One in the Many

Question 1:

It is very difficult, particularly for the Western mind, to understand that life is purposeless. And it is beautiful that it is purposeless. If it is purposeful then the whole thing becomes absurd - then who will decide the purpose? Then some God has to be conceived who decides the purpose, and then human beings become just puppets; then no freedom is possible. And if there is some purpose then life becomes businesslike, it cannot be ecstatic.

The West has been thinking in terms of purpose, but the East has been thinking in terms of purposelessness. The East says life is not a business, it is a play. And a play has no purpose really, it is nonpurposeful. Or you can say play is its own purpose, to play is enough. Life is not reaching towards some goal, life itself is the goal. It is not evolving towards some ultimate; this very moment, here and now, life is ultimate.

Life as it is, is accepted in the East. It is not moving towards some end, because if there is some end who will decide the end and why? If God decides it, then you can ask the same question about God: "What is the purpose of creating a world with purpose?" or, "Why should he create a purposive world?" or even more deeply, "What is the purpose of God's existence?"

Maybe life has a purpose and God decides the purpose, but then God's existence has to be questioned - why he exists - and that way the question is simply pushed one step ahead. Then God becomes purposeless, or you have to create another God to decide the purpose of this God.

Then you will be in a regress ad infinitum, then there is no end to it. Somewhere deep down you will have to come to the conclusion that this phenomenon is purposeless; otherwise there is no end.

So why go from the world to the God? Why not say that life itself is purposeless? The whole game of logicians, theologicians, is stupid in a way. They say, "God created the world, because how could the world come into existence if there was no one who created it?" But the question can be asked, "Who created the God?" - and then they fall on their own. They say, "God is uncreated." If God can exist without being created, why can't this life itself exist without being created? If you accept that something is possible without being created, then what is the trouble? Then why think about a God who created the world?

The East says God is not the creator, God is the creation. Nobody has created it, it is there. It has been so always, it will be so always - sometimes manifest, sometimes unmanifest; sometimes visible, sometimes invisible. It goes on moving in a periodical rhythm, in a circle. But existence itself is uncreated and it has no goal.

Then think about it in other ways also. Firstly, if there is a goal why hasn't it been achieved yet?

The existence has been existing timelessly, millions and millions of light-years it has existed, and the goal has not been reached yet. When will it be reached? If so many millions and millions of light-years have passed and the goal is nowhere to be seen, when will it be reached? Secondly, if some day the goal is reached, what will happen to existence? Will it disappear? When the purpose is fulfilled, then what? Conceive of a moment somewhere in the future when the purpose is fulfilled:

for what will existence exist then? Then it will be purposeless for it to exist.

The reality is this: that it is already always purposeless. There is no goal towards which the existence is moving. It is moving, but not towards any goal. It has a value, but the value is not in the end, the value is intrinsic.

You love someone. Have you asked the question, "For what purpose does love exist?" The mind, a calculating mind, is bound to ask, "Why love? What is the purpose?" If you can answer then one thing is certain - that you are not in love. If you can show the purpose then love is not there, it is a business, it is a bargain. But lovers will always say there is no purpose to it. To be in love is the goal. The goal is not somewhere else; it is intrinsic, it is in the very phenomenon of love. The goal is already achieved. When you are happy have you asked, "What is the purpose of being happy?" Can there be any purpose to being happy? When you are happy you never ask because the question is absurd. Happiness is itself the goal, there is no purpose to it.

Life is like love, life is like happiness. Life is existence - no goal. And once you can understand this your ways of living will change totally, because if there is no purpose in life itself there is no need to create a purpose for your individual life also - no need. Because of individual purposes you become tense, something has to be achieved. Then an achieving mind is created which is always trying to achieve something or other. And whenever something is achieved again the mind asks, "Now what?

What is to be achieved now?" It cannot remain with itself, it has to go on achieving.

