The Alchemy of Religion

Date Unknown

Question:

Suffering is symbolic. It does not have causes, but only one cause. Howsoever different the suffering, the cause is always the same. The cause is that the hidden harmony between the human mind and the cosmic existence is lost. Whenever the hidden harmony is broken, suffering arises.

The suffering that is all around is only symbolic of the broken harmony. Even physiological suffering is symbolic. It means that the harmony in the body is broken. In the same way, mental suffering means that the harmony in the mind is broken. Wherever harmony is broken, there is suffering.

Suffering means broken harmony and bliss means harmony regained. You can say it like this: that harmony is bliss and absence of harmony is suffering. Whenever and wherever - in any dimension:

physiological, mental or spiritual - if there is no harmony, then there will be suffering.

The deeper the dimension of life concerned, the more suffering there is. On a physiological level, when there is no harmony you experience pain. The suffering is not so deep. It can be removed by outward methods because it is superficial. It is only the first layer of your being: the physiological. It can be removed, thrown. Medicines can help, chemicals can help, and your health can be regained.

This word 'health' must be understood. 'Health' really means harmony. The word 'health' comes from the same root as the words 'whole' and 'holy'. The moment the body is whole, it is healthy.

When the body is divided, it is diseased. The word 'disease' also must be noted. It means dis-eased:

two parts not at ease. So on the physiological level, help in regaining your body harmony is easily available because physiology is your outermost part. But the psyche, the mind.

If the harmony of the mind is broken, there is not pain but anguish. Then suffering is deeper. The most that outward help can do is to make you adjusted, not harmonious. On the physiological level, outward help can make you harmonious, healthy, holy, whole, but the mind can be helped only up to the point of becoming adjusted.

Western psychology is doing nothing but helping you to become adjusted. Freud said somewhere that the most that we can hope to do through psychology and psychoanalysis is to bring you to a state of normal insanity. That is the most we can hope for: normal insanity In his last years, Freud wrote to some friends: "I do not have any hope that happiness is possible for the human mind. At the most, we can make man adjusted to normal unhappiness."

Outward help cannot be so deep as far as the mind is concerned. It can only make you adjusted.

But the word 'adjusted' really means nothing because with each culture, adjustment is different. A person who is well adjusted in an eastern society will not be so well adjusted in a western society.

For a particular religion, one may be well adjusted, while in another religion, the same person would be considered maladjusted. Adjustment is a criterion that is more sociological than psychological. It is mainly concerned with he particular society to which you must be adjusted.

As far as the innermost part of you is concerned - your being, the spiritual part of you - when it is not in harmony then no help from the outside, not even adjustment, is possible. Something more must be understood about it.

The innermost, central part of your being is not reached at all through psychoanalysis or through any science of the mind that is prevalent today. In fact, there is not even a word in western languages that is parallel to pain and anguish as far as the third dimension of your being is concerned. Pain is physiological, anguish is mental, but when the spirit is not in harmony, when your being is unhealthy, then you have no word for it.

Buddha used the word dukkha. It cannot be translated really. It is neither pain nor anguish nor misery. Dukkha means a meaningless existence. You go on existing without any meaning. You go on existing unnecessarily, you are just a burden to yourself.

Buddha was not physically ill. He had one of the most beautiful and harmonious physiques. He was not in anguish. There was no psychological complexity, no psychological disharmony - one of the most well adjusted beings. But he felt dukkha. I will have to explain to you what dukkha is. It is real suffering, the innermost suffering.

Buddha's whole story will have to be told to you:

When Buddha was born, all the wise men came to bless him. One wise mao came from the Himalayas. The moment he saw Siddharth (Buddha's name), he began to weep. Buddha's father was disturbed. He asked, "Why are you weeping? You have come to bless the child and instead you are weeping. Is something going to be wrong with the child?"

The wise old man said, "No, nothing is going to be wrong with the child. I was weeping for myself.

The child is going to be a Buddha, an enlightened one, but I will not be here to see it. I am going to die this year, my course is completed. My whole life I was seeking and seeking for a man who is enlightened, but I couldn't find one. This child is going to be an enlightened one, but I will not be there. That is why I am weeping."

