Beyond the Changing

WE ARE entering today into one of the most enchanting and mysterious worlds - that of the Upanishads. The days of the Upanishads were the highest as far as the spiritual quest is concerned.

Never before and never afterwards has human consciousness achieved such Himalayan heights.

The days of the Upanishads were really golden, for many reasons. The most important of them is contained in this seed mantra:

AUM PURNAMADAH PURNAMIDAM PURNAT PURNAMUDACHYATE PURNASYA PURNAMADAYA PURNAMEVA VASHISHYATE The emphasis of the Upanishads is on WHOLENESS. Remember, it is not on perfection but on wholeness. The moment one becomes interested in being perfect, the ego enters in. The ego is a perfectionist - the desire of the ego is to be perfect - and perfection drives humanity towards insanity.

Wholeness is totally different; its flavor is different. Perfection is in the future: it is a desire.

Wholeness is herenow: it is a revelation. Perfection has to be achieved, and of course every achievement takes time; it has to be gradual. You have to sacrifice the present for the future, the today for the tomorrow. And the tomorrow never comes; what comes is always today.

Existence knows nothing of future and nothing of past; it knows only the present. Now is the only time and here the only space. The moment you go astray from now and here you are going to end into some kind of madness. You will fall into fragments; your life will become a hell. You will be torn apart: the past will pull a part of you towards itself and the future the other part. You will become schizophrenic, split, divided. Your life will be only a deep anguish, a trembling, an anxiety, a tension.

You will not know anything of bliss, you will not know anything of ecstasy because the past exists not.

And people go on living in the memories which are only footprints left on the sand; or they project a life into the future, which is also as non-existential as the past. One is no more, the other is not yet, and between the two one loses the real, the present, the now.

Wholeness is of the now. If you can be simply here, then this very moment the revelation! Then it is not gradual, it is sudden, it is an explosion!

The word upanishad is tremendously important. It simply means sitting down close to a Master; it is a communion. The Master is living in wholeness; he is living herenow, he is pulsating herenow. His life has a music, his life has a joy, a silence of immense depth. His life is full of light.

Just to sit silently by the side of a Master is enough, because the presence of a Master is infectious, the presence of the Master is overwhelming. His silence starts reaching to your very heart. His presence becomes a magnetic pull on you: it pulls you out of the mud of the past and the future. It brings you into the present.

Upanishad is a communion, not a communication. A communication is head-to-head and a communion is heart-to-heart. This is one of the greatest secrets of spiritual life, and nowhere else, at no other time, it was understood so deeply as in the days of the Upanishads.

The Upanishads were born nearabout five thousand years before. A secret communion, a transmission beyond the scriptures, a communion, a transmission beyond the scriptures, a communion beyond the words... this is what UPANISHAD is - you sitting silently, not just listening to my words but listening to my presence too. The words are only excuses to hang the silence upon.

The silence is the real content, the word is only a container. If you become too much interested in the word you miss the spirit.

So don't be too much interested in the word. Listen to the heartbeat of the word. When a Master speaks, those words are coming from his innermost core. They are full of his color, of his light. They carry some of the perfume of his being. If you are open and vulnerable, receptive, welcoming, they will penetrate into your heart and a process is triggered.

What Carl Gustav Jung calls synchronicity explains exactly what happens between a Master and a disciple. It is not the same as what happens between a teacher and a student. Between teacher and a student there is a communication; some information is transferred by the teacher to the student, but no transformation - only information. The teacher himself is not transformed, he himself has not arrived. He is repeating words from other teachers, he may be even repeating words from other Masters, but he has not known himself; his words are borrowed. He may be very scholarly, he may be very well-informed, but that is not the real thing. Information is not the real thing - transformation.

And unless one is transformed he cannot trigger the process of transformation in others.

Carl Gustav Jung calls this synchronicity. The Master cannot cause your enlightenment. It is not a scientific process, it is far more poetic. It is not a law like the law of cause and effect; it is far more liquid, far more loose, far more flexible. The Master cannot cause the enlightenment to happen in you, but he can trigger the process, and that too only if you allow, not against your will. Nothing can be done to you unless you are totally receptive. This can happen only in a love affair.

Between the teacher and the student there is a business: between the Master and the disciple there is a love affair. The disciple is surrendered; that is the meaning of "sitting down". He is surrendered, he has put his ego aside. He is simply open, in tremendous trust. Of course, doubt will hinder the process.

