Bound in Deep Togetherness

AUM represents the music of existence, the soundless sound, the sound of silence, when your whole being hums with joy. Aum represents the ultimate harmony, what Heraclitus calls "the hidden harmony". To become one with this music of existence is to attain flowering, fulfillment.

The moment you lose your discord with the whole, the moment you are in tune with the whole - attunement simply means "at-onement" - when you are one with the whole, every fiber of your being, every cell of your being dances, for no reason at all. It is the dance for dance's sake, joy which is uncaused, hence it is eternal - joy which is unmotivated. joy which is not dependent on anything. It is your intrinsic, natural music, your spontaneity.

All the Upanishads begin with this remembrance:

THAT represents the innermost core of THIS. It is called THAT because it is not known to you yet.

Those who know, for them there is only this and no that, or only that and no this. The duality disappears, but for the blind the duality is there. Everything is dual, if you are not fully aware - divided.

This means that which you can see and that means which is invisible. This is the wheel and that is the axle. The wheel moves on the axle but the axle moves not. All movement depends on something unmoving: all change depends on something eternal Time depends on timelessness.

Birth and death happen into something which is never born and never dies.

This represents all that is known to the unenlightened and that which is known when you become enlightened. When you are full of light you have clarity, perception, transparency; you can see through and through. In that vision, this starts melting into that; the circumference disappears into the center. The center is naturally hidden, it is bound to be hidden; only the circumference is available to the senses. You can see only the surface, you cannot see the depths. If you go to the ocean you can see only the surface and the surfacial turmoil; you cannot see the depth. To see the depth you will have to dive deep, and as far as the ultimate that is concerned, only diving deep won't do: you will have to dive so deep that you disappear totally, become one with it. In that oneness God is realized.

The people who go on arguing about God know nothing about God. Those who know, they cannot argue about God. Yes, their very presence is a proof, their very existence radiates the ultimate, their "thisness" is overflowing with "thatness", but they cannot prove logically, intellectually the existence of God. God is not an object, hence it cannot be put before you. It cannot be made a collective experience.

That's why science goes on denying God, and science WILL go on denying God because science depends on collective observation; it believes only in that which can observed by everybody. It believes in the rock because the rock can be watched by everybody; everybody can agree that it exists.

The word "object" is significant; "object" means that which hinders. If you try to pass through a wall you will be hit hard by the wall. The wall is an object: it objects your passing through it. You cannot pass through a rock - it objects, it prevents, it hinders.

God is not an object - you can pass through God, you are passing through God every moment. You are breathing God; your very heartbeat is God's heartbeat. But God is so close... even the word "close" is not right. because the word "close" or "closeness" shows distance.

This fan is close to me, but it is separate. This microphone is even more closer, but still it is separate.

The body is even more closer, but it is still separate. God is inseparable with you; hence even the word "closeness" is not right. God is your very being, your very consciousness. It cannot be an object, it cannot prevent you; it helps you, it nourishes you. It is your subjectivity. Because it is your innermost core it remains hidden even from yourself - unless you take a one-hundred-eighty-degree turn, unless you recoil upon yourself.

You must have seen the symbol - a very ancient symbol and very significant too - of a snake eating its own tail. Many ancient mystery schools used that symbol; it is certainly very indicative. The snake eating its own tail means one-hundred-eighty-degree turn. The snake is turned upon itself, the consciousness has recoiled upon itself And the snake has represented in almost all the cultures of the world wisdom. jesus says: Be ye as wise as a snake. And in the East snake, the serpent, has symbolized the inner energy of man, kundalini; hence it is called serpent power. The energy is coiled at the lowest center of your being; when it uncoils, the snake starts rising upwards. It simply represents that there is something in the snake which can be used as a metaphor.

The snake can catch hold of its own tail; the dog cannot do it. Dogs try - you must have seen dogs trying - and the more they try, the more crazy they go, because the tail goes on jumping with them.

They think it is something separate. They try to catch hold of it, and when they cannot catch hold of it... of course they try desperately, but the more they try the more they are at a loss. Only the snake can do it, no other animal.

The same happens in enlightenment: your energy starts moving upon itself, it becomes a circle.

God is your subjectivity; you cannot find God anywhere else. But once you have found God within you you will find him everywhere else too. All the arguments are stupid, and these arguments are really childish. Whatever proofs have been given of God are so childish that one wonders what these theologians were doing. They prove by their arguments only one thing: that they were fools!

God is an experience, unprovable, because your senses cannot reach him. If God was an object, your senses will be able to reach. God is not a thought either, hence your mind cannot grasp it.

