Life and death

Date Unknown

WHEREVER I LOOK I SEE THE THRILL OF LIFE, the pulse of life. Everything is throbbing with life. Even the tiniest atom vibrates with the love of life. All around you the dance of life goes on; everywhere the symphony of existence is playing. Even if you can neither see it nor hear it, the delightful, exhilarating rhythm of life is there!

Isn't this life we see around us God himself? Any God that is aloof from life, that is apart from life, is dead, unreal. Life is the only truth.

God does not indulge himself in the play of creation sitting somewhere far off in the distance. Life is one perpetual process of evolution, and this continuing creation of life is God himself.

EVEN FOR LIFE'S LONGEST JOURNEY you only need the courage to take one step. No one can take more than one step at a time. Even a journey of thousands and thousands of miles begins with one step and ends with one step.

LIFE IS HERE, NOW, TODAY. Tomorrow is far off. Tomorrow is infinitely far away. And that is why it never comes. Live today. The man who really lives always lives today. Today is life and tomorrow is death. If you want to live, then live today - but if you only want to die, then you will find tomorrow very useful.

YOU ONLY LIVE LIFE WHEN YOU TOUCH YOUR ULTIMATE DEPTHS. Otherwise, you simply exist. The difference between just existing and living life is as great as the difference between living and dying.

I WISH EVERYONE WOULD LIVE AS IF THE EYES OF THE WORLD WERE UPON HIM. Whether we know it or not, nothing is hidden, no matter how deep it may be. No man can ever really be aloof or apart from the whole. The echo of everything that arises in him reaches everyone else. His life is part and parcel of the life that flows around him.

I LOVE BEAUTY - THE BEAUTY THAT LIES DEEP BENEATH THE BODY. The body, with its beautiful thoughts and its beautiful sensations, is only the protective frontier, but there is also the deep and perfect beauty of inner emptiness, free of thought, free of sensation. So do not stop at the body. Stopping is death. Wade through the deep water. You will only find pebbles and shells on the shore. You have to go far out to sea to dive for pearls.

THE ATTAINMENT OF KNOWLEDGE is not an end to the mystery of life. In fact, it is only when one has acquired knowledge that the true mystery is revealed. And then, only mystery remains.

Knowledge is the understanding of mystery. The acceptance of mystery, the communion with mystery; knowledge is the bliss of a life with mystery, of a life in mystery, of a life through mystery.

When the self has dissolved and only mystery remains you have entered into the sacred precincts of the universal soul. There is no greater mystery than this dissolution of the self, because when the individual self disappears the pure existence of the absolute self is manifest in its indescribable glory and total grandeur.

WHAT SHOULD I SAY TO YOU TODAY? Should I talk to you about life? Perhaps I will. Perhaps it would be appropriate, because although you are alive you have no relation with life whatsoever.

This may appear to be a contradictory statement, but not only is it possible to say this to you, this is really the way things are. You are alive but you have forgotten about life. Perhaps you are too involved in living to remember life.

Whenever I look at a tree I wonder if it is aware of its roots. But even man knows nothing of his roots.

And unless he does, unless a man possesses this knowledge, how can he have any real relation to life? Life exists in roots, in invisible roots; the essence of the visible is rooted in the invisible. In every living thing, the source of the visible is in the invisible. And unless you are aware of this you will go through your life without any relation to its true essence whatsoever.

To be related to life the simple fact that you have been born is not enough. Birth is nothing more than a platform, a stage upon which the experience of life that is latent within you can unfold. Birth is only the beginning. But there are many, many people who stop here, who never progress beyond the starting point. They mistake it for the target itself. This is what generally happens.

There are only very few people who are able to distinguish the difference between the starting point and the finish line. Others, perhaps may be able to differentiate between the two but do not live their lives accordingly. Their differentiation is purely intellectual, and it must be remembered that intellectual perception is not pure perception at all. It is only when perception comes out of a deeper understanding, out of a great sensitivity to life that it is fruitful. This understanding comes from an intense feeling for life and from the depths of one's heart. It transforms a man; it renews him.

The intellect labors under the illusion it possesses knowledge, but this so-called knowledge is nothing more than the borrowed thoughts of others. Intellectual perception is basically quite superficial. It is like the waves that ride the ocean - fickle, changeable, without stability or endurance.

They come and they go, but in the depths the ocean is unchanged, unaffected by them. The intellect is to understanding as waves are to the ocean.

Awareness of the self, awareness of the difference between being born and living life, must come form the heart rather than from the intellect. Birth is simply the beginning; it is not the be-all, not the end-all. And the man who mistakes birth for life will automatically accept death as the culmination point of life as well. This is an illusion, just a natural outgrowth of having accepted the initial misconception. And those who misunderstand birth will also be afraid of death.

What we know as life is really a living death. The man who is not aware that he is separate from his body is not alive in the real sense of the word. The man who does not know that he existed before the birth of his body and will exist after its death is not alive at all. The phenomenon of life is an unbroken one, yet such a man will not even be able to experience fully the life that is his between this birth and this death.

Birth is an external event; life is inner. Birth is the world; life is God. Birth is only the gateway to life.

But unless a man makes an effort to realize this, birth, for him, becomes the gateway to death and nothing more. Death is just a development of birth.

Only consciousness and awareness lead to life. This is what sadhana is; this is what the journey to self-realization is. This is what religion is.

I look at old people and I look at young people. From the standpoint of birth and death there is a difference between them, but as far as life is concerned there is none whatsoever. Life is outside the realm of time. Birth and death occur within time and the advancement of age happens within time, but they are not developments of life itself. Age and life are two totally different things.

To attain to life it is necessary to move outside time. Do you know what time is? Time is change. In the material world nothing is static. Not one single atom in the physical world is stable. Only the self is stable. There is something in the self that is beyond change. And the existence of the self is also beyond time. Entering into this unchanging existence is awakening to life.

Search for life. If you don't, death will claim you. Every moment it comes nearer and nearer. After birth, each moment brings you closer to death's victory. And no matter what you do, unless you decide to live a real life this victory is already decided. Property, power, fame - all these count for nothing in the wake of death's triumph. The realization of the existence of the self is the only thing that is outside death, because the self alone exists outside time. Living in the realm of time is rushing towards death.

I see everyone running towards the jaws of death. Stop and think about the direction you are moving in. Someone dies every day and yet each of you still remains a disinterested spectator. If you were aware of the truth you would recognize your own death in his. The same thing is going to happen to you. Really, it is already happening. What you have mistake for life is actually a gradual death. But the process of dying is so slow that you do not recognize it until your face to face with it.

A subtle insight is required to see this slow motion advance of death and to recognize the situation of the self in the scheme of things. And the desire to attain to life is born only when a man realized the precarious position his self is in. When he sees the self being enveloped by the fires of death he is like a man who wants to escape from a burning house. Then he develops an intense and acute thirst to live. This wish to live is the greatest fortune that can befall a man because this desire leads to his penetration of the deeper layers of life.

Do you have this desire in you? Does your heart want to reach the unknown, to move beyond the known? If not, then know well that your eyes are closed and that your blindness will lead you nowhere but into the hands of death.

Awaken while there is still time. Open your eyes. Look. Death is all around you. But in your self, outside the world and outside time, there is nectar to be found. The man who reaches to that divine nectar will not encounter death anywhere. To him death is just an illusion and only life is real.

Christ said. "Man cannot live by bread alone." He spoke truly; bread is not enough. This does not mean that a man is able to live without bread. He cannot. But he cannot live on bread and on nothing else. It is impossible to live without bread, but to live solely on bread is equally impossible.

Bread is to man as roots are to plants. The roots do not exist for themselves; they are for producing fruit, for creating flowers. If fruit and flowers do not grow then the existence of the roots has been in vain. And although fruit and flowers cannot be produced without the roots, the fruit and the flowers are not produced for the roots. The lowly is needed to create the lofty. The lowly serves its purpose through the very evolution that creates the higher form.

