The fall of the idiots

KNOWLEDGE IS indirect, knowing is direct. Knowledge is through many mediums; it is not reliable. Knowing is immediate, without any medium. Only knowing can be reliable.

This distinction has to be remembered. Knowledge is like a messenger comes and tells something to you: the messenger may have misunderstood the message; the messenger may have added something of his own into the message; the messenger may have dropped something from the message; the messenger may have forgotten something from the message; the messenger may have added his own interpretations into it, or the messenger may be simply cunning and deceptive. And you have to rely on the messenger. You don't have any direct approach to the source of the message - this is knowledge.

Knowledge is not reliable, and not only one messenger is involved in knowledge, but four. Man is behind many closed doors, imprisoned. First knowledge comes to the senses; then the senses carry it through the nervous system, it reaches to the brain, and then the brain delivers it to the mind, and then the mind delivers it to you, to the consciousness. It is a vast process, and you don't have any direct approach to the source of knowledge.

It happened in the Second World War: a soldier was hurt very deeply in his toe and the leg, and the toe was in severe pain. The pain was so much the soldier became unconscious. The surgeons decided to operate the whole leg. It could not be saved it was so damaged, so they cut it. The soldier was unconscious so he never knew what happened.

Next morning when the soldier came back to consciousness, he again complained about the pain in his toe. Now this is ridiculous: when the leg doesn't exist, toe and all the leg has been completely removed, how pain can exist in a toe which doesn't exist? The nurse laughed and she said, "You are imagining, or you are in a hallucination." She uncovered the blanket and showed to the soldier that "Your whole leg is removed, so in the toe no pain can exist now, because the toe doesn't exist." But the soldier persisted. He said, "I can see that the leg is not there and I can understand your viewpoint, and I am ridiculous - but I still say the pain is severe and unbearable."

Doctors were called; surgeons consulted amongst themselves. This was absolutely absurd! - the mind is playing some trick - but they tried to understand what is happening. Then the whole body was X-rayed, and this was the thing they came upon: the nerve that was carrying the message of the pain in the toe was still carrying it. It was trembling in the same way as it should tremble if there was a toe and there was pain in it.

And when the nerve is bringing the message, of course the brain has to decode it. The brain has no way to check whether the nerve is carrying a right message, a wrong message, real, unreal. The brain cannot come out and check the nerve. The brain has to depend on the nerve, and the brain decodes it to the mind. Now the mind has no way to check the brain - one has simply to believe it - and the mind delivers the knowledge to the consciousness. Now the consciousness suffers for a toe which doesn't exist.

This is what Hindus call MAYA. "The world doesn't exist," Hindus say, "and you are suffering terribly, suffering for something which doesn't exist." This is how the mechanism functions of knowledge. It is very difficult in this process to check anywhere unless you can come out of yourself. Mind cannot do that because the mind cannot exist outside the body. It has to depend on the brain, it is rooted in the brain. The brain cannot do it because the brain is rooted in the whole nervous system; it cannot come out. Only at one point the possibility exists to check, and that is at consciousness.

Consciousness is not rooted in the body; the body is just an abode. As you come out of your house and go in, consciousness can come out of the house and go in. Only consciousness can come out of this whole mechanism and look at things, what is happening.

In nirvichara samadhi this happens - thoughts cease. The connection between the mind and the consciousness is cut, because thought is the connection. Without thought you don't have any mind, and when you don't have any mind the connection with the brain is broken. And when you don't have any mind and the connection with the brain is broken, the connection with the nervous system is broken. Your consciousness now can float out and in; all doors are open. In nirvichara samadhi, when thoughts cease, consciousness is free to move and float. It becomes like a cloud without any roots, without any home. It becomes free of the mechanism you have lived with. It can come out, it can go in; there is no hindrance on its path.

Now direct knowledge is possible. Direct knowledge is knowing. Now you can see immediately, without any messengers between you and the source of know!edge. It is a tremendous phenomenon when your consciousness comes out and looks at a flower. You cannot imagine because it is not part of imagination; you cannot believe what happens! When the consciousness can look direct to the flower, for the first time the flower is known, and not only the flower, through the flower the whole existence. In a small pebble, the all is hidden; in a small leaf dancing in the wind, the whole dances. In a small flower by the side of the road, the whole has a smile.

When you come out of your prison of senses, nervous system, brain, mind, layers and layers of walls, suddenly individuals disappear. A vast energy in millions of forms... and every form indicating towards the formless, and every form melting and merging into other forms - a vast ocean of formless beauty, truth, goodness. Hindus call it sat-chit-ananda: that which is, that which is beautiful, that which is good, that which is blissful. This is direct perception, aprokshanubhuti, immediate knowing.

