Gone, Gone, Gone Beyond!

Teilhard de Chardin divides human evolution into four stages. The first he calls geosphere, the second, biosphere, the third, noosphere, and the fourth, christosphere. These four stages are immensely significant. They have to be understood. Understanding them will help you to understand the climax of the Heart Sutra.

The geosphere. It is the state of consciousness which is absolutely asleep, the state of matter. Matter is consciousness asleep. Matter is not against consciousness, matter is a state of consciousness asleep, not yet awakened. A rock is a sleeping Buddha; one day or other the rock is going to become a Buddha. It may take millions of years - that doesn't matter. The difference will be only of time, and time does not matter much in this eternity. That's why in the East we have been making statues out of stone - that's very symbolic: the rock and the Buddha are bridged through a stone statue. The rock is the lowest and Buddha is the highest.

The stone statue says that even in stone is hidden a Buddha. The stone statue says that Buddha is nothing but the rock come to manifestation; the rock has expressed its whole potential.

This is the first stage: geosphere. It is matter, it is unconsciousness, it is sleep, it is pre-life.

In this state there is no freedom, because freedom enters through consciousness. In this state there is only cause-and-effect. Law is absolute. Not even an accident is possible. Freedom is not known. Freedom enters only as a shadow of consciousness; the more conscious you become, the more free. Hence Buddha is called a mukta - utterly free. The rock is utterly in bondage, fettered from everywhere, from all sides, in all dimensions. The rock is soul in imprisonment, Buddha is the soul on wings. There are no longer any chains, any bondages, any imprisonments; no walls surround Buddha. He has no borders to his being. His being is as vast as existence itself. He is one with the whole.

But in the world of the geosphere, cause-and-effect is the only dhamma, the only law, the only Tao. Science is still confined to the geosphere, because it still goes on thinking in terms of cause-and-effect. Modern science is a very rudimentary science, very primitive, because it cannot conceive of anything more than matter. Its conception is very limited, and hence it is creating more misery than it solves. Its vision is so finite, its vision is so tiny, small, that it cannot reconcile itself with the totality of existence. It is looking from a tiny hole and thinks that's all. Science is still confined to the geosphere. Science is still in bondage, it has not yet got wings. It will get wings only when it starts moving beyond cause-and-effect.

Yes, little sparks are there. The nuclear physicist is entering into the world which is beyond cause-and-effect, crossing the boundary. Hence, the principle of uncertainty is arising, arising with great force. Cause-and-effect is the principle of certainty: you do this and this is bound to happen. You heat the water to a hundred degrees and the water evaporates - that's cause-and-effect. The water has no freedom. It cannot say, "Today I am not in the mood, and I am not going to evaporate at a hundred degrees! I simply say no!" No, it cannot say that; it cannot resist, it cannot fight against the law. It is very law-abiding, very obedient. Some other day, when the water is feeling very happy, it cannot say, "You need not bother too much. I am going to evaporate at fifty degrees. I am going to oblige you." No, that is not possible.

The old physics, the old science, had no glimpse about the principle of uncertainty. The principle of uncertainty means the principle of freedom. Now, little glimpses are happening.

Now they are not so certain as they used to be. Now they see that at the deepest, in matter too there is a certain quality of freedom. It is very difficult to say whether the electron is a particle or a wave: it behaves both ways, sometimes this way, sometimes that way. And there is no way to predict it. It is a quanta. And not only that - its freedom is such that sometimes simultaneously it behaves like a wave and like a particle. That is utterly impossible for the old scientist even to conceive or understand. Aristotle would not be able to understand it, Newton would not be able to understand it. That is impossible to see. That is saying that something is behaving like a line and a dot simultaneously; it is illogical. How can something behave like a dot and a line? Either it is a line or it is a dot.

But now the physicist is starting to have glimpses of the innermost core of matter. In a very, very roundabout way they are stumbling on one of the greatest factors of life: freedom.

But in the geosphere it doesn't exist. It is sushupti.

The word sushupti means absolute sleep - not even a dream stirs. The rocks are not even dreaming, they cannot dream. To dream they will have to be a little more conscious. The rock is simply there. It has no personality, it has no soul - at least not in actuality. It cannot even dream; its sleep is undisturbed. Day, night, year-in, year-out, it goes on sleeping. For millennia it has slept, and for millennia it will sleep. Not even a dream disturbs it.

In yoga we divide consciousness into four stages. They are very very relevant to de Chardin's division. The first is sushupti, deep sleep. The geosphere corresponds to that. The geosphere is more like death than like life. That's why matter appears to be dead. It is not. It is waiting for its life to grow, it is like a seed. It appears dead: it is waiting for its right moment to explode into life. But right now it is dead. There is no mind. Remember, in the last stage also there will be no mind again. A Buddha is in a state of no-mind, and the rock is also in the state of no-mind. Hence the significance of a stone statue: the meeting of two polarities. The rock being in a state of no-mind means the rock is still below mind. Buddha is in a state of no-mind: that means Buddha has gone beyond mind. There is a similarity, just as there is a similarity between a child and a saint. The child is below mind, the saint is beyond mind. The rock will have to go through all the turmoil of life the Buddha has passed through. He has gone and gone and gone, and gone beyond, utterly beyond. But there is a similarity: he again exists in a state of no-mind. He has become so fully conscious that the mind is not needed.

