And Home Is Not Far Away

MAN'S QUEST FOR THE TRUTH is eternal. it is a long pilgrimage without any beginning. Though it comes to an end, it has no beginning. We have been searching and searching and searching; our search has continues through the centuries, sometimes in one form, sometimes in another form.

Even those who don't seem to be consciously searching for truth, they too are searching. Man's very being is a search for the truth.

That is the agony of man - and the glory too. No other animal is in search, all other animals are contented as they are. The dog is a dog, and he is not trying to become anything else. There is no becoming. The dog is perfectly satisfied; he's at ease. There is no pilgrimage, he is not going anywhere, there is no future. And so is it the case with every other animal.

Man is a strange animal, very odd, and the strangeness is that he is never satisfied; discontent is his very soul. He is moving; he is dynamic, he is not static. He is a flow, a river searching for the ocean - sometimes knowingly, sometimes not so knowingly, but the search continues. it is in the very being of man to be a seeker, to be a searcher; man cannot be otherwise.

Friedrich Nietzsche has said that man is a rope stretched between two eternities: the eternity of nature and the eternity of God. Man is a bridge. You CANNOT rest while you are a man, you have to go. For a while you may rest, but rest cannot become your life; you have to go - because man is not a being, man is a process.

The dog has a being, and the rock also has a being, but man has no being yet; the being has to come, the being has to flower, the being has to be achieved. Man is very paradoxical: he is, and yet he is not. That is the tension, the anguish, the anxiety: how to be?

A constant abyss surrounds humanity, and man is always facing the bottomless abyss and always afraid of not being, because he is not yet. Man is a promise: he can be, but he is not yet - so there is hope and there is fear, there is possibility and there is apprehension. It may happen, it may not happen, so man is never in certainty.

This whole search for truth can be divided into four stages. And I would like you to ponder over these four stages because you will be somewhere in these four stages - either in some stage, or passing from one stage to another.

The first stage I call 'the jungle'; the second I call 'the forest'; the third I call 'the garden'; the fourth I call 'the home'.

'The jungle' - it is the state of deep sleep; man is not consciously searching. The majority lives in this state. The search is there, but very unconscious, not deliberate yet; groping in the dark, but not exactly aware of for what, or not even aware that one is groping; very accidental. Sometimes one may come across a window and may have a vision, but again that misses. Because one is not consciously searching, one cannot hold these visions. Sometimes in your dream something dawns on you. Sometimes in your love a door opens and closes, but you don't know how it opened and how it closed again. Sometimes looking at a beautiful sunset, something tremendously beautiful surrounds you: the other world has penetrated you - or at least has touched you, and then it is gone. And you cannot even trust that it was there, you cannot even believe that it happened...

because you were not consciously searching. Many times you come across God; mind you, many times you come across God, you meet Him in many points of your life, but you cannot recognize Him - because in the first place you are not looking for Him.

And remember, unless you look for a thing you cannot see it. You can see it only when you are looking for it. It may pass by your side, but if you are not looking for it you will not see it. To see something one has to look for it.

The first state is like a jungle: deep, dark, dense, primitive, primordial. No path exists, not even a footpath, and man is not going anywhere, goes on stumbling from one dark corner to another dark corner. The majority of humanity loves in the jungle, in the unconscious state of the mind. People are asleep: sleepwalkers they are, somnambulists they are.

That is the teaching of Buddha, Christ, Gurdjieff, Kabir: the majority lives not, only exists, vegetates.

You seem as if you are alert; you are not. You live in a dense fog, clouded. Your life is mechanical.

Yes, things happen, but they happen just as things happen to a mechanism: you push the button and the light goes on, just like that; you push the button and the mechanism starts functioning, just like that. Somebody pushes a button in you and anger comes; somebody pushes another button in you and you are very happy; somebody else pushes some other button and some other mood surrounds you - and there is not even a single moment's gap between the pushing of the button and the mood arising. It is mechanical. You are not a master, you are a slave.

Gurdjieff used to say that man is like a chariot: the driver is drunk, the master is fast asleep inside the chariot, the horses are unruly and wherever they want they go, and all four horses are going in four directions. Any passerby can just jump on the chariot, take hold of the chariot, lead the chariot; the driver is drunk and the master is fast asleep.

And this is the state of your life: your innermost core is fast asleep, and your awareness is drunk.

Your body is a chariot, and any whim, any desire enters you, drives you for the time being, takes you somewhere, leaves you there, and then another whim, another desire.... And in this way you go on zig-zagging, stumbling into this rock, stumbling into that tree. In darkness, you go on hurting yourself, wounding yourself. Your whole life is nothing but a deep nightmare.

Try to understand other characteristics of this state. First, it corresponds to what Carl Gustav Jung calls 'the collective unconscious', and also to what Sigmund Freud calls 'the unconscious'. It is the LOWEST state of consciousness. In this state no search is possible. Because you never take hold of your life in your hands, you remain at the mercy of accidents.