Otherwise, all your knowing is indirect, depends on messengers which are not very reliable - cannot be. Their very nature is unreliable. Why? Your hand touches something; now the hand is an unconscious thing. From the very beginning an unconscious part of you takes the message. Intelligence is hidden behind, and on the door an idiot is sitting, and the idiot takes the message. The idiot is the receptionist. Hand is not conscious, and the hand touches something and receives the message. Now through the nerves the message travels. Nerves are not conscious; they don't have any intelligence - so from one idiot to another now the message is given. From the first idiot to the second much must have changed.

In the first place, the idiot cannot be hundred percent true because he cannot understand; understanding is not there. The hand is dull, very dull. It carries the work in a mechanical way, robot-like. The message is delivered much has changed already. The nerves take it to the brain and brain decodes it. And brain is not also very much intelligent, because brain is part of the body, it is the other end of the hand.

If you know something of physiology, you must be knowing that the right hand is connected to the left hemisphere of the brain and the left hand to the right hemisphere of the brain. Your two hands are two receiving ends of the brain. They function for the brain; they are extended brain. Your right hand carries message to the left brain, your left hand to the right brain. Brain is also not alert; brain is just like a computer - something is fed to it, it decodes, it is a mechanism. Sooner or later we will be able to make plastic brains, because they will be cheap and they will endure more and they will create less trouble. And they can be operated very easily and the parts can be changed: you can even have spare parts always with you.

Brain is a mechanism, and by the discovery of computers it has become perfectly clear that brain is a mechanism; it has no intelligence in it. Then the brain accumulates whole information, decodes it, gives the message to the mind. Your mind has a little intelligence; very little that, too... because your mind is not alert. Your hand is mechanical; your brain is mechanical; your nervous system mechanical, and your mind is asleep, as if drunk. So from one idiot to another idiot then finally to a drunkard the message reaches!

Gurdjieff used to give vast big dinners for his disciples, and the first toast was always for the idiots. These are the idiots.

And then this drunkard, half asleep, half awake, interprets it according to the past, because there is no other way. According to the past the mind interprets the present. Everything is going wrong because the present is always new and the mind is always old. But there is no other way; the mind cannot do anything else. It has accumulated much knowledge in the past through these same idiots, as unreliable as anything, and that past is brought to the present, and the present is understood through the past. Everything goes wrong. It is almost impossible to know anything through this process.

That's why Hindus call the whole world that is known through this process maya, illusion, dream- like; it is. You have not known the reality yet. These four messengers won't allow you, and you don't know how to avoid these messengers or how to come out into the open. The situation is as if you are closed in a dark cell, and just through the keyhole you are looking out, and the keyhole is not passive, the keyhole-is active - it interprets, it says, "No, you are wrong; this is not so, this is like this." Your hand interprets, your nervous system interprets, your brain interprets, and finally the drunkard interprets. And that interpretation is given to you and you live through that interpretation. This is the state of the ignorant mind, the state of the unenlightened.

In nirvichara samadhi, this whole state is shattered. You suddenly come out of this whole mechanism. You don't rely on it, you simply drop the whole mechanism. You come directly to the source of knowledge; you look immediately to the flower.

This is possible. This is possible only in the highest state of meditation, nirvichara, when thoughts cease. Thought is the link. When thoughts cease, the whole mechanism ceases, and you are separate. Suddenly you are no more imprisoned. You are not looking through the keyhole. You have come out into the world under the sky, open. You look at things as they are, and you will see that things don't exist; they were your interpretations. Only beings exist; there are no things in the world. Even a rock is a being, howsoever fast asleep, snoring; a rock is a being because the ultimate source is a being. All its parts are beings, souls. A tree is a being a bird is a being, a rock is a being. Suddenly, the world of things disappears. "Thing" is the interpretation of these idiots and the drunkard mind. Because of this process everything becomes dull. Because of this process only the surface is touched. Because of this process you miss the reality; you live in a dream.

You can create a dream in this way. Just try someday: your wife is sleeping, or your husband, or your child - just rub a cube of ice on the feet of the sleeping person. Do it just a little, not too much, otherwise he will be awakened - just a little and put it away. Immediately you will see the eyes under the lids are moving fast, what psychologists call REM, rapid eye movement. When the eyes are moving rapid, a dream has started. Because the person is seeing something, that's why the eyes are moving so fast. Then just in the middle of the dream, you wake the person and ask what he saw. Either he would have seen that he is passing through a river which is very cold, ice cold, or he is walking on snow, or he has reached on the Gourishankar: something like this he will dream. You created a dream because you deceived the first idiot, you touched at the feet, ice. Immediately the idiot started working, the second idiot was given the message, the third idiot decoded; the fourth, drunkard - which is also asleep now - immediately started a dream.