Man needs bread in order that he may live and satisfy his hunger for truth, for the beauty of life.

Bread is needed to satisfy hungers even greater than the hunger for bread. But if there is no greater hunger the bread has existed in vain. Bread does not exist for bread alone.

On its own it has no value. Its purpose is served when it transcends its own existence. Its purpose lies in those values of life that are far above and beyond it.

A sadhu used to come to see me and would always tell me he was thinking about immortality. I used to tell him it was just not possible to think about immortality, because whatsoever falls within the sphere of thinking simply cannot be immortal. Thought is mortal. How can it have any contact with immortality. I used to tell him he would be better off to think about mortality, to search for death and to come to know it.

Facing death squarely is what leads the soul to immortality. But we are frightened of death; we prefer to ponder immortality. Doesn't all this thinking and talk about immortality come out of our fear of death: And how can a mind that is terrified of death succeed in attaining immortality?

If the truth be known, there is no fear of death - death is in fear. Death is unknown and unfamiliar, and I find it difficult to understand where the fear comes from. You need to be familiar with something to be afraid of it. It is not possible to fear the unknown, but fear of losing the known, of losing the familiar is possible. Fear of death is not really fearing death, it is fearing the loss of what you know as life. And when this fear solidifies it is transformed into death.

That is why I advised the SADHU to search for death, why I tell everyone the same thing. And this is the only quest that bears fruit. At the end of that search it is not death that is achieved, but immortality itself.

WHY IS THERE SO MUCH MISERY IN MAN'S LIFE? It is because man's life is a medley of notes, but there is no noteless medley. It is because there is always the Pandemonium of thoughts, but never any thoughtless silence. It is because there is the constant turmoil of emotions but no simple affection, free of fantasies. It is because man is always racing hither and thither in countless directions, but there is never any pause with no wish to go anywhere at all. It is because his life is an open market place of activity, but there is never any isolation, never any being alone, never any inactivity. And lastly, it is because his ego is always predominant and his soul is completely suppressed.

LEARN HOW TO SURRENDER YOURSELF TO TRUTH. Unless you surrender yourself the truth cannot be realized. The seed has to crumble and disintegrate before it can become a seedling, green and full of life. Learn to die if you want to live.

I HAD A DREAM IN WHICH I SAW SOME OF MY DEAD ACQUAINTANCES ONCE AGAIN. They were all wearing the same clothes they had died in, they were all obsessed with the same thoughts, opinions and prejudices with which they had died. Since they had died everything in life had changed, but they had not changed one bit. I mentioned this to them and they laughed. "The dead never change," they said. "We remain fixed in the world of the dead. Our principles are eternal.

It is only life that is affected by and afflicted with the disease of change."

"There are people who never change in life as well," I said. "Their principles are also eternal and they shut their eyes to change as well. But aren't there at least a few here who change too?'

In one voice they answered, "No. No. No. How can that happen here? No one is alive here. Such a thing may happen in life because many people are already dead long before they actually die."

DID I HEAR YOU SAY LIFE IS MISERABLE? No, my friend, life is only what you make it. As long as you do not make it blissful, life will never be blissful for you. Life is an opportunity; it is a blank check. You fill it in by living it; you make it full by living fully. Life is not handed to man. He builds his life by living it day by day. Life is a self-creation. No man is responsible for anyone but himself.

WE WERE SEATED BESIDE A MOUNTAIN STREAM and just below us was a pool in which fish swam about. There was a sandbar nearby, full of shells and conches. I took some of these in my hand and said to those with me, "Look. There are many unborn creatures in these shells. When they are strong enough to break out of these shells they will be born. Are there not similar unborn creatures within us. Are we not covered with hard coatings, just like these shells? Aren't our egoistic selves just like these shells? And can't we too give birth to that unborn existence within us by breaking out of the shell of the ego?

"It is the "I" that is against the birth of that new life," I said, "and it knows only too well how to protect itself. It protects itself by worldly possessions, by status, position and fame. And in more subtle forms it protects itself by religion, society, ideals, values and the like. It will do anything to survive, to flourish and prosper. But remember, the stronger it grows the less chance that yet-unborn life hidden inside has.

"The ruthlessness and hardness of the ego can kill the unborn soul that is there, in the womb of your self. The ego has to die for the soul to be born."

LIFE IS FRUSTRATION BECAUSE WE OURSELVES HAVE IMPRISONED IT WITHIN THE EGO.

If life is liberated from the four walls of the ego it transforms itself into bliss. Life does not exist in "I"; nor does it exist in "you". It is a never ending current that flows between the two.

One's life is a conversation with the whole. But we have turned it into a debate. And that is why there is so much misery, so much affliction; that is why there is anxiety and death. All of this is the result of imprisoning our consciousness within the confines of the ego. Because of this, life has been retarded. It has been rendered insensitive, deathlike, without ups or downs. It has become our bondage, our prison.

We are like the germinating sprout trapped within the hard casing of the seed. As soon as the outer shell breaks open the sprout stirs and begins its upward journey from its dark underground prison towards the sun. The voyage for which it exists begins.

Man is the sprout that is imprisoned within the shell of the ego. This shell is very hard to break through; it affords us the solace of security. But instead of trying to crack it open we go on strengthening it, nourishing it. And the stronger and more solid it becomes the more the inner sprout becomes weak and lifeless. So under the illusion we are making our life safer, more secure, we are losing life itself.

I have heard about an emperor who, in his desire to protect himself, built a palace that had no doors.

He installed himself inside and had the passage he used to enter sealed off. Hidden within, he was completely safe from any enemy; in his doorless palace he was totally secure. But the moment he was completely closed within he realized that it offered whim no security at all, but certain death.

The palace itself became his tomb.

Out of his concern for his security a man turns his ego into a house without doors. And it eventually becomes his own tomb as well.

Life is not separating oneself from existence, life is merging with it. This is why I tell you that if you want to realize life, that if you aspire to the bliss of freedom you have to drop this madness for security. That alone is the basis of the vicious circle that, under the pretence of protecting life, eventually kills it. Life is insecure. Life only exists in insecurity. Security is sluggishness. And what more can security bring you than death?

The man who is ready to live in insecurity can break through the shell of egoism, and then the sprout that is his life can make its way to God.

LIFE LEADS US INTO DEEP WATERS - not to drown us, but to cleanse us. But those who are frightened of being drowned simply sink in life's ocean in vain. Who has ever drowned in life? I know of no one at all. It is those who huddle on the shore in fear who drown.

TO CREATE BEAUTY YOU HAVE TO LOSE YOURSELF IN BEAUTY, YOU HAVE TO BECOME ONE WITH BEAUTY. Only then can beauty be known. If you heard an artist say. "I don't know beauty but I create it," you would say he was mad. Is this not true in regard to good conduct as well?

How can you live a life of truth, how can you practice truth without knowing it, without becoming one with truth? Our actions only reflect what goes on in our consciousness. Isn't that so? If an artist who does not know beauty but dreams of painting beauty is considered mad, then that person who does not know truth but tries to put is into practice in his life is equally mad.

The creation of beauty is the outcome of the experience of beauty and a truthful life is an outgrowth of the experience of truth. Living a truthful life is not a stairway to the experience of truth, a truthful life is the manifestation of the experience of truth. A so-called life of truth that a man leads without the actual experience of truth is not only untrue, it is worse than untrue because it creates a false idea of truth, it allows him a fantasy of truth. And that is fatal.

WHAT DO YOU LIVE FOR? If you can tell me this I will know what you are all about. Your life is determined by the direction in which you move. Your life is your own creation. You build your own life; what you build is you. You are the stone, the sculptor and the chisel. No art is as complex as the art of life, and it is to escape from the work and discipline necessary to mold it that some people deny life completely. Their lives are like rocks, blindly shaped by the shocks and tremors and steady erosion of the current of life. And they never feel anything at all. This is a life of misery; this is a life of affliction and pain. This is a living death.