But we have made God an object; statues have been created. Those statues are objects; they are made of stone or wood or some other material. And to make God an object is the greatest blasphemy because God is subjectivity. You are changing the whole idea of God; you are reducing it into a thing. God is not a thing.

That's why Gautam the Buddha calls God "nothingness". Remember, when he uses the word "nothingness" he means "no-thingness" - he does not negate. He is not saying there is no God; the word "nothing" simply means it is not a thing.

And the temples and the churches, they have all made God a thing, even though there may not be any statue - in the mosques there are no statues. But people are praying to God as if he is THERE, not deep in your own consciousness but somewhere else. It is the same! - whether you are bowing down to a statue or to a God somewhere above the clouds, still it is an object. WHOM YOU are praying? Your prayer means that you have accepted the idea of God's separateness from you - he has to be prayed. You are the prayer and he is the prayed. You are the praiser and he is the praised.

The separation is accepted, and that is irreligiousness.

But people go on fighting on each and everything. In fact, they want to fight; fight seems to be their joy. Then God is one of the most beautiful excuses to fight because it can never be conclusively decided.

In a one-horse town in front of the general store two men were fighting. A ten year-old boy was among the spectators who were enjoying the battle. A stranger came along and asked the youngster what was going on.

"My father and a man are having a real fight," explained the boy.

"Which one is your father?" the stranger asked.

"That," said the boy, "is what they are fighting about!"

And this is what religious people have been doing for centuries. They think they are creating great philosophical ideas. Professors of philosophy and professors of theology don't know anything about themselves, but they are trying to prove that their idea of God is true. They themselves live in absolute unconsciousness. If they were not unconscious they will not argue about God; they will LIVE God, they will RADIATE God. God would be their fragrance, their presence.

An absent-minded professor of philosophy was going out to dinner one evening with his wife.

"I don't like that tie you have on," she said. "I wish you would go upstairs and put on another."

The professor quietly obeyed. Minute after minute passed until finally the impatient wife went upstairs to see what had happened. In his room she found her husband undressed and getting into bed.

Old habit! The moment he took out his tie he thought the time has come to go to bed.

And these are the people who go on proposing great systems of thought. Immanuel Kant has created one of the greatest philosophical systems in the world, and he himself was such an unaware man that it seems almost impossible how a man can be so unaware. There are thousands of anecdotes about his life.

One day he came home after his evening walk... He was a very regular person in his habits, in his routines. He never got married for the simple reason that the woman may disturb his pattern. He never allowed any friendship because then you have to be polite to the friends. And if you want to go to bed and your friend is sitting, just out of etiquette, mannerism, you have to go on talking. And he was such a mechanical man that at exactly nine - and nine meant nine, not a minute before, not a minute after - he will go to bed. He never married for the simple reason because women are illogical and they won't understand, and there will be unnecessary quarrels.

He kept a servant, and the servant used to declare only time. There was no need to say anything, he will simply come and say, "Sir, it is nine," and he will jump into the bed.

The servant was puzzled that it was almost ten in the night and his light was still on, so he went to have a look what has happened. He looked from the window and he could not believe his eyes: he was standing in a corner of the room with closed eyes, and his walking stick was Lying on the bed!

When he came after the walk he forgot who is who - just a little confusion! And it was nine o'clock so there was no time even to think about the matter, to figure it out, who is who. He was in such a hurry!

The servant came in, shook him and asked, "What is the matter? What are you doing?"

And he said, "I was also thinking what is the matter - because I am feeling very tired! Now I know what is the matter." When he saw the walking stick on the bed resting, then he realized.

And these people have created great systems of thought, and they talk about God and they talk about truth and they talk about love and they talk about beauty. and they define what is virtue and what is sin. So unconscious!

In the East we have a totally different approach. You cannot think such a phenomenon with a Gautam Buddha or with an Upanishadic seer, because the whole approach is of being more and more conscious. One has to be a flame of consciousness, one has to be alert and aware. On one hand is Immanuel Kant, on other hand is Gautam Buddha.

His chief disciple Ananda, who lived with him for forty years and served him with great love... He used to watch him in every possible way, because he was continuously following him like a shadow, and each of his movements was beautiful, it was a grace. He was also watching him when he was asleep. because he used to sleep in the same room in case the Master needs him in the night, he used to watch him while he was asleep. Awake or asleep, his grace was the same, his beauty was the same, his silence was the same.

One day he asked Buddha that, "I should not ask such questions - it looks so stupid - but I cannot contain my curiosity. You sleep, but I have watched you for hours. Sometimes in the middle of the night I wake up and watch you, sometimes just before you get up early in the morning I watch you, but my experience has been such that it seems to me that you are still awake even while asleep.

