Remaining closed to the lower: A technique for transformation

There is an old saying: "When the disciple is ready, the teacher appears." The disciple cannot find the teacher; it is impossible. Only the teacher can find the disciple. Only one who knows himself can know someone else. Then it is easy.

When you are ready, the whole universe begins to help you. There is no need to ask for any astral help, there is no need to go anywhere, help is always being given - a need is always fulfilled. But one has to be ready, one has to be in a state of mind where universal forces can help you. So it is not a positive search, because you cannot seek astral help; help depends on your receptivity, your readiness.

Higher forces are present everywhere, every moment. This very moment you are surrounded by both higher forces and lower forces, but you are receptive only to the lower.

You can either be open to higher forces or you can be open to lower forces; you cannot be open to both. The very mechanism of consciousness is such that if you are open to the lower you will be closed to the higher, and if you are open to the higher you will automatically become closed to the lower. We have only one opening, so it is your choice in which direction to move.

The first thing to be understood is how to be closed to lower forces and how to be open to higher forces. Higher forces are always there, but they cannot work unless you cooperate with them, unless you give yourself to them. The moment you are open to them the work begins - when the doors are open, the sun can come in. Your doors are closed. The sun is there, this very moment it is knocking on the door, but you are in darkness. You will remain in darkness not because the sun is not there but because your doors are closed. You have not invited the sun, you are not receptive to it. You are still not prepared to be a host - the invitation has not been sent.

How can one become closed to the lower forces and open to the higher forces? We are not even aware that we are open to the lower forces and yet we are in search of higher forces that can work on us....

For example, when someone loves you, you are always suspicious, always doubtful of it. Is the love true or not? Are you really loved or not? Is the person being authentic or deceptive? When someone is angry you never doubt whether he is really angry or just being deceptive, whether he is playing a role or is authentic. There is no doubt. It is always taken for granted that anger is authentic, but love is never taken for granted. You always believe the lower; you have a deep-rooted faith in the lower.

Remember, faith is the opening. Faith means trust, and whatever you believe in, you are open to.

An untrusting mind is closed because it is afraid. But unless you trust you will remain closed.

The first thing to be considered is this: which do you believe in more easily, lower things or higher things? You believe in lower things without reasoning, without doubting, without thinking about it.

You believe in the lower: the lower is your reality.

When Gurdjieff was just a child of nine, his dying father said to him, "I cannot give you anything except the one deep thing that I have experienced in my life. There is only one thing that I have gained that I can give you as my heritage: whenever someone is angry at you, don't react immediately. Wait for twenty-four hours and then reply."

Later on Gurdjieff was to say that this simple teaching transformed his whole life - he promised his dying father that this rule would be binding on him for his whole life. If someone insulted him, scolded him, or abused him, he would remain a witness to it with no immediate reaction - and not only outwardly but inwardly also. He would listen patiently to whatever was being said or done to him and then say, "I cannot react immediately. I will come back after twenty-four hours. This is a promise that I have given to my father. So I will come back after twenty-four hours and then I will react."

Obviously, he never reacted. He found himself coming back after twenty-four hours and saying, "At the moment I could not react because of my promise. Now, too, I cannot react."

His whole life was changed by it, because the opening for the lower became closed. Twenty-four hours is too long a period to wait. The mind opens only when there is a certain pressure - and then only for a moment. If you wait, the mind will close again. If you don't allow the pressure to affect you, then after twenty-four hours the situation will have become cold and dead. Only in a heated moment is the mind ready to react.

Because anger had become an impossibility, Gurdjieff tried this technique in other areas also. For example, sex. Whenever the urge was there, he would wait. After twenty-four hours there would be no urge: the mind would no longer be pulled by the lower force.

After practicing this for years, Gurdjieff suddenly became aware of other openings in his mind.

Because energy has to flow, and the lower outlet was closed, it had to find a new outlet.

For example, passing by a church where a mass was taking place, he would just look at the people praying in silence and suddenly the door of his mind would open and he would become one with those who were praying; suddenly his mind would be open to something higher.

