Sarvasar Upanishad, Chapter 09

Now the rishi is discussing the complexities of the mind, complexities of the consciousness. Why are we just a complexity? Why is there no innocence and no simplicity? Why is everything just a knot, just a confusion, just insanity inside?

If we can open a mind, then we will see just anarchy there, chaos. We go on somehow managing ourselves, but inside there is nothing which can be said to be a cosmos. Inside there is chaos, simple chaos. This is a miracle that we can manage ourselves; it seems impossible. How are these complexes built? How are they formed? How do we help them form? And how many complexes are there?

There are five divisions of all the complexes. The first complex is the mind. Eastern mysticism has always looked at mind as the disease, as the basic disease. It is just the opposite from the Western attitude towards life. The Greek mind, which is the originator of all Western thinking, always looked towards the mind as the supreme-most thing. Mind is the peak according to the Greek attitude, Greek thinking.

For Aristotle, mind is the peak, mind is the most evolved energy. But to the Eastern mind, mind has been a disease. That's why the East couldn't develop science, because if mind is diseased then you cannot develop science really, because science has to be developed with the mind.

The Greek mind could give the impetus to the Western mental evolution, so they could create a very complex structure of science and scientific knowledge. The structure has arrived; the structure is there now, but the consciousness, the human being itself, is lost. It has been at a very big cost.

Machines have evolved, but the creator itself is just feeling empty and meaningless. Technology has developed, and now we can create with this technology a very different world - but the very interest to create a different world is no more there.

Sartre or Camus or others - they all feel that there is no sense in existing at all, there is no meaning.

Sartre says we are condemned to be alive; there is no need, there is no purpose, nothing is going to come out of all this effort, it is just futile. So Camus asserts that the only philosophical problem, the only metaphysical problem now is suicide. The only possibility for us in which we can be free and active, seems to be suicide; all else is just meaningless.

This has to happen, because with mind, ultimately there can be only madness and suicide. With mind, ultimately there can be only meaninglessness and an effort to forget it. So the whole of the West is now trying to forget - through chemicals, through alcohol, through so many methods, to forget themselves. Life is so meaningless that to be aware is to be in suffering. To know it - the misery all around, the suffering all around, and the meaninglessness of it - to be aware of it is too much; it creates anguish. So it is better to forget it somehow and drop into a world of dreaming.

Chemicals can help. You drop out of the world, and they say to you "turn on." Where do you turn on?

You turn on really to a dream world; there you can find meaning, there you can find purpose. There you can find again the romance and poetry, but not when you are awake, aware, conscious. And they say these chemicals are helping the expansion of consciousness. This is absurd. They are not helping the expansion of consciousness, they are helping only the expansion of the dreaming process. They are only helping you to dream more beautifully, more deeply, to dream more intensely.

They are not helping consciousness; they are helping unconsciousness. They are helping deep processes of SUSHUPTI - of sleep and dreaming.

This had to happen, because with the mind you cannot go beyond this point. With mind there is no meaning; there cannot be. With mind there is logic, but no meaning; with mind there is reason, but no life. With mind you can create the dead and mechanical, but you completely lose track of existence, of life, of being, of consciousness.

Mind, this rishi says, is the first disease, the basic disease in a way. Why is mind a disease? - because mind is just a disturbance. Mind is just a disturbance in consciousness. It is not your nature; it is just a disturbance. The moment there is no disturbance, there is no mind. And this state of no-mindedness is the state of consciousness - the expansion of consciousness. You drop into yourself: not into dreaming, not into projections, into yourself. Consciously, with full alertness, you come to your center the moment mind is not there.

Meditation means how to be not a mind.

How to be not a mind!

Meditation means how to create the state of no-mindedness.

It doesn't mean unconsciousness. It means conscious and still, without any disturbance in the consciousness; conscious with no ripples, with no waves, with no vibrations; conscious as a deep, calm, silent pool with no ripples on it, with no disturbances on the surface; just a calm silent pool with no breeze to disturb, just mirrorlike.

With mind one goes on being disturbed more and more, and then this whole process of disturbance is self-perpetuating. One disturbance creates ten more, and those ten create a hundred more. This is self-perpetuating, and then you are in a vicious circle. With this mind something can be done.

That is, you can travel outwardly, you can go more into the world. But the more you go into the world the farther you are from yourself. And the farther you have gone, the more the track back is lost.

