The Secret of the Drowned Man

THE THINKER IS CREATIVE WITH HIS THOUGHTS. This is one of the most fundamental truths to be understood. All that you experience is your creation. First you create it, then you experience it, and then you are caught in the experience - because you DON'T know that the source of all exists in you.

There is a famous parable:

Once a man was travelling, accidentally he entered paradise. In the Indian concept of paradise there are wish-fulfilling trees there, KALPATARUS. You just sit underneath them, desire anything, and immediately it is fulfilled - there is no gap between the desire and its fulfillment.

There is no gap between a thought and a thing. You think, and immediately it becomes a thing; the thought realizes automatically. These KALPATARUS are nothing but symbolic for the mind. Mind is creative, creative with its thoughts.

The man was tired, so he fell asleep under a KALPATARU, a wish-fulfilling tree. When he woke up he was feeling very hungry, so he simply said, "I am feeling so hungry, I wish I could get some food from somewhere." And immediately food appeared out of nowhere - just floating in the air, delicious food.

He was so hungry that he didn't pay much attention to where it had come from - when you are hungry you are not philosophic. He immediately started eating, and the food was so delicious that he was caught up in the food. Once his hunger was gone he looked around. Now that he was feeling very satisfied, another thought arose in him: "If only I could get something to drink..." - And there is still no prohibition in paradise; immediately, precious wine appeared.

Drinking the wine relaxedly in the cool breeze of paradise under the shade of the tree, he started wondering, "What is the matter? What is happening? Have I fallen into a dream, or are some ghosts around and playing tricks with me?"

And ghosts appeared. And they were ferocious, horrible, nauseating. And he started trembling, and a thought arose in him: "Now I am sure to be killed. These people are going to kill me."

And he was killed.

This parable is an ancient parable, of immense significance. It portrays your whole life. Your mind is the wish-fulfilling tree, KALPATARU - whatsoever you think, sooner or later it is fulfilled.

Sometimes the gap is such that you have completely forgotten that you had desired it in the first place; sometimes the gap is of years, or sometimes of lives. So you can't connect the source.

But if you watch deeply you will find all your thoughts are creating you and your life. They create your hell, they create your heaven. They create your misery, they create your joy. They create the negative, they create the positive. Both are illusory - the pain and pleasure, the sweet dream and the nightmare, both are illusory.

What is meant by calling these things illusory? The only meaning is that they are your creation. You are creating a magic world around yourself - that's what is meant by the word maya. Everybody here is a magician. And everybody is spinning and weaving a magic world around himself, and then is caught - the spider itself is caught in its own web.

There is nobody torturing you except yourself. There is nobody except yourself; your whole life is your work, your creation.

Buddhism insists on this fact very emphatically. Once this is understood, things start changing. Then you can play around; then you can change your hell into heaven - it is just a question of painting it from a different vision. Or if you are too much in love with misery you can create as much as you want, to your heart's content. But then you are never complaining, because you know that it is your creation, it is your painting, you cannot make anybody feel responsible for it. Then the whole responsibility is yours.

Then a new possibility arises: you can drop creating the world, you can stop creating it. There is no need to create heaven and hell, there is no need to create at all. The creator can relax, retire.

That retirement of the mind is meditation. You have seen all, this way and that. You have enjoyed and you have suffered, and you have seen the agonies and the ecstasies: love and hate, anger and compassion, failure and success, you have seen all. Ups and highs, lows and downs, you have lived all. Slowly slowly, this experience makes you alert that you are the creator.

If you have been on any drug trip, you know it. The drug simply releases your mind energy and things start happening. You are transported into other worlds. If a person suffers from paranoia and he goes on an LSD trip, the trip is going to be very very horrible. He will be persecuted, he will be surrounded by enemies, he will suffer much. If the person is not living out of fear but living out of love and joy, he will have beautiful experiences.

Aldous Huxley says that he lived great heavenly experiences through LSD. But Karl Reiner says that he went through hell. And both are right. They think they are against each other, criticizing each other. Reiner thinks drugs create hell. Drugs create nothing. All that is created is by your mind; drugs can only magnify it. They can exaggerate, they can allow things to appear in a very magnified form, a thousandfold bigger than they are. Molehills are turned into mountains, that's all. The drug can only exaggerate, but the seed is supplied by your mind.

Your whole life is a kind of drug trip. When you are under the impact of a drug, things happen fast; immediately; they start happening. When you are living the usual ordinary life, things take a little longer time, conventional time. But it is the same trip. Your life and your drug experiences are not separate, because both are out of the mind - how can they be separate?

Buddhism says: To see this point is to allow an awakening in yourself. Then both can disappear. You can simply let things disappear by not cooperating, by withdrawing yourself, by becoming a simple witness, watching.

Scientists say that every day in twenty-four hours, fifty thousand thoughts pass through the average man. Fifty thousand thoughts are continuously passing. You DON'T allow all the thoughts to be realized; you choose. There are good thoughts, there are bad thoughts, there are beautiful thoughts and there are ugly thoughts - you choose.

It is almost as if you have a radio and all stations are available on the radio. The whole noise of the world and the politicians is available on the radio. But you choose the station - that choice is yours. Or you can choose not to put the radio on; you can choose to put it off. Then all that noise disappears.

