Adhyatma Upanishad, Chapter 41

This UPANISHAD is basically against mind, and not only this UPANISHAD, upanishadic teaching as such is against mind.

Really, religion is against mind, because mind creates all illusions, all dreams. Mind creates everything that we call the world. Mind IS the world; try to understand this. This is one of the basic truths.

Ordinarily we think we live in one world. That's absolutely false. You live in YOUR world, I live in MY world. So really there is not one world; there are as many worlds as there are minds. Each mind is a world of its own. My mind creates my world; your mind creates your world.

A poet lives in his own world. A scientist never passes through that world, can never pass. A scientist and a poet may be neighbors, but they are poles apart. A scientist passes through a garden; he looks at a flower, but the flower is never seen. He looks at the structure of the flower, not at the flower. The flower of the poet, he can never see. When the scientist looks at a flower, it is a chemical phenomenon. It is a mystery for him, but a mystery which can be decoded. It may be unknown but is is not unknowable. It can be known - if not today, then tomorrow, but the mystery can be de-mystified. Reason can penetrate into its structure and know what this flower is and how it flowers - the material structure, the atomic structure can be known, can be penetrated. So the flower is never a mystery for a scientist in the sense it is a mystery for a poet.

When a poet passes through this garden and looks at the same flower, this is not the same flower - know this. The same flower is looked at by two minds - one of scientific attitude, another of poetic attitude. The flower is the same, but not the same, because the scientist is thinking of a different flower - chemical, electrical, material, structural. He is thinking of atoms; he is thinking how this flower happens to be. What is its mechanism? How does it happen?

The poet is not concerned at all with atoms, with matter, with molecules, with mechanism, with structure. No, the poet is concerned with beauty; the scientist is never aware of the beauty. The poet is aware of a certain mystery which he calls beauty, and this mystery is not the same. This mystery to a poet means it can never be decoded. If it can be decoded, then it is not a mystery.

To him, mystery means something which will remain unknowable, not unknown. The unknown can become known; potentially there is no difficulty to make it known. Unknowable means: which cannot be made known - never! For a poet, a flower will remain a mystery forever. That mysteriousness is its beauty, and beauty has no structure; beauty has no molecules, no atoms, no mechanism. What is beauty? Beauty is not material; it is immaterial. Really, the poet is not looking at it; he is feeling it.

We can bring a mystic also to the garden. A mystic also passes - a saint, a Sufi, a Zen monk.

For him the flower is neither a scientific structure to be understood, analyzed, known, nor is the flower just a beauty, a poetic sense, aesthetics; no. A mystic observing a flower becomes the flower himself; the barriers dissolve. It is not that the flower is there, and the mystic is here - here and there become one. So the mystic can say, "I have flowered in you." The division is not there. The mystic enters the very spirit of the flower; or, the flower enters the mystic and becomes one. A feeling of oneness, a feeling of divine oneness comes to the mystic.

The scientist approaches the flower through the intellect; a poet approaches the flower through the heart. A mystic approaches the flower through his wholeness, through his totality. The flower is the same, but not the same, because three minds create three worlds, and they never meet. The poet can never understand what the scientist is talking about - what flower is he talking about? The scientist can never understand the poet - he looks childish, talking nonsense. And the mystic... is a madman - "What do you mean by becoming a flower yourself? Have you gone mad? How can you become a flower? And how can the flower become you?" Science depends on division, so the mystic's non-division, no-division world is absurd; he is mad.

There are psychological studies of Jesus. They say he was neurotic, a madman. Your Mahavira, Krishna, Buddha - they are as yet untouched, fortunately. Sooner or later some psychologist will say they were mad, not because they were mad, but because their approaches are different. They are talking of different worlds, different languages. They cannot meet, they cannot communicate.

It is difficult to communicate poetry in scientific language; it is difficult to communicate science in a poetic language. If you create poetry out of science, the very scientific-ness is missed. If you try to translate poetry into scientific language, the beauty disappears. They cannot be translated.

That's why Indian scriptures have been translated many, many times, yet they remain untranslated; they cannot be translated. They all are written in poetry; that is the problem.

If you write a certain thing in poetry, it cannot be translated. Prose can be translated, because prose is basically rational. Poetry cannot be translated; it is the world of the irrational - feelings become more important, emotions become more important.

