Mind in a hurry

The first question:

IT IS VERY SIMPLE - if when I speak on Patanjali and you feel that Patanjali is the path for you, and when I speak on Zen, you feel Zen is the path for you, and when I speak on Tantra, you feel "Tantra is the path for me," then the problem doesn't exist - I am the path for you!

The second question:

No, it is not essential. All the stages are described by Patanjali because all the stages are possible, but not essential. You can bypass many. You can even go from the first step to the last; the whole path in between simply can be bypassed. It depends on you, your intensity, your passionate search, your total involvement. The speed depends on you.

That's why it is possible to attain a sudden enlightenment also. The whole gradual process can be dropped. Right this very moment, you can become enlightened. That's possible, but it will depend on how intense is your search, how much you are in it. If only a part of you is in it, then you will attain to a fragment, a step. If half of you is in it, then you will reach half the journey immediately, and there you will be stuck. But if your total being is in it and you are not withholding anything, you are simply allowing the whole thing to happen right now, immediately it can happen. Time is not needed.

Time is needed because your effort is part, fragmental; you do it half-heartedly. You do it, and you don't also do it. You move one step forward and one step backward simultaneously. By the right hand you do, by the left hand you undo. Then there will be many, many stages, more than Patanjali can describe. He has described all the possible stages. Many can be dropped, all can be dropped - the whole path can be dropped. Bring your total being to your effort.

And being near with a Master can be a tremendous help, but that too depends on you. You can live physically near a Master and you may not be near him at all, because to be with a Master is not a question of physical closeness; it is a question how much you are open towards him, how much you trust, how much is your love for him, how much you can give of your being to him. If you are really close, that means if you trust and love, then there is no other closeness. It is not a question of space, it is a question of love. If you are really close to a Master, all the paths, all the methods can be dropped because being close to a Master is the ultimate method. Nothing like it exists. Nothing is comparable to it. Then you can simply forget about all the methods, all the Patanjalis; you can simply forget about them. Just being close to a Master and allowing the Master to enter your being, you become just a receptivity, no choice on your part, just an opening, then this very moment the phenomenon is possible.

And I would like to remind you that by all the methods that exist in the world, many people have not reached. Greater number of people have reached through being near a Master - that is the greatest technique. But finally, everything depends on you.

That is the problem, that is the very crux of the problem: it doesn't depend on me. Otherwise I would have given you already; then there would have been no problem. One Buddha would have been enough, and he would have given to all because he has infinity in his hands; you cannot exhaust it. He can go on giving and giving and giving, and he is always ready to give because the more he gives, the more he gets. The more he shares, the more unknown sources open, unknown streams start flowing towards him. One Buddha would have given enlightenment to all the beings if it was dependent on a Master. It is not. In your ignorance, in your egoistic state of mind, in your closed imprisoned being, you will reject even if a Buddha wants to give it to you. Unless you want it you will reject; it cannot be given to you against you. You have to receive it, and you have to receive it very consciously, alert and aware. Only in deep awareness and deep receptivity it can be received.

Being near with a Master, close in love and trust, and allowing the Master to do whatsoever he would like to do, with no choice of your own, then there is no need to do anything. But then, don't expect; then don't even in a deeper part of your mind demand, because the very expectation and demand will become the barrier. Then you simply wait. Even if it is going to happen after many, many lives, even if you have to wait unto eternity, wait. And this waiting should not be a sad, depressed waiting. It should be a celebrating waiting; it should be festive; it should be full of joy.

So these are the things: then you can become closer and closer and closer, and suddenly one day comes - the flame of the Master and the flame of your being become one. Suddenly there is a jump: you are no more there, and no more is the Master; you have become one. In that oneness, all that the Master can give to you, he has given it to you. He has poured himself into you.

So it is not essential for a seeker to pass through all the stages of samadhi. It becomes essential only because you are not enough of a seeker... Then many stages. If you are really intense, sincere, authentic, if you are ready to die this very moment, it can happen.

The third question:

No, I am just the opposite of Patanjali. Patanjali has a perfect combination of poetry, mysticism, and logic. I am just a neti, neti - neither this nor that. I don't have a perfect balance of poetry, mysticism and logic. In fact, I have neither balance nor imbalance, because a perfectly balanced man also has imbalance just by the side. Because the balance can exist only when the imbalance exists. The harmony can exist only when there is discord just by the side. I am just like a vast emptiness with no harmony, no discord, no balance, no imbalance, no perfection, no imperfection - just an emptiness. If you come in me you will not find me at all there. I myself have not found, so how can you find it?

