A ray from the beyond

Question 1:

Samvedo, Gautama the Buddha, waiting at the gates of paradise until the last human being has entered in, is not just a story. It may not be factual, but it has immense truth hidden in it.

The first thing you have to understand is the difference between the fact and the truth. Ordinary history takes care about the facts - what actually happens in the world of matter, the incidents. It does not take care about the truth, because it does not happen in the world of matter; it happens in consciousness. And man is not yet mature enough to take care about the events of consciousness.

He surely takes care about events happening in time and in space; those are the facts. But he is not mature enough, not insightful enough to take care about what happens beyond time and beyond space - in other words, what happens beyond mind, what happens in consciousness. One day we will have to write the whole of history with a totally different orientation, because the facts are trivia - although they are material, they don't matter. And the truths are immaterial but they matter.

The new orientation for a future history will take care about what happened inside Gautam Buddha when he became enlightened, what went on happening while he was in the body for forty-two years after his enlightenment. And what was happening in those forty-two years is not going to be discontinued just because the body drops dead. It had no concern with the body. It was a phenomenon in consciousness, and consciousness continues. The pilgrimage of the consciousness is endless. So what was happening in the consciousness inside the body, will go on happening outside the body. That is a simple understanding.

So this story is a story of inner happenings. For forty-two years Gautam Buddha was nothing but pure compassion. There was no need for him to live any more on this shore. He had attained everything that life is capable of giving, he had reached to the highest peak. But he continued to work, continued for forty-two years, in spite of a fragile body, old age, sickness.

His compassion was great. He was teaching his disciples that "Before you become enlightened you must learn the ways of compassion. If you become enlightened before you have learned the ways of compassion, you will think there is no need for you to linger on this miserable, sad, suffering shore.

Your boat has arrived, you can go to the beyond - beyond all suffering, beyond all misery. And it is not only going beyond suffering and misery, it is going into a deeper blissfulness, eternal ecstasy."

He waited here for forty-two years, and he was teaching his students, his disciples, his devotees, the ways of compassion.

Before enlightenment happens... if you are ready to be compassionate, only then will you stay on the shore to help others who are suffering, who are groping in the dark. You were also part of the same people; they are your brothers and your sisters. Wouldn't you like to share your experience of the ultimate and the explosion of light? Now you are capable of giving eyes to those who are blind.

You are capable of dispelling the darkness in which they have been living for lives.

And there is no hurry, your boat can stay. It will have to stay till you are ready to go. There is no compulsion to leave immediately - although the temptation is there, because you have worked for enlightenment only to get to the other shore. And now that the moment has come, to delay it feels difficult. To resist the temptation you need a tremendous compassion for those who are still blind, who are still in tremendous suffering and misery.

Forty-two years, in spite of his fragile body, he continued to move from village to village, in search of those who were ready to receive the gift that he had brought for them. It is a natural conclusion that even after his body's death, his consciousness must be still ready to help those who need the help and who are courageous enough to open their hearts.

This story symbolizes Gautam Buddha's compassion. This story is the story of every great master.

All mystics are not masters, although all masters are mystics. A mystic experiences the ultimate blossoming of his being and disappears into the eternal without thinking once about others who are left behind. The master is one who attains the same experience but prevents himself from disappearing into the eternal, into the infinite.

In different ways compassion is also a kind of attachment. It is the purest form of love, but in the ultimate analysis of things it is also an attachment. Through this thin thread of attachment he keeps himself from disappearing completely into the universe. You can disappear only when all attachments, all desires are dissolved. Compassion is also a desire; to help is also a desire.

And the masters have always been finding ways, according to their own personalities, their own uniqueness....

I have told you the story of Ramakrishna. His disciples were very much embarrassed because he would be talking about meditation, ecstasy, the ultimate truth... and suddenly in the middle of his discourse he would say, "Wait a minute - I'm coming back because I smell something delicious being cooked in the kitchen."

