Look up to heaven and down on earth and they will remind you of their impermanency.
Look about the world and it will remind you of its impermanency. But when you gain spiritual enlightenment you shall then find wisdom.
The knowledge thus attained leads you anon to the way.
You should think of the four elements of which the body is composed. Each of them has its own name and there is no such thing there known as ego. As there is really no ego, it is like unto a mirage.
I am reminded of the fateful day of 21 March 1953. For many lives I had been working – working upon myself, struggling, doing whatsoever can be done – and nothing was happening. Now I understand why nothing was happening. The very effort was the barrier, the very ladder was preventing, the very urge to seek was the obstacle. Not that one can reach without seeking – seeking is needed, but then comes a point when seeking has to be dropped. The boat is needed to cross the river but then comes a moment when you have to get out of the boat and forget all about it and leave it behind. Effort is needed, without effort nothing is possible – and also only with effort, nothing is possible.
Just before 21 March 1953, seven days before, I stopped working on myself. A moment comes when you see the whole futility of effort. You have done all that you can do and nothing is happening. You have done all that is humanly possible. Then what else can you do? In sheer helplessness one drops all search. And the day the search stopped, the day I was not seeking for something, the day I was not expecting something to happen, it started happening. A new energy arose – out of nowhere. It was not coming from any source. It was coming from nowhere and everywhere. It was in the trees and in the rocks and the sky and the sun and the air – it was everywhere. And I had been seeking so hard, and I was thinking it was very far away, and it was so near and so close. Just because I was seeking I had become incapable of seeing the near. Seeking is always for the far, seeking is always for the distant – and it was not distant. I had become far-sighted, I had lost the near-sightedness. The eyes had become focused on the far away, the horizon, and they had lost the ability to see that which is just close, surrounding you.
The day effort ceased, I also ceased. Because you cannot exist without effort, and you cannot exist without desire, and you cannot exist without striving.
The phenomenon of the ego, of the self, is not a thing, it is a process. It is not a substance sitting there inside you; you have to create it each moment. It is like pedaling bicycle. If you pedal it goes on and on; if you don’t pedal it stops. It may go on a little because of the past momentum, but the moment you stop pedaling, in fact the bicycle starts stopping. It has no more energy, no more power to go anywhere. It is going to fall and collapse.
The ego exists because we go on pedaling desire, because we go on striving to get something, because we go on jumping ahead of ourselves. That is the very phenomenon of the ego – the jump ahead of yourself, the jump into the future, the jump into the tomorrow. The jump into the non-existential creates the ego. Because it comes out of the non-existential, it is like a mirage. It consists only of desire and nothing else; it consists only of thirst and nothing else.
The ego is not in the present, it is in the future. If you are in the future, then ego seems to be very substantial. If you are in the present, the ego is a mirage; it starts disappearing.
The day I stopped seeking . . . and it is not right to say that I stopped seeking, better will be to say the day seeking stopped. Let me repeat it: the better way to say it is “the day the seeking stopped” – because if I stop it, then I am there again. Now stopping becomes my effort, now stopping becomes my desire, and desire goes on existing in a very subtle way. You cannot stop desire; you can only understand it. In the very understanding is the stopping of it. Remember, nobody can stop desiring, and the reality happens only when desire stops.
So this is the dilemma. What to do? Desire is there and buddhas go on saying desire has to be stopped, and they go on saying in the next breath that you cannot stop desire. So what to do? You put people in a dilemma. They are in desire, certainly. You say it has to be stopped – okay. And then you say it cannot be stopped. Then what is to be done?
The desire has to be understood. You can understand it, you can just see the futility of it. A direct perception is needed, an immediate penetration is needed. Look into desire, just see what it is, and you will see the falsity of it and you will see it is non-existential. And desire drops and something drops simultaneously within you.
Desire and the ego exist in cooperation, they coordinate. The ego cannot exist without desire, the desire cannot exist without the ego. Desire is projected ego, ego is introjected desire. They are together, two aspects of one phenomenon.
The day desiring stopped, I felt very hopeless and helpless. No hope because no future – nothing to hope because all hoping has proved futile, it leads nowhere, you go in circles. It goes on dangling in front of you, it goes on creating new mirages, it goes on calling you, “Come on, run fast, you will reach.” But however fast you run you never reach.
That’s why Buddha calls it a mirage. It is like the horizon that you see around the earth. It appears but it is not there. If you go it goes on running from you. The faster you run, the faster it moves away, the slower you go, the slower it moves away, but one thing is certain – the distance between you and the horizon remains absolutely the same. Not even a single inch can you reduce the distance between you and the horizon.
You cannot reduce the distance between you and your hope. Hope is horizon. You try to bridge yourself with the horizon, with the hope, with a projected desire. The desire is a bridge, a dream bridge – because the horizon exists not, so you cannot make a bridge towards it, you can only dream about the bridge. You cannot be joined with the non-existential.