It happened: in a house of a Sufi mystic, Bayazid, a thief entered. The night was dark and Bayazid's house was absolutely in darkness, because he was so poor he couldn't afford even a single candle. And then there was no need also because he never did anything in the night, he simply slept. When the thief entered - and there was no difficulty, because the doors were always open... The thief entered; Bayazid feeling the presence of someone said, "Friend, what are you seeking here?" Just by the nearness of a Master like Bayazid, even the thief could not lie - the very presence was such; he felt the love. And when Bayazid said, "Friend, what are you seeking here?" the man said, "I am sorry to say, but I must say - and I cannot lie to you - that I am a thief and I have come to find something." Bayazid said, "The effort is useless because I have been living in this house for thirty years, and I have not found anything. But if you can find anything, just let me know."

If you come in me, you will not find me there at all, because I myself have been living in this house for many, many years and I have not found anybody there. That is my finding; that is what I have found - that there is nobody inside. The inside being is a non-being. The deeper you go, the less you will find anything like the self. And when you reach to the deepest core of it, it is just emptiness, pure emptiness, just a vast sky of nothingness. So how can balance exist there, and how can imbalance exist there?

Patanjali is one of the most extraordinary men; I am not. Patanjali is just the opposite. If you tell Patanjali to speak on me, he will not be able; he is too full of himself. But if you ask me to speak on Patanjali, on Tilopa, on Bodhidharma, on Buddha, on Mahavira, Jesus Christ - simple, very simple. Because I am absolutely empty, I can become available to anybody; I can allow anybody to speak through me. Just a hollow bamboo - anybody can sing a song through it; it can become a flute.

So I am not a combination of poetry, mysticism, or logic or anything. I am not a balance at all. But remember, I am not an imbalance also; I am a neti neti - what the Upanishads call "neither this nor that". That's why I am available to anybody. If Patanjali insists he can speak through me; there is no trouble, there is no resistance.

That's why you are always puzzled when I speak on Patanjali. He becomes the very climax of all existence. Then I forget about Buddha and Mahavira and Jesus and Mohammed, as if they never existed, as if only Patanjali has existed, because in that moment I am available to Patanjali in my totality. Nothingness only can do that. So this is for the first time it is happening. Otherwise, you can not find Jesus to speak on Krishna, or Krishna to speak on Buddha.

Mahavira and Buddha lived in the same time, in the same country, in the same part of the country. They moved in a small territory in Bihar continuously for forty years. Contemporaries, sometimes they were together in the same village. Once they stayed in the same dharamsala but never spoke to each other. They have something within them. They have to say something of their own; they are not available to others.

I have nothing to say of my own just a hollow bamboo. If you ever want to make statues of me, there is a very simple process: you put a hollow bamboo. That will be my statue; you can remember me through it. No need to make anything of it - just an emptiness, just a vast sky. Any bird can fly and the sky has no conditions that: only swans from Manasarovar will be allowed, and crows? - no, they are not allowed. The sky is available to everybody, swan or crow. A beautiful bird or an ugly bird - the sky makes no conditions.

Patanjali has a message; I have none. Or you can say nothingness is my message, and in being nothing you will be closer to me. And in being nothing, you will attain to me. And in being nothing you will be able to understand me.

The fourth question:

No. If you feel quite hopeless about love, you should have to feel absolutely hopeless about prayer, because prayer is nothing but the very essence of love. Love is like a flower and prayer is like a fragrance. If you cannot attain to the flower, how can you attain to the fragrance? Nobody can bypass love. And nobody should try, because there awaits failure and nothing else.

Why you are so hopeless about love? The same problem will come with prayer because prayer means love with the whole, the cosmos. So go deeper in the problem of love, and solve it before you think about prayer. Otherwise your prayer will be false; it will be a deception. Of course only you are deceived, nobody else. There is no God listening to your prayer. Unless your prayer is love, the whole will remain deaf. It cannot open in any other way - love is the key.

So what is the problem? Why one feels so hopeless about love? Too much ego will not allow you to love anybody. Too much egocentric, too much selfish, self-oriented, self-obsessed - then love will not be possible because one has to bend a little, and one has to lose one's territory a little. One has to surrender a little in love. Howsoever little, but one has to surrender a part. And in certain moments one has to surrender completely.