Doubt is perfectly good when you are collecting information: the more you doubt, the more information you will be able to collect, because each doubt will create questions in you and questions are needed to find answers. But each answer will be doubted again in its own turn, creating more questions. and so on. so forth But with a Master doubt is a hindrance. It is not of asking a question, it is a quest of the soul; it is enquiry of the heart, it is not intellectual curiosity. It is NOT curiosity, it is far more important - it is a question of life and death.

When one is tired of all questions and all answers, when one is fed up with all philosophy, only then one comes to a Master. When one has accumulated much information and still remains ignorant, and all that information does not create any light within his soul, then he comes to a Master, to sit by his side. There are no questions any more; he knows now one thing. that all questions are futile. He has tried and he has seen the whole futility of it. Now he sits in silence, open, available, receptive, like a womb.

The disciple becomes feminine, and only in those feminine moments the Master, without any effort on his part, starts overflooding the disciple. It happens naturally. The DISCIPLE IS not doing anything, the MASTER IS not doing anything - it is not a question of doing at all. The Master is being himself and the disciple is open.

When your nose is not closed by cold and you pass by the side of a flower, suddenly the fragrance is felt. The flower is not doing anything in particular; it is natural for the flower to release its fragrance.

If you are open to receive it you will receive it.

The word upanishad means coming to a Master, and one comes to a Master only when one is tired of teachers, tired of teachings, tired of dogmas, creeds, philosophies, theologies, religions. Then one comes to a Master.

And the way to come to a Master is surrender. Not that your being is surrendered - only the ego, the false idea that you are somebody, somebody special. The moment you put the idea of the ego aside, the doors are open - for the wind, for the rain, for the sun - and the Master's presence will start entering in you, creating a new dance in your life, giving you a new sense of poetry, mystery, music.

It is synchronicity. The Master is beating in a certain rhythm, he is dancing on a certain plane. If you are ready, the same dance starts happening in you - in the beginning only a little bit, but that's enough, that little bit is enough. In the beginning only dewdrops, but soon they become oceanic.

Once you have tasted the joy of being open you cannot be closed again. First you may open only a window or a door, and then you open all your windows and all the doors.

And a moment comes in the life of a disciple when not only windows and doors are opened, even the walls disappear! He is utterly open, available multidimensionally. This is the meaning of the word upanishad.

The Upanishads are written in Sanskrit; Sanskrit is the oldest language on the earth. The very word sanskrit means transformed, adorned, crowned, decorated, refined - but remember the word "transformed". The language itself was transformed because so many people attained to the ultimate, and because they were using the language, something of their joy penetrated into it, something of their poetry entered into the very cells, the very fiber of the language. Even the language became transformed, illuminated. It was bound to happen. Just as it is happening today in the West, languages are becoming more and more scientific, accurate, mathematical, precise.

They have to be because science is giving them its color, its shape, its form. If science is growing, then of course the language in which the science will be expressed will have to be scientific.

The same happened five thousand years before in India with Sanskrit. So many people became enlightened and they were all speaking Sanskrit; their enlightenment entered into it with all its music, with all its poetry, with all its celebration. Sanskrit became luminous Sanskrit is the most poetic and musical language in existence.

A poetic language is just the opposite of a scientific language. In scientific language every word has to be very precise in meaning; it has to have only one meaning. In a poetic language the word has to be liquid, flowing, dynamic, not static, allowing many meanings, many possibilities. The word has to be not precise at all; the more imprecise it is the better, because then it will be able to express all kinds of nuances.

Hence the Sanskrit sutras can be defined in many ways, can be commented upon in many ways - they allow much playfulness. For example, there are eight hundred roots in Sanskrit and out of those eight hundred roots thousands of words have been derived, just as out of one root a tree grows and many branches and thousands of leaves and hundreds of flowers. Each single root becomes a vast tree with great foliage.

For example, the root RAM can mean first "to be calm", second "to rest", third "to delight in", fourth "cause delight to", fifth "to make love", sixth "to join", seventh "to make happy", eighth "to be blissful", ninth "to play", tenth "to be peaceful", eleventh "to stand still", twelfth "to stop, to come to a full stop", and thirteenth "God, divine, the absolute". And these are only few of the meanings of the root. Sometimes the meanings are related to each other, sometimes not; sometimes even they are contradictory to each other. Hence the language has a multidimensional quality to it. You can play with those words and through that play you can express the inexpressible; the inexpressible can be hinted.