The day the desire stopped, the day I looked and realized into it . . . it simply was futile; I was helpless and hopeless. But that very moment something started happening. The same started happening for which for many lives I had been working and it was not happening.
In your hopelessness is the only hope, and in your desirelessness is your only fulfillment, and in your tremendous helplessness suddenly the whole existence starts helping you. It is waiting. When it sees that you are working on your own, it does not interfere. It waits. It can wait infinitely because there is no hurry for it. It is eternity. The moment you are not, on your own – the moment you drop, the moment you disappear – the whole existence rushes towards you, enters you. And for the first time things start happening.
Seven days I lived in a very hopeless and helpless state, but at the same time something was arising. When I say hopeless I don’t mean what you mean by the word hopeless. I simply mean there was no hope in me. Hope was absent. I am not saying that I was hopeless and sad. I was happy in fact, I was very tranquil, calm and collected and centered. Hopeless, but in a totally new meaning. There was no hope, so how could there be hopelessness? Both had disappeared. The hopelessness was absolute and total. Hope had disappeared and with it, its counterpart hopelessness had also disappeared. It was a totally new experience – of being without hope. It was not a negative state. I have to use words, but it was not a negative state. It was absolutely positive. It was not just absence, a presence was felt. Something was overflowing in me, overflooding me.
And when I say I was helpless, I don’t mean the word in the dictionary sense. I simply say I was selfless. That’s what I mean when I say helpless. I have recognized the fact that I am not, so I cannot depend on myself, so I cannot stand on my own ground – there was no ground underneath. I was in an abyss, a bottomless abyss. But there was no fear because there was nothing to protect. There was no fear because there was nobody to be afraid.
Those seven days were of tremendous transformation, total transformation. And the last day the presence of a totally new energy, a new light and new delight, became so intense that it was almost unbearable – as if I was exploding, as if I was going mad with blissfulness. The new generation in the West has the right word for it – I was blissed out, stoned. It was impossible to make any sense out of it, what was happening. It was a non-sense world, difficult to figure it out, difficult to manage into categories, difficult to use words, language, explanations. All scriptures appeared dead and all the words that have been used for this experience looked pale, anemic. This was so alive. It was like a tidal wave of bliss.
The whole day was strange, stunning, and it was a shattering experience. The past was disappearing, as if it had never belonged to me, as if I had read about it somewhere, as if I had dreamed about it, as if it was somebody else’s story I have heard, and somebody told it to me. I was becoming loose from my past, I was being uprooted from my history, I was losing my autobiography. I was becoming a non-being, what Buddha calls anatta. Boundaries were disappear-ing, distinctions were disappearing. Mind was disappearing; it was millions of miles away. It was difficult to catch hold of it, it was rushing farther and farther away and there was no urge to keep it close. I was simply indifferent about it all. It was okay. There was no urge to remain continuous with the past.
By the evening it became so difficult to bear it – it was hurting, it was painful. It was like when a woman goes into labor when a child is to be born, and the woman suffers tremendous pain – the birth pangs.
I used to go to sleep in those days near about twelve or one in the night, but that day it was impossible to remain awake. My eyes were closing, it was difficult to keep them open. Something was imminent, something was going to happen. It was difficult to say what it was – maybe it was going to be my death – but there was no fear. I was ready for it. Those seven days had been so beautiful that I was ready to die, nothing more was needed. They had been so tremendously blissful, I was so contented that if death were coming, it was welcome. But something was going to happen – something like death, something drastic, something that would be either a death or a new birth, a crucifixion or a resurrection – but something of tremendous import was just around the corner. And it was impossible to keep my eyes open. I was as if drugged.
I went to sleep around eight. It was not like sleep. Now I can understand what Patanjali means when he says that sleep and samadhi are similar. Only with one difference – that in samadhi you are fully awake and asleep also. Asleep and awake together, the whole body relaxed, every cell of the body totally relaxed, all functioning relaxed, and yet a light of awareness burns within you . . . clear, smokeless. You remain alert and yet relaxed, loose but fully awake. The body is in the deepest sleep possible and your consciousness is at its peak. The peak of consciousness and the valley of the body meet. I went to sleep. It was a very strange sleep. The body was asleep, I was awake. It was so strange – as if one was torn apart into two directions, two dimensions; as if the polarity had become completely focused, as if I was both the polarities together . . . the positive and negative were meeting, sleep and awareness were meeting, death and life were meeting. That is the moment when you can say the creator and the creation meet. It was weird. The first time, it shocks you to the very roots, it shakes your foundations. You can never be the same after that experience; it brings a new vision to your life, a new quality.
Around twelve my eyes suddenly opened – I had not opened them. The sleep was broken by something else. I felt a great presence around me in the room. It was a very small room. I felt a throbbing life all around me, a great vibration – almost like a hurricane, a great storm of light, joy, ecstasy. I was drowning in it. It was so tremendously real that everything else became unreal. The walls of the room became unreal, the house became unreal, my own body became unreal. Everything was unreal because now there was for the first time reality.