To surrender to the other is the problem. You would like the other to surrender to you, but the other is also in the same plight. Two egos when they meet, try that the other should surrender, and both are trying the same. Love becomes a hopeless thing.

Love is not to force the other to surrender to you. It is hate that forces the other to surrender to you: that is the nature of hate, because to force the other to surrender to you is to destroy the other. It is a sort of murder. Love is to surrender yourself to the other not because you are forced to surrender, no; it is a voluntary thing - you simply enjoy it - not that you are forced. Never surrender to anybody who is forcing you to surrender, because that will be suicide. Never surrender to anybody who is manipulating you, because that will be slavery, not love. Surrender on your own, and the quality immediately changes.

When you surrender on your own it is a gift, gift of the heart. And when you surrender on your own, voluntarily, simply you give yourself to the other; something for the first time opens in your heart. For the first time you have the glimpse of love. You have only heard the word, you don't know what it means. Love is one of those words everybody uses and nobody knows what it means.

There are a few words, like "prayer", "love", "God", "meditation": these words you can use, but you don't know what is their meaning because their meaning is not in the dictionary. Otherwise, you can consult a dictionary; that is not difficult. Their meaning is in a certain way of life. Their meaning is in a certain transformation within you. Their meaning is not linguistic; their meaning is existential. Unless you know by experience, you don't know - and there is no other way to know it. When you surrender on your own, unconditionally... because if there is any condition it is not a surrender at all; then it is a bargain. Even if this condition is there, that "I will surrender to you if you surrender to me," then too it is not a surrender. It may be business, bargain, but not surrender.

Surrender doesn't belong to the market. It is not part of the economics at all. Surrender means unconditional: "I surrender because I enjoy; I surrender because it is so beautiful, I surrender because in surrendering, suddenly my misery disappears." When you surrender, the misery disappears because the misery is the shadow of the ego. When you surrender, the ego is not there. How the misery can exist? That's why love is so happy.

Whenever somebody is in love, suddenly, as if spring has come within the heart, the birds have started singing which were silent and you have never heard them. And suddenly everything within has bloomed and you are full of a fragrance which doesn't belong to this earth. Love is the only ray on this earth which belongs to the beyond.

So you cannot avoid love and reach to prayer, because love is the beginning of the prayer. It is as if you are asking, "Can we avoid the beginning and reach the end?" It is not possible. It has never happened and never will happen.

What is the problem in love? First, you cannot surrender. If you cannot surrender in love, how you will surrender in prayer? - because prayer demands total surrender. Love is not so demanding.

Love demands, but even a partial surrender will do. Even if you can surrender part, even if you can surrender sometimes, that will also do. Even for few seconds you can surrender - in those few seconds a door will open and you will have a glimpse of the other world. Love is not so demanding. And if you cannot fulfill the demands of love how you will fulfill the demands of prayer? Prayer is absolutely demanding. It will not accept you if you surrender part. It will not accept you if you surrender sometimes and sometimes not. Prayer is very much demanding. One has to go through love. If you ask me, love is a school for prayer - the training, the discipline, getting ready for the higher jump. I am absolutely for love.

People have tried: what you are asking, people have tried through the centuries. People who couldn't love tried to pray. All the monasteries are full of those people - failures in love, feeling hopeless in love, they thought they could at least try towards prayer. But if you are a failure in love, how can you pray? In the monasteries, thousands of people all over the world are doing their prayer, but they don't know what love is. Then prayer becomes just verbal chattering. Then they simply from the head go on talking to God. With God, communication is of the heart. With God, you cannot talk through the head because the God doesn't know any language that your head knows. He knows only one language, and that is love.

That's why Jesus says, "Love is God," because love is the only way to reach him, and love is the only language he understands. If you speak in English, he will not understand. If you speak in German, absolutely not... no language of the earth.

Why I say, "If you speak German, absolutely not"? - because German is more male-oriented language. The Germans call their country "fatherland". The whole world calls their country "motherland". The more male-oriented a language, the less God can understand it. In fact, God understands the feminine mind more than the male mind, because feminine mind is nearer the heart than the male mind. Poetry he understands more than prose. In fact, he understands emotions more than thoughts. He understands tears more, smiles more than concepts. If you can weep wholeheartedly, he will understand. If you can dance he will understand. But if you go on talking in words, they are just being thrown into emptiness - nobody understands.

