Silently Blissful, Blissfully Silent

THIS MORNING IS REALLY COLD, hence the change of the meaning. I don't stick to the words, I stick to the reality! Therefore, before we enter into the cold waters of the Mandukya Upanishad, a few jokes to warm you up.

Two fleas were sitting on their deck chairs on the beach in Miami, Florida. It was January, the weather was warm, and the fleas were lazing around with a cool drink, suntan lotion smeared over their bodies.

Their quiet was interrupted by a third flea who came in and sat down on a deck chair next to them.

He was rugged up in heavy boots, an overcoat, hat and gloves, and still he was shivering.

"Why are you dressed for the Antarctic in the middle of the summer?" one of the fleas asked him.

"Oh," moaned the third flea, "I found myself in the beard of a hippie when he mounted his motorcycle back in the bitter cold and snow of Detroit, Michigan. He drove non-stop for two whole days to get here. I'm chilled to the bone!"

"Next winter," said one of the fleas, "go to the penthouse of an expensive apartment building during a cocktail party. There you are bound to find someone wealthy who is going south for the winter, and you can go in style!"

A year later the same fleas were sitting on the beach in Miami when the other flea approached them, still wearing a heavy overcoat and shivering violently.

"What happened to you? Why didn't you take my advice?" asked the flea.

"I did take your advice," grumbled the freezing insect. "I got to a penthouse and found a cocktail party going on. I located a beautiful lady, wearing furs and expensive jewelry. I knew she would be going south in high style, so I climbed onto her toe, up her ankle, up her calf, up her thigh, and then I came to a lovely warm spot, and I knew I would be going south in style.

"The next thing I knew, I was inside the beard of a hippie who drove straight through non-stop in the bitter cold!"

This reminds me of Almasto and her questions - she is back again to her questions.

'Osho, why do they sell so many lightbulbs in Iran?

Because they always try to fit them in with a hammer. This is called the Islamic revolution!

How many Tibetans does it take to fit in a lightbulb?

None. They have not heard of lightbulbs yet in Tibet.

How many Chinese does it take to screw in a lightbulb?

None. You are not allowed to screw in China these days.

Why does it take a Russian so long to screw in a lightbulb?

Because first he has to have a five-year plan.

Why was the Polack Pope horrified when taking up his office in the Vatican for the first time?

Almasto, he saw a lightbulb lying in a wastepaper basket next to his desk and he was horrified - he thought it was a contraceptive.

And the last... and then you take the dive in the cold waters of the Mandukya Upanishad. It is cold for you, not for me. As a proof you can see - my fan is still on!

A Brahmin priest was cycling down a country lane. He rounded a bend and was surprised to find a little boy screwing a rabbit. The priest, without hesitation, jumped off his bicycle, grabbed the boy by the hair and gave him a good talking to. He was really furious and asked the boy, 'What are you doing?"

The boy said:

This was really too much! The priest gave the boy a good beating, got back on his bicycle and went on. A few miles further up the road he spied an old man atop a grassy verge screwing a goat. The priest was utterly shocked and he stormed over to the old man.

"Not two miles back down the road," he yelled, "I found a little boy doing exactly the same thing with a rabbit! You should know better at your age!"

The old man looked up at the priest with a grin and said, "Do you expect me to catch a rabbit at my age?"

The priest looked at the sky and said:

Now it is up to you how deep you can dive in the cold waters Before the jump one has to go a few steps back, so I will start from the sutras of the last sutra session:

THE THIRD IS DEEP SLEEP, THE MIND RESTS, WITH AWARENESS SUSPENDED.

THIS STATE BEYOND DUALITY, - FROM WHICH THE WAVES OF THINKING EMERGE, IS ENJOYED BY THE ENLIGHTENED AS AN OCEAN OF SILENCE AND BLISS.

The only difference between deep, dreamless sleep and the awakened state, the enlightened state, is that of awareness. If you can be aware in your deep sleep you are a Buddha. You are not aware even while you are awake, and the Buddha is one who is aware even while he is deep asleep.

He may be snoring: just as you will hear his snoring he also hears his snoring. The snoring is a physiological phenomenon. You are watching from the outside, he is watching from the inside. In fact, he is more aware of it than you are, because you may be having other thoughts, a thousand and one, but he has no thought at all.

