The Mystery Beyond Mind

Question 1:

Why's are always unanswerable. To the mind it seems that whenever you can ask a why it can be answered. But that is one of the fallacious assumptions. No why has ever been answered or can be answered. Existence is - no why about it.

If you ask, if you persist, you may create an answer - but that answer will be a created one; it will not really be an answer. Questioning itself is foundationally absurd.

The trees are - you cannot ask why. The sky is - you cannot ask why. Existence exists, rivers flow, clouds float - you cannot ask why.

The mind asks why, I know it. Mind is curious; it wants to know the why of everything. But this is a disease in the mind, and it is something which cannot be satisfied because if you answer one, why then another arises immediately. Every answer only creates more questions. And the mind will not be satisfied unless the ultimate answer has been given to you - and there can be no ultimate answer. By ultimate answer I mean that you cannot ask any why any more. But there is no possibility of such a state. Whatsoever is said, why again becomes relevant.

This has been the whole absurd effort of philosophies: Why is this world? So they thought and they created a theory about it: God created it - but why did God create it? Then again more theories and then finally: Why is God?

So the first thing to know about: this quality of the mind which goes on asking whys. Just as leaves grow out of trees, whys grow out of the mind - you cut one, many more grow. And you may collect many answers but the answer will not be there. And unless the answer is there, the mind goes on, restless in its search. So this is the first thing I would like to say to you: Don't insist much on whys.

Why do we insist? Why do we want to know the cause? Why do we want to go deep into a thing and come to the very base of it? Why? Because if you know every why, if you know every answer about a thing, you have become the master of it. Then the thing can be manipulated. Then the thing is not a mystery; there is no awe, no wonder about it. You have known it you have killed the mystery.

The mind is a killer, a murderer - the murderer of all mysteries. And mind is always at ease with anything dead. With anything alive mind feels uneasy, because you cannot be the total master. The living is always there - unpredictable. The future cannot be fixed with a living thing, and you don't know where it will go, where it will lead. With a dead thing, everything is certain and fixed. You are at ease. You are not worried about it. You are certain.

To make everything certain is a deep urge in the mind because mind is afraid of life. Mind creates science just to kill every possibility of life. Mind tries to find explanations once an explanation is found, the mystery is dissolved.

You ask a why, and it is answered, then the mind is at ease. What have you achieved through it?

You have not achieved anything, you have lost something - a mystery has been lost.

Mystery makes you uneasy because it is something greater than you, something which you cannot manipulate, something which you cannot use as a thing; something which overwhelms, something which overpowers, something before which you are naked and impotent - something before which you simply dissolve. Mystery gives you a feeling of death; hence so much inquiry about whys - why this? why that? This is the first thing to be remembered.

But don't think that I am avoiding your question. I am not avoiding it. I am telling you something about the mind - why it asks. And if you can retain the feeling of mystery, I am going to answer.

If the feeling of mystery is retained, then answering is not dangerous, it can be useful. Then every answer leads you into a deeper mystery. Then the whole thing becomes qualitatively different. Then you ask, not to get an explanation, then you ask to get deeper into the mystery. Then the curiosity is not mental, then it becomes an inquiry - a deep inquiry of being.

See the difference? If you are hankering after an explanation then it is bad, and I will be the last one to fulfill it because then I become an enemy to you, then I make things dead around you. Theologians have made even God a dead thing - they have explained it so much, they have answered so many things about God, that's why God is dead. Humanity has not killed him - the priests, they have killed him. They explained him so much that no mystery has remained.

And what is God if there is no mystery in it? If it is just a theory you can discuss, a doctrine you can analyze, a belief you can accept or deny, then YOU are greater and this God is just part of the furniture of your mind - it is a dead thing.

Whenever I am talking to you, remember this always: whatsoever I say is not to kill your inquiry, is not to give you explanations. I am not interested in giving you answers. Rather, on the contrary, it is to make you more inquiring, deeply penetrating into the mysteries.

My answers will give you deeper questions, and a moment will come when all questioning will drop.

Not that you have received all the answers but because every answer is futile. And then the mystery is total, then it is all around, without and within. Then you have become part of it, then you float in it, then you have also become a mysterious being, and only then do the doors open.

Now I can answer why I am with you, and why you are with me here.