God understands silence, and love is very silent. In fact, whenever two persons are in love, they would like to sit silently together. When the love disappears, then only language comes in. Husbands and wives continuously talk because love has disappeared; the bridge is no more there. Somehow they create a bridge of language. They talk about anything - rumors, gossips - because they cannot tolerate silence. Whenever they are silent, suddenly they are alone. The wife is not there, the husband is not there - there exists a vast gap. Through language they deceive that the gap is not there. In deep love, people are silent. There is no need to talk. They understand without talking to each other. They can hold each other's hands and sit silently. Prayer is also silent, but if you have never been silent in love, how you will be silent in prayer? It is a silence between you and the whole.

Love is silence between two persons; prayer is silence between one person and the whole. That whole is God. Love is a training; it is a school. I will never suggest you to avoid it. If you avoid it, you will never reach prayer. And while you will pray you will talk too much, but the heart will not be able to communicate, to commune. So howsoever hard the lesson, howsoever difficult to break the ice... but don't try to avoid love. Prayer is not an escape from love; don't make it an escape - many have done that and failed. You can go to the monasteries anywhere in the world and look at those fools who have failed, failed because they tried to avoid love.

One has to go through love, otherwise you will remain angry at life. How you will be able to pray? You will remain in deep rejection of life. How will you accept and pray? You will remain a condemner; acceptance will not be possible. In love, for the first time you accept. In love, for the first time you understand that meaning is there and life is meaningful. In love, for the first time you feel that you are at home in the world, not a stranger, not an outsider. In love, for the first time a small home is created. In love, for the first time you feel peace and somebody loves you and somebody feels happy with you; for the first time you accept yourself also. Otherwise, how will you accept yourself? In life, from the very childhood you have been trained to condemn yourself, to reject. "Don't do this, don't be like that" - and everybody is preaching at you and everybody is trying that you are absolutely wrong and you have to improve yourself.

It happened: Mulla Nasrudin's wife was very ill. She was in the hospital. Mulla used to go every day, and he will ask the doctors and the nurses and they will say, "She is improving." And her condition was getting worse and worse every day, but the doctors continued and the nurses continued, that "She is improving, she is improving." And I used to ask Mulla Nasrudin, "How is your wife?" He said, "The doctors say, 'Perfect! - she is improving.' The nurses say she is improving, so she must be coming back home soon." Then one day she suddenly died. So I asked him, "What happened, Nasrudin?" He shrugged his shoulders and said, "I think she couldn't stand all that improvement. It was too much."

Everybody is improving you: the parents, the teachers, the priests, the society, the civilization. Everybody is improving, and nobody can stand that much improvement. And the total result is that you never attain to be the ideal man, you simply become a condemner of yourself. The ideal is impossible, the ideal is imaginary. The ideal is simply not possible, abstract, not natural. And everybody is being forced, pulled and pushed from every direction to improve. From everywhere comes the message that whatsoever you are, you are wrong - improve. That creates a self- condemnation; you reject yourself, you are not worthy - worthless, rubbish, rot. That is in the mind.

Only love never tries to improve you, accepts you as you are. When somebody loves you, you are simply perfect, the ideal, as you are. And if lovers are also trying to improve each other, they are not lovers. Again the whole game is there. Love accepts you as you are, and through this acceptance happens a transformation. For the first time you are at ease and you can relax, and this is going to be the prayer finally.

Then only, when you are at ease and relaxed, a gratitude arises. A gratitude just to be is so beautiful and ecstatic. You don't demand anything in prayer, you simply are thankful. Prayer is a thanksgiving; it is not begging something from the God. Beggars are never people who can pray. It is a thankfulness, a deep gratitude, that "Whatsoever you have given is too much. In fact I never deserved it." The whole life, through love, becomes a gift of the divine, and then you feel grateful. And out of gratitude arises the fragrance of prayer.

It is a very subtle process: from love, acceptance of yourself and the other; through love's acceptance, a transformation, and a vision that howsoever, whatsoever you are, you are perfect and the whole accepts you. Then a gratitude; then arises a prayer. It is not verbal; simply the whole heart is filled with gratitude. Prayer is not an act, prayer is a way of being. When there is really prayer, you are not praying, you are the prayer. You sit in prayer, you stand in prayer, you move in prayer, you breathe in prayer.

