Kundalini Will Transform You

Question 1

It is like this: You have a well in your house and I have another well in my house. Obviously, the two wells seem to be separate from each other. But the underground stream from which these two wells draw their supply of water is the same. And this underground stream, in its turn, is connected with the distant ocean.

If you follow the course of the stream which is the source of your well's water, you will not only come across my well and all other wells, you will ultimately come upon the great ocean itself. In the same way, in the context of the kundalini the individual is there only at the beginning of the journey-as the journey comes to its end the individual too, comes to his end. Then there is only the all, the whole, the absolute, the one, or whatsoever you call it.

So at the starting point of the journey you are separate and I am separate, but at the destination, the ultimate point, there is neither you nor I. We are just fragments or parts of that which is there at the journey's end.

So when the kundalini manifests itself in you, it will seem at first to belong to you-the individual. It will be yours. Naturally, you will find yourself standing at the edge of your well. But as the kundalini will ascend and expand, you will by and by find that your well is connected with all other wells also.

And the more the experience deepens the more and more your individual well will disappear, and in its place the ocean will come into being. And it is in the ultimate experiencing that you will be able to say that this kunda belongs to all.

It is in this sense that I said that the kunda is one and universal; it is one cosmic pool of energy.

That is how we all, as we are, seem to be separate as individuals. Let us understand it in a different way. If a leaf on a tree all of a sudden becomes conscious and aware, then the neighboring leaf will ap pear to it as the other. How can it know a leaf hanging from another branch of the tree to be itself? Leave aside the leaf on the other branch; it cannot think of another leaf on its own branch to be itself. Maybe this leaf is a little distant from it; even the leaf on its right hand side will appear to be the other. It will be so because the consciousness of this leaf is individual.

But if this leaf enters its own interiority it will soon find that the neighboring leaf is hanging on the same stem which is its own, and that they both derive their juice of life from the same source. If this leaf goes deeper it will know that not only its own stem, even the neighboring stem is part of the same tree and that their life force is one and the same. And if it reaches the very roots of the tree it will learn that all its branches and all its leaves are, like itself, parts of one and the same tree.

And if this leaf continues on its journey and enters the heart of the earth itself-the earth from which the neighboring tree has emerged-then it will be aware that along with its own tree, all other trees are children of one mother-mother earth. And in case this leaf ventures still farther, it will in the end discover that ultimately the whole cosmos is nothing but its own extension, its own ramification. So this tiny leaf is only one end of this immense existence.

A leaf is a separate individual when it becomes conscious as a part, and it will cease to be an individual when it becomes conscious as the whole.

Your first experiencing of the awakening of the kundalini will be one of the atman, or the soul; and its ultimate experiencing will be that of paramatman, or God himself. And if you stop with the very first awakening and don't probe any further, and if you raise a fence around the well of your awareness, you will stagnate as atman, as d soul. That is how a number of religions are stuck with the soul-they don't go beyond it. But the atman or soul is not the ultimate experience; these religions have covered only half the journey. If you go further, the soul also will disappear and then only God or the whole will remain.

And as I said earlier, if you venture a little further, even God will disappear and what will remain in the end will be nirvana or emptiness. Or, we can say that nothingness will remain. So those who ventured to take a step beyond God arrived at nirvana. It is they who talk of the ultimate void or the absolute emptiness. They say that nothing remains there; ultimately there is nothing, or nothingness itself.

The truth is that when you realize the all, you also realize the nothing or nothingness at the same time. The absolute is nothingness, too.

Let us approach it in a different way. The zero and the whole, the nothingness and the all, the emptiness and the absolute are two names of the same thing. They are interchangeable; they mean the same. The zero is also the whole. The emptiness is also the wholeness. The nothingness is also the everythingness.

Have you ever seen a half emptiness or a half zero? You cannot divide a zero into two halves. You cannot split a zero; it will cease to be a zero if you succeed. You can divide two by two; you can also divide one by two. But you cannot split the zero; it is impossible. You cannot even draw the zero or the void on a piece of paper. The sign of zero drawn on paper is symbolic. As soon as you draw it, it ceases to be the void, because you circumscribe it, limit it with some lines. If you ask Euclid, he will say that zero is that which has neither length nor breadth. No matter how small you draw it, even the smallest possible point will have a little length and breadth. So the sign of the zero drawn on a paper is only symbolic, it is not real. If it has length and breadth, it cannot be a zero.

Therefore the Upanishads could say that if you deduct the void from the void, the void still remains- which means that you cannot deduct anything from it. You will find at the end that you cannot take away anything from emptiness. All your attempts at stealing from it will have been in vain. Nor can you remove it or run away with it. It is irreducible; it is irremovable; it is in a way absolute.

What is true in the context of zero or the void is also true in the context of the whole or the absolute.

In fact, you cannot conceive of the whole except by way of emptiness. The whole means that nothing can be added to it, ant the zero or emptiness means that nothing can be deducted from it. There is no way of going any farther from the absolute, and there is no possibility of plunging deeper than the deepest void. You cannot divide either the whole or the void into parts; they are indivisible.

And the whole cannot be bounded, because whatever is bounded cannot be the whole. To be bounded means that something remains outside the boundary, and so it cannot have wholeness.

Then it is less than the whole. If the boundary of your house begins where the boundary of my house ends, it means that my house is not the whole; if it is the whole it should include your house as well.

So there can be no limit to the whole; it is illimitable. Who can limit it? It needs a neighbor, an outside agency to do so. But nothing is outside the whole. The whole is alone; it has no neighbors whatsoever.

Remember, it always needs two to create a boundary between them; two create a boundary. There is a boundary where I end and someone else begins. If there is no one else to begin with, if only I am there, then I am not going to end; I cannot be limited. So also the whole has no limits. Who is there to limit it? In the same way the void, the emptiness, can have no limits, no boundaries; because if it can be limited, it is something-then it cannot be nothing. Only something can be limited.

So if you understand it correctly you will know that the void and the whole are two ways of saying the same thing. And a religious pilgrim can follow both ways: either you become the whole or you become the nothing. Both ways will take you to your destiny, which is the destiny of all.

One who goes the way of the whole, who is in love with the whole, the positive, he will say: "I am the brahman, I am the absolute." He will say that he is God, he is all that there is. He will say that there is nothing beyond him, and that there is no "thou". He includes all "thou's" within him. If it is possible for you to be so infinite, you will have attained the highest.

But in the final reckoning, even this "I" will have to go, because if there is no "thou", how can you say "I am; I am the BRAHMAN"? "I" can be meaningful only in the context of"thou"; without "thou", "I" is simply irrelevant.

And when you are the absolute, there is not much sense in saying, "I am the absolute", because this statement concedes in away the existence of two-the brahman and you. And ultimately with the departure of "I", even the brahman or the absolute will become meaningless. One will have to become speechless; he will be absolutely silent.

In this other way you annihilate yourself so completely that you say, "I am not." In one case you say, "I am the BRAHMAN," or "I am all," and in another you say "I am nothing; everything is absolute emptiness." This path will also take you to the same ultimate destiny. And when you have arrived there you will not be able to say even this-that you are not. To say "I am not" needs the presence of the "I". So even this will disappear.

You cannot even say that everything is emptiness, all is void. To say that all is void, it is necessary that both "all" and "emptiness" would be in existence. Then the only course open to you is that you become speechless, you become silent. From wherever you begin- -whether from the whole or from the void, nothingness- it will take you to supreme silence where you will have nothing to say.