I WAS STAYING WITH SOME FRIENDS AND THEIR CHILDREN WERE GETTING READY TO TAKE PART IN A RACE. They asked me, "Babaji, what it the secret of winning a race?" "Courage," I answered. And then I quickly added, "Be sure to remember this even in life's race. In the race of life there is not greater secret than courage."

ONCE I STAYED IN A HOUSE THAT HAD NO WINDOWS. It was quite an old building. I said to the landlord, "Your house is like man's mind. There are no windows in it either. You have made no arrangements for fresh air, for the light of the open sky."

He replied, "This building is very old."

I said, "Man's mind is pretty old too."

Being old seems to mean the end of openness to life. Being closed is death. It is a preparation for being entombed forever. But couldn't you just tear down a wall and let the light in? Is what is within the walls not supposed to be in touch with what is outside them? Are the walls so precious that it is too costly to pull them down to reach the sky? The person who is encircled by walls will never know the real panorama of life.

What a terrible fate, being cut off from the sky by these old walls! How self-destructive it is, being isolated from the soul by this old mind!

THE PHYSICAL BODY GROWS OLD NATURALLY, but be careful your mind does not grow old along with it. It is a sure sign that you have successfully completed life's pilgrimage if your mind has kept the perfect simplicity of a newborn child when your body has arrived at the threshold of death.

DO NOT SEEK NIRVANA AS OPPOSED TO LIFE. Rather, make life itself nirvana. This is what those who know do. Do not strive for salvation but let all your actions bring salvation to you. I assure you this is possible. I speak from my own experience. The day this becomes possible for you, your life will become as rich as the most beautiful flower - and as filled with fragrance.

LIFE IS NOT A PROBLEM to be solved from outside. The solution to life is only found by living it.

WHAT A WONDROUS WORLD THIS IS! Those who appear to live are not alive at all. A life that is entangled in dreams of passion is not a real life at all. I also see that those they say are dead are not dead at all. The soul knows no death.

WHAT DO MY EYES TELL ME? They tell me that all men are asleep, whether it is night or whether it is day. Those who are presumed to be awake are really asleep. For a real awakening, man's inner consciousness must be activated. Only then will man's sleep, both physical and spiritual, come to an end.

Consciousness is life; sleep is a form of death. Consciousness is the light of awareness that fills the heart; sleep is the darkness that is ridden with misery, pain and remorse. If this is how you feel, know well that you are in darkness. But you must understand that you are asleep, you must understand this state before you can awaken from it. To appreciate the desire for freedom you must first experience imprisonment.

I ask everyone to look inside, to be introspective. If you have any inclination whatsoever to escape form your inner mind, from your inner feelings, it is just an attempt to flee from the darkness you have encountered there. I meet people every day and have the opportunity to study many of them at length. One thing is common to them all, and that is suffering. Everyone is caught in a net of deep misery, entangled in a web of intense anxiety. Everyone seems to be choked by a sense of suffocation. Is it the same with you? Do you have the same feeling of claustrophobia as well?

Everywhere I look I see a lack of purpose; there is an atmosphere of boredom and of frustration all around. Is this what life is about? Are you satisfied with this? Have you not had enough yet? Is this life? or is this death?

Life is a totally different proposition altogether. It is a whole other experience - one you are not familiar with at all. I tell you this for a reason, because I too once mistook this so-called life for the real thing. This is a natural mistake, because unless your are aware that there is an alternative you will accept what you know as life. This is not a conscious mistake, it is an error of ignorance.

But the tiniest thought about the self, the most minute attention to one's inner being can eradicate this ignorance. You should not accept whatsoever is presented to you, for this is blind, unconscious reacting. Thought is conscious, and so it can destroy all illusions.

Thought is diametrically opposed to belief, which is completely unconscious. So to attain to a life that is real it is necessary to follow the path of thinking, not the cul de sac of belief. Belief is blind acceptance; thought is alert investigation. Those who accept everything blindly have no incentive whatsoever to move ahead. The greatest hurdle on the path to knowledge is this tendency to believe. Belief is the only real barrier that stands in the way of freedom of thought. The chains of belief impede progress. Do not get caught in this trap. You will only attain to a life that is authentic through your own investigation.

Do not be satisfied with life as it is. It is not real. It has no meaning, no validity. It is only an episode, just a part of the overall evolution of life.

I have heard a story of an old man who wanted to choose an heir before this death, and so he decided to put his two sons to a test. He gave each of them some wheat seeds, said he would be away for a while on a pilgrimage and told them to look after the seeds carefully. The first son stored the seeds is in an underground cellar; the second son planted them. Some years later, when the old man returned, he found that the seeds he had given the first son had rotted away while the second son's seeds had increased a thousandfold.

Life is also like this. Life is like a seed; its potential is latent, hidden within it. Only the man who realizes this potential can become the master of his inner being.

Each of us has the opportunity to grow. And reaching the greatest level of attainment possible, reaching the highest peak there is, is becoming real.

Have you ever noticed flowers? One morning, in a garden full of beautiful flowers, I said to some friends who were with me, "These flowers are so lovely, so healthy and fragrant, because they have become what they were meant to be." The flowers had attained their intrinsic perfection; their potential had been fulfilled.

This is possible for man too.

Life is like a flute - hollow and empty within, but possessing infinite slumbering possibilities for beautiful music. The music that pours from the flute depends on how you play it.

DO NOT CENTER YOUR LIFE AROUND THE FUTURE. Life exists here, in the now. The future is hidden in the present, and the man who loses today loses all his tomorrows. Aren't all tomorrow's flowers hidden in the seeds you plant today?

A FRIEND DIED AT A VERY YOUNG AGE. He was just a youth, but his life had been pure and beautiful, quiet and harmonious. Someone remarked, "What a tragic shame! Dying at such a young age!"

I said, "No, do not say this. It is quite possible that a long life may not be a worthwhile one at all, but a life that has been pure is profound and long and vast. In terms of hours and minutes you may not be able to agree, but this simply proves the inefficiency and limitations of our yardsticks.

I DIE EVERY DAY. In fact, I die every moment. This is the secret of life, of a long life. The man who carries the weight of the past dies from bearing the burden of the dead.

HAVE YOU EVER SEEN GOOD MEN DYING or bad men living? Just as bad men never truly live, good men never really die.

HAVEN'T YOU INVENTED GOD because the fear of death perplexes you so? Nothing is more untrue than a concept of God based on fear.

LIGHT TRAVELS IN A STRAIGHT LINE. Truth and religion also travel in straight lines. If your life does not travel in a straight line then be aware your life is traveling the path of darkness, evil and untruth.

WHERE DOES THIS MAD RACE AFTER WEALTH, FAME, KNOWLEDGE OR RENUNCIATION TAKE A MAN? Where does the headlong rush of the ambitious mind lead? When I think about this I am reminded of a dream I have never been able to forget.

In this dream, which came to me a number of times, there was a long ladder with its upper rungs completely lost in the clouds. It seemed to be a ladder that led to the sky. Urged by an irrepressible desire to reach the sky, I began to climb. But it was very difficult; each rung required great effort.

My breathing grew strained and perspiration poured from my forehead. But my desire to reach the sky was so great that I went on climbing. Soon there was a feeling of suffocation and it seemed as if my heart would give out. But all at once I realized that I was not the only climber, that mine was not the only ladder. There was an infinite number of ladders and endless numbers of people were climbing upwards. I experienced a surge of great rivalry and I began to climb even faster. This mad race, this using of all our strength to keep climbing continued until it eventually faded into the end of the dream.

That is always the same.