Then he became aware of another deep phenomenon. An ordinary person would pass by him while he was just walking along the street, and suddenly Gurdjieff would become aware that the person was not ordinary; he was a mystic. He would follow him. And he was one hundred percent correct every time!

Sufi mystics function very esoterically, so they have discovered secret ways of being recognized.

Indian mystics want isolation, they want to be away from the crowd. They move to the forest, to the hills. But even if he moves to a monastery or the forest, people become aware of him, and before long he becomes known. Silence has its own message: it is its own message, conveying many things.

Sufis have tried another method. They do not go to a monastery, they do not go to a forest or to a lonely hill; rather, they become part of ordinary life. For example, a Sufi mystic may be just a cobbler. He will be so ordinary that no one will be able to recognize that he knows something, or he is something. But one who is open to higher forces will become aware of it.

This opening within Gurdjieff became the basis of his search for the miraculous. He followed - without any map, without any knowledge - and eventually came to India, to Egypt, and to Tibet. He went on and on - just feeling his way, not knowing where he was going - when suddenly he would feel that a particular footpath was good. He would follow it. Sometimes the footpath would end in front of a hut, and inside would be a mystic!

When you become open to the higher, things begin to happen in a very different way. But if you are only open to the lower then you have to grope in the dark for the higher. That groping is random, accidental. Sometimes you may come to know someone or something, but that is rare. Even if you stumble upon someone or something that could change and transform your life totally, you are not aware of it.

Even if you meet Buddha, you will not be aware that you are facing a buddha. How can you be aware of it? You are not open to the higher, so even if you do meet a buddha you will only be open to his lower possibilities. You will begin to find things to disturb you even in a buddha: Why does Buddha eat like this? Why does he sleep like that? Why is he such and such? Your lower opening will give you things to think about that do not concern his buddhahood at all, and the higher will be missed. The only thing that you will do is to look in the direction of the lower: it is such a long habit.

We believe in the lower forces, we are faithful to the lower, because only the door to the lower is open in us. If someone is condemning someone else we believe him totally; there is no need for evidence. That is why rumors become true: you can create an absolutely false rumor and then, because so many people believe it, it is possible that you yourself may begin to believe it. We are led by others. If so many people are saying something, it must be true.

The opening to the lower is habitual in us. Be aware when some lower force is pulling you. Be a witness to it. Don't allow your mind to be open to it. Everything that you are open to becomes deeply imprinted inside you and finally begins to work.

So be aware constantly, moment to moment. Even if something is right, true, but lower, don't be open to it. Even if you know someone is a thief, still I say: don't be open to it, because while you are focused on it, it is being imprinted within you. This habit of focusing on the lower is not good because it becomes a hindrance to the opening of the higher.

Buddha has said, "Don't believe anything that your ordinary mind thinks is believable." If I say that someone is a great saint, if I say that he is completely pure, your ordinary mind will hesitate to believe it. How can it be? He is in his body just as you are - how can he be pure? The ego feels hurt, so you try to rationalize it in every way. You cannot conceive of someone who is purer than you are, so you try to disbelieve it. But if you cannot conceive of someone's being purer than you, you will not be able to grow toward greater purity; then there will be no possibility of growth.

A Christian mystic, Tertullian, has said, "I believe in God, because only then I can grow." For Tertullian, God is not a question of fact or fiction but of inner growth.

For example, Nietzsche could have grown to be a buddha. Such a great potential, such a great genius, such a vast possibility! But he did not grow to be a buddha; rather, he grew to be a madman.

When he said, "God is dead," it was not a statement about God; it became a closing to the higher for him. If there is no God, then there is no possibility beyond this. Then, you cannot grow toward God.

You do not believe so easily that someone can be pure. A buddha is so pure that you cannot believe it - even Buddha's own father could not believe it. When news reached him that his son had become enlightened, he is reported to have said, "I know him well - he is my son, my blood and bones. I know him better than you. He is not what you say."

After twelve years of wanderings, Buddha returned to his home town. Thousands and thousands of individuals had become his disciples: he had become an inner light to them. But his father was totally unaware of the whole thing, and when he came to see him he was angry. He was angry because Buddha was his only son - he had been his only hope - and he had deserted him in his old age. So when Buddha stood before him he said, "I still forbid you to do what you are doing. I am your father! I love you so much that whatever you have done I can forget - my doors are still open - but leave all this nonsense! I cannot bear to see my son begging in the streets."