The awakened person is called enlightened because this small flame of awareness continues to bum twenty-four hours a day, whether he is awake, whether he is asleep, whether he is doing something or not doing anything. Nothing matters; everything remains on the circumference. At the center there is only the flame of awareness, and this flame of awareness is experienced as silence and bliss.

This is one of the most significant things to understand: it is easy to be silent, it is also easy to be blissful but to be silent AND blissful is impossible for the mind to comprehend. It can only be experienced at the ultimate peak, at the ultimate culmination, where all dualities merge and become one.

This is a duality: silence and bliss are poles apart. Hence it is easy to be on one polarity; if you are ready to renounce the other you can easily have one, but to have one is to remain partial.

And unless you are whole you are never fulfilled. Only wholeness is holiness; only wholeness is flowering, blossoming, is fulfillment, is contentment.

The person who has only a part of his being actualized is in a constant conflict with the other part which is not actualized. He cannot dance - he is paralyzed, HALF of him is paralyzed. How can he dance? He cannot even walk! He needs a thousand and one supports, he needs all kinds of crutches. He is not able to stand on his own feet, he cannot live out of his own being. He needs this and he needs that, and those needs are infinite. So he goes on desiring and desiring, and his mind remains a beggar; he cannot be an emperor. To be whole is to be an emperor.

Silence is easy if you are ready to renounce bliss. That's what has been done for centuries by the so-called religious saints: they have decided to be silent and for that they have dropped the idea of being cheerful, blissful, joyous. But then their silence is dead, then their silence is no longer breathing, then their silence has no music, then their silence is like a graveyard. You can whitewash the graves, you can keep them clean, you can even grow roses, but a graveyard is a graveyard. You can try to hide the facts, but they are there. And how long can you deceive? Maybe you can deceive others, but you cannot deceive yourself. You know that something in you has died; the moment you dropped cheerfulness, something in you stopped singing.

It is because of these escapist, so-called religious people that religion has become a graveyard. You can see the vibe of this death in the churches, in the synagogues, in the temples, in the mosques.

Wherever your so-called religious people gather together they are always deadly serious. They cannot laugh - they have become incapable of laughter. They are absolutely cold, they cannot be warm, because they are afraid of warmth. Warmth means love, warmth means joy, warmth means bliss, warmth means laughter. Just to be silent they went on cutting everything that could have disturbed their silence. Their silence is very arbitrary; a silence that can be disturbed is not much of a silence. Only a silence which cannot be disturbed is true silence - but there is no need to escape from the world.

What is the fear of the world? Why have these people been running away from the world? The fear is within them, it is not in the world. They are afraid that if they are in the world they may fall in love, they may start enjoying something, they may start living. Where so many people are alive they may start forgetting their commitment to silence. They may start singing! Afraid of the possibility, of their inner potential, they escape from the opportunity where it can be realized. They imprison themselves in caves, in monasteries. Of course they become silent, but their silence is worthless; it has no value at all. It is not sacred - it is not even alive, how can it be sacred? Nothing grows out of it; it is a desert. It is absolutely impotent. It is uncreative, insensitive.

That's why I am against the old, routine religious attitude, its escapist tendencies. I am against renunciation I am all for rejoicing. I would like the temples to be full of laughter, the churches to be full of joy, the mosques full of music and dancing.

Do you know that the mosque avoids music so much that you cannot even play on any instrument before a mosque - it may create a riot. In India it happens almost every day in some part or other.

Even if you start playing on a flute in front of a mosque you are against the Mohammedans - you are doing something wrong. Playing on the flute! You may be playing the tunes of the Koran, but music cannot be allowed in the mosque, not even in the close proximity of it. Such fear of music?

Such fear of joy? Such fear of life?

It is good that these so-called religious people were not able to convince the majority of humanity - they could not convince because their whole approach was life-negative; they could not convince because not so many people are as suicidal as they were. They could not convince the major part of humanity for the simple reason that people are not so sado-masochistic. But they could get hold of a few sado-masochistic people, psychologically ill people, suicidal people. They could get hold of a few negative minds, and these negative minds have dominated the past.

I want to introduce affirmation, and that's the beauty of the Upanishads: they are affirmative. The Upanishadic vision is the only affirmative vision that has happened in the past, but it is strange that even Hindus who go on reading the Upanishads can't see its life-affirmative approach. They remain life-negative, they remain escapists. They go on interpreting the Upanishads in such a way that they lose all meaning - in fact, they go on imposing just the opposite meaning on the Upanishads. They turn and twist the words in such a way that affirmation becomes negation, that yes becomes no.