The Sanskrit language is called DEVAVANI - the divine language. And it certainly is divine in the sense because it is the most poetic and the most musical language. Each word has a music around it, a certain aroma.

How it happened? It happened because so many people used it who were full of inner harmony. Of course those words became luminous: they were used by people who were enlightened. Something of their light filtered to the words, reached to the words; something of their silence entered the very grammar, the very language they were using.

The script in which Sanskrit is written is called DEVANAGARI; DEVANAGARI means "dwelling-place of the gods", and so certainly it is. Each word has become divine, just because it has been used by people who had known God or godliness.

This Upanishad in which we are entering today is the smallest - it can be written on a postcard - and yet it is the greatest document in existence. There is no document of such luminosity, of such profoundness anywhere in the whole history of humanity. The name of the Upanishad is ISA UPANISHAD.

The world of the Upanishads is very close to my approach. In fact, what I am doing here is giving a rebirth to the spirit of the Upanishads. It has disappeared even from India, and it has not been on the scene at least for three thousand years. There is a gap of three thousand years, and in these three thousand years India has destroyed its own achievement.

The first thing is that Upanishads are not anti-life, they are not for renouncing life. Their approach is whole: life has to be lived in its totality. They don't teach escapism. They want you to LIVE in the world, but in such a way that you remain ABOVE the world, in a certain sense transcendental to the world, living in the world and yet not being of it. But they don't teach you that life has to be renounced, that you have to escape from life, that life is ugly or life is sin. They rejoice in life! It is a gift of God; it is the manifest form of God.

This fundamental has to be remembered. Upanishads say that the world is the manifest form of God and the God is the unmanifest form of the world, and every manifest phenomenon has an unmanifest noumenon inside it.

When you see a flower, the flower is only the manifest form of something inside it, its essence, which is unmanifest, which is its soul, its very being. You cannot catch hold of it, you cannot find it by dissecting the flower. For that you need a poetic approach, not the scientific approach. The scientific approach analyzes; the poetic perspective is totally different. The science will never find any beauty in the flower because beauty belongs to the unmanifest form. Science will dissect the manifest form and will find all kinds of substances the flower is made of but will miss its soul.

Each and everything has both, the body and the soul. The body is the world and the soul is God, but the body is not AGAINST the soul, the world is not against the God. The world manifests God, expresses God. God is silence and the world is the song of that silence. And the same is true about you. Every person has both: the manifest, the bodymind structure, and the unmanifest, your consciousness.

Religion consists in discovering the unmanifest in the manifest. It is not a question of escaping anywhere; it is exploring your innermost depths. It is exploring the silent center, the center of the cyclone. And it is always there; any moment you can find it. It is not something that has to be found somewhere else, in the Himalayas or in a monastery. It is within YOU! YOU can discover it in the Himalayas, you can discover it in the marketplace.

The Upanishads say that to choose between the absolute and the relative is wrong. Any choice will make you partial; you will not be whole. And without whole there is no bliss, without whole there is no holiness; without whole you are always going to be a little bit lopsided, insane. When you are whole you are healthy because you are total.

The relative means the world, the changing, phenomenal world, and the absolute means the unchanging center of the changing world. Find the unchanging in the changing. And it is there so there is no question; just you have to know the technique of discovering it. That technique is meditation.

Meditation simply means becoming attuned to the unmanifest. The body is there, you can see it; the mind is there, you can see it too. If you close your eyes you will see the mind with all its activity, with all its working. Thoughts are passing, desires are arising, memories surfacing, and the whole activity of the mind will be there; you can watch it.

One thing is certain: the watcher is not the mind. The one who is conscious of the activities of the mind is not part of the mind. The watcher is separate, the witness is separate. To become aware of this witness is to have found the essential, the central, the absolute, the unchanging.

The body changes: once you were a child, then a young man or a young woman, then old age...

One day you were in the mother's womb, then you were born, then one day again you die and disappear into the womb of existence. The body goes on changing, continuously changing.

The mind goes on changing. In the morning you are happy, in the afternoon you are angry, in the evening you are sad. Moods, emotions, feelings, go on changing; thoughts go on changing. The wheel goes on moving around you. This is the cyclone; the phenomenal world is the cyclone. It is never the same, not even for two consecutive moments.

But something is always the same, always, never changes - it is the witness. To find that witness is to find God.

Hence Upanishads don't teach you worship, they teach you meditation. And meditation can be done anywhere because the question is to know the witness. If you go into a monastery the same method will have to be applied there; if you go into the mountains the same method has to be applied there.

