Eastern psychology: The science of the soul

Question 1:

Narendra, modern psychology is in its very childhood. It is just one century old.

The concept of enlightenment belongs to Eastern psychology, which is almost ten thousand years old.

The modern psychology is just beginning from scratch, it is at the ABC stage.

Enlightenment and beyond enlightenment are the very end of the alphabet of human endeavor -- XYZ.

Modern psychology is a misnomer because the word `psychology' originates from the word `psyche'. Psyche means the soul. The exact meaning of the word `psychology'

would be the science of the soul. But it is a very weird word.

Psychology denies the existence of the soul and still goes on calling itself `psychology'. It accepts only the physical body and its byproduct, the mind. As the physical body dies, the mind also dies; there is no rebirth, there is no reincarnation. Life is not an eternal principle, but just a byproduct of certain physical material things put together.

You have to understand the word `byproduct'. Even the idea of a byproduct is not very original.

In India, there has been a school of materialists, at least five thousand years old, called charvakas. They describe mind as a byproduct of the body. Their example is very fitting.

Remember, it is a five thousand year-old example. We can find modern contemporary parallels to it.

In India you must have seen people chewing betel leaves, pan. It consists of four or five things -- the betel leaf and three or four things more. You can eat them separately and they will not give the color red to your lips; but if you eat them together they will create the color red as a byproduct. That red color has no existence of its own, it is a byproduct.

In a contemporary example, look at a watch working.

I have heard that Mulla Nasruddin, when he retired, was presented with a gold pocket watch by his friends. It was automatic, and from the very beginning he was surprised, he thought what a miracle it was that it went on and on. But after three or four days it stopped. He was very much surprised: what had happened?

When it stopped he opened it up and found a small dead ant inside.

He said, "Now I know the secret! This ant is the driver, and now he's dead how can the watch continue? But those idiots should have told me that there is a driver! -- it needs food, it needs water. And sometimes you even have to change a driver!"

When a watch is running, and if it is automatic, what makes it tick? Is there some immaterial entity like a soul? Open the watch and take the parts apart, and you will not find any soul.

That's what charvakas said five thousand years ago: that if there is a soul, then cut a man open and you should find it. Or when soldiers are cut open in the war -- so many souls would be flying upwards. Or when ordinarily a death happens naturally in your house, the soul must leave the body.

Charvakas were very stubborn materialists. In five thousand years materialism has not gone even a step further than charvakas. They weighed a dying person, and when he was dead they weighed him again and the weight was the same -- it proves that nothing left the body. Then what was ticking in the body? It was something: a byproduct of the constituents of the body.

And the materialists of all ages -- Epicurus in Greece, Karl Marx and Engels in Germany and England -- continued to repeat the same idea: that consciousness is a byproduct. And modern psychology has accepted it as their basic foundation: there is no soul in man; man is only a body.

Joseph Stalin was able to kill almost one million Russians after the revolution. Anybody who was unwilling to give up his rights to his property was killed mercilessly. The whole family of the czar which had ruled for hundreds of years -- one of the oldest empires in the world, and one of the biggest -- nineteen persons in that family were killed so mercilessly that they did not even leave a six-month-old baby, they killed that baby too.

Killing was easy: because of the philosophy, nothing is killed, it is almost like breaking a chair.

Otherwise it would be difficult for any man to kill one million people and not feel any prick in his conscience. But the philosophy was supportive of all these murders -- because nothing is murdered, only the physical body. There is no consciousness which is separate from the body.

Modern psychology is still behaving stupidly because it is still clinging to the five thousand year-old primitive idea of charvaka, that consciousness is a byproduct. Hence, all that modern psychology can do is a mechanical job.

Your car is broken down. You go to the workshop and a mechanic fixes it.

The psychologist is a mechanic, no different from a plumber. He simply fixes nuts and bolts in your mind which get loose once in a while; he tightens them here and there...

somewhere they are too tight, somewhere they are loose. But it is a question of nuts and bolts.

The question of enlightenment does not arise for the modern psychologist because enlightenment is based on the experience that mind is not your whole reality.

Beyond mind there is your consciousness, and going beyond mind is what enlightenment is all about.

At the moment you cross the borders of the mind, there is enlightenment, a world of tremendous light, awareness, fulfillment, rejoicings.

But there is a possibility to go even beyond that -- because that is your individual consciousness. If you can go beyond it, you enter into the cosmic consciousness.

