Let Go and Fly

[NOTE: This is a translation of the Hindi series ADHYATMA UPANISHAD. This version is the final edit pending publication.]

In this sutra many valuable things are said - not only valuable but original also.

ONLY A PERSON FREE FROM HOLDING ON TO THE EGO ATTAINS TO SELF-NATURE.

A very deep truth is revealed in this. The ego has not caught hold of you, it is you who has caught hold of the ego. The world has not caught hold of you, it is you who has caught hold of the world.

Sufferings are not clinging to you, they are your very own creations. Sufferings are not chasing you, they have not taken any resolve to give you trouble, they come to you only at your own invitation.

Normally we do not think this way. We think, why are there sufferings? Why is there this worldly anguish? Why is this cycle of birth and death? Why does this ego torment me? How to be free of it? Constantly this thought runs within us: How to be free of it? You must have all encountered this question sometime or the other - how to be free of it? - otherwise it would have been impossible for you to come here.

But this sutra will disappoint you greatly, because it says the very question of becoming free does not arise because the ego is not holding onto you, the world is not stopping you in any way, your births have not invoked you, it is all due to your own will. So it is wrong to ask, "How to be free of all these?" The right thing to ask is, "How, in what manner and with what trick, am I holding onto all this misery and trouble?"

One should not raise the question of becoming free of all these. The question should be: What is our methodology, what is the pattern with which we catch hold of sufferings? We go on catching hold of sufferings, and with our own hands we go on imposing upon ourselves more worlds, more births, more incarnations. The question should be: Why do we go on creating newer and newer expanses and skies of desires? This is what is needed to be understood.

This will have several implied meanings. One meaning will be that liberation is not some attainment which is to be achieved. The world is certainly to be lost, but liberation is not to be achieved. If you are ready to drop the world, then you will find that your liberation is already the case. You are already free, but you have managed to remain in bondage through great self-trickery.

If you have seen how parrots are caught in the jungles you will understand. A rope is tied across two supports. The moment a parrot comes and sits on the rope, he immediately hangs upside down because the rope has turned due to his weight. Now the parrot feels that he is caught. The upside- down hanging parrot feels that he is caught, badly caught, his feet are entangled, now there is no way to get away. It is the parrot who is clutching the rope tightly, the rope is not holding him at all.

But what the parrot feels also appears logical, "The rope which has turned me upside down, it has caught me, it must be holding me!"

So the parrot stays hanging. He tries in all possible ways to straighten himself up so he can fly away, but he is unable to manage to do that because the rope is very light compared to the weight of the parrot - so no matter how much he tries, he always swings back to his upside-down position. Thus, the more he tries, the more convinced he becomes that there simply is no way of release.

If the parrot could understand, it could undo its grip and fly away the same moment. But it tries first to sit upright. Even if it leaves the grip in its upside-down position it can fly away because the rope has not caught it. But the parrot has never flown in an upside-down position; whenever it has flown it has been standing upright. It knows only one way of flying. It thinks that perhaps flying has some unavoidable connection with standing right side up on two feet.

How is the parrot hanging upside down to understand that it can also fly here and now, and that it is not caught at all? But because it is hanging upside down it fears that if it leaves the rope it will fall on the ground and die. So it clutches the rope tightly. And howsoever late its catcher may come, he will find the parrot hanging there.

Man's consciousness is more or less in the same situation. Nobody has caught you. Who is interested in catching you? This world has no interest in holding you. What could be the purpose, what would the world achieve through holding you? No, nobody is interested in catching hold of you.

You have caught yourself. But there are some illusions which give you the idea that you are caught by others.

The greatest illusion is that you think yourself to be so valuable that the whole world is interested in catching you. This is egoistic to feel that all the miseries are rushing towards you only; that so many miseries pay so much attention to you; that all the hells are created just for you! They are all just for you, and you are sitting in the center. As if this whole cosmic arrangement goes on running just for you - and you are nothing but a parrot hanging upside down on a rope!

But the reasons for the creation of this illusion are more or less the same as those for the parrot.

As soon as a human child is born many tragic events take place side by side. They are a must, that is why they take place. A human child is born the most helpless of all animals in this world. The child of no other animal is born so helpless. Children of other animals can walk and run and can set out in search of their food soon after they are born, but a human child will require twenty-five years after birth to be ready to set out in search of his own food... twenty-five years!