The glimpse will come from love. Have you ever been in love? - then you breathe in love, then you walk in love. Then your step has a quality of dance in it even visible to others. Then your eyes have a light, a different light to them. Then your face has a glow. Then your voice has a song in it.

A man who has never loved walks as if he is dragging himself. A man who has loved floats as if on the wings of the wind. A man who has never loved cannot dance because he doesn't know what dance is, in his inside being. He can never be ecstatic-sad, closed, almost dead, almost living in a grave. Love allows you to move to the other, and when the energy moves to the other you become dynamic. When the energy moves to the other, from the other to you, suddenly you create a bridge between you and the other. And this bridge will give you the first glimpse, the first blueprint of what prayer is. It is a bridge between you and the whole.

I cannot conceive how it is possible for anybody to go to the prayer without going through love, so don't be scared of love. Die into love so that you can be reborn. Lose yourself into love so that you can become again fresh and young. Otherwise there is no possibility of prayer. And don't feel hopeless about love, because that is the only hope. Says Jesus, "If the salt loses its saltiness, then how it can be salted again?" And I say unto you, if love becomes hopeless, then there is no hope, because love is the only hope. Then where you will get the hope again?

Don't drop the effort, don't accept the failure. There exists somebody for you; you exist for somebody. If the thirst is there, there must be water. If the hunger is there, there must be food. If the desire is there, there must be a way to fulfill it. Don't feel hopeless. Revive your hope again, because only a hopeless person is irreligious; only a hopeless person is atheistic. Love is the only hope. Through love, many new hopes will arise, because love is the seed of the ultimate hope - that is God. Make every effort; don't settle in that hopelessness. It may be arduous but it is worth, because without it you are stuck, and you will be thrown back and back again into life unless you learn the lesson of love. And once love is learned, prayer is so easy. In fact, there is no need to learn prayer; it comes by itself if you love.

The fifth question:

Just like me! What I am doing here? fighting with your neurosis. The ego is the source of all neurosis, because the ego is the center of all falsity, of all perversions. The whole problem is with the ego. If you live with the ego, sooner or later you will become neurotic. You will have to become, because ego is the basic neurosis. Ego says, "I am the center of the world," which is false, mad. Only if there is a God, he can say "I". We are only parts, we cannot say "I". The very assertion "I", is neurotic. Drop the I and all neurosis disappears.

In between you and the mad people in the madhouses there is not vast difference - only a difference of degrees, not of any quality, quantity. You may be ninety-eight degrees, and they have gone beyond hundred. You can go any time; the difference is not vast.

In the madhouses sometimes, go and watch, because that can become your future also.

Watch a madman. What has happened to him? That has happened to you in part. What happens to a madman? - his ego becomes so real that everything else becomes false. The whole world is illusory; only his inner world, the ego and its world, is true. You may go to visit a friend in the madhouse, and he may not look at you; he will not even recognize you, but he is talking to his invisible friend - to you - who is sitting by his side. You are not recognized, but a figment of his mind is recognized as the friend, and he is talking and he is answering.

A madman is a man whose ego has taken total possession. And just the opposite is the case with an enlightened man who has dropped the ego completely. Then he is natural. Without ego you are natural, like a river flowing to the ocean, or the wind passing through the pines, or the cloud floating in the sky. Without the ego you are again part of this vast nature, loose and natural. With the ego there is tension. With the ego you are separate. With the ego you have cut yourself from all relationships. Even if you make a move in a relationship, you make it very guardedly. The ego will not allow you to move in anything totally. It is always withholding itself.

If you think you are the center of existence, then you are mad. If you think you are just a wave in the ocean, part of the whole, one with the whole, then you can never get mad. If Patanjali was here, he will do the same that I am doing. And remember well that situations differ, but man is almost the same.

Now new technology is there. They were not in the days of Patanjali - new houses, new gadgets. Everything has changed around man, but man remains the same. In the days of Patanjali also, man was the same, almost the same. Nothing much has changed in man. This has to be remembered, otherwise one starts feeling that the modern man is some way condemned-no. It may be that you are mad after a car; you would like a sports car and you are very tense and much anxiety is created by it. Of course, there were no cars in Patanjali's days, but people were mad after bullock-carts. Even now if you go to an Indian village, the man who has a fast bullock-cart is just like a man who has a Rolls Royce in London: bullock-cart or Rolls Royce makes no difference; the ego is fulfilled the same way. In a village, the bullock-cart will do the same. Objects don't make much difference. The mind of man, if egocentric, will find something or other always, so that is not the problem.