I finally reached the last rung. There is no rung beyond, and turning around, I see that there is no ladder either. And then the fall, the descent from that great height begins. It is even more painful that the climb. Death seems inevitable. And sure enough, it is my death. And the shock of that death invariably awakens me.

But that dream shows me a great truth, and since the first time I have had it life has seemed nothing more to me than an extension of that dream. In every dream is there not some kind of vision of the mad rush in which mankind is involved? Doesn't every mad scramble end in death? But then, ask yourself what "death" means. Doesn't it just mean there is no higher rung on the ladder? Death is the end of rushing. It is an end to the future; it is the impossibility of any further possibilities. The rushing, racing mind leads a man to great heights, and what is death but the fall from those heights?

Whenever there is a mad race of any kind, death invariably steps in. It makes no difference whether the goal is wealth or religion or enjoyment or renunciation. Wherever there is rushing there is dreaming, but where there is no rushing, racing mind, there is truth. And there is life too - the life that has no death.

THERE WAS A TIME WHEN DEATH WAS STALKING ME. Because I was afraid it was always lying in ambush for me. But the day I stepped forward to embrace it, it was not there at all. Death is in the fear of death; accepting the fact of death is salvation from its jaws. Fear is death; fearlessness is freedom from death. Like a shadow, death pursues those who flee it, but if you turn and face it, it vanishes. To welcome death before it comes to you is to escape from death forever.

IT IS NOT UP TO ME HOW I WILL DIE. It is not left to we to choose. But how I live is certainly my decision. Death is the completion of life and, precisely for that reason, by choosing how to live I also choose how to die. One's death is an indication of one's life. The seeds a man sows in his life come into flower during his death.

LIFE IS ONLY FOR THOSE WHO KNOW how to die in a fight for life.

IF A MAN DOES NOT FEEL THE EXISTENCE OF THE SELF at a time of crisis, then he is not alive at all. Somehow he manages to live and somehow he manages to die, but he has not yet begun to ponder the existence of his self. Thinking about life is what eventually awakens a man to the truth of death. One's death becomes a real possibility at a time of crisis. A crisis ushers in the search for the self. It marks the beginning of a man's quest in the direction of truth. It is the moment of transition from death to immorality.

This is why I ask if you have ever had a crisis in your life. If you haven't, then how do you hope to set out on the search of truth? It is necessary for a man's consciousness to meet with a crisis. A crisis if a face to face encounter with the possibility of the end of your self. It is out of this that the desire to attain immortality is generated and the campaign to achieve it is set into motion. No one has ever set out in search of life unless he has first looked into the eyes of death. Nor can he ever do so.

Life is a quest, but until death is faced this pursuit does not become a quest for life. Unless this happens a man goes on chasing insignificant things and simply dies in vain. He is completely caught up in trivialities and so death comes in search of him. But the moment he has a glimpse of death it is such an unprecedented crisis for him that the race after inanities comes to an abrupt halt. This shock shakes him out of his dreams, out of his drowsiness. It becomes impossible for him to sleep any longer. This hour, this hour of crisis awakens him to life. And then his consciousness becomes engaged in surmounting death.

This is why I till you to seek our death. Go find it. It is better you go in search of it than to have death come looking for you. Nothing is of more everlasting importance than this.

YOU ASK ME WHAT THE GREATEST VIRTUE IN LIFE IS - and I say it is courage. Without courage there is no freedom; without freedom there is no truth; without truth there is no virtue. Courage is to the edifice of life what the cornerstone is to a building.

YOUR HAVE TO WADE THROUGH DEATH TO CONQUER DEATH. The man who becomes conscious of death defeats it and attains immortality.

I WOULD LIKE TO ASK YOU WHAT YOU ARE LIVING FOR. Is there a goal or an ideal for which you are prepared to lay down your life? If your answer is negative then know for certain that you are already dead. The tremendous and powerful energy of a life of purpose is only awakened and kept alive by an ideal for which you are prepared to court death with a smile. You only win life by staking your life.

MAN IS ALL CAUGHT UP IN PROBLEMS. And as a result, society is also entangled in problems.

The problems of the world are the same as those of the individual.

How is it that man is always faced with some sort of problem? It is not that the individual has a problem, the individual himself is the problem. His individualistic consciousness itself is the problem.

His egoistic consciousness itself is the problem. But if, from "I am" you remove the "I" and are left with the experience of "am" then the problem vanishes, then the solution is knocking at the door.

In reality, life is simply existence; it is just the natural flow of the current of existence. "I" is an attempt to halt that flow, "I" is a man-made dam impeding that natural current.

Look for the "I" in yourself. It is nowhere to be found. There is life, there is being, but there is no "I".

And yet we build our entire lives on the "I". No wonder we are unable to find any peace in life. Our religions, our civilizations - all are built on the foundation of "I". Isn't it natural then that religion and civilization only generate worry, tension, bewilderment and madness? No matter what is erected on the foundation of "I" it is unsound, unsafe.

It is only the life built on "I" that transmigrates, that is reborn. It is only "I" that is born and dies. Only dreams are born and disappear. What exists cannot have birth or death. It merely exists. It exists and exists and exists.

Forget that "I". Just let it go. Wake up to existence. And live in it.

The "I" will not allow you to awaken to life. It will not allow you to live in existence. It lingers in the past or in the future, but life is the eternal present. Life is always here and now.

The man who shakes off "I" and awakens to the present realizes that the nectar of life, that the truth, beauty and harmony of life surrounds him from all sides, from all quarters, from within and without - just as a fish is encompassed by the sea.

MAN DOES NOT KNOW WHAT LIFE IS. And if he cannot even understand life then there is virtually no possibility of his ever knowing death. As long as the meaning of life is unknown, as long as it remains an enigma to us death can never be understood.

The truth is, our ignorance of life causes death. To those who have known the meaning of life the word "death" does not exist at all - because death has never happened, does not happen, can never happen.

Some words in man's language are totally false. In some of them there is not one iota of truth.

"Death" falls into his category. It is a totally false word; it is a word that is completely untrue. Death never happens. Yet we see people dying every day. We are surrounded by death on all sides. Every village and every town has its cemetery, and many a corpse must have been burned on the very ground upon which we tread every day. The plots of land upon which we have built our houses must surely have been the cremation grounds of bygone days. Millions and millions of people are born and die every day, and although it may surprise you I venture to say there is no word more false that "death" in the languages of mankind.

There was once a Mohammedan fakir who lived in Tibet. One day a man came to him to ask the meaning of life and death. The fakir burst out laughing. He said, "If you wish to ask me about life, then you may certainly do so. But as far as death is concerned, I have never come across it. I am not acquainted with it at all. If you want to ask about death then ask someone who lives a dead kind of life. Or ask someone who is already dead. I am life itself and I can only tell you about life and its meaning. I know nothing at all about death."

There is a similar tale about darkness.

Once darkness complained to God about the sun. He said, "God, your sun persecutes me constantly. I am so fed up with it. Form the moment the morning dawns he follows me throughout the day. I admit he leaves me alone in the evening but he even does that reluctantly. What have I done to deserve this? What offense have I committed that he pursues me like this? He is after me the whole day. And even with a little rest at night I am unable to recover from the exhaustion of the day. The the first thing I know it is morning again and the sun is knocking at my door, and I have to start running again to escape his persecution. This has been going on since the beginning and now I am worn out, at the end of my tether. Please, Almighty God, take the sun to task. Please grant me this wish!'; God sent for the sun. When the sun appeared before him, God asked, "Why do you chase darkness?

What harm has darkness done to you? Do you have a complaint to lodge against him? What is the reason for this hostility?"

Unruffled, the sun replied, "Darkness? I have been revolving around the universe since time immemorial and so far I have never run across darkness. I do not know him at all. Who is darkness?

If you will call him here I will certainly ask his forgiveness. I will also be able to meet him. Then I will avoid offending him in future and will be able to say out of his way."