You can create dreams; you create many times, unknowingly. Your both hands are on your chest and you are Lying on your bed, and you feel that somebody is sitting on your chest, a monster. And when you open your eyes, nobody is there - your own hands, or a pillow.

The same is happening while you are awake. It makes no difference because the whole mechanism is the same; whether the eyes are opened or closed makes not much difference, because there can be no check on the process. Even if you want to check, you will have to go through the whole process itself. How can you check unless you can come out and see what is happening?

This possibility is the whole world of spirituality: that the final consciousness can come out. Drop the whole mechanism, look at the thing directly: "things" disappear. That's why Hindus say this world is not real, and for the real knower it disappears. Not that rocks will not be there and trees will not be there they will be there even more so, but they will be no more trees, no more rocks; they will be beings. Your mind turns beings into things: your wife is a thing to be used; your husband is a thing to be possessed; your servant is a thing to be exploited; your boss is a thing to be deceived. The mind, because of this whole idiotic process, turns every being into a thing. When you come out of the mind and have a look under the open sky, suddenly there is nothing at all. "Thingness" disappears.

When thoughts drop, the second thing to drop is the thing. Suddenly the whole world is full of beings, beautiful beings, supreme beings, because they all participate into the ultimate being of God. Definitions disappear - you cannot separate. All separation existed because of the mechanism. Suddenly you see a tree moving out of the earth, not separate - meeting with the sky, not separate, everything joined together; everybody is a member of everybody else. The whole world becomes a net of consciousness, millions and millions of consciousnesses, luminous, kindled from within, every house lighted. Bodies disappear because bodies belong to the world of things. Forms are there but they are no more material; they are forms of moving, dynamic energy, and they go on changing. That is what is happening.

You were a child, now you are young, now you are old. What is happening? - you don't have a fixed form. The form is continuously flowing and changing. A child is becoming a young man, the young man is becoming old, the old is moving into death.

Then you suddenly see: birth is not birth, death is not death. There are changing forms, and the formless remains the same. You can see that luminous formlessness always remaining the same, moving amidst millions of forms, changing, yet not changing; moving, yet not moving; becoming everything else and yet remaining the same. And that's the beauty and the mystery; then life is one - a vast ocean of life. Then you don't see alive beings and dead beings, no, because death doesn't exist. It is because of the mechanism, wrong interpretation.

Neither exists birth nor death. That which exists is birthless and deathless, eternal. But this is how it looks when you come out of the mind.

Now try to penetrate the sutras of Patanjali.

When senses are not used, when the keyhole is not used to look at the sky - because the keyhole will give its own frame to the sky and destroy everything the sky will not be bigger than the keyhole, cannot be. How can be your perspective bigger than your eyes? How can be your touch bigger than your hands, and how can be a sound deeper than your ears? - impossible! The eyes, ears, nose are keyholes: through them you are looking at reality. And suddenly you jump out of yourself, in nirvichara; for the first time the vastness, the infinity is known. Now the full perspective is attained. The beginning is not there, the end is not there. There are no boundaries in existence. It is unbounded; there are no limitations. All limitations belong to your senses; they were given by the senses. Existence itself is infinite; in all directions you go on and on and on. There is no end to it.

When the full perspective is attained, then for the first time the subtlest ego that was still clinging to you disappears. Because the existence is so vast - how can you cling to a small puny ego?

It happened: a very great egoist, a very rich man, a politician, came to Socrates. He had the biggest, most beautiful palace in Athens, in fact, in all of Greece. And you can see when an egoist walks, you can see when an egoist says something, the ego is always there, mixed in everything. He walked in a haughty way. He came to Socrates, talked to Socrates in a haughty way. Socrates talked for few minutes and he said, "Wait. Now there is an urgency first that has to be solved, then we will talk" - and he asked a disciple to bring the map of the world. The rich man, the politician, the egoist, couldn't understand what type of urgency has so suddenly arisen, and he couldn't see the point of bringing a map of the world. But soon he realized the point was there. Socrates asked, "Where is Greece in this big map of the world? - a small place. Where is Athens? - just a point." And then Socrates asked, "Where is your palace? Athens is a point. Where is your palace and where are you? And this map is only of the earth, and the earth is nothing. The sun is sixty thousand times bigger and our sun is a mediocre sun. Millions times bigger suns are there in the universe. Where will be our earth if we make a map of the solar system? - and our solar system is a very mediocre solar system. There are millions of solar systems. In one galaxy millions of suns and millions of solar systems. Where will be our earth if we make a map of the galaxy to which we belong? There are many millions of galaxies. Where will be our solar system? Where will be our sun?"