The rock is so unconscious that the mind cannot exist. In the rock the unconscious is absolute, hence the mind is not possible. In the Buddha the consciousness is absolute and the mind is not needed. Let me explain it to you; it is one of the most important things to learn, to understand.

Mind is needed only because you are not really conscious. If you are really conscious, then there is insight, there is no thinking. Then you act out of insight, you don't act out of your mind. Mind is not needed then. When you see a thing as true, that very seeing becomes your action.

For example, you are in a house and the house is on fire. You see it - it is not a thinking.

You simply see it, and you jump out of the house. You don't wait, you don't ponder, you don't brood over it. You don't inquire, you don't consult books, you don't go to ask somebody's advice about what to do.

You are coming from an evening walk, and just on the road you come across a snake. You jump! Before any thinking enters, you jump. It is not out of thinking that you jump, it is out of insight. The great danger is there - the very danger makes you alive, intense, conscious, and you take the jump out of consciousness. It is a no-mind jump.

But these moments are rare in your life because you are not yet ready to live your consciousness intensely and totally. For Buddha, that is his normal way. He lives so totally that the mind is never needed, never consulted.

The first sphere, the geosphere, is a no-mind sphere. There is no self, obviously, because without the mind the self cannot exist. Again, in the fourth, there will be no self - because without the mind how can the self exist? The mind needs to function out of a center, hence it creates the ego, the self. The mind has to keep itself in control, the mind has to keep itself in a certain pattern, order. It has to hold itself. To hold itself it creates a center, because only through the center can it keep control. Without a center it will not be able to keep control. So once the mind comes in, ego is on the way. Sooner or later the mind will need the ego.

Without the ego the mind will not be able to function. Otherwise who will control, who will manage, who will manipulate, who will plan, who will dream, who will project? And who will be there to be referred to as a constant thing? - because the mind goes on changing. One thought after another... it is a procession of thoughts. You will be lost if you don't have any ego: you will not know who you are, and where you are going, and for what.

In the geosphere there is no mind, no self, and no time. It is below time. Time has not entered yet. The rock knows no past, no present, no future. And so is it the case with Buddha.

He also is beyond time. He knows no past, no present, no future. He lives in eternity. In fact that is the real meaning of being in the present. Being in the present does not mean that space which is between past and future. In the dictionary that is the meaning given: the space between past and future is called the present. But that is not the present. What kind of present is this? It is already becoming past; it is going out of existence. This moment, if you call it 'present', the moment you have called it 'present' it is already gone into the past; it is no longer present. And that moment you were calling 'future' - the moment you called it 'future' it has become the present and is moving towards becoming a past. This present is not a real present.

The present that is between past and future is just part of past and future, of the time procession.

The present that I talk about, the now that I talk about, or the Buddha talks about, or Christ when he says, "Don't think of the morrow. See the lilies in the field - they toil not, they spin not, and look how beautiful they are. How incredibly beautiful! Even Solomon was not so beautiful arrayed in all his glory. Look at the lilies of the field..." Those lilies are living in a kind of nowness; they don't know the past, they don't know the future.

The Buddha knows no past, no future, and no present. He knows no division. That's the state of eternity. Then the now is absolutely there. There is only now, and only here, and nothing else. But the rock is also in that state - unconscious, of course.

The second sphere is the biosphere. It means life, pre-consciousness. The first sphere was matter, the second sphere is life: trees, animals, birds. The rock cannot move, the rock has no life anywhere, not visible anywhere. The tree has more life, the animal still more, the bird still more. The tree is rooted in the ground, cannot move much. It moves a little bit, sways, but cannot move much; it has not that much freedom. A little freedom is certainly there, but the animal has more freedom. He can move, he can choose a little more freedom - where to go, what to do. The bird has even a little more freedom - it can fly. This is the sphere called the biosphere, the life sphere. It is pre-consciousness; just rudimentary consciousness is coming into being. The rock was absolutely unconscious. You cannot say the tree is so absolutely unconscious. Yes, it is unconscious, but something of the consciousness is filtering in, a ray of consciousness is coming in. And the animal is a little more conscious.

The first state corresponds with Patanjali's sushupti - deep, deep sleep. The second state corresponds with Patanjali's swabana, the dream state. Consciousness is coming like a dream.

Yes, dogs dream. You can see - you can watch a dog asleep and you will see he is dreaming.

In dream sometimes, he will try to catch flies. And sometimes you will see he is sad, and sometimes you will see he looks happy. Watch a cat, and sometimes she is jumping on a mouse in her dream, and you can see what she is doing in the dream - eating the mouse, cleaning her mustache. You can watch the cat: dream has entered, things are happening in the world of consciousness. Consciousness is surfacing. Cause-effect is still predominant, but not so much as in a rock. A little freedom becomes possible, and hence accidents start happening.

The animal has a little bit of freedom. He can choose a few things, he can be temperamental:

he can be in a good mood and be friendly towards you, he can be in a bad mood and will not be friendly towards you. A little bit of decision has come into his being, but a very little bit, just the beginning. The self is not yet integrated. It is a very loose self, hodgepodge, but it is coming up. The structure is taking shape, the form is arising.

The animal is past-oriented; it lives out of the past. The animal has no idea of the future - it cannot plan for the future, it cannot think ahead. Even if sometimes it thinks ahead, that is very, very fragmentary. For example when the animal is feeling hungry it can think ahead, a few hours ahead - that he will get food. He has to wait. But the animal cannot think about one month, two months, three months into the future. The animal cannot conceive of years; it has no calendar, no time concept. It is past-oriented. Whatsoever has been happening in the past it expects to happen in the future too. Its future is more or less the same as the past; it is a repetition. It is past-dominated. Time is entering through the past, self is entering through the past.