A human child is the weakest of all animals at birth. Biologists say that something has gone wrong somewhere. They say that for a mature birth, the human child should remain in the womb for twenty-one months. But the human female is weak, she cannot keep the child so long in her womb.

Thus, according to some biologists, the whole human race is an abortion. No human child is born fully developed, all are born partially developed. By contrast, children of all animals are born fully developed.

But for the human child this partially developed birth is a blessing as well as a curse. In this world there is nothing that is one-sided, there are always two sides to everything. It is unfortunate that the human child is weak, but this is a blessing also because it is due to this weakness that man became superior to all other animals. There are some deep reasons for that. Because the human child is born very weak - he requires great assistance, otherwise he will not survive - just to provide that assistance the unit of 'family' came into existence, otherwise there is no need for a family.

In animals there is no family life because it is not needed. A human child will simply die without a family - hence the mother, the father, and the sacred institution of family. It is all born out of that weakness of the child. On the basis of the family, the society, the nation, and the whole network of civilization was born. And because a human child is born helpless he does not possess the basic instincts. The animal child is born and it comes with intelligence - just enough to live its life. But the human child does not arrive with such intelligence; if we leave him unattended he will die. There is no way he will survive. This is why the human child has to be trained.

No animal child needs any training. A human child needs to be taught. He does not come prepared with anything, everything has to be taught. Therefore there are schools, colleges and universities. These are institutions born due to this human weakness. We have to impart all education, everything; one thing after the other has to be taught. A great effort has to be made, and still there is no certainty that the child will learn! Thus all arrangements of education and conditioning are developed becuase of the weakness of the human child. This sutra has some relationship to this reality.

Because the child is helpless, the parents have to pay a lot of attention to it. Because of this attention the child feels, "I am the center of the world, the whole world is revolving around me."

A child cries a little and the mother comes running. A child becomes slightly ill and the father is in immediate attendance along with a doctor. The small child knows that everything moves at his slightest bidding. A slight noise, a slight crying, a slight indication of trouble calls the whole family to his service. And for the child the house is the whole world, he knows no other world. So a natural illusion is created in the mind of the child that, "I am the center of the world, all arrangements are just for me, everything is happening just for me, everybody is looking just toward me."

This illusion settles deep in us, and then for the rest of our lives we go on living with the assumption that we are the center. This brings tremendous pain; this is why the ego hurts - because it is not true, you are not the center of the world. The world runs very happily without you. It faces no obstacles at all because of your absence. But somewhere in some corner of your mind you go on feeling, "I am the center." And you are always waiting for this world to accept that you are the center.

This is the very search of the ego.

The sutra says, ONLY A PERSON FREE FROM HOLDING ONTO THE EGO... one who is prepared to give up that concept of ego which has grown and deepened from childhood... ATTAINS TO SELF-NATURE.

This is inevitable; this creation of the ego from the very birth of the child is inevitable. This is an unavoidable evil. But to get stuck there and not to move on destroys our whole life because then we remain deprived of knowing that entity which is hidden within us. We will be able to know it only when we drop our ego. Why? Why in religion is there so much emphasis on dropping the ego? The emphasis is because one who feels that he is the center of the world remains deprived of knowing his own center. That man lives believing a false center to be his center. A man who believes that he is the center of others' eyes never bothers to seek if he in reality has any center of his own, and thus a pseudo center is born. This pseudo center is dependent on others, and therefore one only gains unhappiness from the ego.

When you say, "You are a good man," you are reinforcing my ego. Tomorrow, if you say, "No, it was a mistake, you are not a good man," then you have just withdrawn the brick you lent to my ego and with which I had built up the castle; it then comes to the verge of collapsing.

The ego is created through the eyes of others, through the ideas of others; ego is dependent on others. And remember, whatever is dependent on others cannot be your center. So we worry too much about who says what, who says good things about us and who says bad things.

A friend had come to me who said, "This is my problem"... he is present here... he said, "This is my very problem, that somebody says something, a small thing, a quite insignificant thing, and I am so hurt that I cannot sleep the whole night." For example, he said, "I had gone to a shop to buy some material. I wanted to buy some material, but I did not like what the shopkeeper had showed me. The shopkeeper said, 'Leave it. I knew when I first saw your face that you would not buy any.' I could not sleep that night, trying to work out why this shopkeeper spoke like that."

