The path of surrender

The first question:

Question 1:

This question arises to many. The techniques that we have discussed also belong to yoga. They are the same techniques, but with a difference: you can use the same techniques with a very different philosophy behind them. The framework, the pattern differs, not the technique. You may have a different attitude toward life, just the contrary to tantra.

Yoga believes in struggle; yoga is basically the path of will. Tantra does not believe in a struggle; tantra is not the path of will. Rather, on the contrary, tantra is the path of total surrender. Your will is not needed. For tantra your will is the problem, the source of all anguish. For yoga your surrender, your will-lessness is the problem.

Because your will is weak, that is why you are in anguish, suffering - for yoga. For tantra, because you have a will, because you have an ego, an individuality, that is why you are suffering. Yoga says, bring your will to absolute perfection and you will be liberated. Tantra says, dissolve your will completely, become totally emptied of it, and that will be your liberation. And both are right; this creates the problem. For me, both are right.

But the path of yoga is a very difficult one. It is just impossible, nearly impossible, that you can attain to the perfection of the ego. It means you become the center of the whole universe. The path is very long, arduous, and really, it never reaches to the end. So what happens to the followers of yoga?

Somewhere on the path, in some life, they turn to tantra.

Intellectually yoga is conceivable; existentially it is impossible. If it is possible you will reach by yoga also, but generally it never happens. Even if it happens, it happens very rarely, such as to a Mahavir.

Sometimes centuries and centuries pass and then a man like Mahavir appears who has achieved through yoga. But he is rare, an exception, and he breaks the rule.

But yoga is more attractive than tantra. Tantra is easy, natural, and you can attain through tantra very easily, very naturally, effortlessly. And because of this, tantra never appeals to you as much.

Why? Anything that appeals to you appeals to your ego. Whatsoever you feel is going to fulfill your ego will appeal to you more. You are gripped in the ego; thus yoga appeals to you very much.

Really, the more egoistic you are, the more yoga will appeal to you, because it is pure ego effort.

The more impossible, the more it is appealing to the ego. That is why Mount. Everest has so much appeal. There is so much attraction to reach to the top of a Himalayan peak because it is so difficult.

And when Hillary and Tensing reached Mount. Everest, they felt a very ecstatic moment. What was that? It was because the ego was fulfilled - they were the first.

When the first man landed on the moon, can you imagine how he felt? He was the first in all history.

And now he cannot be replaced; he will remain the first in all the history to come. Now there is no way to change his status. The ego is fulfilled deeply. There is no competitor now, and there cannot be. Many will land on the moon but they will not be the first. But many can land on the moon and many can go to Everest - yoga gives you a higher peak. And the more unreachable the end, the more there is the perfection of the ego - pure, perfect, absolute ego.

Yoga would have appealed to Nietzsche very much because he felt that the energy which is working behind life is the energy of will - the will to power. Yoga gives you that feeling. You are more powerful through it.

The more you can control yourself, the more you can control your instincts, the more you can control your body and the more you can control your mind, then the more you feel powerful. You become a master inside. But this is through conflict; this is through struggle and violence. And it always happens more or less that a person who has been practicing yoga for many lives comes to a point where the whole journey becomes drab, dreary, futile, because the more ego is fulfilled, the more you will feel it is useless. Then the follower of the path of yoga turns to tantra.

But yoga appeals because everyone is an egoist. Tantra never appeals in the beginning. Tantra can appeal only to the higher depths - to those who have worked on themselves, who have really been struggling through yoga for many lives. Then tantra appeals to them because they can understand.

Ordinarily you will not be attracted by tantra, and if you are attracted you will be attracted by the wrong reasons, so try to understand them also.

You will not be attracted by tantra in the first place because it asks you to surrender, not to fight. It asks you to float, not to swim. It asks you to move with the current, not to go upstream. It tells you, nature is good; trust nature, do not fight it. Even sex is good. Trust it, follow it, flow into it; do not fight it. "no-fight" is the central teaching of tantra. Flow. Let go! It cannot appeal, there is no fulfillment of your ego through it. In the first step it asks for your ego to be dissolved, in the very beginning it asks you to dissolve it.