This forecast disturbed the father even more, because if Buddha, Siddharth, was going to be enlightened, then what would become of the kingdom? So the king asked the other wise men how to stop the child from becoming a Buddha.

They said, "There are only two possibilities. If he can be prevented from becoming aware of suffering only then can you hold him back. Otherwise he is going to be a sannyasin. So don't let him know suffering, don't let him know DUKKHA."

But the father could not understand how it was possible to prevent someone from knowing dukkha.

He again asked for advice.

The wise men advised him that Siddharth should never be allowed to see death. If there is death then life becomes meaningless, so he should not become aware of death. He should not know at all that death exists, that life is going to end. Secondly, he should not be allowed to become aware that old age comes. Otherwise, youth will become meaningless. And thirdly. he should never see a sannyasin. If he sees a dancing, laughing, blissful sannyasin, his life will become meaningless.

"These three conditions must be fulfilled. he should never see a diseased old man, he shouldn't see anyone dead and he shouldn't see anyone blissful."

Buddha's father arranged it in such a way that not even a dead leaf would ever be seen by him. No old man could come nearby to where Siddharth was. Whenever he would go out in the streets, the whole street would be cleared so that no old man passed by. Nor was he ever allowed to become aware of death, or ever allowed to see a sannyasin.

But how can you prevent it forever? One day there was going to be a youth festival. Siddharth was invited to preside over it. Young men and young women had come from all over the kingdom. As he was moving on his chariot, an old man passed by. He asked his driver, "What has happened to that man?"

The chariot driver said, "I cannot deceive you. Nothing has happened to that man that does not happen to everyone."

Siddharth asked, "Will I also be like that someday?"

The chariot driver said, "I cannot deceive you. No one is an exception."

Siddharth said, "Let us go back to the palace. It is no use going to a youth festival. I have become an old man. If old age is to come someday, in a way it has already come. Youth is useless because it is just a hiding place for old age."

While they were driving back, a dead body was being carried by. Siddharth asked, "What has happened?"

The chariot driver said, "The second stage. After old age, this happens."

Siddharth said, "Then I am dead! Life makes no sense at all. It is meaningless, futile."

Back home, just when he was at the door to his palace, he saw a sannyasin. This is what the parable says. It seems impossible, it couldn't happen like that: first the old man, then the dead man and then the sannyasin. It was all arranged by destiny, by the deities. In life it couldn't happen that way - that Buddha would see these things one after the other - but according to the tale, the myth, it was arranged this way by the deities because otherwise Buddha would never feel suffering and if suffering is not felt, then you cannot attain that inner harmony that is bliss.

Dukkha means this knowledge: that whatever appears to be living is going to die; whatever appears to be blissful, is not so. Ordinary life is going to end in death; it is JUSt a progression toward death.

So on the third level, the innermost, suffering means dukkha. Or, you can call it 'spiritual agony.'

Today, there are very few people who are spiritually in agony, who are in dukkha. But anguish is there, mental agony is there, mental disharmony is there. And in the West, it is intense. In the East the mental agony is not so intense because it becomes intense only when physical pain is not there.

When physical pain has gone, only then is your consciousness freed from the physiological level and it moves to the mental.

The same thing happens again when there is no mental agony and the mental realm becomes harmonious. Then you become aware of spiritual suffering, spiritual agony. If the body is suffering - as it is suffering in the East you will not feel mental agony. You have no energy to feel it. You're exhausted by the day to day struggle to survive. The day to day struggle for the body to somehow survive exhausts you so much that on the mental level you are simply tired, not in anguish. So whenever a society becomes materially prosperous mental agony deepens, but when a society is poor, mental agony is not there.

But this is not a good sign. In the East, people think that it is a good sign: we are in less mental agony than people in the West. But it is not a good sign at all. It simply shows that we are more poor, more hungry, more starved. We are so engaged with fulfilling the needs of the body that we cannot pay any attention to the mind. As far as the mind is concerned, we only feel tiredness, that's all.