And he would go into the kitchen and would ask Sharada, his wife, "What are you preparing? The smell was so attractive that I had to stop my discourse because I could not resist the temptation to know first what is being prepared. And as far as ecstasy and God and other things are concerned - they are eternal matters. They can wait a little."

But the people who were his audience felt very much embarrassed, particularly the ones who loved him immensely - thinking that this does not fit in the character of a great master. He should be beyond all these things, and he is not even beyond the food! And at such a point when he is talking of great things, suddenly the smell comes, and he stops in the middle of the sentence - he does not even complete it! He says, "Wait, I'm coming back!"

Sharada was embarrassed. She told Ramakrishna many times, "It does not look right. You are unnecessarily making yourself a laughingstock."

His closest disciples prayed to him, "Stop doing it. Because sometimes we bring visitors and they say, 'You call this man enlightened? This man seems to be crazy! And if he is so much attached to food, what about other things?'"

Ramakrishna listened to everybody's advice but continued doing his thing. One day Sharada started crying and weeping and she said, "Because of you, people are continuously harassing me, saying, 'You have to do something. Only you can prevent him.' And what can I do? How I can prevent? At the most I can say, 'Don't do this.' And whatever is being prepared is prepared for you. Within half an hour you will be eating it. There is no need to come to the kitchen, disrupting the discourse...

and the discourse is about the ultimate reality!"

Seeing her tears, Ramakrishna said, "It seems you really want to know what is the secret of it. Then don't blame me; I have been avoiding the subject, but there is a limit to everything. I will tell you the reality. Food is the only thing I am keeping myself attached to, otherwise I cannot remain in the body. That is my strategy. And the day I show indifference towards food, know that I will be here in the world only three more days. Now be satisfied and tell all those people who are so much worried about it."

Nobody really believed it, they thought it was just to console them, a rationalization. But Sharada became very much aware and alert. One day when she brought the food in the room where Ramakrishna was resting... he used to jump out of his bed, and immediately would look into the plates, "What have you brought?" But today when he saw Sharada coming in, he turned his back towards her, did not jump out of the bed. This was the first time he had shown indifference. Sharada remembered what he had said a few years before; everybody else had forgotten it.

The plates fell from her hands; the disciples gathered. They said, "What is the matter?"

She said, "Perhaps you have forgotten, call the doctor immediately."

And the doctor said, "He has cancer of the throat and he cannot live more than three days." He said, "I am puzzled, how he has managed to live with this cancer for so many years? He should have been dead many years before; the cancer is old, it is not new." And exactly after three days, he died.

Masters have been using their unique ways of lingering on this shore, and it is almost impossible to understand their strategies. People understand them only afterwards, when it is pointless.

You are asking me, will I also wait for you? I am waiting for you, and I will continue to wait for you, either in the body or out of the body.

The people I have loved, the people who have opened their hearts to me, the people who have risked the dangerous path of devotion, who have been walking on the razor's edge, certainly for them I will be waiting for eternity.

The mystics who disappear immediately after their enlightenment miss a great opportunity of knowing that enlightenment can also be shared; and the more you share it, the more bright, the more juicy, the more blissful it becomes. In that way the mystics are poor compared to the masters.

They thought they had found the treasure, and that is true, they have found it - but distributing that treasure increases it, makes it more abundant.

Waiting is not a futile exercise; waiting is a rejoicing. And as people you are waiting for go on becoming aflame with love and truth and light... it is not only that they become enlightened, the master goes on becoming more and more enlightened with each of his disciples. It is again and again a fresh experience. With each disciple becoming enlightened, the master becomes again enlightened. His enlightenment is constantly renewing itself, it never becomes stale. That is a totally different story which mystics miss.

I will be waiting for you, Samvedo. And don't be worried about time.