The third sphere is the noosphere; mind, self-consciousness arises. The first was unconsciousness, the second was pre-consciousness, the third is self-consciousness.

Consciousness comes, but there is a calamity with it - the self. It cannot come otherwise; the self is a necessary evil. Consciousness comes with the idea of 'I'. Reflection starts, thinking starts, personality comes into existence. And with mind comes future orientation: man lives in the future, animals live in the past.

Developed societies live in the future, undeveloped societies live in the past. Primitive people still live in the past. Only civilized people live in the future. To live in the future is a higher state than to live in the past. Young people live in the future, old people start living in the past. Young people are more alive than old people. New countries, new cultures, live in the future. For example, America lives in the future, India lives in the past. India goes on carrying five thousand, ten thousand years of past. It is such a burden, it is so difficult to carry it, it is crushing, but one goes on carrying it. It is the heritage, and one is very much proud of the past.

To be proud of the past is simply an uncivilized state. One has to reach into the future, one has to grope into the future. The past is no more, the future is going to be - one has to prepare for it.

You can watch it in many ways. The Indian mind is thrilled only by past events. Still, people go on playing the drama of Rama every year, and they are very thrilled. Thousands of years have passed and they have been playing the same drama again and again and again, and again they will play it. And they are very thrilled. They were not so thrilled when the first man walked on the moon; they were not so thrilled as they were and have always been thrilled by the drama of Rama. They know the story, they have seen it many times, but it is their heritage; they are very proud of it.

You will be surprised to know that there are Hindu mahatmas and Jaina mahatmas in India who have been trying to prove that man has not walked on the moon, that the Americans are deceiving. Why? - because the moon is a god. How can you walk on the moon? And there are people who listen to them and follow them.

A Jaina monk came to see me once in Gujarat and he said, "Support me... and I have got thousands of followers!" And he did have. And the whole thing, the theme of his life, was that the Americans have been deceiving, that those photographs are all photographic tricks that have been produced, that those rocks that have been brought from the moon have been brought from Siberia or from somewhere on the planet. Nobody has ever gone and nobody can ever go to the moon, because in the Jaina shastras, in the Jaina scriptures, it is written that the moon is a god. How can you walk on God? This is past-orientation. This is very deadening.

That's why India cannot grow, it cannot evolve, it cannot progress. It is stuck with the past.

With the noosphere, with mind, self-consciousness, reflection, thought, personality, future-orientation comes into being. And the more you start preparing for the future, the more anxious, of course, you become. So Americans are the most tense people, restless. Indians are very restful, so restful that they don't have any efficiency at all. Do you know that when Indians change an electric bulb, three Indians are needed? - one to hold the bulb and two to turn the ladder. Very restful people, relaxed; they don't suffer from any anxiety, they don't know what anxiety really is.

Anxiety enters with the future, because you have to plan. You cannot just go on repeating the old ways of your life. And when you do something new there is a possibility of a mistake, more possibility of a mistake. The more you try the new, the more anxious you become. That's why, psychologically, America is the most disturbed country, India the most undisturbed.

Animals don't have anxiety. To live in the past is a lower state of mind - of course more comfortable, more convenient. And the Hindu mahatmas go on saying to the world, "Look how peaceful we are. No neurosis exists. Even if we starve, we starve very, very silently. Even if we die, we die very very acceptingly. And you are going mad!"

But remember, progress comes through anxiety. With progress there is anxiety, there is trembling - of going wrong, of doing something wrong, of missing the point. With the past there is no problem: you go on repeating it. It is a settled past, the ways of it are perfectly known. You have traveled on them, your parents have traveled on them, and so on and so forth, backwards to Adam and Eve. Everybody has done it; there is no possibility of going wrong. With something new, anxiety, fear, fear of failure enters.

This third sphere, the noosphere, is the sphere of anxiety, tension. If you have to choose between the second and the third, choose the third, don't choose the second. Although there is no need to choose between the third and the second, you can choose between the third and the fourth; then choose the fourth. Always choose the higher.

Remember, when I condemn the Indian mind, I am not condemning Buddha and I am not condemning Krishna. They have chosen the fourth: they are also at rest, they are also relaxed - but their relaxation comes from dropping time itself, not by living in the past. They are utterly relaxed, they have no anxiety, no neurosis. Their mind is a calm, rippleless lake - but not by choosing the second but by choosing the fourth; not by remaining below mind but by going beyond mind. But that's how things go.

People have seen Buddha in India, and they have seen the silence, and they have seen the benediction of the man, and they have seen the grace, and they have seen that life can be lived in such relaxation... why not live such a life? But they have not made any effort to go to the fourth stage. On the contrary, they relapsed from the third and settled in the second stage. It gives something like Buddha's silence; but it is 'something like', it is not exactly that. It is always easier to settle in the past and become more convenient and comfortable. Buddha has not settled with the past; he has not even settled with the future. He has not settled with time itself - he has dropped time, he has dropped the mind that creates time. He has dropped the ego that creates anxiety.

Indians have chosen to drop the future because that seems to create anxiety: "Future creates anxiety? You can drop the future." Then you will slip back, you will relapse into the previous state. Drop the ego, and then you go beyond.

