The master creates a lovesphere

Question 1:

It is very simple: none of the voices come from the inner self. All voices come from the mind. When all voices are absent, the inner self inspires you in silence towards a certain action, direction. It does not come in words - it is just a silent indication. Otherwise it would have been absolutely impossible to find out which one is the voice of the inner self.

It is easy because no voice is of the inner self. So when all voices have died down and there is utter silence, the inner self is capable of taking your hand and moving you. That is the moment to be in a let-go, and allow it to take you wherever it takes you.

In language we have to use words which do not apply to the inner reality - for example, the "inner voice." There is no voice - it is simply the inner silence. But if we use the words "inner silence," you will not get the idea that there is some inspiration or some direction which is being pointed to. Hence the words, "inner voice" have been used. But these are not the right words.

Question 2:

I am certainly helping - helping the older generation to disappear as quickly as possible, helping the old generation to be finished fast.

And when they call, in an abusive way, the younger generation the "no-future generation," to me it is not a condemnation. It is man coming of age.

To live without future is the greatest courage. Only cowards live in the future.

Man's past has been very cowardly. It was living, not in the present, but in the future: all that has to happen is to happen tomorrow. And in that hope they lived, and they died. And what they were waiting for never turned up. It proved to be waiting for Godot.

The younger generation will have to pass through a very painful experience, because for centuries man has lived either in the past or in the future - never in the present.

The present has remained unexplored, unlived.

And that is the only reality there is.

The younger generation will find it a little difficult to detach itself completely from the old hang-up, and not to be worried that there is no future. On the contrary, rejoice that now there is no future, and we can live in the present. Nobody can live in the future. Future is only a word to keep you going, dragging on. Future does not exist.

So it is a maturity. The disintegration of the past traditions and traditional values is a blessing. They need not be restored. And the younger generation facing a "no future" is a tremendous revolution in consciousness.

Individually we have been talking about meditation as living in the present - and a few people have lived in the present and reached to the optimum consciousness. But it has happened to only very few individuals. And the greater humanity may have worshipped these people, but it has never believed in them, because it was not their experience - and they were millions against one man. He may be cheating them. He may be himself illusioned, living in a hallucinatory world.

But because this type of man had certain beautiful qualities which were lacking in the ordinary man, it created a suspicion in their minds: "Perhaps he is not mad - perhaps he is right." But there was no other proof except those few attributes of love and compassion, of no anger, of no greed.

If a whole generation faces "no future," it is immensely important, because there is no other way for it to live other than meditatively - because to live in the present, meditation is the only way.

So first there will be pain and anguish. The old safety is gone, the old security is gone, the old hope is gone; the new generation is being uprooted from the past. But soon it will feel tremendous freedom, a great unburdening; and a realization that the future had never existed - it was just a mind game.

And we have been befooled by the mind for centuries.

Now the present is there - whatever you want to make of it you can. And the present is so fleeting.

You don't get two points together; just one single point, one single second, and when it has gone, then the second second.... The time is very small. You have to be very intensive and very total to use it. When time is vast, you need not be total, you need not be intensive. You can spread yourself all over time. There is no urgency, there is always future.

But when there is no future, you have only one moment. You cannot afford to waste it in thinking, in planning, in memories, in imagination. You cannot afford it. You have such a small time that you would like to live it. And the smallness gives you intensity and totality.

So the "no future" generation is going to be the beginning of the new humanity I have been talking about.

The new man is not going to have any future - but the present is more than enough.

Question 3:

It happens to everybody, because both the experiences are still of the mind. The beautiful space and the despair, the suffering - they are not opposite to each other. They are part of the same mind, because mind exists in duality.

It is just like a bullock cart: two wheels are needed. You cannot have a bullock cart with one wheel.

The mind is even older than a bullock cart - it is the mind that invented the bullock cart.

The trouble arises when you start identifying yourself with the beautiful moments, then you are getting ready for trouble. Then soon the other thing is going to happen: you will be suffering, you will be desperate.

So the first thing to be understood is that both things are of the mind. That will give you a little distance from both the experiences. And secondly, don't bother about the suffering and the despair.

Concentrate when you are feeling beautiful, when you are feeling that you have moved miles from where you were stuck. That is the moment to remember, "It is a mind game, and I am not going to participate. I am going to remain simply a witness."

Not identifying with the beautiful moment will automatically destroy the other part: the suffering, the despair.

People always do vice-versa; and that is not possible in the nature of things, because the second part is the other side of the coin. When you are feeling beautiful, you get identified; you feel, "It is me, this is my real self."

Now you are preparing the ground - digging the ditch to fall into it. And when you are in despair and suffering, then how can you say, "I will be simply a witness"? You cannot be a witness.

Nobody wants despair or pain, all those negative feelings; everybody wants to get rid of them. But the way to get rid of them is to get rid of them through the beautiful spaces that you come across.

So whenever you are again feeling in a silent, peaceful, blissful state, remind yourself - don't fall asleep - remind yourself, "This is not me. I am just seeing something far away there on the screen.

I am just consciousness, awareness. I am taking note of it, what is happening there."