You look so alive, so fresh! And one thing more - you never change your posture. You go to sleep and you wake up in the same posture. What is the secret of it?"

Buddha said, "There is no secret in it. The BODY goes to sleep; once you are awake you are awake!

- whether it is day or night makes no difference, the inner flame goes on burning. The body goes to sleep because the body gets tired, and now there is no mind any more so no question of the mind arises at all."

There are only two things. In the unenlightened person there are three things: the body, the mind, the soul. And because of the mind he cannot see the soul. The mind is a turmoil, a chaos; it is all smoke, it is all clouds. The enlightened has no mind; there is only silence. So he has the body and he has the soul. The body tires, needs rest, but the soul is never tired, needs no rest; it is always awake. The body is always asleep and the soul is always awake. The nature of body is to be unconscious and the nature of the soul is to be conscious. These are intrinsic qualities. Once the mind is no more there, then even in your sleep only the body sleeps, not you.

In the East we have called these people religious: those who have known such awakening which cannot be clouded by any sleep any more. The West has been thinking about Kant and Hegel and Fichte and Bertrand Russell and Nietzsche and Wittgenstein - these people, as if they are great explorers of truth. They are thinkers.

And remember always, only a blind man thinks about light The man who has eyes knows it: he need not think about it. These are blind people - howsoever clever they are in argumentation but they are blind.

The Upanishad belongs to the seers. It expresses that which is experienced in the ultimate accord where you are no more a separate entity from the whole, when the dewdrop slips from the lotus leaf and becomes the ocean.

The first sutra:

THE ONE SELF NEVER MOVES, YET IS TOO SWIFT FOR THE MIND.

You will come across many self-contradictory statements, for the simple reason because truth is paradoxical. It HAS to be paradoxical for the simple reason because it contains the whole, and the whole means the contradictory also is contained in it. It contains both the poles, the negative and the positive. It contains the day and night, life and death, summer and winter. It contains all opposites; in it those opposites are no more opposites, they are complementaries. So don't think them as contradictions.

To the seer, to the one who has come to the ultimate peak of meditation, one who has attained SAMADHI, all the polarities are joined together into one existence. They are not separate - NOTHING is separate. The existence is one organic unity, hence to say anything about it will have to be paradoxical if it has to cover the whole truth. So you will come again and again from different sides. The contradictions have to be dissolved, they have to be talked about, so that you become aware of their complementariness.

The first is:

THE ONE SELF NEVER MOVES, YET IS TOO SWIFT FOR THE MIND.

It never moves and yet it is too swift, unmoving and yet moving. But remember, these are not separate, these two phenomenon: movement and non-movement. Again let me remind you of the metaphor of the wheel and the axle: the axle remains unmoving; it is because of the unmoving axle that the wheel moves. They support each other. If the axle also moves then the wheel will not be able to move. By remaining unmoving it is supporting the wheel to move.

The world is the wheel. The Sanskrit word for the world is SAMSARA; SAMSARA simply means the wheel - literally it means the wheel. That's why Sanskrit is a language belonging to a totally different category: it is a transformed language, transformed by the seers. Each word has been coined in such a way that it can be used in two ways: it can be used in a mundane sense, it can also be used in a sacred sense. It is the most expressive language about the ultimate, about the inexpressible.

The Sanskrit word for the world is samsara; samsara means the wheel. It goes on moving. But don't forget the axle, the very center upon which the whole movement depends, and it has to be unmoving. The wheel and axle are not enemies; they are in partnership, a deep friendship. They are together; they are bound in a deep togetherness.

THE ONE SELF NEVER MOVES, YET IS TOO SWIFT FOR THE MIND.

One more thing has to be understood: whenever the Upanishads say "the one Self", remember, it is exactly what Buddha says when he calls the ultimate reality "no-self". Their expression is opposite to each other. Upanishads speak the language of affirmation, Buddha speaks the language of negation. Upanishads are via AFFIRMATIVA, and the approach of Buddha - or at least the expression of Buddha - is via NEGATIVA. Both are valid approaches; it depends with whom you are speaking.

The Upanishads were spoken in a different context; they were spoken twenty-five centuries before Buddha arrived - from today, five thousand years before today. It was a totally different world. The Upanishadic seers were not moving from one place to another place; they were not talking to the crowds, they were not arguing with the skeptical minds. They were talking only to their disciples, chosen few; it was a totally different context. To talk to your own disciples is certainly different than to talk to those who are skeptical, doubtful. antagonistic.

