You Transcend Duality

The first question

Question 1:

Sarjano,

IT IS ONE OF THE MOST significant problems, almost perennial. In every time, in every country, in every mystery school, the meditators have faced it. If one becomes ecstatic, blissful, one loses silence, because ecstasy, after all, is a beautiful kind of excitement. It is a disturbance - lovely, but a disturbance all the same.

Blissfulness brings its own chaos, its own turmoil, its laughter, its tears, its creativity, its song. And one is bound to get tired of it - it is exhausting. You cannot be ecstatic all the time. Sooner or later you would like to move to the other polarity: silence.

Ecstasy is the logical end of all that is beautiful, passionate, intense, but because it is such a peak of passion and intensity you cannot remain on that peak for long. You have to go back into the deep, dark valleys of silence to rest, to sleep, to get nourished, to be rejuvenated.

Hence the desire for silence arises, a tremendous desire for silence, and of course it feels as if you are going to lose all your creativity, all your joy. And from the peak of ecstasy, silence naturally looks empty and the very idea of moving into silence seems to be suicidal - alluring, enchanting, seducing, but suicidal too, because you will lose your song, your dance, and a sadness arises. But even if the sadness arises one has to go to silence; one has to move to the dark valleys which LOOK empty, which LOOK like death. Hence the fear, the scary feeling.

Those who have tried to live on the peak of ecstasy have remained only poets; they have not been able to become mystics. A few people have tried, but then they have to find a certain kind of relaxation on the peak. Hence all the poets, all the creators - painters, dancers, singers - sooner or later become attracted towards intoxicating drugs, because the excitement is too much. One has to forget it all. Either you move to the silent valley, or you can remain on the peak but fall into deep oblivion.

It is not just an accident that since the very ancient days of the RIG VEDA the poets have always been interested in some kind of psychedelic drugs. In the RIG VEDA it was SOMA, now it is LSD or marijuana; all kinds of drugs have been used by creative people. The logical reason is that nobody can live continuously in excitement - it will kill you. If you don't want to move into silence, then the only way to avoid the constant, passionate, feverish state is through some intoxicant - alcohol, opium, or whatsoever it is.

The people who have moved to the silent valley, who have lived in silence, become afraid of going to the peak of ecstasy because they start feeling that once they move to the peak of ecstasy they will lose their silence. These are the monks; the monasteries were created for these people. These people moved into hidden caves in the Himalayas and other mountains, not to come back into the world, not to relate, not to love, not to live. They lived only at the minimum so that the silence they have achieved can be preserved, but then they become cold. In the beginning it looks very cool, but soon it starts getting colder and colder. They become almost dead.

The people who live in the monasteries are dead people. If you are not creative you cannot be alive.

Life can have only one meaning and that is creativity.

God is ultimate life, hence he is the ultimate creator. If you want to live intensely, totally, fully, wholly, you have to create, you have to relate, you have to love, you have to be multi-dimensional. In a monastery people live a one-dimensional, flat kind of life. Of course there is no excitement, hence they are not tired, but because they are just sitting there without any songs arising in them, without any spring ever visiting them, they become deserts, empty deserts.

This has been one of the most significant problems for all the meditators: either you choose silence, but then you become dead, cold, unloving, hard, frozen, or if you choose creativity, you live an intense life, passionate, but very tiring.

My effort, Sarjano, is to bring these two polarities into your life together. If you ask me to define meditation, I would define it as the art, the alchemy of transforming the polar opposites into complementaries. There is no need to choose. One should be liquid, fluid, flexible, to move from one pole to the other, knowing that they are supportive to each other, they are not against each other; they are not enemies, they are friends. Just as electricity cannot exist without the positive and the negative poles, just as the day cannot exist without the night, just as life cannot exist without death, creativity cannot exist without silence. And vice versa is also true: silence cannot exist without creativity.

And my own experience and observation is this: that a life which has both is REALLY a whole life, and I don't see any REAL problem except the old conditioning of centuries. Thousands of years of programming has made the division, otherwise there is no division.

