In the search is the ego

Question 1:

Niyama, the question you have asked must be reflecting the question of many people. It is significant in the sense that being enlightened brings a full stop to your desires, longings, searchings. All that you have done, down the ages, is only desiring, seeking, dreaming, hoping, and one is afraid to come to a point where suddenly you find there is no way to go, nowhere to go, that you have arrived.

You are saying, "When you said last night that everyone is enlightened it really freaked me out." It freaked many out, it freaked many in, but it certainly freaked. And it brought to the surface something that you must have been carrying within your unconscious. Without this freaking out it may not have come to the surface.

You are saying, "It looks like I'm much more at ease with being unenlightened and searching for it, rather than just being enlightened."

You are saying something immensely significant, not only about you, but about human mind as such.

It is at ease in hoping, it is at ease if there is a tomorrow. The goal may be far away, but if the goal is there it is at ease. It does not want to come to a standstill - that feels very uneasy, because we have become accustomed to dreaming, running after goals, never arriving but always trying to arrive. The goal seems to be just close by, but the distance between you and the goal remains the same whatever you do. It is almost like the horizon. You go towards it and it goes on receding at the same rate. This has been the training of our mind, this is what we are; hence although you are just a beggar dreaming about kingdoms you are at ease.

It happens in many ways. You will not find poor people thinking about the meaning of life, you will not find poor people even bothering whether there is something like enlightenment or not. Only when a civilization becomes richer, people become educated, their bodily needs are fulfilled, do they suddenly start thinking about faraway goals. Then they start searching in many dimensions.

They are searching, but deep down they don't want to arrive at the conclusion. This is a strange dilemma, but if you understand rightly you can see the point. The point is, mind can live only in movement. When there is no movement time stops, mind stops, only you are.

It was not you who freaked out, it was your mind, with which you are absolutely identified. Unless you create a distance between the mind and you - you the witness - you will remain searching.

Money, power, prestige, God, paradise, enlightenment - anything will do, just it should keep you going on. Any direction is okay, just stopping is dangerous, because the moment you stop mind dies. The moment you stop your personality dies. The moment you stop you disappear into the oceanic existence; hence the fear.

I have told you a beautiful story about Rabindranath Tagore. In one of his poems he has the same glimpse that is expressed in your question.

In the poem he says, "I have been searching for God for many, many lives. Sometimes I saw him near a faraway star, and I was immensely happy that although the star was far away, it was not impossible to reach. And I started moving there, but by the time I reached the star God had moved to some other place. But he was visible - so far away, but inviting, creating hope. And I went on running around the universe for many, many lives.

"One day it happened, I came to the house of God. I could not believe that I had arrived. It was such a shock, but still I stepped towards the door. As I was going to knock on the door my hand suddenly froze. A thought arose in me: Just wait a minute and think it over. It is written outside the door, 'This is the house of God.' If by chance it turns out to be really the house of God then you are finished.

What are you going to do then?

"For millions of years your training has been only for searching. You are perfectly disciplined as a seeker, but finding? That is absolutely new; you are not acquainted with it. And moreover, a finding of the ultimate, the absolute God, beyond which there is nothing to search... what will you do then?

What will you be? And it is going to be forever - an eternal situation of a full stop."

He took his shoes in his hands. He was afraid that as he goes back down the steps, if God hears some noise outside and opens the door... And then he ran away, not looking back.

The poem is beautiful because it says, "I am again searching him. I know him, his house; I go on avoiding it. I go in every direction, but I keep myself far away from the house where he is, because I know that meeting him is going to be my disappearance."

Enlightenment is nothing but your disappearance. It is nothing but a pure silence. Naturally one feels afraid and one starts thinking, "It is better to remain unenlightened and searching for it." The story that I told you from Rabindranath's poem is your story. It is everybody's story. That's why I say, you are enlightened, but you don't want to recognize it. You want to find some way so that you can start searching for enlightenment again.

In the search is the mind.

In the search is the ego.

In the search is the personality, in the search are all the saints, the sages, the prophets, the incarnations of God - in the search. The moment you arrive you are just a pure silence, a nothingness - alive, abundantly alive, overflowingly alive, full of fragrance, but now there is no movement. You will remain in this silence for eternity. I think every one of you has returned from the house, knows the way, knows the house and is still searching and seeking and asking, "Where is the house of God? Where can I find him?"

The moment you understand that the reason for your search is not that you are not enlightened, the reason for your search is that the mind wants to go on living, and it can live only in your unenlightenment... You have to choose. You can choose the mind and go on seeking for eternity that which is right now available, this very moment. Or you can choose the state of no-mind, no- movement, and disappear in the cosmos, in eternal peace, in the splendor of the universe. But it all depends on you; it is your freedom.