So this is the difference: in the East, pain is predominant - physical pain, physical suffering, is predominant - and in the West, psychic pain, mental agony, has become predominant. This is a sign of progress. The East must also progress to at least this level: to be in mental anguish. But if and when this happens, if you are not in mental anguish then there is a harmony in the mind.

When the mind becomes harmonious, you become aware of a deeper meaninglessness. Then you become disturbed in a more fundamental way. The body, is okay, the mind is okay, - now, you yourself are meaningless. You've taken care of everything - there is no pain, no anguish - but then what? When there is pain you struggle: to take care of your house, to take care of your body. There is something to do, to be engaged in and occupied with. But once your material needs are taken care of, the mind begins to suffer. It becomes aware of intrinsic contradictions, intrinsic tensions.

Meditation is a means to help the mind regain harmony. In fact, meditation leads you only as far as the last boundary of the mind. No method can lead you to the spiritual; it can only lead you to mental harmony. And when mental harmony is attained you become aware of a deeper realm, because now you don't need to be concerned with the mind at all.

So the mind doesn't need only psychoanalysing. Psychoanalysis only gives a superficial adjustment.

The West needs meditation. It needs methods of meditation that can bring authentic psychic harmony. Then you become aware of suffering, of dukkha, of the meaninglessness of life. But to be aware of this innermost suffering... This awareness is a great bliss in disguise because once you become aware that life is meaningless...

Death is awaiting you. Nothing leads anywhere, everything just ends. Your whole life, your whole effort, just leads to the grave, you come to an end. This suffering is dukkha - the awareness of it - is the point from where you can take a jump into another realm, into another dimension.

It is not that you will find meaning in life, it is not that now there will be no death, but once the boundary of the mind is crossed, you became aware of this inner suffering, this meaninglessness.

This feeling of meaninglessness is bound with your past. You have always been purposeful, you have never conceived of existence as meaningless. That is why this suffering comes to you.

But once you take the jump, you cannot go back. There is no way to go back. Once you have come to the end limit of the mind, you have come to a point of no return. You cannot go back: for you, there is only meaninglessness and death. But if you can stay in it, if you can be courageous enough to be in it, to be a witness to it, then there is an explosion. Then, the suffering is lost.

Then there is no suffering, there is no longing for meaning, there is no desire for immortality.

Then seriousness has gone. You become playful. Everything changes into a new dimension:

the dimension of play, the dimension of leela. Harmony is regained between you and the cosmic, between you and the existence. Then there is no barrier, because there is no mind.

The mind is a search for meaning and a search for immortality. The ego is in fear of death and if there is no meaning then the ego has no foothold to stand on This gap - where you recognize the meaninglessness of life - is a spiritual abyss. From the mind, from the boundary of the mind, you will become aware of the spiritual agony, the meaningless of everything. Death is the only goal. But if you jump into the abyss then everything is negated. There is no suffering - you become blissful.

Then there will never again be any suffering at all because the part that can suffer is lost - the ego is lost, the mind is lost.

You can look at it in another way. The body becomes unhealthy if it is in tension, if it is disharmonious within itself or in relation to the atmosphere. The mind becomes anguished if it is in conflict with itself or with other minds. Your being feels a sense of meaninglessness because of your body and your mind. You become alienated from the cosmic spirit because of your body and your mind. Within these two boundaries, you become alien - a stranger, uprooted from the cosmic existence. You feel suffering.

When these two barriers are not there, you have become one with the existence. Then there is no question for you of life having any meaning. You are not, only the cosmic is. Now you cannot die because you are not. The cosmic is - you are just a wave in the ocean now. Even if the wave disappears in the ocean, the ocean remains. You have realized that you yourself are the ocean so there is no fear of death. Death is not. As far as your cosmic being is concerned, there is no death; but as far as your individual being, your ego, is concerned, there is death.