Exactly this is the situation. A meditator chooses not to choose any station; he simply puts the radio off or disconnects it. And all the noise and all the politicians and all that nonsense disappears.

But if you want to choose, you can choose; you can choose any station. People become addicted to stations. When you enter into somebody's room you can see his radio. You will see the needle on the station to which he is addicted, whether the radio is on or not. Slowly slowly, the radio remains always fixed on that station which he likes.

That is the situation of your mind. When I look into you I see your needles fixed. Somebody has decided to live in hell; his needle is fixed. And it has remained fixed for so long that now even to change to another station is going to be difficult. It has gathered rust; maybe it has lost the capacity to be moved from here to there, it may have become fixed. You may have left it there for many many lives; you have forgotten that other stations are available. And you think you are suffering, you have to listen to this noise. You DON'T like it at all, but what can you do? - you have to listen to it.

People become addicted to their thoughts. Then that thought comes more often, is repeated more, creates a groove in the head, in the brain cells, and becomes your reality. Naturally, you think what can you do? - you are a helpless victim.

Buddhism says: You are not a victim at all - not a victim of fate, not a victim of God, not a victim of the so-called theory of karma. These are just tricks, strategies, to avoid seeing the fundamental law of life.

When you are suffering you try to find some explanations. There are beautiful explanations available.

Somebody says, "This is how God wants it to be, so what can you do? You have to live it. It is not in your hands. Man is impotent and God is omnipotent. What can you do? All that is possible for you is either to suffer happily or to suffer unhappily. Suffering is going to be there, so just suffer - as happily as possible, as ungrudgingly as possible, without complaint. Suffer with acceptance - that's all that you can do. Or you can go on crying and weeping, but nothing can change it. It is beyond you."

This explanation helps people. Then they remain fixed in their groove. They forget that they can change anything.

Buddhism declares that man is free. That is Buddhism's greatest contribution to human consciousness and the history of human consciousness, that man is utterly free, that man is freedom. There is no God who is programming you, there is no programming at all. You are programming yourself; you are a self-programmer.

There are other explanations: those who DON'T believe in God, they believe in karma. You are suffering, you are in anguish, and you say, "What can I do? It is my past life's karma, I have to go through it." This helps acceptance; it is a consolation. It gives you a certain kind of rest, it makes life a little easier - otherwise it will be too difficult, it will be impossible, it will be unbearable.

Once you see the point that it is predetermined in some way or other - whether by God or karma, it is the same strategy, with no difference; karma is another God, only words are different - now nothing can be done. You have done something wrong in the past life, there is no way to undo it now; the only way is to go through it. Go through the worst, and hope for the best. Remain in a kind of consolation that something good will come out sooner or later.

This is why people are in so much misery - because of their explanations! If you have explained your misery, how are you going to transform it? If you have a certain explanation that helps you to accept it as it is, then there is no possibility of transformation.

Buddhism wants to take away all theories and consolations. Those are all tranquillizers, deadly poisonous. And the insight that Buddhism wants to share with you is that you are the sole agent, the sole creator of your life; nothing else determines it. Each moment you are in control. You just have to see it and you have to try a few changes - those changes will help you to become more aware.

One day you are feeling very miserable: just sit silently in the chair, relax, and start enjoying. Just do the opposite - DON'T get into the trap of the misery: start smiling. In the beginning it will look false.

Just get euphoric, blissed out. Start swaying, as if there is a great dancing energy in you. And you will be surprised that, slowly slowly, that which had started almost like a pretension is becoming real.

The misery is disappearing; it no more has its hold on you, something has changed. A laughter is arising in you.

Your old habit will say, "What are you doing? What about karma? This is not supposed to be; you should not do such things. This is against all philosophy and metaphysics. Go back into the old groove! This is not right, you are cheating - you have to be miserable when there is misery. This is inauthentic, this is pseudo."

The mind will bring in all kinds of things to create the disturbance again. But insist: "This time I am going to drop out of the theory of karma. I am going to jump out of the wheel! This time I am going to choose the polar opposite." Start dancing, singing, and see, and you will be surprised. But you will have experienced a great truth, that it changes; that the climate changes, that the clouds disappear, that it becomes sunny, that you are different.

Sometimes you are feeling very happy: do the opposite, become miserable - for no reason at all, just become miserable. In the beginning it will again be just acting. But soon you will get into the act - because all that you are doing is nothing but an act, so it can be changed.

What you call your authentic life is also just an ACT. Maybe you have practised it long, that's all, but it is an act. So it can be changed for another act. And once you have learnt the trick of changing your acts from one to another, you will be able to see your freedom. You are something beyond the acts.

The function of a master is to destroy all your acts and to make you capable of being free. Buddhism says you are free, utterly free. Experience your freedom, and slowly slowly get out of the old ruts.

It happened, a professor of English language was invited to speak on the philosophy of life. He was a retired professor, well-known, but he wanted to make a little change in the title of the lecture. He said, "Let it be called "The grammar of life"." A professor of English language: the people who had invited him thought, "It is right, it is the same - the philosophy of life or the grammar of life."