There are a few people who have come to me not searching, just accidentally; a friend was coming and they thought, 'Okay, let us go and see what is there.' They were looking in a book store and they came across one of my books, and my picture attracted them; or they liked the title of the book, and they became curious, and they have come here. But this search is very, very unconscious. You are not thinking, meditating about your life, about how it should be, what it should be, where it should go.

And each desire, when it takes possession of you, becomes your master. When you are angry, anger becomes your master, takes complete possession of you. It is not that you are angry; you become anger, and you will do something in your anger for which you will repent. And this is the irony: another 'I' will repent for the act of some other 'I', another desire, another state, another mood.

Now you will suffer, and you will go and you will like to ask to be forgiven. This is somebody else; it is not the same person. Where are those red eyes, that violent face, that readiness to kill or be killed? They are all gone.

Once a man spat on Buddha; he was very angry. He must have been - otherwise it is very difficult to spit on a Buddha, looks almost impossible. How could he do it? But he must have been very angry, in a rage. Buddha wiped it with his shawl and asked the man, 'Have you anything more to say to me?'

The man was embarrassed, he could not say a single word. He went away. The whole night he could not sleep; in the morning he came. He fell at Buddha's feet and he said, 'Please forgive me. it was sheer stupidity, I was mad.'

Buddha said, 'You were not; that's why you could do it. You were not - so don't feel worried. You were absolutely unconscious, so you are not responsible. So don't repent! That was some other person who had come and spat on me, you are somebody totally different. That man was in a rage, he was mad. You are same, you are touching my feet. No, no, you are both so different, I cannot make a connection.'

Man is a crowd in the state of 'the jungle'. Many people live in you, disconnected, fragmentary. You don't have a soul. That's why Gurdjieff used to say a very meaningful thing - that man is not born with a soul. Man is born with many selves, but not with a soul. When all these selves melt into one, integrate into one, and all these selves are changed chemically and become one unity, then you have a soul. When all these selves drop into the ocean, and their separateness has disappeared, and one arises, then you have a soul. All persons don't have souls. By your birth you have not got a soul - very significant, very meaningful. One has to become a soul, one has to integrate this crowd inside, these selves fighting with each other.

At this stage, the stage of the jungle, people are more interested in answers than in questioning.

They are immediately satisfied with any stupid answer given to them. In fact, they have never asked the question. Even before asking, they have taken the answer. That's how somebody has become a Hindu and somebody a Mohammedan and somebody a Christian: before you had ever asked the question, the answer was given to you, and you have been clinging to the answer. What do you mean when you say that 'I am a Jew' - or a Mohammedan or a Hindu or a Jaina? What do you mean? Have you asked the question, or have you just borrowed the answers? Without asking the question, you have believed in Christ, in Buddha, in Krishna, in Mohammed? - this is sheer stupidity.

How can you get to the answer when you have not even asked, you have not enquired?

In the state of the jungle, people believe in answers without asking. Questioning is arduous, questioning is difficult. Just to believe in borrowed answers is comfortable, convenient. To question one has to suffer, to question one has to travel, to question one has to go within oneself. You just take the answer, just borrow it.

At this stage people are very knowledgeable: the pundits, the priests. They themselves live in a dark, dense forest, and they go on leading others also towards more dense, dark jungles. In this state, the jungle, people are very worldly, although they pretend to be religious. They pretend: they go to the church, they go to the temple, the mosque, the gurudwara, but it is all formal, they don't mean it. They pay lip-service to God, but they don't mean it. It is more of a security-measure - MAYBE God is; it is a 'perhaps' - more of a social formality. it is good to appear to be religious.

The Sunday religion is very good - it gives you respectability. These people are not seekers, and these people are very orthodox - because they are afraid. They know that their knowledge is false, borrowed, cheap, so they are very afraid. if somebody says anything against them, they immediately pound on him. You are creating doubt. They don't want any skepticism, they don't want any doubt, they don't want any questions. They want to cling to the comfortable beliefs their parents have given to them, or the society, or the state. They don't want to be shaken. They live in a false world fo words, ideologies.

This is the type of person you call 'straight' - the square, the traditional, the conformist. He is past- oriented; he never looks to the future, and he never looks in the present. He is past-oriented: the past was golden, the real days are gone; those days existed when Jesus was walking on the earth, or when Buddha was walking on the earth, or when Krishna was playing his flute. his golden age is always in the past, his utopia is always in the past: 'It has been; now we have fallen from it.' He believes in a fallen state. he thinks that now there is no future, and he never looks at the future, and he clings to the past. he is a dead man, and he clings to dead beliefs, dead ideologies. His religion is not a movement, his religion is not a dynamism; his religion is codified, organized, dead.

his religion is a corpse.

This type of person believes in the priest, in the bishop, in the pope, in the shankaracharya. This person never goes to seek anywhere else.