Our ego is dependent on what others say. The people all around us either contribute to our ego or they take away some of it. This is why we are concerned the whole time as to what people are saying or thinking about us. That is our capital. Collecting others' opinions contributes to our pride - but what is the reliability of others' opinions? Their opinions are in their hands. Today they may be extending it in our favor, tomorrow they may not. Today they may have a good opinion of us, tomorrow they may have a bad one - and they have their own motivations.

That shopkeeper had his own motivations. He gave a hit to the ego. Now two things could have happened through it. One was that this man might have purchased the material, just to save face if for nothing else. And it would have been better if he had made a purchase, for at least he would have saved himself from a whole night's sleeplessness. But then another worry would have gripped the mind - "Why did I buy the cloth which I did not want?" And you all have bought many such items that you never wanted to buy, but on many occasions your ego goads you to buy.

In the West, salesmen are slowly being replaced in shops by saleswomen. Now there are no more salesmen, only saleswomen! Now there is no sense in keeping the word salesman in use. When a male customer enters a shop to buy a pair of shoes and a beautiful salesgirl approaches him, fits a pair of shoes on his feet with her own hands, ties the laces carefully and smilingly adds, "Beautiful!

This pair looks so beautiful on your feet," now, howsoever much that pair of shoes may be pinching him, it is his compulsion to buy them. He will have to buy them. Now it is no more a question of shoes, now you are buying something else, the shoes are just an excuse.

We have all bought many such things which we never wanted. Our whole life is a similar collection of things, and the ego is the total collection of all this. We have stolen the shine from the eyes of others, put it all together and that has become our flickering light. But it is always the others who are the masters, any day they want to they can pull back the support.

Even the biggest of leaders is not bigger than his followers. He cannot be, because his whole leadership is in the hands of others. Today they have given it, tomorrow they can take it away.

Therefore, however great a leader may be he is a follower of his followers. He has to follow them.

He has to watch in which direction the followers are going, then he runs and stands in front of them.

He has to mark the direction of the wind, the direction of his followers, and his whole expertise is in then running and standing in the front. And this is why, all the time, every day, the leader goes on changing his statements. He has to change. That is what is called keeping the follower's views in mind. You have received your ego from them. Your prestige, position, everything you have received from them - it is all borrowed. And whatever is a borrowed thing, it is not you. You were there before all these things were received. When death snatches all this away from you, you will still be there.

You have created a false center, and if you have taken yourself to be this center, why then will you then search for your real center? You have taken it for granted that this is the real center.

What is your image in your own eyes? It is an image created by others. It is others who have created it - somebody has given color to it, somebody has drawn its eyes, somebody has drawn the feet, and that is all you are. But this is only a paper image, one small shower of rain will wash off all its colors. But this situation is born out of the inevitabilities of life.

Psychologists say that a child becomes aware of others first, not of himself. Naturally, when a child opens his eyes, he sees his mother. How can he see himself? The other, the 'thou', is seen, not the 'I'. Slowly his acquaintance enlarges. He sees his father, his brothers, sisters, and the family, and this way he is slowly learning to experience the other. And it is in contrast and relation to this other that he begins to experience his 'I'.

It is very interesting to note that the experience of 'I' is not the first. I am, but I do not experience myself first, I experience others first. Naturally when I experience the others first, then the 'I' that I will create will be based on the opinions of these others.

Therefore, the psychologists say, a child who has received love from the mother and the father and has received the appreciation of the family has got a feeling of self-love. But a child who has not received any love from the parents, any appreciation of the family - a kind of pathetic personality develops in him, because if the people through whom the child first became aware of his 'I' did not express their joy and happiness about him, the 'I' of that child becomes poor and destitute forever.

He did not receive the nourishment.

Psychologists say that something is missing in a child that is brought up in the absence of a mother, and this can never be compensated for because the child's very first experience of 'I' remains crippled. The person from whom that first understanding of 'who I am' was to be born, the 'thou' from whom the first glimpses of 'I' were to come, was never there to give those glimpses. That person was never there to reflect the experiences of dignity, respect, pride, honor and love.