You can be in the home, in the family, in the marketplace - the same method.

In fact, in the world it is easier to see the changing. When you go to the desert it will be more difficult to see the changing because in the desert almost nothing seems to change, or the change is so subtle that it is not visible. But in the marketplace, sitting by the side of a road, you can see the change continuously, the traffic on the road changing; it is never the same.

Living in the monastery is living in a static world, in a dormant world. It is living like a frog in a pond, in a well, enclosed. To live in the ocean will make you more aware of the changes.

It is good to be in the world: that is the message of the Upanishads. The Upanishadic seers were not ascetic. Of course they renounced many things, but the renunciation came not through effort, it came through understanding, it came through meditation. They renounced the ego because they saw that it is just a manufactured entity by the mind. It has no reality, no substance in it; it is pure shadow, and to waste your life with it is stupid. To say that they renounced is not right; it will be better to say that because they became so aware it withered away on its own accord.

They became non-possessive. It is not that they did not possess things, but they became non- possessive. They USED things. They were not beggars. They lived joyously, enjoying everything that was available to them, but they were not possessive, they were not clingers. That is true renunciation: living in the world and yet remaining absolutely non-possessive. They loved, but they were not jealous. They loved totally but without any ego trip, without any idea to dominate the other.

This is what I am trying to do here, and there are fools in India who think I am against Indian culture.

Of course I am against what has happened in these three thousand years - that is not true culture, that is a deviation, that is ugly. That has made India poor, that has kept India a slave for twenty-two centuries; that has made India so starved, unhealthy, unhygienic, for the simple reason if you teach people that life is not good to live - it is only worth renouncing, it has no value, the only value it has is to renounce it, the only virtue is to be anti-life - naturally life is going to suffer.

But this is not the message of the Upanishads, and the Upanishads are the very soul of this country, and not only of this country but of all the people who have been religious anywhere. They will find in Upanishads their very heart they will rejoice in Upanishads because Upanishads teach wholeness.

The relative has to be lived as the relative, knowingly that it is relative, knowingly that it is changing, and remembering continuously the unchanging. Abide in the unchanging and go on living in the changing. Remain centered in the unchanging, but allow the changing, beautiful world to move around you with all its seasons, with all its colors, with all its beauty, splendor. Enjoy that too, because it is the manifest form of God. This is a very holistic approach.

The first sutra:

AUM PURNAMADAH PURNAMIDAM PURNAT PURNAMUDACHYATE PURNASYA PURNAMADAYA PURNAMEVA VASHISHYATE AUM That is the whole.

"That" means the ultimate, the absolute, the hidden aspect of reality, the invisible, the unmanifest.

You can call it God truth, nirvana, Tao, Dhamma, Logos.

THAT IS THE WHOLE.

THIS IS THE WHOLE TOO.

And by "this" is meant the phenomenal world, the manifest world, the world that surrounds you.

"That" means your center, "this" means your circumference. And both are whole, in fact both are one whole.

FROM WHOLENESS EMERGES WHOLENESS.

From "that" emerges "this", and out of wholeness only wholeness can be born. You cannot dissect wholeness, you cannot divide wholeness. Out of wholeness only wholeness is born, so both are whole.

WHOLENESS COMING FROM WHOLENESS, WHOLENESS STILL REMAINS.

Although the wholeness comes from the whole it does not mean that the whole, the original whole, starts losing something. It loses nothing; it STILL remains the whole. This is a tremendously important statement. It will be good to try to understand it through YOUR experience.

You love somebody; that does not mean that because you have given; on the contrary, it may be even more. It is not ordinary economics. In the ordinary economics if you give something, of course you will have less. If you have ten ordinary economics. In the ordinary economics if you give something, of course you will have less. If you have ten rupees with you and you give five to somebody you cannot still have ten rupees, and certainly you cannot have fifteen rupees; you will have only five rupees left. This is the ordinary economics, the economics of the outside world.

The inner world is totally different. You give love and you have still the same love or maybe even more, because by giving, your love starts flowing. It may have been dormant, stagnant; by sharing it starts flowing. It is like you draw water from a well: the moment you draw water from a well, from the hidden springs more water starts coming to the well to fill the space. If you don't draw the water from the well the water will become dirty, it may even become poisonous. And the springs will not be used; they will become blocked. If you go on drawing water every day, more and more water will be flowing in the well and the springs will become bigger because they will be used more.

