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‌CHAPTER 1

1 June 1978 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

Remember only one thing: the past is a hindrance, the greatest hindrance. It has to be completely dropped, utterly dropped. To be with me is to be in the now – no past, no future. This moment is all there is and just this moment is god. Everything else is just the mind dreaming, desiring, imagining.

Once the past and future have dropped – and they are always dropped together; if you drop one, the other disappears of its own accord. They are two aspects of the same game. The past projects itself into the future. It wants to repeat itself – in a little more modified way, but still the same. Between the two is the moment. The moment, this moment, is the only reality, and the door to reality.

So let this moment become your whole life. Live moment to moment, with no ideology, with no desire for any kind of future, with no goal. And then you need not go to god – god comes to you.

The mind is never clear and can never be. The mind is what unclarity is. And all relationship is through the mind; hence the problem. You will have to learn the ways of no-mind So it is not a question of how to be clear; it is a question of how to be a no-mind. Through the mind the same thing will go on being repeated, again and again. The mind is repetitive, it is mechanical. It moves like a wheel: the same spokes come up again and again and again.

This is the difference between the western approach and the eastern. The western approach is to bring clarity to the mind. The whole of psychoanalysis is nothing but that: how to bring a clarity to the mind. The eastern approach is how to get out of the mind, because the mind is not going to be clear ever. The mind is confusion. There is not any possibility with the mind. It is not that there are confused minds and minds which are not confused, no. All minds are confused... the mind as such is confusion.

So it is not a question of how to become clear about your relationship; that is just a by-product. You have to get out of the mind slowly, slowly; you have to learn ways of getting out of it. And that’s

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what meditation is all about: it is slipping out of the mind. The mind is a mechanism. There is no need to get identified with it. Use it, but remain aloof, remain separate. Know perfectly well that you are a witness. Just as you are a witness of the outside world – the trees, the moon and the people – exactly like that you are a witness to the inside world – the dreams, the imagination, the anger, love, hate, jealousy, possessiveness, and all that. But you are always a witness, and the witness is always clear. The mind is always confusion, the witness is always clear.

Become more and more of a witness. Don’t get identified with the mind. It is very close but still it is not you. So there is no point in working on the mind. The whole work now has to be not on the mind but on you. Disconnect yourself from the mind more and more. When anger comes, sit silently and watch it. You are a watcher on the hills and anger is there just like a cloud passing by. There is the hate and there is the jealousy, but you remain aloof; you just see them. Don’t judge them, don’t be against them, because the moment you judge you become entangled. That’s what Jesus means when he says ‘Judge ye not’. That is the secret key to no-mind. Don’t say ‘This is good’, don’t say ‘This is bad’; just don’t say anything. Silently see it, take note of it: anger is there – it is neutral, neither good nor bad. And you will be surprised that it comes, it surrounds you and then it goes away.

Once you have learned the knack of it – that you can remain undisturbed and undistracted by the mind stuff that is continuously moving like traffic – you will have clarity. Not only clarity about this particular problem: you will simply have clarity – clarity about your whole life, clarity about everything that you are doing. And out of that clarity is beauty and benediction. Out of that clarity religion is born. You become religious out of that clarity, but it is never of the mind.

Deva means divine, vatula means madness, divine madness. There are two kinds of madness, and sometimes they look very similar but they are diametrically opposite, not similar at all. They exist in two different dimensions, they are two different realities.

The first madness is a kind of breakdown and the second madness is a kind of breakthrough. The first madness happens if you become too identified with the mind and the reasoning processes. If you go too much into the mind – it has a limit – if you stretch it too much, sooner or later the limit is arrived at; you cannot go beyond it. Then the pressure goes on accumulating and accumulating and it explodes. One falls below mind. That is the ordinary madness.

It happens through the identification with the mind; it is a failure of the nerves. You tried to do something impossible with the mind, something which it is not made to do. You pulled it to its logical end and there was no way to go beyond it. You destroyed it. That’s what happened to Friedrich Nietzsche: it was a breakdown. He tried hard. He became utterly one with the mind. His whole approach towards life and existence was of reason and only reason. Reason can take you to a certain point – beyond that there is no way for reason. If you still insist, it will break down, it will not be able to contain the beyond.