We are living in the ocean of cosmic consciousness, just as a fish lives in the ocean and is not aware of the ocean. Because it is born in the ocean, it lives in the ocean, it dies in the ocean, the fish knows only the ocean. If a fisherman pulls it out of the ocean, throws it in the sand on the beach, then for the first time it becomes aware that something had been surrounding it, nursing it, and giving it life -- and that without it, it cannot remain alive.

It is easy to give a fish the experience of being out of the ocean. It is very difficult to give man the experience of being out of the cosmic consciousness. Because the cosmic consciousness is everywhere -- there is no beach, there are no boundaries to the cosmic consciousness. So wherever you are, you are always in an invisible ocean of consciousness.

Modern psychology stops at the mind.

Mind is only an instrument, and it is a instrument of the physical body -- so they are not wrong in saying that it is a byproduct. But mind is not all. Mind is only a biocomputer, and the day is not far away when the function of the mind will be almost taken over by computers.

You will be able to keep just a small computer in your pocket containing the whole ENCYCLOPEDIA BRITANICA. Any information about any subject will be immediately available -- there is no need to remember it, there is no need to read it, there is no need to study it.

Your mind is going to lose its job very soon.

But the psychologist is concerned only with the mind. And there are people called `behaviourists' who say there is no mind either, that man is only a physical organism.

In the Soviet Union they don't accept the mind. The Soviet psychology is even more primitive; it accepts only the behavior of your body. There is nothing which you can call mind; hence in the Soviet Union there is nothing parallel to pscyhoanalysis. There is no question: if somebody's mind is behaving in an abnormal way then medicine is needed, not psychoanalysis. Then he has to be hospitalized; he is suffering from a sickness just like any other sickness.

At least in the West they have taken the first step beyond the body -- not a very big step, very small, very negligible, but still a step accepting that there is something like mind, that although it is a byproduct, it functions on its own as long as the body is alive.

And now it is a great profession: psychologists, psychoanalysts, psychotherapists; they are all fixing people's minds -- because everybody's mind is in trouble.

There are only two kinds of people in the world: normally mad, and abnormally mad.

Normally mad means you are mad, but not beyond limits. You are mad just like everybody else.

You can see these normally mad people watching a football match. Now can a sane person watch a football match? They need some nuts and bolts... Because with a few idiots on this side and a few idiots on that side throwing a ball, and millions of idiots so excited in the stadium and at their television sets, glued to their chairs for six hours so they cannot move... as if something immensely valuable is happening because a ball is being thrown from this side to that side. And millions more, who are not so fortunate to be able to see, keep a transistor at their ears, at least listening to the commentary.

You call this world sane?

There are boxing matches: people are hitting each other, and millions of people are so excited.

In California, the University of California has been researching... whenever a boxing match happens in California the crime rate immediately rises by thirteen percent; and it remains thirteen percent higher for seven to ten days afterwards -- rape, murder, suicide.

And now it is confirmed by other studies that boxing is simply our animal heritage.

The one who gets excited in you is the animal -- it is not you. You also want to kill somebody -- many times you have thought of killing somebody -- but you are not ready to take the consequences.

In a boxing match there is a psychological consolation; you get identified. Every boxer has his own fans. Those fans are identified with him. If he hits the opponent and the opponent's nose is dripping blood, they are rejoicing. What they have not been able to do, somebody else is doing on their part, on their behalf.

In any world which is sane, boxing would be a crime.

It is a game, but all your games seem to be primitive... nothing of intelligence, nothing of humanity.

These normally mad people are always just on the boundary line. At any time they can slip. A small accident -- the wife dies or goes away with somebody else -- and you forget the normal boundary, you cross it. Then you are declared mad, insane, and immediately you have to be taken to the psychiatrist or the psychoanalyst.

And what is his function? His profession is the highest paid profession in the world.

Naturally he makes people normal again, he pulls them back, he keeps them from going farther away from the normal line.

His whole expertise is how to put you back and make you normally mad.

Naturally the people who are functioning as psychologists, psychoanalysts, psychotherapists are in danger because they are constantly dealing with mad people.

Naturally more psychologists go mad than any other profession -- the number is twice as many. More psychologists commit suicide than any other profession -- the number again is twice as many. And once in a while every psychologist goes to another psychologist to put himself back into the normal world, because he is slipping out.

One would expect that at least the psychologist should be a sane person; he is trying to help other insane people. But this is not the case. They behave more insanely than anybody else, for the simple reason that from morning till night they are constantly coming in contact with all kinds of weird, strange people with weird ideas.