Yoga also asks you, but at the end. First it will ask you to purify it. And if it is purified completely it dissolves, it cannot remain. But that is the last in yoga, and in tantra that is the first.

So tantra will not appeal generally. And if it does appeal, it will appeal for wrong reasons. For example, if you want to indulge in sex then you can rationalize your indulgence through tantra. That can become the appeal. If you want to indulge in wine, in women, in other things, you can feel attracted toward tantra. But really, you are not attracted to tantra. Tantra is a facade - a trick. You are attracted to something else which you think tantra allows you. So tantra always appeals for wrong reasons.

Tantra is not to help your indulgence, it is to transform it. So do not deceive yourself. Through tantra you can deceive yourself very easily, and because of this possibility of deception Mahavir would not describe tantra. This possibility is always there. And man is so deceptive that he can show one thing when he really means another, he can rationalize.

For example, in China, in old China, there was something like tantra - a secret science. It is known as Tao. Tao has similar trends to tantra. For example, Tao says that it is good, if you want to be freed of sex, that you should not stick to one person - to one woman or one man. You should not stick to one person if you want to be freed. Tao says that it is better to go on changing partners.

This is absolutely right, but you can rationalize it; you can deceive yourself. You may just be a sex maniac and you can think that "I am doing tantra practice, so I cannot stick to one woman. I have to change." And many emperors in China practiced it. They had big harems only for this.

But Tao is meaningful if you look deep down into human psychology. If you know only one woman, sooner or later your attraction for that woman will wither away, but your attraction for women will remain. You will be attracted by the other sex. This woman, your wife, will really not be of the opposite sex. She will not attract you, she will not be a magnet for you. You will have become accustomed to her.

Tao says that if a man moves amidst women, women, he will not only go beyond one, he will go beyond the opposite sex. The very knowledge of many women will help him to transcend. And this is right - but dangerous, because you would like it not because it is right but because it gives you license. That is the problem with tantra.

So in China also that knowledge was suppressed; it had to be suppressed. In India tantra was also suppressed because it said many dangerous things - dangerous only because you are deceptive.

Otherwise they are wonderful. Nothing has happened to the human mind that is more wonderful and mysterious than tantra; no knowledge is so deep.

But knowledge always has its dangers. For example, now science has become a danger because it has come to know many deep secrets. Now it knows how to create atomic energy. Einstein is reported to have said that if he is again given a life, rather than being a scientist he would like to be a plumber, because as he looks back, his whole life has been futile - not only futile, but dangerous to humanity. And he has given one of the deepest secrets, but to a mankind which is self-deceptive.

I wonder... the day may come soon when we will have to suppress scientific knowledge. There are rumors that there are secret thoughts amid scientists about whether to disclose more or not - whether they should stop the search or whether they should go further, because now it is dangerous ground.

Every knowledge is dangerous; only ignorance is not dangerous, you cannot do much with it.

Superstitions are always good - never dangerous. They are homeopathic. If the medicine is given to you, it is not going to harm you. Whether it is going to help you or not depends on your own innocence, but one thing is certain: it is not going to harm you. Homeopathy is harmless; it is a deep superstition. If it works, it can only help. Remember, if something can only help then it is deep superstition. If it can do both, help and harm, then only is it knowledge. A real thing can do both, help and harm. Only an unreal thing can just help. But then the help never comes from the thing, it is always a projection of your own mind. So, in a way, only illusory things are good; they never harm you.

Tantra is science, and it is deeper than atomic knowledge because atomic science is concerned with matter and tantra is concerned with you, and you are always more dangerous than any atomic energy. Tantra is concerned with the biological atom, with you - the living cell; with life consciousness itself and how its inner mechanism works.