Keep aloof. It will be a little difficult - one wants to jump into it, it is so beautiful - but if you can keep aloof from the beautiful moments, you have won a great victory, because the person who is capable of keeping himself just a witness of beautiful moments and does not get identified.... It will be child's play for him to witness depression when it comes.

Both the extremes, witnessed, start disappearing.

Witnessing is almost the finest fire you can find. Witness anything and that thing soon disappears.

And don't be afraid that beautiful spaces will disappear. You don't know yet what is really waiting ahead of you - when beautiful spaces and depressive moments both have gone, when that duality is no longer there.

You are not aware of what is going to happen to you. It is so profound and so deep that those who have found it have remained silent. They will not say a single word about it. There is no word in any language to express it. All these words - "beautiful," "blissful" - fall too short. And the greatest thing is that there is no duality, that you have come to a point which remains with you always; there is no opposite to it.

This is something to be remembered, that whenever you experience something of which there is no opposite, you have come home. While the opposite exists you will be torn apart continuously.

Between those two experiences you will be just a football - sometimes feeling happy, sometimes feeling miserable; but never knowing yourself, that there is something beyond both the beautiful and the depressive. That's why it cannot be brought into words, because all words are dualistic; otherwise they won't have any meaning.

This is the nature of language: you cannot have a word without having its opposite. If you don't have the opposite, then the word won't have any meaning.

If somebody asks you, "What is light?," you can say, "That which is not darkness." How do you define light? - by its opposite; otherwise you don't have any definition. How do you define health? - just by saying that it is opposite to sickness. How do you define life? - by saying it is opposite to death.

Without the opposite you cannot even have meaning for any word.

So just try to reach into a wordless space.

Begin from the beautiful space, because in those moments you are more full of energy, and it is possible to get out of it. When you are depressed, all your energy is so dull, so sad, that you cannot get out of it.

So use those beautiful moments just for a jumping board into the wordless, non-dual experience of your own being. Once you have succeeded in doing it from the beautiful space, you will be able to succeed in the depressive part also, because now you know the way, now you understand that those were not anything significant. You were simply getting identified with fictions.

Now you have touched reality - and reality is strength, power. And then slowly the other spaces will disappear and you will remain in this wordless experience without falling out of it.

You can call it true meditation, the authentic experience of life. It only looks difficult if you have not tried. Once you have tried, it is a very simple experience.

Question 4:

It is a question, and a meaningful question too.

Opening to something is really a device. There is nothing to open for: the real thing is opening.

But people are such that if you say, "Just open," they will think it crazy. They want to open for something. Their minds always function through motivation. They want to love someone. You simply say to them, "Love," and it will be very difficult for them. It is absolutely certain they will ask, "Who?" That has happened with meditation for centuries.

Even the word "meditation" is not right, because in the English language there is no word which can really describe the Sanskrit word dhyana or the Japanese word zen. Japanese had no word, Chinese also had no word; the Sanskrit word dhyana became zana because Buddha was not speaking Sanskrit, he was speaking Pali. In Pali the word becomes zana, and from Pali, in China, it became ch'an. And in Japan, ch'an became zen. But it is the same word - dhyan.

In English it never happened. There are three words: concentration, contemplation, meditation - but none of the three is relevant because concentration immediately reminds you: "On what?"

Contemplation immediately reminds you: "On what?" And meditation also reminds you: "On what?"

You tell somebody to meditate, and the immediate question will be, "On what?" Just to meditate seems to be madness. How can you meditate without an object? How can you love without an object?

And the same is the situation about opening up. So devices which are false have been used: "Open to the master," "Open to existence," "Open to God" - but open to something. That makes sense to the mind. Just to say to the mind, "Open!" makes no sense. Why should I open myself? For what?

Mind is essentially a motivated mechanism.

So what you are saying - that just opening a little bit is so beautiful that it seems irrelevant for what you are opening.... It is irrelevant. There is nobody, there is nothing for which you are told to open.

It is just to manipulate your mind, to speak in a language that it can understand, knowing perfectly well that when it opens it will understand why a false device was used.

All devices are false.

The real question is your opening.

The more you are closed, the more you are in darkness; the more you are closed, the more you are dead. The dead person is completely closed.

In all countries, in all traditions, when a person dies... if his eyes are open, they immediately close them, for the simple reason that it doesn't suit a dead man to have open eyes: "You please keep them shut!" Now everything is closed.

I was concerned about it from my childhood when I saw that dead people's eyes are immediately closed. I used to ask my father, my grandfather, "What harm are they doing? Let them see the world a little more. What is this taboo that you immediately close their eyes?"

They had no answer, they simply said, "This is the convention - it has always been done."

Only later on with my own experience of opening did I understand something: that opening is life; to be fully open is enlightenment. Closing is death - to be completely closed. And then I remembered why people close the eyes, because that is the only part that remains open; everything is already closed. The man is dead - it is better to close his eyes.

Life is in opening - becoming broader and broader, becoming vaster and vaster - to a point where nothing in you remains unopened. It has nothing to do with anything else - why you are opening, for what you are opening. These are all nonsense. But tell people to do anything, and they will immediately ask, "For what?"

So there is no harm in giving them a false device if the false device can help.