And do you know what the professor said when he spoke? He said: "Live in the active voice, not the passive. Think more about what you make happen than what happens to you. Live in the indicative mood, rather than the subjunctive. Be concerned with things as they are, rather than as they might be. Live in the present tense, facing the duty at hand without regret for the past or worry for the future. Live in the first person, criticizing yourself rather than finding fault with others. Live in the singular number, caring more for the approval of your own conscience than for the applause of the crowd. And if you want a verb to conjugate, you cannot do better than to take the verb "to love"."

This is his grammar of life. His whole life he must have been teaching grammar, grammar and grammar. Now it has become almost an unconscious habit; he cannot think in any other terms.

This is how you are caught, you are caught by habits. There is no karma that is holding you - or if there is any karma it is nothing but your habits. The thing that you have been doing again and again, becomes almost a determining factor in your life, becomes decisive.

But one can drop any habit. You may have been smoking for thirty years - but you can drop THIS cigarette, half-smoked, on the floor and never take another cigarette in your hand. You are free. If you cannot drop it, that simply means you are choosing not to drop it. If people say, "How can we get out of misery?" they are simply saying, "We DON'T want to get out of misery." They are deceiving themselves.

People come to me and they go on asking, "How to get out of this?" And I am simply puzzled, because only they are holding themselves in it; nobody else is there. They can come out of it just as easily. The energy that they are putting into being in it is more; less energy is needed to come out of it. But they have forgotten one thing - they have forgotten their freedom.

The message of Buddhism is freedom. Freedom from God, freedom from heaven and hell, freedom from fear, freedom from the future - freedom from all these explanations that man has created down the ages and is burdened with and crushed by.

I have heard:

An efficiency expert died and was being carried to his grave by six pall-bearers. As they approached their destination the lid of the coffin popped open and the efficiency expert sat up and shouted, "If you'd put this thing on wheels you could lay off four men!"

Just the whole life's habit - an efficiency expert is an efficiency expert. And DON'T laugh at it, this is what you are doing. You are living in habits, you will die in habits. And because of these habits you will miss real life. Real life consists of freedom. And once you know that you are free then there is no obsession to choose this or that. You can choose NOT to choose.

That state is called Buddhahood.

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THIS IS AN IMPORTANT SUTRA. Go slowly into it. The first thing: to ask the Buddha to help us is foolish, for three reasons. First, he cannot. Second, even if he could he would not. Third, we do not need to be helped since we are all Buddhas already.

Zen people say: Because of these three reasons, to ask for help from the Buddha is foolish. First, he cannot. Why can he not help? Because from his standpoint you DON'T need any help at all. From his standpoint your whole situation is ridiculous. Your whole misery is false! Rather than being kind to you, he would like to laugh at you - although he does not laugh. He goes on showing his kindness to you, just not to offend you unnecessarily.

But the basic thing is, from the standpoint of a Buddha all your misery is so stupid. It is as if you are in a house which is on fire - doors are open, windows are open, you can jump out from anywhere, and you are just sitting there and shouting, "Help me! How am I to get out of this house? My house is on fire! Bring me maps, guidebooks; teach me techniques, methods, to get out." And the house is on fire and you are just standing in the middle of it. And the doors are open and the windows are open - you can get out immediately, not even a moment has to be lost. The whole situation is ridiculous.

A Buddha knows that you are all Buddhas. The day a man becomes enlightened, for him the whole world becomes enlightened. Then he can see through and through: he can see your eternity, he can see your eternal purity, he can see hidden inside you the source, the God. And you are crying, and weeping, and he can see your treasure and your empire. And you are begging, begging for help.

The Buddha cannot help you, because he can see your misery is self-created, illusory. And he cannot help you for another reason too: the master himself has disappeared as an ego, as a self.

There is nobody who is inside; a Buddha is pure emptiness. Who is there to help you?

You can take all the help that you need, but nobody is there to help you. Let it be very clear: you can partake of the energy of a Buddha, you can eat as much of his energy as possible, you can drink him and you can become intoxicated with him - but he cannot do anything on his own. The door exists no more.

A Buddha is simply an availability. The master remains available in SATSANGA; his presence, or his absence, is there. You can take in as much as you want, you can allow that presence to penetrate you as deeply as you open your heart. But all depends on you. Yes, you can help yourself through the Buddha, but the Buddha cannot help you. There is no activity possible on the part of Buddha.

Sometimes when you come to me and ask, "Osho, will you help me?" you create a problem for me.

If I say I will, I am false. If I say I will not, you are hurt - I am unkind, unloving. The situation is: I am available. You can help yourself through my presence; I cannot DO anything.

The master is a catalytic agent. His presence can trigger a process in you, but he cannot be a doer. He cannot take any initiative, he cannot be a manipulator, he cannot impose any discipline or character on you, he cannot force you to change - all that violence is gone. Violence is a shadow of the ego; the day the ego disappears, all violence disappears.

That's why I say a do-gooder is not a good man. And the man who is after you and is trying to change you is not the man to be with. The man who is hankering to change you is an egoist, he wants to make you according to his ideas. He is dangerous, he will destroy you; he will not be helpful to you. He will cut from you this part and that part, he will change things in you. He has a blueprint with him, he has a certain idea that has to be implemented. He will not be bothered about you. His whole concern is with his idea; you are just a plaything.