That is why tantra became so much interested in sex. One who is interested in life and consciousness will automatically become interested in sex because sex is the source of life, of love, of all that is happening in the world of consciousness. So if a seeker is not interested in sex, he is not a seeker at all. He may be a philosopher, but he is not a seeker. And philosophy is, more or less, nonsense - thinking about things which are of no use.

I have heard that Mulla Nasruddin was interested in girls, but he had very bad luck with girls, no one would like him. He was going to meet a certain girl for the first time, so he asked a friend, "What is your secret? You are wonderful with women, you simply hypnotize them, and I am always a failure, so give me some clue. I am going on a date for the first time with a girl, so give me some secrets."

The friend said, "Remember three things: always talk about food, family and philosophy."

"Why about food?" Mulla asked. The friend said, "I talk about food because then the girl feels good - because every woman is interested in food. She is food for the child, for the whole humanity she is food, so she is basically interested in food."

Mulla said, "Okay. And why family?" So the man said, "Talk about her family so your intentions look honorable."

Then Mulla said, "And why about philosophy?" The man said, "Talk about philosophy. That makes the woman feel that she is intelligent."

So Mulla rushed. Immediately, when he saw the girl, he said, "Hello, do you like noodles?" The girl was startled and said, "No!"

Then the Mulla asked the second question: "Have you got two brothers?" The girl was even more startled and wondered, "What type of date is this?" She said, "No!"

So for a moment Mulla was at a loss. He wondered, "How to start talking about philosophy?" Just for a moment he was at a loss, and then he asked, "Now, if you had a brother would he like noodles?"

Philosophy is more or less nonsense. Tantra is not interested in philosophy; tantra is interested in actual existential life. So tantra never asks whether there is a God or whether there is MOKSHA, liberation, or whether there is hell or heaven. Tantra asks basic questions about life. That is why there is so much interest in sex and love. They are basic. YOU ARE through them; you are part of them.

You are a play of sex energy and nothing less, and unless you understand this energy and transcend it you will never be anything more. You are, right now, nothing but sex energy. You can be more, but if you do not understand this and you do not transcend it you never will be more. The possibility is just there as a seed. That is why tantra is interested in sex, in love, in natural life.

But the way to know it is not through conflict. Tantra says you cannot know anything if you are in a fighting mood because then you are not receptive. Then because you are fighting the secrets will be hidden from you - you are not open to receive. And whenever you are fighting you are always outside. If you are fighting sex you are always outside; if you surrender to sex you reach the very inner core of it; you are an insider. If you surrender; then many things become known.

You have been in sex, but always with a fighting attitude behind it. That is why you have not known many secrets. For example, you have not known the life-giving forces of sex. You have not them known because you cannot know - that needs you to be an insider.

If you are really flowing with sex energy, totally surrendered, sooner or later you will arrive at the point where you will know that sex cannot only give birth to a new life: sex can give you more life.

To lovers sex can become a life-giving force, but for that you need a surrender. And once you are surrendered, many dimensions change.

For example, tantra has known, Tao has known that if you ejaculate in the act, then it cannot be life-giving to you. There is no need to ejaculate; ejaculation can be totally forgotten. Tantra and Tao both say ejaculation is because you are fighting; otherwise there is no need of it.

The lover and the beloved can be in a deep sexual embrace, just relaxing into each other with no hurry to ejaculate, with no hurry to end the affair. They can just relax into each other. And if this relaxation is total, they both will feel more life. They both will enrich each other.

Tao says a man can live for one thousand years if he is not in any hurry with sex, if he is deeply relaxed. If a woman and man are deeply relaxed with each other, simply melting into each other, absorbed into each other, not in any hurry, not in any tension, many things happen - alchemical things happen - because the life juices of both, the electricity of both, the bio-energy of both, meet.

And just by this meeting - because they are "anti"; one is negative, one is positive: they are anti- poles - Just by meeting with each other deeply, they invigorate each other, make each other vital, more alive.