Just as you come out of your house when it starts getting too cold inside, out into the sun, or when it becomes too hot outside you move inside into the cool shade... is there any opposition between the two! Do you need great effort to synthesize this coming out of the room and going back into the room? There is no question at all - you can simply walk in and out. It is your own house, it is your own garden! And the same feet and the same walk takes you out and in, only your direction is different. Sometimes you are facing inwards, sometimes you are facing outwards.

And one thing to be remembered: when you are capable of moving easily from the inner to the outer and from the outer to the inner you transcend duality, you are no more caught in duality.

That's the whole message of the Mandukya Upanishad: transcendence of duality. And the transcendence cannot happen by choosing one of the two; that is not transcendence, that will be clinging.

Sarjano, you say:

AGAIN YOU INVITE US TO SHOUT THE TRUTH FROM THE HOUSETOPS.

Again and again I will do it, because I would like your silence to be a singing silence. Remember, even the silence has a song of its own. It may not be YOUR song - let me emphasize: it may not be YOUR song, in fact it cannot be your song - the silence has its own song. You may lose YOUR song; it HAS to be lost, only then can the silence sing.

What you are feeling as creativity, passionate and intense, is still adulterated with your ego. That's why silence looks empty. because in silence there will be no ego.

You say:

ON THE OTHER SIDE AN EMPTY SPACE, A COOL SILENCE IS CALLING ME MORE AND MORE GENTLY, MORE AND MORE SEDUCING, MORE AND MORE SCARY, BECAUSE IN THIS SILENCE ALL THE COLORS OF MY CREATIVITY FADE AWAY...

CREATIVITY will NOT fade away - YOUR creativity MAY fade away, and they are totally different phenomena. In fact, YOUR creativity is not of much value. When you are no more there AND a creativity arises which you cannot claim as yours, then something real has started happening; then it is the song of the silence.

You say:

SINCE I AM HERE, CREATIVITY IS BECOMING MORE INTENSE AND VAST, AND MY SONG IS BECOMING MORE AND MORE FULL OF COLORS AND DANCE AND GRACE.

It is still MY song. Let it be just a song! Let it be just creativity, a dance without any dancer, a song without any singer, a creativity but without any creator. Then things are very simple. You can move from the peak of creativity easily, gracefully, into silence, and you will enjoy it and it will not be empty.

It will be overflowing, it will be pregnant, not empty, because it will NOURISH you; it will nourish your sources of creativity.

Your songs will be born in your silence; they may not BE EXPRESSED in your silence, but they will be born in your silence. And when the creative phase comes - which automatically comes, just as the day follows the night and the night is followed by the day... it will come. There is a balance: half the time you will be silent and half the time you will be creative. When the creativity comes you will know these songs were sown in your silence, your silence was pregnant with them.

For nine months the child is in the mother's womb; the womb is not empty. Of course you can't see the child, but the child is growing. In fact, it is better that nobody can see the child, because seeing the child may hinder its growth; it may be a deep interference.

Hence all things grow in darkness. Roots grow in darkness, seeds grow in darkness, children grow in darkness. In fact, everything grows in darkness, underground, hidden; nobody can see it, it is not visible, nobody even knows what is growing underneath the ground. And then one day suddenly the sprouts are there, but they were prepared by the silence. And the spring comes and there are flowers, but they were prepared by the phase that preceded it. One day the child is born - if the womb is empty, from where can the child come?

So don't call the silence empty. It looks empty to you Sarjano, because of a lingering shadow of the ego. It is dying, but dying very slowly. That too is perfectly okay! - there is no hurry. And if you do it in a hurry it may come back. In a hurry it will be only patchwork. In a hurry you may hide it somewhere but sooner or later it will find its way back again - if not from the front door, then from the back door; in some subtle way it may come in. It is better to let it die slowly, with deep understanding, so nothing is left of it.

It is because of the ego that the silence seems to be empty. It is because of the ego that you feel that ALL THE colors of my creativity fade away. Once the ego is gone, it will be the same scene but your interpretation will be different. Then you will not say ALL THE COLORS FADE AWAY. YOU will say: all the colors mingle and merge into one color, and that is white. Then you will see the beauty of whiteness.

White is not a color, it is the synthesis of all the colors. It represents purity, innocence, egolessness.