I have heard....

The parson of a tiny congregation in Arkansas rashly lit one night with the entire church treasury, and the local constable set out to capture him. This he did. Dragging the culprit back by the collar a week later, 'Here is the vermit fox,' announced the constable grimly. 'I am sorry to say he has already squandered our money, but I drug him back so we can make him preach it out.'

Now even this type of priest will do - because religion is just a formality. Even a thief can be forced to preach. Nobody bothers about the priest, his being, his consciousness, no. At the most, his training is needed: that he know what his is doing. This type of mind, the jungle mind, is very ritualistic.

The ritual is religion. The chanting of a mantra the priest has given to you is enough. The priest himself has not arrived home, and he goes on giving the Guru Mantra; he goes on giving people their mantras. He goes on distributing keys and he has not yet opened his own door. He is as ignorant as the people he leads. But he has one thing: credit that comes from the past centuries and centuries. A Hindu priest can say that for five thousand years his family have been priests; it has a market value, that's all. He has credit. The Hindu can say that the VEDAS are the oldest scriptures in the world. Their being old is thought to be very valuable. In fact, the older a book is, the more dead it is bound to be.

Religion is fresh, young, like a new leaf, or this morning's dew-drops on the grass leaves. Religion is born every moment; it has nothing to do with the past. A really religious person goes in search of some Buddha who is alive, of some Christ who is still living and breathing, goes to find a Mohammed to whom the KORAN is still coming, to whom the KORAN is still descending.

But the jungle type never goes anywhere. He clings to the priest, to the religion, to the church in which he was accidentally born. He remains there, he lives in it, he dies in it.

I have heard....

According to a Hollywood journal, a cinema adorable was in the precess of getting married for the seventh or eighth time. The officiating clergyman, flustered by all the publicity and glamor, lost his place in the ritual book.

The star yawned and whispered, 'Page eighty-four, stupid!'

Now even she knows - having got married seven, eight times, she knows which page. 'Page eighty-four, stupid!' she says to the priest. This ritualistic religion is just mechanical. The priest knows because he repeats it every day. And you, by and by, become acquainted with it because you go on repeating it every day. It depends on repetition. It is not a revelation, it is not your acquaintance; it has nothing to do with you, it is absolutely disconnected with you. You are not born to it, it has not been born in you. It remains superficial.

I have heard....

An old maid died, and her two friends went to have a gravestone made.

'Do you have a suitable epitaph?' asked the engraver.

'We thought: "Born a virgin, lived a virgin, died a virgin" would be nice,' answered the woman.

The engraver answered, 'Why not save money? Just put: Returned unopened.'

And that's what happens to the man who lives in the jungle state: he comes here, but never lives.

Life is dangerous; he cannot afford that. Life is an adventure into the new; he clings to the old. Life is unknown and unknowable, and he does not want to risk his knowledge. He is returned unopened.

He comes, he lives, he dies, but in fact he never comes, and he never lives, and he never dies. His whole existence is fast asleep. He has not yet claimed to be a man.

This type of person is what you call 'pigheaded'. He always has the outlook of 'holier than thou' - very moralistic. He thinks he is very moral; he does not know the ABCD of morality. But he clings to the social code, he never toes beyond it. He keeps the rules. Not that he is moral - because he clings to an immoral society, how can he be moral?

A moral man is bound to be unsocial; a moral man cannot be social - at least not up to now has it been possible. We can hope that some day, in some future world, the society will be so moral that the moral man may not need to become unsocial. But it has not been so up to now: hitherto it has always been so that whenever there is a moral man, he is unsocial.

A Jesus is unsocial; so is Buddha, so is Kabir. Why are real moral people unsocial? - because the society is immoral. If you adjust to the society, you become immoral. How can you adjust to a society which is immoral and remain moral? And the morality that is preached in the society is just hocus-pocus; it is bogus, it is just a show, it is not really moral. It pretends, and hidden deep behind it is all that is immoral.

Christians go on teaching: Love your enemy, and they have fought more wars than anybody else, and they have killed many more people than anybody else. The whole history of Christianity is bloody. The very word 'Islam' means peace, and Mohammedans have never been peaceful.

It seems simply unbelievable how we have tolerated all these things in the world. How we tolerate, how we are unable to see into them! The church has been one of the calamities; still it remains the protector. It goes on making announcements about what man should do. But everything is put in such words that the man who lives in the jungle is deceived.

For example, now the world is becoming too crowded, and abortion is moral, and to go on producing children is immoral - because the world will be crowded more: there will be more famine, more war, more poverty. You will be the cause of it. But the Pope goes on saying that no Catholic is allowed to abort; it is a sin. The same is true about the shankaracharya of the Hindus; he goes on saying 'No abortion.'