One man was brought to a psychoanalyst... The man was convinced that he was dead.

Everybody had tried to tell him: "Don't be foolish, you eat perfectly well, you sleep perfectly well, you talk perfectly well, you go for a morning walk -- and you say you are dead?"

He said, "Who says that dead people don't go for a morning walk? Every day I meet many dead people going for a morning walk."

The family was very much puzzled -- what to do with the man?

When they found it impossible to convince him... Because he wouldn't go to the shop.

His argument was clear: "Dead people don't run businesses. I have never come across a single dead man. If you can convince me by bringing a dead man who runs a business, I will go to the shop. I will do only things which dead people are supposed to do -- nothing else."

They told the psychoanalyst the whole story: "This man is in a poor state."

The psychologist said, "Don't be worried, I will fix him."

He took a needle and asked this madman: "What do you think about the proverb that `Dead people don't bleed'?"

He said, "It is absolutely right. I heard it when I was alive: `Dead people don't bleed.'" The psychologist was very happy. The family was very happy also -- listening, thinking that the psychologist is really great: he is catching him on the first point.

The psychologist pushed the needle into the dead man's hand and blood came out. He looked at the dead man and said, "What do you say now?"

The man said, "That means that proverb is wrong -- dead people do bleed. I had only heard it; now it is my own experience."

If you come across such people the whole day long, in the night you will dream of the same people. Naturally, psychologists don't live a very sane life.

And they cannot live a sane life until and unless they accept that there is something beyond mind.

The beyond is the rest, the shelter. Mind is a continuous chattering, it is twenty-four hours chattering. Only beyond mind is peace and silence. In that peace and silence sanity is born.

Enlightenment is the ultimate peak of sanity -- when one becomes perfectly sane, has come to a point where silence, serenity, consciousness are twenty-four hours his, waking or sleeping. There runs a current of tranquility, blissfulness, benediction which is a nourishment, food from the beyond.

Eastern psychology accepts mind as the lowest part of human consciousness -- dismal and dark.

You have to go beyond it.

And enlightenment is not the end, because it is only individual consciousness.

Individuality is still like two banks of a river. The moment the river moves into the ocean, all banks disappear, all boundaries are annihilated. You have gone beyond enlightenment.

Modern psychology has to learn much from the Eastern experiment. It knows nothing.

All that modern psychology is doing is analyzing dreams, fixing people to somehow carry on their normal business and repressing their abnormalities. But it brings no transformation.

Even the founders of modern psychology -- Freud or Jung or Adler or Assagioli -- are not people who you can put in the category of Gautam Buddha, Lao Tzu, Chuang Tzu. You cannot put these people with the seers of the UPANISHADS, with Kabir and Nanak and Farid. These are the sanest people humanity has produced, and they have not bothered about dreams, they have not gone through psychoanalysis for years together.

It is such a strange phenomenon: in the whole world there is not a single person who has completed psychoanalysis -- because it goes on and on, ten years, twelve years. There are people who have been in psychoanalysis for twenty years, wasting millions of dollars.

In fact, just as everywhere ladies talk about diamonds and emeralds and rubies, in America ladies say: "How long have you been in psychoanalysis? I have been in it for thirteen years!"

It is a criterion of wealth: it shows you can afford to pay millions of dollars.

The poor man, the psychoanalyst, has to listen to all kinds of garbage. No wonder that they start going mad, they start committing suicide, they jump from the window of a thirty-story building or hundred-story building! Just listen to a woman's dreams for twenty years.... It is a great relief for the husband, he is perfectly happy that she throws all her garbage and tantrums and everything on the psychoanalyst -- it is not too costly, he can manage to pay -- but for the poor psychoanalyst... Twenty years of listening to one woman and her stupid dreams? If one day he suddenly jumps out of the window, you cannot condemn him -- he needs everybody's sympathy.

But it is big business.

Just the other day I was telling you that Jesus founded a big business, Christianity.

Another Jew, Sigmund Freud, founded another business, psychoanalysis. Another Jew, Karl Marx founded another business, communism.

Jews are strange people. Whenever they do something, nobody can compete with them.

Now half the world is communist in one Jew's hands; the other half is Christian, in another Jew's hands. And who knows? -- maybe both are partners.

Jews are always business minded; they don't bother about Christianity, they don't bother about communism. Sigmund Freud is dead, Karl Marx is dead. Wherever they are -- in hell or in heaven -- they may be enjoying the fact that their businesses are going well; they may have even joined with Jesus. This would be the real trinity: three Jews running the whole world.