You say, "I am putting all my energy into waking up." You think you are putting all your energy - because once you put all your energy into it, there is no reason why you should not wake up. Not that you are lying to me; you are saying what you understand as all your energy. But you know only a part of your energy, that which is conscious. And only that part - and that is one-tenth of your whole energy - you are putting totally. But nine times more energy is still in the unconscious, which is holding everything back. And it is nine times more powerful. So you are trying everything....

Your position is such that everybody must have felt it once in a while. You have a nightmare, you want to wake up, you try hard; you want to open your eyes, you want to move your hands, but neither do your eyes open nor can you move your hand. For a moment it seems as if you are paralyzed. It seems this nightmare is not going to end.

But every nightmare ends. Although nine times more energy is against waking, if you go on trying, slowly slowly, more and more unconscious energy will join in your efforts. The moment just fifty-one percent of your energy is for waking, you will wake up - not even a hundred percent is needed.

And sometimes it has happened, that you have become tired, you had been working hard and nothing was happening. You drop the whole project, and you relax, and what was not happening, happens immediately; because a relaxed state of your being is an essential for your awakening.

When you are making an effort, naturally you are tense, you are in a hurry. You want it to happen as quickly as possible. All these tensions don't allow you relaxation.

This story will help you....

For years, Grandpa Goldstein had been stubborn and bad-tempered, no one could please him.

Then overnight he changed. Gentleness and optimism twinkled about him. "Grandpa," asked his grandson, "what made you change so suddenly?"

"Well, sonny," said the old man, "I have been striving all my life for a contented mind. It has done no good, so I have decided to be contented without it."

He just dropped the effort. He was trying to have a contented mind and that was making him bad- tempered, irritated, because everybody was disturbing the possibility and his hope. But the day he decided to live without it, he relaxed... and suddenly there was contentment.

You say, "Everything takes time."

Samvedo, that is not true. Everything except enlightenment takes time. That is the one exception, and it has to be an exception. Because everything else belongs to the world. Enlightenment is a ray from the beyond. It does not take time. What takes time is to learn that all efforts are useless because every effort is making you tense, and in a tense state enlightenment cannot happen.

Relaxedness is absolutely essential. If you can relax just now, no other conditions have to be fulfilled. The beyond will suddenly open and flowers will start showering on you.

That's how it happened to Gautam Buddha himself. He strived as hard... perhaps as nobody else in the whole history of man has strived. For six years, just single-pointedly, one target; and he did everything that was prescribed in the scriptures. He almost destroyed his body in practicing all those arduous methods, disciplines; they are all a kind of self-torture, and he tortured himself. He was a man with a totality of mind - if he wanted to do something, he was not the one to be defeated, he would do it - and that became the barrier.

When he was born, the astrologers had declared that either he would become the emperor of the whole world or he would become an awakened man. He would have become the emperor of the whole world without much difficulty. He was a man of power, concentration, intelligence. But he had chosen to become enlightened. And he strived for it in the same way as you strive when you are trying to conquer the world - and that was his failure.

And on the full-moon night that has passed just a few days ago - this same full moon, this same month - he dropped all efforts. Seeing the futility, that nothing happens... whatever you do everything fails. He had renounced the world, now he renounced all spirituality; he renounced the other world also, and for the first time in six years he slept in utter relaxation. There was nothing to do, no tension, no dream, no desire - everything was finished.

As he woke up the next day, early in the morning, the last star was disappearing from the sky.

He opened his eyes, saw that last star disappearing and, amazingly, he felt that with that last star disappearing he had also disappeared. What he was searching for had arrived when he was not waiting for it, when he had dropped the whole project. But he was now in the right position.

Enlightenment does not take time. It is not a time phenomenon. It happens in a split second.

And you are asking, Samvedo, "Will there be enough time for me, too?" Time is more than enough.

Time is eternal, there is always time. But time is not needed at all.

I have heard about two young ladies, one American one French, who were talking about how their lovers make love to them. The French woman said, "First, my lover kisses my neck, then he kisses my eyelids, then he kisses me."