Now to go on populating this world is going to be one of the MOST immoral things; this world is already too populated. And if you bring a child into this world, you are not only doing something wrong to the world, you are doing something wrong to your child too: you will be throwing him into a very miserable world. His future will be miserable. But the old ideology is NEVER aware of the new reality. It goes on talking nonsense. Maybe those words were meaningful one day, but they are no more.

A real religion has to change with the times. And this type of man is too pigheaded: he never changes, he is not ready to change. he is very much against change, he is anti-revolutionary. And this type of man is a fanatic and a fascist; he is ready to be violent at any moment. And all his violence arises because he is not confident about himself, not self-confident about his religion. His religion is not his own experience; how can he be self-confident? If you argue with him, immediately he brings the sword into the argument. He argument is that of the sword. This type of man is very irrational, but he talks as if he is very rational. His rationalism is nothing but rationalization, it is not true reason.

Remember and watch: somewhere deep in your soul you must have this jungle. A few people have it more, a few less, but the difference is of quantity, of degree. But this jungle is in every person.

This is your unconscious, your dark night within. And from this dark night arise many instincts, impulses, obsessions, insanities, and they take possession of you and your consciousness is very fragile. Your unconsciousness is ninety-nine percent, and your consciousness is just one percent.

You cannot depend on it. Watch it and don't support the unconscious. Take your cooperation away, don't cooperate with it. When anything happens and your unconscious starts taking possession of your consciousness, become watchful, become alert.

For example, anger arises: it arises from the unconscious, the smoke comes from the unconscious; then it spreads to your consciousness and then you are drunk with it. Then you can do something you would never have done in your senses. Wait. This is no time to say a single word or do anything.

Close your door, sit silently, watch this anger arising, and you will have found a key. If you watch this anger arising, you will see: by and by the anger has subsided. It cannot remain forever; it has a certain amount of energy, a certain potentiality. When it is exhausted, it goes back; and when it goes back and re-settles within yourself you will see a change, a qualitative change in your being.

You have become more aware. The energy that was going to become anger and was going to be wasted and was going to be destructive, has been used by your consciousness. And now the consciousness burns brighter - from the same energy.

This is the inner method of how to change the poison into nectar. When you are feeling very sexual....

I am not against sex, but I am against sexuality. And let me make a distinction: when you feeling very sexual and being possessed by the person, this is not the moment to do anything. Close your doors, meditate on your sexuality. Let it arise, let it come out of the dark night within you. Out of the jungle, let it spread - you watch, you simply watch, you become an unmoving flame of awareness.

Soon you will see it has settled again, and your consciousness is burning brighter than ever. You have absorbed it, it has become nectar.

I am not against sex; when you are feeling very prayerful, very loving, go into sex - nothing is wrong - but never be trapped by passion. And see the difference: when you are feeling loving, it is a totally different quality. When you are feeling happy, celebrating, and you would like to share your energy with somebody you love, go make love. But this is not a moment of passion, this is a moment of tremendous warmth. A moment of love, share.

Have you watched it? - people almost always make love after they fight with their woman or with their man. That becomes a ritual. First they fight, they become angry, and then suddenly passion arises. Anger feeds the passion. There are people who will not feel passion unless they are beaten by their woman or by their man.

You must have heard about de Sade. He used to have all his instruments always with him in his bag. Who knows where he would find a woman to love? And his instruments consisted of things to torture himself, or to torture the woman. But without torture, passion would not arise. When you are whipped, suddenly there is passion.

And there were women who told that once they loved de Sade, they could not love anybody else - because first he would whip them and make their bodies hot, and they would become angry, and they would scream, and they would run around; he would whip them to passion and then he would make love. Of course, this is the way to move into the jungle.

And just on the other extreme was Masoch: he would whip himself, he would force the woman to whip him. Only when he was whipped - and he would scream and he would shout and he would become angry, and his face would become red with rage - then he would be potent; otherwise he would be impotent.

In a smaller measure you also do it, unconsciously: couples fight, they argue, they nag, they create anger, then they make love and then they go to sleep.

This is moving into the jungle. This is sexuality, not natural sex.

Natural sex is more meditative. There is less fever - more warmth but less fever. Passion is a fever, a state of madness, insanity. Warmth is a state of love. If you can make love, fully alert, your love precesses will help you towards becoming more and more aware, more and more centered.

From the jungle, you have to pull yourself out.

The second state is 'the forest'. It is almost like the jungle with a slight difference: the forest has a few paths, footpaths - not super highways, but footpaths. The jungle has not even a footpath. The jungle is very primitive: in the jungle the human being has not yet entered, it is almost animal. In the forest, human beings have entered. A few footpaths are there, you can find a way.

The forest is like dreaming. The jungle was like sleep, the forest is like dreaming. It is like the subconscious - a twilight land, neither night nor day, just in the middle. Things are still foggy, but not dark. You can see a little, you can move a little, you can have a certain amount of awareness. This is the land of the starry-eyed, the hippie, the so-called religious searcher, the drug-addict - trying to find any way, any means, shortcuts to somehow get ut of the forest. This is the state where the search begins - in a very wavering way, but at least it begins. It is better than the jungle.