First thing: it is not only here this moment that you are with me - you have been before. Life is so interrelated. It is a riverlike flow. We divide it into past, present and future, but the division is just utilitarian. Life is not divided. The flow of life is contemporaneous.

The river Ganges at the very source, the river Ganges passing through the Himalayas, the river Ganges on the plains, the river Ganges falling into the ocean - this is one! It is contemporaneous.

The origin and the end, the beginning and the end, are not two separate things - it is one flow. It is not past and future. It is eternal present. This has to be understood very deeply.

You have been with me. You are with me. It is not a question of past. If you can be silent, if you can put your mind aside a little, if you can become a white cloud perched on a hill, not thinking, just being - you will feel it. You have been with me, you are with me, you will be with me. This being with me is not a question of time.

Somebody asked Jesus: You talk about Abraham...how do you know, because there is a long gap between the days of Abraham and Jesus - thousands of years. And Jesus said a very mysterious sentence, the most mysterious that Jesus ever asserted. He said: "Before Abraham was, I am." Before Abraham was, I am. Time dissolved.

Life is eternal present. We have been here and now always - forever, forever. Different shapes, different forms, of course, different situations. But we have been always and always.

Individuals are fictions. Life is not divided. We are not like islands, we are one. This oneness has to be felt. And once you feel this oneness, time disappears, space becomes meaningless. Suddenly you are transported from both time and space. Then you are - simply you are.

Somebody asked Buddha: Who are you? And Buddha said: I belong to no rank. I just am. I am, but I don't belong to any rank.

Right now, you can have the glimpse. If you are not thinking, then who are you? Where is time? Is there any past? Is there any future then? Then THIS moment becomes the eternity. The whole time process is just a long extended now. The whole of space is just expanded here.

So when you ask why I am here, or why you are here, it is because this is the only way of being.

I cannot be anywhere else. You cannot be anywhere else. This is how we have become joined together.

You may not be able to see it right now. The links are not so clear for you because your own unconscious is not clear for you, because you don't know yourself in your totality. One tenth of your being is known to you, nine-tenths is just in darkness.

You are like a forest with a little clearing. Trees have been cut, and a small place has been created in which to live. But just beyond that small clearing the dark forest exists. You don't know the boundaries of it. And you are so afraid of darkness and the wild animals that you never leave your clearing. But your clearing is just part of this dark forest. You know only a part of your being.

I see you as your total darkness, the whole forest of you. And once I see a single individual in his totality, all individuals are involved because that forest is not separate. In that darkness boundaries meet, mingle and become one.

You are here. If I become too attentive to one individual, then I am focusing myself. But still, even focusing, I continuously feel your boundaries are mingling with the other. So for certain purposes I may take you as an individual, but in reality it is not so. When I am not focused I simply look at you without seeing you - just a look, then you are no more there. Your boundaries are meeting with everyone else's, and not only with man and human beings - with trees, with rocks, with sky...everything. Boundaries are fictions, hence individuals are fictitious.

I am here because I cannot be anywhere else. This is how life has happened. You are here because you cannot be anywhere else. This is how life has happened to you. But it is difficult to accept it.

Why is it difficult to accept it? - because then you cannot manipulate it, then life becomes greater than you.

If I say you are here because you are a great seeker of truth, then you are at ease. If you are here because you are a great seeker, then the ego is fulfilled. Then if you choose, you can go. Then you are the chooser. Then you are controlling life, not controlled by life.

But I don't say that, I say you are here because life has happened this way. You could not have chosen, it is not your choice. Even if you leave, that will not be your choice. Again, that will be how life happens to you. If you choose to remain, that too is not a choice. Choice is not possible. Choice is possible only with the ego.

Whenever ego is not fed, uneasiness, discomfort, is felt. So there are two ways to be at ease. One is to go on feeding the ego, another is simply to drop it. And remember, the first way is temporary.

The more you feed the ego, the more it demands, and there is no end to it.

So I tell you: Life has happened in such a way that I am here and you are here. And it has happened many times before, and it will continue happening the same way.If you can realize this, much more will immediately become possible. If you realize this, you will be more open, less closed, more vulnerable, more receptive. Then you are not afraid. Then life can pass through you. Then life becomes just a breeze, and you become an empty room, and life comes and goes...and you allow it. Allowing is the secret - secret of all secrets.