Aeons have passed and this incident is still in God's file, unsolved. God has been unable to bring darkness into the presence of the sun and will never be able to do so. This problem can never be resolved. How can darkness ever be summoned into the presence of the sun? Darkness has no power of its own. Darkness has no individual existence; it has no separate entity of its own.

Darkness is just the absence of light - so how can the absence of the sun be called into the presence of the sun? It is not possible. Darkness cannot be brought before the sun.

But forget about the suns, the immense sun, for the moment - it is not even possible to bring darkness into presence of the tiniest lamp. Darkness can never enter the lamp's circle of light. How can darkness come in where light is present? And how can death exist where there is life? Either life does not exist or there is nothing like death at all. Both cannot exist side by side.

We are alive and yet we do not know what life is. It is because of our lack of knowledge about life that we think death happens. Death is a kind of ignorance. And ignorance about life inevitably results in death. If we could only know the life within us! A single ray of the knowledge of out inner life would remove our everlasting ignorance about death forever. It would dispel our blind belief that we can die, that we have died before, that we will die again. But we do not know the light that we are, the light that is our selves, and we are afraid of the darkness, afraid of something that is totally alien to us. We never encounter the light that is us, that is our very being, our soul, our life, our power - and yet we fear the darkness that is not within us at all.

Man is not death; man is the nectar of the gods. But we do not even lift our eyes to see the cup that is held out to us. We never probe into life, never take a single step towards uncovering its meaning.

We remain strangers to life and approach death in terror.

The major question is not one of life and death, it is one of life alone. I was asked to speak on life and death. But this is impossible. There is only life. Death does not exist. If one understands life then there is only life. But if life remains unknown there is only death. Life and death never exist together, like two aspects of a problem. We either know that we are life and then death does not exist, or we do not know that we are life and then only death exists. They cannot exist together. But we are all afraid of death. And this clearly shows we have not understood the meaning of life. Fear of death only betrays one's ignorance of life.

What flows in and out of us every moment, through every pore, through every breath, is completely unknown to us. And this means that man is in a deep slumber, because it is only when one is fast asleep, that it is possible to forget one's self. This means man is in a deep coma. It boils down to the fact that the full power of man's spirit is not awake, but lost in some kind of faint. When he is asleep man is not aware of anything. He does not know who he is, what he is, where he has come from. In the darkness of sleep everything is lost. Man even forgets his own existence. It is only when he has awakened that he knows he has been asleep.

Some kind of hypnotic sleep of the spirit seems to have paralyzed man and has made it impossible for him to grasp the true meaning of life. But we refuse to accept this as a fact. We will even question the sanity of such a theory and will insist that we do know life because we are alive, because we move about, because we stand, sit sleep. But look, a drunkard also moves about, breaths, sleeps, opens and closes his eyes, speaks. And so does a madman. Both the drunkard and the madman are alive yet you cannot say that the drunkard is in his right senses or that the madman is conscious.

An emperors's procession was moving down a road. As one crossroad a man began hurling stones and insults. The emperor's soldiers immediately took him into custody and threw him into prison.

But while the man was throwing rocks and shouting abuses the emperor had simply laughed. His soldiers had been quite surprised and his chief minister had asked, "My Lord, why are you laughing?"

The emperor had replied, "I don't think that man knows what he's doing. He must be drunk. In any case, bring him to me tomorrow morning."

The man was accordingly brought before the monarch the next morning. The emperor inquired, "Why did you insult me and throw stones at me yesterday?"

Very subdued, the man said, "My Lord, what are you saying? Me? Abusing you? Impossible! If I insulted you I could not have been myself. I was drunk and not in my right senses. It was not the real me at all, Really, Your Majesty, I have no idea what I said at all."

We are not ourselves either. We walk, talk, love hate and wage war - all in sleep. If someone from another planet were to see us he would most certainly conclude that the whole human race was is some kind of deep sleep. In three thousand years mankind has fought some fifteen thousand wars.

Does this sound like a humanity that is wide awake and aware of itself?

From the moment he is born until be breaths his last the whole story of a man's life is one of death, anxiety, sorrow and pain. Not a single moment of real happiness does he experience. What joy is, what delight is, remains totally unknown to him. A man lives his whole life without a single glimpse of joy. You cannot say such a man is in his right senses. Worry, suffering, sorrow, despair and madness seem to be the story of his life. But we do not notice this because all around us everyone else is asleep too.

Once in a while a conscious, wide-awake man is born, and those who are asleep cannot tolerate him. They lose their tempers and they kill him. We crucified Jesus Christ because he was awake.

People in deep sleep cannot bear the presence of such a man. He is a symbol of disrespect to those who are not awake. Such men disturb our sleep, and so we give a cup of poison to a Socrates. We behave toward conscious, awakened men as madmen would were they to find a sane man in their midst.

A friend of mine went insane and was locked up in an asylum. In his madness he drank a whole bottle of a disinfectant he found in a cleaning cupboard. As a result he had such intense attacks of diarrhea and vomiting that within two weeks his whole body was transformed. The madness left him and be became well again. He had been confined to the madhouse for six months, and although his sanity returned at this point - after he had been there only three months - they kept him there the full term.

When he was finally sent home he told me of the incredible agony he had had to bear during the last three months of his stay. He said. "While I was mad myself I noticed nothing. We were all mad, insane. But as soon as I was cured I asked myself where I was. I would be asleep and two huge men would sit on my chest. I would be walking and someone would push me from behind. When I was insane I never noticed things like that at all. In my condition I didn't even realize that everyone around me was mad."

We move among people who are spiritually asleep and so we fail to realize that we ourselves are also asleep. We destroy those who are spiritually awake because such men disturb and plague us.

We cannot possibly understand the full meaning of life because all around us everyone is asleep.

We only know the physical form of life; we never try to move inside the spiritual.

Knowing only the physical is akin to a man mistaking the outer wall of a palace for the palace itself, like a man who sleeps on the outer parapet and thinks he is sleeping in the maharajah's bedroom.

Those whose whole understanding of life centers around the body are just like that ignorant man.

They bed down on the parapet and think they are guests in the palace. We are the same. We only know the outer aspect of the body; we know nothing of the inner. We only know the outer circle of the body; we know nothing of what is inside, of the spirit. We do not even know the interior of the parapet, let alone the inside of the palace, and we think the outer portion of the wall that surrounds it is the palace itself.

We only know the body from the outside. We have never tried to enter it and to see it from within.

If you and I are sitting inside this room we are seeing it from inside but a man who is wandering around outside is only able to see the exterior of this house. Similarly, man is unable to see his body from inside. He only knows it from outside. What we know is just an outer covering, a sort of outer garment draped over the body. It is like the outside wall of a house. The real owner of the house is sitting inside, and unfortunately we have never had the occasion to meet him. We do not even know the inside wall of the house, so there is no question whatsoever of knowing the owner. He is deep inside, at the very center of the house.

This understanding of life from outside is what causes the experience we call death. The day this experience we call life begins to slip from a man's hands and his consciousness begins to shrink away from the body and to move inside, anyone looking on from the outside will say the man is dead. And the man himself will feel that he is dying because his consciousness will begin to move inside, to move away from what he has known as life. His consciousness starts to leave behind the surface existence he thought of as life. And this preparation for the new journey makes his spirit cry out because everything he knew as life is being engulfed, swallowed up. People on the outside will take him for dead, and in this moment of supreme transformation even the man himself thinks he is dying or that he is dead and will be gone forever.

This body is not our authentic being. Our true inner being is of an absolutely different nature; our real essence is a complete contradiction of our bodily existence. For example, a seed has a hard outer shell to protect the fragile, living seedling inside. The outer covering is not the living sprout and the man who mistakes the outer wrapping for the inner seed will never come to know the real fountain of life that is encased inside the shell. He will only see the outer shell and the essence of life that is inside will never have the chance to spring forth. The fact is that when the seed sprouts the outer shell has to disappear. It has to break open, to fall apart and vanish into the earth. It is really only when the outer wrapping, when the external wall of the seed is gone that the true nature of the seed manifests itself.

