Discovering Your Own Path

Date Unknown

Question:

No theoretical solutions are ever possible. It appears as though the human problem is a theoretical problem, but the problem is always existential. It is not theoretical, it is not a puzzle to be solved by the intellect. Rather, it is a river that can be crossed only through existential means. Whenever the intellect tries to solve it, it only goes around and around and around the problem. It never arrives anywhere. It never touches the problem.

The problem remains untouched by the intellect. Why? - primarily because the intellect is the source of the problem. To be more exact, the intellect is the problem. Mind can never solve problems; it can only create them. Just like leaves grow on trees, problems grow in the mind. The intellect always promises to solve them, but each solution only creates more problems.

Somewhere it has been written, "I cannot love a valid inference. A theory may be valid, logical, rational, but still you cannot love it. No validity can inspire love. No matter how rational a particular theory may be, it cannot inspire you to love it. As for as living is concerned, validity is of no significance whatsoever.

So the first thing to be understood that intellect can create problems and it can create solutions to them, but nothing is solved by it. Everything remains continues in its own way, it remains untouched.

By 'life' I mean your total being and by 'intellect, I mean that part of your being that speculates.

If you go deeply within, you will see that the thinking part of you is a very nonessential part of your being. Life goes on without any help from your mind. You are born: you grow, you become a youth, you fall in love, you die. Everything happens beyond the mind. The mind is not involved at all in the deeper circumstances of life.

Every problem comes from deep inside you where the mind cannot penetrate. That's why any intellectual approach is irrelevant. Psychologists say that your life comes from sources that are below the mind. Your life is unconscious and your mind is conscious - and the unconscious part is nine times greater than the conscious part. The conscious part is not functioning for twenty-four hours a day, but the unconscious is. Even when you are asleep, the unconscious is functioning. It is capable of doing everything without you - and more efficiently than when your conscious mind is present.

That's why sleep is needed so much. The real need is not for sleep itself, but for the absence of your conscious mind. You must be absent for some time so that your nonvoluntary mechanisms can work. 'You' are a hindrance. With your conscious mind, you are not helping the flow of life; you just create obstacles. You need to spend one third of your life totally submerged in the unconscious or you cannot live.

The unconscious can live without the conscious mind, but the conscious mind cannot live without the unconscious. If you are deprived of sleep even for a single week, you will go mad. This madness happens because your conscious mind has been interfering with the natural flow of life constantly for one week, with no gaps in between for the unconscious to move to the very source of life and attain sustenance.

Even when you are not asleep, your conscious mind is not working constantly. It is only there during the moments that you need it, otherwise the unconscious is working. Only in emergency situations is your conscious mind really needed. You may be walking on the stroet and you think that an accident is going to happen. For a single moment, your conscious mind works. But only in moments such as that is your conscious mind needed. Otherwise you function unconsciously, your whole behavior pattern is unconscious. You may be able to rationalize what you do, you may be able to justify it, but all justifications are after the fact, once the thing has happened.

I fall in love with you. Then I begin to rationalize why I love you. The phenomenon comes first and the rationalizing process follows. I say, "Because you are beautiful, because you are such and such, I have fallen in love with you." Then afterwards, when I no longer love you, it appears as if you have changed and that is why I no longer love you.

When I think about it afterwards, I can say, "You are this or that. That is why I have fallen in love with you." But the real thing is quite the contrary. I fall in love unconsciously and then I consciously try to rationalize it. It is not because you are beautiful that I have fallen in love with you. Rather on the contrary, you seem to be beautiful, you appear to be beautiful, because I have fallen in love with you. Love comes first; the justification follows.

Even when you are awake, your conscious mind is not really working; the unconscious continues to work. What I am trying to point out is that the conscious mind is only a security measure that you use when there is an emergency when something dangerous is happening around you, something new in the sense that the unconscious cannot comprehend it. Only the conscious mind can deal with something that is totally new because the unconscious comes from the past - it can only work through the Known. When anything unknown has to be faced, your conscious mind will be needed for a moment. It is an emergency measure.

But this conscious mind tries to solve existential problems. It cannot do that; it is impossible. The conscious mind is not meant for that. Of course it can go on speculating, it can verbalize, it can create systems, it can create logical inferences, it can appear to have solved the problem, but the problem remains the same; it bas not even been touched.

The agony of the West is basically rooted in this wrong approach. Life should be tackled through living - not through speculation, not through intellectual theorizing. Life should be known existentially. And this is the miracle: that if you know life existentially, then there are no problems. It is not that existential living solves your problems but, rather that when you live life totally, there are no problems. I ;*vould like to say: not only does intellect binder solutions - it creates the problems.

Take any problem. If you are in fear... Fear is a basic problem, more obvious in the West. What can the mind do about It? Fear is there because death is there. What can the mind do? Your problem may be that fear cripples you totally, it destroys you completely. It uproots you; life becomes impossible. You can only vegetate; the fear will not allow you to move. But what can the intellect do about fear? It can only analyze it.