Hence I emphasize, insist, that you are not here because of any choice on your part. I am not here because of any choice on my part. As far as I am concerned there cannot be any choice, because I am not. As far as you are concerned, you may be under the delusion that you are here because of your choice, but that is not a fact.

And I am not going to feed your egos because they have to be destroyed. That's what the whole effort is: how to destroy you - because once your boundaries are destroyed you are infinite. Right this moment, this can happen. There is no barrier to it - there is only your clinging.

Many people come to me and ask: Have we been with you before? If I say yes, they feel very good.

If I say no, they feel dejected, depressed. Why? We live in fictions. You are here with me - that is not so significant; you were with me in the past - that seems to be more significant. And you are missing this moment when you can be REALLY with me - because to be with me is not a physical phenomenon. You can sit by my side and you may not be with me. You can cling to me for years and you may not be with me for a single moment - because to be with me only means that you are not.

I am not, and if even for a single moment you are also not there, there will be a meeting - then two emptinesses meet. Remember, only two emptinesses can meet, there is no other meeting possible.

Whenever you have a meeting, it means two emptinesses merging.

The ego is very solid, too substantial to merge. So you can struggle, clash, but you cannot meet.

You may think that this clash of two egos is a meeting. It is a sort of meeting. You come together, but you are never together. You meet, and still you don't meet. You touch each other, and still you remain untouched. Your inner emptiness remains a virgin land, it has not been penetrated.

But when the ego is not there, when you are not feeling much I, when you are not thinking about yourself at all, when there is no self, that's what Buddha calls ANATTA - no-selfness. He was very much misunderstood. In India people were talking of ATMA - the self, the supreme self. Everybody was searching for the supreme self - how to become the ultimate self. And then Buddha comes and he says: There is no self to be attained, rather, please be a no-self. His teaching could not be accepted. Buddha was thrown out of this country. He was not accepted anywhere. A Buddha is always thrown out. Wherever he goes he will be thrown out, because he hits on you so deeply you cannot tolerate it. He says you are not.

When you are empty, when just a vacuum exists, meeting happens. Anybody who is capable of being empty will merge. And this is the only way to become one with existence. You may call it love, you may call it prayer, you may call it meditation, or whatsoever you like.

You are here because life has happened that way. I am here because this is how life has happened to me.

And this possibility of your being near me can be used, can be misused, can be missed altogether.

If you miss, then too it will not be for the first time. Many times you have been with me. It may not have been exactly with me; many times you were with a Buddha and that was to be with me. Many times you were with a Jina, with a Mahavira, and that was to be with me. Many times you were around Jesus, or Moses, or Lao Tzu - that was being with me. A Lao Tzu or a Buddha cannot be defined in any way; they are two emptinesses, and two emptinesses have no qualities to differ.

You may have been with a Lao Tzu and I say you were with me, because there is nothing to make any distinction. A Lao Tzu is an emptiness. Two emptinesses are just the same, you cannot make any distinction. But you missed. You have been missing many times. You can miss again.

And remember, you are wise, clever, calculating. Even if you miss, you will miss very wisely. You will rationalize it. You will say there was nothing to be gained. Or you will find arguments that hide the fact.If you become alert to this possibility of missing, then meeting is immediately possible. And I say immediately - there is no need to postpone it.

And this is significant, that life has happened in such a way that you are here. Millions are there and life has not happened in such a way. You are fortunate, but don't make that point an ego food - because if your ego takes anything out of it and becomes stronger, you have missed that fortune.

You are fortunate, but it remains an open possibility. You can grow into it, you can drop out of it. And this is rare - rare for many reasons.

First: it is very difficult to be attracted to a person who is empty - very difficult, because emptiness is not such a magnetic force. You are attracted to a man who has got something. Why are we attracted to a man who has got something? Because we have desires. We also want to get something.

You are attracted to a politician who has power because you are power-oriented, you want power. So whosoever has it becomes the idol, the hero. You are attracted to a person who has fabulous riches.

Because you are poor, deep down you hanker after riches. So whosoever has them becomes the ideal. But why should one be attracted to a person who has nothing?

This is fortunate, a rare possibility. Sometimes life happens in such a way that you become attracted to a person who has got nothing, who is empty. You are not going to gain anything out of him; rather, everything has to be lost with him. It is a gamble. So you are gamblers - that's why you are here.

