God is in Search of You

Question 1:

The real problem is not consulting the master, but how to be more meditative, because the physical part of the master is not the significant thing. If you are more meditative, you can consult the master every moment. The physical presence is not necessary, it becomes necessary only because you are not meditative.

Because you are identified with YOUR body, that's why in your mind the master is identified with his body. Because you think that you are a body, you also think that the master is a body. The master is not a body, and when I say this, that the master is not a body, I mean that he is not confined in time and space.

It is not a question of being in his presence. Wherever you are, if you are meditative, you are in his presence. Even when the master is dead he can be consulted. Buddha is still consulted even today - and the answers are received. It is not that Buddha is sitting somewhere and giving you the answers, but when you are deep in meditation you ARE the buddha. Your buddha-nature arises and your buddha-nature answers you, and now Buddha is no longer confined anywhere. That means, for one who is blind he is not to be found anywhere; but for one who can now see it means he is everywhere.

You can be in contact with your master wherever you are. The way is not to go to the master, the way is to go within. The deeper you reach into yourself, the deeper you have penetrated the master.

Answers will be coming, and you will come to know and feel that those answers are not given by your mind. There will be a total difference of quality. The quality changes so absolutely that there can be no confusion about it. When your mind answers, you feel you are answering. When the mind is not there, you are simply meditative, the answer comes as if from someone else, not from you.

You hear it.

That is the mystery of the Koran. Mohammed thought that he heard it - and he was right. And Mohammedans are wrong if they think that God was speaking. Mohammed is right when he thinks that he heard the Koran, and Mohammedans are wrong when they think that God was speaking.

Nobody was speaking.

But when your mind is silent, from the very depths of your being arises the answer. And it is so deep, so beyond your so-called mind, that you feel that you have heard it. It has come to you. It has been revealed to you.

You are always identified with the surface, and the answer comes from the depth. You don't know your own depth - that's why you will feel God is answering, that the master is answering. In a way you are right - because when the answer comes from your depth, it is from the master.

Hindus have always been saying that your real master is within you, and the outer master is just trying to bring your inner master up, to make your inner master functional. Whenever your inner master has started functioning, the work of the outer master is done. The outer is just a representative of the inner.

I am your depth. Once your depth has started functioning, I am not needed. Once I feel your depth has started answering you, I will stop answering you. All my answers are not really concerned with your questions. All my answers are concerned with how to create the response within you so your inner depth starts speaking to you, so your own consciousness becomes your master.

Be more meditative. Be more silent. Allow more and more stillness to penetrate you.

What is to be done? How to be more meditative? In a sense, nothing can be done directly, because whatsoever you do directly the mind comes in. If you try to be silent, you cannot be, because the mind is trying. Wherever mind is, disturbance is. Mind is the disturbance, mind is the noise.

So if you try to be silent, mind is trying to be silent. You will create more noise which is now concerned with silence. Now you will try, and think, and do this and that, and you will get more and more uneasy.

Nothing can be done about silence, silence is already there. You just have to allow it. It is just like sunlight: your windows are closed and you cannot bring sunlight into your house in bundles, in buckets. You cannot do that! If you try you will be foolish - and many are doing that. Simply open the windows, open the doors. Allow the breeze to blow. Allow the rays to come in. Invite and wait. You cannot force. Whenever you force, things go ugly. If a man forces himself to be silent, his silence will be ugly, tortured, forced, artificial, just on the surface. Deep down there will be turmoil.

So what is to be done? Open your mind and wait. Look at the trees, look at the parrots screeching.

Listen to them, don't do anything. Whatsoever is happening around you, just be a passive alertness.

The light on the water, the river flowing, the noise, the children playing, laughing, giggling - you just be there, a passive presence, open, listening, seeing, not thinking.

The birds are there in the trees, making a noise, singing.... You just listen. Don't think, don't create a second series in your mind about what is happening. Just let it happen, and sooner or later you will feel the mind has disappeared and a silence has come to you. You will actually feel it descending on you, penetrating from every pore of the body, reaching deeper and deeper.