Your intellect can analyze the problem: what fear is. But even if you know what fear is, it makes no difference. You know what the fear is about; that death is there, that you are going to come to an end. You exist always on a volcano; never for a single moment can you be at ease. Death is always there! Analysis cannot do anything at all about it.

You can create theories around the problem, but no theory will solve it for you. At the most it can make you adjusted, you can go on. The fear remains, but somehow - through some theory - you train yourself to neglect it. But the fear is still there. It's still working, its poison is continuing to flow in you. It will go on uprooting your life, it will go on poisoning the very source of your life.

There are so many theories to explain what fear is, but even if you can explain it, it is not explained away. It remains where it was. Theories go on accumulating in the memory while the problem continues at the very roots. The two never meet: theories are accumulated in the memory - the memory is a storehouse of all your theories - and the fear ii hidden somewhere underground, in the roots. They never come in contact. Memories can never go deep down to the roots, they just accumulate in a corner of the mind. And they are so nonessential that they can be washed away completely and your life will not be affected by it. It will go on unconcerned.

So what can be done? The existential approach is diametrically different. If there is fear, the intellectual approach is to think about it while the existential approach is to live it. Don't think about it. Feel it and live it. Tremble with it. Let your whole being tremble with the fear. Be in it don't escape from it, don't postpone it, don't try to theorize about it.

Don't escape from it. Be in it. That is the best thing that you can do. Everyone has to face death; it is something that has to be faced sooner or later. No one can help you; you have to encounter it. It will not help at all if you close your eyes and go on speculating about it. It will not help at all; it will just create new problems. Fear will still be there because death will still be there but now you will even be afraid to see it. A new fear has crept in.

You will pretend that through your theory you have expelled the fear, but doubts will remain in the mind. The mind will begin to be afraid of whether or not the expulsion has really happened; it will begin to be afraid of whether the theory is correct or not. You will just be pushing the problem back, not getting rid of it.

Live with the fear. The existential approach is to move deeply into the problem, to live it. Be in it! If there is fear, then be fearful. Don't fool yourself by creating some bravery - don't fool yourself that you are not afraid.

Don't fool yourself that the soul is immortal so there is no death. Death is there. You will never know that the soul is immortal unless you know death. I am not saying that the soul is not immortal. What I am saying is this: that you cannot fool your being like that. You can go on saying that the soul is immortal, you can go on repeating it continuously, but the fear will still be there. Really, you are repeating it because of the fear. You don't know that the soul is immortal but you want to believe it so that your fear will be eliminated. "The soul is immortal, so I am not going to die." You can find some explanation, but it is only a temporary solution. Death is there, so the fear will still remain.

If death is there, accept it. It is so; it is going to happen. Disease is there - it is so. Old age is there - it is so. It is going to happen and You cannot do anything about it, you cannot prevent it. You will have to face it finally.

The existential approach means to face life's problems. Once you face a problem, it is no longer there. Trying to escape from it is what creates the problem. For example, if you accept that death is there, it is going to happen... It is a certainty. The only certainty really. It is going to happen! You were promised death the moment you accepted life. It's the other pole of birth, of the phenomenon of birth.

It is going to happen. In fact, it started to happen at the very moment of your birth. You are bound to die, but if you accept it, there will be no fear. The moment you accept death totally, where is the fear?

The fear comes because of nonacceptance. "I should not die! How can I make certain that death will not come to me? It may come to everyone else, but I have to be an exception." This creates fear.

The being knows perfectly well that your explanations will not do, that death will come.

You know it perfectly well, you know it absolutely, you are certain of it. As far as the deeper sources of your life are concerned, you know that death is going to come. It is not something that is coming to you; it is something that is developing in you, something that is growing in you. Your roots know it well. You are growing towards death, you are constantly growing towards it. Your birth was the first movement toward death. Your being knows well that death is going to happen. You can fool your conscious mind, you can create theories, but the unconscious will know that you are going to die and the fear will still be there.

Don't fight with the unconscious, don't fight with your being Accept what is in the unconscious. Let your conscious mind cooperate with the unconscious. Don't create a schizoid condition, don't be against yourself. You can't be. No one can be against himself; he can only think he is. In the end, the conscious mind will know that the unconscious has won.

To me, the existential approach is the only approach possible. Once you have begun to accept, mysteries begin to open up to you. For example, if you have begun to accept death as part and parcel of life, you will see that it is not that life ends with death. Death is the flowering of life: the peak, the ripening.

Our minds create the problem. We like youth, but we don t like old age. In fact, youth is nothing but the preparation for old age. We like life and we don't like death, but death is the flowering of life, the peak. The desire for things to be different from what they are is created by the intellect. If you are speculative, intellectual, theoretical, you can fool yoUrself, but you cannot deceive existence; you cannot deceive your own inner being.

To me - or to yoga, or as far as the eastern approach is concerned - the theoretical approach is nonsense. The existential approach is the only way.

