Darshan 24 October 1976

[A newly arrived sannyasin says: I have been able to start witnessing myself. I don't know if it's really witnessing but it feels as if it's something like that.] Very good! That's the only barrier - the subtle ego. It comes everywhere and it is so subtle that unless you are very very aware of it, it will go on deceiving you. It can take many garbs. It can play many games; it is very inventive. It can even become humbleness, it can become simplicity, it can become sannyas. So only watchfulness is the key.

A few things to be remembered: don't condemn it, otherwise your watchfulness will be corrupted.

Once you condemn a thing you have become afraid of it. Once you have condemned a thing you have accepted the power that the thing has over you. You are already in a defensive mood, and when you are defensive, your defeat is certain. When you condemn a thing, you have already accepted that it exists. That very acceptance gives it life energy. Because the ego is not a thing; it is not substantial. It is just a shadow. In fact it does not exist. It exists only like a shadow - it has no matter in it.

But if you become afraid of your shadow and you start running, the shadow will follow you. Your mind makes it run faster - only then can you defeat the shadow; otherwise it is running very fast with you. But that is not the way: by running faster you can never win. The shadow is your shadow, so wherever you are it is there. The mind can say to you, 'Fight with it. Take a sword and cut it into pieces.' You can only cut something which is - you cannot cut something which is not. Absence cannot be cut, only presence. So if you try to cut it, again your energy will be dissipated and by and by you will start feeling that it is hopeless, you cannot win; you are doomed.

So never fight with it; never escape from it. No need to condemn it. Just watch it whatsoever it is.

Don't be in a hurry to drop it, because if you are in a hurry to drop it you will not be able to watch it.

It is there - there is no hurry. You have simply to feel what it is. So make it a point that you have to see what it is in its various forms. In its different disguises, different names, you have to see it. And whenever you see it, just remember one thing - laugh!

Nothing kills the ego more than laughter. If you can laugh at yourself, it is finished. We laugh at others; we never laugh at ourselves. And the person who has learned to laugh at his own being, at his own ridiculousness, is getting out of the game. Laughter is the best way to get out of it.

So whenever you see it.... And it is a beautiful phenomenon because it is so subtle; it can pretend anything. When you find it, when you catch it redhanded, just relax and laugh. No need that the laughter should go outside. A smile will do; even an inner smile will do. Just a smile - just see how beautiful it is, how ridiculous it is, how subtle it is. And by and by you will see that the laughter has completely destroyed it; it has disappeared. The shadow disappears when you sit under the shadow of a tree. When there is no sun falling on you, the shadow disappears. If you find shelter in laughter, the ego has disappeared.

So good, the last darshan has been tremendously beautiful for you because you were turned out.

Sometimes things happen in such mysterious ways. If you were not turned out, you may not have learned. Sometimes one learns through misfortunes, miseries, pain, suffering. Sometimes one learns through ridicule. Life is mysterious, but one can learn from everywhere Anand means bliss and sonal means golden - golden bliss. All that glitters is not gold; only bliss is gold. So be more and more blissful and you will become golden. With being blissful, in the innermost core of being, the sun starts rising, the gold spreads all over the being - one becomes radiant.

This orange colour is nothing but a symbol for the sun, for fire, for light So change to orange and wait for the inner dawn. It will be coming soon - you are ready!

[To a sannyasin, who said she was about to commence the Vipassana course] Good. That will bring you here more, and to now more. Just learn one thing, that if you are here and now, misery cannot exist Being here and now has nothing to do with being here, now - you can be here and now anywhere. That is your inner state. You can be here anywhere and you can be in the now anytime. Whenever you are in the herenow, you will be close to me; thousands of miles away doesn't make any difference.

Whenever you need me, just be here and now and suddenly you are close to me. There comes a moment when the past and the future completely disappear. Then you are in me and I am in you.

That has to be learned, and then you will be blissful wherever you are and whatsoever you are.

Bliss is a very unconditional thing. It needs nothing to be blissful. Of course to be miserable many things are needed. Misery needs many conditions to be fulfilled. Misery is very hard. One has to work hard to be miserable. To be blissful is very simple - maybe that's why so many people are miserable, because the difficult becomes a challenge.

And the simple... who bothers for the simple? The simple seems too obvious, not worth achieving.

