Witnessing is like sowing seeds

How does watching lead to no-mind?I am more and more able to watch my body, my thoughts and feelings and this feels beautiful. But moments of no thoughts are few and far between. When I hear you saying “Meditation is witnessing,” I feel I understand. But when you talk about ‘no-mind,’ it doesn’t sound easy at all. Would you please comment?

Meditation covers a very long pilgrimage. When I say “Meditation is witnessing,” it is the beginning of meditation. And when I say “Meditation is no- mind”, it is the completion of the pilgrimage. Witnessing is the beginning, and no-mind is the fulfillment. Witnessing is the method to reach to no-mind.

Naturally you will feel witnessing easier. It is close to you. But witnessing is only like seeds and then is the long waiting period—not only waiting, but trusting that this seed is going to sprout, that it is going to become a bush, that one day the spring will come and the bush will have flowers. No-mind is the last stage of flowering.

Sowing the seeds is of course very easy. It is within your hands. But bringing the flowers is beyond you. You can prepare the whole ground, but the flowers will come on their own accord. You cannot manage to force them to come. The spring is beyond your reach. But if your preparation is perfect, spring comes.

That is absolutely guaranteed.

The way you are moving is perfectly good. Witnessing is the path and you are starting to feel a thoughtless moment once in a while. These are glimpses of no-mind, but just for a moment.

Remember one fundamental law: that which can exist just for a moment can also become eternal, because you are given always one moment—not two moments together. And if you can transform one moment into a thoughtless state, you are learning the secret. Then there is no hindrance why you cannot change. The second moment will also come alone with the same potential and the same capacity.

If you know the secret, you have the master key which can open every moment into a glimpse of no-mind. No-mind is the final stage, when mind disappears forever, and the thoughtless gap becomes your intrinsic reality. If

these few glimpses are coming, they show you are on the right path and you are using the right method. But don’t be impatient. Existence needs immense patience. The ultimate mysteries are opened only to those who have immense patience.

Once a man is in a state of no-mind, nothing can distract him from his being.

There is no power bigger than the power of no-mind. No harm can be done to such a person. No attachment, no greed, no jealousy, no anger, nothing can arise in him. No-mind is absolutely a pure sky without any clouds.

You say, “How does watching lead to no-mind?” There is an intrinsic law: thoughts don’t have their own life. They are parasites. They live on your identification with them. When you say, “I am angry”, you are pouring life energy into anger, because you are getting identified with anger.

But when you say, “I am watching anger flashing on the screen of the mind within me”, you are not giving any life, any juice, any energy to anger any more. You will be able to see that because you are not identified. The anger is absolutely impotent, has no impact on you, does not change you, does not affect you. It is absolutely hollow and dead. It will pass on and it will leave the sky clean and the screen of the mind empty.

Slowly, slowly, you start getting out of your thoughts. That’s the whole process of witnessing and watching. In other words, George Gurdjieff used to call it ‘non-identification.’ You are no longer identifying with your thoughts. You are simply standing aloof and away—indifferent, as if they may be anybody’s thought. You have broken your connections with them. Only then can you watch them.

Watching needs a certain distance. If you are identified, there is no distance, they are too close. It is as if you are putting the mirrors too close to your eyes— you cannot see your face. A certain distance is needed, only then can you see your face in the mirror. If thoughts are too close to you, you cannot watch, you become impressed and colored by your thoughts. Anger makes you angry, greed makes you greedy, lust makes you lustful, because there is no distance at all.

They are so close that you are bound to think that you and your thoughts are one.

Watching destroys this oneness and creates a separation. The more you watch, the bigger is the distance; the bigger the distance, the less energy your thoughts are getting from you and they don’t have any other source. Soon they start dying, disappearing. In these disappearing moments you will have the first glimpses of no-mind—as you are experiencing. You say, “I am more and more able to watch my body, my thoughts and feelings. And this feels beautiful.” This

is only just the beginning. Even the beginning is immensely beautiful. Just to be on the right path, even without taking a single step, will give you immense joy for no reason at all.

And once you start moving on the right path, your blissfulness, your beautiful experiences are going to become more and more deep, more and more wide with new nuances, with new flowers, with new fragrances.

You say, “But moments of no-thoughts are few and far between.” It is a great achievement, because people don’t know even a single gap. Their thoughts are always in a rush hour. Thoughts upon thoughts, bumper to bumper. The line continues—whether you are awake or asleep. What you call your dreams are nothing but thoughts in the form of pictures, because the unconscious mind does not know alphabetical languages.

What you are feeling is a great indication that you are on the right path. It is always a question for the seeker whether he is moving in the right direction or not. There is no security, no insurance, no guarantee. All the dimensions are open; how are you going to choose the right one?