If a mother had not danced within herself on the birth of her child, if a mother was not overwhelmed with joy and if her whole being was not thrilled all over, then the 'I' of that particular child will remain crippled forever. He will suffer a lot. He will have to find crutches. He will be in great difficulty.

We get our first experience of 'I' from others, and we continue to get it from others all along. Slowly, slowly we accumulate opinions, approval, certificates, views of others, a prestige and a respect from the society. On this false center we remain hanging, whereas our real center is hidden behind it.

'Thou' cannot be first, 'I' is first - it is another matter that we only come to know it much later. When a child is born, he is born with his 'I', with his soul. But that center remains hidden and another new center gets created. Then we hold on to this new center. We do so because we do not know any other center, and we are afraid that if we let go of this center we may be hanging in mid-air, and if we do not take care we may be lost. We are afraid that everything may go topsy-turvy, chaotic. Hence we hold on fast to it like that parrot holding fast to the rope, because of the fear that it may fall down and be hurt.

We also go on holding on to this 'I' because we do not see anything else that can be held for support.

We move on its support and keep holding tight lest it may slip out of our clutches. This brings misery because it is not the true center.

This situation of ours is like a person who is born with a treasure, but who mistakenly thinks it buried in a ditch and goes on digging for it fruitlessly.

Our real center is an emperor; our soul is sheer bliss and a treasure. But this 'I' is a false ditch where, however much we may dig, we will find no treasures whatever. Digging there we can never reach to our self-nature. Therefore the sutra says: ONLY A PERSON FREE FROM HOLDING ONTO THE EGO ATTAINS TO SELF-NATURE. What is to be done then?

Gurdjieff was a remarkable mystic. When his grandmother was on her deathbed he asked her, "Do you have any life experiences and conclusions that you think are worth passing on to me?"

His grandmother then said a very strange thing to him. She said, "If you can remember one thing throughout your life that will do. That is: Never do anything as others do it - never do any work as others do it, always try to do it differently." Gurdjieff later on developed a whole philosophy around it and formed "The law of otherwise" - always doing things differently from others.

Gurdjieff made great effort to apply this advice and a unique person was born in him, because not doing anything as others do it brings tremendous results. The first outcome is that, as one's ego is nourished only when one does things the way others do them, naturally there is nothing to nourish your ego. On the contrary, people will laugh at you.

Gurdjieff has said, "My grandmother told me, 'I am nearing my death and I will never know whether you followed my advice or not. So give me a demonstration before I die.' An apple was there near her bed; she gave it to me and asked me to eat it, but making sure that I did not eat it the way others do."

This child Gurdjieff must have found himself in great difficulty: what to do? But children are very inventive. If the parents do not kill their inventiveness completely there would be many inventors in the world. But inventions seem to be dangerous, because anything new brings uneasiness.

Gurdjieff took the apple and, bringing it close to his ear, he first tried to hear it, then bringing it near to his eyes he looked at it, he kissed it and touched it with closed eyes, then danced while still holding it in his hands, jumped and ran, and then he ate the apple. His grandmother said, "I am satisfied."

"Later," Gurdjieff said, "this became a principle in my life - not to do anything the way others do but to bring some originality of my own to it." People used to laugh at him and call him mad. They would say, "What sort of man is this? What is he doing - hearing an apple with his ears?"

Gurdjieff said, "I had not realized it then, but another outcome was that I was no longer worried about others. What others are saying or what their opinions are about me, or what others think about me - this concern simply dropped; I just became alone, absolutely alone on this earth. Because of this," Gurdjieff writes further, "I did not have to undergo that suffering all others go through. No false center was ever created within me and I never had to make any effort to destroy my ego. It never formed in the first place."

What is to be done? Drop bothering about the others. I watch you in the morning when you are meditating. You are meditating, but an idea remains lurking, "Someone must be watching me... what will the others say?"

Just today a friend came to me. He said, "Whatever you say, I will do it alone. But doing it here in front of so many people...." There will be no benefit in doing it alone. There will be no benefit, because benefits of meditation are multi-dimensional. Your courage to go mad in front of so many people simply knocks down your ego. Your childlike behavior in front of so many people suddenly removes you from your ego and throws you to your center. This will not happen in your aloneness.

In aloneness, everybody is a singer in his bathroom. And everybody can make faces in the mirror in the aloneness of his bathroom - not only children, but grownups too. Such stories are luckily not told by the mirrors. But these things are of no value, and are no help - no help at all!