The American woman said, "My God, in this much time, in America, if things are going so slowly the couple comes back from their honeymoon."

But existence is not American, fortunately. It allows you as much time as you want. It allows you millions of lives, with a trust and a hope that some day, in some moment, you will be in the right tuning and the eternal music will descend on you.

So there is nothing to be worried about. Don't be speedy, and don't be in a hurry. Meditation should be a very patient, effortless effort; with no tension, with no desire that enlightenment should happen quickly, because these are the barriers. You should simply enjoy meditating, why bother about enlightenment? It will come when the time is ripe, it is none of your concern.

You meditate, you rejoice, you sing, you dance, you sit silently, you relax. Whenever you are centered, whenever you are relaxed - and you don't know at what moment, in what situation all the stars will be favorable to you...

Enlightenment happens suddenly. It is not a gradual process, it does not come in installments. It is not that you have become enlightened a little bit, then a little bit more. You suddenly become enlightened, it is not a process.

But I will certainly be waiting for you. Those who have loved me, those who have received my love, I am committed to them. I will do everything to remain in the body, and I will do everything - even if I have to leave the body - to be continuously around you. You will not be able to see me, but I will be able to see you. Just remember: don't let me down.

Enlightenment happens almost the way a dewdrop evaporates suddenly in the morning sun. Just a moment before, it was there, so beautiful on the lotus leaf, more beautiful than any pearl can be.

And just a moment later it is found nowhere. The sun has risen, and the dewdrop has disappeared.

George and Mildred were visiting a country mansion. "Do you realize, George," whispered Mildred, "that this room we have rented is supposed to be haunted by a ghost that returns every year on this date at midnight to find a human sacrifice?"

And then suddenly she shouted, "George, George, George!"

... but George has disappeared!

You will disappear, in a moment - exactly like that.

Question 2:

Deva Abhiyana, what is happening to you happens to almost everybody. It is one of those experiences you have to graduate from. Without passing through these sticky stages you can never attain freedom. This is a first step, to realize that you have fallen into a sticky glue. You were thinking it is "great juice," but that's how everybody gets caught by the glues. It is a mirage: from faraway the glue looks very juicy, but when you have fallen into it, then you realize, "My, God! now how to get out of it."

Getting into is very easy. Getting out needs tremendous effort; but it is part of becoming mature, it is part of learning the difference between reality and illusion. One cannot avoid it. One should not avoid it. People have tried to avoid it, they have renounced the world and escaped into the mountains - they were escaping from glues. But they remain immature.

Maturity comes only through experiences, good and bad both, of love and hate both. Friends help you, enemies help you. Life gives you dark nights and days full of light; moments of heaven and ages of hell. You will be surprised why I am saying moments of heaven and ages of hell - this seems to be unjustified. But it is only an appearance; ages of heaven appear like moments, and moments of hell appear like ages.

It is the whole philosophy of relativity! The theory is very complex and so difficult that it was thought, while Albert Einstein was alive, that there were only twelve people in the whole world who could understand what he was saying. One of the great British philosophers, Bertrand Russell, has written a book on the theory of relativity. He has titled the book, THE ABC OF RELATIVITY. One of his friends, G. Moore, another great philosopher and his colleague, asked him, "Why do you call it ABC?"

Bertrand Russell said, "More than that I myself don't understand. And I cannot claim that which I don't understand. I understand only the ABC; beyond that is beyond my comprehension."

And Albert Einstein was being asked every day, whether at a party, in a club, at a marriage, on a picnic; wherever he was, people were asking him: "Just tell us something about your famous theory of relativity." And he knew that it was almost impossible for them to understand, so he had found a small formula for these parties, picnics and marriages.