Therefore, where one begins his journey is not a major question. What is to be examined is the destination where one will finally arrive. Where he will ultimately reach is the basic question.

This final destiny can be known and recognized. And if one has attained to it, then whatever path he has followed is the right path. No path is right and no path is wrong in the absolute sense.

Whatsoever takes you to your goal is the right path. And the goal is one and the same.

But wherever you begin you will always begin with the "I". The early experience will always be "I"- oriented, because that is our given situation; that is where we are and whence we start. Whether we awaken the kundalini or we go into meditation or we enter silence, the initial experience has to be individual, it has to be "I" oriented. Whatsoever will happen at the initial stage will happen to us as individuals, because we are individuals at the beginning of the journey. But as we go deeper, the individual will go on disappearing. The deeper the experience the greater the erosion of the individual, the ego. But if we stray from the inner journey and wander about, then the individual will survive and go on growing instead.

For instance, a person is standing on the edge of a well. If he enters the well and keeps going deeper and deeper, he will one day reach the ocean. Ultimately he will know that there was no such thing as a well. What is a well really? It is just a hole; it is a hole in the earth through which one peeps into the ocean; it is a small opening in the great ocean.

What is the meaning of a well? It is a small opening, a passage through which you come in contact with the sea. You are wrong if you think of a well in terms of water; the water in the well is the ocean itself; it comes from the ocean. The well is just the medium through which you see the sea. And as this opening will be enlarged, the vision of the sea will be enlarged to the same extent.

But if you come out of the well and stray from it, you will, by and by, lose sight of the water too. Then you will barely see the edge of the well and its mouth; you will never be able to find any association between the well and the ocean. And then you will refuse to believe that they are one and the same.

While the inward journey will take you to unity and oneness, the outward journey will do the contrary; it will take you to division and diversity. It will take you to the many.

But the fact remains that at the beginning of all experiences there is the well, the individual, and at its end there is the ocean the non-individual or God. It was in this sense that I said that the kunda of energy is one, universal, cosmic. If you dive deep, the kunda will cease to be yours; then there will be only the universal kunda. Then, in fact, nothing will be yours. It is so in the very nature of things.

Question 2

You ask this question because you think emptiness to be nothing. And why should someone do anything just to achieve nothing? One should do something if there is something to be achieved.

You equate emptiness with nothing. Then sadhana or effort becomes unnecessary for you. For you, effort is worth making if you have to become something. Why strive for nothing?

But you don't know that emptiness means the whole. You don't know that the void is all there is. It does not mean nothing; it means the absolute. But right now you cannot understand how emptiness could be the whole, the absolute. A well can also say, "If I have to go to the ocean only to know that I am nothing, then why should I go at all?" The well is right to say so. And it is right in refusing to go to the sea if it means that ultimately the well does not exist.

But for reality or truth it makes no difference if you don't go. The fact is that you are not. Whether you go to the ocean or you don't, it does not alter the reality. The reality is you are not a well; you are the ocean itself. You can choose to remain a well but the fact is that you are not; it is a lie that you are. And this lie will continue to hurt you, to haunt you. It will continue to make your life unhappy and miserable. And it will keep you in chains, in bondage. In this lie there is no possibility whatsoever of joy and bliss.

It is true that the well on reaching the sea will disappear, but with it all its misery, all its anxiety will also disappear. Because all its misery and anxiety are inextricably bound with its being a well, an individual, an ego. To others it will seem that the well has lost itself by entering the ocean; it failed to be something. But the well will not think so. The well will say, "Who says that I am lost? I have become the ocean itself." It was the neighboring well, that has not yet visited the sea, which had said, "Where are you going, you fool? Why do you go where you will cease to be?" But the sea going well will say, "Who says it means to be nothing? It is true that I will die as a well, but I will be born as the ocean itself."

The choice is always whether you want to re main a well or you want to become an ocean. The choice is between the petty and the immense, between the part and the whole, between bondage and freedom. But it is an experiential matter; it is not at all philosophical. And if the well is afraid of dying, it will have to sever all relationship with the ocean. Because as long as it is related with the ocean it will always face the danger of knowing that it is the ocean itself.

Then the well will have to break its ties even with all the underground springs and streams, because ultimately they go to the same ocean. The well will have to close its eyes from all sides and refuse to see within, lest it should come to know of its own non being and the being of the ocean. Then it will always see outward and never look within. Then it will wish the streams to be as small as possible; it will even wish them to be dry and dead. But then in the long run the well itself will die, although it will do everything to save itself. In the very effort to save itself it will perish.

Jesus has said, "He who will save himself will die, and he alone will be saved who will die voluntarily."

So the question invariably arises in our minds, "Why go where I will die and disappear? Why go there at all, if death is certain?" But if this death is a certainty, it is what it is. And how on earth will you save yourself through such self preserving efforts? If it is true that you will die on entering the ocean, how are you going to save yourself as a well, and for how long? If, in your view, becoming such a huge ocean amounts to dying, how are you going to survive as a tiny well and for how long?

Soon its walls will crumble; soon its water will evaporate, and soon it will be covered with dirt and dust. When you are not to survive as a vast ocean, how will you survive as a petty well? And for how long?

This is how the fear of death arises. This is the fear that pursues the well. The well does not want to go to the sea for fear of extinction. Therefore it keeps a distance from the sea and continues to be a well. But even then the fear of death is going to grip it, because no sooner does it alienate itself from the sea, death draws closer and still closer. Joined with the ocean there is hope and life for the well; the well's life is inescapably linked with the ocean. Alienated from the ocean its death is certain.

That is why we are all afraid of death; we are afraid lest we should die and disappear. But there is no escape from death; it is certain. And there are only two ways of dying. One is that you take a jump into the ocean and die. This kind of death is very blissful, because you will not really die, you will become the ocean itself. And another kind of death happens when you stubbornly cling to the well, and die nonetheless. Then you stagnate and rot and die with tears in your eyes.

Our mind is greedy; it is always after some gain, some profit, some achievement. It goes on asking, "What will I gain if I go to the ocean? What will I achieve if I seek samadhi or nirvana or emptiness?"

We always ask what we are going to achieve, and we never ask- which is what one should ask- "How did we lose ourselves in this rat race for gains and achievements?" On the face of it, we have achieved every thing: we have achieved wealth, power, prestige, everything. And in this very pursuit we have lost ourselves; we have completely lost ourselves. We have now everything- except ourselves.

If you ask me in terms of achievement, I will say: if you are prepared to lose you will achieve yourself.

And you will lose yourself and lose completely if you are not prepared to lose, if you try to save. This is the paradox; that in your attempt to save, you will save everything except yourself. You will save things and you will lose your soul, which you really are.

Question 3

There are many connections between them. One, we carry within us the potential for both life and death. While the oxygen of breath represents our potential for life, carbon dioxide represents the potential for death. When your oxygen gradually diminishes and disappears and you are left with carbon dioxide alone, you will turn into a corpse. It is like we burn a piece of wood-it keeps burning so long as oxygen is available. There is fire, there is life in the wood so long as oxygen is available to it. But as soon as its oxygen is spent, it is dead. It is reduced to ashes, to coal, which is carbon.

The carbon which is left behind is nothing but dead fire.

