Light, Life and Love

LIGHT IS the most mysterious thing in the universe - for many reasons. You may not have felt it like that, but the first thing about light is that light is the purest energy. Physics says that everything material is not really matter. Only energy is real. Matter is dead; matter exists no more. It never existed except in our conceptions. Matter appears to be, but it is not. Only light is - or energy, or electricity. The deeper we penetrate into matter, the less material is found. At the very deepest there is no matter, and matter itself becomes non-material. But light remains, or energy.

Light is the purest energy. Light is not matter, and wherever we feel matter it is only light condensed.

So matter means light condensed. This is the first mystery about light, because it is the substratum of all Existence. So in a new way, the oldest concept of religions - that in the beginning God said, "Let there be light," and there was light - becomes very significant, because Existence in its purity is light. So if Existence begins, it has to begin with light.

Another thing: light can exist without life, but life cannot exist without light. So life also becomes secondary. Matter simply disappears. It is not. It is only condensed light. Then light can exist without life. Life is not a necessity for light to exist, but life cannot exist without light. So life becomes secondary and light becomes primary. In this context, one thing more: just as light can exist without life but life cannot exist without light, just the same, life can exist without love but love cannot exist without life. So these three l's have to be remembered - light, life, love.

Light is the substratum, the ground, and love is the peak. Life is only an opportunity for tight to reach love. Life is just a passage. So if you are only alive, you are just in the passage. Unless you reach love, you have not reached. Light is the potentiality, love is the actuality, and life is only a passage.

So when it is said that God is love, this is the love that is meant. Unless you become love, you are just in between, you have not reached the end. Light is the beginning, love is the end, and life is just a passage.

So remember this: light can exist without life. Matter is just an appearance, a "condensity", an intensity of light, and life is a manifestation. That which is hidden in light is manifested. Life is not an appearance: life is a manifestation. Matter is just light condensed. So when light remains light and becomes condensed, it is matter. When light evolves, manifests its potentiality, it becomes life.

If it simply remains life, then death is the end. If it evolves more, then it becomes love - and love is deathless. You may call it God, you may call it anything. These are basic points. If you remember them, then we can proceed into the sutra.

Thirdly, in this whole world everything is relative except light. Only light has a constant velocity.

That's why physics takes light as the measurement of time. Everything is relative; only light is, in a certain way, absolute. Light travels with a constant velocity. Nothing else is constant. So only light is absolute. There is no change: the velocity is absolute, the speed is absolute. So light becomes a mystery. It is not relative to anything, and everything else is relative to light. So nothing can travel with more speed than light, because if anything takes the speed just equivalent to light, it will turn into light.

If we can throw a stone with the speed of light, the stone will become light. Anything moving with the speed of light will become light. So nothing reaches the velocity of light, and nothing transcends the velocity of light. The speed of light is 186,000 miles per second. Anything travelling with that speed will become light. That's why scientists say we cannot travel with the speed of light: because anything - we or aircraft, rockets - anything travelling with that speed will become light itself.

Fourthly, light travels without any vehicle; everything else can travel only with a vehicle. Only light travels without vehicles. That is mysterious. And also, light travels without any medium. Everything else has to travel through a medium. A fish can travel in water, a man can travel in air, but light travels in nothing, in nothingness.

In the beginning of this century, physicists just imagined something like ether. They imagined something must be there; otherwise, how can light travel? So that was a basic question: light comes to the earth from the sun or from some star, it travels, so there must be some medium through which it travels. So just because nothing can travel without a medium, in the beginning of this century scientists hypothetically assumed that there must be some X - they named it ether - through which light travels.

But now they have found that there is no medium. The whole universe is just a vast space, and light travels in nothingness. That means even nothingness cannot destroy it, even emptiness cannot affect it. That means even non-being cannot affect light's being. And it can travel without any medium, without any vehicle. That means the energy is not derived from somewhere else. Light itself is the energy. If you have some derived energy, then you will have to travel through mediums, through vehicles; you cannot go yourself. Light goes by itself.

Fifthly, light is neither being pushed nor being pulled. It simply travels! If I throw a stone, then there is a push. I put my energy in the stone, and the stone will only go to the limit, to the extent, up to where it can be forced by my energy. When my energy fails or is exhausted, the stone will fall down.