For him, Buddha was just a beggar - in modern language, just a hippie, a rebel. Buddha stood there silently. Finally his father began to be aware that he had not replied. His father said, "I know why you have no reply. You have no courage."

Buddha laughed. He said, "Who are you talking to? The son that left your house is no more. I am a completely different person."

The father became even more angry - obviously. He said, "Are you trying to tell me that I don't know who you are? I have given birth to you!"

Buddha said, "You have given birth to me, but I do not belong to you, I am not your possession. You were just a passage. I am grateful, but don't say that you know me. You don't even know yourself so how can you know me?"

The father went on talking in the same way. He was not open to the higher being that Buddha had become, he was not open to the reality that was before him but only to the memory of Siddhartha, his son. A higher force was open to him, but he was open only to the lower. He was behaving like a father with his past memories, not even seeing the reality that was before him.

The whole thing depends on you. Buddha is not the monopoly of any age or any period; Buddha's power is always there, everywhere. One has only to be open.

The first thing to do is to be closed to the lower. Whenever your mind opens to the lower, just by sheer force of habit, remember continuously to be a witness to it and it will stop, it will close. Don't waste energy in the lower. Then you will not be dissipating energy, you will be accumulating energy, and the accumulated energy will help to throw open the door to the higher. Once you begin to feel the higher possibilities that exist, there is not even any need to think of the lower. The lower has disappeared: you have entered a different world, a different dimension, a new existence. And then you begin to receive help from advanced souls.

You ask: IN THIS DESPERATE SPIRITUAL SITUATION, HOW CAN WE GET HELP FROM ADVANCED SOULS IN THE ASTRAL WORLD?

You can get help this very moment! The help is always there, but your eyes are closed. And not only are your eyes closed, you are emphatically in favor of their remaining closed. If someone tries to open your eyes, you use every argument against it. You say, "This is natural - darkness, sin, and evil are natural things."

For example: Freud brought about a great revolution. He did a great service in making humanity aware that regardless of what a man's potential is, ninety percent of his activity, his behavior, his thinking, is sexual. It was a great step, but because our mind is open only to the lower, the whole revolution went wrong. So when Freud said that the whole of human life, as it is, seems to be sex-centered, every religion fought against him.

It was a losing battle, because he was pointing out a fact. But now we are using that fact in a very wrong way. Now we say, "Yes, man is sex-oriented, sex-centered, but that is his nature - it has to be so." So not only ninety percent of human life is accepted as being sex-centered, the remaining ten percent is added to it.

These are the two lower possibilities: either one begins to fight sex and in the fighting the energy becomes perverted and goes astray, or one becomes a prey to one's own instincts and begins to flow toward sex with no possibility of any transformation.

Buddha and Mahavira and Jesus were trying to transform sex energy. Remember, to transform it, not to suppress it. But those who were open only to the lower and not to the higher heard it as suppression not transformation. Then the lower mind began to suppress, and perversion was the outcome - a Freud had to be born in order to bring man out of it. He had to emphasize that sex is natural: it should not be suppressed but accepted. Then again, people began to move to the opposite extreme.

The lower mind moves to the other extreme very easily, because the lower opening only functions in two ways: suppression or indulgence. They appear to be polar opposites, but they are not. They help each other very mysteriously, like friends in a deep conspiracy. If you indulge too much then you will be pulled automatically toward the so-called opposite, suppression - and vice versa. Then the third possibility will remain closed to you - that of transforming the energy.

Both of these extremes are horizontal; and a transformation of the energy, the third possibility, is vertical. If you neither suppress nor indulge, the energy will not be able to move on the horizontal plane; it will begin to move vertically. That vertical movement is transformation, that vertical movement opens you to the higher forces.

When I say be closed to the lower forces, I don't mean fight them, I mean be aware. If you begin to fight you will remain in the lower and become perverted, which is even worse. Then you are not even natural; you become obsessed.