That's what your so-called mahatmas go on doing. They go on giving you patterns of life, they go on forcing things upon you: "Do this, DON'T do that. If you do this you will be rewarded, if you DON'T do this you will be rewarded. If you obey, the paradise is yours. If you disobey, then you fall into hell."

These people are dangerous people. These are politicians, not religious people at all. Their whole effort is to change people; they enjoy it. But people are not things. A man is not a canvas, you cannot paint him the way you want. The man is God, the woman is God, each person is divine. Who can change a person? Just the very idea of changing a person is sacrilegious, is a sin.

Many people come to me and they say, "Why DON'T you give discipline to your sannyasins?" Who am I to give discipline to my sannyasins? I am available. Whatsoever they want, they can have; that is their choice and their freedom. I am here to teach a single thing: Freedom. No interference in it. If they choose to remain in the world, fine. If they choose to get out of it, fine. With me, all is good. But the greatest value is freedom.

A Buddha cannot be asked to help you. He is help - but a passive help, just a presence, a door.

You can pass through it, but the door cannot drag you through itself. Be aware of the fact: if you are with a real master he will not drag you anywhere. He will shower his presence on you, he will remain available in a thousand and one ways, but he will give you freedom to choose, freedom to be. His presence is not active, cannot be; all action is violent. His presence is passive. So, for three reasons, it is not possible.

Ikkyu says:

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Secondly, he would not help you, because anything that is given to you from the outside cannot become your eternal nature. Even a Buddha cannot give you the truth - because truth is not a thing to be given or taken, it is an experience that arises in you. The Buddha is an occasion where you can bloom. But nothing can be given to you, nothing can be transferred.

There are things which are untransferrable. They only ARISE; they grow. They are not commodities, they grow like a fragrance grows in a flower.

Truth is your fragrance. So even if he wants, a Buddha would not help you - because anything given from the outside, just because it has been given from the outside, becomes untrue. It is no more the real gift. The real gift has to arise in you, it has to be given birth by you, through you. At the most, the master can be a midwife.

That's what Socrates says he is - a midwife. The child grows in the womb of the mother: the midwife can become an occasion to bring the child out of the womb more comfortably, conveniently. That is the function of a master.

God is growing in your womb. The master can be an occasion to bring this birth to happen in comfort, with as little pain as possible, with as much joy as possible, with celebration.

Thirdly, he cannot help, because he sees we do not need any help. All that we need is an awareness of our freedom, an awareness of the fundamental law that thought creates reality - that we are creators, that each and everyone is a creator.

Never think for a single moment that God has created the world. You have created your world. And there is not one world, there are as many worlds as there are people here. You live in your world, your wife lives in hers. That's why the clash - those two worlds are continuously clashing. They have to clash, they are overlapping.

You like one thing, your woman likes another thing. There is no way to convince each other, this way or that - a liking is a liking. You would like to go to this picture, to this movie; she wants to go to some other picture, to some other movie - a liking is a liking. Two worlds together, overlapping, interfering with each other - hence the conflict. We DON'T live in one world. There are as many worlds as there are people.

And the Buddha is one who has seen the truth of it, that he is the creator of his world, and he has retired from it. He creates no more. A Buddha lives here in the world, without a world. That's the meaning of being a Buddha: he lives in the world but there is no world for him. He lives in the world but the world is not in him. His own creation has completely disappeared. His canvas is vacant: he creates no more, he no more projects any dreams.

To come close to a Buddha means coming close to an emptiness. Hence the fear. One feels scared.

If you look into the eyes of a Buddha you will feel utter emptiness, an abyss. And you feel as if, if you fall into it, you will never reach to any bottom. There is none. There is no bottom, it is eternal emptiness - one falls and falls and falls. One disappears but never comes to the bottom of it.

The Buddha cannot help you, because he sees your dreams. It is as if you are asleep and you are seeing a very dangerous dream. A tiger is following you and you are screaming, and in your sleep you shout, "Help! Help!" And somebody is sitting by you side awake. What do you think he is supposed to do? Should he try to help you? Then he will be just as stupid as you are. Then he will be as asleep as you are, or even more.

He will laugh. He knows there is no tiger; it is your creation, it is your imagination. He may have a good laugh. But you are suffering - you tiger may be imaginary, but for the moment your suffering seems to be true. Tears are coming, you are shaking and trembling.

What should the man do who is awake? He cannot save you from the tiger, because there is no tiger in the first place. But he can do one thing: he can help you to be awake.

That's why these sutras are so depressing, you feel sad. Pradeepa has written a letter to me; her brother and her brother's wife are here and she has written, "Osho, the last time they were here you were talking about Sufis, and they were thrilled by the talks - that's why they have come again. And now these Ikkyu sutras: they are sad and they create sadness." She has asked me to do something so that her brother and brother's wife DON'T feel sad here. Nothing; can be done. With Ikkyu, I am Ikkyu.