As for the techniques are concerned, there are so many techniques. But each technique is essentially the same. The difference is only in details, not in the basic foundation.

We will discuss two or three methods that may appear to be contradictory, but the foundation is the same. One method may be applicable to particular individuals; another may not be. So many techniques exist not because there are so many ways but because there are so many types of individuals. The way is one, it cannot be otherwise, but it has to be applied to so many individuals, and with each individual the details will be different.

Many of the basic techniques are concerned with will. If you can will something absolutely - with no wavering in the mind, with not a single part of the mind against it - if you can crystallize your will and be totally one with it, then you can enter the existence. So there are many techniques that are techniques of will. For example, Gurdjieff's techniques for the west were techniques of will. The will must be totally crystallized...

But this is not possible for everyone. The feminine mind cannot understand how to be totally will- oriented. It is impossible in a way. Teachers who ray that only techniques of will are possible will deny that women can reach moksha, salvation.

For example, Mahavir denied it. He said that women cannot reach moksha unless they are first born as men. They cannot enter directly into absolute freedom, into moksha. Mahavir had a particular reason for saying this. It is not because women are inferior - which is what it has been thought that Mahavir was saying. No, it is because they are different. Mahavir's method is basically one of will.

It is not the right approach for a woman. If a woman can succeed through Mahavir's methods then she is a woman in name only. Her total personality will be that of a man.

One Jain woman achieved moksha and became a great teacher, of the same rank as Mahavir. One woman, Mallibai became a teerthankara. Jains have twenty-four teerthankaras, teachers, and one of them is Mallibai. But according to tradition, there is no Mallibai. The tradition says that no woman can enter, no woman can achieve liberation, so they have called her 'Mallinath Mallibai'. She was virtually a man. Only her physical structure was that of a woman; her inner structure was that of a man.

Why is this so, that a woman cannot achieve on the path of will? It it because the whole biological necessity for a woman is that she must surrender. She cannot be aggressive. Biologically, she must be capable of surrendering; she must be able to receive, to be receptive.

There is a joke about the word 'woman'. It says that woman means 'man with a womb'. The capacity to receive is a biological necessity. The whole feminine structure is built for that: the whole body, the whole mind. But that is not so if the body is that of a woman and the mind is that of a man. Then there will be constant conflict, anxiety, anguish.

A woman cannot be fulfilled unless she becomes a mother and she cannot become a mother unless she surrenders. So Mahavir's technique, based on will, cannot be used. The whole technique is such that it is a great fight, a struggle.

That is why Mahavir denied God. He said that there is no God. The male mind cannot conceive that there is a God, become if God exists then he has to surrender; he has to become just like a woman.

The parallel to this is those who have loved Krishna. They have behaved like women. There is a particular sect exactly the opposite of Mahavir. They think of themselves as women, as lovers of the divine. It makes no difference whether they are men or women. They say that there is only one male, and that is Krishna, the Lord. Everyone else is just a woman. This is the way of surrender. No man can enter the divine this way. If he does, it will be because he has been reborn in this very life, as a woman. He has become feminine, receptive.

There is a basic difference between a man and a woman because of the biological and structural differences. When body structure is different, the psychic structure will also be different because the body structure is something that is added on after the psychic structure is there. The psychic structure comes first and the structure of the body follows. It is not that your mind is feminine or not feminine because of your body. Your body is the way it is because of your mind.

Because of these basic, biological differences, all techniques can be divided into two: according to whether they require surrender or require will. If they require surrender, then God will be there. If they require will, then there will be no God.

Mahavir denied God absolutely. The whole system of yoga does not take God seriously. God can be neglected because the whole system is based on will. Yoga will not talk about God, or if it is talked about, it will just be mentioned by and only as an afterthought. The more ancient the yoga book is, the less possibility there is that there will be any reference to God at all. You need God to surrender - otherwise you don't need Him. In a will-oriented system, your soul becomes the god. You are the god, no one else.

This is the male attitude toward existence. Man (the male attitude) cannot conceive of God as anything other than himself. This is Mahavir's attitude.

Then there is Meera's attitude. It is completely different, absolutely different. Not only different, but categorically opposite. The will has to be surrendered - that is the method. Rather than becoming totally the will, you are to drop the will completely. 'You' must not be. Only God should be; you should not be. You should be absent, just an absence. Annihilate yourself, surrender.

But I still say that whether the technique is one of will or one of surrender, the foundation is the same.

Even with methods that are categorically opposite, the foundation is the same. The foundation is this: that only one being should exist - either you or the divine. How you work out which one of the two remains is up to you, but only, one should remain in the end.

Either there is no God, only "aham brahmasmi: I am God; there is no other." The will has become universal, cosmic. Now there is no one else - "I am all. I have become the universe." The other is completely denied.