All the meanings that we look for, search for, desire for, are ego meanings. You must attain something otherwise you are no one. You only feel fulfilled if you achieve something. Through achievement the ego is fulfilled so you must achieve something - maybe riches, maybe prestige, maybe knowledge. You must attain something, you must be able to attach something to yourself that you can claim as mine: my achievement. Only then is there an 'I', otherwise 'I am no one.'

The mind feels anguish and the mind also feels suffering, dukkha. It feels anguish when there is mental disharmony and it feels suffering as far as ultimate suffering is concerned. This feeling, too, is of the mind. You must know the distinction clearly. Mind is in anguish as far as mental inner disharmony is concerned, and mind is in dukkha as far as the ego and ultimate destiny is concerned.

Once the mind is not, the mind is annihilated, there is no suffering at all, no dukkha at all. Body pain is possible even for an enlightened one - even for a Buddha, body pain is possible - but psychic anguish is not possible and dukkha is not possible. Suffering exists in all three of these dimensions.

To me, the ultimate suffering is because of the ego and the ultimate bliss comes through egolessness. The western mind has become more anguished because of scientific achievement.

The ego is strengthened more. It is strengthened because western science has taken the attitude of trying to conquer nature. It is a very egoistic attitude: to conquer nature. For the last three centuries we have been constantly conditioned through science. Everywhere, but especially in the West, the mind is science-oriented. It thinks in terms of conquering nature, in terms of competing with others.

And the more science has progressed, the more the western mind has felt that religion is invalid - because so many religious propositions have been proved wrong by science. But really, no religious statement can be proved wrong by science. Only those statements that were scientific statements recorded in the religious scriptures have been found invalid. They're not religious statements at all!

If, in the Bible, the earth is said to be flat, it is not a religious statement. Religion is not concerned at all with whether the earth is flat or not. It is a scientific statement, according to the science of Jesus' day. When such a statement is proved invalid, it only shows that the older science has been proved invalid by the newer science. But it does not make religion invalid at all!

But this misfortune happens. We confuse one thing with the other and we think that now religion is invalidated. In the old days, religious scriptures were the only records made. In fact, Bible means 'the book'. It is the only book we have of those days. It it an encyclopedia. It has no name really. It means: the book.

The Vedas have no name either. They mean 'the knowledge'. All the knowledge of those days has been compiled. They have poetry, they have science, they have medicine, they have grammar, they have religion, they have philosophy. They have everything; they are encyclopedias.

But because the scientific knowledge of those days is compiled in them and newer science, newer searches, have disproven much of this scientific knowledge, it doesn't mean that religion itself is disproved. Not a single religious statement can be disproved by science because the dimensions are altogether different. They never crisscross, they never cross at any point. No matter what Einstein says, it never touches upon anything that Jesus has said - any more than progress in higher mathematics can prove that Kalidas or Shakespeare are wrong. One has no relevance as far as the other is concerned. Poetry has its own dimension; mathematics has its own dimension.

Howsoever great a poet, he cannot refute by his poetry - howsoever profound it may be - any mathematical statement. It makes no sense.

Scientific progress has given the western mind the false attitude that religion is refuted. And if religion is refuted, if there is no divine, no divineness, if no cosmic relationship is possible, then you are left alone, uprooted. That's why, in the West, this century is a century of alienation. Everyone feels alienated. And the further scientific progress goes, the more you will fell a stranger in a world in which you have no roots.

If we were go back and ask some Vedic rishi, he would say that he lives in a cosmic family. Everything is related. even the sun is related, even the stars are related, even the moon is related. They are persons; it is a great family. He is rooted in it. He is intimately related to everything that exists; he is not alone. There is a cosmic relationship taking place with each breath.

But today, the educated mind is absolutely uprooted. The cosmic family has disappeared. The stars are dead - you cannot be related to them. Existence is so material that no relationship can exist.

And everything is inimical to you. It is bound to happen; it's a logical conclusion. Either you are rooted in the existence or the whole existence will become inimical to you. These are the only two alternatives; you cannot remain neutral.

Through scientific progress, our relationship to the universe has been denied. But we never realized that by the denial of our intimate relatedness to the whole we have made the second step inevitable:

the whole has become inimical lo the individual. That is the cause of the anguish today in the west.