The days when the Isa Upanishad was born were the days of very innocence, deep innocence.

People were simple, non-philosophical. They were not much concerned about logic; they were trusting people, honest, sincere, authentic. And then the Upanishadic seers lived in their small ashrams.

The ashram, the commune of the Master and the disciples, is an Upanishadic discovery. It is not a monastery; that is a totally different phenomenon. In English, ordinarily the ashram is translated as a monastery - it is not a monastery. A monastery is something AGAINST the world; a monastery means you have escaped from the world; a monastery simply shows a condemnation of the world.

The ashram is not a condemnation of the world. Rather it is a learning place - where you learn the art of how to LIVE in the world. People used to go to Upanishadic Masters to learn how to live in the world.

In those days this was the process of life. Assuming that a person was going to live hundred years, life was divided in four parts. First twenty-five years everybody has to be with some awakened Master so that he can have a taste of the beyond, so he can have some experience of the sacred. This first stage was called BRAHMACHARYA. Remember, to translate BRAHMACHARYA as "celibacy" is not right. The word BRAHMACHARYA simply means living like a god, living with the experience of the Brahma, the absolute, living meditatively. If I am to translate BRAHMACHARYA I Will translate it as "the life of meditation".

Those twenty-five years, the beginning part of life... it will look strange. Why God has to be experienced in the beginning? - for many reasons. First: the first part of life is the most innocent part, most courageous, adventurous, alive, intelligent. Once you become burdened with life's experiences you start becoming cunning. To live in a world and not to be cunning is very difficult.

To face the world y ou will have to be cunning, to face the world you will have to be on guard, cautious; otherwise you will be cheated, you will be exploited. To be in the world you have to be continuously fighting and competing; you have to be ambitious and violent and aggressive. And if all these experiences become part of your consciousness - and they are bound to become part - then trust will be more difficult, doubt will be more easy.

I have heard:

Johnson was a compulsive gambler, but always willing to give and share. So when he lost all his money in a poker game, Brown, one of his cronies, gave him a twenty-dollar bill to tide him over till the next day. On his way home, a shabbily dressed woman approached him with a hard-luck story.

"I can't go on," she pleaded. "I haven't eaten all day. If you don't help me, I'm going to drown myself"

Generous Johnson handed her the twenty-dollar bill.

"I'll never forget your kindness," she said gratefully. "You have restored my faith in mankind."

The next morning Johnson noticed a newspaper item about the body of an unknown woman that had been fished out of the river. The description of her clothes fitted the woman he had befriended.

He was puzzled.

He met Brown at lunch.

"What did you do after you left us yesterday?" asked Brown.

"I walked home," said Johnson.

"Did you spend any money?"

"No. Why?"

"That's good," said Brown with a smile. "We were wondering what would happen when you tried to spend that phony twenty-dollar bill I gave you."

In this world you are bound to be corrupted - this world is so corrupted. It is because of this fact that in the days of the Upanishads, the knowers, the seers have decided that before you have any experience of the world it is better to have some taste of God, because that taste will save you from the corrupting influences of the world. If you have known something higher, then the lower cannot disturb you; if you have known something deeper, then the superficial does not matter. It is very scientific and very psychological The first part of life, twenty-five years, had to be devoted to meditation, living with a Master, serving the Master, being with the Master, enjoying his presence, rejoicing his presence. It was not a monastery; it was a school, an academy, a real university to learn the art of life.

And when after twenty-five years the second stage used to begin... it was the stage called the stage of the householder, GRIHASTHA. Then one gets married, goes to work in the world, earns money, lives a worldly life, but now he has an inner center, a grounding. The world cannot disturb him, and he knows that that experience has to be again achieved, that light has to be again achieved.

Whatsoever glimpses he has got in those twenty-five years will haunt him, will remind him again and again that this world is only momentary. He will not become mad after money or power or prestige.

He will do all the actions of the world but remain deep down unmoved. He will become a wheel as far as the outside is concerned, but inside he will remain an axle, unaffected, cool. Whether success comes or failure it will be all the same. Whether he becomes rich or poor it will be all the same. Whether he becomes very famous or remains a nobody it is all the same, because he has experienced a joy within himself; now he cannot be deceived by anything from the outside.

And this experience is also needed to enforce, to reinforce the first experience of twenty-five years.

This is an examination, this is criterion whether what you have achieved you have really achieved it, or it was only in the light of the Master, in his presence, something borrowed. You have to go into the world - that is the test - so that you can see that it is something that has become part of your own being and nothing can take it away. Even coming away from the Master is not going to affect it; it is your own, authentically your own. This is a beautiful, scientific procedure.