Modern man is not modern. Only the modern world is modern. Man remains very ancient and old. You think you are modern? When I look at your faces I recognize ancient faces. You have been here many many lives and you have remained almost the same. You have not learned anything because you are doing again the same - again and again the same rut. Objects have changed but the man remains just the same. Nothing much has changed. Nothing much can change unless you take the step to change it. Unless transformation becomes your heart, unless transformation becomes your very throbbing of the heart and you understand the stupidity of the mind and you understand the misery of it... and then you take a jump out of it.

Mind is very old. Mind is very, very ancient. In fact, mind can never be new, it can never be modern. Only a no-mind can be new and modern because only no-mind can be fresh every moment fresh. No-mind never accumulates. The mirror is always clean; no dust accumulates on it. Mind is an accumulator; it goes on accumulating. Mind is always old; mind can never be new. Mind is never original; only no-mind is original.

That's why even scientists feel that when a certain discovery is made, it is not made by the mind but only in the gaps where mind doesn't exist - in sleep sometimes.

Just like Archimedes who was trying and trying to solve a particular mathematical problem and couldn't solve it - he tried and tried, with the mind of course, but the mind can give you only answers which the mind knows. It cannot give you anything unknown. It is a computer: whatsoever you have fed to it, it can reply. You cannot ask anything new. How the poor mind is expected to reply something new? It is simply not possible! If I know your name, I can remember it, because mind is memory and remembrance. But if I don't know your name and I try and try, how can I remember which is not there?

Then suddenly it happened. Archimedes worked and worked, and hard, because the king was waiting for him. And one morning he was taking his bath, naked, relaxing in the water, and suddenly it bubbled up, surfaced as if from nowhere. He jumped out of the bath. He was in a state of no-mind. He couldn't even think that he is naked because that is part of the mind. He couldn't think that going naked on the street people will think him mad. That mind which is given by the society was not there, it was not functioning. He was in a state of no-mind, a sort of satori. He ran into the street shouting "Eureka, eureka!" - shouting, "I have found it!" - and people of course thought that he has gone mad:'What you have found, naked, running into the street?" He was caught hold because he was trying to enter the palace of the king shouting, "Eureka!" He would have been imprisoned. Friends got hold of him, brought him home and said, "What are you doing? Even if you have found something, then go in proper dress, otherwise you will be in trouble."

Between two moments of mind there is always a gap of no-mind. Between two thoughts there is a gap, an interval of no-thought. Between two clouds you can see the blue sky. Your nature is no-mind; there is no thought, nothing... vast emptiness, the blueness of the sky. Mind is just floating on the surface.

And this has been happening to many people: it happened to Madame Curie, she got the Nobel Prize for a moment of no-mind. She was working, again on a mathematical problem - worked hard. Nothing was coming out; months passed. Then one night, suddenly she got up in sleep, went to the table, wrote the answer went back to her bed, forgot everything about it. In the morning when she came to the table she could not believe: the answer was there. Who has written it? Then by and by she remembered, as if like a dream: "It happened in the night..." She had come and the handwriting was hers.

In deep sleep the mind drops; the no-mind functions. Mind is always old; no-mind is always fresh, young, original. No-mind is always like the dewdrop in the morning absolutely fresh, clean. Mind is always dirty. It has to be, it collects dirt. The dirt is the memory.

When I look at you, I see your mind is very ancient, many past lives collected there. But I can see deeper also. There is your no-mind, which doesn't belong to time at all, so neither it is ancient nor modern. Man is always old, but something exists in man - the consciousness - which is neither old nor new, or, it is absolutely always new.

The sixth question - and very important:

It is a little complicated. First, there are many types. There is a sort of doziness which comes if you listen to me very attentively. Then it is not like a sleep, it is more like hypnosis. You are in such deep tune with me that your mind starts non-functioning. You simply listen to me, and just listening to me becomes like a lullaby. A certain doziness is there if this is the case, but this will come only when you listen to me very attentively. Then it is not a sleep. It is beautiful and you should not feel guilty about it. If it is created by listening to me then there is no problem. In fact, this should be the case, because then you are listening deeper and deeper. Then I am penetrating you very, very deep, and you are feeling like a doze because the mind is not functioning. You are relaxed. It is a state of let-go. You are allowing me to penetrate you deeper and deeper. This is good; nothing is wrong in it. You feel it like dozy because it is a passivity; you are not active, and there is no need.