Our physical body is just an outer wrapping. The consciousness of life is inner; the awakening of the spirit is from inside. We perish because we mistake the superficial, outer shell for the seed itself.

And so the seed never has the chance to sprout, never has the chance to break through into the light. But when his seed is allowed to crack through its shell a man can grow into a fully developed tree. Until that happens man is just a seed, just a potentiality - but when that does happen, when man experiences the light of spiritual awakening, his seedling rises upward like a tree and man becomes a solid reality. Some call this reality the soul; some call it God.

Man is the seed of God, but how can a seed know the fullness of its realized potential? Only the tree can feel the complete, total experience of full development; only the tree can know the immense joy of that fulfillment. The seed can never know that tender, green leaves will adorn it as a tree. It can never know that the rays of the rising sun will dance on its leaves and that the gentle breezes will sing through its branches. It can never understand how the soul of the tree will swell with the ecstasy of life. How can the seed know that flowers will grace the tree's branches, surpassing even the beauty of the stars that twinkle in the sky? How can the seed understand the joy of birds nesting in the tree's branches, singing their songs of happiness? And the peaceful shade the tree will give to weary travelers, the seed can never know. The seed is unconscious of all this joy, of all this satisfaction. It cannot even dream of these delights, These are only possible when the seed becomes a tree.

Man cannot grasp the meaning of life because he has confined all his efforts to perfecting the seed alone. He can only know life when the tree has risen out of the tiny seed. And quite apart from being ignorant of the tree that grows out of the seed of life, we neither know, remember or are willing to believe that anything separated and distinct from the physical body exists. Man has concentrated all his attempts to perfect himself on the seed alone. He has gone this far and no further. But realizing the true nature of life by experiencing what is inside is a question of the utmost importance.

I asked one tree, "Where is your life?" It replied, "In the roots you cannot see." The life of the tree springs from these invisible roots. The visible tree draws its life from that which is invisible. But man assumes, takes for granted, that the outer manifestations, that the leaves and the flowers are the tree's life, and conveniently disregards the fact that its roots are buried deep in the earth. And it is from these hidden roots that the life of the tree springs forth. In the same way man pays no attention to his inner self, to the spring of his own life. Rather, he deliberately ignores it. He does not remember that what he really is hidden inside him. Truth, power, all the force all the abilities of his life are there inside. What is apparent on the outside are merely outer manifestations. The authentic being is inside. The soul is the innermost shrine of life.

Those who view life's outer manifestations as life itself are troubled throughout their stay on earth by a continuous fear of death. Even though they live and breath, they are like corpses. They live in the constant fear that death will confront them at any moment. Such people weep over the passing of others and worry about themselves because every death they witness becomes a harbinger of their own. The death of a dear one is a vivid and painful reminder of their own impending end. Actually their horror is not at the death of others at all but at the thought of their own fast approaching death.

And so they shudder. They are stricken with terror and suffer great mental anguish.

It is a such times that a man begins to think great thoughts and makes grand assumptions about the imperishability and immortality of the soul. It is then he sees himself as an infinitesimal part of God. But this is all nonsense, ridiculous prattle by which a man endeavors to deceive himself and to escaped from the truth. And terrified by the mere idea of death, such a man tries to console and strengthen his feeble mind by repeating over and over to himself his theories about the immortality of the soul. He falsely tries to convince himself that he will not have to die. After all, he tells himself, the soul is deathless. But on the inside his is still afraid.

One who really knows the soul is immortal does not go on repeating some theory of immortality - he simply knows it to be true. Those who quake in their boots ar the thought of death create a dangerous illusion for themselves with their theorizing because they have not really grasped the true meaning of life. But these people keep on talking about the immortality of the soul, and it is really a difficult task to distinguish between those who truly and sincerely believe what they are saying and those who are only trying to console themselves out of their fear of death. Somehow this misfortune only seems to take place in this country.

In India, more than anywhere else in the world, one can find the greatest number of people who honestly believe in the soul's immortality as well as the greatest number who are afraid of death.

For those who know that the soul never perishes, that the soul is an everlasting truth, death has ceased to exist and so their fear of death has ended forever. No one can kill these people; no one can end their lives. And there is another important fact to note - not only can no one kill them, they cannot kill anyone else either. They should not harbor any illusion they can kill, because the existence of death is no longer a reality for them.

But those who preach the immortality of the soul over and over again are nonetheless afraid of death. Not only do they spout the doctrine of the eternal soul, they loudly support the principle of non-violence as well. They do not advocate this because they are not prepared not to kill anyone, but so that no one will step forward and kill them . The world, they say, should follow the principle of non-violence. Outwardly they profess it is bad to kill, but in fact they are afraid they may become someone else's prey. But if they really come to know death does not exist, they there will be no fear of killing or of being killed, and then all this talk will cease to have any meaning or importance whatsoever.

In BHAGAVAD GITA, which Krishna himself expounded to Arjuna on the battlefield of Kurukshetra, he told Arjuna not to be afraid at the prospect of killing his relatives. Krishna explained, "Those who are standing before you have lived many times before. You were there; I was also there. We have all existed before. We have lived many lives and we will live many more lives to come. Nothing in this world perishes and so there need be no fear of dying or of being killed. There is no death and so there can be no destruction. The question is of living one's own life. As far as life is concerned, those who are afraid of dying or of being killed are impotent. Those who can neither kill nor die do not know the truth of immortality - that what is cannot die, cannot be destroyed."

What a world it will be when everyone realizes the soul is eternal, indestructible! That will be the day when the whole fear of death vanishes forever and, with it, the empty threats of destruction that are now so effective. That day wars will disappear. But not before. As long as man thinks he can kill or be killed war will never cease in this world. Until then war will continue, unhampered, whether it is Mahatma Gandhi or Buddha or Mahavira who preaches non-violence. Millions of lessons in non-violence can be taught throughout the world, but they will be ineffectual until mankind realizes in the innermost depths of his being that what he is, is divine and therefore deathless. War will never stop in this world until them.

And to not think that those who carry swords in their hands are brave. A sword may well be evidence of a man's inner cowardice. The status of those holding swords in their hands are monuments to cowards. The truly brave need no swords, because they know talk of death is simply the prattling of a child. Yet how man propagates this marvelous self-deception! Out of his fear he tries to show his defiance of something he does not understand.

In his heart of hearts each man knows he will have to die because death is in the order of things. If he looks inside he sees that his body grows weaker and weaker every day, the youth is fading and giving way to old age. The body is slipping through is fingers, and yet he goes on preaching that the soul is deathless, eternal. He tries to bolster his faith and muster his courage by telling himself again and again not to be nervous, not to be afraid. He knows for certain death exists, but the great saints and sages have confirmed that the soul is immortal, everlasting. People who are afraid of death and hold forth on the soul's immortality are the ones who throng about these sages.

I am not trying to say that the soul is not immortal, but I do wish to assert that this theory of the soul's immortality is just a theory, propounded by those who are afraid of death. To realize the immortality of the soul for yourself is quiet a different thing from simply putting a theory into words. Only those who have experimented with dying, who have sacrificed themselves during their lifetimes can fathom the depths of the soul's immortality. This is the only way to know the eternity of the soul.

This statement needs further explanation.

What actually happens in death? At death the spirit, that glow of life that spreads over the external form, begins to shrink away from the outer shell and to move back to its origin, to its source.

If we slowly and gradually lower the wick of a lamp, the light that has spread throughout the room will diminish and it will become darker. If we continues to lower the wick still more the flame will become smaller and smaller and will move closer to the lamp itself and we will finally be enveloped in total darkness.