The biblical story that God drove out Adam and Eve from paradise is certainly wrong. It is Adam and Eve who escaped, because in the garden of paradise there was no possibility of being a prophet, no possibility of being someone special, no possibility of any ego arising. In the garden of paradise you and the trees and the animals are all equal. Seeing this situation, my own understanding is that Adam and Eve escaped, they were not driven out. It was a revolt against a state where everything was available and there was no way to find anything new. Escaping from that kingdom, man started searching.

I have reasons to say that.... In India the twenty-four tirthankaras of the Jainas are all kings who renounced their kingdoms. Gautam Buddha was going to be the king, the only son of his old father.

He escaped before he was crowned as a king. The ceremonies were prepared for - because the old man wanted Gautam Buddha to be crowned before him; he wanted to see his son on the throne. Seeing the situation, Gautam Buddha escaped. He had seen everything, he had all that was possible in those days for anybody to have in his possession. The most beautiful women of the kingdom were collected just for his pleasure. His father had made three different palaces in different places, for different seasons.

In India, just in my childhood, seasons were absolutely certain. They became disturbed only after the second world war; otherwise, each season was four months. And it was absolutely determined:

the winter comes exactly on one date, the winter goes exactly on one date.

The old king had made three beautiful palaces in his kingdom, so when it was summer Gautam Buddha could move to a hill station; when it was winter, too cold, he could come to the plains, near a beautiful river; when it was too rainy... he had found a place for him where it was a pleasure, not in any way a trouble.

There is a place just nearby where Gautam Buddha was born... perhaps in the whole world that is the place where it rains the most - five hundred inches per year! In Poona it rains only seventy inches per year. Even to live in a nearby place, Khandala, is very difficult - it rains two hundred inches per year. That means for days it goes on raining, you cannot come out, for days there is no sun, for days it is just rain and rain. Just conceive, five hundred inches... In four months there will not be a single day perhaps when it is not raining, and great floods... The father had found a faraway place where rain was nearabout forty or fifty inches per year - just a pleasure. Gautam Buddha became tired, bored, because everything that he needed was handed over to him, even without his asking.

It is a strange situation. When you are poor you want to be rich, and when you are rich suddenly you feel that you have gained everything, but you have lost hope. Now there is nowhere to go; you have come to the last rung of the ladder. Sitting there on the last rung of the ladder you look simply foolish and nothing else.

This accounts for the differences in the religions which were born in India and the religions which were born outside India. It needs a tremendous psychological insight... Jesus was a poor man.

Moses was also not a rich man - he could have been a rich man, but he discovered that he was a Jew and he wanted to be with his own race. He renounced all his powers and went into a great revolt against the Egyptian kings. Mohammed was also a poor man. These three poor men created three religions outside India. The three religions created in India were all created by kings. Rama and Krishna are kings; Mahavira and Adinatha are kings; Gautam Buddha is a king. And you can see the difference between the religions, because of these people's situations.

Gautam Buddha does not promise you any paradise where beautiful women will be available to you, where rivers of wine will be flowing - strange, but not inexplicable. He is fed up with women, he is fed up with wine, he is fed up with everything that money can purchase. All that he can promise to his disciples is a pure silence.

But Mohammed cannot do that, Jesus cannot do that. Jesus has to provide in his paradise all those beautiful things which poor people are missing on the earth. Mohammed provides rivers of wine, beautiful women. And you will be shocked to know, because homosexuality was very much prevalent in Saudi Arabia, in paradise beautiful boys are also provided for the sages.

Jesus provides everything that a poor man can dream of and can hope for. Mahavira provides only absolute aloneness. This will not appeal to a poor man. He is already very lonely, and you have come... and to attain to that aloneness he has to go through all these disciplines. Are you mad?

He wants things - he wants beautiful women, he wants beautiful men, he wants beautiful houses - and you have come here saying, "You have to fast, you have to train yourself in yoga, you have to meditate. And finally you will get a pure nothingness."

This can appeal only to the very rich. They are tired of things, they want just silence; they are tired of people, they want pure aloneness. The poor man is not tired... he has not even had the chance to be tired of money. He is hoping some day he will have money, have a beautiful house.

One day I was stopped on the road - I was going to the university - and a beautiful woman gave me a pamphlet. I asked, "What is it?"

She said, "Everything is explained in it, and if you are interested the phone number is given."

Going to the university, just driving, I looked at the pamphlet: a beautiful house by the side of a mountain river, great tall trees, and a question: "Do you want this house?"

I thought, "In this city at least there is no such house; perhaps I don't know it? If it is available it is worth looking into the details."

I turned the page and inside the details were given: "If you become a follower of Jesus Christ, in the kingdom of God you will have even better houses than the one you have just seen on the other side of the page."

When a poor man creates a religion it is bound to be full of your desires, your greed, your lust, and a promise that everything will be fulfilled. When a rich man creates a religion his religion is going to be a purity, a silence, a beautiful space. But you are one with that beautiful space, not separate.