The third sphere is like what Patanjali calls wakefulness. The first is sleep, the second is dream, the third is wakefulness - your wakefulness of course, not the wakefulness of a Buddha. Your so-called wakefulness: eyes are open but dreams are roaming inside you; eyes are open but sleep is there inside you. You are full of sleep even when you are awake. This is the third state. And it is always helpful; if you become tired of the day, you fall into a dream - it gives you relaxation. Then you fall into deep sleep; it gives you even more relaxation. In the morning you are again fresh. You fall backwards to become restful because that is what you know already, and that is there in your system; you can go into it.

The fourth state has to be created; it is not in your system. It is your potential but you have never been in it before. It is arduous, it is going upstream, uphill. The fourth state is the christosphere - you can call it the Buddhasphere, it means the same thing; you can call it the Krishnasphere, it means the same. With the third state there is kind of freedom, a pseudo-freedom, the freedom known as choice. This has to be understood, it is of great importance.

At the third stage you simply have a pseudo kind of freedom, and that freedom is the freedom of choice. For example, you say, "My country is religiously free." That means you can choose: you can go to a church or to a temple, and the country and its law will not create any trouble for you. You can become a Mohammedan or a Hindu or a Christian - you can choose. 'The country is free' means you can choose your life, where you want to live, what you want to do, what you want to say. The choice of expression, the freedom - that you can say whatsoever you like, that you can do whatsoever you like, that you can choose any religious or political style; you can be a communist, you can be a fascist, you can be a liberal, you can be a democrat, and all that nonsense. You can choose. It is only a pseudo-freedom. Why do I call it pseudo freedom? - because a mind which is full of thoughts cannot be free.

If you have lived for fifty years and your mind has been conditioned by your parents and the teachers and the society, do you think you can choose? You will choose out of your conditioning. How is it going to be a choice? First, you have been conditioned.

It is like when you hypnotize somebody. You can take somebody to Santosh, our hypnotist, and he can hypnotize him and tell him, "Tomorrow morning you will go to the market and you will purchase a certain kind of a cigarette, a certain brand." He can suggest this to that person in deep hypnosis. Tomorrow morning he will get up and he will not have any idea that he is going to purchase a certain brand of cigarettes in the market, because the conditioning has entered into the unconscious, has been put in the unconscious. His conscious mind is unaware. He will not even have any idea of why he is going to the market. But he will find some rationalization: he will say, "Let us go shopping today." Why today? He will say, "This is my freedom. Whenever I want to go I will go. Who are you to prevent me? This is my freedom." And he's unaware, completely unaware that this is not freedom at all. And he will go to the market with the idea that he is free, and he may not even think for a single moment that he's going to purchase a certain brand of cigarettes. Then suddenly he comes across a shop and he says to himself, "Why not purchase a packet of cigarettes? You have not smoked for so long." And he is thinking that he is thinking it! And he goes to the shop and he says, "Give me this brand of cigarettes, 555." Why not Panama? Why not Wills? Why not Berkeley? He will say, "This is my choice! I am free to choose!" And he will purchase 555, and he remains free - at least in his idea. He's not free, he has been conditioned.

You have been conditioned as a Hindu, a Christian, as a Mohammedan, as an Indian, as a Chinese, as a German - how can you be free? You have been conditioned by your parents, by your society, by your neighborhood, by your school, college, university - how can you be free? Your freedom is pseudo. It is bogus - it only gives you the feeling of freedom and makes you happy; otherwise there is no freedom in it. When you go to the church are you going out of your freedom? When you go to the Hindu temple are you going out of your freedom? Look into it and you will find it is not out of freedom; you were born in a Hindu family.

Sometimes it can happen - you were born in a Christian family and still you want to go to a Hindu temple. That too is a conditioning - a different kind. Maybe your parents were too Christian, too much, and you could not absorb that much nonsense. There is a limit. You became antagonistic, you started rebelling against it; you became a reactionary. They used to pull you to the church. And they were powerful, and you were a small child, and you could not do anything; you were helpless. But you were always thinking, "I will show you." The day you became powerful you stopped going to church.

Now this idea, "I will show you," has been implanted by their obsession with the church. It is again hypnosis - in the reverse order, but it is still hypnosis. You are reacting, you are not free. If you want to go to church you will not be able to go, you will find yourself pulling away. You will not go because this is the church your parents used to take you to. You cannot go to this church; you will become a Hindu. You will start doing things which your parents had never wanted you to do just to show them. This is reaction. The first is obedience, the second is disobedience, but there is no freedom in either.

And one thing more: it is not only a question of conditioning that you are not free. When you choose between two things - maybe nobody has conditioned you about those two things; there are millions of things for which you have not been conditioned at all. When you choose between two things your choice is out of confusion, and out of confusion there can be no freedom. You want to marry this girl or that - how are you going to choose? You are confused.

Every day I receive letters from people: "I am torn apart between two women. What should I do? This woman is beautiful bodily, in proportion, has very, very beautiful eyes, a kind of charm; the body is vibrant, radiant, alive - but psychologically she is very ugly. The other woman is psychologically beautiful, but physically ugly. Now what to do?" And you are torn apart.

I have heard about a man who was thinking to marry. He was in love with a woman, but she was very poor. She was beautiful, but she was very poor. And another woman was in love with him who was very rich but very ugly. But one thing was beautiful in her too - her sound, her voice. She was a great singer.