Drop worrying about others, stop thinking about the opinions of others; start reducing your craving for others' attention. The search for others' attention is the food for the ego. The others' attention is food, the ego gets nourished by it. Therefore the more people pay attention to you, the juicier it feels to you, the more you feel you are something. But if nobody pays any attention to you, you are in a house and nobody even looks at you....

Gurdjieff was experimenting with his disciples. He and his thirty disciples lived in a big house, and he told them to live there in such a way as if the other twenty-nine did not exist. They were not to speak with anyone, not to make any signs, not to make any gestures which may create any communication. Even if one passed by someone else, he had to remember that he was all alone there, nobody else was there in the house. Knowingly or unknowingly nothing was to be done by anyone that may indicate the presence of the other. If someone stepped on somebody else's toes, he was not to make any apology - for there was no one else present there. Even if because of somebody's mistake an ember from the fire was to fall on someone's hand, no one was to ask for any forgiveness - for there was no one else present there. No one was even to express through their eyes, "I am sorry."

Gurdjieff asked these thirty disciples to stay like that for three months. Twenty-seven disciples ran away after some time, only three remained to the very end, but those three were transformed into totally different persons.

What was the purpose of this experiment? Let us understand. It is very easy not to pay any attention to others, or not to apologize, even if you kick someone! This is very easy, there is no difficulty in it.

This is how we always want it to be. But this is not the significant point. So what meaning does this experiment carry?

Remember, its meaning is deep and hidden. Gurdjieff had asked you not to pay any attention to the fact that there is someone else present, but then also to understand well that others also will not pay any attention to you. That is where the catch is. You will not pay attention to others, you are alone; others will not pay attention to you, they are twenty-nine. You will not receive twenty-nine other people's attention, for three months, at all!

All transactions are mutual. I give you attention, you give me attention. It is a business. I am fulfilling your ego, you are fulfilling mine. But in this experiment the exchange will cease at both the ends.

What was the reason for those twenty-seven disciples running away? Many of them said later, "We felt as if we were suffocating, that we would die, that we were choking."

Actually their throats were not choking, it was their ego's throats that were choking. They were thinking, "Three months! And there will be no food for our egos! By the time we are out of this place we will be empty." Those three courageous disciples who stayed, after three months they came out as different persons altogether. What had changed in them?

Ouspensky was one of those three disciples who had stayed through the experiment. Later he said, "This man Gurdjieff was amazing, because in three months.... And we had no idea that this was a device to kill our egos. We had thought that the experiment was being carried out to bring peace and silence to our minds. We were not even told that our egos will be killed. After three months we became as though we did not exist; only our being remained. There was no tune of 'I' arising anywhere in us."

The day no tunes of 'I' arise within you, that day you are standing at your real 'I'. That real 'I' is called the soul. And naturally then your individuality becomes spotlessly clean like the full moon - ever blissful and self-luminous.

The light already exists there, the bliss already exists there, it is only a question of a small jump from your 'I' to the soul. The spotless cleanliness is already there, it has never been disturbed.

Another important sutra, equally original and wonderful.... Words many times hide the real meaning and it is not seen. And because those words are familiar it becomes difficult to dive deep into them.

You all must have heard these words before, none of them are unfamiliar, but their arrangement here is totally unfamiliar.

ON CESSATION OF THE SENSE OF DOING, ALL ANXIETIES CEASE. ON CESSATION OF THE ANXIETIES, ALL DESIRES CEASE. THE CESSATION OF DESIRES IS EMANCIPATION - AND THIS IS CALLED JEEVANAMUKTI, LIBERATION WHILE LIVING.

ON CESSATION OF THE SENSE OF DOING, ALL ANXIETIES CEASE.... We all want to destroy anxieties. Who is the man who does not want to be free from anxieties? But we do not want to be free from being the doer. We want to be free from anxieties but we do not want to be free from the doer - and anxiety is the shadow of the doer. A person who thinks, "I am doing this," cannot save himself from anxiety. The anxiety will go on piling upon him. The more he thinks, "I am doing," the more anxious he will become.

The people of the East have invented ingenious devices. One of them was to feel, "I am not doing, God is doing." This was a technique of meditation. The technique was: "Not even a leaf of the tree moves without the permission of God." There is nothing like this in actuality. If God had to issue permission to every single leaf, by now he would have gone mad. Imagine telling every single leaf, "Now move, now stop."