They are very skillful.

Scholars ARE skillful people. They know how to play with words, they are hair-splitters. They create much dust, so much dust that you can't see what is happening. They create so much smoke of logic that you start forgetting what the real question was.

But the Upanishads are life-affirmative, totally life-affirmative.

It is easy to have silence if you are ready to renounce bliss, but renouncing bliss means renouncing life, renouncing life means renouncing God. Then that silence is of no worth at all - you have committed suicide. Of course, the man who has committed suicide IS silent...

One man had murdered his wife. The judge asked him, "Are you aware of what you have done?"

The man said, "I am a very peace-loving person."

The judge said, "What do you mean by 'peace-loving'? You killed your wife, and you think you are a peace-loving person?"

He said, "Since I have killed her there has been so much peace in the house!"

Of course, when you kill your wife there is peace! You escape from the wife and there is peace and there is silence. You escape from your children and of course, in a cave somewhere in the Himalayas, there is peace and there is silence. But is it worth having it at such a cost? It is stupid!

And the other extreme is: people can choose bliss AND renounce silence. That's what the majority has been doing down the ages. They have chosen cheerfulness, pleasure, joy, all the shades of bliss, all the colors of bliss. Bliss is a rainbow: it has many colors, from pleasure to bliss; it has the whole spectrum from the physical to the psychological to the spiritual AND the beyond.

The people who have chosen pleasure, joy, happiness, bliss, cheerfulness, have renounced silence.

Then their blissfulness is feverish, it is almost insane. It is alive, but in a very insane way. They are dancing, but their dance has no rhythm. It is chaos, it is anarchy. They are singing, but they don't know what they are singing. Their song is meaningless, it has no significance, because it does not contain silence.

A song without silence is empty; it is only a container without any content in it, it is a flower without fragrance. It is a false flower - maybe a paper flower or a plastic flower, but not a real flower. It has no roots. It has not grown, it has been manufactured.

People are manufacturing all kinds of pleasures, but they don't satisfy, they don't bring contentment; they only drive people more and more insane. So the so-called religious have become dead and the so-called worldly have become insane. This is the situation of the whole of humanity - this is where we are standing. A few people have forgotten how to laugh and a few people are laughing in a neurotic way. Their laughter is neurotic, hysterical. They are not the masters of it, they are slaves of it. Both the extremes are wrong.

The Upanishads follow the golden mean, the middle way. One has to have both, nothing has to be sacrificed. Only then - when your silence is pregnant with bliss and your bliss is full of silence - is there wholeness, totality. Then all duality and all schizophrenia disappear.

That's what I would like my sannyasins to be: silently blissful, blissfully silent. This state of silent bliss or blissful silence:

... IS NOT OUTER AWARENESS, IT IS NOT INNER AWARENESS, NOR IS IT A SUSPENSION OF AWARENESS.

IT IS NOT KNOWING, IT IS NOT UNKNOWING, NOR IS IT KNOWINGNESS ITSELF.

IT CAN NEITHER BE SEEN NOR UNDERSTOOD, IT CANNOT BE GIVEN BOUNDARIES.

IT IS INEFFABLE AND BEYOND THOUGHT.

IT IS INDEFINABLE.

IT IS KNOWN ONLY THROUGH BECOMING IT.

IT IS THE END OF ALL ACTIVITY, SILENT AND UNCHANGING, THE SUPREME GOOD, ONE WITHOUT A SECOND.

IT IS THE REAL SELF.

IT, ABOVE ALL, SHOULD BE KNOWN.

Now go into each statement very carefully. This state the Upanishads call 'the fourth', TURIYA; now the Mandukya is trying to help you by giving some hints of what it is. First:

IT IS NOT OUTER AWARENESS...

It is not extroversion; that is what you call your ordinary waking state. You are aware of the outside world, but you are not aware of the inside. You are aware of objects, but you are not aware of your interiority. You are aware of everything except your subjectivity. You know the trees, the mountains, the rivers, the stars, but you are absolutely oblivious of who this knower is - who am I?