In the same way, the light of life, the spirit of life which has permeated every nook and cranny of the physical body, begins to shrink, slowly and imperceptibly, until it finally returns to its origin. And then it becomes the seed, the atom for its journey into a new and fresh life.

It is shrinking that makes a man realize that death is approaching, that he is dying, that what he thought was life is slipping away from him. His hands and feet grow numb, his breathing becomes difficult, his eyes no longer see and his ears no longer hear the sound of life. His limbs, his senses, his entire body functioned because of this unseen but potent connection with the spirit. And now the spirit is returning to its origin. The body is only a physical entity and now that the spirit has departed, it becomes dead, lifeless.

The master of the house is going to leave his abode, and so the house is becoming forlorn and gloomy. At this crucial moment of death a man feels himself going. He feels he is drowning, that he is finished forever. This sense of drowning; of dying, of everything ending, brings on such a flood of nervousness, anxiety and anguish that in his suffering he deprives himself of the experience of death.

It requires great peace of mind to know death, to acknowledge it. We have died so many times. So many times we have left this mortal frame, but every time we suffer this mental agony and so miss the experience. And the ultimated knowledge eludes us, remains inaccessible to us.

Every time death has ever knocked at our door, every time we have ever encountered it we have not been able to see it. At the time of death it is not possible to know it, but there can be a planned death through yoga. What happens in meditation is that what automatically and naturally occurs in death is precipitated by certain activities and efforts of the meditator. He shrinks his whole life-force and directs it inside. Since the effort is his own and only an experiment, he suffers no anxiety. He simply endeavors to redirect his life-force inside. And he accomplishes this in a tranquil frame of mind. Then he is able to understand that the body and the spirit are two different things.

The electric bulb is quite distinct from the electricity that illuminates it. The bulb is lifeless, a piece of matter, and when the electric current is withdrawn there is no spark, no light, no current flowing through it. The human body is nothing more than a light bulb. Life is the electricity, the energy which keeps the physical body alive, glowing with vitality.

In the culmination of meditation, in SAMADHI, the meditator dies of his own free will he realizes the truth - that his inner self is separate form his physical body. Once this ultimate truth dawns on him, death ends for him and then he understand life. The real experience of life and the end of death happen together, because as soon as death ends for a man he understands the fullness of life. This is really saying the same thing in two different ways.

This is why I look upon religion as the art of dying. But you may say you have also heard me call it the art of living. Yes, I do say both things. And I say them in the same breath because only one who knows how to die knows how to live life as it should be lived. And so, religion is both the art of dying and the art of living.

If you really want to understand the true meaning of life and death, then you must, by your own effort, learn the art of withdrawing your life-force from the exterior body and focusing it on your inner self. Only then will you be able to grasp the true meaning, the real significance of life and dearth.

And remember, this energy can be controlled and redirected quite easily. It is not a difficult task at all. This energy is motivated by your own will and can move outwards or inwards as you direct it.

This energy is the offspring of your will.

Make up your mind to do this and for half an hour every day concentrate on diverting your life-force to your inner being. If you make up your mind to dive, to drown in yourself, and you withdraw your energies from the outside you will achieve what you wish. But this requires consistent, daily practice.

Then you will find that your energy, your life-force has begun to move inward. You will feel that the physical body has relinquished its hold on you and that it is quite separate from you.

If you follow this technique continuously for three months, you will find one day that your body is lying outside of you, separated from you. This you can see. At first this is perceived from inside, but after more practice, after the application of more courage you can bring the inner spirit out and from the outside you can see your own body lying outside you, quite separated from you.

Let me tell you about a remarkable experience that happened to me. Up to now I have never mentioned it anywhere. I have suddenly recalled it, so please listen carefully.

Some twelve or thirteen years ago I had the habit of meditating at night while sitting in a tree. When ever I meditated on the ground I felt that my body was the more powerful, that it had the upper hand. This is perhaps because the body is made of earth. The fact that yogis go to mountain peaks or high up in the Himalayas to meditate is certainly not without reason. It is definitely based on scientific principles. The greater the distance between the body and the earth, the less the force of the physical body is and the greater the power of the inner force becomes. That is why I used to climb a tall tree to meditate for hours every night.

One particular night I became so lost in deep meditation that I did not notice when my body fell out of the tree. I looked around me with mistrust when I finally notice my body lying on the ground. I was quite surprised. How it had happened that I was still sitting in a tree and my body was lying on the ground I could not comprehend at all. It was a very strange experience. A bright line, a glittering silver cord running from the navel of my body was joined to me where I was perched in the tree above. I was at a loss to understand this or to foresee what would happen next. I was worried how I could return to the body.

How long this experience lasted I do not know. But nothing like this had ever happened to me before.

That day, for the first time, I saw my own body from outside and since then the idea that my life was merely the physical existence of my body has finished for me. From that day on death also ceased to exist for me. That day I experienced that the body and the spirit are two different things, quite separate form each other. This was the most important moment in my realization of the spirit that dwells within every human body. It is really very difficult to say how long that experience lasted.

As morning dawned two women carrying milk cans from some nearby village passed and noticed my body lying there. From the top of the tree where I was sitting I saw them looking at my body.

They approached the body and sat down beside it. They touched my forehead with the palms of their hands and in a moment, as if by some tremendous force of attraction, I returned to my body and opened my eyes.

After that experience I had another.

I began to see that a woman could create an electrical charge in a man's body and that a man could do the same thing in the body of a woman. I pondered over the touch of the woman on my forehead and my instantaneous return to the body - how and why had this happened.

Many more experiences of this sort happened to me and then I understood why those Indian yogis who experiment in the realms of SAMADHI and death enlist the aid of women. If, in deep and profound SAMADHI, the spiritual self has left the man's physical body it cannot return without the help and cooperation of a woman. In the same way, if it has left a woman's body it cannot return without the assistance of a man. As soon as the bodies of a man and a woman come into contact a current is established, an electric circle is completed, and at that very instant the departed spirit returns.

I experienced this phenomenon six times within the next six months. And during that eventful half year I felt my life span lessen by ten years. That is to say, if I had been supposed to live seventy years I would now, because of those experiences, live only sixty. And the experiences of these six months were extraordinary! The hair on my chest even turned white! Yet I failed to grasp the full meaning of what had happened.

After much thought I finally realized that whatever connection or link there is between the physical body and the spiritual being had been interrupted, that the natural adjustment between them had been broken. And then I understood why Shankaracharya died at the age of thirty-three and Swami Vivekananda at thirty-six. Their deaths took on a different meaning for me. If there is a disruption between the two, between the visible body and the invisible spirit, it is difficult for the body to remain alive.

I also understood Ramakrishna Paramahansa's being afflicted with so many diseases, and saw that Shree Ramana Maharshi's dying of cancer was not due to physical causes but this break in the adjustment between body and spirt.

People seem to think yogis and sages are hale and hearty but the opposite is true. In fact most yogis die young, and when they are alive they are usually unwell because the adjustment has been disturbed and a discord has been created as a result. Once the spirit escapes the body and leaves it, it can never re-enter the body properly, never as fully as before. Of course then there is no need, no reason for a proper re-entry of the spirit into the yogi's physical body.

Determination - strong and unfailing determination - can force the energy to turn in, to direct itself inside. The thought, the desire to go in, to return to the center can definitely enable you to reach to the source. The urge must be so intense that it permeates every fiber of your being, every breath you take. And then it may happen any time. One day, in a flash, you may reach your innermost core and perceive your body from within.

What they say in yoga about veins and arteries is not in agreement with the science of physiology because it has no connection with this science. If you study physiology you will find that the veins and arteries yoga talks about have nothing to do with this science at all. The are perceived from inside. And where are the seven chakras they describe in yoga? They are not to be found in the body because we try to locate them from outside.