And when you deny the other completely, you your self cannot remain. If there is absolutely no other, how can you be? So this is the last assertion of your being: aham brahmasmi. After that, you will not be who do you exist in opposition to, to whom will you declare that you are all? You have become the total. Now, only silence exists.

You cannot even say 'I' because 'I' is meaningful only in opposition to 'thou.' It is meaningless if there is no 'thou ' When the will has become absolute, the ego commits sUicide because it cannot remain without anyone to relate to. It is only in relationship to a thou, or in opposition to a thou, that it can exist.

It cannot exist alone. You have come to a point where only the death of the ego is possible. The 'I' will commit suicide because there is no 'thou.' Against whom can it go on saying 'I'? It is meaningless.

Through the other method - the method of surrender, which is quite a contrary method - the same phenomenon happens. You go on denying yourself until a moment comes when you are not. You say, "Only you are, only God is. I am not." This is going to be the last assertion - that 'I am not' - because if you are not, then you cannot even say that you are not. To say that 'I am not' is still to believe that 'I am. Otherwise who can assert that 'I am not?' Now you will no longer be able to say it. And when you cannot even say that 'I am not,' you are not.

I will tell you a story. There was a great Sufi, Mulla Nasrudin. He was very afraid of death, as everyone is. One day, he heard that someone had died. He came home trembling. He asked his wife, "Can you tell me how I will know when I am dead? What are the symptoms? How will I be able to know that death has come?"

His wife said, "You are foolish. You will know. You will become cold..."

One day soon after, Mulla was working on his farm. The day was very cold and his hands became cold. He thought to himself, "It looks like I'm dying." He began to think about what he should do. "I must behave like a dead man now. The body is the body. My symptoms tell me that I am dead.

What do dead men do? - I must think about it."

Dead men lie down, so he lay down and closed his eyes. Someone passed by. They thought that Mulla must be dead. He wanted to say, "I am not dead," but dead men don I speak. He thought:

"Dead men never speak, I have never heard about a dead man speaking. It will be absolutely unnatural for me to speak."

They decided to carry Mulla to the cemetery. But because they were unfamiliar with that part of the country - they were foreigners, passing by on the road - when they came to the crossroad they didn't know in which direction the cemetery was, they didn't know were to go. Of course, Mulla knew where the cemetery was. He wondered if it would be all right to tell them the way so get there, but then he decided that it was impossible. And besides, someone would turn up and then they could ask.

No one turned up. Evening was descending and soon it would be night. The men began to be worried. Mulla thought, "They are so worried. I must help them" - but of course dead men cannot help.

Finally night had come, it was dark. They thought: "What to do? We cannot leave the dead body here. We don't know where to go: where his house is or where the cemetery is. What are we to do now?"

Mulla said, "If you don't mind - it's not natural of course: I am a dead man, I should not speak; the rules don't permit it but if you allow me, I can show you the way. And then, I will stop talking."

If you are not, then you cannot even say that you are not. It's not possible. So the last assertion that the technique of surrender will lead to is 'I am not.' That is the last assertion. Then only the divine is. And when you are not how can there be any difference between you and the divine?

When you are not, you are divine.

So through the approach of will or the approach of surrender you reach the same point. Through one approach 'the other' is killed, and through the opposite approach 'you' are killed. In both cases, in the end only one remains: the amness remains.

I have talked about 112 techniques. There are so many different techniques, but the only difference between them is one of appearance, of structure. The difference is based not on the techniques themselves but on the particular person who is going to apply them. One example may make it clear to you.

There are people who are intellectuals intellectual in the sense that their intellect is more functioning than their emotions. They cannot directly feel anything. First they think about something and then they can feel it. Even when they love, they think they feel love. Thinking must be there; it cannot be dropped. They cannot feel anything immediately without the mind. The mind is always there.

Then there are people who are emotional. They cannot even think without feeling. First they have to feel something. Even if they are solving a mathematical problem they say "I feel it should be done like this. Do it like this - I have a feeling about it." No reason is given: "I feel that it is like this." Feeling is foremost.

For those who are intellectually-oriented, emotional methods will not do. The intellect must go through reason, and motion must go through faith. Emotion cannot doubt; reason cannot trust. Even if reason is able to trust, it trusts only because it has found that there is no reason to disbelieve. The trust is just a logical conclusion: "I should believe there is no reason to disbelieve."

Truth is negative with an intellectual person. It is always negative, it is never positive. It is not that trust has flowered in him; it is just a reasoning process. "Because I cannot disbelieve - there is no reason to disbelieve - I belive." It is almost a defeat. For the intellectual person to trust is like a defeat. He feels it like that, so he goes on trying to overcome it in so many ways. He tries to create some doubt again so that he can be at ease. The intellect is always at ease with doubt - it is never at ease with trust.

The emotional is always at ease with trust. It is never at ease with doubt, to doubt is inconceivable to it. Reason doubts; emotion trusts. So the techniques for the two types of people cannot be the same.