No, there is no such God anywhere to move and stop every single leaf. But this statement has nothing to do with God anyway, it is simply a technique of meditation, a device, because a person who believes that "Not even a leaf moves without his permission," slowly starts dropping the notion of "I am doing." "He is the doer," such a man believes, "I am nothing at all. I may be instrumental at the most. If he makes me move, I move; if he makes me walk, I walk; if he makes me get up, I get up."

Thinking that everything is happening through God and we are just puppets in his hands has allowed a great phenomenon to take place in this world; the people in the East have become totally anxiety free. The anxiety-free time that the East has known has been known nowhere else on the earth, and the anxiety-laden time that the West is knowing presently has also never been known before anywhere. But the cause originates from the same source. In the West God became a doubtful entity, the concept of destiny lost all meaning.

I do not say that the concept of destiny is right, but the device in the concept of destiny that "Everything is happening as per destiny," ended in the West. Neither God survived nor fate nor destiny - the whole responsibility fell on man. "I am doing. Whatever I am doing, I am doing." The 'I' remained because there is no way of denying it.

It makes no difference whether God is or is not, but if you can leave aside your doer in favor of God - even if he may not be - it begins to have an effect on you: you become anxiety free.

In the West, anxiety has deepened. American psychologists say that three out of every four people are mentally sick... three out of four! How long can that fourth person remain unaffected in the middle of these three! These three are trying in every possible way to drown the fourth. It is a big figure if three out of four persons have become mentally disturbed and sick. What is the reason?

The East has never produced so many mad people as the West.

In the West the madness goes on increasing and slowly, slowly is taken for granted. Even Freud eventually accepted after a lifetime of research on the mind that there was no way of curing man; man will remain more or less mad. He accepted his inability. And if Freud accepts his inability it is very meaningful, because this man devoted fifty years of his life to exploring the human mind and he has done some deep research. He says there is no way man can be made fully healthy.

But Freud is not aware that fully healthy people have lived on this earth and fully healthy societies have also lived. But those societies had concepts altogether different. The deepest of those concepts was: "I am not the doer." They had found a device: the doer is God, fate, destiny - somebody else. "I am just an instrument and am like a leaf - moving when moved, not moving when not moved, winning or losing when made to win or lose. I am nowhere in it."

This had a two-fold effect. One was that when you are not the doer, then there arises no reason to worry about anything. Then defeat is accepted as well as victory. When victory is none of your doing, it does not create an ego; and since defeat is also none of your doing, it does not give one sleepless nights, nor does anxiety take over one, neither does it pain one's heart. And another more interesting thing also happens: if someone else wins there is no envy in your mind about it, because if he has won it is not his achievement, it was God's will that it should happen that way. Neither he is bigger because he has won, nor are we smaller because we are defeated. It is all God's will.

A very peaceful mental state develops if the feeling of being a doer drops. It is not necessary that one should believe in God for this. Buddha dropped it without believing in God, Mahavira dropped it without believing in God. This is a little more difficult. If one has to drop the doer without believing in God, one has to deepen his witnessing very much. Just remain a watcher; whatsoever is happening, just remain a watcher. If there is defeat, just watch that you are witnessing the defeat; if there is victory, just watch that you are witnessing the victory. Neither you lose nor you win, you are only the witness. When it is morning, you witness that morning has come; when it is evening, you witness that evening has come. When the darkness of the night gathers, you witness that the darkness has come. When the sun rises and there is light, you witness that the light has come.

You remain a watcher in your own place - whether it is day or it is night, whether it is happiness or unhappiness, whether it is defeat or victory. Thus when a person settles in witnessing the doer dissolves; the doing no longer remains yours. You no longer remain the center of doing, you become the center of seeing, witnessing, knowing. The doing goes on happening around you in existence.

Mahavira says, "My stomach is hungry, I watch it; a thorn pierces my foot and the foot is in pain, I watch it; the body becomes sick, a sickness has come, I watch it." Even at the time of death, Mahavira will go on watching that the body is dying. You will not be able to watch that the body is dying, you will feel that you are dying. If you have been the doer your whole lifetime, then you will have to do the dying also. When you have done everything, to whom can you leave the act of dying? One who disowns life, he also disowns death. One who has kept watching life as a witness, he watches death also as a witness.