But this sadness is of immense value. And you are not here just to be entertained, you are here to be enlightened. There is nothing wrong in being entertained - if you decide to be that, fine - but then you missed a great opportunity. You need to be enlightened. And before one becomes awake one has to pass through many sad layers of one's being. Layers upon layers are there of sadness that you have repressed - because you never wanted to be sad, you have never faced it.

Buddha brings all your sadness in front of you, because his commitment is not to your sleep and your dreams. Maybe those dreams sometimes are sweet, but a dream is a dream, whether sweet or bitter. Even if it is very entertaining it is a dream, and the time is wasted.

Truth may not be very entertaining, but it is enlightening. And once you have seen the truth, life moves into a totally new dimension. That dimension is of blissfulness. And remember again, blissfulness does not mean happiness - because what you mean by happiness is again entertainment. What you mean by happiness is nothing but pleasure, sensation, thrill.

Blissfulness has the quality of peace in it, silence, stillness, undisturbedness. There is no pain and no pleasure: that state of non-duality, Buddha is interested in it. And to attain to it, if one has to pass through sadness it is worth it. Any cost is okay, because what you are going to realize is beyond all values; it is beyond all your comprehension.

The Buddha Way is the way of awakening. But you can be awake only when your sadness is emphasized totally. Otherwise who would like to be awake? You have to be made alert about your sadness, about your hell. You have to be made aware of your death, of your illness. You have to be made aware of all the agonies that you have passed through and you are passing through and you will have to pass through. This whole thing has to be emphasized.

I have heard:

A Broadway producer decided he was fed up with the extravagant ballyhoo in the advertising of so many shows. He decided that he would insert a clause in his contract giving him the right to approve all advertising for the new play he was producing.

Writer after writer prepared ads embodying the honesty and sincerity he said he wanted in his ads.

He turned them all down. Finally, one brought in a piece of copy which read like this:

"Here is a play which combines the drama of Shakespeare, the wit of Rostand, the strength of Tennessee Williams, the intellect of Marlowe, and the plot mystery of Dickens. Greater than Hamlet, more moving than the Bible, this is a play destined to live for ever."

"That's it!" shouted the producer. "No exaggeration! Just the simple truth!"

You are living in an exaggerated kind of hope, it can be destroyed only by an exaggerated kind of sadness. The opposite polarity has to be brought in. You are hiding all your wounds, Buddha would like to open them all up. Naturally, one does not like it. Seeing one's wounds, it hurts. Life starts looking very very painful, one feels lethargic about living. Then what is the point? One starts thinking of committing suicide.

That's the point Buddha would like you to reach. Where you start thinking of suicide, only there is sannyas possible - not before it. When you think the whole life is meaningless, only then does your energy start being concentrated on one point - that now some other meaning has to be searched for. "This life has failed, in toto. Now another life has to be searched for. I have lived outside myself and seen it is all sadness and agony. Now I have to turn inwards - a one-hundred-and-eighty-degree turn."

That's why these sutras appear so sad. They bring the truth of your life into focus.

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AND PEOPLE ARE SO STUPID that even when they come to a Buddha - who knows no future, who knows no past, who lives in the eternal moment - they still ask about the after-life. They want to have some felicity in the after-world. They are not interested in being awakened herenow, they are interested in making some beautiful world after death.

Buddha is interested absolutely in the herenow. He wants you to be awake herenow. But you go to him and ask, "Is the soul immortal? Will I live after death? What will happen after death? What happens after death? Where do people go?

And Buddha used to laugh at all these questions and he would simply put them all aside. In fact this was his usual way: whenever he would enter a town his disciples would go around the town declaring to each and everybody, "DON'T ask these eleven questions." And these eleven questions were all questions of metaphysics: the afterlife, God, heaven, hell, karma - all that kind of garbage.

Buddha used to say: Just ask about the immediate, that which is the question right now. Let me become the answer for that.

People DON'T want to ask that, they want to avoid it. You are in misery and you ask, "What will happen after death?" People come to me too; they say, "What will happen after death?" I say, "First see what is happening before death." They are not interested in that. Before death? Who bothers about before death? The real question is after death.

If you can't see what is happening now, and you DON'T want to see it, the story is going to be the same later on too. Somebody has asked, "This question has been pursuing me from my very childhood:

how does the stone feel inside? Inside the stone, how is it?"

Inquire first how it feels when you are a man - because once you were a stone too, but then you were worried, I know, then you were worried about how it feels to be a man. Now you are a man, you are worried about how it feels to be a stone. Are you going to miss all the opportunities?

And remember, it feels the same. If you can know how it feels inside right now, you will know how it feels inside anywhere else. The inside is the same, only outsides differ. One is a woman from the outside, another is a man from the outside; from the inside, nobody is a man and nobody is a woman. And the man is continuously puzzled by the woman. Even your greatest men, so-called greatest men, are continuously puzzled by the mystery of the woman.

How does it feel? From the inside it is the same, even in a stone. The inside is always the same; only the outer periphery, the shape and the form, is different. Inside is God. God is the inside of all things.

But these questions! Now, just think, a person has been continuously thinking since childhood - it must have become an obsession - how it feels inside a stone. And the person has not yet asked, "How does it feel right now inside me?"