For an intellectual person, a technique must work with doubt, it must use doubt. For example, in the Middle Ages in Europe, Descartes used doubt as a technique to move towards faith. He began thinking, "I must not trust until there is no reason left for any doubt. I must go on doubting unless a point comes where I can no longer doubt."

He began doubting, a very arduous process. You cannot begin with a belief in God; you must begin with not believing. If you try to believe in God of course, you cannot believe, because the very effort shows that you are not an emotional person. You must have proof, evidence, witnesses. You must be able to put God in the witness box - only then can you believe in Him. There is no other proof, no eyewitnesses. Even if someone says, "I have known God," there are no witnesses to prove that he has known Him. He alone has known, it may be just a deception. He may be deceiving others, or he may have been deceiving himself. So, God cannot be believed.

Even the reality of the other - of someone who is with you - cannot be believed. It may be just a dream. In a dream you see people who are, who absolutely are, and in the morning you discover that they were just part of your dream. While it is happening, who can know that it is just a dream?

The night is long, and the dream is lovely But sooner or later you find that the night is over and the dream is lost.

How can I make a distinction between a dream-you and you as you are to me right this moment? It is impossible. While I am dreaming, I believe that the dream is real, but then every morning I see that it has just been a dream. When I go to sleep again, this knowledge that it has just been a dream is of no use. The dream again deceives me; I take it as reality.

If my mind can be deceived by dreams in the night, then what is the guarantee that when I open my eyes I am not still seeing a dream? Who can make that guarantee? - that I am not just thinking that you are here. How can I trust that, really, you are here?

So Descartes says that it is impossible to believe in anyone else. It may be just a dream, just a thought creation. In that way, he goes on doubting everything Until everything is destroyed. What remains in the end is only the doubter. That be cannot doubt. He ends up in the same situation as Mulla Nasrudin. In the end he can only say 'I am.' But this much cannot be doubted, because even to doubt it he will have to be. To doubt whether I am or not, I have to be. The doubter cannot be doubted. So Descartes said, "This is the only fundamental truth. I can trust that I am."

But to go through so much doubt is very arduous. In the end you come to a point where doubt is impossible. Then, you trust.

So the technique if you doubt will be different from the technique if you trust. Krishnamurti's technique (or Buddhist techniques) is to begin with doubt. Don't believe in anything. Go on doubting.

If you can take this to the end, finally only you are left.

But even to follow this technique, you have to begin by believing in Krishnamurti. Then right away you have lost the track. It makes no sense. If, even for a single moment, you say, "of course, yes, Krishnamurti is right," you have lost the track; the method is not being followed. You must take it to the very extreme. Not only other gurus have to be thrown, but Krishnamurti also; not only scriptures have to be thrown, but Krishnamurti's writings also. Everything should be destroyed. Then, in the end, there will be only you.

Not a single fragment of reality must be accepted. No God, no guru, no scripture, no world, no stars, no sun - nobody else, only you. If doubt can be brought to this extreme, then it becomes a spiritual method. Through doubt, you will achieve.

The problem is that scarcely one person in a million can bring doubt to such an extreme. To doubt absolutely is to create absolute trouble. You will go insane, you will have no foothold to stand on.

Nowhere can you trust anything. That is why only a giant intellect is capable of going through this method. It is not that this method has not been known before. Krishnamurti is not the first who has propounded it, it has always been known.

But it has never been spoken about before because there is no use in talking about it. One reason is because hardly a single person is capable of such doubt. And secondly, one who is capable of it will not come to listen to you. If he is capable of such doubt he will not come to listen to Krishnamurti - he himself will be a Krishnamurti!

Someone said to Mozart, "I have heard that you became a great musician without having had a teacher. Tell me how I can become a great musician without having a teacher."

Mozart said, "It will be impossible for you. I never went to anybody and asked them anything. You have come to me and asked something. If I tell you, I will be your teacher. You are not a person who can become a great musician without a teacher. Those who can, do so without asking anyone for advice. If you are to become a great musician you will have to grow through discipline, you will need guidance, a teacher.

Even this much you cannot understand yourself: how to become a musician without a teacher. You have asked me even this."

So those who hear Krishnamurti go on fooling themselves. They are not the right people to follow his teachings. Had they been, they would never have gone to Krishnamurti But they have been going to him for forty years! For forty years they have been going to him to learn that there is no guru, that you cannot learn from anyone else. What nonsense!

Doubt is a method that is only for a few - so few that it need not be talked about. It is unnecessary to talk about it because those few that it can work for already know it. Krishnamurti's effort has been futile. What he says is right, but the fact that he says it is not right. He is right, but it is unnecessary to say it. Those who come to listen to him are not the type of people who can doubt. And those who are that type, never come.

The opposite approach, the method of emotion, is absolutely different. Intellect is the outer part:

your mind. Emotion is deeper. It is your heart. The approach of emotion is based on a contradictory foundation: trust. The moment you doubt, you are nowhere.