Modern psychology will not accept meditation because meditation will destroy their business.

A man of meditation needs no psychoanalysis. The deeper his meditation goes, the saner he becomes and the further beyond the mind is his flight.

Meditation is the greatest danger for psychoanalysis, for psychologists. They have to insist that there is nothing beyond mind because if there is something beyond mind, then their whole business can flop.

The East has to assert itself: show that what they are doing is simply foolish.

In a Zen monastery in Japan the same kind of psychological case is treated within three weeks; in the West he would not be treated in twelve years. And in the Zen monastery in those three weeks there is no psychoanalysis. You will be surprised: nothing is done; the person is put in an isolated place -- a beautiful garden, pond. In time food will be provided, in time tea will be sent; but nobody will talk with him, he has to remain silent.

You can see the difference.

In psychoanalysis he has to talk about his dreams continuously, for years, one hour every day, two hours, two sessions a week, three sessions a week -- as much as you can afford.

And here in a Zen monastery they simply put the man in a beautiful, comfortable place.

There are musical instruments available, painting material is available, or if there is anything special he wants to do that is made available; but it has to be something to do -- not talking. And for three weeks nobody will to talk to him.

During the three weeks, people paint, people play music, people dance, people work in the garden, and after three weeks they are perfectly normal, they are ready to go back home.

What has happened? If you ask the Zen master, he would say, "Nothing; these people were working too hard, and their mind got wound up too much. They needed unwinding.

So just three weeks rest and their mind was unwound. They needed physical work so that the whole energy goes into the body, not in the mind." And these people certainly become interested... without doing anything all the strange and weird things that they had been thinking had disappeared. This is a simple way for sick people to unwind the overloaded mind.

For those who are healthy -- not sick people -- the way is meditation. There are different methods for different types. And thousands of people have achieved such luminosity, such glory, such godliness, that all the psychologists of the world should be ashamed.

They have not been able to produce a single person. Even their founders are just very ordinary -- worse than ordinary.

Sigmund Freud was so afraid of death that even the word `death' was prohibited. In his essence nobody should mention the word `death' because just hearing the word he would fall into a fit, he would go unconscious. These are the founders of modern psychology; they are going to give humanity sanity!

And on the other hand.... A Zen monk, just before dying, said to his disciples: "Listen, I have always lived in my own way. I am an independent person and I want to die in my own way also. When I am dead I will not be here, so I will give you the instructions to be followed."

Just as in India, it happens in exactly the same way in Japan too; before he is taken to the funeral, the person's clothes are changed, he is given a bath and new clothes are put on him.

He said, "I have taken the bath myself, I have changed my clothes, you can see. So when I am dead, there is no need for any bath or changing of clothes. And these are the orders from your master, so remember: at least a dying man's wishes should not be denied -- and I am not asking much."

His disciples said, "We will do as you say. There is nothing much in it."

He died, and thousands of disciples were there. When his body was put on the funeral pyre, they all started laughing and giggling -- he had hidden firecrackers inside his clothes. He had made it into a divali, just to make everybody laugh -- because that was his basic teaching, that life should be a dance, a joy, and death should be a celebration.

And people said that even after death he managed it so that nobody should stand around him with a long face, so that everybody was laughing. Even the strangers who had come started laughing; they had never seen such a scene.

These are the people who have understood life and death. They can make death a joke.

Not Sigmund Freud, for whom the word `death' becomes a fit.

And the same is the case with other great psychologists. Jung wanted to go to Egypt to see the old mummies of kings and queens, dead bodies preserved for three thousand years old. But he was very much afraid of death and dead bodies. He was a disciple of Freud.

He booked the ticket twelve times, and each time he would find some excuse: "I am feeling feverish," or, "Some urgent work has come."

And he knew. He wrote in his diary: "I knew it was all an excuse. I was avoiding going to Egypt, but the more I avoided it the more I was attracted -- as if I had to go, it was a challenge to my manliness. Am I such a coward? So I would book again, and I would gather courage, and I would try to convince myself that there is nothing to be worried about -- they are dead bodies, they cannot do anything to you. And so many people go to see them. They are there in the museums. Thousands of people see them every day. Why are you afraid?" -- but arguments won't do.

Finally, the twelfth time he booked, he managed to get to the airport, but when the plane came on the airstrip all his courage, arguments and everything disappeared. He said, "I am feeling very sick and nauseous. I want to go back home. Cancel the trip." And after that, he never dared book again; twelve times was enough. He never managed to reach Egypt -- which was only a few hours' flight.