Both the elements are operating within us. If we have more of carbon dioxide, we will slide into lethargy. That is why it is easier to sleep in the night than in the daytime, because during the night the amount of carbon dioxide goes up while that of oxygen declines. That is how we go to sleep so easily in the night and not so easily during the daytime. In the daytime the amount of oxygen in the air goes up because of the sun, and everything is awake and active. And with sunset, the proportion of oxygen in the air drops considerably.

That is how darkness and night have become the symbol of lethargy and inertia. And the sun- is the symbol of light and life and energy, because it brings life with it. At night everything becomes listless:

flowers close their petals, leaves wither, and all living beings go to sleep. In a sense the whole earth in the night slides into a temporary kind of death. And with the advent of another morning, flowers bloom again, trees begin to sway, leaves become alive, living beings wake up, birds are on their wings and the whole earth becomes festive. The temporary death of the night-time disappears and life returns to the earth.

The same thing happens within you. When the quantity of oxygen in you goes up, your latent energies begin to awaken. For every kind of latent energy to wake up, oxygen is a must. We can keep a dying man alive for a little while with the help of oxygen. He would be instantly dead if the oxygen tube is removed from his nostrils. But with oxygen he can be kept alive for a few days, a few months, even for a few years, because his utterly enfeebled life force is being revived by oxygen.

We are keeping death itself at bay with the help of oxygen.

Today thousands of people throughout Europe and America are being kept alive with oxygen pumped into them from without. They would have been dead long ago but for the oxygen cylinders.

Now euthanasia has been one of the most important issues in the countries of the West. Euthanasia means that a person should have the right to die when he must. With the help of oxygen and other modern devices the physicians can keep someone alive-although he may be as good as dead-for long. So euthanasia has become a great issue. The physician's problem is that if he allows him to die he will be said to be guilty of homicide. It would be a kind of murder. So he will keep an eighty-year-old invalid alive with oxygen. If he does not do so he will be prosecuted for murder, so he will keep this ebbing energy alive by inserting an oxygen tube in the nostrils.

What do breathing exercises like pranayam, bhastrika and what I call intense and fast breathing do?

You breathe in so much life breath that the potential of your latent energy is heightened and it begins to awaken. At the same time, with deep and fast breathing the pattern of deep seated inertia or sleep is broken.

You will be surprised to hear a story that I am going to tell you.

About four years ago a Buddhist monk came to me from Ceylon. He had been going without sleep for three years. He was given every kind of medical treatment, but it did not work. Medicine could not work because the bhikkhu had been practicing anapansati yoga-a special kind of breathing discipline in vogue among the Buddhists. It consists in watching one's deep breath day in and day out. Now the person who had taught him anapansati yoga did not know that if one watched his deep breath through twenty-four hours of the day, he would lose his sleep completely. Then it would be impossible for him to get any sleep.

To make the matter worse, the bhikkhu was be ing given sleeping pills while he was doing anapansati. It created a great conflict in his body and he was really in a mess. While the drugs were trying to induce sleep in him, constant watchfulness of the breath was keep ing him awake.

Consequently a kind of deadlock, a crisis was created in his body, as will happen in a car if both its accelerator and brake are applied simultaneously. It was evident that the bhikkhu was in terrible suffering.

Somebody told him about me and so he came. As soon as I saw him I knew that he was in the grip of a kind of madness. he had put himself in an impossible situation. I asked him to stop the anapanasati yoga immediately. But he wanted to know what anapanasati had to do with his loss of sleep. He had no idea that constant awareness of deep breathing had increased the amount of his oxygen so much that his sleep had vanished. I also told him that if he could not give up anapansati, he should then stop taking sedatives and go without sleep. If he continued with his anapansati, he could easily do without sleep; it would do him no harm at all.

When the bikkhu stopped anapanasati for only eight days, his sleep returned to him, and he had no use for any sedatives.

Any increase in carbon dioxide inevitably increases our sleep. And everything that produces carbon in our body sends our already sleeping energies into deeper sleep, it deepens our unconsciousness.

That is why, as the population of the world is growing, every person's share of oxygen is going down in the same measure. And that adds to our unconsciousness-which is already too much. A time may come soon when our capacity to be awake will be at its minimum.

You feel fresh in the morning. You feel fresh when you go to a forest or visit a seashore. And you become listless and dull when you are in the market place, when you are in a crowd. Why? It is because of the preponderance of carbon dioxide and lack of oxygen. It is true that oxygen is being created all the time, but as a crowd consumes more oxygen, it leads to a scarcity of oxygen in the marketplace. Go to a crowded place-a cinema house or a temple-and soon you will be in the grip of dullness and insensitivity. And go to a mountain or a garden, or a riverside, and you will feel alert and alive and happy.

There is a great purpose in increasing the quantity of your oxygen. It changes your inner balance; it makes you more wakeful and aware, less sleepy and unconscious. And if the amount of oxygen is increased swiftly and sharply and abruptly, it will make a radical difference in your inner balance. It will be like one side of the scales goes to the top and the other side touches the ground. And if this change is brought about in one stroke, you will experience it very quickly and sharply. A slow and gradual change is hardly felt by you.

That is why I insist on fast and intense breathing so that you bring about such a swift change that you pass from one stage to another in just ten minutes, and also observe the process of change itself. It is only when a thing changes swiftly and sharply that it can be so clearly observed.

For instance, each one of us passes from infancy to adolescence and from youth to old age, but the process is so slow and gradual that we never know exactly when we become adolescent, when we be come old. If someone asks for the exact date when I became old, I cannot tell. An old man is confused, he fails to understand that he is now old, because be tween his youth and old age there was no gap what soever. Similarly, a child does not know that he has come of age; he continues to behave as a child. While he looks adolescent to others, he himself remains unaware of this fact.

While his parents expect him to take up his responsibility in the family, he still takes himself to be a kid.

It is so because the transition from one stage to another does not happen with a bang; it is very silent and slow. In the same way an old man continues to behave as though he is a young man; he is not aware that a change has taken place in his life. And how can he know?

A sharp and sudden transition is needed for one to know it. If there was a fixed day and hour for this transition to take place, there would have been no room for confusion. And then there would be no need to remind a grown up or an old person about his proper state.

In meditation I aim at a change so sharp and powerful that you clearly know the difference between your sleeping consciousness and its awakened counterpart. It should come like a leap, with a bang, so you know well that the transformation has happened. This knowing is valuable; it will help you very much. For this reason I support techniques that bring about sudden and sharp transformation.

If it takes a long time, you will never know it. And this ignorance has its dangers. The danger is that if you don't know what change has taken place then it will not deepen your understanding as it should.

It often happens that someone comes to some spiritual experience all unaware and effortlessly, and the change is so slow and silent that he does not know what it is all about. Then he tries to interpret it in his own old ways-which are mostly wrong-because the necessary perspective to understand it is lacking. Many times it happens that you are very close to a new spiritual experience and you bypass it, because you interpret it according to your old moorings. All this happens just because the changes happen so gradually and slowly.

I know of a man who easily lifts a water buffalo with his hands. A buffalo is a considerably large and heavy animal. His animal farm has many buffaloes on it. This man started lifting a baby buffalo and continued to lift it daily for a long period of time. Therefore as the buffalo grew up, slowly his capacity to lift it grew at the same pace. And now he can lift any grown-up buffalo-which simply looks like a miracle! The man himself does not think it to be a miracle, because he has acquired this capacity slowly over a long period of time. But all other people think it to be a veritable miracle, because they have a perspective to see it. They know they themselves cannot do what this man does with perfect ease.