One who cannot doubt absolutely should not doubt at all. If you don't think you can doubt absolutely then don't doubt at all or you will get nowhere.

The contrary, which is also true, may be more easy to understand. If you can't trust absolutely, don't trust at all. No trust can be relative. If you say that you trust with conditions, you don't mean it. Trust is unconditional. If someone comes to me and says, "I believe in you because of this or that," he has no trust. Trust means that there is no cause for it. You trust because you can trust. Who or what you trust is not what creates the trust. It is because of you, because your heart can trust, that you trust. It is not me who is significant. The object of trust is not significant, the heart that trusts is significant. If you can trust, trust. If you can doubt, then doubt. Again, the object is meaningless.

Go on doubting - with every object.

But first decide what type of person you are, otherwise your life will be just a waste. Decide whether you can trust absolutely or you can doubt absolutely. If you say, "I can only doubt relatively," you will not get anywhere, the technique of doubt cannot be used. If you say, "I can only trust relatively," then too you will be nowhere because each technique works only in absoluteness.

This must be understood. Each technique works only in absoluteness. That's why every religion has emphasized absoluteness. The reason is not to deny other possibilities to say that other ways are wrong, but only to emphasize absoluteness. If a Mohammedan says that nothing can be added to the Koran, it is only a way of saying that he trusts so absolutely that nothing else is needed. Or if a Jain says that Mahavir is all-knowing, it doesn't mean that in fact he know all, but only that "I trust him so absolutely. To me, he knows all. Now to me, there is no need to go anywhere else."

Only absoluteness works. Otherwise you go on wavering from this to that. Sometimes you doubt, sometimes you trust. You are just wasting your energies. Not only wasting but creating a contradictory nOw in yourself. You move one step ahead and go one step back - and in the end you find that you are right where you have always been. You have not progressed because with each step you took, you negated what you did before. If you have been trusting and then you begin to doubt, you are negating your own self. If you have been doubting and now you begin to trust, again you are negating yourself.

A person who listens to Krishnamurti... If I speak against Krishnamurti and he says, "Don't speak against him," it shows that he is not a man who can doubt. He is a man who can trust. He even trusts Krishnamurti who doesn't allow any trust, who is not in favor of faith at all. But this man trusts him.

And where trust is needed, the man will doubt. He will go to a temple and say, "How can I believe that this image is God?" There is no question of how. There are people who just can. It's a question of your capacity to trust, not a question of how. There are people who can trust and there are people who cannot. That, too, is a question of capacity.

No one is higher or lower. One person is capable of trust; another is capable of doubt. So decide for yourself which you are capable of. For each there will be different techniques.

If you go to Gurdjieff, the technique is that of trust. You must trust him. First he will examine you to find out whether you can trust. He will create such fantastic situations that you cannot believe it! He will create situations so that you will try to escape from him. If you are a a doubter, then he will give you every opportunity to doubt, he will create situations so that you will doubt. Then he knows that "this person is not capable of trust."

Gurdjieff would tell stories about himself. He would create totally false stories about himself. And he would create such situations that only someone who could trust absolutely, in spite of everything, would be able to trust. Sometimes he would behave in such a rude manner that it would be impossible to stay with him. If you could stay in spite of his rude manner, you would not find a more compassionate, more sympathetic person, but first you would have to pass through the test.

He said, "I will not waste my energies on people who cannot be helped by me. First I must know whether a person is capable of trust."

So there are techniques that are based on faith and there are techniques that are based on doubt.

Both lead to the same. In the end, a point comes where doubt becomes impossible; you cannot doubt. That means you have come to trust - even in yourself, but, still, the trust is absolute.

Descartes became a very religious person in the end. He had such deep faith that everything that he had denied before he said was all nonsense. "If I cannot doubt myself, then who am I to doubt the divine?" he said in the end. He doubted everything and denied everything until ultimately he came to himself. This fact could not be denied, it was ultimate. But then he realized, "If I cannot doubt myself, if I am incapable of doubting even myself, who am I to doubt anything?" In the end, doubt fails. He became a religious person - through doubt.

Krishnamurti or Buddha - they also became religious persons through doubt. And the same thing happens when you go on trusting. To trust means you annihilate yourself. You cannot assert anything. The teacher may say, "It is night now," and you know it is the day. If you went to Gurdjieff that is what he might say. A person who trusted Gurdjieff would think, "He must know more than I do. I have come to learn from him. If he says it is night, he must mean something."

If there is trust, 'I' cannot remain. It is annihilated. You surrender yourself, you are no more. If you surrender to such an extent that your trust is absolute, then you are no more. There is no one who can trust: the duality - the truster and the trusted - explodes. Maslow says that what follows is an aha experience. You cannot say anything: aha! it is an explosion There is no one there.

The doubter comes to trust everything in the end and one who trusts reaches nothingness in the end. In the beginning it appears as though the doubter will come to nothingness in the end and the truster will come to everything in the end; but one who trusts is surrendered so finally only nothingness is there, while one who doubts becomes crystallized - he becomes the whole.