If someone is angry at you, remain closed; don't react. I don't mean fight against what you are feeling. I mean just be aware, wait; consider the whole situation and analyze it impartially; take every point of view. If someone is angry at you, first begin by considering whether he is right or not.

If he is right, then be grateful to him. If you analyze very impartially and he is wrong, then there is no need to react because that will be his problem; you will not be part of it at all.

This is a very deep psychological insight: that if someone is abusing you, you begin to react only if you unconsciously feel that he is right. If you feel that he is absolutely wrong then you can laugh. If someone comes to you and says, "You are impotent," you will become furious only if you feel some sort of impotence somewhere, otherwise not. Only if what is being said hits something hidden within you is there a reaction. So analyze the whole thing, and if he is right then be thankful to him.

Modern psychology says that man's mind is divided into two parts: the minor part is conscious and the major part is unconscious. I may not be aware of my unconscious, but everyone who comes in contact with me will begin to be aware of it because it is expressed in my behavior, my gestures, my language. The unconscious is expressed in everything I do.

This becomes a problem, a deep problem. You are not aware of your deeper attitudes, your deeper longings, your deeper suppressions, but others become aware of them. So learn to analyze what is happening. If someone is angry at you, analyze the situation. Maybe he is right. Then you will become aware of a part of your unconscious that you were unaware of before. Or he can be partially right and partially wrong - this is the third alternative. If he is partially right then be partially grateful and don't be bothered about where he is wrong. If he is totally wrong, then the statement is not about you; it is his problem.

When I say don't be open to the lower, I don't mean suppression, I mean analysis, observation, awareness, consciousness. If you suppress, then you will never be able to be open to the higher.

A suppressed mind is deeply rooted in the lower because whatever you suppress you have to suppress continuously. If someone is suppressing sex, he cannot take a holiday from suppression.

One moment's holiday, and the snake becomes alive again, with much vigor and vitality. With suppression, nothing dies. On the contrary, a thing that has been suppressed becomes more alive.

Be clear about the distinction between suppression and not being open to the lower. Remain closed to the lower. You have to begin from there because, as it is right now, your state of mind is open only to the lower. There are many people who try to open their minds to the higher without first closing the lower door. Then they create unnecessary tension and conflict in themselves, because unless the lower is closed, the higher cannot open; it is impossible.

First make every conscious effort to close the lower and then, without any effort on your part, you will sometimes begin to be aware of a different dimension. Just sitting under a tree, you will be transported to a different world.

You must have seen pictures of Buddha sitting under a tree. Have you ever thought about what he is doing? He is doing nothing; he is waiting. The lower has been closed, the accumulated energy is there, and now he is waiting for the right moment when the energy is such that it forces the higher to open. Many of the old meditation techniques are concerned only with this.

Buddha has mentioned many things to do in order to close the lower, but the basic technique is what he calls right-mindfulness, samyak smriti. That is the same thing that I have been talking about: awareness, alertness, observation, analysis. Buddha's own word is right-mindfulness. He says, "When you are angry, remember that you are angry. Be mindful. Be conscious of the act."

And this is an inner alchemical truth: that if you are mindful, you cannot be angry. You can either be angry or you can be mindful. You cannot be angry consciously because unconsciousness is the basic requirement for anger to happen: you can be angry only if you are unaware.

If you close the lower, the higher opens. And with the opening of the higher, you will be in contact with many phenomena. One will be what you have asked about: a deep communion with advanced souls. Nothing in existence is ever lost. Buddha is always there, Jesus is always there - nothing is lost. So for one who is open to the higher, Jesus is not a historical figure; he is still there. Twenty centuries evaporate and you are in contact with a living presence.

Buddha is still here - nothing is lost, nothing can be lost. Buddha, Mahavira, or Krishna are not just names and bodily forms: they became Buddha, Krishna, and Mahavira because they realized the formless. Now they are formless, they are eternal, so you can be with them at any moment; only an opening toward the higher is needed, because then time disappears. Both space and time are phenomena of the lower opening.

Scientists have said that this world consists of space and time. Einstein has made it only one: he says that time is a fourth dimension of space. He calls it spatio-time - this world is nothing but spatio-time. But when you are open to the higher you move into a non-temporal, non-spatial world:

there is no time, no space.