Now he was torn apart. The beautiful woman had not that voice, that singing voice; and he was a lover of music. She had a beautiful face, but form was not so important to him as voice.

And then he was poor, and he wanted a woman who brings much money with her so there would be security; he could go into his music totally, wholeheartedly, so he need not worry about money and things like that. He wanted to devote his whole life to music. That woman had two things: the money and a beautiful voice - but she was utterly ugly. It was very difficult to look at her, her face was repulsive. The poor woman was beautiful, but her voice was ordinary and she had no money. So if he chose that woman he would have to drop his love affair with music. He would have to become a clerk in some stupid office, or a teacher or something. And then he would not be able to devote himself to music. Music needs total devotion, music is a very jealous mistress - it does not allow you to go anywhere, it wants to absorb you utterly, totally. So he was torn part. And finally his love for music won, and he married the ugly woman.

He came home, they went to sleep. The dark nights were okay because he was not looking at the woman, so there was no problem. But in the morning, when the sunrays filtered in and he was awake, and he looked at the face of the woman, it was so repulsive. He shook the woman hard and said, "Sing! Sing immediately! Sing immediately!" - just to protect himself from that ugliness.

People write to me: "We are torn apart between two women, or between two men. What should we do?"

This confusion arises because you are motivated. There is a motivation: money, music, security. There is no love; that's why you are torn apart. If love is there, intense love is there, passionate love is there, then there would be no choice. That passion itself would decide. You would not be choosing, you would not be torn apart. But people are not that intelligent and not that intense. They live very lukewarm, so-so; they don't live intensely; their lives have no fire.

Real freedom happens only when your life becomes so total in each moment that there is no need to decide; that totality decides. Do you follow me? - the totality itself decides. You are not facing two alternatives: whether to marry this woman or that. Your heart is totally with one. There is no motive so you are not divided, and there is no confusion. If you decide out of confusion you will create conflict. Confusion will take you into deeper confusions. Never decide out of confusion.

That's why Krishnamurti goes on talking about choicelessness. Choicelessness is freedom.

You don't choose, you simply become totally intense. You just become absolutely alert, aware, attentive.

For example, you are listening to me: you can listen in a lukewarm way - half asleep, half awake, yawning, thinking a thousand and one things, planning, the last night still hanging around you, hangovers of a thousand and one types - and you are listening too. Then there is a question of whether I am telling the truth or not. If you are passionately listening, if you are utterly herenow, that very passion will decide. In that intensity you will know what truth is. If I say something which is true, it will immediately strike in your heart. Because you will be so intelligent, how can you miss it? Your intelligence will be so alert, how can you miss it? And if there is something which is not true, you will see it immediately. The vision will come, immediate. There will be no decision on your part: "Should I follow this man or not?" That is out of confusion. You have not listened, you have not seen me.

See the point of it! With truth you need not agree or disagree. The truth has to be heard totally, with sensitivity, that's all. And that very sensitivity decides. You see, you immediately feel the truth of it. In that very feeling you have moved into truth - not that you agreed or disagreed; not that you were convinced by me, converted by me. I'm not converting anybody; truth converts. And truth is not a belief, and truth is not an argument; truth is a presence. If you are present you will feel it. If you are not present you will not feel it.

So on the third stage, the noosphere, there is pseudo-freedom. Out of confusion, you decide; hence confusion goes on growing. Confusion brings conflict, because there are always two sides in you - to do this or to do that, to be or not to be. And whatsoever you decide, the other side will remain there and wait for its time to take revenge. Freedom happens only at the fourth stage.

The christosphere is the fourth. With the christosphere, no-mind comes into existence - the no-mind of a Buddha, of a Christ, not of a rock. With the fourth comes consciousness, without a center, with no self in it; just pure consciousness with no border to it, infinite consciousness. Then you can't say "I am conscious." There is no 'I' to it, it is just consciousness. It has no name and no form. It is nothingness, it is emptiness. With this consciousness, thinking is not needed; insight starts functioning, intuition starts functioning.

Intellect lives on tuition. Others have to teach you - that's what tuition is. Intuition nobody has to teach you: it comes from within, it grows out of you, it is a flowering of your being.

This is the quality of consciousness called meditation, intuition, insight, consciousness without a center, timelessness; or you can call it the now, the present. But remember, it is not the present between past and future; it is the present in which past and future have both dissolved.

De Chardin calls it 'the omega point', Buddha calls it nirvana, Jainas call it moksha, Christ calls it 'God the Father'. These are different names. This whole sutra is concerned with the movement from the third to the fourth, from the noosphere to the christosphere, from intellect to intelligence, from self-consciousness to no self-consciousness. The third is like waking, ordinary waking, and the fourth is what Patanjali calls turiya, 'the fourth'. He has not given it any name, and that seems to be very beautiful. Call it 'christosphere', and it looks Christian; call it 'Krishnasphere', and it looks Hindu; call it Buddhasphere, and it looks Buddhist.

Patanjali is very, very pure; he simply calls it 'the fourth'. That contains everything. He has not given it a particular name. For three he gives names because they have forms, and wherever form is, name is relevant. The formless cannot have any name - turiya, 'the fourth'.

This whole Prajnaparamita Sutra is about the movement from the third to the fourth.

Sariputra is at the peak of the third: the noosphere - reflection, thinking, self-consciousness.

He has traveled to the uttermost into the third, he has reached the maximum of it. There is no more to it. He's standing on the boundary line.