Buddha is interested in the immediate, the imminent. Go into the right-here-now: enter your reality and see. And whatsoever you will know will solve all your problems. No metaphysics is needed, meditation alone is enough.

But people used to ask him, "Help us for the future life." And he was ready here, available here, to transform you. But you are not interested in being transformed here, because you have a thousand other things to do. You are thinking that after life is finished and all the beautiful things of life have been done, then resting in the grave, yes, then one can meditate. Then one can think about great things. Why be bothered right now? Right now there are so many things to do - so many INTERESTING things to do.

Buddha cannot help you for the future, because for a Buddha there is no future. The only time for a Buddha is the present. He cannot help you for the past, because there is no past. It is all one NOW.

ALREADY, OVER THE HEART

NOT A CLOUD IS HANGING,

AND NO MOUNTAIN IS THERE

FOR THE MOON TO HIDE BEHIND.

And if you can see it, and if you can go into the right-now of things inside yourself THIS moment, you will be surprised...

ALREADY, OVER THE HEART

NOT A CLOUD IS HANGING,

AND NO MOUNTAIN IS THERE

FOR THE MOON TO HIDE BEHIND.

All is clear there! This very moment! Just you are not there. All is clear there - just clarity, transparency, crystal clarity. And it has been so since time began. Your inner purity is absolute, it cannot be contaminated.

It is just as if a man is asleep, you shake him and he awakes. Even while he was asleep his capacity to awake was not destroyed. It was there; it was like a substratum. On the top maybe there was a layer of sleep, of dreams, but deep down he was awake. Otherwise how can you wake him just by shaking him? Just an alarm, just somebody calling from the outside, and he opens his eyes and asks, "Who is calling me?" And he was asleep and he was dreaming a thousand and one things, and he was utterly lost in those things. But something was still aware.

That something is always aware. That something never loses its awareness.

You are lost in thoughts; thoughts are dreams. You are lost in the head - and that clarity exists in the heart. The head is your confusion, naturally: fifty thousand thoughts passing through your head every day, it is really always rush hour, twenty-four hours. And these fifty thousand thoughts I am talking about are for the very very normal average man. I am saying nothing about the neurotics and the philosophers and the thinkers, mad people; I am not saying anything about them, this is just average.

So many thoughts passing through the head: how can you remain clear? So many clouds: how can you see the sun?

But there is a space inside you, a fountain of clarity: your heart. Slip out of the head and fall into the heart. And suddenly one is aware.

ALREADY, OVER THE HEART

NOT A CLOUD IS HANGING...

Because not a single thought ever passes through the heart. The mechanism of thought is in the head, and the mechanism of awareness is in the heart. The heart is always aware. That's why whenever you do something from your heart it has a beauty, a transcendental beauty, a grace. It has something of the divine - maybe a small thing, a small gesture, but in that gesture God is revealed.

And whatsoever you do from your head is always calculated, cunning, clever, and remains profane and ugly.

ALREADY, OVER THE HEART

NOT A CLOUD IS HANGING,

AND NO MOUNTAIN IS THERE

FOR THE MOON TO HIDE BEHIND.

There it is all clear. And both these spaces are available to you, but somehow you are just standing by the roadside, surrounded by the traffic and the noise.

Get out of your head and get into your heart. Think less, feel more. DON'T be too much attached to thoughts; get deeper into sensations. Just see the change: it is only a change of gestalt. You are lost in your thoughts, you cannot hear the birds singing. Then you change the gestalt. Just the focus changes, it is a shift. You are no more worried by the thoughts: suddenly all the birds are there singing, the flowers blooming, the sunrays passing through the trees and the wind playing around with the old dead leaves. Just a shift...

And exactly that has to be done. Hence, one who really wants to be awakened needs to learn all the ways of sensitivity. Feel more, touch more, see more, hear more, taste more. And your mahatmas have all dulled your sensitivities. They have been telling you, "DON'T taste, taste is dangerous." They have been telling you, "DON'T listen to music; forget your senses." And because you have become closed to all your senses, your feeling has disappeared - because feeling can live only through the nourishment that your senses give it.

So when a new person comes here and sees people hugging each other, holding hands, dancing, singing, he is puzzled - because he knows only one kind of ashram, the cemetery kind, where people are dead, just sitting under the trees, dull, not feeling anything, just chanting "Rama-Rama-Rama".

And that chanting is just a kind of lullaby so that they can force all their senses to fall asleep.

If you want to be aware, you have to be sensitive. You have to allow all your senses to become aflame. Then the heart starts living. Then the lotus of the heart opens and there is never any confusion.

IN OUR WAY THROUGH THIS WORLD

OF BIRTH AND DEATH,

WE HAVE NO COMPANION;

LONELY WE DIE,

ALONE WE ARE BORN.

DON'T GET LOST too much in the world of relationship, because all relationship is dreaming.

Remember your utter aloneness.

LONELY WE DIE,

ALONE WE ARE BORN.

And this life is just an overnight's stay. DON'T become too much committed to it, DON'T get too much involved. Staying overnight in a SARAI, you DON'T get involved. You remain there for the night and you know that in the morning you have to go, so you DON'T become worried about the caravan SARAI.