The stone is not travelling with its own energy. The energy has been given to it, it is foreign.

Everything in the world has foreign energy in it - except light. Everything moving is moving with some energy derived from somewhere else. A tree is growing, but the energy has been derived. A flower is flowering, but the energy has been derived. You are breathing and living, but the energy is derived. You have no energy of your own. Nothing has except light.

In this reference, the saying of Mohammed in the Koran becomes very significant. He says, "God is light," and he means there that only God is His own source of energy. Everything else is just derived.

So we really live a borrowed life. It is borrowed from many, many sources. That's why our lives are conditional. If one source just refuse to give us energy, we are dead. Light lives with its own energy - unborrowed, self-originating. It is neither pushed nor pulled, and it moves. That's the most mysterious thing possible. It is a miracle!

Sixthly, if only light has its own energy and everything else lives with borrowed energy, certainly it must be that everywhere, ultimately, the energy is borrowed from light - because if everything lives with borrowed energy except light, then ultimately light is the donor. Wherever you get your energy, ultimately the source must be light.

You are eating food and you are getting energy, but the food itself gets it through light, through sunrays, so you are not getting it from food. Food does not have its own energy source: food is deriving it from somewhere else. The food is doing only an in-between work, the work of a medium.

Because you cannot absorb light directly, trees are absorbing it, and then they transform it in such a way, they compose it in such a way, that you can take that energy directly. So they work as mediums - then light becomes the only source of energy.

So if everything drops in the universe, light will not be affected. If everything just goes off, if the whole universe is dead, light will not be affected. The universe will still be filled with light. But if light goes off, then everything will die. Nothing can exist.

This basicness of light is not only basic for science, it is basic for religion also. So now the second part: if you penetrate matter you stumble upon light. If you penetrate life you again stumble upon light. So religious mystics have always said, "We experience Light, we realize light - the light within, the flame within." All the mystics have talked this way, and it is not only symbolic. Only in this century has it become possible to say that it is not only symbolic. If matter dissolves into light, comes out of light, why not life itself? And when a mystic goes deep, he is going deep in life, he stumbles upon light. This going deep in oneself means going more and more to the original source of light.

So the outer light is not the only light. You have inner light also, because you cannot exist without it. rt is the base. To be means to be grounded in light; there is no other being. So when you go in you are bound to come to and realize a dimension, a realm, of light - inner light. This inner light and your life make just two layers. Your life is the outermost layer; light is a deeper layer.

Your life will end in death. Unless you realize the inner light you cannot know the deathless, because your life is just a phenomenon; it is not the base. It is just a phenomenon, a wave - a wave on the ocean of light. It will go! If you can penetrate through it to the deeper realm of light, you will know that which is immortal, which cannot die - because only light cannot die, only light is immortal.

Everything will have to die, because everything lives on derived life, borrowed life. Only light has its own life. Everything else has life borrowed from somewhere else. So one has to return it, one has to give it back.

So unless you realize the inner light, you will not know that which is beyond death. In a sense it is beyond death and beyond life also. Only then does it become immortal. That which is born will have to die; that which is alive will be dead. So only that can be beyond death which is beyond life itself.

Light is beyond life and beyond death. Whenever mystics have been talking about light, they always talk about deathlessness, because the moment you enter the inner light, the source of life, you enter deathlessness.

In this sutra, both terms have been used. This sutra says:

TO BE CENTERED CONSTANTLY IN THE INNER ILLUMINATION, in the inner light, AND IN THE INFINITE INNER NECTAR, IS THE PREPARATORY BATH FOR THE WORSHIP.

So unless you are bathed in your own inner light, and in the nectar, in the immortality which belongs to that light, you are not ready to enter the Divine temple. This is a preparatory bath. Water will not do: light has to be used. Pure light has to be used. Unless you are bathed in pure light, you are not ready to enter the Divine temple.

When Krishna showed his infiniteness to Arjuna, Arjuna said, "I don't see you, Krishna, I see only light. Where have you gone? I see only thousands and thousands of suns - and I am scared. You come back!" When one enters into the inner light... it is there, because without it you cannot be.

nothing can be. It is a scientific fact, because without light nothing can be. If there is anything, then in its ground light is bound to be. You may know it, you may not know it, but light is the ground of all.