When you are open to it, a totally different world is revealed to you. You are not only in contact with the higher but in deep communion with it. Then you are not. With the higher, you dissolve; only with the lower can you be.

That is why you insist on remaining with the lower - because in the higher, you will not be. The very existence of the ego, the self, the I, belongs to the lower. When you are open to the higher, you are not. And then, when you are not, you are simply guided by higher forces; you become just an instrument.

When Mohammed was in deep meditation on Mount Hira, suddenly he heard a clear voice which said, "Read!"

Being completely illiterate, he said, "How can I read? I don't know how to read, I am illiterate."

Again the voice said, "Read!" - but more forcefully. Mohammed hesitated. He began to tremble in fear. How could he read? Then, when for the third time the voice said, "Read!" Mohammed was standing on the boundary line between the lower and the higher. He knew very well that as far as the lower was concerned, he could not read. But the voice was from another realm. It persisted:

"Read!" He opened his eyes and saw that he was in a different world. He could read, he could see.

This continued for years. The Koran was not delivered to Mohammed in one day, it kept on being delivered to him throughout his whole life. Mohammed had been an ordinary man before, absolutely ordinary. Suddenly he became different.

That is why Mohammed never said, "I am an enlightened one. I am a buddha." Never. He never said, "I am the son of God," as Jesus did. He would only say, "I am an ordinary man - just a servant, just a messenger between two worlds." He was a simple, innocent man. That is why the lower closed and the higher opened. He was not making any effort for the higher to open, it just opened.

The first time it happened he became so afraid that he would not tell anyone. When he came home, he was in a high fever. It was so strange! How could he read? And what he had seen was so different, it was not of this world. He himself could not believe it - everything had turned upside down. He remained in the fever for three days and prayed. Then, very hesitantly, he confided to his wife what had happened. "I have been to a different world," he said. "But don't tell anyone or they will think me mad."

From that day on, Mohammed was guided not by his ego but by forces beyond him: he became just an instrument.

When the higher opens, everything turns upside down. Your logic will not apply, your reason will not apply. Whatever you have known becomes irrelevant; whatever you are becomes irrelevant.

You ask: HOW CAN WE BECOME OPEN TO THE HIGHER?

It is possible by closing the lower opening. And it is essential for the survival of the human race that this happens.

It has always been so: the human race has survived only because of contact with the higher. You can pick out twenty names from the history of mankind - Buddha, Jesus, Mahavira, Lao Tzu...

twenty names, and you will not be able to conceive how humanity could have survived without them.

Darwin may say that we have survived because of the struggle of the animal world, and he is right as far as surviving as animals is concerned. But as human beings we have survived because of the higher forces that have been penetrating us all the while.

Whenever there is a Buddha, the higher penetrates the lower; through him the whole of mankind comes in deep contact with something higher. Buddha becomes a vehicle, a passage, a bridge.

There are many bridges; because of those bridges, man is not just an animal, he is something more.

If man survives only as an animal, that survival is meaningless. And that is what is happening everywhere, all over the world. Those who contemplate the situation are aware that our lives have become just a meaningless, absurd repetition of the trivial, going on and on and on. We are just occupied, we are not living.

Only those who are not aware at all can think that this is life. Only very mediocre minds can think that this is life. If you think that this is all then life is meaningless. It is meaningless because, as an animal, man cannot have any significance. Man is a growth, a going beyond animality.

Buddha says that life is a wonder, a benediction. Krishna can dance and sing and celebrate life.

We are just sad - sitting and watching life pass by like a meaningless journey, going nowhere. A boredom, a repetitive boredom... but for Krishna life is a celebration, a dance, a flowering. Why?

Because he is in contact with the higher. When you are in contact only with the lower, life is just a trivial, meaningless, repetitive routine.

The world is not going to end in some atomic explosion, but it may end because of this meaninglessness. Whenever I think about the end of the world, it is never murder which comes to my mind but suicide. If this meaninglessness goes on piling up, humanity may commit suicide. It may commit suicide through an atomic explosion, but it will still be committing suicide.