They can live for a long time, and they can live never becoming old. But this can only be known if you are not in a fighting mood. And this seems paradoxical. Those who are fighting sex, they will ejaculate sooner because the tense mind is in a hurry to be relieved of the tension.

New research says many surprising things, many surprising facts. Masters and Johnson, they have worked scientifically for the first time with what happens in deep intercourse. They have come to realize that seventy-five percent of men are premature ejaculators - seventy-five percent Before there is a deep meeting they have ejaculated and the act is finished. And ninety percent of women never have any orgasm; they never reach to a peak, to a deep, fulfilling peak - ninety percent of women!

That is why women are so angry and irritated, and they will remain so. No meditation can help them to be peaceful and no philosophy, no religion, no ethics will make them at ease with the men with whom they are living. They are in frustration, in anger, because modern science and old tantra both say that unless a woman is deeply fulfilled orgasmically she will be a problem in the family. That which she is lacking will create irritations and she will be always in a fighting mood.

So if your wife is always in a fighting mood, think again about the whole thing. It is not simply the wife - you may be the cause. And because women are not achieving orgasm, they become anti-sex.

They are not willing to go into sex easily. They have to be bribed; they are not ready to go into sex.

Why should they be ready if they never achieve any deep bliss through it? Rather, they feel after it that the man has been using them, that they have been used. They feel like a thing which has been used and then discarded.

The man is satisfied because be has ejaculated. Then he moves and goes to sleep, and the wife goes on weeping. She has been just used, and the experience has not been in any way fulfilling to her. It may have relieved her husband or lover or friend, but it has not been in any way fulfilling to her.

Ninety percent of women do not even know what orgasm is. They have never known it; they have never reached a peak of such a blissful convulsion of the body that every fiber vibrates and every cell becomes alive. They have not reached it, and this is because of an anti-sexual attitude in the society. The fighting mind is there, and the woman is so repressed that she has become frigid.

The man goes on doing the act as if it is a sin. He feels it as guilt: "It is not to be done." And while he is making love to his wife or beloved, he is thinking of some MAHATMA - so-called saint - of how to go to the mahatma and how to transcend this sex, this guilt, this sin.

It is very difficult to get rid of the mahatmas, they are already there even while you are making love.

You are not two; one mahatma must be there. If there is no mahatma, then God is watching you doing this sin. The concept of God in people's minds is just that of a Peeping Tom - he is always watching you. This attitude creates anxiety, and when anxiety is there ejaculation comes soon.

When there is no anxiety, ejaculation can be postponed for hours - even for days. And there is no need of it. If the love is deep, both parties can invigorate each other. Then ejaculation completely ceases, and for years two lovers can meet with each other without any ejaculation, without any wastage of energy. They can just relax with each other. Their bodies meet and relax; they enter sex and relax. And sooner or later, sex will not be an excitement. It is an excitement right now. Then it is not an excitement, it is a relaxation, a deep let-go.

But that can happen only if you have first surrendered inside to the life energy - the life force. Only then can you surrender to your lover or beloved. Tantra says, this happens, and it says how it can happen.

Tantra says, never make love while you are excited. This seems very absurd because you want to make love when you are excited. And normally, both partners excite each other in order that they can make love. But tantra says that in excitement you are wasting energy. Make love while you are calm, serene, meditative. First meditate, then make love, and when making love do not go beyond the limit. What do I mean by "do not go beyond the limit"? Do not become excited and violent, in order that your energy will not be dispersed.

If you see two persons making love you will feel that they are fighting. If small children sometimes see their father and mother making love, they think the father is going to kill the mother. It looks violent; it looks like a fight. It is not beautiful, it looks ugly.

It must be more musical, harmonious. The two partners must be as if they are dancing, not fighting - as if singing one harmonious melody, just creating an atmosphere in which both may dissolve and become one. And then they relax. This is what tantra means. Tantra is not sexual at all, tantra is the least sexual thing and yet it has so much concern with sex. And if through this relaxation and let-go nature reveals to you its secrets, it is no wonder. Then you begin to be aware of what is happening.