You are, so you have a deep realm of light. The moment you enter it, you are bathed. and this bath means many things.

Ordinarily, when you enter a temple, outwardly you take a bath. You take a bath because dirt can be washed from the body, and you can enter into the temple with a purer body - fresh, undirty, clean. But when you are really entering into the Divine temple. your body is not entering:

your consciousness is entering. And you cannot bathe your consciousness with water. But consciousness can have a deep cleansing in inner light, and that deep cleansing means cleansing the dirt of all karma - all actions.

Whatsoever you have done, whatsoever you have been, whatsoever your past has been. it dings to you - just like dirt, just like dust, it clings to you. When you enter inner light, it disappears. Why?

Because the moment you enter that inner light, everything takes the velocity of light and nothing can remain. The dirt, the dirt of karmas, dissolves - all that you have done in all your lives. When you enter that realm, everything becomes light, because with light, in that velocity, nothing can remain anything else. So it is not simply a bath. All the karmas, just disappear, they become light, and the consciousness is cleaned. It becomes fresh and young as it should be, as it is meant to be.

And when all the karmas disappear - by "karmas" I mean the material dust that one accumulates through actions and desires and passions - when it disappears, the entity, the nucleus of ego disappears also, because ego exists only as a collectivity of all the dust, of all the dirtiness, of all the impurities. It exists as a center. When everything disappears, ego disappears. And when ego disappears, you are pure, clean, you are born anew. So to enter this inner light is to enter the inner fire.

Another thing: the light that is outside is constant, but it cannot be constant for you. The sun will rise and set. The sun itself never rises and never sets, but for the earth it rises and it sets; the night comes. So with outer light you cannot remain constantly in light. Only with inner light is there no rising and no setting. That's why the sutra says, "To be centered constantly..." continuously. There is no night, there is no setting, because there is no rising. The light is there as your Being, as your very Existence. So to be constantly centered in this light is the bath. And by "bath" is meant that everything to which one was clinging is just destroyed - not only destroyed, but transformed also. It becomes light itself.

This entry has three parts: first you will realize light, then you will realize a deep cleansing of your soul, of your being, and, thirdly, you will realize the elixir, the nectar - the AMRIT - the immortality, the deathlessness of it, because once the ego dies you are deathless, once the karmas are washed away you are deathless, once you have entered deeper than life you are deathless.

Deeper than life, death cannot exist. Death exists parallel to life. It means the end of life. So life has two dimensions. One is just horizontal. You go from one moment of life to another moment of life, then another - A-B-C - in a sequence. Then ultimately, the Z is going to be the death. You move from A to B, from B to C, then to X-Y-Z. A is birth, Z is death, and you move from A-B-C-D horizontally. This is one movement - birth to death. Buddha says, "One who is born will have to die, because he is moving horizontally." So death is a necessity on a horizontal plane.

But you can move vertically. From A, instead of going to B, drop below the A or go above the A.

Don't move to B. So from any life movement, you can move in two ways. You can move to another life movement; then death will be the end. Then you are progressing towards death automatically, unknowingly. You can move down or up - not horizontally but vertically. So move down or up from A, and then you move from life to light. If you move down, then you move to light. If you move up, then you move to love. This is the vertical plane.

If you move down from life, then you move to light. If you move up, then you move to love. And both give you the door to the deathless, because death only means horizontal moving. Now you are not moving horizontally. And move either way. If you can consciously go down to light, your life will become love - because once you have known the deathless you can be nothing but love.

Really, death is the enemy of love. You cannot love because there is death; you cannot love because you are fearful of death; you cannot love because you are afraid of everyone else, of the other. And all fears are basically fear of death. They all can be reduced to the fear of death. Once you know the deathless, the fear has gone. And when the mind is fearless, it is love. When the mind is fearful, it is never love. You may put on a show, you may pretend, but it is never love. With fear hate can exist, with fear jealousy can exist, with fear anything can exist, but not love. That's why we pretend love, and love is not found. In the end jealousy is found, hate is found, fear is found - love is not found.

Why? Because you cannot love really. How can you love when there is death? How can you love unconditionally when every moment death is coming near?