This achieving mind will never be blissful, it will always be tense. And whenever something is achieved the achieving mind will feel frustrated, because now new goals have to be invented. This is happening in America. Many of the goals of the past century have been achieved, so America is in a deep frustration. All the goals of the founding fathers who created America and the American constitution are almost achieved. In America the society has become affluent for the first time in the whole history of mankind. Almost everybody is rich. The poor man in America is a rich man here in India.

The goals have almost been achieved - now what to do? Society has become affluent: food is there, shelter is there, everybody has got a car, radio, refrigerator, tv - now what to do? A deep frustration is felt, some other goals are needed. And there seem to be no goals. Instead of one car you can have two cars - a two-car garage has become the goal - or you can have two houses, but that will be achieved within ten years. Whatsoever the goal it can be achieved. Then the achieving mind feels frustrated. What to do now? It again needs a goal, and you have to invent a goal.

So the whole of American business now depends on inventing goals. Give people goals - that's what advertisements and the whole business of advertising is doing. Create goals, seduce people:

"Now this is the goal! You must have this, otherwise life is purposeless!" They start running, because they have an achieving mind. But where does it lead? It leads into more and more neurosis.

Only a nonachieving mind can be at peace. But a nonachieving mind is possible only with the background of a cosmic purposelessness. If the whole existence is purposeless then there is no need for you to be purposeful. Then you can play, you can sing and dance, you can enjoy, you can love and live, and there is no need to create any goal. Here and now, this very moment, the ultimate is present. If you are available the ultimate can enter you. But you are not available here; your mind is somewhere in the future, in some goal.

Life has got no purpose and this is the beauty of it. If there was some purpose life would have been mean - just futile. It is not a business, it is a play. In India we have been calling it leela. Leela means a cosmic play... as if God is playing. Energy overflowing, not for some purpose, just enjoying itself; just a small child playing - for what purpose? Running after butterflies, collecting colored stones on the beach, dancing under the sun, running under the trees, collecting flowers - for what purpose?

Ask a child. He will look at you as if you are a fool. There is no need for purpose.

Your mind has been corrupted. Universities, colleges, education, society, have corrupted you. They have made it a conditioning deep down within you that unless something has a purpose it is useless - so everything must have a purpose. A child playing has no purpose. At the most, if the child could explain he would say, "Because I feel good. Running, I feel more alive. Collecting flowers, I enjoy, it is ecstatic." But there is no purpose. The very act in itself is beautiful, ecstatic. To be alive is enough, there is no need for any purpose.

Why ask for anything else? Can't you be satisfied just by being alive? It is such a phenomenon.

Just think of yourself being a stone. You could have been, because many are still stones. You must have been somewhere in the past, sometime, a stone. Think of yourself being a tree. You must have been somewhere a tree, a bird, an animal, an insect. And then think of yourself being a man - conscious, alert, the peak, the climax of all possibilities. And you are not content with it. You need a purpose, otherwise life is useless.

Your mind has been corrupted by economists, mathematicians, theologians. They have corrupted your mind, because they all talk about purpose. They say, "Do something if something is achieved through it. Don't do anything which leads nowhere." But I tell you that the more you can enjoy things which are useless, the happier you will be. The more you can enjoy things which are purposeless, the more innocent and blissful you will be.

When you don't need any purpose you simply celebrate your being. You feel gratitude just that you are, just that you breathe. It is such a blessing that you can breathe, that you are alert, conscious, alive, aflame. Is it not enough? Do you need something to achieve so that you can feel good, so that you can feel valued, so that you can feel life is justified? What more can you achieve than what you are? What more can be added to your life? What more can you add to it? Nothing can be added, and the effort will destroy you - the effort to add something.

But for many centuries all over the world they have been teaching every child to be purposive. "Don't waste your time! Don't waste your life!" And what do they mean? They mean, "Transform your life into a bank balance. When you die you must die rich. That is the purpose."