And in that awareness of what is happening many secrets come to your mind.

Firstly, sex becomes life-giving. As it is now it is death giving, you are simply dying through it, wasting yourself, deteriorating. Secondly, it becomes the deepest natural meditation. Your thoughts cease completely. When you are totally relaxed with your lover, your thoughts cease. The mind is not there, only your heart beats. It becomes a natural meditation. And if love cannot help you into meditation, nothing will help, because everything else is just superfluous, superficial. If love cannot help, nothing will help!

Love has its own meditation. But you do not know love; you know only sex and you know the misery of wasting energy. Then you get depressed after it. Then you decide to take a vow of BRAHMACHARYA, celibacy. And this vow is taken in depression, this vow is taken in anger, this vow is taken in frustration. It is not going to help.

A vow can be helpful if taken in a very relaxed, deeply meditative mood. Otherwise you are simply showing your anger, your frustration and nothing else, and you will forget the vow within twenty-four hours. The energy will have come again, and just as an old routine you will have to release it.

Tantra says, sex is very deep because it is life. But you can be interested in tantra for the wrong reasons. Do not be interested in tantra for wrong reasons, and then you will not feel that tantra is dangerous. Then tantra is life transforming.

Some tantric methods have been used by yoga also, but with a conflict, a fighting attitude. Tantra uses the same methods, but with a very loving attitude - and that makes a great difference. The very quality of the technique changes. The technique becomes different because the whole background is different.

It has been asked, "What is the central subject matter of tantra?" The answer is you! You are the central subject matter of tantra: what you are right now and what is hidden in you that can grow, what you are and what you can be. Right now you are a sex unit, and unless this unit is understood deeply you cannot become a spirit, you cannot become a spiritual unit. Sexuality and spirituality are two ends of one energy.

Tantra starts with you as you are; yoga starts with what your possibility is. Yoga starts with the end; tantra starts with the beginning. And it is good to start with the beginning. It is always good to begin with the beginning, because if the end is made the beginning, then you are creating unnecessary misery for yourself. You are not the end - not the ideal. You have to become a god, the ideal, and you are just an animal. And this animal goes berserk because of the ideal of the god; it goes mad, it goes crazy.

Tantra says, forget the god. If you are the animal, understand this animal in its totality. In that understanding itself, the god will grow. And if it cannot grow through that understanding then forget it, it can never be. Ideals cannot bring your possibilities out; only the knowledge of the real will help.

So you are the central subject matter of tantra, as you are and as you can become, your actuality and your possibility - they are the subject matter.

Sometimes people get worried. If you go to understand tantra God is not discussed, moksha - liberation - is not discussed, nirvana is not discussed. What type of religion is tantra? Tantra discusses things which make you feel disgusted, which you do not want to discuss. Who wants to discuss sex? Everyone thinks he knows about it. Because you can reproduce, you think you know.

No one wants to discuss sex and sex is everyone's problem. No one wants to discuss love because everyone feels he is a great lover already. And look at your life! It is just hatred and nothing else. And whatsoever you call love is nothing but a relaxation, a little relaxation, of the hatred. Look around you, and then you will know what you know about love.

Baal Shem, a fakir, went to his tailor every day for his robe, and the tailor took six months to make a simple robe for the fakir. The poor fakir! When the robe was ready and the tailor gave it to Baal Shem, Baal Shem said, "Tell me, even God had only six days to create the world. Within six days God created the whole world and you took six months to make this poor man's robe?"

Baal Shem remembered the tailor in his memoirs. The tailor said, "Yes, God created the world in six days, but look at the world, at what type of world it is. Yes, he created the world in six days, but look at the world!"

Look around you; look at the world you have created. Then you will come to know that you do not know anything, you are just groping in the dark. And because everyone else is also groping in the dark, it cannot be that you are living in light. If everyone else is groping in the dark you feel good, because then you feel there is no comparison.