And after twenty-five years when the person will be reaching the age fifty, his children will be ready to come from the ashrams, from those extraordinary devices for learning. His children will be now ready. They must be getting twenty-five years old and they will be on the way back to home. Now they will be getting married and they will take the place of the father.

And try to see the eastern insight into human psyche: when the son comes back and he gets married, and if the father still goes on reproducing children, it is ugly. It is like when your small son is born and he plays with toy boats and you are also playing with toy boats. It will be stupid; you will simply show that you are retarded. If you go on carrying a teddy bear... it is perfectly okay for a child, but a man of fifty years carrying a teddy bear and cannot go to sleep without a teddy bear will be ugly; it will show immaturity; the man has not grown.

Fifty is the time - enough! Twenty-five years you have lived in the world; it is enough to see that it is only a drama. It is enough to give you an experience of its falseness, of its illusoriness. It is made of the same stuff dreams are made. It is enough to see. And now your children will be playing the same game, and you are also playing the same game; it does not look right.

The moment your son comes back, in the days of Upanishads, the father will start removing himself away from the jobs, the work, the money, the power game - all the games. Now the son has to be given the place, not reluctantly - rejoicingly, happily. Now let him play the games. Otherwise fathers are also in the same game, their children are in the same game, even their grandchildren are in the same game. The grandchildren are chasing girls and the grandfathers are chasing girls! It looks so ugly, as if nobody seems to have grown up. Maybe physically they are old, but not psychologically mature.

To grow old is not to grow up, remember it. To grow up is a psychological process. So when a man was fifty he will start giving place to his children, and there was no competition. Now there is every competition in every field.

Somebody like Morarji Desai, at the age of eighty-five still trying again to be the prime minister of the country... Then what about the children? If you are interested in the teddy bears, then what about the children? What about the young people who really need space and opportunity? These old fools go on and on; they don't stop. There is no retiring age for the politicians, no retiring age for the wealthy. They never retire, they only die. Only then reluctantly they have to retire, otherwise they won't retire.

There is a college in London, a medical college; the man who founded the college, who gave the money, he presided his whole life on the board of the directors, and when he died his will was opened and all were puzzled and shocked. His will was that "My whole money is for the college, provided I still continue to preside." After death... and he is still presiding! After two hundred years he is still presiding in that medical college. His body has been preserved. His body sits in the place of the chairman... and the board meeting and he presides. Of course somebody else does the whole work as acting president, but the real president is there in the chair! Even people don't want to retire after death - he has not retired.

Now just think of that meeting, how the other directors who are alive will be feeling, sitting with a dead man, a corpse! And he is the president, and they must be addressing him, "Sir, president sir..."

But this is the situation all over the world! In Sri Lanka a man of ninety years age is now the prime minister! Now these dead people are bound to create bad feelings in younger generation, and they say it is the younger generation which is wrong. It is not so.

When people used to live not that long, when people used to live not more than seventy years, it was okay; the younger generation could tolerate them, hoping that they are going to die sooner or later - don't get into a hurry, don't kill them. But medical science has now made it possible for people to live indefinitely.

In Russia there are thousands of people who have crossed the age one hundred fifty, and they are still working. Now what do you want? Younger generation is bound to be angry. Sooner or later younger people will start killing these old people - they have to be killed! 1 low long you can tolerate? They will destroy your whole life! By the time you are hundred they may die, but then other younger people are there who will push you into the grave!

It was very psychological that when your children are back from the gurukul... the ashrams were called GURUKULS. GURUKUL means the place where the Master lives and his family - his disciples are his family - where the Master lives with his disciples - the family of the Master, the commune of the Master.

When the children started coming, the father, the mother, the elders have to vacate and joyously, because now they are being relieved. Twenty-five years they will still remain in the home so that they can help their children to be in the world, so they can hand over everything to the children. By the time their grandchildren start coming home they will go back to the ashrams.

This is the full circle of life, four stages. It begins in the ashram, it ends in the ashram. It begins in the ashram as a disciple and it ends in the ashram as a Master. The circle is complete. A man after seventy-five years of age - twenty-five years' experience with a Master, then twenty-five years' testing time in the world, then twenty-five years of slow withdrawal, not a hasty renunciation, a very meditative withdrawal, slowly... and then back into the forest, into the ashram. Now he comes as a Master in his own right; a fully lived life, experienced in all possible ways, sacred and mundane, he becomes a Master himself... and children will be coming again.