It is for this reason that I teach you this intense and dynamic way of meditation.

And oxygen has great significance. It is a tremendously precious thing. The more you fill your body with oxygen the more speedy will be your transition from the body to the soul. If you understand it rightly, you will know that your body is your dead end; the body is that part of you which shows itself because it is dead. This part of you, being dead, has been solidified and therefore it is visible. And the soul is another part of you that continues to be liquid and subtle, rare and ethereal; it cannot be grasped. A good quantity of oxygen, which brings awakening and life to you, will create a good distance between your body and soul. Then you will clearly know them to be absolutely different from each other, although they are two parts of the same being-you.

Therefore, breath plays a great role in the awakening of the kundalini.

The kundalini is your energy asleep. You cannot awaken it with the help of carbon dioxide. Rather, carbon will deepen its sleep. Oxygen is a great aid in awakening the kundalini. This is the reason that we have always given such great importance to morning meditation. The reason is this: that in the morning even a small breath carries a large amount of oxygen with it. The earth happens to be in a very unique and extraordinary state for a full hour after sunrise, and to take advantage of this situation, morning has been chosen all the world over as the finest time for meditation.

The more you hammer the kundalini with your fast and intense breathing, the more quickly it will awaken. But the difficulty is that we don't see clearly how it operates, and therefore the significance of deep breathing is lost on us. For instance, a lamp is burning. We see the oil in the earthen pot, we see the wick and the matchstick that lights it. We also see the flame and the light arising from it. But we fail to see the real thing: the oxygen which is the vital part of the whole operation. It is really oxygen that burns and becomes light. Neither the oil nor the wick nor the matchstick is that important. The oil, the wick and the matchstick are the visible parts of the lamp, they form its body.

But its invisible part, the oxygen, which forms the soul of the lamp and which really burns, is not visible.

I have heard that one evening a family went out to visit friends, leaving behind a boy to take care of the house. There is a small temple in that house and a lamp is burning before a statue of some god.

The boy has been especially asked to see that the lamp does not go out. Meantime, a strong wind begins to sweep through, and the boy gets worried about the lamp. So he brings a glass bowl and covers the lamp with it. Although the lamp is well protected, yet its flame dies immediately. Perhaps the lamp could have survived the wind, but it could not survive lack of oxygen; it was dead in a second.

The oxygen, which is really the vital force, is invisible. What we call our life is a process of oxygenation; it is like the burning of the lamp. Speaking in scientific terms, life is the flaming oxygen.

Whether it is in human beings or in trees or in the lamp or in the sun himself, wherever there is oxygenation there is life. So the more the oxygenation, the brighter your life's flame. And kundalini is this life's flame. Oxygenation heightens the flaming and flow of the kundalini. So oxygen is very effective with the kundalini.

Question 4

Actually many things are necessary before some one can go into a cave to practice yoga. If these requirements are not fulfilled a yogi in a cave will never attain to samadhi; he will instead pass into increasing unconsciousness. What he will take for samadhi will be nothing but deepening sleep and unconsciousness. He alone can make use of a cave who has oxygenated himself so much through abundant practice of prana yam that the cave poses no problem for him.

If a person has gone through pranayam in depth, if every drop of his blood, every fiber of his body has been oxygenated, he can bury himself underground for eight days and come out of it alive. The reason is simply this: he has enough oxygen in reserve to last him for eight days. Ordinarily, we don't have any surplus oxygen with us; we manage with much less. If you go and lie down underground by the side of the yogi without adequate practice of pranayam, you will be dead on the eighth day when the yogi comes out alive. The yogi has in reserve that amount of oxygen which is needed to keep one going for eight days buried under the earth. Such a person will make good use of a cave for meditation and will be highly benefited. Since he will have no problem of oxygen, he will reap other benefits that only a cave brings to a yogi.

The cave is used because it provides many kinds of protection to the seeker. It not only protects him from the din and bustle of the outside world; it also protects him from various vibrations that are injurious to yoga. A cave of a particular kind of stone has much significance. Particular stones, like marble, prevent many vibrations from entering the cave. That is why marble has been widely used in the construction of temples. Because of the marble certain vibrations are kept away from the temples.

So the marble is not used just for decoration's sake-as is generally understood-it has really great spiritual significance discovered through long experimentation. There are stones that absorb some special kinds of vibrations, thus preventing them from enter ing the temples. Some other stones deflect or repel these vibrations. And there are stones that attract vibrations conducive to spiritual discipline. In the past, caves of particular shapes and sizes were carved out, because the design of a cave is also important to sadhana.

But we have no idea, because the whole science of it has been lost. When we make a car, we make it with a specific design. This is done with an eye to the speed of the car. A car has to be designed so that it tears through the air and does not fight with it. If the car is flat at its front, its speed will be inhibited. The front should be such that it cuts through the air, non-resisting like an arrow. And because the car cuts through the air with speed, the air rushes into the vacuum created behind the car, adding to the speed.

You might have seen the bridge on the river Ganges at Allahabad; it was constructed with great difficulty. The river's current was so strong that it washed away every pillar of the bridge that the engineers sought with great effort to construct. Pillar after pillar had to be built and rebuilt. But the builders had a special difficulty with one particular pillar; it was almost impossible to construct it.

When all other pillars were ready, this one continued to defy modern technology. Then the engineers hit upon an ingenious plan: they designed this pillar after the shape of a shoe and it withstood the powerful current. If you observe your own shoe you will find how its shape helps you in walking; it cuts through the air. So the shoe-like pillar could absorb the shock of Ganges' rushing currents.

That is why caves have special shapes and sizes and specific kinds of stones in them.

A seeker can project his vibes up to a particular limit of his space, and through experimentation he will learn for himself how much space he needs in order to safely do his sadhana. For instance, if he comes to know that he can fill an area of sixty four square feet with his own vibes, that much space will be considered safe for him, and he will find just that much space for himself. Then he will see to it that his cave has the least number of openings-perhaps one will be enough. And this single door should have a shape and size of its own; it should preserve the vibes of the seeker and at the same time keep off other unwanted vibes from entering the cave.

If a number of seekers have used a particular cave for this sadhana, that cave acquires extraordinary significance, and new seekers can be very much benefited by it. Therefore some caves have been used for thousands of years without a break.

When for the first time the caves of Ajanta were excavated, they were all filled with mud. And it was done with a purpose, although the people in charge of the excavation work had no idea of it. They were surprised to find that every cave had been carefully filled and sealed with dirt. They looked just like mountain rocks, where trees had grown freely. It became necessary to fill those caves with dirt, because a time came when seekers became scarce, and their useful ness had to be preserved for some future time when new seekers would be available who would need them.

The caves of Ajanta were never meant for the tourists and sightseers for whom they are being used at present. They are not for visitors; the visitors have virtually destroyed everything that was precious about them. Now they are of no worth spiritually.

Although a cave lacks oxygen, it has other advantages for a seeker. And sadhana or spiritual discipline is a complex affair; there are many aspects to it. A cave is good for the advanced seekers.

And a seeker did not have to remain confined to a cave day in and day out; he went out of it from time to time. A part of his sadhana was done outside the cave, if it was necessary to do so. He used both-the inner and outer space of the cave.

Temples and mosques were designed and constructed for this very purpose; they were meant to conserve special kinds of vibes and energies, which are conducive to the growth of the seekers.