You will see it as tremendous whiteness, snow-white, and you will be able to decipher all the colors in it - of course now in a latent form, a silent form, sleeping resting. When all the colors rest in the womb of existence they become white. They don't fade away, they only go to rest. It is seed-time.

Every tree comes out of a seed and one day disappears again into seeds. It will come back - those seeds are carrying the whole program. All the leaves - their structure, their pattern, their gestalt - all the branches, all the flowers, are hidden in the seeds, small seeds. But to see into the seed you need tremendous clarity, and the ego does not allow that clarity. Ego is contaminating, polluting your vision.

You say:

THE DANCE LOSES ITS PASSION.

When the ego is gone you will not see it in that way. You will see the dance loses the DANCER, not its passion. And when there is no dancer, the passion is not tiring the passion is no longer exhausting. It has intensity, but now the fire no longer burns - it only gives light. It is the SAME fire, but now it gives light.

You say:

THE SONG BREAKS.

It is not the song that is breaking, it is the ego. But because the ego is identified with the song, when the ego breaks you feel the song is breaking.

I can say to you from my own experience - and I have all the Buddhas of the past supporting me - the song has never broken. Buddha became enlightened and for forty-two years he was singing; for forty-two years his each gesture was a song, his silence was a song, his words were songs.

Whether he said something or not, the song continued. The song is not breaking.

You say:

THE WORDS FALL FROM MY HANDS, AND THERE I AM SADLY, EMPTY-HANDED, WITH NO SONG TO SING ANYMORE.

No, your interpretation is wrong, Sarjano. You feel sad because the ego is disappearing and that has been your joy up to now. The only joy that people know is the joy of ego succeeding. Now the ego is by and by withering away and you feel sad, empty-handed, because your hands were full of the ego.

Once you have understood it you will not see your hands as empty, in fact you will see them having the whole space of the sky available - sky in your hands, not emptiness. You will see it as spaciousness, not emptiness.

I have always lived in empty rooms - no furniture, just the bare necessities, one chair, not even another chair for a visitor because nobody comes to visit. And I have always watched: whenever somebody came to see, either they said the room was empty or they said the room was spacious - but very rarely. Out of a hundred persons only one person would say, "The room is very spacious. I love it!"

The English word 'room' simply means spacious, roomy; it does not mean empty. So I have the biggest room in the world, the most roomy room - just space, nothing to hinder, the whole sky available. Only once in a while has somebody said, "It is spacious," and that man had a certain understanding; otherwise they say 'empty'. And both are right according to their vision.

But you have to understand, Sarjano, it is not empty, and it is not that you have no song to sing any more, it is only that your 'I' is disappearing. You are disappearing, not the song! And believe me, when you are completely gone, then only does the song arrive. Then it is divine.

We have called it in India, 'BHAGAVAD GITA - 'the song celestial'. Then God sins through you, you are just a hollow bamboo flute.

The second question

Question 2:

Dhyan Gyanam,

CONDITIONING AS SUCH is always German, more or less, because conditioning means the desire of your parents, of your society, of your state, of the past, to make you perfect. And once the seed, the ambition to be perfect enters into you, you cannot remain sane.

Perfectionism is neurosis. Of course, Germans are far ahead of others - they are the epitome of perfectionism - but everybody has the same kind of desire. ALL parents have failed, and because of their failure they load their children with the desire to be perfect. They have not been able to be perfect; now they want to live a vicarious life through their children. They don't love the children - if they love them they will not condition them. That will be the only sign of their love. If you love somebody you cannot condition the person.

If your parents love you, the first thing that they will never do is to load you with their own ambitions.

But they have been loaded by their parents and they have tried to live according to those desires - the desires of their dead parents - and they have failed. Now they think maybe there was not enough time, maybe circumstances did not allow: "Perhaps what has not been possible in my life may be possible in the life of my children." So they live through their children.

Conditioning means they know they have to die, but still they can live in a subtle way through the children. It is a desire for immortality. They know their bodies are going to die, that's why there is so much obsession for children. "And the child has to be MINE, not anybody else's, so that a part of me, a cell of me, a seed of me, will be living. I will NOT be there, but at least something of me will go on living."