It is a very simple theory: If you are sitting on a hot stove, one minute will feel like one hour. It depends how hot the stove is. The hotter the stove, the longer the time will appear. And if you are sitting with your girlfriend, one hour will feel like one minute - the juicier the girlfriend, the shorter the time.

In short, the theory of relativity is that time is elastic. If you are in misery, time will pass very slowly.

If you are joyous, time will pass fast.

I can understand, Deva Abhiyana, your problem. There is no way to change glue into juice. And you are right, that at the most you can make it a little diluted; but still it will remain glue - it will not become juice. But if you can make it a little diluted, it will be possible for you to get out of it. So mix in as much water as you can. It will not change it into juice, but it will help you to come out from the trap.

But the trouble is that people become attached even to their glue. And it is not that the glue is holding them back; they themselves are afraid to get out of it, because who knows? - this glue is at least familiar. You may fall into another trap. You know yourself, that you cannot remain without falling into some trap. And the other trap may prove more dangerous - it may be German glue! If you have fallen into Indian glue, nothing to be worried about. You can come out very easily. The glue even will help! Because you are not the only one in trouble - the glue is also in trouble. And if you are going to be a sannyasin the glue will touch your feet and pray for your renunciation - not to be disturbed by another glue.

But remember one thing: that it is a basic experience of attachment, of lust, of desire, of so-called love, and everybody has to pass through it. And you will be grateful one day, because the experience has made you more alert, more aware, more discriminating between illusions, mirages, and real experiences. Nobody comes into the world with maturity. Everybody has to gain maturity in the world and naturally he has to go through many miseries, sufferings, failures and mistakes. But they all help if you know how to use them, if you are not being stupid.

And what do I mean when I say "stupid"? I mean, not to commit the same mistake again and again is intelligence. To commit the same mistake again and again is stupidity. Once it is perfectly good; twice it is too much. So learn from your experience, and don't feel that only you are in such a strange position.

Ronald Reagan was about to be discharged from the psychiatric hospital. "Now that you have been pronounced cured," said his doctor, "what are your plans?"

"Well," said Mr. Reagan, "I used to be a president, so I may go back to that. I also used to be a cowboy film star, I may go back to that. I might try teaching, too. And if I find that I don't like any of those, I might try architecture, or maybe pilot a plane, or..." Finally, he added, "I might become a teapot again."

That's what he was when he had come to the psychiatric hospital - a teapot... the simplest thing in the world.

You are not the only one in trouble; this whole world is a vast psychiatric ward. And if you look into people's insides, everybody is a teapot.

When Pundit Jawaharlal Nehru was prime minister of India, he went to visit the greatest madhouse in India, in Barali. One madman was cured, and they were going to release him just two days before the visit. Then the doctors thought, "It will be good, he will feel very great if he is released by Pundit Jawaharlal Nehru's hands. Moreover, he will enjoy meeting Jawaharlal," because that was his problem. When he had come to the madhouse he had thought that he was Pundit Jawaharlal Nehru, the prime minister of India. In Nehru's time there were at least eight persons, all over India, who believed that they were Jawaharlal Nehru.

So they waited two more days, and when Jawaharlal came to visit they introduced the man, saying that two years before he had been entered, and today he was being released by Nehru's hands. The man looked at Jawaharlal without blinking his eyes. When they introduced him to Jawaharlal, and Jawaharlal to him, they said, "You are standing before the prime minister of India, Pundit Jawaharlal Nehru. You are fortunate to be released by his hands."

He laughed, and he said to Pundit Jawaharlal Nehru, "Don't be worried. These doctors are very good. Just two years you will have to be inside, and you will be cured. I used to think the same way, now I am cured." Jawaharlal could not figure out what to say to this man.

The world in which we are living is our own creation - particularly the human world, the human society. And because we are unconscious people, we don't know what we are doing. We are puppets in the hands of the unconscious. So when you fall in love, you cannot even give a reason why you have fallen in love with a certain person. You simply shrug your shoulders and say, "I just have fallen in love." But why? Why not with somebody else? Some strange unconscious desire, some unconscious image is being fulfilled by the man or the woman you have fallen in love with. You have been looking for her, or for him.