Sometimes you find, on visiting a place, that your thoughts have suddenly changed, although you don't know that the particular place has a hand in it. You think that the change has occurred by itself.

At times you find that on visiting a particular person you are a different person-different from what you were. You find that a different facet of your personality has come to the fore. Then you think that it is just a matter of changing moods. But the matter is not that simple.

A good deal of research has been done in this direction. For example, there are the pyramids of Egypt. Intensive investigations have been made to find out what the pyramids are, why they were made and for what. What was the purpose of constructing such giant pyramids in a wasteland, in a desert? How much money was spent on their construction? How much human energy went into the making of them? If such huge structures were only meant for burying the dead, as they seem to be, then it was a reckless waste of money and human energy.

The truth is that the pyramids were especially constructed for spiritual purposes; they were places where spiritual sadhana could be carried on with great ease and advantage. And it was for spiritual purposes that the dead bodies of special people were preserved in them.

In Tibet, dead bodies of great bodhisattvas, highly advanced souls, some of which are thousands of years old-have been preserved in very deep and secret caves. The body that Buddha had was not an ordinary body. Even the physical body, with which the great soul of Buddha had been associated for eighty years, was not an ordinary thing. It was immeasurably precious and great. This body had absorbed and assimilated the rare vibes of Buddha for eighty years. It is difficult to say if a phenomenon like that will happen on this earth again.

After his crucifixion the dead body of Jesus was kept in a cave. It was to be buried the next day, but it was not found again. It continues to be a mystery for the Christians how his dead body disappeared, and what happened to it. There is the story of his resurrection which says that Jesus was seen by some of his disciples a few days after his crucifixion. But the question remains: what happened to Jesus after he was resurrected and when did he die again?

But it is mysterious that nothing is known about Jesus after the crucifixion. The Christians have no account whatsoever of the resurrected Jesus. The fact is that the dead body of Jesus was so precious that it had to be immediately removed from the cave to a place where it could be preserved safely for a long time. And this information had to be a guarded secret for the safety of the dead body. A man like Jesus is indeed rare in all history.

So these pyramids of Egypt-including their structure, their courts, their special features-are highly meaningful and significant.

(Here in answer to an inaudible question Osho says that it is a different matter and He will discuss it separately.)

Question 5

PLEASE EXPLAIN THIS PHENOMENON IN THE CONTEXT OF MEDITATION AND SAMADHI- I.E. ECSTASY.

Actually, when breathing has reached its full intensity and a gap is created between you and your body, when your sleeping and awakened parts seem to be separate from each other, then you will begin to move to your awakened part. At this stage the body ceases to need oxygen any more. Now it is good that the body goes into sleep, that it becomes inert, as good as dead. Now your life force does not move toward the body, instead it begins to move toward the soul.

It is the body that needs oxygen, the soul has no need for oxygen really. Do you follow what I say?

The body needs oxygen; and when your life force moves toward the soul, the body needs a minimum amount of oxygen-just enough to keep it alive. It does not need more than the minimum, and it will impede your progress if the body receives more oxygen at this stage.

Therefore it is as it should be that breathing slows down and becomes thin and feeble. Breathing was useful to awaken the energy, and once the energy is awake, breathing ceases to be useful.

Now your body can do with the minimum of breathing. And so there will be moments when it will come to a stop completely. It has to stop.

In fact, when you reach the point of right balance, which we call samadhi, breathing will cease. But we have no idea what this cessation of breathing means. If you want to know it right now you can stop breathing, but it will be meaningless. You cannot know it experientially by deliberately stopping it. This will not be the same experience that you have in deep meditation.

We are familiar with only two ways of breathing: a breath comes in and another goes out. But a moment comes, and it comes at the height of meditation, when breathing stops halfway between inhalation and exhalation. When such moments come you will feel that your breathing has ceased and that you are going to die. Certainly these moments will come.

As you go deeper in meditation your breathing becomes slower and slower; as if breathing has rarified. It is because you don't need any oxygen at that depth of meditation. Oxygen was necessary at its initial stage. It is like I turn a key in the lock to open a door. Need I continue turning the key even after it has done its job? Now the key is useless. It hangs by the lock and I am inside the room.

You may ask why I don't use the key when I am in the room. No, the key has served its purpose; it was only meant for entering the room.

As long as the kundalini does not awaken, you will have to use the key of breathing with all your strength. But as soon as it is awakened, breathing becomes unnecessary. Now, as you are on your in ward journey, your body will demand very little oxygen. And then you don't have to use your volition to stop breathing; it will slow down on its own. It will slow down to a halt, and a moment will come when everything will seem to have come to a standstill. In fact, this is the moment-when breathing stops half-way between inhalation and exhalation-when you are in a state of utter balance, when you are in ecstasy or samadhi. In this very moment you know existence-not life.

Understand this difference between knowing life and knowing existence. In samadhi you know existence-not life. Your knowledge of life is linked with your breathing, because life is oxygen, it is a part of breath. In samadhi you know the existence where breathing is wholly unnecessary.

Existence is immense. This existence includes everything-it includes your being, and the mountains and the stars and the whole space. There is no movement whatsoever; everything is still and resting in existence. Not even a ripple arises in its placid, calm and tranquil sea. In that moment all the vibrations of your breath will come to a stop; breath itself will stop, because breath cannot enter this stillness, this emptiness. Let alone breath, even life cannot enter this space. Never.

The beyond is beyond life too.

Remember, that which is beyond death is beyond life, too. Therefore we cannot say that God is alive; it would be absurd to say so. Since he is not subject to death, it is meaningless to call him alive. Life is relative to death; the one cannot be without the other. God has no life; he has existence-rather he is existence itself. Of course, we living beings are alive, we have life. When we come out of existence, we have life. And it is our death when we return to existence again.

For instance, it is life when a wave arises in an ocean. Before the wave arose there was only the ocean, there was no wave. Life begins when a wave arises; it is the wave's coming into being, into life. And when the wave disappears, it is the wave's death. Its rise is its life; its fall is its death.

But the existence of the sea is without waves. The ocean was there even when waves had not arisen, and it will be there when the waves will have died. And the experience of that existence, that sameness, that tranquility, is samadhi or ecstasy.

So samadhi is not the experiencing of life; samadhi is the experiencing of existence. Samadhi is existential; breath is not needed for it. For samadhi breath has no meaning. Neither breath nor non breath has any meaning for samadhi. Where everything comes to a stop there is samadhi.

Therefore it is necessary that when a seeker enters deeper states of meditation every precaution and care should be taken to keep him alive. Many persons are required to help him through that critical hour, otherwise he may disappear, he may be lost in that immensity known as samadhi. If proper care is not taken, he may not return from his sojourn into existence. Ramakrishna often reached this state. For days he used to be in samadhi, to be absorbed in existence, and it became difficult for him to return to life.

Ramakrishna is a very revered sage, he is widely known and held in great respect. But we don't know a thing about the man who saved Ramakrishna for the world. One of his nephews lived with him; it was he who always saved him when he slid into such a state. He kept night vigil for him.

Whenever Ramakrishna entered samadhi, this nephew of his worked hard to keep him alive; he kind of forcibly fed him with milk and water and other nourishments. Whenever his respiration failed, he gave him massage to restore his breathing. He did everything to save him for the world.

The whole world came to know of Ramakrishna through Vivekananda, but nobody knows the man who saved him for the world. He worked hard, he spared nothing to serve Ramakrishna, who could have been dead any time. The experience of samadhi is so tremendously blissful that a return from it becomes nearly impossible. In that moment there is every possibility of getting lost irrevocably.