Look at it in this way: you are here, your beloved or your lover is here. You are just in the ecstasy of love, and then someone says that within five minutes you are going to die. The moment this is said, that within five minutes you are going to die, love will disappear. You will forget the beloved, the lover and the poetry, and everything will just disappear. Why does it disappear? It has never been there.

It was only that you were unaware of death, so you were pretending love.

Deathlessness known becomes love. Then you cannot do anything else. Then it is not that you love; rather, you become love. Love becomes your quality - not your act - your very being. So either drop down from A; from the horizontal line drop down vertically to light: that is one way. Yoga is concerned with this dropping down. Or, from A, rise vertically to love. BHAKTI - the path of devotion - is concerned with rising up. Either way you go vertically. The same will be the result.

If you can go up from A, again you find the deathless. Vertically, there is no death; only horizontally is there death. So if you find love by going up, you will find light, because entering the deathless one is bound to find light, entering the light one is bound to find the deathless. They are one! So, really, life and death are two aspects of one coin, and death is not opposite to life. It is a part. Light is opposed to death, not life, because light is immortality. Love is also opposed to death because again it is deathless.

So the problem is either to enter light by going down or by going up to enter love. This vertical journey is the journey of religion. And this sutra says, "To be centered constantly in the inner illumination and in the infinite inner nectar is the preparatory bath for the worship." So how to enter and how to be centered? How to enter? How to find this light?

Two or three things: one, whenever you say light is, what do you mean? I say, "The room is lighted." What do I mean? I mean that I can see. Light is never seen; only something lighted is seen. You see the walls, not the light; you see me, not the light. Something lighted is seen, never the light itself, because light is so subtle that it cannot be seen. It is not a gross phenomenon. So we only infer that light is. It is an inference, not a knowing. It is just an inference! Because I can see you, I infer, assume, that light is How can I see you without light?

No one has ever seen light - no one! And no one can ever see light. But we use the words, "I see light," and by that we mean, "I see things which cannot be seen without light." When you say it is dark, there is no light, what do you mean? You only mean, "Now I cannot see things." When you cannot see things. you infer that light is not. When you can see things, you infer that light is. So light is an inference even in the outer, the outside world. So when one has to enter, when one is ready to enter inside. what do we mean by light?

If you can feel yourself, if you can see yourself, that means the light is there. This is strange, but we never think about it. The whole room is dark; you cannot say anything is there, but one thing you can say: "I am." Why? You cannot see yourself either. The room is totally dark, nothing can be seen, but about one thing you are certain and that is your own being. No need of any proof. no need of any light. You know that you are, you feel that you are. A subtle, inner illumination must be there.

We may not be aware of it, we may be unconscious of it or very dimly conscious, but it is there.

So turn your gaze inwards. Close all your senses so that there is no feeling of the outside light. Go into darkness, close your eyes, and now try to penetrate, to see inwards. First you may feel simple darkness; that is because you are not accustomed to it. Go on penetrating. Just try to look into the darkness which is within. Penetrate it, and by and by you will begin to feel many things inside. An inner illumination begins to work. It may be dim in the beginning. You will begin to see your thoughts because thoughts are inside things. They are things! You will begin to stumble upon the furniture of your mind.

Much furniture is there - many memories, many desires, many unfulfilled passions, many frustrations, many thoughts, many seed thoughts, many, many things are there. When you begin to feel them, first try to penetrate the darkness. Then a dim light begins to be there, and you begin to be aware of many things. It is like when you enter a dark room suddenly - you can't see anything.

But remain there. Be adjusted to the darkness, let your eyes be adjusted to the darkness. Eyes have to adjust, they take time. When you come from without, from a sunlit garden to your room, your eye will have to readjust themselves. Your eyes will take a little time, but it happens.

If one is constantly using his eyes only to see things which are very near - for example, if one is constantly reading - then he will become shortsighted, because so much use of short sight will fix the mechanism of the eyes. So when he wants to see a far-off star, he cannot see it because the mechanism has become fixed. Now it is not flexible. The same happens inside: because we have been looking outside continuously, for lives, the mechanism has become fixed and we cannot look inside.

But try, make an effort - look into the darkness. Don't be in a hurry, because the mechanism has been fixed for many lives. Eyes have forgotten completely how to look inside. You have never used them for that purpose. So look into the darkness, see the darkness, and don't be impatient.