That’s why when Buddha and Shankara say the world is maya, a mirage, it is difficult for us to understand. Because we know only this world, we don’t have any comparison. This is the only reality we know. What are these people talking about – this is maya, illusion? This is the only reality. Unless you come to know the really real, their words cannot be understood, their words remain theoretical. They look like hypotheses. Maybe this man is propounding a philosophy – “The world is unreal.” When Berkeley in the West said that the world is unreal, he was walking with one of his friends, a very logical man; the friend was a skeptic. He took a stone from the road and hit Berkeley’s feet hard. Berkeley screamed, blood rushed out, and the skeptic said, “Now, the world is unreal? You say the world is unreal – then why did you scream? This stone is unreal – then why did you scream? Why are you holding your leg and showing so much pain and anguish on your face? Stop this! It is all unreal?”
Now this type of man cannot understand what Buddha means when he says the world is a mirage. He does not mean that you can pass through the wall, he is not saying that you can eat stones, and it will make no difference whether you eat bread or stones. He is not saying that. He is saying that there is a reality, and once you come to know it, this so-called reality simply fades away, simply becomes unreal. With a higher reality in your vision the distinction arises, not otherwise.
In a dream, the dream is real. You dream every night. Dreaming is one of the activities that you go on doing most. If you live sixty years, for twenty years you will sleep and almost ten years you will dream. Ten years in a life of sixty years – nothing else do you do so much. Ten years of continuous dreaming – just think about it! Every night . . . and every morning you say the dreams were unreal, and again in the night when you dream, the dreams become real.
In a dream it is so difficult to remember that it is a dream. But in the morning it is so easy. You are the same person, dreaming and awake, so what happens? In the dream there is only one reality, so how to compare – how to say it is unreal? Compared to what? It is the only reality. Everything is as unreal as everything else, so there is no comparison. In the morning when you open your eyes another reality is there. Now you can say it was all unreal. Compared to this reality, the dream becomes unreal.
There is another kind of awakening – and compared to the reality of that awakening, this whole reality becomes unreal.
That night for the first time I understood the meaning of the word maya. Not that I had not known the word before, not that I was not aware of the meaning of the word. As you are aware, I was also aware of the meaning but I had never understood it before. How can you understand without experience? That night another reality opened its door, another dimension became available. Suddenly it was there, the other reality, the separate reality, the really real, or whatsoever you want to call it – call it the divine, call it truth, call it dhamma, call it Tao, or whatsoever you will. It was nameless. But it was there – so opaque, so transparent, and yet so solid one could have touched it. It was almost suffocating me in that room. It was too much and I was not yet capable of absorbing it.
A deep urge arose in me to rush out of the room, to go under the sky – it was suffocating me. It was too much! It would kill me! If I had remained a few moments more, it would have suffocated me – it looked like that. I rushed out of the room, came out in the street. A great urge was there just to be under the sky with the stars, with the trees, with the earth . . . to be with nature. And immediately as I came out, the feeling of being suffocated disappeared. It was too small a place for such a big phenomenon. Even the sky is a small place for that big a phenomenon. It is bigger than the sky, even the sky is not the limit for it. But then I felt more at ease.
I walked towards the nearest garden. It was a totally new walk, as if the force of gravity had disappeared. I was walking, or I was running, or I was simply flying, it was difficult to decide. There was no gravitation, I was feeling weightless – as if some energy was taking me. I was in the hands of some other energy. For the first time I was not alone, for the first time I was no longer an individual, for the first time the drop had come and fallen into the ocean. Now the whole ocean was mine, I was the ocean. There was no limitation. A tremendous power arose as if I could do anything whatsoever. I was not there, only the power was there.
I reached to the garden where I used to go every day. The garden was closed, closed for the night. It was too late, it was almost one o’clock in the night. The gardeners were fast asleep. I had to enter the garden like a thief, I had to climb the gate. But something was pulling me towards the garden. It was not within my capacity to prevent myself. I was just floating.
That’s what I mean when I say again and again “float with the river, don’t push the river”. I was relaxed, I was in a let-go. I was not there. It was there, call it God – God was there. I would like to call it “it”, because God is too human a word and has become too dirty by too much use; it has been polluted by so many people. Christians, Hindus, Mohammedans, priests and politicians – they all have corrupted the beauty of the word. So let me call it “it”. It was there and I was just carried away . . . carried by a tidal wave.
The moment I entered the garden everything became luminous, it was all over the place – the benediction, the blessedness. I could see the trees for the first time – their green, their life, their very sap running. The whole garden was asleep, the trees were asleep. But I could see the whole garden alive, even the small grass leaves were so beautiful.
I looked around. One tree was tremendously luminous – the maulshree tree. It attracted me, it pulled me towards itself. I had not chosen it, existence itself had chosen it. I went to the tree, I sat under the tree. As I sat there things started settling. The whole universe became a benediction.