When there is nothing to doubt, doubt will have to be left. It can exist only in opposition to some belief, it cannot exist in the void. If everything is doubted and nothing is left to believe, you cannot doubt any further. Doubt drops. In the same way, if you have trusted everything, if no doubt is within you, then trust becomes meaningless. It is only meaningful in relationship to doubt. To be absolute is the key. If doubt becomes absolute there will be an explosion. If faith becomes absolute there will be an explosion. There will be nothing left but "Aha!"

I cannot talk about these 112 methods now, but soon we will discuss them. Each method ultimately leads to the same thing: oneness. Each method is for a particular individual. That is the reason for the satguru: the right master. The term satguru means one who can know the type of individual you are, nothing else.

Every technique is written in the scriptures. You can read them, but that will not help you to be able to know what type of person you are. The satguru is needed not to give you the technique - the technique is written every where; you can find it out for yourself - but to make you understand what type of person you are. Once your particularity is known, the right technique can be given to you.

To give the right technique is a great science because each individual differs. Really, there are no two individuals who are alike. Each individual differs; each individual's center of emphasis is different. Each individual's body centers are different, each individual's body electricity is different, each individual's capacity is different. Each individual has stopped somewhere on the path, where no other individual has ever stopped. Each one is on the journey, on the path, but each one is somewhere else; no one else is like him. Only a master can know where one is in his spiritual journey.

But for the method of doubt this is not needed. Only doubt is enough. You can deny gurus, you can deny scriptures. It can be relied upon that those who are not capable of the method will not be able to do it.

With the method of trust, many distinctions will have to be made. The kind of trust one has differs from person to person. It may be that one person can trust a living teacher. For that, a deeper trust is needed. Or it may be that someone can only trust a dead teacher. Then much trust is not needed because it is not possible to find faults with the teacher. You cannot find faults with Mahavir now, you cannot find faults with Buddha now. Everything has become absolute.

With a living teacher... if Mahavir was here now, you would find faults with him. When he was alive, people found faults. They will always find them, it is not significant. Even if someone has no faults, if you are a fault-finder you will find them.

To be with a dead teacher doesn't require deep trust. That's why the more ancient the teacher is, the deeper the trust you feel you can give him. Bot it is not really that you have faith in him, that you trust him. Faith is required only when the person is alive because then every moment he can behave in such a way as to challenge your faith. He can make it almost impossible for you to believe in him.

Alan Watts has written about Gurdjieff that he was a scoundrel saint. And it is so! Sometimes he would behave just like a scoundrel. And in that way, he helped so many people. He would just cut you off. Then neither your time would be wasted nor his.

One day at Fountainbleu, a journalist came to see him. He never allowed journalists to come to him but somehow the journalist arrived with someone and was introduced as a treat journalist attached to an international paper. Gurdjieff asked the man who was introducing the journalist, "What day is today?"

The man said, "Saturday."

Gurdjieff said, "How can it be? Yesterday was Friday so how can it be that today is Saturday? It is impossible!"

The journalist just fled! He ran away! His friend followed him and asked, "Where are you going?"

"Is he mad? He says, 'How is it that Saturday can follow Friday? Yesterday it was just Friday, so how can it be that today is Saturday?'"!

The friend came back and asked Gurdjieff, "What nonsense were you saying?"

Gurdjieff said, "If he cannot tolerate even that much nonsense, then it is impossible to talk further to him. Whatsoever is meaningful to me will be nonsense to him. There is a realm where sense ends.

You may call it supersense, but it is still nonsense. If he could not tolerate even this much, then it is better that he is gone. I am a madman. Soon I will say many things that will appear mad to him. It is better to find out first whether he can tolerate a madman. If he can, then something can be said to him. Otherwise, not."

I myself create so many situations. Those who are really authentic, who are ready to work, will have to pass through them. Otherwise they cannot work. The work is in the unknown. It is in that dimension which transcends reason, which transcends sense, which transcends all your understanding.

If you come to me with your moral attitudes, your traditional-mind attitudes, your so-called knowledge, I will have to shatter it from somewhere. I will have to break it, I will have to make an opening. The opening is always difficult, painful. So I have to create many many situations...

I create situations. I spread rumors about myself just to see what happens to you. Someone says something to you about me. What happens? You may simply drop me. And it is very good! Now you will not be wasting my time and I will not be wasting yours. If you drop me then it is not your path, you must find someone somewhere else. Then it is good that you have dropped me. But if you remain, if you persist in spite of many repulses, then only can something that is beyond, transcendental, be shown to you, indicated to you.

Otherwise it is going to be difficult: A person who is bound to his common sense, his so-called common sense, cannot go deep. And deep are the mysteries. The deeper you go, the deeper the mysteries that will be there. You will have to throw all your common sense, all your knowing and knowledge. Somewhere on the way you will have to be empty. Only in that emptiness is the flowering.