There is a point of no return, and it is so close to samadhi. Schools and monasteries and ashrams came into being for this very purpose: just to save the seekers from sliding into the point of no return. Sannyasins who did not build schools and ashrams failed to experience deep samadhi.

Wandering sannyasins-known as parivrajakas-who kept moving from place to place, were deprived of this loftiest spiritual experience. To do so a group, a school is a must.

To go deep into samadhi and, further, to save seekers from death, many persons who know the thing are needed. The parivrajakas, in order to escape attachment, made it a rule that they would not stay at a place for a long period of time. But one who becomes a victim of attachment over a long period of time can become so even in a short time. The difference will be that of degree-his attachment will be a small one. It may be the difference between a three months old attachment and a three days old attachment. The difference will be one of degrees. The school of parivrajakas is bound to lose yoga and samadhi in the long run, because groups and communes are needed to save them.

It is one thing to enter samadhi-an individual can do it-but the matter of bringing him back is very different. There is no difficulty up to the stage of meditation, but the moment of samadhi requires great precaution and care. It is the moment when it becomes urgent to protect the seeker from slipping into the region of no return. He has to be saved so that he brings us the news of the beyond. And he alone can bring that news who has peeped into it through samadhi, who has a glimpse of it.

Whatsoever we know of it came to us from those handful of people who have returned from that beyond. But for them we would have been utterly in the dark about it. You cannot know it through thought or speculation; there is no way to it. It can only be directly contacted and experienced. And very often one who contacts the beyond finds it difficult to return from there. He can be lost forever; it is the point of no return. It is the point from where one jumps into the unending void of space, where all roads end, where all bridges are broken.

It is the time when great care is needed, when great work has to be done. Lately I have been of the view that when I have prepared you for samadhi, schools or communes will be urgently needed.

Groups, and not individuals, will be important to you-groups that will take care of those who will enter samadhi; otherwise they will be lost forever. Groups, schools and communes will see to it that seekers are helped to return from that state, and that knowledge of this supreme experience is preserved for us. Otherwise there is every danger of its being lost.

Question 6

It becomes very rhythmic, very harmonious, it becomes musical; and there are many other things to it. The person who is twenty four hours in sahaj samadhi, whose mind does not waver, who is still and quiet, who is established in existence, who is one with it, his breathing takes on a rhythm of its own. And when he is not doing a thing-neither eating, nor speaking nor walking-then breathing becomes exceeding blissful for him. Then just being, just breath ing brings him such joy and bliss that nothing else can bring. His breathing is very rhythmic and harmonious; it turns into a soundless sound, the sound of one hand clapping.

A taste of that unearthly experience can be had through breathing in a particular way. That is why disciplines of breathing-yogic and others-were developed in the past. For instance, if a person makes his breathing as rhythmic and harmonious as the breathing of a person in sahaj samadhi, he will know what quietude and peace is. Pranayam and other breathing techniques were developed through observing the ways of breathing and its effects in close proximity of any number of people established in samadhi. And they are very helpful.

Breathing in the state of samadhi is reduced to its minimum, because in samadhi life is not as significant as existence, or being is. For a person in samadhi an altogether new dimension has opened, which belongs to existence and where breathing and things like it are not necessary. Now he is everlastingly established in that dimension, he exists in that dimension. He now makes use of his body only when he has to relate with us; otherwise he does not use his body. It is only to relate with us that he eats, sleeps, bathes, wears clothes and does other things that the body needs.

These are just his ways to relate with us.

Except for relating with us he does not need his body and breathing and the rest of it. In themselves the body and its functions have no meaning for him. And his breathing becomes minimal; he breathes only that much as is necessary to produce enough life force to keep him in the body.

Therefore he can easily live in a place with very little oxygen.

There are olden temples and caves which have hardly any doors and windows; they have no ventilators at all. They look so anachronistic for the modern times, they are wholly against hygiene, the science of health. All these ancient temples and caves that are still existing, have no openings worth the name.

There are caves with no arrangements for ventilation; one wonders how a whiff of air can enter them.

This is so because those who lived in them did not need much air. In fact, they did not want much air to enter their sanctuaries, because the vibrations of the outside world carried by air could have destroyed the astral vibrations of the cave, which needed to be protected and preserved. It was with a view to protect and preserve the store of astral energy that the temples and caves of old times had nothing like ventilation.

This is not possible today. To make it possible again, it will be necessary to build a long line of the discipline of breathing. To make it possible we will need men and women who have attained to samadhi.

Question 7

Anapansati has great effect on our body oxygen. This is a good question which needs to be rightly understood. Every activity of life, every function of our body is accelerated when you pay attention to it. Most of the bodily functions are autonomic; you don't have to pay attention to them, but when you pay attention they are affected.

For instance, when a doctor puts his finger on your pulse, your pulse beat does not remain the same, it immediately quickens a little; it is more than what it was before. It is so because it has received attention, the attention of two persons-the doctor's and yours. And it will quicken a lot if the doctor happens to belong to the opposite sex, because now it will receive more attention. You can try it like this: check your own pulse first, and then watch for ten minutes how it beats and then check it again.

You will find that your pulse beat has changed, it has quickened. Attention works as a catalytic agent to heighten your pulse beat, or for that matter any function of the body.

The technique of anapansati is tremendously valuable. It is a way of watching your own breathing.

You don't have to do a thing about it; you don't have to interfere with your breathing or to breathe in any particular manner. You have only to watch it as it is. But it is also true that as soon as you begin to observe it, your breathing becomes a little faster. It is inevitable. With your observation, the manner of your breathing will change, and it will be faster than before. And this change and the observation itself will show results.

But the main objective of anapansati is not to bring about any changes in your breathing pattern; the main objective is just observing your breath as it is. Because when you observe your breathing, and ob serve it constantly, by and by you begin to separate yourself from it; there occurs a gap between you and your breath. Because when someone observes something, immediately the observer becomes separate from the observed.

In fact, the observer cannot be one with the observed. The moment you turn something into the observed, you separate yourself from your object of observation-you become different from it. Since you have made your breath the observed, and you have been watching how it works, you become distant from it in the very process of observation. And then one day you will find that while breathing is going on you are at a considerable distance from it.

Anapansati yoga brings about your separation from the body; you really experience it.

You can try anapansati in many ways. If you watch the way you walk-if you just observe how the right foot rises and moves, and then the left foot rises and moves-if you only watch the movement of your feet, you will find in two weeks' time that you are quite separate from your feet. You will clearly see your feet as the observed and you remain the observer. Your own feet will seem to you to be functioning mechanically. Such a person can say that walking he does not walk, talking he does not talk, eating he does not eat, sleeping he does not sleep. And he is right.

But it is very difficult to understand such a person who has become a watcher on the hill. If he is a witness to his walking, if he really does not walk while walking, it is only he who actually sees it so; it will be difficult for others even to understand it. If he is a witness to his talking, he will not talk while talking, he will remain a witness alone.

Anapansati is a significant technique; it makes you the witness, the witnessing soul, but it is different from kundalini.

Question 8

Actually, no person uses his lungs fully while breathing. There are roughly six thousand air sacs in a person's lungs, out of which hardly fifteen to twenty hundred sacs are filled with oxygen if the person happens to be very healthy and he breathes normally. The rest of the air sacs are filled with carbon dioxide, which is another name for filth. Therefore it is difficult to find a man who takes in more oxygen than is necessary. One who takes in the necessary amount of oxygen is also rare. A major part of our lungs remains unused.