He came to India, and he went to all the universities of India. He was here for three months. But he would not go to one man, where he needed to go: He would not go to Shri Raman Maharshi. And in every university it was suggested that he was wasting his time:

"You have come to understand the Eastern approach, but we are all Western-educated psychologists in the Indian universities' psychological departments. You are just wasting your time. These people may be educated in the West or in the East but their education is Western; they know nothing of the East. But by chance there is a man -- he knows nothing of psychology, he is absolutely uneducated, but he represents the East. This man has experienced the ultimate flights of meditation. You just go and sit by his side."

He went up to Madras, but he would not go to see him. It was only a two-hour journey from Madras, but he would not go. And he had come to India to understand what the Eastern attitude to psychology was.

Western psychology -- which is the contemporary psychology -- is very childish.

The East has a ten thousand year-old inquiry into human consciousness. It has touched every nook and corner of human being, within and without, as individual and as universal.

But it is unfortunate that even the Eastern psychologists and professors of psychology have no idea about the Eastern approach. They are just parrots repeating Western psychology secondhand. That too is not their own original contribution. Sometimes even parrots are better and more intelligent.

I have been a professor in the university, and I have been in constant conflict with the professors: "You are parrots and you are agents of the West without your knowing. You are corrupting the Eastern mind because you don't know what you are doing. You are not even aware of what the East has already discovered. You are just carbon copies carrying certificates from Western universities."

I have often told a story in the universities.

A bishop was looking for a parrot. His own parrot had died. He had been a very religious parrot -- religious in the sense that he was able to repeat the Sermon on the Mount accurately, word for word. And whoever heard him was simply amazed. And the parrot had died and the bishop was missing his parrot.

So he went to a very big pet shop, and he looked around. There were many parrots there with many qualities. But he said, "No, my parrot was almost a saint, I want a very religious parrot."

The pet shop owner said, "I have a special parrot -- but the price may be too much. He is no ordinary saint, he is a very special saint. Come inside with me. I keep my special parrots in my house behind the shop, not in the shop itself.

There in a golden cage was a beautiful parrot.

The pet shop owner said, "This is the religious parrot. You have talked so much about your parrot, but this parrot is unique -- you will forget all about him. Come close and see:

on its right leg there is a small thread; if you pull that thread, he will repeat the Sermon on the Mount. There is also a small thread on its left leg; if you pull that, it will repeat the Song of Solomon. So if you have a Jew for a guest, you can make the parrot repeat the Song of Solomon from the Old Testament; or if you have a Christian guest, then the Sermon on the Mount from the New Testament."

The bishop said, "Great; this is really great. And what will happen if I pull both threads together?"

Before the owner could say anything, the parrot said, "Never do that, you idiot. I will fall on my ass!"

Even parrots have some intelligence.

Sooner or later psychology has to inquire into the states created by meditation, into spaces which are beyond mind. And unless it dares to penetrate the innermost core of human beings, it will not become a science. Right now its name is wrong; it has to prove that it is psychology -- the science of the soul.

Question 2:

First, can't you recognize my hands? Open your eyes, and just take a good look! You see my hands every day.

If in meditation you feel two hands appearing, don't close your eyes. And you will be able to recognize my hands.

There is nothing to fear.

In fact, the feeling that you are uplifted from the earth is tremendously valuable. You are not really lifted up, you are on the earth; it is not that your body is really lifted up.

But you have three bodies.

Your physical body will remain on the earth.

And because of meditation your mental body is silent, relaxing.

Only the astral body is capable of rising upwards; it is beyond gravitation. Gravitation has no power over it.

Light is not under the control of gravitation. That's why the flame of a candle can go upwards. Even if you put the candle upside down, the flame will immediately turn upwards. The flame cannot go downwards because the gravitation has no pull on light.

Your astral body is made only of light, of electrons.

It is very indicative that you feel that your body is uplifted. Naturally in the beginning you will be gripped by fear: What is happening?

But open your eyes.

These are the moments when I am really with you in case you need me; hence, you feel two hands because it is a very delicate moment. Any accident is possible.

Open your eyes and see. You will be surprised, because it will seem as if you are floating above your body and your body is lying down on the floor. But you will see a thin cord as if made of silver, shining, joined with the body lying down on the floor. The point the silver cord is joined to is your navel -- and it is very flexible. You can fly higher, and it will stretch without any difficulty. You can come closer.