The higher is needed, always. It is the only saving force. But we are more and more closed to it, we have denied it completely. And this is strange: that the same thinkers who have denied the higher now say that life is meaningless. If you show them any meaning they deny it. If you tell them that meditation can lead you to find meaning in life they say, "How? It cannot be - meditation is just a fiction. Where is this meditation? Show us what it is." They ask for scientific proof; they say, "We will experiment." Now they are trying to experiment with meditation scientifically. What are their conclusions? Their conclusions are basically these: that when someone is in deep meditation, he is nowhere but in deep, dreamless sleep - the mind waves are the same. When someone is in deep sleep, the mind produces alpha waves - these can be recorded now - and if someone is in deep meditation, the same alpha waves appear. So meditation is nothing but a deep sleep.

To outward appearances, that is right. You cannot deny it because there is scientific proof for it.

If you go deep into meditation, the same waves appear in the mind as in dreamless sleep. So meditation is just dreamless sleep - the thing is finished!

It is not! Deep meditation is a stage beyond dreamless sleep. It is a waveless state where waves cease completely. When someone is moving into deep meditation he passes the state of deep sleep and then he goes beyond it. The recorder can record only up to the point where waves disappear; it cannot record what is happening in the state of no waves.

If the buddha state is just like deep dreamless sleep, why waste time meditating for years and years? Why not take a tranquilizer? If the same alpha waves appear, then what is wrong with taking chemical help? It will be easier, more of a shortcut. The difference is that a person may take pills for years and yet he will not come to feel that life is meaningful. He may be able to sleep deeply, the same alpha waves will appear, but he will remain the same, in the same repetitive routine. He will not become wise, he will not become a buddha. He will not be able to celebrate life, he will not be able to say, "I am happy that I was born, I am happy that I am." He will not be able to offer thanksgiving, gratitude, to existence.

Buddha is different - but scientists say they need scientific proof. Even if you could observe Buddha's mind, you would not be able to record what happens. When a buddha is in deep sleep he is aware.

But that awareness cannot be recorded because it is waveless. If you say that Buddha's state is just like deep sleep then you can still ask what the meaning of life is. Life remains meaningless.

Life becomes meaningful if you feel the existence of the divine, if there is a God. Meaning is possible only if the higher exists. Meaning always comes from the beyond; it cannot come from you. Only if you can go beyond does there seem to be a meaning of life.

But these same thinkers who want proof go on denying: "There is no God. There is no other state of consciousness." Then they ask what the meaning of life is!

Life is meaningless if you are only open to the lower. With the lower, there is only repetition of the same thing, again and again. With the higher, there is no repetition. There is eternal freshness, eternal virginity. Every moment is eternity itself. Then there is meaning in life, then your life becomes significant.

This contact with the higher is deeply needed for humanity to survive as humanity. Otherwise humanity can only survive as a species of animal - different of course, but not unique.

This has become the problem. We are struggling like animals: our politics, our nations, our races, our religions are all animalistic. When we say "nation," it is nothing but the greed for territory. When we say race, it is nothing but herd worship. We give good names, we give good labels, and hide much ugliness behind them.

What is politics all about? It is like something animals do. You can see the whole political structure, the same politics of any capital of the world, even in a group of baboons. There is a president, the chief; then there are subordinates and servants, there are lower castes and higher castes - everything.

The chief is the super baboon. No one else can come near him; he has his own personal space.

Even when the group is moving the chief moves alone: a certain space is left around him. Those who cross his boundary do so at their own risk.

There is a whole pecking order. The higher baboon suppresses the lower and the lower cannot even rebel. This is the inner politics; it continues every moment. Whenever a new baboon tries to become a chief, there is fighting and violence. Then, once again, the pecking order is changed and reshuffled.

Then, too, there are many baboon groups in a forest, each group with its own territory which no other group can enter or there will be violence, war. The same has happened with man. This is the boundary: China begins here and India ends here. The question of the boundary is a great problem and ultimately only force decides where the boundary will be. If you go into politics deeply and if you compare it with a baboon group or any other animal group, you will see absolute similarities. In politics, man is just like an animal.

Only with religiousness, only with a religious consciousness, do you become human for the first time. Otherwise, everything is animal-like.