This life is just a journey, this life is only a bridge. Pass through it; DON'T become too much involved in it. Remain aloof, detached. And that aloofness and that detachedness has not to be a forced thing.

If it is forced, you have missed the point. It has to be out of your understanding. If it is forced, it will kill your senses; if it is out of understanding, your senses will become more alive.

THE VAST FLOOD

ROLLS ONWARD

BUT YIELD YOURSELF;

AND IT FLOATS YOU UPON IT.

And remember, if you are not involved then there is no question of fighting, no question of struggle.

It is the involved people who become very very struggling, because they have certain ideas of what has to be done. They want the world to be in a certain way; it has to be changed. They become so involved that they cannot sleep. They have to paint the walls of the CARAVANSARAI, they have to decorate the walls, they have to change the bed, they have to arrange the furniture - and by the morning they have to go. And the whole night is lost in arranging and fighting and changing things.

Out of understanding, not out of enforced practising, you start floating with life. Then all is okay; then you DON'T push the river...

THE VAST FLOOD

ROLLS ONWARD

BUT YIELD YOURSELF;

AND IT FLOATS YOU UPON IT.

And if you start fighting with it you are simply fighting with yourself and with nobody else. If you start struggling with life you will become more and more closed, naturally, in defence. If you start struggling with life you will be defeated, because you will dissipate your energy in fighting.

If you DON'T fight with life, you float with the flow, you go with the river, you go downstream - you DON'T try to go upstream, you have no ideas, you are simply in a kind of surrender with life - this is trust, this is surrender. And this is it! Then a miracle happens: if you DON'T fight with life, life simply helps you - it takes you on its shoulders.

Have you seen any dead body floating in the river? And have you watched the secret of the dead man? When he was alive he was drowned by the river, naturally. Maybe he didn't know how to fight, he didn't know how to swim: he was drowned by the river. He must have been fighting, he must have tried hard to get out of it: he was drowned.

Now he is dead, and he is floating on the surface. What has happened? It seems when he was alive he didn't know the secret. Now he knows; now the river is not drowning him. The best swimmer is one who knows how to behave with the river as if you are dead - AS IF you are dead - then the river takes you.

This is let-go: living as if dead, living with no attachment, living with no possessiveness, living with no clinging. Living with joy.

WHO SEES NAUGHT,

SAYS NAUGHT,

HEARS NAUGHT,

SIMPLY SURPASSES

THE BUDDHA.

And if you can float with the river without making a house on it, this miracle will happen:

WHO SEES NAUGHT...

You will be able to see that which cannot be seen. And you will be able to see that when it happens, the seer also disappears. You will be able to see that which cannot be called the seen.

This is the trinity of experience: the knower, the known and the knowledge. This is the trinity of experience. If one becomes totally relaxed, this trinity disappears. Then there is no one who is a knower and then there is no one who is known; there is simply knowing. The knower and the known have dissolved into knowing. All nouns have dissolved into the verbs of life.

WHO SEES NAUGHT,

SAYS NAUGHT...

THERE IS AN EXPERIENCE which is not an experience, which you cannot call an experience.

That's why Buddha never talks about God - because to talk about God is wrong, is to falsify, is to belie, is to betray. It is something that nobody has never seen. It is something that is seen only when the seer has disappeared, it is something that comes to your vision only when you are not there. It is utter unity: there is no division of the experience and the experienced, of the observed and the observer. All distinctions, all dualities, have disappeared. How can you say anything about it?

SAYS NAUGHT...

That's why the sage says a thousand and one things about a thousand and one things, but never says anything about the truth. Nothing can be said about it. The sage is the truth. You can partake of him, you can drink as much as you want out of him, you can live in his vicinity and you can be transformed by being close to him - but there is nothing which can be said about truth.

The Tao that can be said is not the true Tao. The truth that is uttered becomes immediately a lie.

WHO SEES NAUGHT,

SAYS NAUGHT,

HEARS NAUGHT,

SIMPLY SURPASSES

THE BUDDHA.

Buddhahood is the absolute transcendence of all - even Buddha is included in that all. One becomes a Buddha only when he surpasses even Buddhahood. Try to see it. It somebody says "I have attained Buddhahood" and clings to it as an experience, he has not yet attained; it is still a part of the world of experience. The ego still persists - maybe it has become very subtle, but it is there.

The real Buddha is one who has disappeared - disappeared as an experiencer. That is the utter surpassing. And in that surpassing, one is God.

The God to which we have become very much accustomed is our own imagination; it is not the true God. The God of the Christians and the Hindus and the Buddhists is not the true God. The true God is the God about whom never a single word has been uttered. The God of the Bible and the Vedas and the Koran is not the true God. The true God is one about whom there has always remained utter silence. Our Gods are our creations.

I have heard:

A woman in Manhattan died and willed her estate to God. To settle the estate a case was filed, naming God as a party thereto. A summons was issued and the court went through the motions of trying to serve it. The final report stated: "After due and diligent search, God cannot be found in the City of New York."

But that is the kind of God people are searching for. What kind of God are you searching for? You have a certain image in your mind, that he will be playing on the flute, he will be like Krishna, or he will be just a magnified form of Jesus Christ, or he will be like this or like that... You are simply going through the empty gestures of religion; the real religion has not possessed your life yet.