These 112 methods that I am referring to are the mo t significant ones. It is not that there are only 112. There can be thousands of methods. Each person has to work differently on whatever technique he is using, so there are as many techniques as there are persons. Ultimately they all lead to the same thing, but your uniqueness has to be taken into account.

If you are to move on the path of meditation, then even one technique will do. But it you just want to speculate about it, then even 112 techniques will not be enough. There is a difference between a thinker and a seeker. What I am talking to you about is basically directed toward a seeker it is not for a thinker. For a thinker, things will be different but for a seeker it is meaningless how many methods there are. Only this is meaningful: "What way is for me?"

It is meaningless what techniques others are working on. The only meaningful thing is whether you are working on the technique that is right for you. A seeker is scientific. He is not just thinking, speculating. He has made his own self an experimental field, a laboratory. He is working on himself.

I was talking for ten years. But then I realized that people were just thinking about what I said.

Thinking leads nowhere, it is absurd - except if the technique of doubt is for you. But then, you will not come to hear me speak!

Now my emphasis is more and more on the seeker. One should be aware of one's particularness, one's individuality. And once, the right technique is known, one should begin to work. When there is a flowering, when there is a realization then you will know that each technique is basically the same.

But of course the details are different, absolutely different.

And whatever technique is given to you, only accept its validity through experimenting and experiencing. You will be fulfilled through it, you will become richer through your experimenting.

Don't just go on thinking about it. Thinking becomes a bad habit, it becomes an obsession. First you think about this, then you think about that and then you need something else to think about.

As soon as you have thought about something you need another object to think about. It becomes obsessive.

With a seeker, this should not be so. That is why when Gurdjieff wrote ALL AND EVERYTHING, a one thousand page book, he left nine hundred pages uncut. There was a note to the reader in the first edition of the book: "Please go through the one hundred page introduction and if you think that you want to read more, only then cut the other pages. Otherwise return the book and get your money back. Don't open the other pages!"

Another note was also there in the first edition: "If you cannot read the one hundred open pages first, before opening the other pages, then you are not a seeker and you will not be profited by the book. Don't become curious. Start with the first hundred pages; don't open the other pages. Read the introduction first. Only then will you find the book of any help."

Mind is so curious. It is so curious that it first wants to read the unopened pages before reading the open pages. It becomes very arduous to go through the first hundred pages. I he mind is constantly thinking about those unopened pages4 you go through the initial pages just in order to reach the uncut pages. This is the attitude of the thinker. He is curious, hopping from one thing to the next.

A seeker is not like that. I will tell you a story about Bayazid, a Sufi saint - when he was at his guru's school. For twenty years Bayazid continued going to his guru for instruction. Twenty years continuously! One day, his teacher said, "In the hall where you are coming from, there is a window.

In that window, there are some books. Bring me such and such a book."

Bayazid said, "I don't know where the window is."

His teacher said, "But you have been coming through that hall continuously for twenty years, every day. You don't know the window?"

He said, "I was coming to see you. It was unnecessary to look here and there. So I did not know that the window was there. But I will go and seek it, and search for the book."

The guru said, "The book is not needed. I only asked you to see whether you are a seeker or a thinker. Now I know that you are a seeker."

After twenty years the teacher was still trying to find out whether or not Bayazid was a seeker!

Bayazid said, "After twenty years you are giving me this examination? You must have examined me before."

The teacher said, "I couldn't. It would have been too cruel. Even now I was not sure if it was time."

The mind is so curious. It is always wandering here and there, everywhere. But a wandering mind will not do. The mind must be focused - insistently focused, intensively focused. It must be brought to one particular point. Only then can any work happen.

A technique is nothing but a method of narrowing the mind down. Thousands are the possibilities of techniques, but you must not wander from one to another. The whole point is to narrow the mind down. Otherwise you will not be able to work at all, the possibility will not be there.

The problem is difficult and deep, and your energies are limited. They must not be thrown here and there. They must be pinned down somewhere. Only then is something possible. Thinking throws your energies from one place to the next. Nothing will be produced by it. That's why a technique is used. It is just to pin you down to one particular, narrow path in which all your energies can be channeled. Only then can your limited life, the limited time You have, come to a flowering that is unlimited. Otherwise it is not possible.

So don't go on thinking so much. Think only up to the point where you have decided what type of technique is for you. Then stop thinking and begin to work. If you cannot leave thinking behind, then no - method is for you. Then your approach is through doubt.

Then, go on doubting. Never think about trust, never think about faith. But one must be decisive about it of one's whole life can be wasted. And we waste. We have wasted so many lives. It is not the first time that we are wasting our lives. It is an old habit.

Think up to the limit where you have come to a decision. Then, throw thinking. Now it is not needed.

Jump, move existentially, don't speculate. Allow the momentum to move you along, remain in the flow. The more narrow the passage in which you are working, the nearer will be the realization. The only function of a technique is to narrow you....