And now scientists say there is no end - galaxies upon galaxies continue. Wherever we move, there seems to be no end to it. With such vastness, how can you cling to the ego? It simply disappears like a dewdrop in the morning when the sun rises. When the vastness rises and the perspective is total, your ego simply disappears like a dewdrop. It is not even that big. It is a misconception given by the idiot messengers. Because of the tiny hole of senses, you seem to be too big, comparatively. When you come under the sky, suddenly the ego disappears. It was a creation of the keyhole, because the keyhole was so small, and through the keyhole the whole world was so small, you are so big behind it. Under the sky it simply disappears.

Socrates said, "Where is your palace on this map? Where are you?" The man could understand the point, but he asked, "What was the urgency in it?" Socrates says, "Urgency was there, because without understanding this there is no possibility of any dialogue; you waste my time and your time. Now if you have understood the point, then there is a possibility of dialogue. You can put aside this ego; it doesn't matter.

Under the vast sky your ego becomes simply irrelevant. It drops on its own accord. Even to drop it looks foolish; it is not even worth that. When the perspective is full, you disappear: this is the point to be understood. You are because the perspective is narrow. Narrower the perspective, the bigger the ego; blinder the person, the bigger the ego... No perspective, there exists perfect ego. When the perspective grows, ego gets smaller and smaller. When the perspective is perfect, ego simply is not found.

This is my whole effort here - to make the perspective so full that the ego disappears. That's why from many directions I go on hitting the wall of your mind, so at least few more keyholes in the beginning can be made. Through Buddha a new keyhole opens, through Patanjali another, through Tilopa still another. That is what I am doing. I don't want you to become a follower of Buddha, Tilopa or Patanjali, no, because a follower can never have a bigger perspective - his doctrine is his keyhole.

Talking about so many standpoints, what I am trying to do? - I am trying to do only this: to give you a bigger perspective. Many keyholes in the walls and you can look at the east and you can look at the west, you can look at the south and you can look at the north; and looking at the east you don't say, "This is the only direction," you know other directions are there. Looking at the east, you don't say that "This is the only true doctrine," because then the perspective becomes narrow. I am talking about so many doctrines so that you can be freed of all directions and all doctrines.

Freedom comes through understanding. The more you understand, the more you become free. And by and by, when you come to know that through so many holes your old keyhole has just become out of date, doesn't mean much, then an urge arises in you: what will happen if you break down all these walls and just simply run out? Even a single new hole and the whole perspective changes, and you come to know things which you have never known, not even imagined, not even dreamed. What will happen when all the walls disappear and you are direct face to face with reality under the open sky?

And when I say under the open sky, remember that the sky is not a thing, it is a nothingness. It is everywhere, but you cannot find it anywhere; it is a nothingness. It is simply a vastness. So I never say God is vast - God is vastness. Existence is not vast, because even a vast existence will have limitations. Howsoever vast, somewhere the boundary must be there. Existence is vastness.

That is the Hindu conception of brahma. Brahma means: that which goes on expanding. The very word brahma means that which goes on expanding. The expanse is brahma. In English there is no word; you cannot call brahma God because God is very limited, a concept. Brahma is not God. That's why in India we don't have a conception of one God, but many gods. Gods are many; brahma is one. And by brahma... the very word simply means the vastness, the expanse; you cannot exhaust it.

That is the meaning when I say under the sky, open sky: with no walls around it, no doctrines, no senses, no thoughts, no mind; you are simply out of the mechanism, for the first time naked, face to face with reality. Then its full perspective... an object is experienced in its full perspective, and to experience an object in its full perspective means that the object simply disappears and becomes the vastness. It may be a focusing of energy.

It is just like, go and look at a well. A quantity of water is there in the well; if you draw the water out, more water is supplied through the hidden springs. You don't see the springs. You go on taking the water out and new water is continuously flowing. The well is just a hole to the ocean. Many hidden springs are bringing water from all around. If you enter into the well, the well is nothing; really those springs are the things, the real things. The well is not a storage, because in a storage there are no springs. A storage is dead; a well is alive. A storage is a thing; a well is a person. Move now with the springs, go deeper into the springs, and finally you will reach to the ocean. And if you move through all the springs, then from all directions ocean is flowing in the well: it is all one.

If you look at an object with full perspective, the object is joined from every part of it with the infinity; it cannot exist without that. No object exists independent. There is no individuality. Individuality is just an interpretation. Everywhere the whole exists. If you make the part the whole, you are misguided. That is the standpoint of ignorance - then you make the part as if it is the whole. When you look at the part and the whole appears in it, this is the standpoint of an awakened consciousness.