Penetrate the darkness, go on penetrating, and within three months you will be able to see many things inside which you never thought were there. And now, for the first time, you will become aware that thoughts are just things. And when you become aware, then you can put a thought anywhere you want. If you want to throw it out, you can throw it out.

But now you cannot throw it. Just now you cannot throw out any thought, because you cannot catch it. You don't even know that it is a thing, that it can be caught and it can be thrown. You don't know where thoughts are located; you don't know from where they come. Everyone says, "I don't want to be fearful; I don't want to be angry." But they cannot do anything because they don't know even from where this anger comes, what the root is, where this anger has its reservoir, where this anger is accumulated. You don't know the roots.

Every thought is a thing. It has an accumulated reservoir. So when one thought comes, it is just a leaf on a big tree. You cannot cut it and throw it - another leaf will come out. Roots are there, the tree is there. When you begin to be aware even dimly that thoughts are there, desires are there - anger, passion, lust - everything is there, don't begin to fight. Just watch, because by watching you will become more aware, and by fighting you will never become aware. So don't fight - watch!

"Watch" is the word, the mantra. Watch constantly, and the more you watch, the more you will begin to feel that more light is there. Light is there; only your eyes have to be adjusted. So watch! By watching, eyes will become adjusted. And when more light is there and everything becomes clear, when there is no dark spot, then you become master of your mind. You can put anything out; you can rearrange everything. And once you become master of your mind, then you will become aware from where this light is coming, what the source is. The sun is not there; it is without. You have not even brought in a candle, but everything has become illuminated. From where is this light coming?

First you will become aware of things which are lighted, then you will become master of the things of your mind, and then you will begin to be aware of where this light is coming from, of what the source is. You will begin to be aware of a flower blooming. Then you will begin to be aware of where this light is coming from. Then you can know the sun.

Only secondarily will you have to proceed from a lighted object towards the source of the light. Again light is not seen; again you will see the sun. So first you will begin to feel the content of the mind.

Then, more and more, the mind will become clear. Then you will be aware of where this light is coming from. Just in the center of the mind is the source. Then enter the source! Now you can forget the mind - you are the master. You can just say to the mind, "Stop!" and the mind will stop.

Awareness is needed for the mastery. Never try the reverse: never try to be the master first and then to be aware. That never happens, that cannot happen. That is not possible. Be aware, and the mastery happens. You become the master. Then go to the source, then enter the source, from where this light is coming. Go! Enter the illumination! That entering into the illumination is the "bath". You have become master of the mind. Now you will become master of life itself; now you will become master of consciousness itself. And once bathed in this illumination, in this source of light, you will be able to see yourself in your eternity. In this moment, all the past and all the future will be there. This moment is eternal. You are so pure that the whole time gathers in you. The past purified creates a purified future - and this moment becomes eternal.

Watch, be aware, observe deeply the contents of the mind. Then you will become aware of the source; then enter the source. It is fearful, because whatsoever you have known as yourself will die.

This bath is a death - a death of all that you have known yourself to be. The identity, the ego, the persONALIty, everything will die. because the personality, the identity, the ego, they are the dirt - the accumulated dirt around your being. Only being will remain without name and form. And this sutra says this is the preparatory bath. Only now can you enter, and only up to here do you have to make efforts. The moment you are purified, the moment you have gone through this bath, the moment the karmas have dissolved. now you need not make any effort.

From this point, God becomes a gravitation. Now you enter the field of grace. It is the same like the gravitation on the earth, but you have to enter the field. So for spaceships we have tb make one basic arrangement: they must be thrown out of the grip of the earth, out of the gravitation field. Two hundred miles above the earth, all around, is the field. If you are under the field you will be pulled back. If you go beyond two hundred miles, then the earth cannot do anything.

The Divine cannot pull you unless you are totally pure, unless you yourself become light. Then with the same velocity, you enter the Divine. So this entering the light is the last effort. Once you are purified you begin to gravitate. Now you need not go: you are being pulled. This gravitation is known as grace: the gravitation to the Divine is grace. Grace is not really a help - it is not! It is just a law.

God is not grace-ful only to some, it is not so, He is not partial; the earth is not gravitational only for some - the moment you enter the field, the law begins to work.