Hence all the societies have insisted on the virginity of women at least, to make certain that the child is yours, not somebody else's. Why this obsession? In a better world, in a more understanding and human world, if the father feels that he can find a better man and a better seed for his children, then certainly he will go for the best. If he is crippled and if he is carrying some disease, hereditary, it will be a sign of love not to give that disease to the child. It is better to find somebody who can give HIS child a better body, better health, longer life, more intelligence.

And that is possible, now it is very easily possible. Just as we donate blood, each genius dying can donate all his semen cells; they can be preserved. Albert Einstein can be preserved. He donated his head - that is stupid. He should have donated his semen cells, because then millions of children could have had the same capacity as Albert Einstein. People who love will find the best. And the same is true about the mother: there is no necessity for the mother to give birth to the child only through HER womb; it can happen in a scientific lab.

We can create a totally different kind of humanity once these old, idiotic obsessions are dropped.

These are all egoistic obsessions. But not only do we give our bodies to the children, we insist on giving our minds too. That's what conditioning is all about: trying to give your mind to your children.

Never give your mind to your children! You have lived it and you know its misery, still you insist on giving it to your children. You have been a Catholic, a Protestant, a Hindu, a Mohammedan - what have you achieved? Where are you? What is your meaning, significance? What poetry has arisen in your being? And still you are insisting on giving the same rotten pattern to your child? You are the enemy of the child, not a lover. You don't love! If you love, you cannot give your ideas to the child. You will insist, "Remember, avoid at least these ideas that I have lived. Do whatsoever else you want to do - just don't be a Christian, don't be a Hindu, don't be a communist. I have been, and this way of life at least is absolutely meaningless. So avoid this."

Each mother, each father should make the child aware that they have tried a certain pattern of life and it has failed. "So don't make the same mistake again. Try some other door, try some other way, explore on your own." But this has not happened yet, that's why humanity is living in such misery and hell.

Gyanam, perfection is bound to bring hurry because life is short, and perfectionism means you have to do thousands of things quickly, otherwise who knows? You may be incomplete before death comes. And particularly in the Western societies where religions have insisted on only one life, there is more hurry. In the East people are not in such a hurry for the simple reason that they believe that there are many lives, so what is the hurry for? There is no need, one can wait.

That's why the East is lazy: it has a psychological reasoning for its laziness. And the West is speedy:

"Be quick, because there is only one life, and if you are not complete in this life then there is no other opportunity. No chances are given, no choices are given - only THIS life." Naturally hurry arises and effort. You have to make tremendous efforts to be perfect.

And in this whole rush for perfectionism you are not a gainer, you become a loser. There is no time to think, there is no time to be silent, there is no time to feel, there is no time to love. All is devoted to one goal: how to be a perfect man, a superman.

It is not an accident that Friedrich Nietzsche was born in Germany. He talked about the superman, and Adolf Hitler believed that he was the superman about whom Friedrich Nietzsche was talking.

Adolf Hitler is not even human - he is sub-human, below humanity, but he thinks that he is super- human. And he was trying to create a race of super-human beings. He brought the whole German ideology of perfectionism to its logical end. And you ARE conditioned, whether you know it or not, by that fascist, Nazi idea.

With me you have to relax. With me you have to drop your being a German or being an Indian or being an Italian. Whatsoever you are you have to drop it. You have to be just silent, blissful. You have to be just human - there is no need to be super-human.

An Englishman thinks seated, a Frenchman standing, an American pacing, and a German afterwards.

There is no time, so it is always afterwards.

It was a tough spot and bullets flew from all sides. The tough German sergeant was not going to allow his men to retreat. "Stay here!" he shouted. "And keep firing, even if you run out of ammunition!"

Wolfgang, the blacksmith, came in with a badly damaged foot. The doctor was surprised, for Wolfgang was a careful man. "What happened to you, Wolfgang?" he asked.

'Well, thirty-three years ago I was a young apprentice to an old blacksmith."

"But what about your foot?"