If the doing dies, in other words if the doer disappears, the anxieties die. The second statement is an even deeper truth than this:

ON CESSATION OF THE ANXIETIES, ALL DESIRES CEASE.

It appears as if there is some mistake in this sutra. In the scriptures it is always said: when desires die, all anxiety dies. And this is what you may have heard also, that if there is no desire, there is no anxiety. This sutra is saying just the opposite. It says: if the anxiety ceases, the desires cease. On the death of doing anxiety dies, and on the death of anxiety desires die. Why?

Have you ever observed that when you are more anxious you are more full of desire, that when you are more tense sexual desire arises more in you, because with sex that tension can be released and one can become lighter. When your mind is in anger, then too sexual desire arises more in you. When your mind is in a joyous, blissful state, sexual desire is less. If the mind is totally and constantly in a blissful state, there simply will be no sexual desire. There are reasons for this. When the mind reaches a certain limit of tension due to anything, the sex center functions like a safety valve, it is a safety valve. When your anxiety increases and becomes too much, when you are not able to tolerate it and so much energy is flowing around in your body that it makes you uneasy, your body finds a way of throwing that energy out.

The sex center is a safety valve. Wherever any energy is functioning, safety valves have to be there.

Nature has done the same.

If you are heating up a kerosene pressure stove, some arrangement has to be there so that if you pump in too much air, the excessive amount of air gets released. When you have electrical fittings done in your house, fuses have to be provided so that if excess current is drawn into a circuit the fuse will burn out, disconnecting the flow of electricity. The fuse does not permit more than a certain amount of energy to pass through it. As soon as too much current begins to be drawn, the fuse will burn out because of the excess energy trying to flow and everything will be safe again.

The body has a biological safety valve through the sex center. Whenever excess energy accumulates in your body and uneasiness grows and anxiety grips you, there is a struggle within you, then it is necessary that either you become a witness and all this trouble subsides, or the second possibility is that the energy flows out of your body and you become weak. Then under the influence of that weakness all this trouble cools down - because one needs strength even for the troubles to continue.

Therefore it is often the case that weak people are gentle people. It does not mean that they actually are gentle people, all it means is that they do not possess that much energy which is necessary for doing evil.

Have you ever observed that fat people are usually cheerful, very sociable, and usually not quarrelsome. Why? If you ask a physiologist he will say that a fat person cannot fight; if he does, he will be beaten, hence he becomes so sociable because he cannot afford this fighting business. If he attempts it, he is bound to be beaten. So they are always smiling. This smile means, no fighting, please; everything is alright, no need to move into fighting.

A fat person cannot run. And in a fight there are only two alternatives: either you fight or run away - and he can do neither. So he becomes non-quarrelsome. But it does not mean he has transcended fighting. No, in man everything lies deep within, and it is useful to become aware of these things.

So whenever you are full of anxiety, unhappiness and misery, desire will arise in your mind. Either you become a witness, in which case the energy that is entangled in anxiety will be released and, riding on it, you will set forth on the upward journey.... Or, if you cannot become a witness, the energy which is making you restless, which has created a cyclonic turmoil in you will be released through the safety valve of the sex center; you will become weak and you will feel you have become lighter, relieved.

Freud has described sex as a natural tranquilizer, a soothing drug. Man returns home tired and weary from the whole day of problems of all sorts and engulfed in anxieties. If he is able to release the energy through sex, he falls asleep peacefully in the night.

This is the reason why women do not take much interest in sex, because they very soon come to realize that they are functioning only as a safety valve to the man. They soon discover that there is no love or anything of the sort in it, it is all instrumental. They soon come to realize that slowly, slowly they have become an instrument for this man through whom he releases his energy and goes to sleep. And it often happens that after intercourse the man turns over and falls asleep, whereas the woman remains weeping because for her there cannot be a bigger insult than just being used like a thing.

An unaccountable number of women come and tell me that they have no interest at all in sex. The reason for this is not their lack of interest in it, the whole reason is that man has used them as a thing and their interest has turned sour. In fact the reality is just the opposite; women are more sexual than men, they have more energy for sex. But they do not appear sexual, instead they appear quite disinterested in sex. Their attitude toward man appears to be, "Okay, take what you want and be done with it. One less problem for me!" But they seem to have no more interest than this. The reason for this is not that they do not have any sex desire within, but because they have a feeling of hurt at their being used as a thing. They are pained at being treated like a thing and not as individuals. But all of this brings other results.