The Master in the Upanishads was talking to innocent people, unpolluted by the world, unskeptical, uncorrupted. trusting, loving.

Buddha after twenty-five centuries was speaking to a totally different audience. Ashrams had disappeared, died; the whole beautiful institution died. It died because of the Jains - they are the culprits, because Jains insisted that the Masters should not live in one place. Jains have a very life-negative attitude and they are as old as the Upanishads. They insisted on asceticism, they insisted on renouncing the world, and they insisted that one should not live in one place because if you live in one place long enough you may get attached to the place. Their fear of attachment was so much, they were so much obsessed with the fear they were living in a kind of phobia, in a panic.

The Jain muni, the Jain monk, is allowed to stay only three days in a town, then he should leave, because if he stays longer than that there is a possibility he may start growing friendship, he may become loving to people, he may become attached to the place, to people, he may not like to move.

Jains are against ashrams. Ashram means the Master lives there permanently with his disciples.

Jains insisted that the Jain monk should be a wanderer; he should not stay anywhere. They destroyed the beautiful institution of the Upanishads, they destroyed it completely. And they appealed more to people because people are so foolish, they become attracted to any kind of unnatural thing. They became attracted to the Jain munis; they thought these are the real renouncers of the world - because the Upanishadic seers lived very ordinarily, just as everybody else lives. The only difference was they used to live in forests. Of course, to live in the forests was far more beautiful than to life in the marketplace. They were not against the marketplace, but they knew the beauty of the forest, the nature and all its joys and all its climates. They were not there against the world; they loved the beauty of nature. They were not for any negative reason, they were there for a positive reason. They loved the trees, the wild animals, the flowers, the silence of the forests. They were in immense love with the forest. They were poets. Their going to the forest was not renunciation, it was rejoicing in nature. Remember the difference.

Jains started a totally different kind of tradition in India - the tradition of the wanderer - and they destroyed the whole institution of the ashram. And the wanderers cannot be Masters, because what can you teach in three days living in a place? And they go on moving. They are afraid, very much afraid of relating to people. What can they teach? They are themselves afraid, living out of fear; their whole orientation is fear of the world. They destroyed the beautiful universities that existed around Masters.

My effort here is to create again a real ashram, a real commune. That's why I want to move to the forests. I am not against the world, against the marketplace, but I know the beauty of the hills, of the lakes, of the oceans, and I would like you to experience it and to experience it with me so you can share my vision, so you can dance with the trees and sing with the birds, so that you can start feeling the humming sound that comes when you meet with the universe... AUM... so that you can feel that music, the eternal music, the celestial music.

Buddha came after the Jains have destroyed completely the institution of the ashrams. He had to talk to the skeptical, he had to talk to the crowd, he had to talk to people who had never known any meditation. Hence he had chosen the expression of the negative. He will say, "The ultimate is a no-self." But Upanishads say, "The ultimate is the supreme Self," but they both mean the same thing.

THE SENSES CANNOT REACH IT.

IT IS EVER BEYOND THEIR GRASP.

Obviously - the senses are to grasp the objective world. You can see with your eyes the whole world, except your eyes themselves. If you want to see your eyes you will have to have a mirror, and then too you are not seeing your eyes, you are only seeing the reflection in the mirror. And those are not your eyes, just a reflection, and the reflection may not be correct; it all depends on the mirror and the quality of the mirror. The mirror may be made in India! - and you may be seeing somebody else's eyes which have nothing to do with you. And you must have seen, there are many kinds of mirrors. In some mirrors you look very small. In some mirrors very tall, in some mirrors very fat, in come mirrors very thin. It all depends on the mirror how you look. In fact, I don't think there is any mirror which EXACTLY represents you, hundred percent; there cannot be.

See the point: your eyes are capable of seeing everything EXCEPT themselves; your hand can grasp everything except itself Your senses are made for the external reality; they are your reaches towards the external. But to the internal they are impotent; they cannot grasp your interiority, and that is where your reality is. They can catch hold of the wheel, but the axle remains beyond them.

REMAINING STILL, IT OUTSTRIPS ALL ACTIVITY, YET IN IT RESTS THE BREATH OF ALL THAT MOVES.

It is the axle.

... IN IT RESTS THE BREATH OF ALL THAT MOVES.

And once you have experienced your absolute, unmoving center, then you know ALL activity depends on it - although it is not active.

This is the meaning of the Upanishadic emphasis of "action in inaction", or the Zen emphasis of "effortless effort", or Bohidharma's statement that if you can just sit silently doing nothing, everything will happen. You are not to do anything, just sit silently so you can have an experience of your axle.