The family has disappeared, the cosmic family.

And because of that, the smaller family will have to disappear. If I am not related to the earth, how can I be related to my mother? The connection is the same. The rishi of old would call the earth 'mother'. He would go on calling, "My mother... mother earth." He would call God 'father', he would call the sky 'father'. We have denied it without thinking what the logical conclusion of this denial will be. If we deny the cosmic family, then the smaller family unit will be denied altogether. If I am not related to the earth, if I am not related to the sky, if I am not related to existence itself, then how can I be related to my mother or my father? What is the difference? If I am not related to nature...

My mother and my father are parts of nature to me. If I am not related to the cosmic existence - they are part of the cosmic existence - then I am not related to them. Then I am alone and there is darkness everywhere. Only a loving relationship creates light, otherwise there is darkness. Only love is light.

Otherwise, there is darkness. Everywhere is darkness, everywhere is the enemy. Friendship is inconceivable. I have to just struggle and fight. But for what? Anguish comes. I am alone.

If you are not related to anything and you think that there is no possibility of any relationship, then you can never transcend the psychic realm. You will never come to the spiritual because you can come to it only when you are related to the cosmic. Our personality flowers amidst relationships.

The deeper you go into relationships, the more you will see that this is so.

For example, if a child is taken from his mother, he will not be the same person that he would have been with his mother. Something that grows in the mother-child relationship will not grow now; the child will be retarded in a way. We have roots, just like trees - but of course, invisible. The child's roots are with his mother.

They have done so many experiments with animals. If the mother is denied from the very first day, taken away, and the animal grows up alone, he never grows really. Everything can be provided for him - even better than his mother could provide - but the mother's love ii absent. He never grows.

He becomes insane, he becomes perverted. And in the end he is never found to be capable of love.

He cannot love because the roots of love have been broken. It is not only that the mother is caring for the child. Unknown even to herself, something is flowing from her towards the child.

And it is not only that the mother is giving something. I he child is also giving responses. Whenever a child is born, it is not only that the child is born. On that very day, the mother is also born. Before she was just a woman - and there is a vast difference between a woman and a mother. Something new has come to her, something new has flowered in her. So the child is also giving something. It is reciprocal it is mutual. The mother grows into motherhood. She becomes a different personality altogether.

I have just taken this as an example.

A child growing up as part of the cosmic family will have a different personality when be is grown up than a child who is growing up in an individual family. The roots are less deep for the child growing up in a small family. Religion means finding roots in the ultimate, finding roots in the cosmos. Even the sun should not be thought to be unrelated to you, even the river that is flowing by should not be unrelated to you, the earth should not be unrelated to you. Everything should be related to you and you should be related to the whole.

This relationship is religion. The word 'religion' means to be related to the whole, related from all sides, from everywhere. If you are related to the whole in this way, then there is no suffering because then there is no possibility of death. You cannot die because you are not; the whole is. The whole bas always bees and the whole will always be. Then you are not in fear. You will always be part of the whole. If you are a drop, you will become lost in the ocean, but you will still be part of the ocean.

Then there is no fear of death there is no problem about the meaning of life. Then you are not alone, you are not in a struggle, in conflict.

So this is another thing to be understood. Science has taken a very inimical attitude toward nature, but religion takes a very friendly attitude. It is not that we are to fight with nature; it is that we are to understand it. It would be a great transformation for science if science could take this attitude. Not of fighting, but of understanding. Fighting creates hatred all around. It exists only in hatred.

Understanding can exist only in a love relationship. Religion thinks in terms of understanding the whole. The more you understand it, the more you feel yourself to be part of it. Then you are not an outsider; you are part of the whole, you are in it.

This feeling of is-ness is ecstatic. If you can feel that you are part of the whole, that you are the innermost part of it, then you are at ease. Then you can never be diseased,- you are at ease.