But people live in the outside economics even in their inner life. The wife becomes very much angry if she finds her husband just being friendly with another woman. The husband becomes aggressive, jealous. if he finds that his wife was having a good time with somebody else, just enjoying, laughing.

This is sheer stupidity! It is not understanding the inner world and the inner meta-economics. He is still thinking in terms of money - that if his wife has laughed with somebody else that means she will be not able to laugh with him any more; so much laughter is lost! Now he is a loser, and of course that creates anger.

In fact, if the wife does not laugh with many people, does not enjoy friendship, is not loving, to many people, her love sources will die; she will not be able to love her husband either. She will forget how to love, her springs will go dry.

That's why you see husbands and wives looking so sad and bored with each other; it is bound to happen. They are going against a natural inner law: you have more the more you give. Giving does not destroy anything in you; in fact it is creative. The person who loves many people will be able to love his wife or her husband more totally.

But humanity has not understood this simple phenomenon even yet. We are still behaving in a very childish and stupid way.

It is as if your beloved asks you that, "You can breathe only when I am there and when I am not there stop breathing, because so much breath will be lost, so much life will be lost. And when you come home and you have been breathing in every place, everywhere, you will be almost dead! So when I am not with you, stop breathing!" And the husband insists also that, "When I am not at home you stop breathing, so that when we are together GREAT breathing happens!" But both will die!

That's how we have killed love in the world, we have killed everything valuable, because our whole logic is stupid. It is good that the husband goes for a morning walk and breathes in the fresh air, jogs and runs on the seabeach, and enjoys the sun. And the wife also goes and enjoys the flowers and the trees and the grass. And when they come together they will be able to be more alive with each other, more loving to each other. They will be at their peak; they will be full of life-juices to share.

But this has not happened yet.

My sannyasins have to remember it: jealousy kills love, possessiveness kills love. Be nonjealous if you want great love to happen; if you want your life to grow multidimensionally it needs freedom. You need freedom and the person you love needs freedom. In freedom only there is expansion, growth.

The word that the Upanishads use for the absolute is BRAHMA; it comes from a Sanskrit root bri; bri means to grow, to expand. Hence for the universe the Sanskrit word is brahmand.

It is only in this century that Albert Einstein discovered the idea, the hypothesis that the universe is expanding. Five thousand years before Albert Einstein the Upanishads were saying the same thing:

that the universe is continuously growing and expanding. The name they gave to the universe, brahmand, means that which goes on expanding, which is continuously growing. There is no end to that growth, no limit to that growth.

A sannyasin, a meditator, has to live his life in such a way that everything goes on growing, expanding, without any limit. Your love, your joy, your silence, your life - everything should be allowed to grow. And it can happen only if you allow the same to others.

But what we have been doing for thousands of years is just the opposite: we encroach on each other's territory, we destroy the space of everybody in the name of love, in the name of friendship.

We use beautiful words to hide ugly realities.

If you really love a person you will allow all the space possible to the person; you will never encroach on his or her freedom. That is the only indication of your love, not those stupid love letters that you write! Any fool can do that - a computer can do far better than you do! A computer can write love letters, there is no problem in it. Your love can be proved only by one thing: how much freedom you are giving to the other - even the freedom to love others; that is the only indication of your love.

And the miracle is, the more we allow each other to love as many people as possible, you will find the person infinitely loving towards you, because love is not money, love is not a commodity. It is an inner energy which grows by sharing, which dies by not sharing.

Every Upanishad begins with a seed mantra. The seed mantra means it contains the whole Upanishad. If you can understand the seed mantra you have understood the whole Upanishad.

The whole Upanishad is just the tree that grows out of the seed mantra. This is a seed mantra:

AUM PURNAMADAH PURNAMIDAM PURNAT PURNAMUDACHYATE PURNASYA PURNAMADAYA PURNAMEVA VASHISHYATE In this small sutra the whole Upanishad is contained. What follows is just a growth out of this seed.

This is the unmanifest part of it. then the whole Upanishad is the manifest part of it.

And each seed mantra is preceded by the mystic sound AUM; that contains even the seed mantra.

If you understand AUM you have understood everything. Upanishads are written in such a beautiful way: first AUM... if you can understand that there is no need to go ahead. AUM means nothing; it is not a word, hence it is not written alphabetically, it is a symbol.