Here in the East - particularly the mystics we are talking about, the Upanishads - they say, "Live richly." In the West they say, "Die a rich man." And these are totally different things. If you want to live richly you have to live here and now, not a single moment is to be lost. If you want to achieve something, you will die a rich man - but you will live a poor man, your life will be poor.

Look at rich people: their life is absolutely poor, because they are wasting it transforming it into bank balances, changing their life into money, into big houses, big cars. Their whole effort is that life has to be changed for some things. When they die you can count their things.

Buddha became a beggar. He was born a king, he became a beggar. Why? Just to live richly...

because he came to understand that there are two ways to live: one is to die richly, the other is to live richly. And any man who has any understanding will choose to live richly, because dying a rich man doesn't mean anything; you simply wasted yourself for nothing. But this is possible only if you can conceive that the whole existence is purposeless; it is a cosmic play, a continuous beautiful game, a beautiful hide-and-seek - not leading anywhere. Nowhere is the goal.

If this is the background, then you need not be worried about individual purposes, evolution, progress. This word progress is the basic disease of the modern age. What is the need? All that can be enjoyed is available, all that you need to be happy is here and now. But you create conditions and you say that unless these conditions are fulfilled you cannot be happy. You say, "These conditions must be fulfilled first: this type of house, this type of clothes, this type of car, this type of wife, this type of husband. All these conditions have to be fulfilled first, then I can be happy."

As if by being happy you are going to oblige the whole universe.

And who is going to fulfill your conditions? Who is worried? But you will try for those conditions, and the effort is going to be so long that they can never be fulfilled really, because whenever something is fulfilled, by the time it is fulfilled the goal has shifted.

One of my friends was contesting an election, a political election, so he came to me for blessing. I said, "I will not give the blessing because I am not your enemy, I am a friend. I can only bless that you may not get elected, because that will be the first step towards madness." But he wouldn't listen to me. He was elected, he became a member. Next year he came again for my blessing and he said, "Now I am trying to be a deputy minister."

I asked him, "You were saying that if you could become a member of parliament you would be very happy, but I don't see that you are happy. You are more depressed and more sad than you ever were before."

He said, "Now this is the only problem: I am worried. There is much competition. Only if I can become a deputy minister will everything be okay."

He became a deputy minister. When I was passing through the capital he came to see me again and he said, "I think you were right, because now the problem is how to become the minister. And I think this is the goal. I am not going to change it. Once I become the minister it is finished."

He has become the minister now, and he came to me a few days ago and he said, "Just one blessing more. I must become chief minister." And he is getting more and more worried, more and more puzzled, because more problems have to be faced, more competition, more ugly politics. And he is a good man, not a bad man.

I told him, "Unless you become the suprememost God you are not going to be satisfied." But he cannot look back and cannot understand the logic of the mind, the logic of the achieving mind. It can never be satisfied, the way it behaves creates more and more discontent. The more you have the more discontent you will feel, because more arenas become open for you in which to compete, to achieve. A poor man is more satisfied because he cannot think that he can achieve much. Once he starts achieving something he thinks more is possible. The more you achieve the more becomes possible, and it goes on and on forever.

A meditator needs a nonachieving mind, but a nonachieving mind is possible only if you can be content with purposelessness. Just try to understand the whole cosmic play and be a part in it.

Don't be serious, because a play can never be serious. And even if the play needs you to be serious, be playfully serious, don't be really serious. Then this very moment becomes rich. Then this very moment you can move into the ultimate.

The ultimate is not in the future, it is the present, hidden here and now. So don't ask about purpose - there is none, and I say it is beautiful that there is none. If there was purpose then your God would be just a managing director or a big business man, an industrialist, or something like that.

Jesus says.... Somebody asked him, "Who will be able to enter into the kingdom of your God?"

Jesus said, "Those who are like small children." This is the secret. What is the meaning of being a small child? The meaning is that the child is never businesslike, he is always playful.