And unless you gamble totally you will miss, because this gambling cannot be partial - parts cannot be accepted. That is not the rule of this game. So don't hold back, put in everything you have. It is dangerous and risky. That's why I say it is rare to be attracted to a Buddha or to a Jesus. Very few are attracted.

You know about Jesus...very few, only twelve disciples. And very ordinary men: some fisherman, some woodcutter, some farmer - not significant in any way, just common people. Why are such common people attracted to Buddha or Jesus?

To be common is a very uncommon quality, because those who are not common, they are after some ego-trip - riches, power, status. A farmer, a fisherman, a woodcutter - insignificant people, absolutely ordinary, not looking for any achievement - they become attracted to Jesus.

To be common is rare; to be absolutely ordinary is really extraordinary. Zen Masters are reported to have said continuously: Become ordinary and then you become extraordinary. Every ordinary being is trying to be extraordinary - that is the ordinary thing. Just remain ordinary. That means not searching for anything, not seeking any achievement, really, not in any way goal-oriented, just living moment-to-moment, drifting. That's what I was saying to you - drifting like a white cloud.

Your being here is rare for other reasons also, because human mind is always afraid of death. It clings to life, a lust for life is there. Even in misery it clings to life...a deep fear of death. And when a person comes to me he is coming, really, to die, he is coming to dissolve.

I will be an abyss to him, a bottomless abyss in which he will fall and fall and fall and reach nowhere...!

If you look into me you will feel dizzy. If you stare into my eyes you will see the abyss, and then the fear will grip you - and the falling and falling....

Just think of a leaf falling into an abyss - and the abyss is infinite and there is no bottom to it so it cannot reach anywhere - it can only disappear; falling, falling, falling, it will disappear.

The religious journey begins but never ends. You come to me, you fall into me, you disappear, you never reach anywhere. But that disappearance is the delight. No other delight has ever been known, no other delight is there. The delight of TOTAL disappearance! Just as a dewdrop in the morning disappears when the sun rises, or just as in the night an earthen lamp burns, the wind comes and the flame goes out and darkness...the flame has disappeared and you cannot find it anywhere - the same way, you disappear.

It is rare to seek suicide: this is suicide, the real suicide! You can kill the body anywhere, but you cannot kill the self anywhere. Here you are ready for the final suicide - to kill the self.

But don't make all these things explanations, they are not. I am always anti-explanation.

If all this makes you more mysterious, if all this makes you more vague, so far, so good. If your mind goes up in smoke and you don't know what is what, that's the best condition.

Question 2:

White clouds are not directed by the wind. The phenomenon of direction exists only when there is resistance.If the white cloud wants to go east and the wind blows to the west, then there is direction - because resistance is there. But if the cloud is not going anywhere, east and west mean the same, there is no resistance. If there is no will on the part of the cloud, then the wind cannot direct it.

You can direct only when somebody is not ready to float, to relax, to let go. But the phenomenon of the cloud means it is the very let-go. If the wind says east, the cloud is ready; it is already on the move towards the east. There has not been a single thought of no; there has not been a single denial. If the cloud was moving to the west and the wind starts blowing east, the cloud moves to the east. The wind is not directing. Direction is needed only when someone is against.

People come to me and they say: "Direct us," and I know what they are saying. "Guide us," and I know what they are saying. They are not ready. Otherwise, what is the need of being directed and guided?

Enough it is that you are here with me, and everything will happen. The wind blows to the east and you start floating towards the east, but you say: Guide; you say: Direct. You are saying that you are against; you have a denial, you have a rejection; you will fight. And if there is no will on the part of the cloud, how can you make a distinction - which is the cloud and which is the wind? The boundary exists with will.

Remember this, this must become your foundational insight: the boundary between you and me exists because of your will. You are there, surrounded by a will. Then I come and there is conflict.

A cloud has no will, so where is the boundary? Where does the cloud end and the wind begin?

The wind and the cloud are one. The cloud is part of the wind; the wind is part of the cloud. The phenomenon is one, undivided.

And the wind goes on blowing in all directions. So the problem is not to choose the direction; the problem is how to become the cloud. The wind goes on blowing in all directions. It moves, it changes. It is always running from this corner to the other. Really, there is no direction. There is no map; the whole thing is uncharted. There is no one guiding it and saying: Now go to the east, now go to the west. The whole of existence waves it. It is a waving existence - all directions belong to it.