It is difficult to say how long I was in that state. When I went back home it was four o’clock in the morning, so I must have been there by clock time at least three hours – but it was an infinity. It had nothing to do with clock time. It was timeless. Those three hours became the whole eternity, endless eternity. There was no time, there was no passage of time; it was the virgin reality – uncorrupted, untouchable, unmeasurable.
And that day something happened that has continued – not as a continuity, but it has continued as an undercurrent. Not as a permanency – each moment it has been happening again and again. It has been a miracle each moment.
Since that night I have never been in the body. I am hovering around it. I became tremendously powerful and at the same time very fragile. I became very strong, but that strength is not the strength of a Mohammed Ali. That strength is not the strength of a rock, that strength is the strength of a rose flower – so fragile in its strength, so fragile, so sensitive, so delicate. The rock will be there, the flower can go any moment, but still the flower is stronger than the rock because it is more alive. Or, the strength of a dewdrop on a leaf of grass just shining in the morning sun – so beautiful, so precious, and yet can slip away any moment. So incomparable in its grace, but a small breeze can come and the dewdrop can slip and be lost forever.
Buddhas have a strength which is not of this world. Their strength is totally of love. Like a rose flower or a dewdrop, their strength is very fragile, vulnerable. Their strength is the strength of life not of death. Their power is not of that which kills; their power is of that which creates. Their power is not of violence, aggression; their power is that of compassion.
But I have never been in the body again, I am just hovering around the body. And that’s why I say it has been a tremendous miracle. Each moment I am surprised I am still here, I should not be. I should have left any moment, still I am here. Every morning I open my eyes and I say, ‘So, again I am still here?” Because it seems almost impossible. The miracle has been a continuity.
Just the other day somebody asked a question – “Osho, you are getting so fragile and delicate and so sensitive to the smells of hair oils and shampoos that it seems we will not be able to see you unless we all go bald.” By the way, nothing is wrong with being bald – bald is beautiful! Just as black is beautiful, so bald is beautiful. But that is true, and you have to be careful about it. I am fragile, delicate and sensitive. That is my strength. If you throw a rock at a flower nothing will happen to the rock – the flower will be gone. But still you cannot say that the rock is more powerful than the flower. The flower will be gone because the flower was alive. And the rock – nothing will happen to it because it is dead. The flower will be gone because the flower has no strength to destroy. The flower will simply disappear and give way to the rock. The rock has a power to destroy because the rock is dead.
Remember, since that day I have never been in the body really; just a delicate thread joins me with the body. And I am continuously surprised that somehow the whole must be willing me to be here, because I am no longer here with my own strength, I am no longer here on my own. It must be the will of the whole to keep me here, to allow me to linger a little more on this shore. Maybe the whole wants to share something with you through me.
Since that day the world is unreal. Another world has been revealed. When I say the world is unreal I don’t mean that these trees are unreal. These trees are absolutely real – but the way you see these trees is unreal. These trees are not unreal in themselves – they exist in truth, they exist in absolute reality – but the way you see them you never see them; you are seeing something else, a mirage. You create your own dream around you, and unless you become awake you will continue to dream. The world is unreal because the world that you know is the world of your dreams. When dreams drop and you simply encounter the world that is there, then the real world appears.
There are not two things, godliness and the world. Godliness is the world if you have eyes, clear eyes without any dreams, without any dust of dreams, without any haze of sleep; if you have clear eyes, clarity, perceptiveness, there is only godliness. Then somewhere it is a green tree, and somewhere else it is a shining star, and somewhere else it is a cuckoo, and somewhere else it is a flower, and somewhere else a child and somewhere else a river – then only godliness is. The moment you start seeing, only godliness is.
But right now whatsoever you see is not the truth, it is a projected lie. That is the meaning of a mirage. And once you see, even for a single split moment, if you can see, if you can allow yourself to see, you will find immense benediction present all over, everywhere – in the clouds, in the sun, on the earth.
This is a beautiful world. But I am not talking about your world, I am talking about my world. Your world is ugly, your world is a world created by a self, your world is a projected world. You are using the real world as a screen and projecting your own ideas on it.
When I say the world is real, the world is tremendously beautiful, the world is luminous with infinity, the world is light and delight, it is a celebration, I mean my world – or your world if you drop your dreams.
When you drop your dreams you see the same world as any buddha has ever seen. When you dream you dream privately. Have you watched it? Dreams are private, you cannot share them even with your beloved. You cannot invite your wife into your dream – or your husband, or your friend. You cannot say, “Now, please come tonight into my dream; I would like to watch the dream together.” It is not possible. Dreaming is a private thing, hence it is illusory; it has no objective reality. Godliness is a universal thing. Once you come out of your private dreams, it is there. It has been always there. Once your eyes are clear, a sudden illumination – suddenly you are overflooded with beauty, grandeur and grace. That is the goal, that is the destiny.