No mediums are used; then many new things suddenly become possible. These new things are the siddhis, the powers. When you have no dependence on the senses, telepathy becomes simply possible. It is because of the senses telepathy is not possible. Clairvoyance becomes simply possible. It is because of the senses clairvoyance is not possible. Miracles become ordinary things. You can read anybody's thought; there is no need for him to say, no need for him to communicate it. With full perspective, everything becomes revealed, all the veils are taken up. Now there are no more veils; the whole reality is before you. Materialization of things becomes possible. Just whatsoever you want to do, immediately it happens; action is not needed. Action was needed because of the body.

That's what Lao Tzu means when he says, "The sage lives in inactivity and everything happens." Millions of things happen around a sage without his doing anything. He looks at you and suddenly there is a transformation - suddenly you are no longer the body; while he looks you have become a consciousness.

Of course this cannot be permanent with you, because when his look has moved you are again the body. Just by being near him you become citizens of some unknown world. You have a taste of the unknown through him because he is now the vast sky himself. Not doing anything, many things happen. But when these things become possible... the desires of the sage have disappeared before these things become possible, so a sage never does any miracle. And those who do miracles are not sages, because the doer is not there, and their miracles cannot be miracles; they are ordinary magical tricks. They are fooling people and deceiving them.

A miracle happens - cannot be done. It happens near the sage. Not that he produces Swiss-made watches... a sage producing Swiss-made watches is a fool. What you are doing? - and there is no miracle in fact, because no Satya Sai Baba is ready to do his miracles under scientific observation. He cannot do, because Swiss-made watches have to be purchased from the market, have to be hidden in the long robe or the Negro-style hairdo! Under scientific observation no Satya Sai Baba is ready to do anything, and if these people are really true, they should do first before scientific observation. These are just ordinary magical tricks. When a magician does it you think, "Just a trick, and when a Baba does it, suddenly it becomes a miracle. The trick is the same.

Miracles happen only when nirvichara samadhi is attained and you come out of your body, but they are never done. That is the basic quality of a miracle - it is never done, it happens, and when it happens, it never produces Swiss-made watches. To attain to nirvichara samadhi and then to produce Swiss-made watches does not make sense! It transforms beings; it helps others to attain to the highest.

Through a sage you can become more watchful, but you will not get a Swiss-made watch! Watchfulness happens; he makes you more aware, alert. He does not give you time, he gives you timelessness. But these things happen, nobody does them, because the door is gone. Only then the nirvichara samadhi is possible. With the doer, how can you cease thinking? - doer is the thinker. In fact, before you do anything you have to think; thinker comes first, doer follows. When the thinker and the doer both are gone and only a witnessing, only a consciousness has remained, then many things simply become possible, they happen.

When Buddha moves, many things happen, but they are not so visible. Only few people will be able to understand what is happening because they belong to a very unknown world. You don't have any language for it, no concepts for it, and you cannot see it unless it happens to you.

... IN THIS STATE KNOWLEDGE IS GAINED DIRECT, WITHOUT THE USE OF THE SENSES.

The mind has gone, and with the mind all the assistants, all the idiots. They are not functioning, they don't distract you, they don't disturb your perception, they don't create any types of hindrances, they don't project, they don't interpret. That whole thing is no more there. Simply consciousness is there before reality. And when this happens, consciousness faces consciousness, because there is no matter.

The most beautiful metaphor that I have come across is a mirror facing another mirror. What will happen when a mirror faces another mirror? One mirror mirrors another mirror; the other mirrors this mirror, and there is nothing in the mirror, only mirroring reflected millions of times into each other. The whole world becomes millions of mirrors - and you are also a mirror - and all mirrors empty, because nothing else is there to reflect, not even the frame of the mirror. There is just the mirror - two mirrors facing each other. That is the most graceful moment, the most blissful; grace descends, flowers shower, the whole celebrates that one more has attained, one more traveler has reached home.

These two words are very meaningful: "extent" and "intensity". When you see the world through the senses, brain and the mind, the world is very dull. It has no luminosity in it, dusty, and soon it becomes boring, and one feels fed up: the same trees, the same people, the same actions - everything just a rut. It is not so.

Sometimes in LSD, or marijuana or hashish, suddenly the tree becomes more green. You have never known it, that the tree was so green or the rose was so rosy.

When Aldous Huxley first took LSD, he was sitting before a chair. Suddenly, the chair became one of the most beautiful things in the world, and that chair has remained in his room for years and he had never looked at it. It was like a prism, many shades, many colors coming out of it; it was like a diamond. The chair was no more the same chair. Huxley was fascinated with the chair. He couldn't believe what happens when somebody takes a drug.