The hippie is better than the square, than the straight: at least he searches. Maybe sometimes he moves in a wrong direction. Searching for meditation, he becomes a drug-addict - because the drug can give a certain similarity, a certain similar experience - but at least he searches, at least he is moving. He may commit errors but he is moving. The man in the jungle is not moving at all; he may not commit errors, but he is not moving.

And not to move is the greatest error one can commit. Move! Life is a trial and error; one has to learn through errors.

Many paths open in this second stage - in fact too many, and one becomes confused. it is very chaotic. The jungle is very settled, everything is clear. Though it is dark, belief is clear: somebody is a Hindu and somebody is a Mohammedan and somebody is a Christian and things are clear. The Christian goes to his priest, the Hindu goes to his priest, the Mohammedan goes to his. They have their BIBLE, their KORAN, their VEDAS, everything is clear. It is dark but things are clear, people are not confused. People are dead, but not confused. With life, confusion arises, and chaos. But out of chaos stars are born.

In the second type come the poets, the painters, the artists, the musicians, the dancers. They are the revolutionaries. The first type is orthodox, the second type is revolutionary. The first type is traditional, the second is utopian. The first is past-oriented, the second is future-oriented. For the first the golden age has passed, for the second it has to come. He looks ahead. he is just like The Fool in the Tarot cards: he looks ahead into the sky. He is standing on a cliff, one foot hanging in the abyss. But he is so happy; he does not look down, he is looking at the sky, at the stars far away.

he is full of dreams. he is near his death, but he is full of dreams. It is dangerous. But if you ask me what to choose, I will say choose the second - be the fool, never be the pundit. It is better to be a fool and risk, than never to risk and remain satisfied with bogus, borrowed knowledge. The second is a fool. For the second stage I have a special name: I call it 'California land'. Yes, it is the California of the human soul, where a great supermarket, a spiritual supermarket exists - all sorts of techniques and all sorts of guides and maps.

This is the moment when one starts looking. One is not satisfied with the church he was born into; he starts moving and tries the alien ways, the strange ways. This is the moment when a person becomes a student and searches for a teacher. Still the search has not gone very deep, but it has started. The seed has sprouted. One will still have to go very long. One has to go long, but now a possibility exists.

The first type is dead; the second type is too much alive, dangerously alive. The first type is at one extreme, the second has moved to another extreme. In the second also there is no balance; the balance will come in the third stage. The first clings to the dead letter, and the second clings to nothing, belongs to nowhere, goes on moving, is a wanderer. The first is a householder, the second is a wanderer. But the second is like a rolling stone: he gathers no moss. He never comes to his own center; he goes on moving from one teacher to another, from one book to another.

The first simply believes in HIS book, and the second becomes available to all the books of the world.

he reads the BIBLE, and he reads the KORAN, and he reads the GITA - and becomes confused, and becomes muddle-headed. And he cannot figure out what is what.

The first is very articulate, the second becomes less articulate. Have you talked to a hippie? - it is very difficult to figure out what he is saying. And when he does not know what he is saying, he says, 'You know?' He does not know himself, and he asks you, 'You know? You see?' - and he is not seeing anything himself. And rather than expressing in words, he starts expressing in sounds. He starts using sounds, baby sounds. He becomes less articulate.

The first is very rationalized, lives in the head. The second is moving towards the heart, becomes more of the feeling type. The first is not aware, but thinks that his thinking is his awareness.

The second has not yet reached the source of feeling, and thinks emotionalism, sentimentalism, is feeling.

The hippie can cry, can laugh; he's eccentric, crazy, but better than the first. The first is political, the second is non-political. The first believes in war, the second starts trusting in peace. The first accumulates things, the second starts loving persons... that's beautiful. The first believes in marriage, the second believes in love. The first lives a sheltered life, the second does not know where he will be tomorrow.

But good; things have started moving. They can move in a wrong direction, true, but they can move in a right direction too. Movement is good. Now the right direction will be needed. One thing has happened, now the direction will be needed.

The first is very worldly, believes in the bank balance and the life insurance; the first is very greedy for power, money. The second does not believe in security; he trusts life more than life insurance. He believes in love more than in the security you can have in a bank balance. he is not money-minded, he does not hoard. He is not moral in the sense that the first is moral, but he starts having a new sort of morality - a revolutionary morality, a personal morality. The first type's morality is social, the second type's morality is personal; the first type's morality depends on conditioning, the second type's morality depends on conscience. He looks around, and whatsoever he feels to do, he does it.

He does his own thing, he is individual.

The first is collective. The unconscious is collective, the subconscious is individual. Have you watched? - when you dream, you dream alone. You cannot share it with anybody; it is individual, personal. You cannot even invite your woman to see your dream. She may be sleeping just by your side in the same bed, but you dream your dream, she dreams her dream - everybody doing his own thing. That's why I call this state the state of subconscious, the dreaming state.