Looking at the religions, their holy books, you can decide whether those holy books came from poor people or from people who have known riches. And remember one thing, the poor man's paradise is just a projection. That's why all the religions that have been created outside India - just by coincidence - don't have the quality, the superiority, the grandeur that Indian religions have.

But India is no longer rich. Those religions were created some seven thousand years ago, some five thousand years ago, some twenty-five centuries ago. Today even the Indian masses have turned to Christianity - Christianity is now the third greatest religion in India. They have turned to Mohammedanism, which is now the second greatest religion in India. Hinduism goes on shrinking, and more and more people go on turning towards Christianity, Mohammedanism, because more and more people are poor. And Hinduism has nothing to offer to the poor people.

They are not interested in nirvana, they are not interested in meditation, they are not interested in their inner being. You can see it here. If anybody descends from Mars and looks at this commune he will not be able to think that this commune exists in India. How many Indians are here?

The religion that I am providing for you is the highest possible. It is not for those who are seeking employment, not for those who are hungry, starving. It needs intelligence to understand me. It needs a kind of frustration with the world - the kind of experience where you feel that all that this world provides is meaningless, that it leads nowhere, that it is sheer wastage of life. Something more is needed - something that money cannot purchase, something that science cannot produce, something that is not available in the market, something that you have to find within yourself.

But why are people not interested in themselves? Perhaps in their past lives at some moment they had reached the house of God, and ever since they have been running away from it. Although they give good names for their running - they are running in search of God, they are running in search of self-realization, they are running for enlightenment - in fact they are running away from exactly these things, as far away as possible.

But you cannot run because your enlightenment is your very being, whether you like it or not.

Existence has not asked you whether you want to be born or not; neither has existence asked you whether you want enlightenment in your innermost core or not. Existence does not treat you as separate; hence there is no question of asking you, you are part and parcel of this beautiful universe.

And this universe goes on moving into different forms, but the innermost core remains the same:

the same light, the same joy, the same celebration.

It is frightening to you, Niyama, because then there will be no movement. But I have been in this full stop for thirty-five years and not for a single moment have I felt that I am in a wrong situation.

People ask me, "For two hours you don't move your legs...." I have also thought, "Why don't I move my legs?" Then finally I discovered that there is no need. I am not walking, why should I move? It is not only here that I am sitting like that, the whole day I am sitting in my chair just like that. And you must be puzzled about what I am doing in my room, just sitting. And there is not even grass growing!

Nothing is happening and I am perfectly happy; there is not even for a single moment a desire - even to go into the ashram and see what kind of stupid things are happening. Just last night when you all had become enlightened... Nirvano told me, "You should have been there."

I heard the noise. I said, "This is enough for me, that my people have become enlightened, just I'm worried what will happen to their enlightenment in the morning." And I can see that you shouted unnecessarily - not even a single one of you has become enlightened! You can try it today again, because this is the place where you have to become enlightened. And just watch Sardar Gurudayal Singh. Most probably he will become enlightened before anybody else. He shouts better, he laughs better, what more is needed?

Pope the Polack and a nun arrive in a small town in the middle of the Sahara desert, riding a very fresh and alive looking camel. The pope is completely exhausted and decides to have a few days vacation. He checks into a caravanserai for the night and the next morning comes out of the tent wearing his underpants and carrying a towel across his shoulder.

"Excuse me," he asks one of the Bedouins, "but can you tell me how far it is to the water?"

"Oh," the Arab replies, "a few hundred miles."

"Shit," says Pope the Polack, "I guess I will have to stay on the beach today."

... hundreds of miles away, then it is better to stay at the beach.

Amos Saperstein dies suddenly with an enormous erection. The undertaker, Moishe Finkelstein, tries everything to make it shrink. He puts cold water on it, then packs it in ice cubes, but nothing works. Finally they decide that they have only one option: they cut a hole in the lid of the coffin and cover it with a sheet.

On the way to the cemetery the coffin is carried past two little old ladies sitting on a bench. "Well, there goes old Amos," says grandma Kravitz. "I hope his family gave him a proper send-off."

Just then a gust of wind blows the sheet off the top of the coffin.

"The tight fisted bastards," says grandma. "Look at that! Only one lousy flower."

And the last, before you start becoming enlightened again....

A priest with a huge prick has terrible trouble getting any woman to sleep with him. At the local whorehouse it is always the same answer, "Sorry father, I wish I could, but that monster is much too big for me."

In desperation, the priest thinks up a cunning scheme. He visits a whorehouse on the other side of the town where no one knows him, picks out a girl and takes her to the bedroom.

Once they are inside the priest tells the girl he is very shy and then says, "Do you mind if I undress with the lights out?"

She agrees. Then as he climbs on top of her she says, "Do you know, father, I am really glad this is what you came here for. When you first walked through the door I was sure you were just going to talk to me about... Jesus Christ!"

Okay, Maneesha?

Yes, Beloved Master.