"This is about my foot. The old man had a daughter and your eyes could gaze on her like the way a bullock would eat good grass. The first night I was there she came in when I was in bed and asked if I was comfortable and if I wanted anything, and I said I didn't. The next night when I was in bed she came in wearing her nightdress and she asked me if there was any single thing she could get me or do for me, and I told her I was as comfortable as a bug in a rug. The next night she came in and the girl had not a thing on her, and she asked me if she could do anything for me, and, not wanting to keep her standing in the cold, and she without a shift I said there was nothing."

"What has that got to do with your foot, Wolfgang?" asked the doctor impatiently.

"Well, it was only this morning that I finally thought of what she meant, and I was so annoyed with myself that I threw my ten-pound hammer against the wall, and it rebounded and broke my ankle!"

Gyanam, now being a sannyasin, drop being German. Enough of it! You have suffered long, your parents suffered and their parents; it is time to stop this suffering. Relax a little bit - there is no need to be perfect. If God wanted you perfect he would have created you perfect! He has created you so beautifully imperfect. It is so clear - he never creates a perfect man, he always creates imperfect people, because only imperfect people can grow. The perfect man will be dead from his very birth, because there will be nothing to do; there will be no POSSIBILITY of growing.

Growth is possible because of imperfection, and growth is the whole joy of life; it is the only ecstasy there is. And God goes on creating imperfect children, but we don't listen, we don't see that God loves imperfect people. And there is no end to growth, so in fact there is no perfection ever.

I don't call Buddha a perfect man or Jesus a perfect man or Krishna a perfect man. I call them WHOLE men, but not perfect. They were total but not perfect - and remember the difference between these two words.

My sannyasins have to learn how to be total - total in each act, passionately in it, intensely in it, utterly involved, not holding back. That's what totality is. If you are dancing you are dancing; then the whole world disappears. Even you are not there, only the dance remains. That is totality. The dance may be perfect, may not be perfect, that is irrelevant. It can always be improved so it cannot be perfect. Everything can be improved so it cannot be perfect.

A Zen story is:

A king was learning gardening from a Zen Master. The Master was teaching him and telling him to go on creating a garden in his palace. After three years he would come to see the garden, and if it was total, then he would have passed the examination.

But the king misunderstood the word'total' - and we all misunderstand it. He thought total meant perfect, so he made the garden perfect. He had thousands of gardeners to work upon it, and it was really the most perfect thing that had ever happened in Japan.

After three years the Master came, and the king was very happy and very satisfied with the garden.

But the Master looked very serious and sad - and he was not a serious man at all. The king started feeling afraid - was he going to fail? Three years' effort, and the garden was so perfect you could not improve upon it. And the silence of the Master was getting heavier on him.

Finally he asked, "What is the matter? Why are you not saying a single word? Don't you like the garden?"

The Master said, "It is too perfect, hence it gives the feeling of artificialness. In nature nothing is so perfect. It is so perfect that it cannot be improved upon, that's why I am looking so sad. And I had told you,'Let it be total,' but you misunderstood me. I don't see even a single dry, dead leaf in the whole garden! How is it possible?"

The king said, "We have removed all the dead leaves - there were many. Just to receive you we have removed them all!"

The Master said, "Give me a bucket!"

A bucket was given. He went out of the garden where the leaves had been thrown. He collected a bucketful of dry leaves, came in, and threw them on the path. And the wind started playing with the leaves... and the sound and the song of the leaves. He started smiling and he said, "Now it is perfectly okay! It is no longer perfect, hence it is perfectly okay! Now it looks more natural. Without these leaves there was no song, it was dead."

Be total, don't bother to be perfect. But this misunderstanding is one of the ancient ones.

The German missionary was preaching to the African tribe: "And I tell you that you must love your fellowmen."

"Moolagumbi!" shrieked the natives.

'White men and black men must learn to cooperate."

"Moolagumbi!" chanted the crowd.

The missionary was very pleased and he told the chief how pleased he was with the reception.

"I am glad, O man of Germany," said the chief, "but be careful as we pass my cattle that you do not step into the moolagumbi!"

All perfectionism is nothing but moolagumbi!

The last question

Question 3:

Prem Geetesh,

SCREWING IN a lightbulb successfully!