And mysticism, the lore of the mystics - that is impossible to translate. Because really it is not concerned with language; it is concerned with being, with the totality. A buddha looking at the world says something which cannot be translated - why? Because Buddha's outlook is so vast, so total, that no word can carry it.

I wonder whether you know it or not.... Buddha made it a point, continuously, for forty years while he was preaching, not to answer eleven questions. A certain eleven questions he would never answer - and they are the most basic questions. Really, it is a miracle how we could accept Buddha as an enlightened man, because those eleven questions are basic to religion. God, soul, MOKSHA - all are included in those eleven questions. And Buddha said to his listeners, "Never ask about these questions. You can ask anything, but never about these eleven questions."

One of his disciples, Mahakashyap asked him, "But these are the most basic. If we don't ask them then nothing remains to be asked. You are playing a trick. In these eleven questions you have included ALL questions. If we cannot ask about God, if we cannot ask about the soul, if we cannot ask about liberation, then about what can we ask? And these are basic, so please don't make it a point not to answer them."

Buddha said, "Because they are basic, that's why I am not going to answer them. They are so total that language cannot convey them; and if I convey anything, that will be erroneous. So don't ask them. But I am not forbidding you to know them. I will give you methods; through those methods you will be able to know them, but I am not going to answer them."

Really, religion has no answers; religion has only methods. Those methods give you certain perspectives, certain situations from where you can look and penetrate into problems. But religion has no answers.

Every mind, each mind, is a world unto itself. That's why there is so much conflict. No one understands another.

You may live with your wife for forty years, fifty years - but have you observed the fact that you cannot understand each other's language? The husband says something, the wife immediately understands something ELSE. Forty, fifty years they have been living together - what is the problem? Have they not yet been able to understand each other's terms and definitions? It is difficult.... They have two minds - each mind has its own world, and whatsoever penetrates into this world takes its shape and color. The husband has his own world: whatsoever he says, it means something in HIS pattern of thinking. When this penetrates his wife's world, it becomes something else - they never meet.

You can meet only when you are silent; when you are talking you cannot meet. That's why love is silent. When you love someone you don't talk, you are just present to each other; talking ceases.

So remember, when two lovers begin to talk, know well that love has ceased to be. When two lovers are silent there is love; in love they can understand each other. Why? - because in love, mind is not allowed to be. Language is not there, talk is not there, words are not there - mind is non-functioning.

For a few moments, mind is not allowed to function; love becomes communion.

Talk, and it becomes a debate, a discussion, a controversy. You say something, and you will be misunderstood. To say something is to be misunderstood, because you are approaching another world, with different attitudes, different orientations, different languages. There is not one world; there are as many as there are minds.

Why insist on this? Just to tell you that REALLY there is one world. And you cannot know that one world unless your mind is dissolved. If you go on clinging to your mind, then you go on creating your own world, you go on projecting your own world. When mind is no more, you face the oneness, the undivided, the undifferentiated existence.

That existence is bliss.

That existence is consciousness.

That existence is truth.

Anywhere you move towards religion, you move towards no-mind. Throw out the mind, and remain mindless, but aware. If you can remain mindless and aware, you will penetrate the deepest layer of existence.

Remember, just mindlessness will not do, because in deep sleep everyone becomes mindless.

When there is no dreaming....

Indian psychology divides human consciousness into three stages: deep, dreamless sleep - the deepest; then above it, dream sleep; and above it, on the surface, what we call the waking state. In the morning you get up from your bed; you enter the waking state. In the evening you go to your bed you enter dream sleep. And then deep in the night somewhere, dreams disappear and you fall down into the abyss of dreamless sleep - that is known as SUSHUPTI.

This dreamless sleep is without mind, because there is no thought, no dream, no ripple; everything has ceased, mind has dissolved. You ARE - without a mind. That's why the insistence - "without mind AND alert." That's the only difference between samadhi and sushupti - samadhi, the ultimate peak of ecstasy, and sushupti, the deepest center of dreamless sleep - only one difference; otherwise, they are one. In sushupti there is no mind; in samadhi also there is no mind. In sushupti you are unconscious; in samadhi you are perfectly conscious. But the quality of consciousness is the same. In one there is darkness, in another there is light.

Through meditation one has to achieve a dreamless sleep with full alertness. Once this happens, the drop falls into the ocean and becomes the ocean.

Now be ready for meditation.