While you are listening to me, there is no need to be active, because if you are active your mind will go on interpreting. This is beautiful and no need to feel guilty - allow it - and no need to make any effort to disturb it. I will be planted deep inside you. This is helpful.

In India we have a special term for it. Patanjali calls it "yoga tandra" - sleep that comes by yoga. In anything, if you do it very totally, you feel very relaxed, and that relaxation feels like sleep. It is not sleep; it is more akin to hypnosis. The word hypnosis also means sleep, but a different type of sleep in which two persons are in such a deep tune... If I hypnotize you, you will be able to listen to me, not to anything else. The hypnotized person listens to the hypnotizer only, nobody else. Exclusively he is focused. In this exclusive focusedness, the conscious drops and the unconscious functions. Your depth listens to my depth; it is a communication from depth to depth. The mind is not needed. But the point to remember is that you should be listening to me very attentively; then only will it happen.

Then there is a second type of sleep: you are not listening to me, and just by sitting here for so long you feel sleepy, not listening to me, or whatsoever I am saying is too much for you; you feel a little bored. Or whatsoever I am saying feels so monotonous - it is, because whatsoever I say is a single note. I am singing the single note in millions of ways: Patanjali, Buddha, Jesus are just excuses. I am singing a single note. It is monotonous. If you feel that it is monotonous and you feel a little bored or you cannot understand it, it is too much for you, or it goes above your head, then too you can feel sleepy, but that sleep is not good. Then there is no need to come to listen to me because in fact you are not listening, you are asleep. So why be physically here? - there is no need.

There is a third type also. The second type you must really feel guilty and make more effort to be aware and listening to me. Then it is possible the first type may happen. Then there is a third type that is not related either with-listening or your being in a state of monotony. It comes from your physiology. You may not be sleeping well in the night. Very few people are sleeping well, so when you have not slept well in the night you are a little tired. You are hungry for sleep, and sitting here in one posture with the same man again and again, listening to the same voice again and again, your body starts feeling sleepy. That comes from your body.

If that is the case, then do something with your sleep. It should be made deeper. Time is not much of a question - you can sleep for eight hours, and if it is not deep you will feel hungry for sleep, starved - depth is the question.

Every night before you go to sleep do a small technique, and that will help tremendously. Put the lights off, sit in your bed ready to sleep, but sit for fifteen minutes. Close your eyes and then start any monotonous nonsense sound, for example: la, la, la - and wait for the mind to supply new sounds. The only thing to be remembered is those sounds or words should not be of any language that you know. If you know English, German, Italian, then they should not be of Italian, German, English. Any other language is allowed that you don't know - Tibetan, Chinese, Japanese. But if you know Japanese then it is not allowed, then Italian is wonderful. Speak any language that you don't know. You will be in a difficulty for few seconds only for the first day, because how do you speak a language you don't know? It can be spoken, and once it starts, any sounds, nonsense words, just to put the conscious off and allow the unconscious to speak...

When the unconscious speaks, the unconscious knows no language. It is a very, very old method. It comes from the Old Testament. It was called in those days glossolalia, and few churches in America still use it. They call it "talking in tongues". And it is a wonderful method, one of the most deep and penetrating into the unconscious. You start by la, la, la, and then anything that comes you go on. Just for the first day you will feel a little difficult. Once it comes, you know the knack of it. Then for fifteen minutes, use the language that is coming to you, and use it as a language; in fact you are talking in it. This will relax the conscious so deeply; fifteen minutes and you then just simply lie down and go to sleep. Your sleep will become deeper. Within weeks you will feel a depth in your sleep, and in the morning you will feel completely fresh. Then, even if I try, I cannot put you to sleep.

The first type is beautiful; the third type is a sort of physiological starvation - it is ill. The third type has to be treated; the first type has to be allowed. The second type you must feel guilty about it and make every effort to get out of it.

The last question:

Yes, the modern man is in a hurry, and just the opposite will be helpful. If you are in a hurry, then Patanjali will be helpful because he is not in a hurry. He is the antidote. Your mind needs an antidote. Look at it this way: because the western mind particularly - and now no other mind exists, only the western mind less or more everywhere, even in the East - is in a hurry. That's why it has become interested in Zen, because Zen gives the promise of sudden enlightenment. Zen looks like instant coffee, and it has an appeal. But I know Zen won't help because the appeal is not because of Zen, the appeal is because of hurry. And then you don't understand Zen.