It contains three sounds: A, U, M. These are the basic sounds: A, U, M; all other sounds come out of these three sounds. This is the basic trinity of sounds, then the whole music of life grows out of this.

AUM means exactly what Zen people call "the sound of one hand clapping". AUM is the innermost music of your being. When all the thoughts and desires and memories have gone, have disappeared, and the mind is absolutely quiet and silent, there is no noise inside, you start hearing a tremendously beautiful music which does not consist of any meaning. It is pure music without any meaning, gives you great joy, fills you with celebration, makes you dance. You would like to shout "Alleluia!" But the music itself has no meaning; it is pure music, not polluted by any meaning.

AUM represents that inner music, that inner harmony, that inner humming sound which happens when your body, your mind, your soul are functioning together in deep accord, when the visible and the invisible, the manifest and the unmanifest are dancing together. when they are like two lovers in deep love-mbrace, merging. melting into each other, the manifest making love to the unmanifest, the unmanifest making love to the manifest when the manifest and the unmanifest are no more two but have become one.

This is represented in the Upanishads by the number hundred. The number hundred is used to symbolize the ultimate state of oneness. The two zeros in the number hundred represent "this" and "that", the manifest and the unmanifest, the phenomenal and the noumenal - two zeros. Both are whole, and when these both wholes become one, the number one in hundred represents that oneness.

One hundred is a symbolic number; it has a message. The two - the body and the soul, the world and God, the changing and the unchanging, the time and the timelessness, the matter and consciousness - are represented by the two zeros. When those two zeros become one, when they are not antagonistic to each other - as in these three thousand years the so-called religious people have done... They have destroyed this beautiful symbol; they have put those two zeros against each other. They have created a life-negativity; instead of affirming life they have condemned it as sin. When these two zeros merge in a love affair, into a deep lovers' embrace into each other, then oneness is born. That is represented by number one in hundred.

A full material existence with a full spiritual life: that is wholeness. And that's my message to you.

Be a spiritual materialist - or a materialist spiritualist - because to me they are not separate. The inner aspect is spiritual, the outer aspect is material.

The religions have divided humanity into materialists and spiritualists. Now Soviet Russia, China and other communist countries think they are materialist. They are communist - they deny God, they deny consciousness, they deny soul, they deny the unmanifest; they believe only in matter. The word "matter" means that which can be measured; the "matter" comes from "meter" - that which can be measured. They don't believe in the immeasurable. But the immeasurable is there: whether you believe in or not does not matter. Your belief of disbelief makes no difference to reality. The immeasurable is there, and not only the mystics are saying it is so - now even the physicists are saying so, that the immeasurable is there.

The existence is immeasurable; it is so vast it cannot be measured. And the vastness is also expanding, every day becoming bigger and bigger. It is already infinite, and it goes on becoming more infinite! It is already perfect, and it goes on becoming more and more perfect, from one perfection to another perfection. It is never imperfect, so it is not a question of from imperfection to perfection. It is always perfect, it is always infinite, but it goes on expanding.

This is the paradox of modern physics. This has been a paradox to all the mystics, but they were not worried by it. That's why they are called mystics: they accept the paradox, they enjoy in the paradox.

They love the paradoxical because they know truth can only be paradoxical. But modern physics is very much puzzled, because physics is rooted in logic and logic cannot accept paradox. Either it has to be "this" or "that" - it is always either/or.

Mysticism is never either/or, and if it is either/or then : it is not mysticism. Mysticism is BOTH/AND!

All religious, so-called religious people are against me - Christians, Mohammedans, Hindus, Jains, Buddhists - for the simple reason because I am teaching wholeness. I am teaching to my sannyasins: be spiritual materialists - because both are! What we can do? It is not a question of our choice; it is already the case: the matter is there and the consciousness is there. Logicians are always choosing...

The so-called spiritualists of the world go on trying to prove that the world is illusory so that they can prove that only spirit exists, the world does not exist - it is maya, it is illusory, it is untrue, it is made of the same stuff as dreams are made of. And the materialist goes on doing the same from the other polarity. He says there is no consciousness; consciousness is an epiphenomenon. Karl Marx says that consciousness is a byproduct of matter and nothing more; it has no substance of its own. Matter is real and consciousness is only a shadow. It is the same logic!

Berkeley says: consciousness is real and matter is only a shadow, a thought, nothing else but a dream. But their logic is the same: both are afraid of accepting both, both are choosing one. They live in the world of either/or.