Then there is another kind of madness I call ‘the divine madness’. It happened to Gautam the Buddha and to Jesus Christ. It happens when you don’t get identified with the mind, when you don’t think of yourself as the mind but as a witness, as a watcher. And when one watches the mind, slowly slowly one goes beyond the mind. In the very watching, the transcendence. When you go beyond the mind, that is the breakthrough; that is what I call ‘divine madness’. In ordinary madness you go

below mind; in divine madness you go beyond mind. From the outside sometimes they can appear similar. That’s what psychoanalysts go on suspecting – that Jesus is a little bit neurotic. He is not: they are!

My whole effort here, my whole work here, consists in leading you towards that breakthrough.

The world is leading you towards a breakdown. The whole process, pressures, the whole modern speed, the whole tension, the anguish of life and the meaningless of it, is driving you towards a breakdown. Only mediocres will survive, only stupid people will survive. Those who have sensitive souls, those who have some intelligence, will all go mad. Only idiots will not go mad. And this modern mind is one of the most intelligent minds ever. Hence madness is increasing. Suicide is increasing, mm? because the limit comes and you don’t know what to do now; everything starts falling apart.

Sannyas means learning the alchemy, the art of changing breakdowns into breakthroughs. I am a madman’s guide to enlightenment!

[To a sannyasin returning to the West]

And this is just a beginning: much more is going to happen. Now it will not make any difference whether you are here or far away from me – I will be close to you. You have been able to receive me at the deepest core of your being. You are connected now. And many things will happen; don’t be frightened.

Sometimes those things will look bizarre just because they are unfamiliar, just because the mind cannot comprehend them, just because they are beyond the mind. Lovingly welcome them, with a fearless heart receive them. This is how one gets ready slowly slowly for the ultimate, because the ultimate is a quantum leap. The experience of the ultimate means a death experience and a resurrection too. On the one hand one dies completely; on the other hand one is reborn, born again. That’s what Jesus means when he says to Nicodemus: ‘Unless you are born again, you will not be able to enter the kingdom of god.’

But the process has started, the process of rebirth. Help it, cooperate with it, imbibe it; give more and more time to it. And don’t be distracted by the world. There are a thousand and one distractions and temptations, very alluring. When one is on the path one has to be more alert not to be distracted sideways – and I will keep an eye on you!

[A sannyasin says: I keep forgetting that what’s really happening isn’t because of the groups, because of the meditations... but because of you.]

Don’t be worried... you need not worry about it. Let it happen: let it happen through the group, let it happen through the meditation – finally you will see that it has happened through me. I am hiding behind many things, mm? To face me directly can be too much, so these are all curtains. Slowly slowly you become able to digest me and then one day all curtains disappear and you are facing me.

It is a kind of hurdle race, mm? All these groups are just hurdles... but they bring you closer to me. You have jumped one hurdle, you are a little closer to me. And naturally when you are doing a group

and something happens, you will think that it has happened because of the group... and nothing is wrong in it. The whole story will be known only in the end. Because then you can have a look at the past and you can suddenly see that everything falls into a certain pattern, into a certain gestalt, into a certain system. But that will happen only in the end, and it is good that it happens in the end. It is all planned that way.

I send you to the groups, to the meditations, and I keep myself hidden. I make it almost impossible for you to find me easily, to see me easily. There are things which can be done only indirectly. A direct assault may be too much; you may escape, you may never come back. So I have to be very indirect, subtle, persuasive. Slowly, slowly, the more you get ready, the more I can come close to you.…

Anand means bliss and pushkara means a blue lotus – a blue lotus of bliss.

Bliss has something to do with the lotus and also something to do with the colour blue. Hence the blue lotus, ‘pushkara’, has become a symbol of enlightenment. When a person comes to the ultimate peak of his awareness, it is a kind of blue light that spreads all over his being, a very very soft light. One is bathed in it. And not only that it is inside, it starts spreading outside. The man of enlightenment sees the world as completely basking in blue light – a very soft blue light, just as the soft sky.

And it is a kind of flowering: when you move to the highest peak of your being, it almost looks as if a lotus has bloomed. The lotus is the biggest flower in the East or in the whole world. This blooming of your consciousness inside is as if it is a one-thousand-petalled lotus. It is simple and yet mysterious; it is innocent but wisdom arises out of it.

So Pushkara is one of the most beautiful names one can get. Make it a point that it has to be realised. These are my hopes for you – they have to be fulfilled. These are my dreams about you – if you cooperate, they will become realities.…

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