In the beginning it will be only for moments, because you are such a habitual thinker, addicted to thinking like a man who is addicted to alcohol or some drug, that only for moments will there be a gap - and again you will start thinking. You may start thinking about this silence that is descending upon you. You may start thinking: Oh, this is the silence that the masters have always been talking about - and you have destroyed it. You may start thinking: This is the silence the Upanishads say is the goal to be achieved, this is the silence that poets have been talking about, the silence that surpasses understanding - you have missed it.

The poets have entered, the masters have entered, the Upanishads have come. You have missed it, you have lost it. Now you are again disturbed, now you are not a passivity, now you are not alert.

Now those singing birds are no longer there for you. Your mind has come in. Now those beautiful trees have disappeared. The sun is no longer in the sky and the clouds are no longer floating. You are not open now - closed, your windows are closed, your doors are closed.

Thought, thinking, is the way to close the mind. Non-thinking, no thought, is the way to open it.

Whenever you are not thinking, you are open; whenever you are thinking, a wall has been raised.

Each thought becomes a brick and the whole process of thinking becomes a wall. Then you are hidden behind the wall, crying and weeping - why is the sun not reaching to you? It is not the sun - it is you who are creating walls around you.

Be more meditative. Whenever you have any opportunity, any space, any time, just allow things to happen around you. Look deeply, attentively, but don't be active - because activity means thinking.

Sitting quietly, allowing things to happen, you will become silent.

Then you will come to know that silence is not a quality of the mind. Mind cannot be made silent.

Silence is the quality of your inner soul, of your inner being. It is always there but because of the chattering, the constant chattering of the mind, you cannot hear it. Whenever you become passive, non-thinking, you become aware of it. Then you are unoccupied. In that unoccupied moment, meditation happens.

So whatsoever the situation - sitting in a marketplace - don't think that the singing of the birds is a must, it is not! The humming of a marketplace is also as beautiful as the humming of the birds:

people carrying on their work, talking, chattering, noise all around, you just sit there passively.

Remember this word passive, and another word, alert. Passive alertness is the key. Remain passive - not doing anything, just listening. And listening is not a doing. To listen to anything there is nothing to do, your ears are always open. To see you have to open the eyes - at least that much has to be done. To listen, not even that much has to be done - ears are always open, you are always listening.

Just don't do anything and listen.

And don't comment, because with commentary, thought starts. A child is crying: don't say anything inside about why he is crying. Two persons are fighting. Don't say inside: Why are they fighting?

Should I go and do something so that they don't fight? No, don't say anything. Just listen to what is happening. Just be with what is happening - and suddenly there is silence.

This silence is totally different from the silence which you can create. You can create silence - you can sit in your house, you can close the doors, you can take a rosary, a mala, and you can go on turning its beads. A silence will come to you, but that will not be the real silence. It will be just like a child who has been given a toy to play with, so he goes on playing and becomes absorbed in his play, then he is not mischievous.

Parents use the toy as a trick just to make the child less mischievous. He sits in a corner and goes on playing, and the parents can continue their own work without the child being a continuous nuisance.

But the child has not transcended mischief; his mischief has been directed towards the toy, that's all.

The mischief is there; the child is there. Sooner or later he will become fed up with the toy. Bored, he will throw it away and the mischief will be back.

Rosaries are old men's toys. Just as you give a toy to a child, children give rosaries to old men - so that they are not mischievous. They sit in a corner and they go on turning their rosary. But they also get fed up; they get absorbed, but they also get fed up - then they keep changing rosaries.

They go to another master and ask for another mantra, because the old one is not functioning. In the beginning, they say, it functioned.

Many people come to me and say: We have been doing a mantra; in the beginning it was helpful, but it is not helping any more. Now we don't feel anything, it has become boring. We do it as a duty, but the love has disappeared. If we don't do it, we feel that we have missed something; if we do it, nothing is gained.

This is what addiction means: if you do it, nothing is gained; if you don't do it, you feel that something is missing. This is what a smoker feels. If he smokes, he knows nothing is gained. He is doing something silly, just a stupid thing - taking smoke in and throwing it out. But that, too, is just like a rosary. You take the smoke in, and then you throw it out. Inhale, exhale, inhale, exhale - it becomes a rosary; you go on changing the beads. You can make it a mantra; when you inhale the smoke, say Ram; when you exhale, say Ram. It becomes a rosary!