With religion, you have to be open to the higher. That is what religious consciousness is: to be open to the higher and closed to the lower. That is why a religious man cannot belong to any country or to any religion. He can belong only to existence, because that is the higher possibility - where there are no boundaries and no politics, where only religion is needed.

If the higher possibility does not happen, politics will become suicidal. Until now we have survived in spite of politics because we had no means of total destruction. We have survived in spite of politics, in spite of continuous wars and of baboon chiefs - you may call them Alexander or Hitler, it makes no difference - fighting for territory, fighting for boundaries, fighting for ego power.

Man has survived in spite of this whole politics of war because there has been no total weapon.

But now that we have total weapons we can destroy the whole world. And because of our animal tendencies, there seems to be no future for us. For the first time, religion has become the only means of survival. Unless many, many consciousnesses become open to the divine source, there is no future for us. We need Buddhas and Jesuses now more than ever.

What can you do? You can do one thing: close the lower opening. It is the only essential thing. But what are the difficulties you are likely to face? Only one difficulty: your old habits.

Old habits become automatic. Someone is angry and the next thing you know, your anger is incited.

It has become so automatic - as if someone had pushed a button and the light went on. It is just like pushing a button. You need not do anything about it, anger comes so automatically.

Psychologists say that our mind is like a robot, an automatic machine - you need not be aware of it. Whatever you have learned you give to your robot and it will perform. Your mind is just like a computer: once you have fed it, it will work. You can rest; you are not needed.

The robot is helpful as far as ordinary life is concerned, because without it you will not be able to do many things; it is a necessary help. But as far as higher things are concerned, the robot becomes a problem.

The robot knows when to be angry. You need not be aware when someone abuses you or looks at you in anger; the robot takes charge. It begins to throw poison into your blood, it makes you ready to jump in and fight. This is mechanical. You have to take charge of the robot - at least as far as the lower openings are concerned. It is good to let the robot drive, but don't allow it to love and to be angry.

Your robot is doing everything for you. It has done the same thing so many times that it has become an expert; you are not needed. When a husband and wife love each other it becomes a robotlike phenomenon; no awareness is needed. The robot goes on repeating things. Don't leave such subtle things to the control of the robot.

The robot is the only difficulty as far as spiritual progress is concerned. Take charge. Be conscious of things which have become automatic. Then, by and by, as you become more and more aware, the lower opening will be closed. And when the higher opens, you need not do anything more: then the higher begins to do everything through you.

You have to do something with the lower. With the higher there is only a surrendering - you are not.

When we say Bhagwan, Buddha, it only means that now Buddha is no longer Gautam Siddhartha - Siddhartha, the person, has dissolved - the higher has taken charge.

Even people who don't believe in God, who say there is no Bhagwan, no God as the creator, still call Mahavira Bhagwan for this reason: because they cannot call him by his old name. The person, Vardhaman, has dissolved completely. Now there is no ego functioning; now it is not Vardhaman who is alive - it is the beyond. Now the beyond has entered, the infinite has come within, and everything happens according to the infinite. Once you are open to the higher, you have dissolved:

you are not, and the higher is. Then the miracle happens.

A Mohammed fighting becomes a problem for us. How can one who has become a higher being fight? But it is not a question of Mohammed's decision. Mohammed is no more; the divine has taken charge. Now it is the higher which is acting, and wherever it leads, Mohammed follows like a shadow. If the higher leads him into war, Mohammed goes willingly.

That is why Krishna is trying to convince Arjuna to surrender. "Surrender to me," he says, "and there will be no problem for you. Then I will take charge - I will fight through you."

But then, you are not. The whole struggle in the GITA between Arjuna and Krishna is due to Arjuna trying to remain himself: he wants to decide for himself whether to fight or not. Closed to the higher, he wants to decide according to the lower. He is resisting opening up to the higher and Krishna is insisting, "Close the lower and surrender to the higher. Then no decision will be needed on your part; then the higher will decide. Surrender to it."

Close the lower first and then, whenever you feel the higher, surrender to the higher. Whenever you feel the higher, have faith in it. Whenever you feel the lower, don't believe it, don't trust it; remain closed to it. Then you yourself will become a bridge to the higher.