It would be really a great thing if you can fill your whole lungs with oxygen; it will lead to great expansion of your consciousness. How expansive your life is can be known from the amount of oxygen you carry in your lungs. The more oxygen, the more life. And if you can fill your entire lungs with oxygen, you will be at the zenith of life.

It is oxygen that makes for the difference between the healthy and the sick. The sick is he who takes in very little oxygen through breathing. That is why some sick people have to be given oxygen through artificial means. They will just die if they are left to themselves. Health and sickness can be measured by the intake of oxygen. That is how running makes you healthy, because running brings you lots of oxygen. Every physical exercise is useful for this very reason. Any activity that adds to your stock of oxygen is conducive to your health. And what depletes your reserve of oxygen is injurious to your health; it will cause sickness.

But the fact remains that you never breathe to the full capacity of your lungs; you never take in even as much oxygen as you are capable of taking in. So the question of taking more than what is necessary simply does not arise. You cannot take more than what the lungs can hold; you cannot take more than its fill. It is such a difficult thing to do.

Question 9

These are absolutely conducive to meditation. Whatever there is in the air-it is not only oxygen but many other things-is conducive to life. It is because of them that you are alive. There is no life on a planet or satellite planet where these gases are not available in the right proportions. It is they who make life possible. Therefore you need not worry on this score.

And the more intensely and briskly you breathe, the more you will benefit. In a state of deep and fast breathing only oxygen can enter your system in maxi mum quantity; everything else will be left out.

And even these other gases are useful ingredients of life; they are not harmful.

Question 10

It is true that the body will feel light after this meditation. It will be so because our consciousness of body is one of heaviness. What we call heaviness is nothing more than our awareness of the body.

The body weighs heavy on a sick person even if he is skinny and wiry. But a healthy person, even if he is a heavyweight, carries his body very lightly. So it is really our body-consciousness which feels like a weight on us.

And we become conscious of our body only when it is in pain, when it is suffering. We become conscious of our feet when they are hurting. We become aware of our head when it is aching. If there is no body pain, we are never aware of our body. This consciousness is the measure of our suffering.

We define a healthy person as one who feels as if he is bodiless. He who does not feel that he is a body, who has a feeling of bodilessness, is really a healthy person. And if he is identified with a particular part of his body it can be said that this part of his body is sick.

As the amount of oxygen increases and as the kundalini awakens, you will begin to have experiences that are not of the body; they belong to the soul or the atman. And on account of these subtle experiences you will simultaneously feel lightness, an extraordinary kind of weightlessness. Many people will feel as if they are levitating. Not that they really levitate-an event of actual levitation takes place only once in a long while. But because of the feeling of utter weightlessness, you feel that you are levitating. If you open your eyes and see, you will find that you are sitting on the ground. But why this feeling of levitation?

The fact is that our mind, in its inmost depths, does not know any language as we know. It only knows the language of pictures, symbols. So when you experience weightlessness, utter weightlessness, your mind expresses it in the language of pictures. It does not say verbally that it is weightlessness, it pictures it as an act of levitation, it feels levitation.

Our deeper mind, our unconscious mind does not think in words, it thinks in pictures, in symbols.

That is why our dreams in the night have only pictures and hardly any words. The dreaming mind has to trans form everything-including experiences and thoughts-into pictures. For this reason when we wake up in the morning we find it so difficult to understand our own dreams. The language we know and use in the waking hours is utterly different from the pictorial language of dreams. The two are total strangers to each other, and therefore great interpreters in the form of pundits, psychologists and psychiatrists are needed to interpret them for us. We just cannot do without them.

Now someone is ambitious. How will he express his ambition when he is dreaming? He will turn into a bird on the wing soaring high in the sky. Then he will be at the top of everything, leaving the whole world behind him. Ambition in dreams takes the form of flights-one dreams that he is flying and flying. All ambitious men have dreams of flying. But the word ambition will never find a place in dreams. So after waking up in the morning the person wonders why he was flying in his dreams.

It is his ambition turned into a flying bird in dreams.

The same way when we enter the depths of meditation, weightlessness feels like levitation. Really weightlessness can be pictured only as levitation, there is no other way.

And once in a great while the body actually levitates in a state of extreme weightlessness.

Question 11

It is possible, it is absolutely possible.

Question 12

Fear is unnecessary, although it is natural that you feel afraid.

Question 13

That, too, is possible. It is possible because your whole inner mechanism undergoes a change.

All your connections with the body begin to get loose, and new connections begin to form in their places. Old bridges are broken and new ones are formed. Old doors close and new ones open. So the whole house is being altered. That is why you think that many things within you are breaking down, and then you feel scared. It is natural, because the whole system goes through a state of disarray and disorder. It happens in times of transition.

When a new order will arise out of this chaos, it will be altogether different from the old, it will be incomparably unique. Then you will forget that some thing like an old order ever existed. And even when you remember it you will wonder how on earth you could put up with it.

All this is possible.

Question 14

When breathing and asking become natural, the question does not arise. Then this question itself will seem to be unnatural. The matter ends with everything being natural. But many times, much before it happens, the mind will persuade you to believe that it has already happened and that it is now no use continuing the effort. So long as the mind continues to persuade you, you should not relax, you should not give up effort. Till then you have to continue with asking, "Who am I?" because the mind is still there, it still survives. It is the mind that argues with you and tries to persuade you.

A day, however, will come when you will find that it is no longer necessary to do anything. Then you will not be able to do a thing even if you want to, because you can ask "Who am I?" only as long as you do not know who you are. The day you come to know who you are, the question will not arise anymore. Then it would be very absurd to ask it, because you know.

As long as I don't know where the door is, I will make fervent inquiries about it, but once I come to know, the question will drop by itself. Then I will not ask whether I should ask this question or not. It is redundant, it is meaningless. We inquire as long as we don't know a thing; as soon as we know it the matter ends. As soon as you realize who you are, the world of questions comes to an end. And when you have taken a jump into the beyond, then nothing is left to be done. Then whatsoever you do, it is meditation. You walk and it is meditation. You sit and it is meditation. Then your silence is meditation, and your speech, too. Even if you fight, it is meditation.

What you do makes no difference.

Question 15

It would be good if you do. It is not a question of whether breathing continues or slackens. It does not matter much if breathing comes to a stop. The question is whether you have put in enough effort or not. What is significant is your effort, not the fruit of your efforts. What matters is that you have done your best, that you have staked your all.

The mind is very cunning in finding avenues of escape. It does everything to protect itself. It says, "Now that nothing is happening, it is time we give up efforts." The mind is so skillful that in the course of a day it can suggest hundreds of ways of escape and hundreds of excuses and rationalizations.

It can go to the length of telling you that you will suffocate, you will die if you pursue in your efforts any longer.

Don't listen to the mind. Tell your mind, "It is blissful to suffocate and to die." It is another thing if breathing stops on its own, but you on your part should continue to strive. You should spare nothing from your side. Don't spare even a little bit, because sometimes even that little bit can be decisive and fateful.

Nobody knows what is going to be the last straw on the camel's back. It is always the last piece of straw that makes the camel sit. Granted that you have put a big load on the camel's back, but it is not yet enough to make it sit. Maybe the last bit of straw is still lacking that will decide the issue, because it is always the last straw that decides. It is not the first straw, but the last one that proves fateful. Maybe you have al ready loaded the camel with 99.99 pounds of hay, and it fails to make it sit. It is still waiting for the last bit-.001 pound.