So don't say that God is grace-ful, don't say that God is helpful, don't say that He has compassion.

It is not right. God means "the Law of Grace". The law begins to work. Once you enter the field, the law begins to work. Once you begin to be light yourself, the law begins to work - and you begin to gravitate.

I said that light is the foundation of life. With this statement even science can agree. Science ends on this point; there is no beyond for science. Religion still has a beyond because religion says that even beyond light there is Existence.

Now another thing: light exists, so light has two qualities - being the light and also existence. Still, light is not the ultimate one because it has two qualities - light and existence. Religion says that existence can be without light, but light cannot be without existence. So one step more: religion says, "God is pure Existence." So, really, for religious people, this word or this sentence that "God is", is fallacious, because "God" and "is" both mean the same thing. A table is, but to say "God is" is not good. Man is because man may not be, so man and is-ness are two things conjoined. They can be disjoined. But "God is" is not right because God means is-ness. So it is tautological, repetitive.

To say "God is" is as absurd as someone saying "Is is" or "God God". "God is" means the same as "God God" or "Is is". They are meaningless, absurd! Is-ness is God. So religion reduces it still more and says that when you enter light, then you will enter the Is-ness, Existence, That. So light is just the aura of That. When you enter light, you enter the aura. But the moment you enter the aura you will be pulled. and there will be no time gap. There is no time gap!

Now another thing: I said that light moves with the highest velocity - 186,000 miles in one second.

in one second. in one minute, in one hour, in one year, how much light moves! The unit with which physics measures its movement is the light year. A light year means the movement of light in one year at this velocity. This is still a time movement. It is very fast, but yet light takes time to move. So as I said, light needs no medium, light needs no vehicle, light needs no borrowed energy - but still light needs time. So for religion, light still needs something without which it cannot move. So light is still dependent on time.

Religion says we have to go even deeper in order to find something which need not have even this dependence - time. So for us it looks meaningless. How can light move without any medium? But now science says it moves. It is so. Religion says, "Don't be disturbed. How can God be without time?" He is, and God moves without time, consciousness moves without time.

Light has the highest velocity as far as science has measured, but in a way it is the highest because Existence cannot be said to have more velocity. Really, it moves without time. So there is no question of velocity. We cannot say how much it moves in one second. The movement is absolutely absolute. There is no time gap. So when one enters this illumination, one is pulled. Even the word "pulled" takes time to be asserted, but the very phenomenon of being pulled takes no time.

When I say "pulled", it takes time, time is lost. But, really, when one enters the illumination, even this much time is not needed. There is no time gap. You are pulled, and beyond this light is God, the temple. This light only bathes you, purifies you, just like a fire. You become purified. And the moment you are purified - the entrance, the explosion.

With light you become deathless, but you still feel. You feel that now you have entered immortality.

But when entering into That, the Is-ness, you are not even aware of deathlessness. Life and death are meaningless now - only Being is. You are, without any conditions. That Being is the Ultimate for religion.

Light is the field, mind is around the field, and we are around the mind, we live outside the mind.

So one has to enter the mind, then light, and then the Divine. But we just go on round and round, outside the mind. This state of always being outside the home has become a fixed habit. We have forgotten that we are living on the verandah. It is easy: the verandah is easy for moving outside.

That's why we have become fixed there - it is easy. We can move outside anytime. and because our mind and our desires are moving outside, we live on the verandah. So at any moment, at any opportunity to move, we can run. We have forgotten that there is a home, and this running outside is just being a beggar. Entering the house means you will have to turn your eyes around completely, and you will have to use your eyes in a new way, and you will have to pass a dark night - only because of a fixed habit.

Christian mystics have talked much about "the dark night of the soul". This is the dark night - because your eyes are so fixed. As I said, someone becomes shortsighted, someone else becomes farsighted. If he goes on looking far, then he cannot look near. If he goes on looking near, then he cannot look far. Eyes become fixed. They are mechanical; they lose the flexibility. Just as someone becomes nearsighted and someone farsighted, we have become "outsighted". "Insightedness" will have to be developed.

You must have heard the word "insight", but you might not have heard the word "outsighted". You know the word "insight", but it is meaningless unless you understand the word "outsight". We have become outsighted, fixed; the insight has to be developed. So whenever you find time, close your eyes, close your mind to the outside, and try to penetrate in. At first you will be in a deep dark night.