Let me repeat. Without effort you will never reach it, with effort nobody has ever reached it. You will need great effort, and only then there comes a moment when effort becomes futile. But it becomes futile only when you have come to the very peak of it, never before it. When you have come to the very pinnacle of your effort – all that you can do you have done – then suddenly there is no need to do anything any more. You drop the effort.
But nobody can drop it in the middle, it can be dropped only at the extreme end. So go to the extreme end if you want to drop it. Hence I go on insisting: make as much effort as you can, put your whole energy and total heart in it, so that one day you can see: “Now effort is not going to lead me anywhere.” And that day it will not be you who will drop the effort, it drops of its own accord. And when it drops of its own accord, meditation happens.
Meditation is not a result of your efforts, meditation is a happening. When your efforts drop, suddenly meditation is there . . . the benediction of it, the blessedness of it, the glory of it. It is there like a presence, luminous, surrounding you and surrounding everything. It fills the whole earth and the whole sky. That meditation cannot be created by human effort. Human effort is too limited. That blessedness is so infinite . . . You cannot manipulate it; it can happen only when you are in a tremendous surrender. When you are not there, only then it can happen. When you are a no-self – no desire, not going anywhere – when you are just here now, not doing anything in particular, just being, it happens. And it comes in waves and the waves become tidal. It comes like a storm and takes you away into a totally new reality.
But first you have to do all that you can do, and then you have to learn nondoing. The doing of non-doing is the greatest doing, and the effort of effortlessness is the greatest effort.
Your meditation that you create by chanting a mantra, or by sitting quiet and still and forcing yourself, is a very mediocre meditation. It is created by you, it cannot be bigger than you. It is homemade, and the maker is always bigger than the made. You have made it by sitting, forcing yourself into a yoga posture, chanting “Rama, Rama, Rama” or anything – “blah, blah, blah” – anything. You have forced the mind to become still. It is a forced stillness, it is not that quiet that comes when you are not there. It is not that silence which comes when you are almost non-existential. It is not that beatitude which descends on you like a dove.
It is said when Jesus was baptized by John the Baptist in the Jordan River, God descended in him, or the holy ghost descended in him like a dove. Yes, that is exactly so. When you are not there, peace descends in you, fluttering like a dove, reaches your heart and abides there and abides there forever.
You are your undoing, you are the barrier. Meditation is when the meditator is not. When the mind ceases, with all its activities – seeing that they are futile – then the unknown penetrates you, overwhelms you. The mind must cease for godliness to be. Knowledge must cease for knowing to be. You must disappear, you must give way. You must become empty, then only you can be full.
That night I became empty and became full. I became non-existential and became existence. That night I died and was reborn. But the one that was reborn has nothing to do with that which died, it is a discontinuous thing. On the surface it looks continuous but it is discontinuous. The one who died, died totally; nothing of him has remained.
Believe me, nothing of him has remained, not even a shadow. It died totally, utterly. It is not that I am just modified – transformed, a modified form, a transformed form of the old. No, there has been no continuity. That day of 21 March, the person who had lived for many, many lives, for millennia, simply died. Another being, absolutely new, not connected at all with the old, started to exist.
Religiousness just gives you a total death. Maybe that’s why the whole day previous to that happening I was feeling some urgency like death, as if I was going to die – and I really died. I have known many other deaths but they were nothing compared to it, they were partial deaths. Sometimes the body died, sometimes a part of the mind died, sometimes a part of the ego died, but as far as the person was concerned, it remained. Renovated many times, decorated many times, changed a little bit here and there, but it remained, the continuity remained.
That night the death was total. It was a date with death and the divine simultaneously.
Now this sutra.
Look up to heaven and down on earth and they will remind you of their impermanency.
Look about the world and it will remind you of its impermanency.
But when you gain spiritual enlightenment you shall then find wisdom.
The knowledge thus attained leads you anon to the way.
Look up to heaven and down on earth and they will remind you of their imper-manency –look! You don’t look, you never look. Before you look, you have an idea. You never look in purity, you never look unprejudiced. You always carry some prejudice, some opinion, ideology, scripture – your own experience or others’ experiences, but you always carry something in the mind. You are never naked with reality. And when Buddha says, “Look up to heaven and down on earth,” he means look with a naked eye, with no coatings of opinions, ideas, experiences, borrowed or otherwise.
Have you seen a naked eye? As far as humanity is concerned it is very rare to come across a naked eye. All eyes are so dressed up. Somebody has a Christian eye, somebody has a Hindu eye, somebody has a Mohammedan eye. They look differently. When a Mohammedan reads the Gita he never reads the same thing that a Hindu reads in it. When a Jaina reads the Gita he reads something else again. A Hindu can read the Bible but he will never read that which a Christian reads. The Bible is the same, so from where does this difference come? The difference must be coming from the eye, the difference must be coming from the mind.