Then you only remember that there is a home, but there is no way to get back. And we continue to remember there is a home; there is a homesickness always somewhere present. There is a home and one has to go back.

But there is no way, and we continually try to find the home with the mind itself, which has lead us astray. Then we go into scriptures, then we go into words, then we go into philosophies, metaphysical systems. And then we are lost even more in it, even more deeply, and the track is not found at all. The track can be found only if you begin to feel and understand that mind is the disease, so you cannot go back with the mind; the mind cannot be used as a vehicle, it cannot be used as a passage. It is not a door towards consciousness. It is a door towards the world, towards objects - not towards the subjectivity. That's why it is said to be a disease, a complex.

The second is PRANA, life itself; rather than life, the lust for life. There is a deep fear - fear of death - and there is a deep lust to continue anyhow, to live anyhow. Life itself seems to be the end.

Life cannot be the end itself; if life itself is the end, then one will have to exist on the periphery.

Something must transcend life itself, something must be higher than life itself; otherwise, life can have no meaning. If you say that life itself is the end, then life is bound to be meaningless, because meaning comes from the beyond - always from the beyond. Something for which you exist gives the meaning - that's why we create many so-called meanings all around us.

Money becomes the meaning because you live for it; power becomes the meaning, prestige becomes the meaning. You create meanings, but those are just bogus meanings - because really, if life is at peril, you will be ready to lose power, money, everything. So you just deceive yourself, but those deceptions can never become the reality. Life remains above them; they are not beyond, they cannot be. That's why in the West, there are so many feelings of frustration and meaninglessness.

That's an obvious corollary of life being taken as the end.

Life originates in something and then again dissolves into something. Life comes up and then goes down and is dissolved. So the original source of life must be beyond life. It comes out of it and then goes back, just as a wave raises itself and then falls down into the ocean; the ocean remains beyond the wave. The wave comes and goes; it is there this moment, and the next it is gone. The ocean is behind, beyond.

Life is just a wave. Existence is beyond life.

So one who begins to be too involved and too attached, too infatuated with life, loses the existential source of life itself.

Life is just the periphery:

The center is existence.

We have called that existence GOD.

We have called that existence MOKSHA.

We have called that existence NIRVANA.

This is something very delicate to be understood. Really, we have never said that God exists. We have said, rather, GOD IS EXISTENCE. Those who say God exists don't know what they are saying.

Man exists; God cannot exist in the same way. Trees exist, the earth exists, the sun exists, but not God. A tree may go out of existence, man may not exist, the sun may not exist, but God cannot be conceived as not existing. God is existence; God is IS-NESS. So really, to say God is, is to repeat oneself.

God MEANS is; God means IS-NESS.

That is-ness is beyond life.

Life is just a wave on the ocean of is-ness. So we are separate as waves, but not as the ocean. We are separate on our peripheries, but not at the center. At the center we are one. So many waves on the ocean, but IN the ocean they are one.

But no wave will be able to conceive it, because it seems so absurd. How can a wave conceive that all the waves around are one with it? - because when another wave is just rising up, one is just dying and falling down. If waves are one, then they must fall simultaneously, they must rise simultaneously. That's why we are the same. If we are all the same, then how is one rich and how is one poor? Then how is one young and how is one old? And how is one born and how is one dying?

- we must be separate, obviously. Then how is one intelligent and one is not? And one is beautiful and one is not? - we must be different, we must be separate. But we are not. There are small waves and there are big waves; there are waves which go higher, there are waves which cannot go higher. But still they are the same - in the ocean they are the same.

If you are aware only of your wavelike life, then you cannot go inside; then this becomes a disease.

And if you are aware that you are a wave, then you must be afraid - you are bound to be afraid of death, of dying, because every wave has to die. You can see that every wave is dying - coming up and down - so you are afraid. This fear comes because you have not known the oceanic existence which is yours; you have known only the wave existence which means life, which means PRANA.

So, the rishi says the second bondage, the second complexity, the second division of diseases, is lust for life. What does it mean?

It means if one is to go deeply into existence, one has to be ready to die. This readiness to die is the basic quality of a religious mind. This is what constitutes the very essential core of being religious: this readiness to die. This doesn't mean a suicidal tendency. This doesn't mean any suicidal tendency, because really all those who commit suicide, commit suicide because of lust for life. This may look paradoxical - but never has a buddha committed suicide, never! Why?