You are in greater hands, there are greater forces that you can rely upon. You're not unnecessarily burdened; you're not alone. You do not have to carry the whole burden on your head. You are just like a child sleeping in his mother's lap: unburdened, carefree. The mother is there so he does not have to worry. There is no anguish, no suffering.

Religion has this attitude towards the whole. The cosmic is just like the mother. Your are encompassed by it - by greater forces, by infinite forces, by wisdom that you cannot fathom. Then you are at ease. This at-easeness, this let go, is a situation in which there is a flowering, an innocent flowering. You are unburdened.

To me, this flowering is anand: bliss, ecstasy. Dukkha is a retarded flowering, a flower that couldn't flower into the whole, that remained aloof, that uprooted itself from the earth. It will suffer; it is bound to happen. It will suffer, and there will only be death for it, no life.

Western science has conditioned man to be egoistic, alone. The eastern concept of knowledge, of knowing, is very different. It is 'to be in cooperation with'. It is not that you are forcing nature to reveal its mysteries. On the contrary, you are opening yourself up to be in a loving participation with nature so that nature reveals its mysteries to you. It is just like asking your mother, questioning your mother. You do not have to force her.

Science has come to so many understandings, but they have been forcibly taken. They have blood marks, they have been violent. And any discovery that is violent, any knowledge that is violent, is going to end in greater violence. Nature will take its revenge. We are just nonentities and we have been fighting with the cosmic existence, with the cosmic force. We can be destroyed in a single moment, in a single second.

But man thinks that he is the master. This nonsense of being the master, this ego masquerading as the master, has created the whole chaos. The western mind will move deeper and deeper into anguish unless this absolutely false attitude of science (not only false, harmful!) is thrown altogether.

Nature cannot be forced, should not be forced. I will tell you something. Eastern minds have come to know something about nature through different methods, altogether different methods. If you look through old Iranian or Indian medicine books, it will look like a miracle. No laboratories existed at the time, but lakhs and lakhs of medicines were known. A single person would write about thousands and thousands of medicines. For one person, a single discovery would have been enough, but one person would write about thousands and thousands of things. And even today, when there are laboratory methods, these old findings are not denied.

The old medicine books say that these were not laboratory findings. These findings came through meditation. Now we cannot believe it. It is said that Lukman would go, sit under a tree, meditate and ask the tree, "What can you be used for?" He would sit under the tree in meditation and when he was in a deep trance when the mind was not there; he was empty, vacant, receptive - he would pray to the tree to "tell me what I can use your leaves for." The tree would answer, and he would just note it down!

It seems unbelievable. How can this be possible? But if it is not possible, the other possibility is even less possible. Lukman had no laboratories, no method of chemical analysis existed. Yet even today, he is not refuted. Experiments prove him right again and again.

Do you know serpintina, a sleep-creating chemical? It has been known in India for ten thousands years as serpgandha. The newer name is just a translation of serpgandha: serpintina. All the qualities of serpgandha that have been written about in ancient Indian books have now been found, through chemical research, to be exactly true. But they had no laboratory methods so how did they come to know all the qualities of the drug?

They say that they came to know through meditation, by asking the. serpgandha itself. I have worked deeply on such things. I have worked with meditation in so many ways that I can become a witness to the possibility of it. But its a possibility that comes from a very different approach - through participation with nature. Not Fighting, participating.

This is something to be noted, that all the scientific inventions began in the East. It is only in the last three hundred years that scientific thinking has become prevalent in the West. All the inventions, the beginnings, were in the East, but they were never developed. Why? If the beginnings were in the East and there was every opportunity to progress from those beginnings into completion, then why?

In China, ammunition was known three thousand years before. Then why was it never used? They just played with it, they just made fireworks with it. They never used it for war. They knew everything about it, but they never used it. Why? If you ask them - if you ask Taoist thinkers - they will say, "If you participate with nature, if you ask nature itself, then nature will prohibit you. It will tell you, 'Don't go further than this'."

Don't go any further! It looks as though the West needs that advice: don't go any further. But the western mind seems to be obsessed with progress, as if progress in itself is something meaningful.