Have you ever read a single page of a book without bringing your mind into it, without corrupting it by your mind, by your past? Without interpreting it, have you ever looked at anything in life? If not then you have not looked at all, then you don’t have real eyes. You have just holes not eyes.
The eye has to be receptive, not aggressive. When you have a certain idea in the eye, in your mind, it is aggressive. It immediately imposes itself on things. When you have an empty eye, naked, undressed – not Christian, not Hindu, not Communist, just a pure look, innocent, just a primal innocence, as innocent as an animal’s eye or a child, a newborn child . . . A just-born child looks around – he has no idea of what is what. What is beautiful and what is ugly, he has no idea. That primal innocence has to be there; only then you will be able to see what Buddha says.
You have been looking in life but you have not come to see that all is impermanence. Everything is dying, everything is decaying, everything is on a death procession. People are standing in a death queue. Look around – everything rushing towards death. Everything is fleeting, momentary, fluxlike; nothing seems to be of eternal value, nothing seems to abide, nothing seems to hold, nothing seems to remain. Everything just goes on and on and on, and goes on changing. What else is it but a dream? Buddha says this life, this world that you live in, that you are surrounded with, that you have created around yourself, is but a dream – impermanent, temporary. Don’t make your abode there, otherwise you will suffer. Because nobody can be contented with the temporary. By the time you think it is in your hands it is gone. By the time you think you have possessed it, it is no longer there. You struggle for it – by the time you achieve it, it has disappeared.
The beauty is fleeting, love is fleeting, everything in this life is fleeting. You are running to catch shadows. They look real; by the time you have arrived they prove mirages.
Look up to heaven and down on earth and they will remind you of their impermanency.
Look about the world and it will remind you of its impermanency.
It is one of the most fundamental principles of Gautama the Buddha – that one should become aware of the impermanent world we are surrounded with. Then immediately you will be able to understand why Buddha calls it a dream, maya, an illusion.
In the East our definition of truth is that which abides forever, and of untruth, that which is there this moment and next moment is not there. Untruth is that which is temporary, momentary, impermanent. And truth is that which is, always is, has been, will be. Behind these fleeting shadows find the eternal, penetrate to the eternal, because there can be bliss only with the eternal; misery only with the momentary.
But when you gain spiritual enlightenment . . .
That’s why I was reminded of my own experience and I talked about it to you.
. . . But when you gain spiritual enlightenment you shall then find wisdom.
Wisdom cannot be found through scriptures. It is an experience, it is not knowledge. Wisdom is not knowledge; you cannot gather it from others, you cannot borrow it. It is not information. You cannot learn it from the scriptures. There is only one way to become wise and that is to enter into a live experience of life.
Something is said by Buddha and you hear it; something I say and you hear it – but you don’t become wise by hearing it. It will become knowledge. You can repeat it, you can even repeat it in a better way. You can become very skillful, efficient in repeating it. You can say it in better language, but you don’t have the experience. You have never tasted the wine yourself. You have simply seen some drunkard moving, wobbling on the road, fallen in a gutter. You have simply watched a drunkard, how he moves, how he stumbles, but you don’t know what the experience is. You will have to become a drunkard – there is no other way. You can watch a thousand and one drunkards and you can collect all the information about them – but that will be from the outside, and the experience is inner. That will be from without, and you will collect it as a spectator. And the experience cannot be attained by seeing, it can be attained only by being.
Now the modern world has become very obsessed by seeing; the modern world is a spectator’s world. People are sitting for hours in the movie houses, just watching, doing nothing. People are glued to their chairs for hours, six hours, eight hours even, just sitting before their TVs. You listen to somebody singing and you see somebody dancing and you see somebody making love – that’s why people are so interested in pornography – but you are a spectator.
The modern man is the falsest man that has ever existed on the earth, and his falsity consists in thinking he can know by just seeing, just by being a spectator. People are sitting for hours watching hockey matches, volleyball matches, cricket matches – for hours! When are you going to play yourself? When are you going to love somebody? When are you going to dance and sing and be? This is a borrowed life. Somebody dances for you; maybe you can enjoy it, but how can you know the beauty of dance unless you dance? It is something inner. What happens when a person is dancing? What happens to his innermost core?
Nijinsky, one of the greatest dancers, used to say that moments come when he disappears, only the dance remains. Those are the peak moments – when the dancer is not there and only the dance is. That’s what Buddha is talking about, when the self is not there. Now Nijinsky is moving into ecstasy and you are just sitting there watching the movement. Of course those movements are beautiful. Nijinsky’s movements have a grace, a tremendous beauty, but it is nothing compared to what he is feeling inside. His dance is a beauty even when you are just a spectator, but nothing compared to what is happening inside him.