The first is not interested in the questions or in the question, he is interested in the answer. The Hindu has answers, the Hindu answer; the Jaina has the answer, the Jaina answer - and so on and so forth. The second is still not interested in the question, but he has too many answers. The first has only one answer, the second has too many answers. Still the question has not become the most important thing, still the answer is, but now, too many. This is good, this is a relaxing. The second cannot be pigheaded. He cannot outrightly deny and say that the BIBLE is wrong because he is a Hindu. He cannot outrightly deny that the GITA must be wrong because he is a Christian. No, he becomes more human, he becomes more universal. He has looked in the GITA and in the BIBLE, and he has seen glimpses of truth everywhere. He has too many answers.

The first is dogmatic, theological; the second is philosophical.

And the third is 'the garden' - the third stage.

The garden is the state of awakening: one is awake. The first is sleep; the second is dream; the third is awake. Hindus call the first SUSHUPTI, the second SWABHANA, the third JAGRATI. Now he is conscious, aware, the day has dawned. Books, guides, teachers, have become irrelevant; he has found the Master.

The first believes in the priest. The second does not know where to go: he has no compass, he has lost all direction, he goes to anybody. You can train a dog and call him Guru Maharaji, and he will go. Just propagate, and you will see that the dog has found followers. The second can go to any Guru Maharaji. He is ready to fall at anybody's feet, he is TOO ready. The first is never ready, the second is too ready. For the first, there is no question of falling at anybody's else's feet other than his own priest. To the second, everybody seems to be the priest. His eyes are very wavering. He can go to anybody, to whosoever claims, to whosoever can shout loudly: 'Yes, I am going to be your guide. I'm the world teacher, I am this and that.' Whosoever can claim, he will be ready to fall at his feet.

But the third is no more interested in teachers; he is not a student. He is interested in personal contact - he is interested in a Master, he wants to become a disciple. He is not bothered about what the Master says, he is more interested in the vibe that the Master creates around him. He is not interested in his doctrines, in his philosophy; he is interested in his being.

When you become interested in being, and when you look directly into a person's innermost core; when you start feeling the presence, then only can you become a disciple. You are not in search of any philosophical answer; now the question has become important: Who am I? The second is ready to learn, the first is not ready to learn, the third is ready to unlearn. Let me repeat: the first is not ready to learn. He is stubborn, he thinks he already knows. The second is ready to learn from anywhere, and then he learns too many things - contradictory, foolish, good, bad - and he becomes confused.

The third is ready to unlearn. He is not searching for knowledge. He says, 'I am in search of a person who has arrived. And I will not listen to whether what he says is argumentatively true, philosophically true. I would like to have an intimate relationship.'

The relationship between a teacher and a student is not personal. The relationship between a Master and a disciple is personal; it is a love-affair. One has to feel, one has to be in the presence of the Master, one has to watch. One has not to bring one's mind in; one has to put the mind away, and one has to look directly, and feel.

One Zen Master used to say, 'When I reached my Master, for three years I was sitting by his side, and he would not even look at me. Then after three years he looked at me, and that was a great joy.

Then three years again passed, and one day he laughed at me, smiled, and it was a benediction.

Then three years again passed, and one day he patted me on my head, at it was tremendous, it was incredible. Then three years passed, and one day he embraced me, and I disappeared and he disappeared... and there was unity.'

To find a Master is to find the closest point from where God is available, the closest door from where God is available. Somebody who has arrived.... But how will you decide? You will have to feel; thinking won't be of any help. Thinking will mislead you; you will have to feel, you will have to be patient, you will have to be in his presence, you will have to taste, you will have to become drunk with his presence. And by and by, things will become clear. As your mind subsides, things will become clear. Either he is the Master or he is not - and it will be a revelation. If he is, then you can drown yourself totally. If he is not, then you have to move. In both ways, you will have come to a conclusion. sometimes it happens that you may feel he IS the Master, but not for you. Then too you have to move - because a Master can help only if you and he fit together, if you are meant to be together, if you are meant for each other.

So sometimes it happens that there may be a great Master. Buddha and Mahavir both lived together in the same time, they were contemporaries. And disciples would come to Buddha, and they would sit with Buddha for years. Then one day suddenly the disciple would be gone. And the same would happen to Mahavir: a few disciples would come to him, would be with him, and one day they were gone and would start following buddha.

Now Buddhists and Jains have been arguing for centuries about why it happened. Jains will say that it happened because Mahavir was the true Master, so many people came from Buddha; they never refer to the disciples who moved from Mahavir to Buddha. And the Buddhists always talk about the disciples who came from Mahavir to Buddha, and they forget about talking about the disciples who went from Buddha to Mahavir.