The real God cannot be imagined; the real God happens only when all imagination has ceased to he. The real God cannot be SEEN; the real God can be seen only when the seer is no more. The real God cannot become an object - to reduce God to an object is to destroy him, is to kill him, is to murder him. The real God always happens as the innermost core of your subjectivity - not there, but here. Not then, but now. Not out, but in. And that "in" also is only for a moment - once God has happened, that "in" also disappears. Then there is nothing outer, nothing inner: all is one.

This is the function of a master - to make you alert of that which cannot be said, of that which cannot be described. A great love is needed, a great sympathy is needed towards the master. Only then these unimaginable things, indescribable things, indefinable things, can be understood.

The master cannot give you God, but he can make your heart aflame with a longing for him.

The young salesman was perturbed. He had lost an important sale he had thought was in the bag.

While discussing the matter with his supervisor, the salesman shrugged his shoulders and said, "You can lead a horse to water but you can't make him drink."

"For Pete's sake!" shouted the supervisor. "Who told you to make him drink? Your job was to make him THIRSTY!"

That is the job of a master - to make you thirsty for something invisible. It is a mad kind of thirst, you cannot logically prove anything about it. It is a kind of infection. Hence satsanga is needed - you have to be in deep communion with the master. Slowly slowly, something contagious enters your being. The look of the master's eye, a gesture caught in a moment when you were utterly silent and the traffic of the mind was no more moving - just a pause, a silence, a period... and something starts stirring in you.

The master is there outside you. His very presence starts calling forth something that has been asleep for long. One starts arising, one opens one's eyes.

It is a very strange relationship to be with a master, the strangest - because the master is not, and the disciple is too much. And, slowly slowly, the nothingness of the master overwhelms the disciple:

seeing the beauty of nothingness, he starts dropping his somebodiness.

It is related that a fire broke out in a house. Within, a man was sleeping. They tried to carry him out through the window, but could not. The man was heavy, big, weighty. They tried through the door, but could not. He was really fast asleep.

And you know, when a man is fast asleep he becomes very heavy; if he is awake you can carry him easily. Have you observed the fact? Just carry a small child when he is awake, and he is light. And carry the same child when he is fast asleep, and he is heavy. Sleep has a quality of heaviness in it - maybe sleep is more in tune with the gravitation of the earth, awareness is more in tune with the levitation of the sky. These words are not used in a scientific way, just metaphorically, but whenever a person becomes awake he becomes very light. And if you have carried somebody who is in a coma then you will know, it becomes almost impossible to carry him.

They tried from the window, they could not. They tried through the door, they could not.

One wise man said, "Wake him up, he'll get out by himself!"

That's what the purpose of a master is. By his awareness, by the impact of his awareness, your sleeping quality slowly slowly is dissipated, dispersed. His light provokes your light, his silence calls forth your silence.

And remember, the master is not doing anything in particular. He is just being here: it all happens of its own accord. But the disciple has to be very watchful, the disciple has to be very very attentive, the disciple has to be very very focussed and concentrated. The disciple has to remain with unblinking eyes. The disciple has to be almost in a kind of deep infatuation, all alert - just as when you are in love, the whole world disappears, only your beloved is.

Unless the master is your beloved, your lover, unless your whole energy is moving towards him, transformation will not be possible. You have to watch every gesture, every nuance.

After Billroth, the Viennese surgeon, had told his students that a doctor needed two gifts - freedom from nausea and power of observation - he dipped his fingers into a bitterly nauseating fluid and licked it off, requesting them to do the same. They did it without flinching. With a grin, Billroth said, "You have passed the first test well, but not the second, for none of you noticed that I dipped my first finger in, but licked the second."

Yes, one has to be very very attentive with a master to see every gesture, because in those gestures is the real message. The way he walks, the way he sits, the way he looks at you, the way he is.

What he says is secondary. What he IS is primary, very fundamental. So those who are lost in their arguments and in their words and in their theories, in their expectations, go on missing.

MORE FRAIL AND ILLUSORY

THAN NUMBERS WRITTEN ON WATER,

OUR SEEKING FROM THE BUDDHA

FELICITY IN THE AFTER-WORLD.

ALREADY, OVER THE HEART

NOT A CLOUD IS HANGING,

AND NO MOUNTAIN IS THERE

FOR THE MOON TO HIDE BEHIND.

IN OUR WAY THROUGH THIS WORLD

OF BIRTH AND DEATH,

WE HAVE NO COMPANION;

LONELY WE DIE,

ALONE WE ARE BORN.

THE VAST FLOOD

ROLLS ONWARD

BUT YIELD YOURSELF,

AND IT FLOATS YOU UPON IT.

WHO SEES NAUGHT,

SAYS NAUGHT,

HEARS NAUGHT,

SIMPLY SURPASSES

THE BUDDHA.

Surpass the Buddha! I am bent upon it here, I mean it! Surpass the Buddha - because that is the true Buddhahood when you have surpassed even the Buddha.

That eternal source is available to you. You are fortunate. DON'T miss it.