But you are also in the dark, and tantra starts with you as you are. Tantra wants to enlighten you about basic things which you cannot deny. If you try to deny them, it is at your own cost.

The second question:

Question 2:

Positions are irrelevant; positions are not very meaningful. The real thing is the attitude - not the position of the body, but the position of the mind. But if you change your mind you may want to change your positions, because they are related. But they are not basic.

For example, the man is always on the woman - on top of the woman. This is an egoist posture because the man always thinks he is better, superior, higher - how can he be below the woman?

But all over the world in primitive societies the woman is above the man. So in Africa this posture is known as the missionary posture, because for the first time when missionaries - Christian missionaries - went to Africa, the primitives just could not understand what they were doing. They thought it would kill the woman.

The man-on-top posture is known in Africa as the missionary posture. African primitives say this is violent that man should be on top of the woman. She is weaker, delicate, so she must be on top of the man. But it is difficult for man to think of himself as lower than woman, under her.

If your mind changes, many things will change. It is better that the woman should be on top, for many reasons. If the woman is on top she will be passive, so she is not going to do much violence; she will simply relax. And the man under her cannot do much, he will have to relax. This is good.

If he is on top he is going to be violent, he will do much. And nothing is needed to be done on her part. For tantra you have to relax, so it is good that the woman should be on top. She can relax better than any man. The feminine psychology is more passive, so relaxation comes easy.

Positions will change, but do not be bothered about positions much. Just change your mind.

Surrender to the life force, float in it. Sometimes, if you are really surrendered, your bodies will take the right position that is needed in that moment. If both partners are deeply surrendered, their bodies will take the right posture that is needed.

Every day situations change, so there is no need to fix postures beforehand. That is a problem, that you try to fix it beforehand. Whenever you try to fix it, this is a fixing by the mind; then you are not surrendering.

If you surrender then you let things take their own shape, and that is a wonderful harmony - when both partners have surrendered. They will take many postures or they will not take them and will just relax. That depends on the life force, not on your cerebral decision beforehand. You need not decide anything beforehand. Decision is the problem. Even to make love, you decide. Even to make love, you go and consult books.

There are books on how to make love. This shows what type of human mind we have produced. You even consult books on how to make love. Then it becomes cerebral; you think everything. Really, you create a rehearsal in the mind and then you enact it. Your action is a copy; it is never real then.

You are enacting a rehearsal. It becomes acting; it is not authentic.

Just surrender and move with the force. What is the fear? Why be afraid? If you cannot be unafraid with your lover, then where will you be unafraid? And once you have the feeling that the life force helps by itself and takes the right path that is needed, it will give you a very basic insight into your whole life. Then you can leave your whole life to the divine. That is your beloved.

Then you leave your whole life to the divine. Then you do not think and you do not plan; you do not force the future according to you. You just allow yourself to move into the future according to Him, according to the total.

But how to make the sex act a meditation? Just by surrendering it becomes so. Do not think about it, let it happen. And be relaxed, do not move ahead. This is one of the basic problems with the mind: it always moves ahead. It is always seeking the result, and the result is in the future. You are never in the act; you are always in the future seeking a result. That seeking of a result is disturbing everything, it damages everything.

Just be in the act. What is the future? It is to come; you need not worry about it. And you are not going to bring it with your worries. It is already coming; it has already come. So you forget about it, you just be here and now.

Sex can become a deep insight in being here and now. That is, I think, the only act now left into which you can be here and now. You cannot be here and now while in your office; you cannot be here and now while you are studying in your college; you cannot be here and now anywhere in this modern world. Only in love can you be here and now.

But even then you are not. You are thinking of the result. And now many modern books have created many new problems. You read a book on how to make love, and then you are afraid about whether you are making it rightly or wrongly. You read a book on how a posture is to be taken, or what type of posture is to be used, and then you are afraid about whether you are taking the right posture or not.