Disciples had moved, that's true, and from both sides - and the reason is not that Mahavir was not true for Buddha was not true. The reason is: sometimes you fit with a Master, sometimes you don't fit. The disciples who moved away from Buddha touched his feet, thanked him - because this experience too had happened in his presence, that they were not meant for each other. And they were grateful for their whole lives towards Buddha. They moved to Mahavir, they attained to their realization in the presence of Mahavir, but they were grateful to Buddha too.

At this stage, the garden, a totally different perspective opens. This is the point where the question 'Who am I' becomes important, and you don't ask for the answer. You are not ready to accept any answer from without. And the Master is not going t give you any answer. In fact, he is going to destroy all your answers - that's what I am doing here.

I am destroying all your answers; if you are a Hindu, I am shattering Hinduism; if you are a Mohammedan, I am shattering Mohammedanism; if you are a Christian, I am shattering Christianity.

That's what I am doing: I am taking away all your answers, so you are left alone with your question, pre with your question, virgin with your question.

When your question is left there, and there is no answer from the outside, you start falling within yourself. The question penetrates like an arrow to the very source of your being - and THERE is the answer. And that answer is not verbal. It is not a theory that you come across, it is a realization.

You explode. You simply know. It is not knowledge; you know. it is experience, it is existential.

The first person is dogmatic, sectarian. The second person is philosophic. The third person is religious., existential.

And then the fourth state is 'the home'.

Hindus call it turiya: the fourth state. At the fourth state you have arrived, you have arrived at the very core of your being - the home, enlightenment, SAMADHI, SATORI, NIRVANA. You have come to the point where the Master and the disciple disappear, where the devotee and God disappear, where the seeker and the sought disappear, where all duality disappears. You have transcended the two, you have come to the one.

This is the place we all have been seeking, and the beauty of it is that it is already there. When you have arrived home you will know that one has arrived where one has always been. Looking backwards from home, you will laugh. You will see that the jungle was not out there; it was your own unconsciousness. The forest was not out there; it was your own dreaming-faculty. The garden was not out there; it was your own awareness.

And the home is your own being, SATCHITANAND. It is you, your innermost nature, SWABHAVA, Tao - or call it whatsoever name you would like to call it. It is nameless.

These are the four states, and I talked about them in such detail because it will help you to understand these sutras, and other sutras that are going to follow.

Now the sutras.

THERE IS NOTHING BUT WATER AT THE HOLY PLACES; AND I KNOW THAT THEY ARE USELESS, FOR I HAVE BATHED IN THEM.

Kabir is talking about the jungle.

THERE IS NOTHING BUT WATER AT THE HOLY PLACES; AND I KNOW THAT THEY ARE USELESS, FOR I HAVE BATHED IN THEM.

One is not purified by taking a bath in the Ganges. It is stupid; the very idea is stupid - because your impurity is not of the physical, your impurity is not like dust on your body. Yes, that much the Ganges can do: it can clean your body, it can give you a bodily cleanliness, freshness. But the problem is not there, so the solution cannot be there. The dust is deeper; no Ganges can take it away.

And Kabir says... 'FOR I HAVE BATHED IN THEM.' Kabir says: I have been in the jungle - the jungle of the rituals, dogmas, scriptures, priests, temples, mosques, Sunday religions. I have been there: it is useless.

THE IMAGES ARE ALL LIFELESS, THEY CANNOT SPEAK; I KNOW, FOR I HAVE CRIED ALOUD TO THEM.

And Kabir says; I have been worshipping the images in the temples - they are dead. They cannot help. I have cried aloud to them and they have answered. They are man-made, and man-made gods won't do. Man cannot create God; God has created man. How can you create God? All symbols are dangerous, because there is a possibility that you may start thinking of the symbol as the real.

The symbol is not the real.

No image represents God, no word represents truth. The word 'God' is not God, of course; the word 'fire' is not fire. And you cannot eat a menu and be satisfied. The menu is not food.

Remember, all symbols are menu-like, and many people are feeding on menus and suffering and starving, and they wonder why they are suffering. The images, the scriptures, the theoretical formulations - all symbols are useless.

THE IMAGES ARE ALL LIFELESS, THEY CANNOT SPEAK; I KNOW, FOR I HAVE CRIED ALOUD TO THEM.

THE PURANA AND THE KORAN ARE MERE WORDS; LIFTING UP THE CURTAIN, I HAVE SEEN.

And even books won't help: the KORAN and the PURANA won't help. The scriptures of the Hindus and the Mohammedans and the Christians and the Jews won't help. Kabir says: LIFTING UP THE CURTAIN, I HAVE SEEN. I have lifted the curtain of the word and the verbal and the philosophical, and I have come to see - truth has no connection with words, truth is word-less, truth is beyond words. The truth cannot be reduced to a theory: it is vast, and the theories are all very narrow. The truth is the whole; how can any theory contain it? Theories are like small boxes, and the truth is like the whole sky. How can these small boxes contain it?