THEREFORE, O SARIPUTRA...

Buddha is standing beyond the boundary and calling Sariputra forth: "Come... come... and yet come..." The whole sutra is condensed today in this last sutra. All of the sutras, up to now, were just preparation for this last peak.

TASMAJ JNATAVYAM: PRAJNAPARAMITA MAHA-MANTRO MAHA- VIDYAMANTRO 'NUTTARA-MANTRO' SAMASAMA-MANTRAH...

THEREFORE ONE SHOULD KNOW...

TASMAJ JNATAVYAM...

... Therefore the only thing worth knowing is this. This is the conclusion of this whole beautiful dialogue. The dialogue is between two energies, Buddha and Sariputra, because Sariputra has not said a single word. This is a far superior dialogue than exists between Arjuna and Krishna in the Gita, because Arjuna says something. It is verbal. Arjuna is more like a student than like a disciple. He becomes a disciple only at the very end. When he becomes the disciple, Krishna becomes the master. If the disciple is not a disciple, how can the master be a master? If the disciple is just a student, then the master is just a teacher.

Where the Gita ends, that is the point where this Prajnaparamita Sutra starts. Sariputra is a disciple: utterly silent, has not uttered a single word, has not even asked a question - not verbally. He's a guest, not a questioner. His whole being is asking, not his mind. He's not verbalizing; his existence is a question mark. He's standing before Buddha, his whole being thirsty, on fire, afire. Seeing his state Buddha goes on saying things on his own. Not that the disciple has to ask; the master knows when the disciple needs. The master knows far better than the disciple himself what his need is. The disciple has to wait. Maybe Sariputra has waited for many years, for twenty years almost, for this moment - when the master would see the need, when the master would feel his hunger and thirst, when he would be worthy of receiving a gift from the master. That day has come, that fortunate moment has arrived.

TASMAJ JNATAVYAM...

Buddha says, "Therefore, O Sariputra, this is the only thing that is worth knowing." And now he condenses his whole message into a few small words, into a small sentence, into a mantra, into a maxim, into a formula. This is the greatest mantra, because Buddha has contained in it all that is needed for the whole journey. He has put everything into this small, this very small formula.

THEREFORE... the only thing worth knowing is...

THE PRAJNAPARAMITA AS THE GREAT SPELL, THE SPELL OF GREAT KNOWLEDGE, THE UTMOST SPELL, THE UNEQUALLED SPELL...

Buddha praises it like anything; he goes through all the superlatives possible. He says, "This is the great spell!" Spell, mantra, means a magic formula. What a mantra is has to be understood. A mantra is a very, very special thing to be understood. It is a spell, a magic formula. It implies the phenomenon that whatsoever you have got is not really there, and whatsoever you think you have not got, is there! A magic formula is needed. Your problem is not real! - that's why a magic formula is needed.

For example... a parable:

It happened: A man was very afraid of ghosts. And unfortunately he had to pass the cemetery every day, coming and going. And sometimes he was late, and in the night he had to pass the cemetery. His house was behind the cemetery, and very close to it. And he was so afraid of ghosts that his life was a constant torture. He could not sleep: the whole night he was disturbed by the ghosts. Sometimes they were knocking on the doors, and sometimes moving inside the house, and he could hear their footsteps and their whisperings. Sometimes they would come very close to him and he could even feel their breath. He was in a constant hell.

He went to a master, and the master said, "This is nothing. You have come to the right person." Just like I say to you! "Take this mantra - this is enough, and you need not be worried. You just put this mantra in a small golden box and carry the box always. You can hang it around your neck."

It is just like the locket: it is a mantra; or it is like the magic box that I give to sannyasins who are going far away from me. It is a magic box, it is a mantra.

The master said, "You keep this mantra. You need not even repeat it; it is so potent that it need not be repeated. You just keep it in the box. Keep the box with you and no ghost will ever trouble you." And it really happened: that day he passed through the cemetery almost as if he was going for a morning walk. Never before had it been so easy. He used to run! He used to scream and shout, and he had to sing songs while passing. That day he walked very slowly with the box in his hand, and it really worked! No ghosts. He was even standing in the middle of the cemetery, waiting for somebody to come, and no ghost turned up. It was utter silence.

Then he went home. He put the box underneath his pillow. That night nobody knocked on the door, nobody whispered, nobody came close to him. That was the first time in his whole life that he slept well. It was a great mantra. But now he became too attached to the box. He could not leave it anywhere, the whole day he had to carry it everywhere.

People started asking, "Why do you go on carrying this box?"

And he said, "This is my safety, my security."

He became so afraid that now if some day this box was lost, "I will be in great trouble, and those ghosts will take great revenge!" Eating - and he had his box. And in the toilet - he had his box. Making love to his woman - and he had his box. He was going crazy! And now the fear was too much: if it is stolen, if somebody plays a trick or if he loses it somewhere, or if something happens to the box, then what? "Then for months those ghosts are hankering to create trouble for me! They will jump upon me from everywhere, and they will kill me!"

The master inquired one day about how things were going.

He said, "Everything is good. Everything is perfectly good, but now I am being tortured by my own fears. Again I cannot sleep. The whole night I have to see whether the box is still there. Again and again I have to wake myself up and search for the box. And if sometimes it slips here and there in the bed and I cannot find... it is so frightening! I get so scared!"