But the true mystic, the Upanishadic mystic, accepts both; he does not even call them two - they are one appearing as two. These two are aspects of one reality: the inner and the outer, the material and the spiritual.

So to me there is no problem: you be scientific and religious, you be materialistic and spiritualistic.

Live in the world and live joyously, but also remain centered in your consciousness. This is bringing the Upanishads back. It is a resurrection!

AT THE HEART ALL THIS PHENOMENAL WORLD, WITHIN ALL ITS CHANGING FORMS, DWELLS THE UNCHANGING LORD.

Everywhere God is present; all that is needed is the eyes to see. Then you will see him in the rocks and in the stars and in the birds and in the animals and in the people around you. But the first experience has to happen within you; only then you will be able to see him everywhere else.

SO, GO BEYOND THE CHANGING, AND, ENJOYING THE INNER, CEASE TO TAKE FOR YOURSELF WHAT TO OTHERS ARE RICHES.

The unchanging is the God and the changing is the world.

... GO BEYOND THE CHANGING...

Not against the changing, remember - beyond. Beyond is not against. "Beyond" means LIVE in it, but live in such a way that you remain above it, like a lotus flower. It grows in the lake but goes beyond the lake. It lives in water, but the water cannot touch its velvety leaves. Even in the morning when dewdrops gather on the leaves or petals of the lotus they remain separate. The dewdrops are there on the leaves and you can see them, so beautiful in the morning sun, like pearls, but they are separate. The leaf remains absolutely dry; the dewdrops cannot make it wet.

That's the way of a sannyasin, that's the way of the Upanishads: living in the world and yet not being of it.

... GO BEYOND THE CHANGING, AND, ENJOYING THE INNER...

Don't enforce - enjoy the inner, and then you can understand my approach very easily. It is not a question of forcing. Meditation should not be enforced; you should not start a kind of regimentation, a violent discipline. You are not a soldier, you are a sannyasin!

A sannyasin simply enjoys the inner; he enjoys the outer also. He enjoys! He enjoys the outer and on the same wave of enjoyment he enters the inner - it is the same wave. It is like breathing: the breath comes in and the breath goes out. Do you think these are two separate breaths? It is the same breath that goes out and comes in and goes out and comes in... It is the same breath, it is the same process. The same breath comes in and goes out.

Enjoy the outer, ride on enjoyment, and enter in the inner also with the same joy, with the same dance. Don't create a division - there is none. All divisions are manufactured by the priests, the hypocrites, the moralists. They go on creating demarcations that: "This is outer and this is inner".

There is no line which can demark what is outer and what is inner; they are part of one process, one whole.

Just as you come out of your house... When it is too cold in the morning you come out of the house to sit in the sun, to take a sunbath. And when it becomes too hot you get up and go in. There is no question of enforcing; just a little awareness that now it is too hot, so you move in, into the shade to the coolness of the house. And when it is too cold inside, just a little awareness and you come out.

Enjoy the outer and the inner in the same way, and go on moving, riding the same wave of enjoyment.

And don't create any distinction - it is the same wave, same reality.

SO, GO BEYOND THE CHANGING, AND, ENJOYING THE INNER...

Don't make it something very serious. Don't make a long face because you are meditating, because you are a sannyasin! Look at the pictures of your saints - such long faces that to live with these saints will be a hell! I don't think these saints can ever enter into heaven, or, wherever they will go they will create their hell. The hell is in their seriousness.

Once Buddha was asked, "What do you say happens when an enlightened person dies? Does he go to heaven?"

Buddha said, "Don't ask nonsense questions! Wherever the enlightened person is, there is heaven - wherever he is, it does not matter where - wherever he is... If he goes to the hell, the hell will be transformed. His presence carries its heaven around himself."

Heaven hangs around the Buddha, around the awakened person. You cannot send an enlightened person to hell - impossible; and you cannot send your so-called saints to heaven - impossible. The hell is so much engrained in their beings; wherever they are they will create boredom for themselves and for others.

Saints are not good company; even sinners are far better. I have lived with both, and, believe me, sinners are far better company than saints. Saints are utterly boring! Saints are very juicy just if they are saints in the sense of Upanishads, in the sense I call my sannyasins.

My sannyasins are saints, but not in the ordinary sense of being a Hindu saint or a Jain saint or a Christian saint. The Christian saint seems to be the worst - so boring that I can believe Friedrich Nietzsche that God is dead; he must have committed suicide! Surrounded by all these saints, what he can do, what else he can do? He must have committed suicide, feeling utterly bored. And this company is going to be there for eternity now! You cannot escape.