The atom bomb is created and then there is an obsession to create the hydrogen bomb. The atom bomb is enough, more than enough, but the mind is obsessed. The whole thing can only end in chaos - as it is ending. We are reaching the end because we have been fighting against nature and we have never asked nature itself where to stop .

Knowledge is not always good. It can do great evil. It is only good up to the limit where it can be managed. By now we have transgressed the limit. It is not that we are managing knowledge. On the contrary, the knowledge is managing and controlling us. It seems that we cannot do anything else but take another step ahead, knowing very well that the next step may prove fatal. But no one is there to prevent us, because we are our own advisers. No advice is coming to us from beyond.

It is as if children have become the masters of the house and no elder is there to give them advice.

Or even if the elder is there, they have forgotten about him.

Suffering has become deep, intense, because of ourselves. The suffering that can be transformed into bliss we have not been able to transform, because all the doors are closed. And we have closed them ourselves.

We say there is no God. Then we have closed the door. Not even the possibility of God is there. It is not even scientific to say that there is no God. Only this much can be said scientifically: that science has not yet found any God. Then, there is still a possibility.

But we say that there is no God. The possibility is closed. And once the possibility is closed, once the suggestion is taken that there is no God, your mind will not look in that direction again. It will look everywhere else, but not in that direction. That possibility is closed. And it is the only possibility of transcending suffering.

A hundred years ago, Nietzsche said that God is dead. A very prophetic saying! The years that followed proved this: that as far as we are concerned, as far as this twentieth century is concerned, God is dead for us. Not that God is dead, but we are so closed inside ourselves that for us there is no God. If we say that there is no God it makes no difference as for as God is concerned, but it makes a great difference to us because a great possibility, a great relationship, is closed. We are thrown upon ourselves. Now we cannot go anywhere, we cannot transcend the human mind, because now not even a hypothetical possibility has been left. Where can we go?

At the most, we can go back to being animals. There is nothing beyond man; there is only something below him. If the beyond is dropped, you will fall back to a lower stage of development. This is one of the fundamental laws of nature: that either you progress, or you get pushed back to where you started. You cannot stand still, there is no situation that is a standstill situation.

In his autobiography, Eddington says that the word 'rest' is meaningless. There is no rest to be found anywhere: everything either moves ahead or moves back. You cannot be in rest. If you deny the beyond there is nowhere further to go. But you cannot remain where you are because the suffering is so great, the anguish is so great. To be human is to be so anguished, so tense. You cannot remain like that so you have to fall back. You use intoxicants to fall back, you go mad and you fall back, you become preoccupied with sex and you fall back. Somehow, you fall back to being an animal.

But you cannot really go backwards. You can only try. No going back is really possible. It is just like jumping in the sky. By jumping, you cannot really leave the earth. You come back again. For a moment you feel that you are in sky, but then the earth attracts you; you gravitate again to the earth.

By jumping, you cannot reach the moon. You can jump towards it, and for a single moment there is the illusion that you are now out of the field of gravity, but you have hardly gone anywhere when you have to come back again. And in the same way, you can go on jumping back towards the level of an animal, but you can't stay there. You return immediately to being human.

But to be human is such anguish. It always was but, before, there was a possibility to transcend and, now, because we have denied God, that possibility is no longer there. That's why the anguish is more intense, more frustrating. Now it can no longer be used as a means for transcendence. The whole art of religion is concerned with how to transform darkness into light, how to transform death in to deathlessness, how to transform your suffering into bliss. The whole art, the whole alchemy of religion, is concerned with this.

Buddha was also in suffering, Mahavir was also in suffering, Christ was also in suffering, but they could transform their suffering into deep bliss. Now we are not able to transform it What has happened? The possibility to transform your suffering has been denied.

To me, your suffering shows the possibility of transcendence. You cannot suffer unless there is a possibility to transcend. A person who cannot be healthy cannot see his illness. It is impossible. If you feel illness, it shows the possibility that you can be helped. Otherwise you cannot feel that you are ill. Only the capacity to be healthy can feel the actuality of illness. Only the eye that is capable of knowing light can know darkness.