The outer awareness, extroversion, gives you science; that is the world of science. It is because science is based on outer awareness that it CANNOT conceive of any interiority in you, it cannot find any self in you, it cannot discover any soul - for the simple reason that its very method prohibits it, its very method gives it a limitation.

You cannot see with your ears and you cannot hear with your eyes; that does not mean that if you cannot listen with your eyes there are no sounds in the world. If you cannot see with your ears that does not mean there is no light, there are no colors in the world; it only means that you are trying to find something through a wrong method. Eyes can see, ears can hear; that is their limitation. If you try to hear with the eyes, then there is no music, of course - but it does not prove the nonexistence of music; it only proves your obsession with a certain limited methodology.

Science is obsessed with the outer awareness, and of course, when you are limited to the outer awareness you cannot know the inner. You have rejected it already, you have bracketed it out already, by your very choice of method. Science will never discover consciousness. If it remains fixated on the outer method, then of course there is no possibility of discovering God; then for science God is non-existential.

The same is true from the opposite pole. There have been people like Shankaracharya who say that the outer world is illusory, MAYA. In a way he is doing the same as the so-called scientists have been doing: now he has become obsessed with the inner. Because he has chosen the inner awareness as the ONLY awareness, the world becomes illusory; he has to reject the world.

The scientist has to reject consciousness, and Shankaracharya and the Vedantins have to reject the outer world; they say that it is illusory. But neither the scientist behaves according to his science nor do Shankaracharya and his followers behave according to their philosophy - they cannot. The scientist is continuously using his consciousness; even when he denies it, in that very denial he is using his consciousness. You cannot deny consciousness; that is the only thing which is indubitable, undeniable.

It happened:

Mulla Nasruddin invited a few of his friends home. He had been talking so much of his generosity and one of the friends said, "If you are really so generous, why don't you give some proof of it! You have never even invited us to your house, not even for a tea party!"

He forgot all about his wife - in that moment of excitement - he said, "Come on, this very moment!

You all come to my house for dinner!"

But as the house came closer he became aware of what he had done. Now there would be trouble!

In fact he remembered that in the morning when he had left the house his wife had asked him to bring vegetables - he had been playing chess with these friends and he had completely forgotten about the vegetables. The wife must have been furious by this time - it was evening, the sun was setting.

He told the friends, "You know, you are all married people, so you can understand my difficulty - just wait outside. Let me first go in and persuade my wife that I have invited a few of my friends...."

They understood it - every husband will understand it - so they remained outside. Mulla went in.

He told the wife that he had fallen into a trap: "It was sheer stupidity to invite these people, but now only you can help me out of this mess. You can just go out and tell them that I am not in the house."

The wife went out and asked, "What are you doing here?"

And they said, "We are waiting for Mulla Nasruddin!"

She said, "But he is not in the house - I have not seen him since the morning. He went to the market to fetch a few vegetables and he has not returned."

They said, "What are you saying? He came with us, we saw him go in, we have even heard him talking to you. We actually heard that it is HIS idea! And whom are you trying to befool? We came with him! We know he is inside the house!"

The wife was of course puzzled. What to do now? She had not expected that there was going to be such an argument about it.

Seeing the situation - Nasruddin was hearing it from a top-floor window, the whole thing - he became so excited because "My wife is not able to convince these fools!" He opened the window and said, "You may be right that he came with you, but he may have gone out by the back door! And are you not ashamed of arguing with a poor woman? Get lost! He is not in the house!"

You cannot say, "I am not in the house," because that very statement will prove that you ARE in the house!

The scientist says, "I am not in the house." He says, "There is nobody inside." Then who is saying this? Then why this whole effort to prove that there is nobody inside, that there is utter emptiness inside? Then who is this person who is trying to prove this?

Karl Marx says that consciousness is only a byproduct of matter - the by-product itself is saying that consciousness does not exist! And he is ready to argue, and he has written big books with great arguments to prove that there is no consciousness.

And Shankaracharya said there is no world - and every day he went to beg. Where did he go to beg? He traveled all over the country to convince people that there is no world, it is all MAYA. And I am sometimes surprised that nobody ever asked him, "If all is MAYA, then with whom are you arguing?" If he meets me, this will be the first thing to decide: "Then whom are you talking to?" I will simply slap his face and see what happens I If the world is illusory, I am illusory, my slap is illusory, so if he gets angry or anything, why? for what? There is nobody! Unnecessarily getting into a quarrel, argument....