In the West, whatsoever is rumored about Zen is almost false; it fulfills a need of the mind who is in a hurry, but it is not true to Zen. If you go to Japan and ask Zen people, they wait for thirty years, forty years for the first satori to happen. Even for sudden enlightenment one has to work hard. The enlightenment is sudden, but the preparation is very long. It is just like you boil water: you heat the water; at a certain degree, hundred degrees, the water evaporates suddenly. Right - evaporation is sudden, but heating you have to bring it up to hundred degrees. The heating will take time, and heating depends on your intensity.

And if you are in a hurry you don't have any heat, because in a hurry you would have to have Zen satori, or enlightenment, just by the way, if it can be attained, if it can be purchased. Running, you would like to snatch it from somebody's hands. It cannot be done that way. There are flowers, seasonal flowers: you sow the seeds and within three weeks the plants are getting ready, but within three months the plants have blossomed, gone, disappeared. If you are in a hurry, then it will be better to be interested in drugs than into meditation, yoga, Zen, because drugs can give you dreams - instant dreams - sometimes of hell, sometimes of heaven. Then marijuana is better than meditation. If you are in a hurry, then nothing eternal can happen to you because the eternal needs eternal waiting. If you are asking for eternity to happen to you, you have to be ready for it. Hurry won't help.

There is a Zen saying: If you are in a hurry, you will never reach. You can even reach just by sitting, but in a hurry you can never reach. The very impatience is a barrier.

If you are in a hurry then Patanjali is the antidote. If you are not in any hurry then Zen is also possible. This statement will look contradictory, but this is so. This is how reality is, contradictory. If you are in a hurry, then you will have to wait for many lives before the enlightenment happens to you. If you are not in a hurry, then right now it can happen.

I will tell you one story that I like very much. It is one of the old Indian stories. Narada, a messenger between earth and heaven, a mythological figure, was going to heaven. He is just like a postman; he goes up and down continuously, bringing messages from above, bringing messages from down. He continues his work. He was going to heaven and just he passed one very, very old monk sitting under a tree with his mala, his beads, chanting the name of Rama. He looked at Narada and said, "Where are you going? Are you going to heaven? Then do me a favor. Ask God how much more I have to wait" - even in the very question, the impatience is there - "and remind him also," said the old monk, "that for three lives I have been doing meditation and austerities, and everything that can be done I have done, there is a limit to everything." A demand, expectation, impatience... Narada said, "I am going and I will ask."

And just by the side of the old monk, under another tree there is a young man dancing and singing the name of God. Just as a joke Narada asked the young man, "Would you also like that I should ask about you, how much time it will take?" But the young man was so much in his ecstasy that he didn't bother, he didn't answer.

Then after few days, Narada came back. He told the old man that "I asked God, and he laughed and he said, 'At least three lives more."" The old man threw his mala and said, "This is injustice! And whosoever says God is just is wrong!" He was very angry. Then Narada went to the young man who was still dancing and said, "Even if you have not asked, I asked, but I am afraid to tell you now, because that old man has got into such an anger he would have even hit me." But the young man was still dancing, not interested. Narada told him that "I asked him, and God said that tell that young man that he should count the leaves of the tree under which he is dancing; the same number he will have to be born again before he attains.' " The young man listened, went into such ecstasy, laughed and jumped and celebrated. He said, "So soon? Because the earth is full of trees, millions and millions. And just these leaves, and the same number? So soon? God is infinite compassion, and I am not worthy of it! - and it is said immediately he attained. That very moment the body fell. That very moment he became enlightened.

If you are in a hurry, it will take time. If you are not in a hurry, it is possible right this moment.

Patanjali is the antidote for those who are in a hurry, and Zen is for those who are not in a hurry. And just the opposite happens: people who are in hurry, they become interested in Zen, and people who are not in any hurry, they become interested in Patanjali. This is wrong. If you are in a hurry, then Patanjali... because he will pull you down and bring you to your senses, and he will talk of a path so long he will be a shock to you. And if you allow him to enter you, your hurry will disappear.

That's why I am talking; I am talking on Patanjali because of you. You are in a hurry and I hope Patanjali will bring down your impatience; he will pull you down, back to the reality. He will bring you to your senses.