A person who is not in the least lusting for life, desiring life, why is he not committing suicide?

Buddha would say, "I am so indifferent to life, I cannot be so infatuated with death. How can I be so infatuated with death? To me, they both mean the same. If life is - okay. If death is - okay." A buddha okays everything. He cannot choose.

Whenever someone commits suicide, really he is imposing conditions on life. He is saying life must be like this; otherwise, I commit suicide. "I must get this woman, I must get this post, I must get this and that. If I am not getting, I can live only with my conditions. Then if there is no fulfillment of my conditions, I am ready to die." Really this readiness to die is not readiness to die. He is asking too much. He is asking too much of life, and out of life; he is so filled with lust that he is even imposing conditions. This death is just a revenge, just a revenge towards life, because life could not fulfill his demands: "I will destroy life if life is not going to be what I desire it to be!" This is revenge, this is violence.

So when I say readiness for death, it means no lust for life, so that whatsoever comes, one is always in a welcoming attitude, in a receptivity. Whatsoever happens, one is ready - even death. Lust for life is the disease. This readiness, simple readiness to die, unties the lust for life.

The third complexity is that of desires. We don't live in existence, we live in desires. Really, we don't live in the world at all, we live in desires. Our life is not here and now, it is always somewhere else where the desire is arrowed. It may be anywhere, but it is never here. Never here, because desire needs time - desire cannot be here.

Can you desire anything in the present moment? The moment you desire, you desire for the future; you cannot desire here and now. Here and now there is no desire, there is no possibility of desiring.

Desire needs space - that space is time.

Desire needs some point somewhere else from here - only then can desire exist. It exists as a bridge: a bridge needs two banks, a bridge cannot exist only on THIS bank. How can the bridge exist? There must be the other; the other bank must be there. Only then does the bridge become possible.

Desire is creating a bridge from here to there.

And the moment you have gone there and lost this moment, you will live always in an inner tension, inner anguish. And really you will never be existential; you will always be in desires, in desires, in desires - always longing for the other shore. Even if you can get to the other shore, you will be again longing for the other shore. No shore can be the fulfillment - desire is self-frustrating. We are nothing but desires. Can you find anything in you which is not a desire? Even when you are praying, it is desire; even when you are meditating, it is a desire; even when you are thinking of the divine, it is a desire. We convert everything into desire. This is the disease, that we cannot conceive of anything without desire.

Buddha used to say, "There is no God." And he was himself one of the most existential proofs of the divine. He was the perfect argument for the divine; his presence was divine. And he used to say there was no God. One day, Sariputta asked him, "Why do you continue to say there is no God?

- because we all feel that when you are, God is. It seems contradictory, a person like you denying God. It seems contradictory because you are the proof, you are enough! We don't require any argument, but why do you deny it?"

Buddha said, "I deny it because I don't like God being made an object of desire. If I say God is, you will begin to desire: 'Then I must get, then I must reach.' And God is something which you cannot desire, and by desiring cannot get."

People would ask him, "Is there existence beyond death?" And he would say, "No, there is no existence beyond death." Why? - simply because if there is existence beyond death, you will begin to desire it.

They would ask, "Is there bliss? Is bliss possible?"

Buddha would say, "No. There is only the cessation of misery, no bliss."

He was one of the rarest geniuses to see the phenomenon of desiring, the tricks of desiring, and the cunningness of desiring. He would say, "No, there is no bliss at all; only cessation of suffering."

Why? - because if bliss is positively asserted, one begins to desire it.

We convert everything into desiring. We have a mechanism for converting and transforming anything. Put anything into it, and it become as desire. We can even desire desirelessness. I have come across people who come and say, "How can I be desireless?" How to be desireless - they are asking for the supreme-most desire - how to be desireLESS! But we go on converting. This is the disease; really, this is the disease.

Look at the disease, look at the fact, and don't ask the "how." Look at the fact: this is the fact. Live with the fact. Be aware of your mind's mechanism, and how it transforms everything into desiring.

In that moment of awareness, desiring stops.

And when there is no desiring, you are just here - this very moment. That moment becomes the door to the infinite.

That moment becomes the door to the divine - to nirvana.