And the followers of Shankaracharya have written a book, SHANKAR DIGVJAY - 'The Conquest of the World by Shankara' - conquest of the world! because he conquered all the philosophers of India. He went from one corner to another, challenging everybody, and he was a good arguer, a good logician. But with whom was he talking? - to the illusory people? And conquering illusion, fighting with dreams which do not exist at all?

If you deny something real, this is going to happen: your behavior will prove that you are wrong, because reality cannot be denied. You can argue against it, but your very life will prove... because when Shankara is thirsty he asks for water, and water is illusory. Now, how can illusory water quench a real thirst?

And why did you renounce the world in the first place if it is illusory? You don't renounce anything that does not exist at all, otherwise anybody can renounce anything. You can say, "I have renounced the whole kingdom." And if somebody asks,'Where is your kingdom?" and you say, "It is all illusory!

It does not exist really, but I have renounced it anyway".... He renounced the world; that proves the world is real.

There are people who have become focussed on the outer consciousness - these are the so-called scientists then there are people who have become focused on the inner awareness - these are the so-called Vedantins. In the East Shankaracharya represents them, in the West Berkeley represents them. They say the world is nothing, it is made of the same stuff as dreams.

The Mandukya says:

IT IS NOT OUTER AWARENESS...

The fourth state, the enlightened state, is not outer awareness; it is not extroversion.

IT IS NOT INNER AWARENESS EITHER.

It is not introversion - because the division between the outer and the inner is arbitrary. What do you call the outer and what do you call the inner?

You are breathing. The breath goes in, then it becomes inner; just a moment before it was outer, and just a moment afterwards it is again outer. The breath going in becomes inner, coming out becomes outer. The same breath going in again is inner, coming out is again outer. What is the breath? - outer or inner? Outer and inner is the whole circle: half is inner, half is outer, and both together make the whole circle.

IT IS NOT A SUSPENSION OF AWARENESS EITHER.

But then two possibilities still remain: if it is not outer awareness, not inner awareness, then it may be that it is suspension of awareness. Many have been befooled by suspension of awareness. They have thought of a deep, dreamless state as the fourth - even people like Ramakrishna.

Ramakrishna, his whole life, just leaving out the few days in the end, believed that suspension of awareness, SUSHUPTI, IS SAMADHI, IS the fourth, TURIYA. Those who know, they say it is JAD SAMADHI, it is unconscious SAMADHI, it is not true SAMADHI. It is a state of deep silence, but because there is no awareness there can be no bliss, because there is no awareness there can be no joy, no dance, no celebration.

Ramakrishna used to go into JAD SAMADHI for days together. Once he remained unconscious for six days, but it was almost like a coma. The doctors who supervised him thought that it was a coma - according to THEIR approach it was a coma and nothing else, suspension of consciousness. He was utterly unconscious - breathing, but unconscious.

I have seen one woman who was in a coma for nine months, breathing and alive, but what kind of life? - just vegetating. And the doctors were convinced: "Now she will not be able to come back, because the coma has remained so long that it must have destroyed her brain cells, and without those brain cells she may not be ever able to come to consciousness again" - and she NEVER came back to consciousness. Three years more she lived and then died in the coma.

Now, these four years of life... do you call it life? It is not death, certainly, but it is not life either. It is suspension of life; just the minimum of life is left, just the physiological phenomenon of breathing is left. The blood circulates still, but there is no consciousness.

Ramakrishna used to think that this is SAMADHI, and many people think that this is SAMADHI - and there are small tricks to create it. There are yoga postures, breathing exercises to create it. You can go into a coma and you will feel very silent, and when you come out of the coma you will feel very refreshed; you will feel rejuvenated, you will feel very alive, because it is such a deep relaxation - good for health but nothing to do with the fourth state, the enlightened state, the awakened state.

Ramakrishna came to know the real SAMADHI only in the last days of his life, through a mystic, Totapuri. Totapuri helped him to get out of this third state and to enter the fourth.

All the chanting of mantras is nothing but an effort to create suspension of awareness.

In Sanskrit we have two words for sleep; one is NIDRA. NIDRA means ordinary sleep, natural sleep; every night you go into it. The other word is TANDRA; TANDRA means deliberately created sleep.