If you can become playful you have become a child again, and only children can enter into the kingdom of God, nobody else, because children can play without asking where it is leading. They can make houses of sand without asking whether they are going to be permanent. Can somebody live in them? Will they be able to resist the wind that is blowing? They know that within minutes they will disappear. But they are very serious when they are playing. They can even fight for their sandhouses or houses of cards. They are very serious when they are creating. They are enjoying. And they are not fools, they know that these houses are just cardhouses and everything is makebelieve.

Why waste time in thinking in terms of business? Why not live more and more playfully, nonseriously, ecstatically? Ecstasy is not something which you can achieve by some efforts, ecstasy is a way of living. Moment to moment you have to be ecstatic, simple things have to be enjoyed. And life gives millions of opportunities to enjoy. You will miss them if you are purposive.

If you are not purposive, every moment you will have so many opportunities to be ecstatic. A flower, a lonely flower in the garden... you can dance if you are nonpurposive. The first star in the evening...

you can sing if you are nonpurposive. A beautiful face... you can see the divine in it if you are nonpurposive. All around the divine is happening, the ultimate is showering. But you will be able to see it only if you are nonpurposive and playful.

The second question:

Question 2:

IT IS FELT BY MANY IN THE WEST AND ELSEWHERE THAT THE PEAK OF LOVE IS REACHED ONLY BETWEEN AN 'I' AND A 'THOU'. IF I AND THOU ARE BOTH DROPPED, CAN LOVE STILL EXIST? CAN LOVE EXIST WITHOUT RELATIONSHIP?

Love, life, light - these three l's are the most mysterious. And the mystery is this - that you cannot understand them logically. If you are illogical you can penetrate them; if you are simply logical you cannot understand, because the whole phenomenon depends on a paradox. Try to understand.

When you love someone, two are needed: I and thou. Without two how can love be possible? If you are alone how can you relate, how can you love? If you are alone there can be no love. Love is possible only when there are two, this is the base. But if they remain two love is again impossible.

If they continue to be two then again love is impossible. Two are needed for love to exist, and then there is a second need - that the two must merge and become one. This is the paradox.

'I' and 'thou' is a basic requirement for love to exist but this is only the base. The temple can come only when these two merge into one. And the mystery is that somehow you remain two and somehow you become one. This is illogical. Two lovers are two and still one. They have found a bridge somewhere where I disappears, thou disappears; where a unity is formed, a harmony comes into being. Two are needed to create that harmony, but two are needed to dissolve into it.

It is just like this: a river flows, two banks are needed. A river cannot flow with only one bank, it is impossible; the river cannot exist. Two banks are needed for the river to flow. But if you look a little deeper those two banks are joined together just below the river. If they are not joined then also the river cannot exist, it will simply drop into the abyss. Two banks, apparently two on the surface, are one deep down.

Love exists like a river between two persons who on the surface remain two, but deep down have become one. That's why I say it is paradoxical. Two are needed just to be dissolved into one. So love is a deep alchemy and very delicate. If you really become one, love will disappear, the river cannot flow. If you really remain two, love will disappear, because there can be no river in an abyss if the two banks are really separate. So lovers create a game in which on the surface they remain two and deep down they become one.

Sometimes they fight also, sometimes they are angry also, sometimes in every way they separate - but this is only on the surface. Their separation is just to get married again, their fight is just to create love again. They go a little away from each other just to come and meet again, and the meeting after the separation is beautiful. They fight to love again. They are intimate enemies. Their enmity is a play, they enjoy it.

If there is really love you can enjoy the fight. If there is no love, only then the fight becomes a problem; otherwise you can enjoy, it is a game. It creates hunger. If you have ever loved, then you know that love always reaches peaks after you have been fighting. Fight - you create the separation, and with separation the hunger arises, you feel starved; the other is needed more. You fall in love again, then there is a more intense meeting. To create that intensity the two should remain two, and at the same time, simultaneously, they should become one.