The master said, "Now I will give you another mantra. You throw this box."

Then he said, "Then how am I going to protect myself from the ghosts?"

The master said, "They are not there. This box is just nonsense. Those ghosts are not there; that's why this box has worked. Those ghosts are only in your imagination. If they were really there they would not be afraid of the box. It is just your idea, those ghosts were your idea.

Now you have got a better idea, because you have got a master. And the master has given you a box, a magic spell. Now be more understanding: the ghosts are not there, that's why this box has helped. Now there is no need to get so obsessed with the box. Throw it away!"

A mantra is a spell to take away things which are not really there. For example, a mantra will help you to drop the ego. Ego is a ghost, just an idea. That's why I say to you that I am here to take away things which are not really with you, and to give you things which are really there. I am here to give you that which you already have, and I have to take away that which you never had but which you are thinking that you have. Your miseries, your hurts, your ambitions, your jealousies, your fears, greeds, hatreds, attachments - those are all ghosts.

A mantra is just a trick, a strategy to help you drop your ghosts. Once you have dropped those ghosts then the mantra has to be dropped too. One need not carry the mantra anymore the moment he feels the ghosts have disappeared. And then you will laugh at the whole absurdity: the ghosts were false and the mantra was false - but it helped.

It happened: A man got the idea in a dream that a snake had entered into his mouth, and that it was there in his stomach. And he would feel the movement of the snake. You know such snakes; everybody knows. And he became very disturbed. He went to the doctors and was X-rayed, but... He would say, "It is there, even if the X-ray is not showing it. It doesn't matter. I am suffering, my suffering is real."

Then he went to a Sufi master. Somebody said, "You go to a Sufi master. Only a master can help about this. Doctors won't be of much help. They treat real diseases; masters treat unreal diseases. You go to a master."

So he went, and the master said, "Right, I will do something. Tomorrow morning it will come out."

The next morning the master arranged it: he found a snake, gave it to the man's wife and said, "Make arrangements so when the man wakes up in the morning he finds the snake crawling out of the bed."

And the man shrieked, and he screamed and jumped. And he said, "Here! Here it is! That snake! And those foolish doctors: they were saying that there is no snake, nothing. And here it is!" But since that day the problem disappeared. This was a mantra. The problem was not really actual.

All your problems are your creations. A mantra is a strategy to take away your illusions, and when the illusions are taken away, that which remains behind is the truth. The mantra only takes the false. It cannot give you the real, it can only take the false. But that's enough.

Once the false is taken, once the false is understood as false, the truth arises. And truth liberates. Truth is liberation.

Buddha says:

... THE PRAJNAPARAMITA, AS THE GREAT SPELL, THE SPELL OF GREAT KNOWLEDGE, THE UTMOST SPELL, THE UNEQUALLED SPELL - SARVA-DUHKHA PRASAMANAH - ALLAYER OF ALL SUFFERING.

Buddha says this small mantra is so potential, it is enough for all your suffering. Just this mantra will do, will take you to the farther shore.

... SATYAM AMITHYATVAT IN TRUTH - FOR WHAT COULD GO WRONG?

Buddha says it will only show you the false as the false. And when you know the truth, then what can go wrong? Then nothing can go wrong - SATYAM AMITHYATVAT.

This word amithya comes from a root mithya. Mithya means false, amithya means not false. The word mithya exists in the English word 'myth'. Myth means the false. Myth comes from the same root, mithya. A myth is that which appears but is not real.

In another English word, 'miss', as in 'to miss', also exists the same root, mithya.

Misunderstanding - that 'mis' comes from mithya. Or when we say, "He missed," that 'to miss' also comes from mithya.

Truth is that which we go on missing. We go on missing because we go on clinging with the false. We miss the truth because we cling to the false. If we drop the false there is no missing at all. And that is the root meaning of the word sin too. 'Sin' means to miss, to miss the target. Whenever you cling to the false you commit a sin, because clinging to it, you miss the truth.

You cling to the idea of God and that is false. All ideas are false. You cling to a certain idea of God and that is your barrier. Buddha says this mantra will take all your barriers; it will give you only nothingness. In nothingness, truth arises, because there is nothing to obstruct.

'Nothingness' means nothing to obstruct anymore - all false ideas have been dropped on the way. You are just empty, you are just receptive, open; you come nude, naked, empty, to truth - that is the only way to come to it. Then nothing can go wrong.

... PRAJNAPARAMITAYAM UKTO MANTRAH - BY THE PRAJNAPARAMITA HAS THIS SPELL BEEN DELIVERED.

And Buddha says, "I have given the last, the ultimate in it. There is no more to it, and there is no more possibility to improve upon it."

And I also say to you: There is no more possibility to improve upon it. 'Nothing' is the greatest mantra. If you can enter into nothingness, then nothing else is needed. And that is the whole message of the Prajnaparamita Sutra.

TADYATHA... IT RUNS LIKE THIS.

Now Buddha condenses the whole scripture, the whole dialogue, the whole message into a few words.

TADYATHA... IT RUNS LIKE THIS:

GATE GATE PARAGATE PARASAMGATE BODHI SVAHA:

GONE, GONE, GONE BEYOND, GONE ALTOGETHER BEYOND.

O, WHAT AN AWAKENING, ALL HAIL!