It can be translated as'hypnosis'. Hypnosis also means sleep, but a different quality is attached to hypnosis: it is deliberate, it is created, it is not natural.

What do you do in hypnosis? You repeat certain things. For example, you repeat, "I am falling into deep sleep. My body is becoming numb and I am falling into deep sleep." You go on repeating, repeating, repeating, concentratedly repeating, and the idea slowly slowly sinks from the conscious mind into the unconscious, and the moment it reaches the unconscious you fall into deep sleep. It is a created thing.

The same happens with Transcendental Meditation and other methods which are nothing but chanting of mantras. ANY kind of repetition can create TANDRA, hypnosis. And of course, afterwards when you are back you will feel very good, a certain well-being will be there, but this is not the realization of the ultimate truth. This is good for health purposes....

That's why I call the Transcendental Meditation of Maharishi Mahesh Yogi a non-medicinal tranquilizer. It is good for people who are suffering from sleeplessness, who cannot fall asleep easily - it is good. Perhaps that's why only in America it has so many followers, because America is the country which suffers most from sleeplessness, from such a restlessness that it does not allow them to fall into sleep; they go on tossing and turning. But any kind of repetition, remember... it need not be a Sanskrit mantra, it need not be:

AUM PURNAMADAH PURNAMIDAM PURNAT PURNAMUDACHYATE PURNASYA PURNAMADAYA PURNAMEVA VASHISYATE.

ANYTHING will do - H20 will do - it is an old method. People can simply count from one to a hundred and then backwards - from a hundred, ninety-nine, ninety-eight, ninety-seven, then come back to one, then again go up... up the ladder, down the ladder, up the ladder, down the ladder....

Four, five times you may be able to do it, and you will fall asleep - and you have done Transcendental Meditation!

You can create your own, there is no need to ask anybody - it is such a simple thing, it can easily be done. Your own name you can repeat and that will do. There is nothing special in Sanskrit words or Arabic words - ANYTHING will do, just go on repeating it.

But this creates only suspension of awareness, because repetition creates boredom and boredom creates sleep. If you are continuously nagging yourself... that's what Transcendental Meditation is - nagging yourself. Just go on torturing yourself with a mantra, go on chanting, don't listen to yourself.

The mind will say, "I am bored with it! I am fed up with it!" but don't be worried, go on and on. Then there is only one escape left for the mind: to fall asleep, to get rid of you and your mantra and your Maharishi! So it falls into sleep.

The Mandukya Upanishad says it is not suspension of awareness either.

IT IS NOT KNOWING...

It is not knowledge, because it is not something there outside that you can observe and know.

Science exactly means knowledge - the very word'science' means knowledge. It is not science, it is not knowledge, it is not knowledgeability.

IT IS NOT UNKNOWING...

But don't move to the other extreme. Saying that it is not knowledge you can think that maybe it is ignorance, unknowing. It is not that either - it is a very different kind of phenomenon. Ignorance and knowledge are two sides of the same coin: the ignorant can become knowledgeable, the knowledgeable can become again ignorant. They are convertible, they are not very different. What is the difference between the ignorant person and the knowledgeable! The difference of quantity.

The ignorant person knows less and the knowledgeable person knows more. He is more informed, well-read, and the ignorant person is not so well-informed, not so well-read. But this is a difference of quantity, there is no qualitative difference.

Hence the Mandukya says:

IT IS NOT KNOWING, IT IS NOT UNKNOWING, NOR IS IT KNOWINGNESS ITSELF.

The effort is to bring you closer to the inexpressible, so it is trying to avoid all the pitfalls. The first pitfall is that you may think it is knowing - it is not. You may think it is unknowing - it is not. You may think then it is knowingness itself - it is not.

IT CAN NEITHER BE SEEN NOR UNDERSTOOD..

There is no way to see it because it is not outside, and there is no way to understand it because it is not INSIDE. It is beyond both, hence it is beyond seeing and understanding. It is a mystery; it cannot be de-mystified.

IT CANNOT BE GIVEN BOUNDARIES.

When you say it is knowledge you have given it a boundary; when you say it is not knowledge you have given it a boundary; when you say it is knowingness itself you have again given it a boundary.

Any word limits.