And when I say all directions, I mean the good and the bad both, I mean the moral and the immoral both. When I say all directions, I MEAN all. The wind is blowing in all directions. This has always been so.

So remember: there has not been a specifically religious age nor an anti-religious age, there cannot be. People think this way because that too gives them ego-trips.

In India, people think that in the old days, in ancient days, there was a religious age on the earth and now everything has gone rotten - this is the darkest age. This is all nonsense. No age is religious, no age is anti-religious. Religiousness is NOT concerned with the time, it is concerned with the quality of the mind.

So it is not a question of whether the cloud is going to the east - then it will be religious, or going to the west and it will be anti-religious. No. If the cloud has no will, the cloud is religious WHEREVER it goes. And if the cloud has will, then wherever it goes it is irreligious.

And there are both types of clouds: very few who are will-less, millions who have their wills and projections and desires and ideas. They fight with the wind. The more they fight, the more anguish is created. And fighting leads nowhere, because nothing can be done. Whether you fight or not the wind will go to the east and you will have to go to the east. You can only carry a notion that you have been fighting and you are a great warrior. That's all.

One who understands stops fighting. He is not even trying to swim, he simply goes with the flood.

This very current he uses as a vehicle; he becomes one with it and moves with it. This is what I call surrender, and this is what the old scriptures called the attitude of the devotee. Surrendered, YOU are not. Then wherever the wind leads you, you will go. You don't have any will of your own.

This has been always so. In the past there were buddhas, floating white clouds; in the present there are buddhas, floating white clouds. In the past there were mad black clouds filled with will, desire, future. They are there today also.With will and desire you are a black cloud - heavy. With no will, no desire, you are a white cloud - weightless. And the possibility for both these is always open. It is up to you whether to allow the let-go, or not.

Don't think of time and age. Time and age are indifferent. They don't force anyone to become a buddha; they don't prevent anyone from becoming a buddha. Time and age are just indifferent.

Allow yourself to be empty, and this is the golden age. Allow yourself to be too much filled with desire, and this is the darkest age possible, the KALI YUGA. You create your time and age around you. You live in your own age and time.

Remember we are not contemporaries in that way. A person like Jesus is ancient! He may be just here, but he is ancient. He lives so eternally...you cannot call him modern. He lives so totally that you cannot say that he belongs to a fragment of time. He is not part of the world of fashions which come and go. Living with the absolute, you become absolute. Living with the eternal, you become eternal. Living with the timeless, you become timeless.

But the question is still pertinent in another sense also. All over the world, people have the feeling that a certain age, a certain time, a certain climax, a crescendo, is nearing - something is going to explode, as if we are reaching a particular point in human evolution. But I would like to say to you:

this is again the ego-trip for the age. Every age thinks that way: Something is reaching a climax with us; we are here, something special is going to happen on the earth. This has been always so!

It is reported that when Adam and Eve were thrown out of the Garden of Eden, Adam said to Eve just as they passed through the door: We are passing through the greatest transformation ever known in history. The very first man saying and thinking: The greatest transformation....

Every age thinks that things are reaching to a crescendo, to an ultimate point, to an omega point, where everything will explode and a new being will be born. But these are hopes, ego-trips, not very meaningful. You will be here for a few years, then others will be here and they will think the same.

The crescendo IS reached - not with the age, but with the individual being. The climax is reached but it is always reached with consciousness, not with a collective unconscious.

YOU can become a religious person. And the time is good, the time is always good. Don't think of others too much because this may be just an escape from yourself. Don't think of the age and don't think of humanity - because mind is so cunning, human mind is so cunning, you don't know....

I have been reading a letter from a friend, and he says that he became so frustrated with all his love-affairs, whenever he was in love it was such misery, that he stopped loving any individual and started to love the whole of humanity. Now the whole of humanity is easy to love, and those who cannot love will always love the whole of humanity. There is no problem. To love an individual is very, very difficult, it can be hell itself. It can be hell itself because it can become heaven.

We go on avoiding. People start thinking about others just to avoid thinking about themselves.

They start thinking about the age, the time, the planets, and what is going to happen to human consciousness, just to avoid encountering the basic problem: What is going to happen to my consciousness?

Your consciousness should be the target. Every time is good, all times are good for it.

Enough for today.