In India we have pictured Shiva as Ardhanarishwar - half-man, half-woman. That is the only symbol of its type all over the world. Shiva - half is man, half is woman; half Shiva and half Parvati, his consort. Half the body is of man and half of woman: Ardhanarishwar, half-man, half-woman. That is the symbol. Lovers join together but on the surface they remain two. Shiva is one, the body is two - half comes from Parvati, half he contributes. The body is two, on the surface the banks are two; in the depth the souls have mingled and become one.

Or look at it in this way: the room is dark, you bring two lamps into it, two candles into it. Those two candles remain two, but their light has mingled and become one. You cannot separate the light; you cannot say, "This light belongs to this candle and that light belongs to that candle." Light has mingled and become one. The spirit is like light, the body is the candle.

Two lovers are only two bodies, but not two souls. This is very difficult to achieve. That's why love is one of the most difficult things to achieve, and if even for moments you can achieve it is worth it.

If even only for moments in your whole life, if even for moments you can achieve this oneness with someone, this oneness will become the door for the divine. Love achieved becomes the door for the divine, because then you can feel how this universe exists in the many and remains one.

But this can come only through experience - if you love a person and you feel that you are two and still one. And this should not be just a thought but an experience. You can think, but thinking is of no use. This must be an experience: how the bodies have remained two and the inner beings have merged, melted into each other - the light has become one.

Once experienced, then the whole philosophy of the Upanishads becomes exactly clear, absolutely clear. The many are just the surface; behind each individual is hidden the nonindividual, behind each part is hidden the whole. And if two can exist as two on the surface, why not many? If two can remain two and still one, why can't many remain many and still one? One in the many is the message of the Upanishads. And this will remain only theoretical if you have never been in love.

But people go on confusing love with sex. Sex may be part of love, but sex is not love. Sex is just a physical, biological attraction, and in sex you remain two. In sex you are not concerned with the other, you are concerned with yourself. You are simply exploiting the other, you are simply using the other for some biological satisfaction of your own, and the other is using you. That's why sexual partners never feel any deep intimacy. They are using the other. The other is not a person, the other is not a thou; the other is just an it, a thing you can use, and the other is using you. Deep down it is mutual masturbation and nothing else. The other is used as a device. It is not love, because you don't care for the other.

Love is totally different. It is not using the other, it is caring for the other, it is just being happy in the other. It is not your happiness that you derive from the other; if the other is happy you are happy, and the other's happiness becomes your happiness. If the other is healthy you feel healthy. If the other is dancing you feel a dance inside. If the other is smiling the smile penetrates you and becomes your smile.

Love is the happiness of the other; sex is happiness of your own, the other has to be used. In love the other's happiness has become even more significant than your own. Lovers are each other's servants, sex partners are each other's exploiters.

Sex can exist in the milieu of love, but then it has a different quality; it is not sexual at all. Then it is one of the many ways of merging into each other. One of the many - not the only, not the sole, not the supreme. Many are the ways to merge into each other. Two lovers can sit silently with each other and the silence can become the merger. Really only lovers can sit silently.

Wives and husbands cannot sit silently, because silence becomes boredom. So they go on talking about something or other. They go on talking even nonsense, rubbish, rot, just to avoid the other.

Their talk is to avoid the other, because if there is no talk the other's presence will be felt, and the other's presence is boredom. They are bored with each other so they go on talking. They go on giving each other news of the neighborhood, what was in the newspaper, what was on the radio, what was on the tv, what was in the film. They go on talking and chattering just to create a screen, a smokescreen, so the other is not felt. Lovers never like to chatter. Whenever lovers are together they will remain silent, because in silence merging is possible.