That which is very far away and very difficult to achieve gives a challenge to the ego. The ego is

always interested in the difficult, in fact in the impossible. And God is just here... very simple. We exist in Him, we are born in Him, we die in Him. We have not left His being for a single moment because we cannot be without Him. We breathe in Him. Each breath is His breath, and each beat of the heart is His beat.

But it is so close that the mind is not interested. The mind is always interested in the faraway - hence the mind remains miserable. Bliss is herenow. The mind is always there and then. So only learn one thing - if you have learned one thing, you have learned ali: whenever you start feeling miserable, remember, you must have moved from the present You must have fallen a victim of imagination or memory. You must have gone into the spinning, the weaving of dreams, projects, plans. You must have moved away.

Whenever you are miserable that simply means that you are not yourself Some idea has taken possession of you; some idea has displaced you. You have wavered from your centring. Whenever you are yourself - centred, unwavering, here and now - misery is impossible. To be is to be blissful.

Not to be is to be miserable. And the way to be miserable is to go away - either into the past or into the future, but never to be herenow. And when I say herenow, I don't mean two words; they are one word.

Albert Einstein coined a new word. He used to call it 'spatiotime', because he came to feel, observe, through his scientific research work, that time is just a fourth dimension to space - time is not a separate thing; that space has three dimensions, and time is just the fourth dimension of space.

The division exists in our mind - the division is not existential. In existence itself, time and space are one. It is closer to reality.

'Spatiotime' is a scientific term. When I say herenow I translate it into ordinary human language, but I use herenow as one word. Here means space; now means time. Now is the fourth dimension of here... just another aspect of here. If you can be here you will be in the now. If you can be in the now, you will be here. So if you can manage one, the other will follow automatically.

And in Vipassana remember it - many moments will come when you will be thrown so totally into the herenow that you will find who you are for the first time. Vipassana is one of the deepest-going methods, so be in it totally. Good.

[A visitor says: I have studied psychology and I work with drug addicts.] That's very good. Bring some meditations to your drug addicts! It will be very helpful, because anybody who goes to drugs is really in search of meditation. He is searching in a wrong direction, but his search is right. The direction is wrong, certainly wrong, but his desire is right his desire has to be respected.

[She answers: Yes. I love these junkies very much!] Mm, because they are the people who are in search of some other kind of experience which is not available in ordinary life. They are fed up with ordinary life; it is too routine and too dull. They stumble upon drugs because that seems more available; meditation is not so easily available. Drugs are very cheap and easy; meditation is very hard, difficult. One has to grow into it. It takes months,

years, sometimes lives. People are not ready to wait that long - not at least in the West. People are in such a hurry.

Christianity and Judaism have created a very wrong notion in the minds of people - that you have only one life. Because of that concept of one life, time is too short and many things have to be done.

A person has seventy, eighty, or ninety years at the most to live. Thirty years will be lost in sleep:

eight hours per day. One third of life goes in sleep, one third of life goes in work, offices, factory.

There is one third of life left and that is taken up by so many routine things - shaving, bathing, having lunch, supper, fighting, loving. One day one finds that the whole life is gone and there was not a single experience that you could say was worthwhile.

And as people come closer to death, they become more hectic. They start searching hectically for some way to get out of this rut, this mechanical dull life. . . colourless. Every morning rushing to the same commuter train. Every evening coming to the same house, the same wife, the same children...

and the same old story. By and by intelligence disappears - people become like robots. They get up, they go to the office, they work, they come home, but the zest for life is no more there. They simply go on dragging themselves from here to there, from there to here, knowing well that they are simply moving towards death.

These are the people who one day or other become victims of drugs, because drugs can give you a vision. At least they can give you a totally different dream world which is really more beautiful, more colourful, than this ordinary world. Meditation can also give you a better world - not a dream world. Meditation gives you a clear insight, vision, so that this same ordinary world becomes suffused with extraordinariness. It gives you such clarity that this ordinary black and white world becomes psychedelic, more colourful. Ordinary sounds become musical, ordinary people become so extraordinary because you can see through them.

Drugs deceive people. They don't give them insight In fact they destroy their insight completely, but they lead them to a dream world, and that dream world is at least better than this ordinary routine world. These are the people who are basically in search of meditation. Help them. They can become great meditators. Good.