Drug is a violent effort to awake the idiots. So you shock them, and just they open their eyes a little, and just they look... "Yes!" And yet, the world become so beautiful, unbelievably beautiful, and then you are hooked, because then you think that it is because of the drug that the world is so beautiful. Now, when you are back and the trip is over, the world will look even more dirtier and more dull than ever, because now you have a comparison in the mind. For certain moments it had become a beautiful phenomenon; it was paradise itself. Even a person like Aldous Huxley got mixed up, and he started thinking that this was the samadhi Patanjali is talking about, and Kabir attained, and Buddha, and all the mystics of the world this is the samadhi.

Drugs can give you a false sense of samadhi, but you are still in the prison. Only because of the drug shock your mechanism functions with alertness, but this alertness will not be for long. More and more if you use it, then the quantity of the drug has to be raised higher and higher, because with the same amount you cannot shock the idiots again. They become attuned to it, then more and more quantities are needed. Drugs work only just like this.

Once Mulla Nasrudin purchased a mule, and he will not move, and he did everything... And the man from whom he has purchased has told him not to beat the mule because he is very sensitive. So he prayed, pursued and did everything, whatsoever he could do: it would not move, it would not listen. So he called the man: he said, "What type of mule you have given to me?" The man came with a stick and hit the mule hard on the head. Nasrudin said, "This is too much! - and you had told me not to hit him." The man said, "I am not hitting. Just to get his attention..." and immediately the mule started.

The idiots are there: LSD hits like a stick. For a few moments you get their attention, you have shocked them. The whole world becomes beautiful. But this is nothing, absolutely nothing. If you can attain to a single moment of nirvichara, then you will be able to know. The world becomes millions times more beautiful than any LSD can give you a glimpse. And it is not because you are hitting the mules on the head, it is simply you are no more inside the mules, you have come out, you have dropped the idiots. You face reality with your total nudity.

With no thoughts, you are nude. With no thoughts who are you? - a Hindu, a Mohammedan, a Christian, a communist? Who are you without thoughts? - a man, a woman? Who are you without thoughts? - religious, irreligious? You are nobody without thoughts. All clothes have dropped. You are simply a nudity, a purity, an emptiness. Then the perception is clear, and with that clarity comes extent and intensity. Now you can look at the vast expanse of existence. Now there is no barrier to your perception; your eyes have become infinite.

And intensity: you can look into any event, any person, because things are no more there. Even flowers are persons now, and trees are friends, and rocks sleeping souls. Now intensity happens; you can look through and through. When you can look through and through to a flower, then you will be able to understand what mystics have been saying, and poets.

Tennyson says that "If I can understand a flower, a small flower in its totality, I would have understood all." Right, absolutely right! If you can understand the part you will understand the whole, because the part is the whole. And when you try to understand the part, by and by, unknowingly, you will have moved to the whole, because the part is organic to the whole.

Once a great mystic, Eckhart, was asked that, "Why don't you write your biography? Your autobiography will be very, very helpful to people." He said, "Difficult, impossible - because if I write my autobiography it will be the autobiography of the whole, because everything is related. And that will be too much, and how one can write the autobiography of the whole?"

That's why those who have known have always resisted; they have never written autobiographies - except this man Paramahansa Yogananda, who has written AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF A YOGI. He is not a yogi at all. Otherwise a yogi cannot write the autobiography - it is impossible, simply impossible, because when somebody has attained to nirvichara samadhi, then he is a yogi, and then, the sheer vastness... Now he has become all. If you really want to write the autobiography, it will be the autobiography of the whole from the beginning - and there is no beginning - to the end - and there is no end.

In me, if I have become aware, the whole culminates. I don't start with my birth, I start from the very beginning, and there is no beginning, and I will go on to the very end, and there is no end. I am deeply involved with the whole. These few years that I am here are not the whole. I was before I was born, and I will be there after I am dead, so how to write? It will be a fragment, a page, not an autobiography, and a page absolutely absurd and out of context because other pages will be missing.

Few friends come to me and they also say, "Why not? You should write something about you," and I know the difficulty of Meister Eckhart. It is not possible, because from where to begin? - every beginning will be arbitrary and false; and where to end?-every ending will be arbitrary and false. And between two false things - the false beginning and the false end - how can real be managed? - not possible. Yogananda has done something which is not possible. He has done something which a politician can do, but not a yogi.

Intensity becomes so much that you look at a pebble, and through the pebble roads are moving into the whole, and through the pebble you can enter into the highest of mysteries. Everywhere is a door; and you knock, and everywhere you are accepted, welcome. From wherever you enter, you enter into the infinity because all the doors are of the whole. Individuals may be there like doors. Love a person and you enter infinity. Look at a flower and the temple has opened. Lie down on the sand, and every particle of sand is as vast as the whole. This is the higher mathematics of religion.