Anything that you can repeat continuously becomes a mantra. Mantra means a repetition of a certain word, a certain sound, anything. A mantra helps the mind to be absorbed - it is a toy. For a few moments you feel good because the mischief stops, and you are so absorbed that the mind cannot function. This is a forced silence. It is pathological, it is not good. It is negative, it is not positive.

This silence is like the silence that happens in a graveyard, the silence of death.

But the silence I am talking about is totally, qualitatively different. It is not a diversion of mischief, it is not a forced occupation, it is not a mantra hypnosis. It is a silence that happens to you when you are passive and alert, not doing anything, not even moving your rosary, totally passive, but alert.

Remember, passivity can become sleep. That's why I emphasize the word alertness - because you can be passive and you go to sleep. Sleep is not meditation. One quality of sleep is there, one quality, that of passivity, and one quality of waking is there, that of alertness. Relaxed as if you are asleep, alert as you are awake.

One thing is taken from sleep - unconsciousness. That should not be there, because meditation cannot be unconscious, and one thing is taken from your waking state - occupiedness; because if you are occupied then the mind is working, you are enclosed in thoughts.

While you are awake there are two things: alertness and occupiedness. While you are asleep there are two things: passivity and unconsciousness. One thing from awakeness, one thing from sleep:

passivity and alertness - they make meditation. If you take the two other ingredients, occupation and unconsciousness, you become mad. Those two ingredients, occupied and unconscious, make madness, make the madman. Passivity and alertness make the meditative man, a buddha.

You have all four ingredients. Mix two and you will become mad. Mix the other two and you will become meditative.

Remember this: I say again and again that silence, the bliss that pervades you when you are open, is not something to be done by you. It is a let-go. It is a happening to you. It comes to you.

People come to me and they say: We are searching for God - how to reach him? And I tell them:

You cannot reach him and you cannot search for him - because you don't know him. How will you recognize that he is God? You don't know him. How will you move? How will you choose the path?

You don't know him. How can you decide if this is his house, this is his abode? No, you cannot, you cannot search for the divine. But there is no need because the divine is always near you, within you.

Whenever you allow him, he searches for you, he reaches you.

God is in search of you. God has always been in search of you. No search on your part is needed.

Seek, and you will miss. Don't seek! Simply remain passive and alert so whenever he comes you are open.

Many times he comes and knocks on your door, but you are fast asleep - or even if you hear the knock you interpret it in your own way. You think: It is just the wind blowing fast and strong. Or you think: Some stranger has knocked and he will go by himself; there is no need to disturb my sleep.

Your interpretations are your enemies, and you are great interpreters. Whatsoever is, you immediately interpret it; your mind starts functioning and grinding it, and you change it immediately.

You color it; you give it a different meaning that was never there. You project yourself into it. You destroy it.

The reality does not need any interpretation. The truth does not need any thinking about. No one ever reaches the truth through thinking. That's why the whole of philosophy is false. It is bound to be false, no philosophy can be true. Philosophers go on fighting, they go on struggling to prove that their philosophy is true. No philosophy can be true, truth needs no philosophy. Philosophy means thinking about, rationalizing about; philosophy means interpretation of the fact.

Religion says: That which is, allow it to happen. All that you can do is, please, don't disturb. Just allow it to happen. Remain alert and passive and then there is no need to come to me will come to you. Many times I have already reached you...whenever you were silent. So this is not a theory:

many of you even know it by experience, but you interpret this also.

People come to me and they say: This morning, meditating, I suddenly felt you, but I thought it must be a projection of my mind. Or they say: Last night suddenly I felt a presence, I became alert, and then I thought it must have been someone passing by, a wind may have entered the room and fluttered the papers, or just a cat has passed.

So what I am saying, many of you have already felt. That's why I am saying it; otherwise, I would not say it.