Sitting silently you become more aware of the axle than of the wheel. If you are active you remain on the wheel, the merry-go-round... or the sorry-go-round, it all depends on you - more or less it is sorry-go-round! You cling to the wheel and the wheel goes on moving.

Sitting silently simply means settling at the very center where all activity ceases, but it is also the source of all activity. The inactive is the source of activity, the nothing is the source of all things.

IT MOVES, YET MOVES NOT.

You walk, you go for a morning walk: in a way you are moving, in a way you are not moving. Your body is moving, your mind is moving, but your consciousness is the same. You were a child, then you became young, then old. Everything has moved and yet nothing has moved; your consciousness is still the same.

That's why it is very difficult... if you don't keep a record, if you don't have a birth certificate, if you don't have a calendar, it is very difficult to judge your age. If you close your eyes and you try to figure out how old you are, you will not be able to figure it out at all.

That's why if you go to the primitive tribes where no clocks exist, no calendars, and nobody knows when he was born because people cannot count beyond their ten fingers... Even the person who can count the ten fingers is thought to be very literate, educated, cultured. He becomes the priest or the chief! If you ask people, "How old you are?" they will not be able to answer you; there is no way.

You cannot judge by your own inner being; some outer measurement is needed. Why? - because when you close your eyes and you look within it is always the same, it never changes - and in a way, everything has changed. You will not be able to recognize your photograph when you were one day old - or do you think you will be able to recognize? And in the mother's womb, in nine months' time, you passed through all the stages that life has passed through - millions of years. First you were like a fish and finally you were like a monkey - and very few people grow out of that stage!

Darwin may be right about a few people - a Buddha, a Christ, a Zarathustra, a Lao Tzu... in fact, I cannot count even Darwin! He may be right about a few people, that they have evolved beyond the monkeys, but as far as others are concerned they have only descended from the trees - that is true - but they have not evolved. They have not become better than the monkeys.

Just watch your mind and you will see: the monkey goes on jumping. Your mind is a monkey and it takes longer jumps - quantum leaps - than any monkey can ever do. The monkey can jump from one branch to another branch, from one tree to another tree, but not much, but you can jump from the earth to the moon. Your mind has become a greater monkey.

Every child comes to that stage in the mother's womb. If you are shown a picture or a series of pictures you will not be able to believe that "This is me!" The first day in the mother's womb, do you think you will be able to recognize? It will be just a dot, almost invisible to the naked eyes; you will need a microscope to see it. And then... but all those changes are peripheral; at the center you are still the same. Nothing has changed, nothing ever changes.

Watch when you are going for a morning walk tomorrow: the body moves, but something in you remains unmoving.

IT MOVES, YET MOVES NOT.

IT IS FAR, YET IT IS NEAR.

It is far if you go through the mind, it is very far. In fact, it is so far you will never reach it. But if you go THROUGH meditation it is very near, nearer than your own ego; it is the nearest. It is your very being, but it depends. If you go through the mind, then you have taken the longest route possible; if you go through no-mind, then you have taken the shortest route possible.

IT IS WITHIN ALL THIS, AND YET WITHOUT ALL THIS.

It is within and without both. But first you have to experience it within because that is the nearest point, the nearest door you can enter into the temple of God. And then once you have experienced it as your very self you will know it is everybody's self Then you will see it in the tree and in the rock, in the animals, in the people - yoU will see it everywhere. Once you have recognized it within yourself you cannot miss recognizing it anywhere.

HE WHO SEES EVERYTHING AS NOTHING BUT THE SELF AND THE SELF IN EVERYTHING HE SEES, SUCH A SEER WITHDRAWS FROM NOTHING.

The whole idea of renunciation is non-Aryan, but Indians think that that is their culture. That is just absolute unawareness of what they are talking about. Renunciation is a non-Aryan phenomenon; it has nothing to do with the Indian culture or Indian religion. It has come from the Jains, and Jains are not part of Indian culture.

When Aryans came to India, nearabout ten thousand years before, India was a very civilized country. When the Aryans came India was flourishing; it was not unpopulated. Now explorers have discovered Harappa and Mohenjodaro. These two cities, they must have gone into tremendous calamities because both the cities show indications that seven times they were destroyed. Because they have gone digging and they have founds seven layers; the oldest is the seventh at the bottom.

One is unable even to comprehend how old the oldest is, but somehow it was destroyed - maybe a great earthquake, some upheaval in the earth - and it is covered with earth. Then the second time again the city was populated and the third time... seven times it has been populated and destroyed.

