”, no “he”, no “they” and no “we”. There was none to be called as such. And so he forgot his “I”. Thirty years is a long time. He became very still and quiet. So now people from the plains began to visit him. And then they made a request to him, “We are organizing a fair in the valley down there and we request you to grace it with your presence. It will give the people of the plains an opportunity to see your holiness, to have your darshan. They cannot afford to come up to these distant mountains. We will be so grateful.” The monk thought that since his ego had disappeared, there was no harm in going to the people. So he came down to the valley.
This way the mind cheats us any number of times; it says now the ego is gone so there is no harm in going back to the people.
The monk came down to the valley. The fair was very large and crowded. Hundreds of thousands of people, all unknown to the monk, had thronged to the fair. They did not know of the monk, who had gone away from them a long time ago. He was forgotten altogether. So when he walked through the crowd, someone stepped on his toes with his shoes. No sooner the shoes trod on his toes than he grabbed the man by his neck and said, “Don’t you know who I am?” The thirty years he had spent in the mountains were lost within a second, as if it was a dream that disappeared. In a split second the mountains, the peace, the emptiness, the cessation of ego and appearance of God who does everything, all was lost in smoke. In a moment the whole thing was wiped out as if it did not ever exist. Now he was clutching at the man’s neck and shouting, “Don’t you know who I am?”
Then all of a sudden he woke up to the reality of the situation and was appalled to see what he was doing. He said to himself, “I had all but forgotten that I existed, I had lost my ego. How come it is back in its place?” And he apologized to the people and said, “Now let me go.” When the people inquired where he was going and why, the monk said, “I am not going back to the mountains, instead I am going to the plains where I will live among people.” And he added, “What I had failed to know living in the solitude of the mountains for thirty long years, I knew here in a moment coming in contact with one person. Now I am going to live among the people and try to find out whether I am or I am not. Thirty years have been wasted, they now look like a dream, because I had thought that my I, my ego had ceased; but nothing had ceased really, everything was intact in its place.”
This is how illusions are created, but illusions won’t do. Now we will prepare for meditation.
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