A man is able to release his energy through sex, but what is the women supposed to do? So women turn quarrelsome, nagging, overbearing. They throw out their energies through these other routes twenty-four hours a day, because the sexual safety valve device is not functioning for them, and they come to think this device is only for men.

Now this is a very paradoxical thing. Women should be more sweet, but it does not happen that way; they should be more gentle, but it does not happen that way; they should be more harmonious, but it does not happen that way. What is the matter? Somewhere some mistake is happening in the natural arrangements. And the mistake is, that what could have been the natural outlet to their energies is blocked and they have lost interest in it. To become a witness is arduous, so all those energies go on circling within and they come out in different forms.

The woman will drop utensils from her hands - usually it has to be chinaware, so it falls and breaks.

In this breaking, her energies are getting an outlet. You can prepare a complete chart of such events to find out yourself as to when such things happen more in your household. And you will inevitably discover that they break more during the days when the energies of the woman do not get released - then through so many methods like anger, tension, etc. the woman will throw out her energy.

When there is great anxiety of the mind, it runs toward indulging desires. Therefore this sutra says that on the death of anxieties, all desires die. This is a very unique and ancient sutra. And it is now that the psychologists are able to discover this. If you become anxiety free, your desires will become very weak. If you become completely anxiety free, your mind will not even move towards desires. Desires become inevitable to release the storm when it arises within you beyond a certain limit. When there are no storms of that intensity, the desires become very weak. But the energy does not get weakened; the desires weaken, but the energy goes on accumulating.

Everything gets transformed at a certain limit. Water turns into steam when heated up to one hundred degrees. On the accumulation of one hundred degrees of heat, the water then becomes steam. When your semen, your energy, continues to become accumulated within to a certain point - without any storms happening and with no necessity arising for uselessly throwing the energy out - then suddenly, when the energy accumulation reaches a certain level, which is like the hundred degree point, it begins to rise upwards instead of flowing downwards.

Have you observed: water flows downwards and steam rises upwards. Water, whose nature is to flow downwards, suddenly at one hundred degrees temperature becomes steam and starts rising upwards, towards the sky.

This is the phenomenon that happens within you too: there is a point, a level, an evaporating point where evaporation happens. When the energy accumulates up to that point, suddenly you find that what used to flow outwards has begun to flow inwards, what was a sin till yesterday has turned into a virtue, and what looked like an enemy till yesterday, there is no greater friend than it - all this comes to be realized.

THE CESSATION OF DESIRES IS EMANCIPATION.

When there is no desire you are liberated. And one can be liberated while living, there is no need to be liberated after dying. One who is unable to be liberated in life should not hope that he will attain it on death, because one dies the same way one was living. As you lived, so will you die; nothing different is going to happen in dying. Death is the ultimate culmination of life. Only to a jivanamukta, the one who has known liberation now and here, death becomes liberation while living too.

SEEING ALL, EVERYWHERE, IN EVERY DIRECTION, AS BRAHMA, THE ABSOLUTE REALITY - ON THE RIPENING OF THE FEELING OF SUCH GOODWILL DO DESIRES CEASE.

NEVER BE NEGLIGENT OF YOUR ALLEGIANCE TO BRAHMA, THE ABSOLUTE REALITY, BECAUSE THAT IS THE ONLY DEATH - SAY THE ONES WHO ARE WELL-ROOTED IN BRAHMA.

EVEN IF SHIFTED ASIDE, THE ALGAE DO NOT LOSE TIME IN COVERING THE WATER AGAIN.

SIMILARLY, EVEN IF A WISE MAN SWERVES FROM HIS ALLEGIANCE TO BRAHMA EVEN FOR A LITTLE WHILE, ILLUSIONS COVER HIM.

So it is necessary to keep constant awareness. Losing awareness even for a moment will not do.

To remain aware is necessary up to such a time as there remains not even the smallest quantity of algae or grass within. When all algae and grass are burned in their very seed form then there is no need for remaining aware, because awareness at that stage becomes your very nature.

Enough for today.