Naturally it has been destroyed by some natural calamity and the possibility is that the Himalaya was rising up very close by, and when such a great mountain rises, then all around it there are great upheavals, bound to be so. Such a great, huge... the greatest mountain coming up means for thousands of miles around everything will change. And Himalaya is still growing. It is the youngest mountain in the world - still growing, still becoming higher. But when the first time it must have arisen out of the earth you can think what calamity must not have surrounded the whole of North India; Harappa and Mohenjodaro were destroyed seven times.

In Harappa and Mohenjodaro statues have been found which can only be related to the religion of the Jains - naked statues, sitting like Mahavira in a lotus posture or standing like Mahavira, meditating. Only Jains are known to meditate standing: no other religion has prescribed meditation has to be done in a standing posture. And they are all naked - only the Jain religion has believed in naked Masters. Harappa and Mohenjodaro must have survived a little bit. Jain religion seems to be far older than Hindu religion; it must have come from Harappa and Mohenjodaro. Harappa and Mohenjodaro must have been Jain cultures; remnants of it remained and they infiltrated the Aryan mind.

Otherwise the Aryans have never been in favor of withdrawing from life; they have always rejoiced in life. But Jains have contaminated the whole mind; they have succeeded in corrupting the whole idea.

SUCH A SEER, SAYS THE Isa Upanishad, WITHDRAWS FROM NOTHING.

There is no need to withdraw because all is God! To withdraw from the world means to withdraw from God's manifestation. It is an unholy act to withdraw, to renounce. The Upanishads believe in rejoicing, not in renouncing, and that's my approach too.

Hence I would like to say to the so-called defenders of Indian culture that they are NOT really defenders of Indian culture. I am, because whatsoever I am saying is rooted in the Upanishadic vision: Rejoice in everything. because all is God! From the lowest to the highest, everything is divine. I am certainly against the Jain attitude of withdrawal, renouncing, but I am not against the Upanishadic attitude - I am all for it.

FOR THE ENLIGHTENED, ALL THAT EXISTS IS NOTHING BUT THE SELF...

The supreme Self, God himself.

SO HOW COULD ANY SUFFERING OR DELUSION CONTINUE FOR THOSE WHO KNOW THIS ONENESS?

There is no question of suffering or delusion. The moment you drop your ego and you become one with the whole, all suffering disappears. Suffering is only illusory; it is a dream, a nightmare. When you wake up, all dreams disappear. Just like that: when you become awake. aware, all suffering disappears. Life becomes a sheer joy, a dance, a celebration!

HE WHO PERVADES ALL, IS RADIANT...

God means that which pervades all, and he is very radiant. All that you need is to open your eyes.

But first you have to see his radiance within yourself; then only you will be able to recognize it on the outside. He is unbounded, because the universe is vast and there are no boundaries. He is untainted, because there is no other thing that can taint it.

These are immense declarations: you are untainted, you are radiant, you are unbounded. Just drop the ego and you become one with this infinity, with this eternity that existence is.

He is INVULNERABLE AND PURE.

So are you.

HE IS THE KNOWER, THE ONE MIND...

What Buddha calls no-mind, Upanishads call the one mind", but they mean the same thing.

HE IS THE KNOWER...

God is the knower. When you become a knower you are a god. To KNOW IS to be a god, because he is the knower:

OMNIPRESENT...

He is present everywhere, because there is nothing else that can be present.

Remember, Upanishads don't believe in any devil, any Satan, they don't believe in any hell, because all is divine - how can there be a hell? Hell is your creation, the shadow of the ego. It is just a delusion - it exists not.

HE HAS HARMONIZED DIVERSITY THROUGHOUT ETERNAL TIME.

God is the harmony of all that is, and you can watch - everything is harmonious. The trees are swaying with the wind; there is harmony. They are not fighting the wind, they are dancing with the wind. The stars are moving in tremendous harmony. This vast existence is a great orchestra: all is tuned with everything else. There is no conflict, no division, no disharmony.

Only man can believe that he is separate. because he has consciousness, and consciousness gives you the alternative. Either you can think yourself separate - then you fall in misery and hell - or you can try to understand the oneness and suddenly there is bliss. To be one with the whole is bliss: to be separate with the whole is misery.

AUM PURNAMADAH PURNAMIDAM PURNAT PURNAMUDACHYATE PURNASYA PURNAMADAYA PURNAMEVA VASHISYATE.

AUM THAT IS THE WHOLE.

THIS IS THE WHOLE.

FROM WHOLENESS EMERGES WHOLENESS.

WHOLENESS COMING FROM WHOLENESS, WHOLENESS STILL REMAINS.