Upanishads are full OF JOY, full of flowers and fragrance.

... ENJOYING THE INNER - not enforcing it - CEASE TO TAKE FOR YOURSELF WHAT TO OTHERS ARE RICHES.

And the Isa Upanishad is not saying that, renounce the world. It says:

... CEASE TO TAKE FOR YOURSELF...

Don't possess, don't become owners of persons or things; just use them as a gift of the universe.

And when they are available, use them; when they are not available. enjoy the freedom. When you have something, enjoy it; when you don't have it, enjoy not having it - that too has its own beauty.

If you have a palace to live in, enjoy! If you don't have, then enjoy a hut and the hut becomes a palace. It is the ENJOYMENT that makes the difference. Then live under a tree and enjoy it. Don't miss the tree and the flowers and the freedom and the birds and the air and the sun. And when you are in a palace don't miss it - enjoy the marble and the chandeliers...

Go on enjoying wherever you are, and don't possess anything. Nothing belongs to us. We come empty-handed in the world and we go empty-handed. The world is a gift, so enjoy while it is there.

And remember, the universe always gives you that which you need.

A Sufi mystic used to say every day in his prayers, "Thank you, God, for all that you go on doing for me. How can I repay? I feel so grateful!"

Once it happened that he was traveling and for three days they were refused shelter because they were thought to be heretics, they were thought to be anti-religious, rebellious. They were not given food, not even water, and no shelter. For three days, hungry, thirsty...

And the third day when he was praying, again he was saying to God, "Thank you! How I can repay you? I feel so grateful! "

Now it was too much His disciples said, "It is time to say something!" They said, "Wait - just a moment! For what you are thanking? For three days we have been hungry, thirsty, no shelter, in the desert, at the mercy of wild animals. For what you are being thankful?"

And the Sufi laughed and he said, "You don't understand - this is what I must have needed for these three days! God always gives to me whatsoever I need. This must have been my need, otherwise he would not have given it to me. I am thankful for it. He always takes care. He does not bother what I desire; he always gives what he feels is right. I am thanking him... three days fasting, three days no shelter, three days the open sky with stars in the desert, sleeping in the desert, and no wild animal has attacked us. And why you are looking so sad? It must have been our real need!"

This is trust, and this is the joyful attitude. This is real sannyas!

CONTINUING TO ACT IN THE WORLD, ONE MAY ASPIRE TO BE ONE HUNDRED.

Continue to act in the world, and now remember: ONE MAY ASPIRE TO BE ONE HUNDRED. It does not mean only a long life. Of course, that too it means, because Upanishadic seers were not against life; they wanted to live long and live joyously, so it was perfectly good - that meaning is perfectly right.

Aspire to live long and aspire to live deep, and aspire to live intensely and passionately - perfectly right! - but don't forget the symbol of one hundred. That is its true meaning, the higher meaning, the invisible meaning.

... ONE MAY ASPIRE TO BE ONE HUNDRED.

Even living and acting in the world you can become one. Those two zeros of this world and that, those two zeros of the body and the soul, those two zeros of the changing and the unchanging, can meet and merge into one even while you are acting in the world, so there is no need to renounce.

THUS, AND ONLY THUS, CAN A MAN BE FREE FROM THE BINDING INFLUENCE OF ACTION.

Not by renouncing action but by acting in such awareness, in such deep meditativeness, one becomes free of action and its binding effects.

UNILLUMINED INDEED ARE THOSE WORLDS CLOUDED BY THE BLINDING DARKNESS OF IGNORANCE.

Upanishads call people ignorant... if they are living in the half they are ignorant. The materialist is ignorant, the spiritualist is ignorant, because both are unaware of the whole. Only the one who knows the whole knows.

INTO THIS DEATH SINK ALL THOSE WHO SLAY THE SELF.

And by dividing your being into two, is like slaying your very being, murdering yourself, killing yourself Don't cripple yourself, don't paralyze yourself. Accept your totality and live it joyously.

AUM PURNAMADAH Purnamidam PURNAT PURNAMUDACHYATE PURNASYA PURNAMADAYA PURNAMEVA VASHISHYATE AUM THAT IS THE WHOLE.

THIS IS THE WHOLE.

FROM WHOLENESS EMERGES WHOLENESS.

WHOLENESS COMING FROM WHOLENESS, WHOLENESS STILL REMAINS.