Nothing will be there except darkness. Don't be impatient. Wait and watch, and by and by darkness will become less, and you will be able to feel many inner phenomena. And only when you become aware of the inner world, then only can you become aware of the source from where this light is coming. Then enter the source. This the Upanishads call "the bath".

How stupid the human mind is! We ritualize everything, and the significance is lost. Then only stupid rituals remain. So we take a bath when we go to the temple. Neither the temple is there nor the bath. The temple is inside and the bath also. And this bath, the Upanishads say, is the bath in inner illumination.

Light is really the bridge between the Divine and the world. The Divine creates the world through creating light. Light is the first creation, and then light condenses and matter happens; then light grows, I say light grows, and life happens; then life grows and love happens.

Light, life, love - these are the three layers. Don't remain in the second layer. Either go back down to the roots, or go up to the seeds again, to the flowers. Go down to light or go up to flowers. And there are two paths. One is the path of knowledge. "Knowing" means going down to light. By "Gyana Yoga" the real secret that is meant is this: going down to light. And then there is "Bhakti Yoga", the path of devotion; that means going to love.

A Buddha goes down, a Meera goes up. A Mahavir goes down, a Chaitanya goes up. They speak very contradictory languages. They are bound to, because one speaks about going to the roots. the source, and the other speaks about going to the flowering, to the end, to the climax, to the peak.

In a way, Buddha, Mahavir, Patanjali - their language is dry. It has to be because they are turning back to the source. There is no poetry, there cannot be because they are not moving toward the flowering. They speak in a scientific way. A Patanjali speaks as a scientist - of laws. Buddha always says, "Do this, and this will happen. Doing this, this follows. This is the cause, this is the effect." They speak scientifically; they speak in terms of mathematics - very dry. They speak in prose, never in poetry. They cannot - how can a physicist speak in poetry? He is digging deep to the source.

He is not concerned with the flowers at all. He is digging down to the roots. How can he speak in poetry? Chaitanya, Meera, they speak a different language. They dance, they sing, because they are going up to the flowering. And a flowering cannot happen without dancing and singing, without celebrating life itself. That's why Buddha and Mahavir appear to be anti-life - because they go to the roots. And Chaitanya and Meera look very affirmative. They love life because they go up.

Both paths reach to the same end. Which one you take depends on you. If you have a very scientific mind, mathematical, with no poetry in it, it is better to follow going down towards light. If you have a prose-oriented mind, then go down. But if you have a poetic, aesthetic attitude, if you can sing and dance and celebrate then don't move to the source; move to the flowering. You will reach to the same, because once you reach to the flower you reach to the seed - the flower is the seed again come back.

If you go down to the roots you again move. From life, you must move. Life is only a bridge. It is just a stop-over. It is not the end. Move to this bank or to that, but life must not be static. It must be a movement beyond itself - to either bank, this or that.

Basically, these are the two dimensions of movement. Choose any! There is no question of which is better. It depends on you - which can be better for you. Both are equal. But for you both cannot be equal. For you one must be preferable. That depends on you. So explore what your type is.

The type I call poetic is illogical, sensitive, a feeling type who can love deeply, totally. A knowing type is not emotional, is not a feeling type. He is logical down to the bare bones. So some persons are logical, intellectual, knowledge-oriented. Feel the difference. Whenever you are knowledge- oriented, your type is for knowing, to know. When you are emotion-oriented, heart-oriented, your search is not for knowing - your search is to be, to feel. And both are different in the beginning. In the end everything becomes one, but in the beginning they are different. If you go to Meera and say to her that this is the way to know the Truth, Meera will say, "What will I do by knowing the Truth?

What will I do? I want to love the Truth." But how can you love the Truth? That's why bhaktas never talk about Truth. They talk about the Beloved; they talk about the Friend. They talk in terms of feeling! To say "God is Truth" locks mathematical to them. Vinoba says that Cod must be a mathematician. It is not that God is, but that Vinoba's mind is mathematical. His own love of mathematics makes God a mathematician. For a Pythagoras, God is a mathematician. So it depends on you. If you feel God as a beloved, as a friend, as a lover, if you cannot conceive of God as Truth, then go up, move vertically towards flowering. Then your meditation will be more creative. Create poetry, create painting, create dance, create singing - and through all these you will come to the illumination.