Psychologists have created new worries in the mind. Now they say the husband must remember whether his wife is achieving orgasm or not, so he is worried over it. And this worry is not going to help in any way; it is going to become a hindrance.

The wife is worried whether she is helping the husband to relax totally or not. She must show that she is feeling very blissful. Then everything becomes false. Both are worried about the result, and because of this worry the result will never come.

Forget everything. Flow in the moment and allow your bodies their expression. Your bodies know well; they have their own wisdom. Your bodies are constituted of sex cells. They have a built-in program; you are not asked at all. Just leave it to the body and the body will move. This leaving it to nature together, both together, this let-go, will create meditation automatically.

And if you can feel it in sex, then you know one thing: that whenever you surrender you will feel the same. Then you can surrender to a master. It is a love relationship. You can surrender to a master, and then while you are putting your head at his feet, your head will become empty. You will be in meditation.

Then there is even no need of a master. Then go out and surrender to the sky. You know how to surrender - that is all. Then you can go and surrender to a tree. But it looks foolish because we do not know how to surrender. We see a person - a villager, a primitive man - going to the river, surrendering himself to the river, calling the river the Mother, the divine Mother, or surrendering himself to the rising sun, calling the rising sun a great god, or going to a tree and putting his head at the roots and surrendering.

For us it looks superstitious. You say, "What nonsense he is doing! What will the tree do? What will the river do? They are not goddesses. What is the sun? The sun is not a god." Anything becomes a god if you can surrender. So your surrender creates divinity. There is nothing divine, there is only a surrendering mind which creates divinity.

Surrender to a wife and she becomes divine. Surrender to a husband and he becomes divine. The divinity is revealed through surrender. Surrender to a stone and there is no stone now: that stone has become a statue, a person - alive.

So just know how to surrender. And when I say "how" to surrender, I do not mean to know a technique; I mean you have a natural possibility of surrendering in love. Surrender in love and feel it there. And then let it spread all over your life.

The third question:

Question 3:

ANAHAT NADA is not a type of sound, it is soundlessness, but this soundlessness is heard. To express it is difficult because then the logical question arises of how soundlessness can be heard.

Let me explain it.... I am sitting on this chair. If I go away from this chair, will you not see my absence in the chair? It cannot be seen by one who has not seen me sitting here, he will simply see the chair.

But a moment before I was here and you have seen me sitting here. If I move away and you look at the chair, you will see two things: the chair and my absence. But that absence will be seen only if you have seen me and you have not forgotten me, that I was there.

We are hearing sounds; we only know sounds. So when that soundlessness comes, anahat nada, we feel that every sound has disappeared and absence is felt. That is why it is called anahat nada.

It is also called nada; 'nada' means sound. But ANAHAT changes the quality of the sound. 'Anahat' means uncreated, so it is uncreated sound.

Every sound is a created sound. Whatsoever sounds you have heard, they are all created. That which is created will die. I can clap my hands - a sound is created. It was not there before and now it is no more; it was created and it has died. A created sound is known as AHAT NADA. Uncreated sound is known as ANAHAT NADA - the sound that is always. Which is that sound that is always? It is not really a sound. You call it a sound because the absence is heard.

If you live by a railway station and one day the railway union goes on strike, you will hear something no one can hear. You will hear the absence of the trains coming and going and moving.

I was traveling in the past for at least three weeks every month. In the beginning it was very difficult to sleep in the train, and then it became difficult to sleep at home. When I was no longer sleeping only in trains, the sound of the train was missed. Whenever I would reach home it would be difficult, because I would miss and I would feel the absence of the railway sounds.

We are accustomed to sounds. Every moment is filled with sound. Our heads are constantly filled by sounds and sounds and sounds. When your mind goes away, moves up or down, goes beyond or below, when you are not in the world of sounds, you can hear the absence. That absence is soundlessness.

But we have call it anahat nada. Because it is heard we call it nada - sound; and because it is not really a sound we call it anahat - uncreated. "Uncreated sound" is contradictory. Sound is created - "uncreated" contradicts. So all deep experiences of life have to be expressed in contradictory terms.