Ordinary mathematics says the part can never be the whole. This is one of the maxims of ordinary mathematics that start in the universities: the part can never be the whole, and the part is always smaller than the whole, and the part can never be bigger than the whole. These are simple maxims of mathematics, and everybody will agree this is so.

But then there is a higher mathematics. When you have come out of the senses - the world of higher mathematics, and these are the maxims: the part is always the whole; the part is never, never smaller than the whole, and-the absurdity of absurdities - sometimes the part is bigger than the whole.

Now I cannot explain it to you. Nobody can explain, but these are the maxims. Once you are out of your prison you will see that this is how things are. A pebble is part, a very small part, but if you look at it with a thoughtless mind, with simple consciousness, direct, suddenly the pebble becomes the whole - because only one exists. Because no part is in fact a part, or separate: the part depends on the whole, the whole depends on the part. It is not only that when the sun rises, flowers open; the other way is also true - when the flowers open, the sun rises. If there were no flowers, for whom the sun will rise? It is not only that the sun rises, the birds sing; the other way is as true as this-because the birds sing, the sun rises. Otherwise, for whom... ? Everything is interdependent; everything is related to everything else; everything is intertwined with everything else. Even if a leaf disappears, the whole will miss it; the whole will not be the whole then.

In one of his prayers, Meister Eckhart has said... and this is one of the rarest men that Christianity has produced. In fact, he looks a stranger in the world of Christians. He should have been born in Japan as a Zen Master, his insight is so clear, so deep, so beyond dogma.

He says in one of his prayers, "Yes, I depend on you, God, but you also depend on me. If I were not here, who will worship and who will pray? and you would have missed me." And he is true: it is not out of any ego, it is a simple fact. I know God must have nodded at that moment, "You are true, Eckhart, because if you were not there, I would not have been here."

The worshipper and the worshipped exist together; the lover and the beloved exist together. One cannot exist without the other, and this is the mystery of existence: everything exists together. This togetherness is God. God is not a person; this very togetherness of all, is God.

THE PERCEPTION GAINED IN NIRVICHARA SAMADHI TRANSCENDS ALL NORMAL PERCEPTIONS BOTH IN EXTENT AND INTENSITY.

From everywhere vastness opens, and from everywhere, the depth... Look into a flower, and there is abyss. You can fall into a flower and disappear. It has happened. It will be absurd but it is true. It is up to you to believe it or not.

It happened in China that the Emperor asked a great painter to come and do some painting in the palace. The painter came and he painted a view of Himalayas, very beautiful. Years he took, and he won't allow anybody to see unless it is complete. Then one day he told the Emperor that, "Now it is ready and you can come."

And the Emperor came with his ministers and generals and the court, and they were simply wonderstruck. They had never seen anything like that - it was so true. The peaks were exactly real, and there was a winding path around the peaks and the path disappeared somewhere. The Emperor asked, "Where this path leads?" The painter said, "I have not traveled on it, so how I should know?" But the Emperor insisted that it was not at all a question of traveling: "You have painted it!" So the painter said, "You wait. Let me go and see." And it is said that he went and disappeared into the picture, and never came back to tell the story where it leads.

It cannot happen, that I know; but in nirvichara it happens. In a flower is the abyss. Because of your intensity, you look into the flower and there is the depth, and you can fall into a flower and disappear forever. You look at a beautiful face with nirvichara and there is abyss in beauty, and you can be forever and forever lost; you can fall into it. Everything becomes a door, everything! With your intensity of look, all the doors are open for you.

This is where all the paths culminate, all the Buddhas meet: Tantra and Yoga, Zen and Hassid, Sufi and Baul - all the paths. Paths may be different - they are - but now this comes, the peak; here paths disappear. WHEN THIS CONTROLLING OF ALL OTHER CONTROLS IS TRANSCENDED... because Patanjali says that it is still a controlled state. Thoughts have disappeared: you can perceive now the existence, but still the perceiver and the perception, the object and the subject... With the body, the knowledge was indirect. Now it is direct, but still the knower is different from the known. The last barrier exists, the division. When even this is dropped, when this control is transcended, and the painter disappears in the painting and the lover disappears in the love, object and subject disappear. There is no knower and no known.

This is the last control, the nirvichara samadhi, samadhi where thoughts have ceased. This is the last control. Still you are, not as an ego, but as a self. Still you are separate from the known - just a very transparent veil, but it is there - and if you cling to this you will be born, because the division has not been transcended; you have not attained to non-duality yet. The seed of duality is still there, and that seed will sprout into new lives and the wheel of life and death will go on moving.