Lovers can merge in many ways. Both can enjoy a certain thing, and that enjoyment becomes a merger. Two lovers can meditate on a flower and enjoy the flower - then the flower becomes the merger. Both enjoying the same thing, both feeling ecstatic about the same thing, they merge. Sex is only one of the ways. Two lovers can enjoy poetry, a haiku, two lovers can enjoy painting, two lovers can just go for a walk and enjoy the walk together. The only thing necessary is togetherness.

Whatsoever the act, if they can be together they can merge.

Sex is one of the ways of being together, bodily together. And I say not the supreme, because it depends.... If you are a very gross person, then sex seems to be the supreme. If you are a refined person, if you have a high intelligence, then you can merge in anything. If you know higher realms of happiness, simply listening to music you can move into a deeper ecstasy than sex. Or simply sitting near a waterfall and the sound of the waterfall, and in that sound you both can merge. You are no more there; only the water falling and the sound, and that can become a higher peak of orgasm than can ever be attained through sex. Sex is for the gross. That is only one of the many ways in which lovers can merge and forget their I and thou and become one.

And unless you transcend sex and find out other ways, sooner or later you will be fed up with your lover, because sex will become repetitive, it will become mechanical. And then you will start looking for another partner, because the new attracts. Unless your partner remains constantly new you will get fed up. And it is very difficult; if you have only one way of enjoying each other's togetherness, it is bound to become a routine. If you have so many ways to be together, only then can your togetherness remain fresh, alive, young, and always new.

Lovers are never old. Husbands and wives are always old; they may be married only for one day but they are old - one day old. The mystery has gone, the newness disappeared. Lovers are always young. They may have been together for seventy years but they are still young, the freshness is there. And this is possible only if sex is one of the ways of being together, not the only way. Then you can find millions of ways of being together, and you enjoy that togetherness. That togetherness is felt as oneness.

If two can exist as one, then many can exist as one. Love becomes the door for meditation, prayer.

That is the meaning when Jesus goes on insisting that love is God - because love becomes the door, the opening towards the divine.

So to conclude, love is a relationship and yet not a relationship. Love exists between two, that's why you can call it a relationship. And still, if love exists at all it is not a relationship, because the two must disappear and become one. Hence I call it one of the basic paradoxes, one of the basic mysteries which logic cannot reveal.

If you ask logic and mathematics, they will say that if there are two they will remain two, they cannot become one. If they become one, then they cannot remain two. This is simple Aristotelean logic:

one is one, two are two, and if you say that two have become one, then they cannot remain two.

And this is the problem - that love is both two and one simultaneously. If you are too much logic- obsessed, love is not for you. But even an Aristotle falls in love, because logic is one thing, but nobody is ready to lose love for logic. Even an Aristotle falls in love, and even an Aristotle knows that there are points where mathematics is transcended - two become one and yet remain two.

This has been one of the problems for theologicians all over the world, and they have discussed it for many centuries. No conclusion has been reached, because no conclusion can be reached through logic. Not only with lovers - the same is the problem with God. Whether the devotee becomes one or remains separate - the same problem. A bhakta, a devotee - whether he remains ultimately separate from his god or becomes one, the same problem.

Mohammedans insist that he remains separate, because if he becomes one then love cannot exist.

When you have become one, who is going to love and whom? So Mohammedans pray, "Let me be separate so that I can love you. Let there be a gap so that devotees can be in prayer and love." Hindus have said that the devotee becomes one with the divine, but then it's a problem: if the devotee becomes one with the divine, then where is the devotion? where can the devotion exist?

And if the devotee becomes the divine he becomes equal, so God is not higher than the devotee.

My attitude is this: just as it happens in love, it happens with the divine. You remain separate and yet you become one. You remain separate on the surface, in the depths you have become one. The devotee becomes the god and still remains the devotee. But then it is illogical. You can refute me very easily, you can argue against it very easily, but if you have loved you will understand.

And if you have not loved yet then don't waste a single moment - be in love immediately, because life cannot give you a higher peak than love. And if you cannot achieve a natural peak that life offers to you, you cannot be capable, worthy, of achieving any other peaks which are not ordinarily available.