Psychologists say that every boy carries his mother's image in his unconscious, and every girl carries her father's image in her unconscious. And their whole life they are searching for somebody who can satisfy their image. The boy is looking in his beloved for his mother. Perhaps something is similar - only one thing need be similar. It may be trivia - it may be the way she wears her hair, or the way she talks, or the way she walks. Something is similar that triggers your unconscious - that this is the woman you have been searching for.

But when you live together, when that small something is not going to be the only thing between you, then the whole woman... and that woman has loved you, because something in you has also triggered her father figure, which she is carrying in her unconscious - perhaps the way you smoke your cigarette, or perhaps the thick glasses you wear.

But these things are not going to help, because what will thick glasses do? A certain way of holding the cigarette in your hands is not going to make your life. And when you come to live together, then you will know each other for the first time, and you will be surprised - My God! This is not my mother.

This is not my father.

And these things you will not understand consciously - just unconscious rejection will start. You will start hating the other because they have deceived you; they pretended to be your mother or your father, and they are not what they were pretending to be. But now you are caught in a marriage, glued together by law, by society.

And it is a very strange thing that the society, the law, glues people in marriages so quickly, but if they want to be unglued it is a long process - great paperwork, great delay, in many countries it is not possible at all. In many countries you first have to live two years in separation - it is not divorce.

You are still married, but you have to live separately as a proof. In some countries you have to prove that your man has been unfaithful to you, or your woman has been unfaithful to you - ugly demands.

Nobody asks anything when two persons are trying to be glued together. Everybody is happy and congratulating them. And when they want to separate, nobody is willing - everybody is condemning them. They themselves are feeling guilty, that what they are doing is not good. And very few people are courageous enough not to bother about respectability. Otherwise many are only living together, cellmates but no longer soulmates.

I have seen people living together for years, and they are not even talking to each other. But just for respectability they don't want to divorce; for their children's sake, for their prestige in society.

In a more psychologically understanding society, marriage will be very difficult and divorce will be very easy. Every hindrance should be created when two persons want to get married, because they are getting into trouble. They should be given two years of living together, and then come back to the registry office.... And most probably nobody will come back!

But if somebody wants a divorce, both the parties are not needed to appear before the judge. One party simply says, "I want to separate." That's enough. Whether the other party wants it or not is immaterial. And there is no need to provide a reason why they want to separate. It is their personal and private life, and no law, no court, no society has any right to interfere in it.

They wanted to be together - they were together. Now they want not to be together and they are simply informing you, that's all. They are not asking your permission. Because who are you?

Why should they ask anybody's permission? It is just information, so that you know that they are no longer together; so in your register you can change their marriage status. And they are not "divorced people." They are simply again unmarried people.

The word 'divorce' is ugly. The woman is no longer married, she is again a "Miss." The man is again unmarried - not divorced. Why carry the past? Let them be completely free so they can renew their life again. And if a man is understanding enough, one marriage will do - for one lifetime at least.

And if one marriage cannot drive you towards enlightenment, that means something is wrong with you. You are either retarded or simply incapable of learning from experiences.

Joe comes home, and finds his wife in bed with another man. He is furious, and demands an explanation.

"Well," begins his wife, "this man came to the door an hour ago, and asked me for something to eat.

So I gave him a sandwich. I noticed his shoes were worn out, so I gave him a pair you have not worn for ages. Then I noticed his jacket was torn, so I gave him one of your old ones. When he took his old jacket off, I noticed his shirt was frayed. So I gave him one that you gave up wearing a long time ago.

"Finally," she continued, "when he was going out the door, he turns and says to me, 'Say, lady, is there anything else around here that your husband does not use?'"

Okay, Maneesha?

Yes, Beloved Master.