These are the ways and the criterion of how one has to choose. If you move on any path, any methodology, and it brings joy to you, more sensitivity, more watchfulness and gives a feeling of immense well-being, this is the only criterion that you are going on the right path. If you become more miserable, more angry, more egoist, more greedy, more lustful, those are the indications you are moving on a wrong path.

On the right path your blissfulness is going to grow more and more every day. And your experiences of beautiful feelings will become tremendously psychedelic, more colorful, colors that you have never seen in the world, fragrances that you have never experienced in the world. Then you can walk on the path without any fear that you can go wrong.

These inner experiences will keep you always on the right path. Just remember that they are growing. That means you are moving. Now you have only a few moments of thoughtlessness. It is not a simple attainment, it is a great achievement because people in their whole life know not even a single moment when there is no thought. These gaps will grow. As you will become more and more centered, more and more watchful, these gaps will start growing bigger and the day is not far if you go on moving without looking back, without going astray. If you keep going straight, the day is not far away, when you will feel for the first time that the gaps have become so big that hours pass and not even a single thought arises. Now you are having bigger experiences of no-mind.

The ultimate achievement is when you are surrounded with no-mind for twenty-four hours. That does not mean that you cannot use your mind. That is a fallacy propounded by those who know nothing about no-mind.

No-mind does not mean that you cannot use the mind. It simply means that the mind cannot use you. No-mind does not mean that the mind is destroyed.

No-mind simply means that the mind is put aside. You can bring it into action any moment you need to communicate with the world, then it will be your servant. Right now, it is your master. Even when you are sitting alone, it goes on: yakkety-yak, yakkety-yak, and you cannot do anything. You are so utterly helpless. No-mind simply means that the mind has been put in its right place. As a servant, it is a great instrument. As a master, it is very unfortunate. It is dangerous. It will destroy your whole life.

Mind is only a medium when you want to communicate with others. But when you are alone, there is no need of the mind. So whenever you want to use it, you can use it. And remember one thing more: when the mind remains silent for hours, it becomes fresh, young, more creative, more sensitive, rejuvenated through rest.

Ordinary people’s minds start somewhere around three or four years of age and then they go on continuing for seventy years, eighty years without any holiday. Naturally they can not be very creative. They are utterly tired, and tired with rubbish. Millions of people in the world live without any creativity. And creativity is one of the greatest blissful experiences. But their minds are so tired. They are not in a state of overflowing energy.

The man of no-mind keeps the mind in rest, full of energy, immensely sensitive, ready to jump into action the moment it is ordered. It is not a coincidence that the people who have experienced no-mind …their words start having a magic of their own. When they use their mind, it has a charisma, it has a magnetic force. It has tremendous spontaneity and the freshness of the dewdrops in the early morning before the sun rises. And the mind is nature’s greatest evolved medium of expression and creativity.

So the man of meditation, or in other words, the man of no-mind, changes even his prose into poetry. Without any effort—his words become so full of authority that they don’t need any arguments, they become their own arguments. The force that they carry becomes a self-evident truth. There is no need for any other support from logic or from scriptures. The words of a man of no-mind have an intrinsic certainty about them. And if you are ready to receive and listen, you will feel it in your heart: the self-evident truth.

You say, “When I hear you say ‘meditation is witnessing’, I feel I understand. But when you talk about no-mind, it doesn’t sound easy at all.” How can it sound easy? It is your future possibility. Meditation you have started, it may be in the beginning stages, but you have a certain experience of it that makes you understand me. But if you can understand meditation, don’t be worried at all. Meditation surely leads to no-mind, just as every river moves towards the ocean without any maps, without any guides.

Every river, without exception, finally reaches to the ocean. Every meditation, without exception, finally reaches to the state of no-mind.

But naturally when the Ganges is in the Himalayas wandering in the mountains and in the valleys, it has no idea what the ocean is, cannot conceive the existence of ocean, but it is moving towards the ocean because water has the intrinsic capacity of always finding the lowest place, and the oceans are the lowest place. So the rivers are born on the peaks of the Himalayas and start moving immediately towards lower spaces and finally they are bound to find the ocean.

Just the reverse is the process of meditation—it moves upwards to higher peaks. And the ultimate peak is no-mind. No-mind is a simple word, but it exactly means enlightenment, liberation, freedom from all bondage, the experience of deathlessness and immortality.

Those are big words and I don’t want you to be frightened. So I use a simple word: no-mind. You know the mind. You can conceive a state when this mind will be non-functioning. Once this mind is non-functioning, you become part of the mind of the cosmos, the universal mind. When you are part of the universal mind your individual mind functions as a beautiful servant. It has recognized the master. And it brings news from the universal mind to those who are still chained by the individual mind.

When I am speaking to you, it is in fact the universe using me. My words are not my words. They belong to the universal truth. That is their power, that is their charisma, that is their magic.

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