He used to say that there are moments when gravitation disappears. I can understand, because I have come across the feeling myself when gravitation disappears, and once upon a time it was only for moments that gravitation disappeared for me. Now I have lived for years without gravitation. I know what he means. Even scientists were very much puzzled, because there were moments in Nijinsky’s dance when he would leap and jump – and those leaps were tremendous, almost impossible leaps. A man cannot leap that way; the gravitation does not allow it. And the most beautiful and amazing part was that when Nijinsky would be coming back from the leap he would come down so slowly that it was impossible. He would come so slowly, as if a leaf is falling from a tree . . . very slowly, very slowly, very slowly. It is not possible, it is against the physical laws. The law of gravity does not make any exceptions, not even for a Nijinsky. He was asked again and again, “What happens? How do you fall so slowly? Because it is not within your power to control – the gravitation pulls you.” He said, “It does not happen always, only rarely – when the dancer disappears. Then sometimes I am also puzzled and surprised, not only you. I see myself coming so slowly, so gracefully, and I know that the gravitation does not exist in that moment.”
He must be functioning in another dimension where the physical law does not exist, where another law starts working that spiritualists call the law of levitation. And it seems absolutely rational and logical to have both the laws, because every law has to be counterbalanced by another in the opposite direction. If there is light there is darkness, if there is life there is death, if there is gravitation there must be a force of levitation that pulls you up.
There are stories that Mohammed went to heaven with his physical body; not only with his physical body, with his horse. Sitting on the horse, he simply went to heaven, upwards. It looks absurd, Mohammedans have not been able to prove it, but the meaning is clear. The story may have not exactly happened, but the meaning is clear. The meaning is to be understood, it is very symbolic. It simply says that there is a law of levitation, and if Mohammed cannot be pulled by levitation, then who will be pulled? He is the right person, a person who exists not. The ego is under the force of gravity, the no-ego is not – a weightlessness arises.
Nijinsky went mad because he was simply a dancer and he never knew anything about meditation, ecstasy, enlightenment. That became a trouble for him. If you don’t understand, and if you don’t move with awareness and suddenly you stumble upon something which cannot be explained by ordinary laws, you will go mad because you will be disturbed by it. It is so weird, it is so eerie. You cannot explain it. You start getting disturbed by it. He himself started getting disturbed by the phenomenon. Finally it was so staggering it disturbed his whole mind.
The force of the unknown, of the divine, is very destructive. If you don’t go rightly you will be destroyed, because it is fire. Many people go mad if they don’t move rightly. If they don’t move with the right guidance they can go mad. It is not a child’s play, one has to understand. And the divine . . . if it happens like an accident you will not be able to absorb it. Your old world will be shattered and you will not be able to create a new order, a new understanding. Because for the new understanding you will need new concepts, a new framework, a new gestalt. That is the whole meaning of finding a master.
It is not just from gullibility that people become attached to masters, it has a scientific base to it. Moving into the unknown is a tremendous risk. One should move with somebody who has already moved into it. One should move hand in hand with somebody who knows the territory. Otherwise the thing can happen so shatteringly that you will be at a loss. Many people go mad if they don’t know that somebody’s help is needed. Somebody is needed like a midwife. You will be born, but somebody will be needed to watch over it. His very presence will be helpful; you can relax. The midwife is there, the doctor is there – you can relax. They don’t do much – you can ask any doctor; they don’t do much; what can they do? But their very presence relaxes the woman who is going into labor. She knows the doctor is there, the nurse is there, the midwife is there. Everything is okay. She goes, she relaxes, she is no longer fighting. She knows if something goes wrong people are around who will put it right. She can relax, she can trust.
The same happens to a disciple. It is a process of rebirth. A master is needed, but from the master don’t go on collecting knowledge. From the master take hints and move into experience.
I talk about meditation. You can do two things. You can collect whatsoever I say about meditation, you can compile it. You can become a great, knowledgeable person about meditation – because every day I go on talking about meditation from different dimensions in different ways. You can collect all that, you can get a Ph.D from any university. But that is not going to make you wise, unless you meditate.
So whatsoever I am saying, try it in life. While I am here, don’t waste time in collecting knowledge. That you can do without me, that you can do in a library. While I am here take a jump, a quantum leap into wisdom. Experience these things I am saying to you.
But when you gain spiritual enlightenment you shall then find wisdom.
Wisdom is only through one’s own experience. It is never from anybody else. Wisdom always happens as a flower opens . . . just like that. When your heart opens, you have a fragrance – that fragrance is wisdom. You can bring a plastic flower from the market, you can deceive neighbors . . .
I used to live near Mulla Nasruddin. I used to see him every day pouring water into a pot that was hanging in his window, with beautiful flowers. I watched him many times. Whenever he would be pouring water, there was no water, in fact – the pot was empty. I could see that there was no water and the pot was empty, but he would pour twice every day, religiously. I asked Nasruddin, “What are you doing? You don’t have any water and you go on pouring that which is not there! And I have been watching you for many days.”
He said, “Don’t get disturbed. These flowers are plastic flowers. They don’t need water.”