Don't interpret. When you feel the presence, allow it to happen. If you allow it to happen, it will materialize more and more. It is possible that I will be there, as real as I am here, sometimes even more so - because it depends on you how much reality you allow to happen. And your questions will be answered.

Be more meditative and then you are nearer to me. Once you are totally meditative, you are me.

Then there is no difference.

One thing more: the more you meditate, the less there will be to be asked. Questions will drop.

Questions belong to a non-meditative state of mind. They arise in a non-meditative state more and more. One question is answered, ten arise out of the answer.

Mind is a great question-creating force. It goes on creating questions. You give the answer and the mind jumps on it, tears it down, and creates ten more questions. When you are meditative, less and less questions will be there.

This will look paradoxical to you, but it is true and I have to say it: When there are questions, there will be no answers; when there is no question, the answer is there. The answer comes only when you are not questioning. Non-questioning will happen to you through meditation.

Don't think that there are as many answers as there are questions. No, there is only one answer.

Questions are millions, the answer is one. Diseases are millions, medicine is one. Only one, and all is solved. But that one cannot happen to you because you don't allow it to happen.

You are so afraid of allowing ANYTHING to happen. This has to be learned. This is the only discipline I want you to do: losing your fear, dropping your fear, and allowing things to happen.

The river is flowing; don't push it! There is no need, it is flowing by itself. You just wait on the bank and let it flow. If you are courageous enough, then drop yourself in the river and flow with it. Don't swim, because swimming means fighting - just float.

Then of course, then you cannot follow any goal, because your goal and the river's may not coincide - then there will be frustration. You can follow a goal if you are swimming, fighting. You can even swim upstream, then there will be a great fight. And when you fight, your ego is strengthened, you feel alive against the river. But that aliveness is momentary; sooner or later you will be tired. Sooner or later you will be dead, and the river will take you.

On the banks of the Ganges, the villagers bring their dead and leave them in the Ganges. But when you are dead, leaving you in the river is useless; when dead, you will float with the river, but then there is no meaning because you are no more. What I am doing is dropping you alive in the Ganges.

If you can float alive, conscious, fully aware, you will become the river. And wherever the river reaches will be the destiny, will be the goal. Then you are not concerned where it reaches. Every moment, the very flow becomes ecstatic; every moment, the very flow, the very aliveness, becomes the goal, then every moment is the goal. Means become ends, the moment becomes eternal.

Yes, you have to follow the master totally. There may be times when you cannot consult him physically, and sooner or later the master will disappear from the body. Then there will be no possibility to consult him physically. It is better to get attuned to him non-physically; otherwise, you will be crying and weeping. My body can disappear any moment! Now there is really no need to carry it - it is being carried for you. If you don't get attuned to my non-physical existence, sooner or later you will get very much depressed, sad, much anguish will be there. Then it will be very difficult to be attuned to me non-physically.

So I go on dropping physical contact with you more and more - just to make you alert and aware that you have to be attuned non-physically. You can get attuned, it is not difficult. Be more meditative and it will start happening to you.

Question 2:

Yes, Gurdjieff has said that a woman cannot attain except through a man - and he is right. He is right because female energy differs from male energy.

It is just as if someone says that only a woman can give birth to a child. A man cannot give birth to a child - he can give birth to a child only through a woman. The physical structure of the woman carries a womb; the physical structure of a man is without a womb - he can have a child only through a woman. And the same in reverse order happens in spiritual birth: a woman can get enlightened only through a man. Their spiritual energy differs also, just like their physical part. Why? Why is this so?

And remember, this is not a question of equality or of inequality - this is a question of difference.

Women are not lower than men because they cannot attain directly; man is not lower than woman because he cannot give birth to a child directly. They are different. There is no question of equality or inequality, there is no question of evaluation. They are simply different, and this is a fact.

Why is it difficult for woman to attain enlightenment directly? And why for man is it possible to attain enlightenment directly?

There are two ways, only two, basically only two, which lead to enlightenment. One is meditation and the other is love. You may call them Gyana Yoga and Bhakti Yoga - the path of wisdom and the path of devotion. The basic ways are only two.