Meditation is a higher peak than love. If you cannot love, are incapable of love, meditation is not for you.

It happened once, a man came to Ramanuja. Ramanuja was a mystic, a devotee mystic, a very unique person - a philosopher and yet a lover, a devotee. It rarely happens - a very acute mind, a very penetrating mind, but with a very overflowing heart. A man came and asked Ramanuja, "Show me the way towards the divine. How can I attain the God?"

So Ramanuja asked, "First let me ask a question. Have you ever loved anybody?"

The devotee must have been a really religious person. He said, "What are you talking about? Love?

I am a celibate. I avoid women just as one should avoid diseases. I don't look at them, I close my eyes."

Ramanuja said, "Still, think a little. Move into the past, find out. Somewhere in your heart, has there ever been any flickering - even a small one - of love?"

The man said, "But I have come here to learn prayer, not to learn love. Teach me how to pray. You are talking about worldly things and I have heard that you are a great mystic saint. I have come here just to be led into the divine, not to talk about worldly things!"

Ramanuja is reported to have said... he even became very sad, and said to the man, "Then I cannot help you. If you have no experience of love then there is no possibility for any experience of prayer.

So first go into the world and love, and when you have loved and you are enriched through it, then come to me - because only a lover can understand what prayer is. If you don't know anything illogical through experience, you cannot understand. And love is prayer given by nature easily - you cannot attain even that. Prayer is love not given so easily, it is achieved only when you reach higher peaks of totality. Much effort is needed to achieve it. For love no effort is needed; it is available, it is flowing. You are resisting it."

The same is the problem, and the problem arises because of our logical minds. Aristotle says, "a is a, b is b, and a cannot be b." This is a simple logical process. If you ask the mystics, they say, "a is a, b is b but a also can be b, and b also can be a." Life is not divided into solid blocks. Life is a flow, it transcends blocks. It moves from one pole to the other. Love is a relationship and yet not a relationship.

The third question:

Question 3:

CAN ONE BE ABSORBED IN DOING SOMETHING - FOR INSTANCE, THESE DYNAMIC MEDITATION TECHNIQUES - WITH ABSOLUTE TOTAL INTENSITY, AND AT THE SAME TIME REMAIN A WITNESS WHO IS SEPARATE, APART?

The same is the problem in many forms. You think that a witness is something apart, separate.

It is not. Your intensity, your wholeness, is your witness. So when you are witnessing and doing something you are not two - the doer is the witness.

For example, you are dancing here in kirtan. You are dancing: the dancer and the witness are not two, there is no separation. The separation is only in language. The dancer is the witness. And if the dancer is not the witness then you cannot be total in the dance, because the witness will need some energy and you will have to divide yourself. A part will remain a witness and the remaining will move in the dance. It cannot be total, it will be divided. And this is not what is meant, because really this is the state of a schizophrenic patient - divided, split. It is pathological. If you become two you are ill. You must remain one. You must move totally into the dance, and your totality will become the witness. It is not going to be something set apart, your wholeness is aware. This happens.

So don't try to divide yourself. While dancing become the dance. Just remain alert; don't fall asleep, don't be unconscious. You are not under a drug, you are alert, fully alert. But this alertness is not a part standing aloof; it is your totality, it is your whole being.

But this is again the same thing as whether two lovers are two or one. Only on the surface are they two, deep inside they are one. Only in language will you appear two, the dancer and the witness, but deep down you are the one. The whole dancer is alert. Then only peace, equilibrium, silence, will happen to you. If you are divided there will be tension, and that tension will not allow you to be totally here and now, to merge into existence.

So remember that, don't try to divide. Become the dancer and still be aware. This happens. This I am saying through my experience. This I am saying through many others' experience who have been working with me. This will happen to you also. This may have happened to many already. But remember this: don't get split. Remain one and yet aware.

Enough for today.