Plastic flowers don’t need water, they are not alive. They don’t need soil, they are not alive. They don’t need fertilizers, they are not alive. They don’t need any manure, they are not alive.
Real flowers are like wisdom. Wisdom is like real flowers, knowledge is plastic. That’s why it is cheap. It is very cheap, you can get it for nothing because it is borrowed. Experience is a radical change in your life; you cannot be the same. If you want to become wise you will have to go through transformations, a million and one transformations. You will have to pass through fire. Only then, whatever is there which is ugly and useless will be burnt, and you will come out as pure gold.
The knowledge thus attained leads you anon to the way.
. . . And the wisdom only. The knowledge thus attained through one’s own experience, through one’s own enlightening experience, through one’s own satori, samadhi, makes you capable of falling in tune with the way. The Buddha calls it dhamma, Tao. Then you are in harmony, what Pythagoras calls harmonia. Then you are suddenly not there, only the law is there, the dhamma is there, the way is there. Then you are simply with the whole. You go with it wherever it goes. Then you don’t have any goal of your own. Then the whole’s destiny is your destiny. Then there is no anxiety, no tension. Then one is immensely relaxed.
In fact, one is so relaxed that one is not! The ego is nothing but accumulated tensions through lives. When you are totally relaxed and you look within, there is nobody. It is simple purity, emptiness, vastness.
You should think of the four elements of which the body is composed. Each of them has its own name and there is no such thing there known as ego. As there really is no ego, it is like unto a mirage.
Buddha says ego is just a concept, an idea; it does not exist in reality. When a child is born he is born without any “I”. By and by he learns it, by and by he learns that there are other people and he is separate from them. Have you watched small children when they start speaking? They don’t say, “I am thirsty.” They say, “Bobby is thirsty.” They don’t have any “I”. By and by they learn the “I”, because they start feeling “thou”. Thou comes first, then comes I, as a reaction to thou. They started feeling that there are other people who are separate from Bobby, and they are called “thou”, you. Then by and by he starts learning the “I”.
But it is just a utility. Useful, perfectly useful – use it. I’m not saying stop using “I”, because that will create troubles. But know well that there is no “I” within you; it is just a linguistic convenience. Just as the name is a convenience so is the “I”.
When a child is born he has no name. Then we call him Sam, and he becomes a Sam. Later on if you insult the name “Sam” he will start fighting – and he had come in the world without a name! And really he has no name, it is just a label – utilitarian, needed, but nothing true in it. He can as well be called Krishna or Mohammed or Michael or anything. Any name will do because he is nameless. That’s why I change your names when I initiate you into sannyas – just to give you a feeling that the name can be changed, it does not belong to you. It can easily be changed. It has a utility in the world, but it has no reality.
The child learns that his name is Sam – the name is for others to call him. He cannot call himself Sam because that too will be confusing. Others call him Sam, he has to call himself something else, otherwise it will be confusing.
Ram Teerth used to call himself Ram, in the third person. It was very confusing. He was a beautiful man, and just not to use “I” – because the “I” has created so much trouble – just as a gesture, he used to call himself Ram. When he went to America he would say suddenly, “Ram is thirsty,” and people would not understand. What does he mean? – “Ram is thirsty.” They would look around – who is Ram? And he would say, “This Ram is thirsty.” But this is confusing. You say, “I am thirsty,” and things are settled. Because when you use the name it seems that somebody else is thirsty.
So there is a need for a name others can call you, and there is a need for something, a symbol, that you can call yourself. It is a need of the society, it has nothing to do with existence or reality.
You should think of the four elements of which the body is composed . . .
Buddha says the body is composed of fire, earth, water, air – these four things are there, they are real things, and there is nothing else. Behind these four things there is just pure space inside you. That pure space is what you really are – that zero space.
Buddha does not want to call it even a self, because the self carries again some distant reflection of the ego. So he calls it no-self, anatta. He does not call it atma, self, he calls it anatma, no-self. And he is right, he is absolutely right. One should not call it any name.
I have come across it. It has no name and it has no form. It has no substance and it has no center. It is just immense, pure, empty, full. It is pure bliss – satchit-ananda. It is truth, it is consciousness, it is bliss, but it has no sense of “I” in it. It is not confined by anything, it has no boundaries. It is pure space. To attain to that purity is what Buddha says is nirvana.
The word “nirvana” is beautiful. It means “blowing out a flame”. There is a lamp, you go and blow out the flame of the lamp. Then, Buddha says, “Do you ask where the flame has gone now? Can anybody answer where the flame has gone now?” Buddha says it has simply disappeared into infinity. It has not gone anywhere, it has gone everywhere. It has not gone to any particular address, it has become universal.
Blowing out a flame is the meaning of the word “nirvana”. And Buddha says when you blow out your ego, the flame of the ego, only pure space is left. Then you are nobody in particular, you are everybody. Then you are universal. Then you are this vast benediction, this bliss, this beatitude. Then you are it.
Enough for today.