But if your type is a knowing type, to call God a lover is just absurd. What do you mean? How can Truth be a lover? To call God a father is meaningless. How can God be a father? He can be Truth.

So if your type is a knowing type, move vertically - down. Move in the depth, not in the height - to the roots, to the source. When you come to your knowing, and when a bhakta comes to his feeling, you come to the same center. But a bhakta moves upward, and a gyani moves downward.

This sutra is for those whose search is for knowing, because the Upanishads belong to the knowing type; they are not for devotees But I mention this only so that you may be aware, because sometimes something may appeal to you very much, but it may not belong to your type. Then don't be deceived.

Appeal means nothing, attraction means nothing - unless there is an inner attuning. You may be attracted, but that will not do. You must begin to feel that "This is my type; this is how I am." Then don't listen to anyone. We are creating many confusions for each other because no one knows what he is talking about.

If you are a heart-oriented person. then don't listen to intellect, then don't listen to arguments, don't argue. Just tell that "I am a heart-oriented person; I am not concerned with arguments at all." Don't listen to arguments because they will confuse you. And sometimes you may even be attracted, because the opposite has a sexual attraction. So it happens that an emotional person may be very much influenced by some intellectual because he lacks this dimension, and one begins to feel that whatsoever one lacks is important. And you cannot convince an intellectual, but he can convince you. You cannot argue for yourself, but he can argue for himself. So your ego feels hurt and you begin to imitate. You miss your type, and it may be for lives that you may not regain it. because once a process begins it is very difficult to come back.

And never mislead anyone. If you feel that someone is a heart type, then don't discuss with him even if it doesn't appeal to you. Don't discuss, don't argue, don't say anything. Let him remain himself.

We are so violent that no one allows anyone to remain himself. Everyone is after everyone, everyone is trying to convert everyone to his own way - without knowing that he may be just destroying a very great possibility. Insist on being yourself. There is no arrogance in it. This is a simple law that "I must be allowed to be myself." But when you begin to talk in others' terms, sooner or later you will be pulled in. So if you are an emotional type, then say directly, "I am not concerned with logic at all or with argument." Don't argue, don't use the same terms or the same language. Just say, "I am irrational. I have faith without any proofs with me - but the faith is working and I don't need any proofs." One very fatal thing has happened to the human mind, and that is that intellectuals have forcibly posed themselves as the only right type. They have forced all over the world the view that they are the only right type and that everyone else is wrong. Education belongs to them, schools belong to them, universities belong to them. They create literature, they create argument, they create proofs, disproofs, they create philosophies. So they have become over-dominant, and the emotional type is just feeling inferior: he feels that he is nowhere. Really, there is no emotional education, only intellectual education. So he doesn't even know the language of emotion, he doesn't know the argumentation of emotion, he doesn't know the logic of the heart. He doesn't know at all, so he feels guilty. If he has faith, if he develops towards the Divine in love, he feels guilty, he feels he is wrong. Never feel that way. Always feel your own pulse - what you are, what your nature is - and then decide. Or, rather, let your nature decide.

So these are the two paths: either be bathed in inner light or be bathed in inner love. And then you will be on the threshold - the boundary from where grace begins to work. Move in and find the source, or move out and find the beloved.

Remember this also: if you have to find the source, move in. If you have to find the beloved, move out. For things you have also to move out, for the beloved you have also to move out. The attitude is different, but the movement is the same. To find the beloved means to find the That in everything you encounter. Move out and go on finding, and let a moment come when everywhere nothing remains except your beloved. Then you are bathed in love, and the same will be the result.

Or, move in. If you are moving in, then you may even discard the very word "God". In old yoga texts, God is not mentioned at all. And even in later yoga texts, God is mentioned only as a means. In order to achieve That, God is mentioned as a means. And you can discard it; it is dispensable.

So a Buddha can reach without any concept of God, a Mahavir can reach without any concept of God - but a Meera cannot reach without a concept of God. A Chaitanya cannot reach, because God is not dispensable if your way is that of love - because then where will you find the Beloved?

But move! Don't remain static in life. Move towards light or towards love!