If you go and ask a master like Eckhart or Jacob Boehme, or Zen masters like Hui Hai or Huang Po or Bodhidharma or Nagarjuna, or Vedanta and the Upanishads, everywhere you will find two contradictory terms whenever a deeper experience is talked about. The Vedas say, "he is and He is not" - about God.

You cannot find a more atheistic expression: "He is and he is not." he is far away and He is near. He is far away and he is also near. Why contradictory statements? The Upanishads say, "You cannot see him, but unless you see him you have not seen anything." What type of language is this?

Lao Tsu says that "Truth cannot be said" - and he is saying it! This too is a saying. He says that "Truth cannot be said, if it is said it cannot be true," and then he writes a book and says something about the truth. It is contradictory.

One student came to a great old sage. The student said, "If you can forgive me master, I want to relate to you something about myself. I have become an atheist; now I do not believe in God."

So the old sage asked, "For how many days have you been studying scriptures? For how many days?" So the man, the seeker, the student said, "Nearabout twenty years I have been studying the Vedas - the scriptures." So the old man sighed and said, "Just twenty years and you have the nerve to say that you have become an atheist?"

The student was puzzled. What was this old man saying? So he said, "I am puzzled. What are you saying? You make me more confused than when I came here." The old man said, "Go on studying the Vedas. In the beginning one says God is. Only in the end does one say God is not. To become an atheist you will have to travel much into theism. God is at the beginning; God is not at the end.

Do not be in a hurry." The student was even more puzzled.

"God is and God is not" has been uttered by those who know. "God is" is uttered by those who do not know and "God is not" is also uttered by those who do not know. Those who know, they utter both simultaneously: God is and God is not.

"Anahat nada" is a contradictory term, but used with much consideration - with deep consideration.

It is meaningful. It says that the phenomenon is felt as a sound and it is not a sound. It is felt as a sound because you have only felt sounds, you do not know any other language. You know only the language of sounds; that is why it is felt as sound. But it is silence, not sound.

And the question further says: EXPLAIN IN WHICH WAY THE STATE OF SOUNDFULNESS CAN BE EQUAL TO TOTAL SOUNDLESSNESS. It is always so. The zero and the absolute both mean the same!

For example, if I have a jar which is completely empty and I have another jar which is completely filled, both are complete. One is completely empty, another is completely filled. But both are complete, both are perfect. If the jar is half-filled, it is half-filled and half-empty. You can call it half-empty, you can call it half-filled. But whether it is completely empty or completely filled, one thing is common to both: completeness!

Soundlessness is complete. You cannot do anything more to make it more soundless. Understand this: it is complete, nothing can be done. You have come to a point beyond which there is no movement possible. And if a sound is total you cannot add anything to it. You have come to another limit; you cannot go beyond it. This is common and this is what is meant.

One can say it is soundlessness because no sound is heard, everything has become absent. You cannot take anything further from it; it is complete. Or you can say it is a complete sound, a full sound, absolute sound; nothing can be added to it. But in both the cases the indication is for perfection, absoluteness, wholeness.

It depends on the mind. There are two types of minds and two types of expressions. For example, if you ask Buddha, "What will happen in deep meditation? When one achieves SAMADHI what will happen?" he will say, "There will be no DUKKHA - there will be no pain." He will never say there will be bliss, he will simply say there will be no pain - just painlessness. If you ask Shankara, he will never talk about pain. He will simply say, "There will be bliss - absolute bliss."

And both are expressing the same experience. Buddha saying "no pain" refers to the world. He says, "All the pains I have known are not there. And whatsoever is there, I cannot relate it in your language."

Shankara says, "There is bliss, absolute bliss." He never talks about the world and its pain. He is not referring to your world; he is referring to the experience itself. He is positive; Buddha is negative.

But their indications are toward the same moon.

Their fingers are different, but what their fingers indicate is the same.