Then the wheel stops for you. Then there is no time, no space. Life and death have both disappeared like a dream. How to transcend this last control? - it is the most difficult. To attain to nirvichara is very arduous, but nothing compared to the dropping of the last control, because it is very subtle. How to do it? "How" is not relevant at that stage. One has simply to live watch, enjoy, be loose and natural. This is where Tilopa becomes meaningful.

Because these people like Tilopa are Zen Masters they talk about the goal: loose and natural one lives, doing nothing, doing nothing to transcend the control. Because if you do something, that will again be a control. Your doing will be undoing. Loose and natural - that is the point where the tenth picture of the ten oxherding series becomes meaningful: back again into the world, and not only back again into the world... carrying a bottle of wine. Enjoying, celebrating, being ordinary - that is the meaning. Nothing can be done now. All that could be done you have done. Now you simply become loose and natural and forget everything about yoga, control, sadhana, seeking, search. Forget everything about it, because now, if you do something, then the control will continue, and with control there is no freedom. You have to wait, and just being loose and natural.

Somebody asked Lin Chi, "What you are doing nowadays?" He said, "Chopping wood, carrying water from the well - nothing else." Chopping wood, carrying water from the well...

Lin Chi must have been at this stage when he answered this. He has come to the last control. Now there remains nothing to be done, so he chops wood. Winter is coming and wood will be needed, and people say it is going to be very cold this winter, so he chops wood; and of course he feels thirsty, so he carries water, waters the garden, vegetables. Absolutely ordinary... no seeking, no search, going nowhere.

This is the state where Zenerin says, "Sitting quietly, sitting silently, doing nothing, spring comes and the grass grows by itself." Beyond this, words cannot explain. One has to reach to nirvichara and then wait for the seedless samadhi. It comes on its own, just like the grass grows by itself. Then the last control is transcended, and there is no one who transcends it. It is simply transcended. There is no one who transcends it, because if someone is there to transcend it, again the control is there. So you cannot do anything about it.

That's why Patanjali simply ends: it is samadhi both.

Here ends the chapter on samadhis - nothing more to say. He doesn't say anything how to do it. There is no how to it. This is the point where Krishnamurti gets very angry, when people ask, "How?" There is no point, no method, no technique, because if any technique is possible here, then the control will remain. The control is transcended, but there is no one who transcends. Remaining loose and natural, chopping wood and carrying water, sitting silently, the spring comes, the grass grows by itself.

So you don't bother about seedless samadhi. You simply think Of nirvichara samadhi, samadhi where thoughts cease. Up to there, search continues. Beyond that is the land of no-search. When you have become nirvichara, then, then only you will understand now what to do. All that could be done you have done.

The last barrier is there. That last barrier is created by your doing. The last barrier is created; it is very transparent. It is as if you are sitting behind a glass wall, very beautiful and pure glass, and you can see everything as clearly as without the wall, but the wall is there, and if you try to cross it you will be hit hard and thrown back.

So nirvichara samadhi is not the last thing, it is the last but one. And that "last but one" is the goal. Beyond that, read Zenerin, Tilopa, Lin Chi; sit silently and let the grass grow by itself. Beyond that you can live in the market, because the market is as beautiful as the monastery. Beyond that you can do whatsoever you feel like doing - you can do your own thing - but not before that. You can relax; the search is over. In that relaxation comes the moment of inner tuning with the cosmos, and the wall disappears. Because it is created by your doing; when you don't do, it disappears. It is fed by your doing. When you don't do, it disappears, and when the doing has disappeared and you have transcended all control, then there is no life and no death, because life is of the doer, death is of the doer.

Now you are no more; you have dissolved. You have dissolved like a piece of salt thrown into the ocean dissolves, and you cannot find where it has gone. Can you find a piece of salt which has dissolved into the ocean? It has become one with the ocean. You can taste the ocean, but you cannot find the piece.

That's why, when again and again people ask Buddha, 'What will happen when a Buddha dies? What happens when a Buddha dies?" - Buddha remains silent; he never answers about it. It was a very persistent question "What happens to a Buddha?" Buddha remains silent because Buddha appears to be to you - for himself, he is no more. Inside, he is no more. Inside, outside have become one; the part and the whole has become one; the devotee and the God have become one; the lover is dissolved into the beloved.

Then what remains? - love remains: the lover no more, the beloved no more, the knower no more, the known no more - knowing remains. Simple consciousness remains, with no center to it, vast as existence, deep as existence, mysterious as existence. But nothing can be done.

When you come to this point someday - if you seek hard you will come; if you seek hard you will come to nirvichara samadhi - then don't carry the old habit of doing, then don't carry the old pattern of doing, then don't ask "How?" Then simply be loose and natural and let things be. Accept whatsoever happens; celebrate whatsoever happens. Chop wood, carry water, sit silently and let the grass grow.