... LIFTING UP THE CURTAIN, I HAVE SEEN.

KABIR GIVES UTTERANCE TO THE WORDS OF EXPERIENCE; AND HE KNOWS VERY WELL THAT ALL OTHER THINGS ARE UNTRUE.

And Kabir says: Don't listen to anything other than your own experience. Only existential experience can reveal the truth to you. The beauty, the good, the truth - they all have experienced, but that has nothing to do with you: his experience cannot be your experience. Jesus has known, but that has nothing to do with you: his experience is his, and untransferable.

I have seen, I have known, and I would like you to share it, I would like it to be given to you - but it is not possible. You cannot see through my eyes, and you cannot feel through my heart. And whatsoever I say will become only a symbol to you. Unless my saying makes you more thirsty - not for more words, but for your own experience - unless you start looking for experience yourself, you will never arrive home... and home is not far away.

In fact, the farthest is the jungle - closer than the jungle is the forest; closer than the forest is the garden of the Master; and just inside the garden, just in the center of the garden, is your home. Your home is the closest point to you; has to be so. It is your being.

'I laugh,' says Kabir:

PANI VIC MIN PIYASI:

I LAUGH WHEN I HEAR THAT THE FISH IN THE WATER IS THIRSTY.

And Kabir says: Looking at you and seeing that you are thirsty, I laugh. I laugh because I cannot believe how this ridiculous thing has happened - that the fish is thirsty in the water? You are thirsty, in the water? You are homeless, and the home is within you? And you are seeking somewhere else that which you are always carrying within you? You are pregnant with truth, and you are rushing here and there, hither and thither?

I LAUGH WHEN I HEAR THAT THE FISH IN THE WATER IS THIRSTY:

YOU DO NOT SEE THAT THE REAL IS IN YOUR HOME, AND YOU WANDER FROM FOREST TO FOREST LISTLESSLY! HERE IS THE TRUTH!

NOW is the truth! You are the truth! Truth is your very being.

GO WHERE YOU WILL, TO BANARAS OR TO MATHURA; IF YOU DO NOT FIND YOUR SOUL THE WORLD IS UNREAL TO YOU.

You live in a world of illusion, because you have not even touched your own reality yet. Become real, and from that moment the whole world becomes real to you. Because you are unreal, the whole world is created on your unreality; it is founded on your unreality.

The man in the jungle lives in sleep; his world is of sleep. The man in the forest lives in dreams; his world is that of dreams. The man of the garden lives in awareness, is coming closer and closer, becoming more and more aware of the home. He is at the door. A knock, and the door shall be opened unto you.

That's what Jesus says: 'Knock - and the door shall be opened unto you. Ask - and it shall be given. Seek - and you will find.'

The third man has come into the garden; now he can see the home, but still he is not in the home. When you come into the home it is neither SUSHUPTI, sleep, nor dream, SWABHANA, nor JAGRATI, awareness; it is superconciousness, or cosmic consciousness. All the three stages have been transcended, you have come beyond.

This is the state of God, Bhagwan, Allah. When el Hillaj Mansur said, 'I am the Truth,' he was in this state. When Jesus declared, 'I and my God, my Father, are both one,' he was in this state. When Upanishadic seers declared, 'Aham Brahmasmi, I am the whole,' they were in this state.

The Bhagwan is within you, the God is within you, the Kingdom of God is within you. Now it is up to you to seek, search, to discover it. It is not a question of inventing anything, you have it already. You have just to uncover. 'Lifting the veil,' says Kabir, 'I have seen the truth.' I have seen the truth that cannot be expressed, I have seen the truth that is ineffable.

Here, I am teaching nothing other than your own being. I am bringing you closer to nothing other than your own being. I am throwing you back to yourself. You are missing nothing; you have only forgotten the treasure that is within you, you have forgotten the ways to look withinwards. Again, The Fool in the Tarot cards....

If you have looked meditatively at the Tarot card... and they are cards to be meditated upon. They are old secret methods of meditation. The Fool is standing on the cliff, one foot dangling, hanging over the cliff - and he is not aware, and he is looking at the stars, and he is very happy; his head must be full of dreams. And he is carrying four sacred symbols on his back, and he is not aware of what they are. He is not even aware that he is carrying four secret symbols on his back. These are the four secret symbols: the jungle, the forest, the garden, the home.

Now it is up to you. If you turn... a one hundred and eighty-degree turn will be needed. That's what conversion is, that's what sannyas is all about. If you TURN, you will simply see that you have never lost for a single moment the bliss of all blisses, the delight of all delights. You have never left your home; you were only thinking that you had gone far away.

You are in the home; you never left it. When this is discovered, one becomes a buddha, one becomes a Christ, one becomes a Krishna. This is your destiny. And unless you attain it, you will never be at ease. Unless you attain it, you will never have rest. A human being has to be restless.

A human being is a bridge. He is not a being yet, he is a promise.