Try to understand it this way. You are trying to break a padlock with a hammer. You have applied 99 powerful strokes and the lock refuses to break. And now, being tired, you apply the 100th stroke very mildly. But the lock breaks down with this mild stroke. So sometimes very small things prove to be the deciding factor; sometimes only a straw becomes decisive. Let it not be said that you did everything and yet missed the target by an inch. Whether you miss it by an inch or by a mile, it is the same. If you miss it, you miss it wholly.

It so happened only recently. One friend had been meditating like you all, for three days in a camp in Amritsar. He is an educated person, a doctor. He had been meditating and meditating, but nothing happened. And then the last day came. I had no knowledge of what he had been doing or not doing.

In fact, I knew nothing about him. On the last day, while explaining the technique, I said that water changes into vapor only when it reaches the 100th degree temperature. If one stopped boiling it at the 99th degree, he should not complain that just for want of a single degree of temperature the water refused to change into vapor. Even if you give it 99.9 degrees of heat, it will continue to be water. Even if an iota of heat is lacking it will refuse to change. Only when it crosses the 100th degree mark will it change into vapor. And there is no other way. A rule is a rule.

He came to me in the evening of the same day. And he said that what I had said in the context of water changing into steam served him well. Earlier he was of the view that if his efforts were mild, his gains from meditation would be that mild, but there would be gains nonetheless. When he heard me, he thought that he was mistaken. For the water to turn into steam, the full 100 degrees of temperature is a must. It is not that a small amount of temperature will change the water into vapor in a small way. The water will not change at all before its heat reaches the 100th degree; it has to traverse the whole way. And so on this morning he brought in all his efforts to meditation, and he was surprised to see that something happened. What he had done for the last three days had been in vain. He had gained nothing but fatigue at the end. Today he was not tired at all, and what is remarkable is that he really made it.

Therefore it is always the last straw that makes the difference between those who make it and those who don't.

There is one other thing to be borne in mind. During meditation, watching the man on your side doing his best, you think that even he is not making any headway, let alone you. You are wrong to think so. There is a difference between a hundred degrees and a hundred degrees. Your hundred degrees is not the same as the hundred degrees of another person. Maybe the other person has much more reserve energy than you have, and he is not using it all, although he is doing better than you. It is like this: A person has five hundred rupees in his pocket, and out of it he stakes three hundred in a gamble. And you have only five rupees in your pocket and out of it you make a bet of four. Here you are staking more than he is; you are going to outbid him.

It is not a question of how much you or the other person has spent, it is a question of the ratio between what you have and what you gamble. It is the ratio that matters. You will win if you wager all your five rupees. And the other man will lose even if he wagers four hundred ninety nine rupees.

In order to win he will have to stake all his five hundred.

What is of ultimate importance is that you will stake yourself totally, that you will not spare even an ounce of energy and effort. Never think that you have done enough for the present, and that you will try next time. The moment you think so, you will begin to regress, to fall behind.

And it often happens that such thoughts begin to assail you right when the decisive hour arrives, where you are going to make it. It is at this critical juncture that your mind begins to be scared lest you should disappear into nothingness. It is the moment of great est danger for you as ego, and it is also the moment of greatest consequence, greatest fulfillment for you as the soul. And it is in this moment that your mind will ask you to give up, on the plea that you have done enough, the water has been heated too much, it may any moment turn into vapor.

When your mind senses imminent danger and panics, know that it is the most decisive and the precious moment of meditation-the moment of fulfillment. As long as there is no danger, the mind will ask you to carry on, but as soon as you come close to danger- which is the boiling point-your mind will ask you to stop immediately. The mind will say you have already exerted your utmost, now there is no energy left to proceed any further.

Beware of your mind when this decisive moment arrives. It is precisely the moment when you have to bring all your energy into action. If you miss that mo ment you may miss for years. Sometimes it takes years to reach the 99th degree temperature. And sometimes you miss it almost when you have touched the hundredth degree mark. And you miss it for very petty things.

So do not spare yourself; otherwise you will miss.

Question 16

Let them be damaged. What will you do by saving them? Today or tomorrow they are going to be destroyed. And what are you going to do after saving them?

Question 17

If you worry about your blood vessels, know for sure that you are going to die in a state of ignorance.

What will you do after you have saved your blood vessels? Our difficulty is that we are always worrying about things that are of no consequence to us.

Question 18

I wonder if you have even that little which is worth saving. If you really had, you would not be afraid of losing it. You don't have even that much. You are like a naked man who is afraid of losing his clothes. This fear gives the naked man a false satisfaction that he owns something. He derives pleasure from the illusion that he has clothes, he is not naked. If he had clothes really, he would not have been afraid of losing them. After all they are only clothes; what if they are lost? Get rid of such fears.

I don't mean to say that your blood vessels are going to be actually damaged. And if they are going to be damaged it will be because of your fear and not because of meditation. Fear will certainly destroy them; it is really fear that damages your blood vessels and many other things. But we are not afraid on that score; we do not fear our fear.

If you are afraid, if you are anxious, if you are tense, your blood vessels along with many other things will be damaged for this very reason. But we are not afraid on account of it. We are afraid of meditation, which does not damage a thing. On the contrary, it will repair all damages that have already happened to you.

But we cling to our fears, and we take refuge in them. And we go on saying: What if this or that happens? So we do everything to run away from meditation. If it is so, I will say: Why go at all? This fear, this hesitancy, this conflict is dangerous. Then don't go near it, be finished with it for good.

But we are ambivalent; we want to do both. We want to meditate and at the same time we want to run away from it. And then this conflict really destroys us. Then we are unnecessarily in a mess.

Thousands of people are unnecessarily in a mess; they want to find God and at the same time they are afraid lest he should confront them any day. This double bind, this split mind is the problem. All our difficulty is that one part of our mind wants to do a thing and another part does not want to do it. Doubt and conflict have be come our very breath. It never happens that what we want to do, we want absolutely. The day it will be so, there will be nothing that will come in your way. That day your life will acquire a dynamism that you have never known.

But we are in a ridiculous state; we take one step forward and immediately we take another step back. We put one brick in its place to build a house and the next moment we remove it. Thus we have both together- the pleasure of building a house and the sorrow of not having it done. All day long we raise a wall and when night comes we pull it down with our own hands. And then we bewail how difficult it is to build a house.

We should try to understand this double bind structure of our mind. And the only way you can understand it is this: Be prepared for what you think to be the worst. This imagined worst is that your blood vessels will be damaged. Let them be damaged. What would you do if you save them, say, for thirty or forty years? You will be a clerk in some office for these thirty years. You will eat, sleep, and produce a few children. These children, in their turn, will grow up and become husbands and wives, this and that, like you. And when you will die, you will leave them behind to worry about their blood vessels being dam aged. What else will you do?

If we know that the life we are trying to save has nothing in it that is worth saving, then only can we stake our all; otherwise it is impossible. We should be very clear in our minds that what we are so strenuously trying to save is not worth the labor. We should also know that nothing is saved in spite of all that we do to save it. And if we understand it clearly, then there is no problem whatsoever. then you will be prepared for everything, even for the blood vessels being damaged.

In Search of the Miraculous Vol 1 165 Osho