Love needs another; meditation can be done alone. Man can achieve through meditation - that's why he can achieve directly. He can be alone. He is alone deep down. Loneliness comes naturally to man. For a woman, to be alone is difficult, very difficult, almost impossible. Her whole being is a deep urge to love, and for love, the other is needed. How can you love if the other is not there? You can meditate if the other is not there - there is no problem.

Woman, the female energy, reaches the meditative state through love; and the male energy reaches love through meditation. A Buddha becomes a great loving force - but through meditation. When Buddha came back to his palace, his wife was very angry, naturally, because for twelve years he had not shown his face. One night he had simply disappeared, not even saying anything to her. While she was asleep he escaped like a coward.

The wife of Buddha, Yashodhara, would have allowed him. She was a brave woman. If Buddha had asked she would have allowed him; there would have been no problem about it, but Buddha would not ask. He was afraid something might go wrong, she might start crying and weeping or something.

But the fear was not because of her - the fear was deep down in himself. He was afraid it would be difficult for him to leave Yashodhara weeping and crying. The fear is always of oneself. It would be very cruel and he could not be so cruel, so it was better to escape while his wife was asleep. So he escaped, and after twelve years he came back.

Yashodhara asked many things. One of the things she asked was: Tell me, whatsoever you have attained there, could not you attain it here, living with me? Now that you have attained you can tell me.

It is said that Buddha remained silent. But I answer: Buddha could not have attained, because a man deep in love...and he was deep in love with Yashodhara; it was a very intimate relationship.

If there had been no relationship with Yashodhara, if she had simply been a Hindu wife, no love relationship, then Buddha could have attained even living with her. Then really there is no problem.

The other is there on the periphery, you are not related. If you are not related, the other is not - only a physical presence moving on the boundary.

But Buddha was in deep love. And it is difficult for a man to attain meditation when he is in love - this is the problem. Very difficult, because when he is in love, whenever he sits silently, the other arises in the mind; his whole being starts moving around the other. That was the fear, that's why Buddha escaped.

Nobody has talked about it before, but Buddha escaped from that house, from the wife, from the child, because he really loved. And if you love a person, then whenever you are occupied you may forget him, but when you are unoccupied the other will come to the memory immediately, and then there is no gap for the divine to enter. When you are occupied, working in a shop, or.... Buddha was on his throne and looking after the affairs of the kingdom, then it was okay - he could forget Yashodhara. But whenever he was not occupied, there was Yashodhara - the gap was filled by Yashodhara and there was no passage for the divine to enter.

Man cannot attain to the divine through love. His whole energy is totally different from female energy.

First he should attain to meditation - then love happens to him. Then there is no problem. First he must reach the divine, then the beloved also becomes divine.

After twelve years, Buddha comes back. Now there is no problem, now in Yashodhara the god is.

Before, Yashodhara was too much, and it was difficult to find the god. Now the god is totally there, there is no space left for Yashodhara.

The totally opposite happens to a woman. She cannot meditate because her whole being is an urge towards the other. She cannot be alone. Whenever she is alone, she is in misery. So if you say:

To be alone is bliss, to be alone is ecstatic - a woman cannot understand it. This emphasis on being alone has existed all over the world because of too many seekers who are men - a Buddha, a Mahavira, a Jesus, a Mohammed. They all went into loneliness, and they only attained in loneliness.

They created the milieu.

A woman, whenever alone, feels anguish. If there is a lover, even in her mind, she is happy. If someone loves, if someone is loved - if love exists around a woman, it nourishes her. It is a nourishment, it is a subtle food. Whenever a woman feels that love is not there, she is simply starving, suffocating; the whole being shrinks. So a woman can never think that loneliness can be blissful.

This female energy has created the path of love and devotion. Even a divine lover will do - there is no need to find a physical lover. Krishna will do for Meera, there is no problem, because for Meera the other exists. He may not be there, Krishna may just be a myth, but for Meera he is, the other exists - and then Meera is happy. She can dance, she can sing, and she is nourished.

The VERY idea, the very notion, the very feeling, that the other exists and there is love, and a woman feels fulfilled. She is happy, alive. Only with this love will she come to a point when the lover and the beloved become one. Then meditation will happen.