That's why I love the Upanishadic flight: it leaves behind everything. For example, the Vedas say it is knowing; that is the meaning of the word VEDA. VID means knowing; from VID comes VEDA; VEDA means knowledge. The Vedas say it is knowing. The Mandukya Upanishad says:

IT IS NOT KNOWING...

Get rid of the Vedas, get rid of all the scriptures, get rid of all the words!

Socrates says: "I know only one thing, that I know nothing" He is saying that it is unknowingness.

Dionysius says it is AGNOSIA, unknowingness, but the Mandukya goes still further. It says it is better than the first - knowing is the lowest, unknowing is a little vaster, but still it defines, it gives a limitation. Socrates and Dionysius are better than the Vedas, but still lagging behind; one has to go a little further on.

And Mahavira says it is KAIVALYA, it is knowingness itself. The Mandukya Upanishad says Mahavira has come very close, but still, if we can deny that too, then we will be coming almost to it, to the indefinable.

IT CAN NEITHER BE SEEN NOR UNDERSTOOD.

IT CANNOT BE GIVEN BOUNDARIES.

IT IS INEFFABLE AND BEYOND THOUGHT, IT IS INDEFINABLE.

IT IS KNOWN ONLY THROUGH BECOMING IT.

There is no other way to know it - neither from the scriptures, nor from traditions, nor from the gurus. It is not possible to know it from anywhere else, unless you become it yourself. And the way to become it is to dissolve into the whole, to disappear as a separate entity as an ego; that is the meaning of becoming it. Don't be an island; disappear and become part of the infinite continent.

Don't remain a dewdrop; slip from the lotus leaf into the lake and disappear. The moment the dewdrop disappears in the lake it becomes the lake, it becomes oceanic.

IT IS THE END OF ALL ACTIVITY...

At the very center of your being there is no activity; all activity is on the circumference, not at the center. The center is absolutely silent and unchanging. It is the supreme good, the SUMMUM BONUM. TO BE it is to be moral, to BE it is to be virtuous.

IT IS... ONE WITHOUT A SECOND.

There is neither the known nor the knower; they have disappeared into one reality. So now there is nobody to claim, "I know," not even anybody to claim, "I don't know" - that too is a claim. Socrates' claim is far better than the claim of the knowledgeable people, the people who say, 'We know" - they are the most stupid. Socrates is far better. He says, "I know only one thing, that I know nothing," but that too is a claim. At least one thing he knows - at least he knows that he knows nothing. Still he is... something of the ego may be just the shadow. If not the ego then the shadow of the ego is still lingering somewhere - a hang-up. But that hang-up has also to disappear, then you come to the real self.

IT IS THE REAL SELF.

IT, ABOVE ALL, SHOULD BE KNOWN.

The statement - the last statement - will look like a paradox, because we have been saying it cannot be known, it is not knowing, it is not unknowing either, it is not knowingness itself, it is ineffable, it is indefinable and in the end the Mandukya Upanishad says:

ABOVE ALL, IT SHOULD BE KNOWN.

This is the trouble with language. It is not the fault of the Mandukya Upanishad - the language is faulty. The language cannot say what it is, the language cannot indicate correctly, but it HAS to be known. Now this known has to be given a special meaning: the meaning of becoming one with it.

That is the only way to know it. To know means to disappear, to know means not to be.

Shakespeare says: The question is to be or not to be. If you ask the Mandukya Upanishad, it will say - and I agree with the Mandukya Upanishad - the question is not: To be or not to be? the question is: How not to be so that you can be? The way to be is not to be. Disappear as you are so you can appear AS YOU REALLY ARE. Let the mask fall so that the original face is discovered, let the mind go so that there is no interference from the mind... and you can be in silent blissfulness, one with existence.

Then you will find yourself in the flowers and their fragrance and you will find yourself in the birds and their songs, and you will find yourself in the sun and in the moon and in the clouds, in the people, in the animals... you will find yourself spread everywhere. You will be as vast as the universe itself.

All that you have to lose is this small ego. It is not much that you are asked to lose. It is rubbish! It is false! It is only an idea. If you are able to drop it, suddenly you explode into the whole, and then the whole splendor of existence is yours. All the songs are yours, all the blessings are yours, all the benedictions are yours.

That state of ecstasy is the fourth state, TURIYA. It has to be known! It has to be lived! That is the only way to attain to ultimate life. Unless it is found, life remains misery, life remains a hell. To find it is to enter into the kingdom of God.