Buddha uses 'gone' four times. These are the four things that he uses 'gone' for: the geosphere, the biosphere, the noosphere, the christosphere. 'Gone' - gone from matter, gone from the body, gone from the visible, the tangible. He again uses 'gone' a second time - gone from life, the so-called wheel of life and death. 'Gone beyond', the third time he uses 'gone' - now gone beyond mind, thought, thinking, self, ego. 'Gone altogether beyond' - now he uses it a fourth time... even gone beyond the beyond, the christosphere. Now he has entered into the uncreated.

Life has moved a full circle. This is the omega point, and this is the alpha too. This is the symbol you must have seen in many books, in many temples, in old monasteries - the symbol of the snake holding its own tail in its mouth.

GONE, GONE, GONE BEYOND, GONE ALTOGETHER...

You have come back home.

O, WHAT AN AWAKENING!

What satori! What samadhi! This is awakening, the buddhahood...

ALL-HAIL! Alleluia!

You can ask Aneeta: she goes on singing 'Alleluia'. This is the alleluia. This is the state of alleluia: when all is gone, when all has disappeared and only pure nothingness is left behind.

This is the benediction - alleluia! This is the ecstasy everybody is searching for. Rightly or wrongly, but everybody is searching for this ecstasy.

You are a Buddha, and you are not yet a Buddha: that's the dilemma, that's the paradox.

You are meant to be a Buddha but you are missing. This sutra bridges you, this sutra helps you to become that which you are destined to become. This sutra helps you to fulfill your being.

Remember, this sutra is not just to be repeated as it has been done down the centuries in China, Korea, Thailand, Japan, Ceylon. They go on repeating: gate gate paragate parasamgate bodhi svaha. That repetition is not going to help.

This mantra is not just to be repeated. It has to be understood, it has to become your being.

Go on moving beyond every name and form, go on moving beyond every identity, go on moving away from every limitation. Go on becoming bigger and bigger, huge, enormous.

Even the sky is not your limit. Go on...

Gate gate paragate parasamgate bodhi svaha.

Svaha is the expression of the ultimate ecstasy. It does not mean anything; it is just exactly like alleluia. It is a great exclamation of joy. The benediction has happened - you are fulfilled, utterly fulfilled. But this sutra is not just to be repeated, remember. Buddha has condensed it into few words so that you can remember it. In these few words he has put the whole message, his whole life's message.

You are a Buddha, and unless you recognize it as that, you will suffer. This sutra declares you to be a Buddha. That's why I started these discourses by saluting the Buddha in you. I declare you to be Buddhas! Recognize it!

The word recognition is beautiful. It means: just turn back and look. Respect yourself. The word respect is also good: it means respect, look again. That's what Jesus means when he says repent. The original Aramaic word means return; it has nothing to do with Christian repentance. Repent means return - a hundred-and-eighty-degree turn. Patanjali calls it pratiyahar - go in, withdraw inwards. And Mahavira calls it pratikrama - don't go out, come in, come home.

The gap between the unreal you and the real you is obviously a false gap, because you are the real you all the time - just dreaming, thinking that you are somebody else. Drop that. Just look at who you are. And don't be deceived by beliefs and ideologies and scriptures and knowledge. Drop all! Drop it unconditionally! Unload the whole furniture that you are carrying in your being. Just make an empty room there, and that empty room will reveal the truth to you. In that recognition, svaha, alleluia! Great ecstasy bursts forth in song, in dance, in silence, in creativity.

One never knows what is going to happen. How that ecstasy will be expressed by you, one never knows; everybody is going to express it in his own way - Jesus in his way, Buddha in his, Meera in hers. Everybody expresses it in his own way. Somebody becomes utterly silent - silence is his song. Somebody starts singing - a Meera, a Chaitanya - singing is their silence. Somebody dances - not knowing how to say it, goes into a crazy dance; that's his way. Somebody may paint, somebody may compose music, somebody may sculpt, or somebody will do something else. There are going to be as many expressions as there are people. So never imitate; just watch for your own expression to take possession of you. Let your svaha, your alleluia, be yours, authentically yours. And that happens when you are a nothingness.

Nothingness is the taste of this whole sutra. Become nothing and you will be all. Only the losers can be the winners in this game. Lose all and you will have all. Cling, possess, and you will lose all.

Buddha is known as mantra adipatti, bestower of spells; master of spells, mahaguru - but not in the sense that the word has fallen and become a dirty thing. In modern times guru has become a four letter dirty word - not in that sense. Krishnamurti says that he's allergic to gurus. It is true.

Buddha is really a mahaguru. The word guru means heavy with heaven, heavy with joy, with ecstasy, heavy with svaha; heavy like a cloud full of rain, ready to shower on anybody who is thirsty, ready to share. Guru means heavy, heavy with heaven.

Guru also means one who destroys the darkness of others. I'm not talking about so-called gurus who go on roaming around the world. They don't destroy your darkness; they impose their darkness upon you, they impose their ignorance upon you. And these gurus are mushrooming like anything. You can find them everywhere: one Muktananda mushrooming here, another Maharishi Mahesh Yogi mushrooming there - they are mushrooming everywhere.

A guru is one who makes you free. A guru is one who delivers you freedom. A guru is one who liberates you. Buddha is one of the mahagurus. His message is the greatest that has ever been delivered to man. And this sutra is one of the greatest expressions of Buddha. He has talked for forty-two years, and he has said many things, but nothing compared to this. This is unique. You are fortunate that you have been here to listen to it and to meditate upon it. Now be even more fortunate - become it.

Enough for today.