So when I say that it is good that suffering is there, I mean that this suffering shows that bliss is possible. If there was no possibility of bliss, then you would not feel suffering. You feel it because of the absence of bliss. This absence is felt as suffering.

This possibility of transcending suffering has to be opened again. And the gates have to be made wider than they ever were before because the present mind needs wider openings. Otherwise, it will go on denying the possibility of transcendence. The cosmic must be allowed to burst forth upon us and everyone must become a gate. If you can transcend your own suffering, you will become a gate for so many others. Through you, they will come to know that something beyond exists.

This is the work to be done. But first become a gate so that whosoever comes in contact with you knows that something beyond is possible, something exists beyond.

That is our only hope. If we can make others feel, by looking through our eyes, through our whole being, that the beyond exists, that bliss exists, then and only then can humanity be saved. Otherwise, that which is going to happen will not be good.

The East is going to turn materialistic because it is so starved. It is bound to follow along the same lines, the same technological, scientific lines, as the West. If a Buddha comes to the East today, he will not be welcome. The East can welcome an Einstein but not a Buddha. Day by day, the East is going to become more materialistic. It will become communistic.

And in the West... If people become open, if some people become so concerned with meditation that it becomes a matter of life and death to them, if they transcend their suffering and become openings fat the divine, then the West can move into a spiritual age. Otherwise, the West will go mad. It has gone as far as the mind can go, it has reached the limit and there is nothing beyond.

The beyond is denied; it has become taboo. To talk of the divine, to talk of the spiritual, is taboo. It you feel something of the divine you can't talk about it or people will think you are crazy.

Day by day, the West is going mad, insane. And through insanity, much will happen. LSD will become more prevalent, mescaline will become more prevalent, marijuana will become more prevalent. These are only attempts to escape, to escape from the overwhelming madness that is waiting right by the corner. You know that it's coming, so all you can do is to escape into oblivion.

Take some drug; become unconscious. Then you don't care. But your noncaring will not prevent it.

It is coming! And if you are unconscious, it will come even sooner.

If nothing happens to intervene, these are the possibilities that we are faced with The East will become materialistic and the West will become totally neurotic. Neither is good. And the East will not be able to remain non-neurotic for long because it is only a matter of time. Within a century the same thing will happen in the East as has happened in the West. When materialism is there, when a violent science is there, when a God-denying culture is there, there is no other possibility. There is no open space, there is nowhere to go.

But, something can intervene. So I am not a pessimist. Something can intervene. But we cannot go on just hoping for it. We have to become vehicles so that the intervention can happen. Each one of us has to become a passage for the divine to come to earth.

This is what my sannyas means. I am trying to make you a vessel, a vehicle, a window, a door through which the beyond can come. If you can be a witness to the divine, it will be enough. Just one ray of light will be a great phenomenon.

This is the first time on earth that no one is really a witness. Everyone goes on quoting others. If you ask an atheist he will say, "There is no God." If you ask a theist he will say, "Yes, there is a God.

My father says so" - or my father's father or some ancient rishi has said so. There is no one who is himself a witness, who says, "God is there. I say so because I know it is so." Whoever can say, "I am a witness," cannot only say it but can live his witnessing. His being can become a witness.

God, the dimension of the divine, has lost its hold because so many neurotic people, so many diseased people, have become interested in religion. They always become interested in it. Because of their frustrations they become interested in the divine. Their interest is negative so they become the wrong kind of witnesses. They are not blissful, they are not happy. They are sad images of sorrow. They close the gate rather than open it.

The gate to the divine can be open only if those who are concerned with religion become blissful, happy, dancing. Only a dancing God can contradict Neitzsche's statement that God is dead because only a dancing God can prove that God is alive.

So be a witness to it. Don't think of the suffering of others; transcend your own suffering. Then, you will be a help to others. Don't think of serving others. Serve yourself first transcend your own suffering. Then you will be a servant to all and you will be able to do something that means something, that is significant. Don't be a sad servant of the divine. Don't make helping others a duty...