But don't be afraid. Don't start thinking, "How am I going to get into my body again?"

You have not come out of the body with your effort. It is your silence, your peace that has helped your astral body move out. The moment you feel like getting back into the body, you will immediately find yourself back in the body. And those two hands that were close to you will disappear the moment you are back in the body.

And just watch my hands closely because these will be the same hands, and naturally you need not be afraid of my hands. My hands have never done any harm to anybody.

In fact, I cannot do anything with my hands -- these must be the laziest hands in the whole world.

But your experience is immensely significant, impeccably beautiful.

And the fear that if you go on and on, how far and where it will lead.... Don't be worried.

Wherever it will lead you is the right place, the right space.

Relax and remain in a let-go. You are not to control its movements because you are far smaller than the energy that you are trying to control. The best way is to simply surrender to existence and allow it to take you wherever it takes you; it has never taken anybody into any wrong space.

It always takes you back home.

Question 3:

Milarepa, your question is very simple.

The mind can be divided into two parts: the known and the unknown.

The known is your knowledge; the unknown is your ignorance. And all your universities and educational systems are trying to do only one thing: to put your mind completely in the field of the known, to dispel the unknown, to dispel ignorance.

Beyond the known and the unknown is what I call `the unknowable'. That is beyond mind. That is the world of the mysterious, the world of the miraculous.

The moment you pass beyond mind, the unknown is left behind, the known is left behind, and you enter into the unknowable. And the unknowable is the field of true religion. You experience it, you live it, you feel it, it becomes your heartbeat, but you can never say you know it.

Knowledge seems to be a much lower category.

The unknowable belongs to the category of being, not to the category of knowing.

The mystics of all the ages, of all countries, are making every effort to push you from the known and unknown into the unknowable, to push you from the mind into the ocean of the mysterious. There you will experience much -- much that you can imagine, much that you can dream about -- but you will not be able to bring anything from it into the world of knowledge, you will not be able to translate it into words, into language, into anything that can become a symbol for it.

I am reminded of a small child.... And a mystic is almost like a small child. The child was sitting with a canvas with all his colors and brushes, and his father was reading the newspaper. Again and again the father looked at the child... he's not doing anything, just sitting there. He said, "What are you doing?"

The child said, "I am painting."

After half an hour the father said, "But I don't see any painting on your canvas. Haven't you decided what you are going to paint yet?"

The boy said, "No, that's not the point. I have painted it."

The father came close to see. He said, "Painted it? I never thought that you would befool me. A plain canvas; you have not even touched it!"

He said, "No, father; I have done my painting: a cow is grazing the grass."

The father said, "A cow grazing in the grass? Where is the cow?"

The boy said, "After grazing the grass, she has gone. What would she do here now?"

The father said, "Okay, where is the grass?"

The boy said, "You are strange; the cow has eaten the grass and gone."

The father said, "How did you make this idea up? To befool me?"

The boy said, "No, I am not befooling you. I saw the grass, I saw the cow, I saw the grass disappearing and I saw her go away."

The child is innocent. Perhaps his imagination... And a child's imagination is really powerful -- they cannot make any distinction between the dream and the real. He may have seen a cow and the grass, and when the cow was there and the grass was there he did not paint anything. What is the point of painting on a canvas when there is a cow and grass and everything is already there? But then the cow eats the grass and the cow goes....

The father said, "Stop painting from today, and you stop all kinds of imaginations; otherwise you will go mad."

That's what we are doing with every child. We are not allowing the child's imagination to be refined to such a point that it becomes almost real; otherwise, every person would carry a poet in him, a painter in him, a singer in him, a dancer in him.

And finally, the culmination of all that is creative is the mystic.

When you have sung the best of your songs, then silence is the song.

When you have danced the best dance, the dancer disappears. And without the dancer, how can the dance remain?

When your poetry is perfect, there is no poet. The poetry has immense significance but no meaning.

In ancient China a Taoist proverb says: "When the archer is perfect, he throws away his bow and his arrows. When the musician is perfect, he forgets all about his instruments."

There is a mysterious world -- illogical to the mind, supra-logical to those who understand the world of the mystic. It surrounds us; we just need the right perception, clear eyes unburdened with knowledge -- innocent, weightless.

We need wings -- wings of love, not of logic.

Logic pulls you downwards. It is under the rule of gravitation.

Love takes you towards the stars.

Allow the mystic in you, and you have found all that is worth finding.

Beyond Enlightenment