Their opening will make them aware that the device was false, but they will be grateful to you that, for their sake, you even lied. And all masters have lied on many significant points. They had to lie; otherwise they could not help anybody. But the lie was just so that your mind could understand there was something to gain; and to gain it, it can allow your being to be open.

You are right: even just a little bit of opening is a great experience, and it does not matter at all that there is nothing to open to.

In the same way, the lie of God was created, the lie of paradise was created, the lie of heaven and hell was created, because your mind will not function, will not listen. The simple truth will not be challenging enough for it: just to open for nothing?

So that is the truth: opening for nothing... because the joy is in the opening, not in anything else; the ecstasy is in the opening, not in any object for which you are opening.

Question 5:

It is true in a way, and it is not true in another way.

The question has two parts. First, the real beauty of being with a master is not that he loves you.

And the second: the real beauty is that he allows you to love him.

The second is certainly significant. That's the function of the master, to create an atmosphere - or to be exactly right, a lovesphere - in which you can love, where love becomes almost like breathing, where love is not a problem, where love is not a business, where love is not a law... where love is just playfulness, with no guilt, with no motivation, with no end to be gained beyond it: Love for love's sake.

That is really the function of the master: to create a lovesphere. And I call those masters fake, who have done just the opposite: they have created a hatesphere instead of a lovesphere. This can be a criterion to judge whether there is a real master or not: what kind of sphere is created around him?

But to create this sphere the first part is absolutely necessary.

You cannot say it is not important that a master loves you. It is absolutely important that a master loves you; otherwise he cannot create the lovesphere. It is created only by loving. If the master himself is not loving you, he cannot be capable of creating a sphere around him.

The same thing has to be remembered: when I say, "The master loves you," I am talking to your mind mechanism. The truth is, the master is love. To say that he loves you is not the right thing - he is love.

So whoever is with him is showered with his love. If he is open, he will get more of it; if he is closed, he will not get any of it - because the love of the master is not addressed to somebody in particular.

It is unaddressed: to whomsoever it may belong. Whoever is open will get it.

So the first part is also very essential; otherwise the second part will not be possible. The master is love, and in being love, he creates a certain sphere around himself. Those who come under his sphere, they will be loving. Slowly, slowly their love will also become unaddressed.

That is the perfection of love.

First they will love each other, their love will be towards a certain person. The work of the master is not to let them become attached to individuals, because he is not teaching them love for particular individuals, he is teaching the quality of love, the energy of love. The particular persons they love are just experiments for growing, maturing.

Slowly, slowly they will come to a point where they are just love - not addressed, but available.

Just as in the other question about opening - that just a little bit of opening is so ecstatic that it does not matter for whom you are opening - the same is true about all spiritual qualities. Love... it does not matter for whom, it does not matter at all whether there is anybody, but your heart is radiating with love. That will give you the greatest experience of love.

And they are all joined; all spiritual qualities are joined. The opening without any object, the love without any object, are exactly the same; they are not different. As the opening will grow, the love will grow - or vice versa. All spiritual qualities grow together in the same proportion.

It is not that one quality - truth - grows ahead, and then comes love and then comes compassion.

No - in fact they are not different things, just different expressions of one, ecstatic experience. You can call that ecstatic experience any name. "Opening" is perfectly good; so is "love" - and all other qualities will be there.

It is not that first you have to practice this and then you have to practice that. If you can simply manage being loving and not being attached... it is attachment that kills love, because it is attachment that destroys freedom, and love cannot exist in a state of bondage.

Love can exist only in total freedom.

Freedom is also part of the spiritual qualities; you cannot separate them. But in the beginning one has to start from very raw material, so that if one is alert one can sort out what is wrong. If people are not alert, they start doing very stupid things.

Seeing that love brings a certain kind of bondage, rather than destroying the bondage and its causes, they start becoming afraid of love. After a few experiences of getting into love and getting caught in bondage, they become certain that love is going to create chains for them, an imprisonment; it is better to live without love.

They harden their hearts. But they have misunderstood the whole thing. It was not love that was creating the bondage; it was attachment, it was jealousy.

If you can love without jealousy, if you can love without attachment, if you can love a person so much that his happiness is your happiness.... Even if he is with some other woman and he is happy, it makes you happy because you love him so much: his happiness is your happiness. You will be happy because he is happy, and you will be grateful to the woman who made the person you love, happy - you will not be jealous. Then love has come to a purity.

This love cannot create any bondage. And this love is simply the opening of the heart to all the winds, to the whole sky. It looks a little strange; but we have been taught continually that love is a relationship, so we have become accustomed to the idea that love is a relationship. But that is not true. That is the lowest kind - very polluted.

Love is a state of being. So a master can sit silently in his room; nobody is there. That does not mean that he is no longer loving because there is nobody whom he can love.

Love is his heartbeat.

Love is his song.

Love is his silence.

Love is his radiation - whether there is anybody to receive it or not does not matter.

So your question is good; the second part is perfectly right - but you are not aware that without the first, the second will not be possible. The master has to be pure love; then only can he create a vibe around himself to purify you, to raise the level of your love, and to make love your only religion.