For female energy, meditation happens only in the deepest merger of love. Then she can be alone, then there is no problem - now she can never be alone - the beloved has become merged, now it is within. Meera or Radha or Teresa, they all achieved through a lover - Krishna, Jesus.

This is my feeling, that whenever a male seeker comes to me he is interested in meditation; and whenever a female seeker comes to me she is interested in love. She can be made interested in meditation if I say that love will happen through it. But her DEEP desire is for love. Love is God for a woman.

This difference has to be understood, deeply understood, because everything depends on it - and Gurdjieff IS right. Female energy will love, and through love will flower the meditative state, the samadhi. Satori will come, but deep down in the roots will be love and satori will become the flower.

For male energy, satori will be in the roots, samadhi will be in the roots, meditation will be in the roots, and then love will flower. But love will be a flowering.

When female seekers come to me, it is bound to happen: they will feel more love, but then a physical partner will be less satisfying. Whenever there is deep love, a physical partner will always become unsatisfactory, because the physical partner can fulfill only the periphery, he cannot fulfill the center.

That's why, in ancient countries like India, we never allowed love - we allowed arranged marriages.

Once love is allowed, the physical partner is going to be unsatisfactory sooner or later, and then there will be frustration.

Now the whole West is disturbed. Now there will be no satisfaction at all. Once you allow love, then an ordinary man cannot fulfill it. He can fulfill sex, he can fulfill the superficial, but he cannot fulfill the deep, the depth. Once the depth is functioning, once you have disturbed the depth, only God can fulfill - nobody else.

So when female seekers come to me, their depth is shocked. They start feeling a new urge, a new love arising. Now their husbands or their boyfriends, their partners will not be able to satisfy it. Now this can be satisfied only by a much higher quality being. This is going to be so.

So either your boyfriend, your husband, has to become more meditative, create higher qualities of being...only then will he be fulfilling. Otherwise the relationship will break, the bridge cannot remain; you will have to find a new friend. Or, if it is impossible to find a new friend - as it would have been for Meera - difficult, then you have to love the divine. Then just forget the physical part - now it is not for you.

The same happens to male seekers in a different way. When they come to me, they become more meditative. When they become more meditative, the bridge between their old partners is broken, becomes shaky. Now their girlfriend or their wife has to grow, otherwise the relationship is on the rocks, it cannot be maintained.

Remember this, that all our relationships, so-called relationships, are adjustments. If one changes, the adjustment is broken - for the better or for the worse, that is not the point. People come to me and they say: If meditation brings higher qualities, then why is the relationship broken? That is not the question. The relationship was an adjustment between two persons as they were. Now one has changed, the other has to grow with them; otherwise there will be trouble, things will become false.

Whenever a man is here, he becomes more meditative. The more meditative he is, the more he wants to be alone. The wife, the beloved, will be disturbed by it. If she is not understanding then she will start creating trouble - this man wants to be more alone. If she is understanding, then there is no problem; but that understanding can only come to her if her love grows. If she feels more loving, then she can allow this friend to be lonely, alone, and she will protect his loneliness. She will try to see that it is not disturbed - this will be her love now.

And if this man feels...if Buddha feels that Yashodhara is protecting, safeguarding, seeing, caring, that his meditation is not disturbed, that his silence is helped, then there is no need to escape from this Yashodhara. But this happens only if Yashodhara's love grows.

When a man's meditation is growing, a woman's love should grow. Only then can they keep pace, and a higher harmony will arise and it will go on, higher and higher. And a moment comes when the man is totally in meditation and the woman is totally in love - then only the PERFECT meeting, then only the real, supreme orgasm between two persons. Not physical, not sexual - total! Two existences meeting into each other, dissolving. Then the lover becomes the door, the beloved becomes the door, and they both reach to the one. So whosoever comes to me should come perfectly aware that it is dangerous to be near me. Your old arrangements will be disturbed - and I cannot help it. I am not here to help your adjustments; that is for you to decide.

I can help you grow - grow in meditation, grow in love. To me, both words mean the same, because they reach to the same end.

Enough for today.