There exists a specific science that deals with the body from inside - an inner physiology. It is a very subtle science and it acquaints you with a number of separate and distinct circuits and centers which cannot be found when the body is viewed from the outside. These centers are fields of energy formed where the body contacts the inner soul.

The most important of the fields of contact is the navel. If your are driving a car and there is about to be an accident - or even if you are nervous - you will notice that first thing to be affected is your navel. In the upheaval of precipitated by an impending disaster the navel becomes very perturbed because it is the most intimate contact between the physical body and the inner soul. The prospect of approaching death will even throw the circuits out of balance and they will lose their harmony with the centers of the entire body.

There is an internal arrangement by which the inner body and the outer physical body retain their mutual contact. The chakras, talked about so much in yoga, are the energy fields of these points of contact.

To get to know your body from within is like getting to know an entirely different world, a world about which we have never before had knowledge or information. Medical science knows nothing of this inner body at all, nor will it ever be able to fathom it.

Once the complete realization that the inner self is distinct and different from the outer body happens, death ceases to exist. When there is no death one can very easily leave the shell of the body and view things as a disinterested spectator.

The way to probe into the facts of life and death is not by thinking about philosophy or the scriptures - and those who pursue these avenues will uncover nothing worthwhile. My approach is existential, because this way you can really understand that you are life and that you have no death. This truth can be entered into, experienced as fact, lived. But those who use thinking in their attempt to unravel the meaning of life and death will never achieve anything, will never arrive at any kind of result - even if they spend their whole lives immersed in such thoughts.

We can only think about what we know. You will be utterly lost trying to think about something that is unknown to you. How can you think about something that is unknown to you. How can you think about something which you have no idea, no knowledge whatsoever? How is it possible? You only know life. You do not know death. So what is there to think about as far as death is concerned?

How can you formulate ideas about something you do not know at all? How can you even imagine it?

Whatever theories the philosophers have evolved about life and death have no value at all. Whatever is written in the books of philosophy about life and death is only indulgence in thoughts, mere theorizing - and totally worthless. Only what yoga says about life and death holds true, and all other theories are just word games.

Yoga approached the mystery of life and death from the existential point of view, with an experimentalist's eye. The immortality of the soul is not just a theory, not an ideology - it is the real experience of certain people. And only actual experience can solve the riddle of life and death.

As soon as one achieves this experience, it clearly dawns upon one's consciousness that only life exists, that there is no such thing as death at all.

All the same, you will say, death does happen in this world. But the crux of the whole matter is that we only leave behind the house in which we have dwelt and proceed to another. We simply move to another house. Each house has its limitations as well as its strengths. It is like a machine that wears out and so we have to leave it behind.

If science succeeds in the experiments it has undertaken the human body can be made to survive for one hundred, two hundred, even three hundred years - but the mere continuance of the physical body will not be proof there is no soul. The soul must change residences frequently, and this will only show that science has been able to repair the old house. No scientist should indulge in the fantasy that because he can preserve the human body for five hundred or a thousand years that there is no soul, no eternal flame in man. This prolonging of life through advanced scientific research will only go to prove that this machine, this body which the soul must abandon because it has become worn out, can be repaired and so need not be discarded.

If the heart can be replaced, if new limbs can be supplied, if new eyes can be provided, then there is no need for the soul to change bodies. If a new heart can be implanted, new hands and feet substituted, then the soul need not relinquish the old body. Now the old house will do. But by no stretch of the imagination does this prove the soul does not exist.

Science may also produce a test tube baby, but then scientists will be under illusion that they have created life itself. I would like to clear up this misconception here and now. Even the existence of a test tube baby would prove nothing of the sort. Such an assumption on the part of the scientist would be completely erroneous.

What happens when a man and woman meet? They do not give birth to the soul. They simply create a situation, an opportunity for the soul to enter. The mingling together of the mother's and father's seeds allow the soul to find a suitable abode. Test tube conception may well furnish such an occasion but it will provide no proof that the soul can also be created in the laboratory. The mother's womb is also a mechanism, but it is a natural mechanism and not a mechanical contrivance.

In it laboratories science may succeed in reproducing, in a test tube, the same chemical combination that comes about when the sperm of the man mixes with the ovum of a woman at the time of the conception of a child. Through research into the chemical essences which prepare the sperm and the ovum for the entrance of the soul in the natural process, they may be successful. And just as soul enters the woman as soon as the opportunity has been created in the womb, the soul will enter the test tube if the correct conditions are fulfilled. This will not mean science has created a soul, it will simply mean the soul has found a suitable opportunity for its entry into life.

Birth consists of two stages - the physical preparation of the infant's body in the mother's womb and the descent of the soul into it. But the future must seem very dark and gloomy for the soul because scientific research keeps trying to convince mankind it does not exist at all. This will not disprove the existence of the soul, it will only weaken man's determination to go inside himself. If test tube babies are created and man comes to doubt the existence of the soul because of them, he will stop all attempts to explore the depths of his inner being. This will be a great tragedy that will come to pass in the next fifty years. During the past fifty years of scientific research the groundwork for this catastrophe has already been laid.

Up to the present, disease, suffering, privation and poverty have populated the earth. People have had no food to eat, no proper clothes to wear and their life spans have been much shorter than they are now. From all points of view, people have been poor, very poor indeed. But as far as belief in the existence of the soul is concerned there has never been such a multitude of poor and totally destitute people as there are today. And this can be attributed to the growing disbelief in the soul, to the idea that there is nothing inside man. If this becomes the general conviction, there will never be any question of man moving inside himself. The future may well be one that is black and full of pitfalls.

Some people must come forth, from every corner of the world, to gain this inner experience for themselves. They must step forward to declare to the world that man is not a mere physical being, but something much more, much more valuable, much more lasting. But these declarations cannot simply be the repetition of the principles expounded in the Gita, the Koran or the Bible, they must be emphatic declarations of life. They must be ringing statements saying that whatever man may be he is not just his physical form, not just his bodily existence. Such affirmations must be spontaneous; they must come from a man's own direct experience of the soul that dwells inside the human body, the soul that gives it the spark of life, the soul without which the body is useless. Then perhaps we may be able to save mankind from impending ruin.

Otherwise, as it becomes more advanced, science will undoubtedly reduce the live, breathing human being to a mere robot. And when the day comes that mankind has become totally and utterly convinced that there is nothing inside him and that there is no such thing as a soul, then all the accesses, all the approaches to the inner soul will be closed. And what will happen then is anyone's guess!

Even today most people's inner doors are locked, but every once in a while a courageous person breaks through the solid inner wall and rushes inside - a person like Mahavira, Gautam Buddha, Christ or Lao Tzu. These men penetrated their inner beings and gained first-hand experience of the soul. But the possibility of this kind of happening decreases day by day.

Perhaps after two thousand years or so man may be able to state with complete conviction that there is nothing like life, but only death - and this will be absolutely contradictory to what I say today; that there is no death, that there is only life. The seeds of that which will be believed two thousand years hence have already been sown in the minds of the general populace today. After all what does Marx preach? He says there is matter but no soul, that there is matter but no God. And that what we think of as God is only a by-product of matter. God, Marx says, is born out of matter. He puts forth the hypothesis that only death exists, and not life. He says the soul does not exist, that matter only matter exists and therefore there is no such thing as life. You may not know it, but the preachings of Marx have influenced many many people.

There have always been people who have denied the existence of the soul or God or whatsoever you choose to call it, but until now there has been no religion or cult of these non-believers. Marx has given the world its first cult of this nature. There have been world famous atheists like Charvak, Brihaspati and Epicurus, but there has never been a distinct organization or church. Marx is the first atheist who has an organized religion, and surprisingly enough, half of the world stands within it s precincts today. And in the coming fifty years the remaining half of the world will follow in their footsteps.

That the soul exists is an indisputable fact, but the doors to it are closing more and more and so we are neither able to know it nor to attain to it. Life also exists, but the possibilities of realizing it are slowly becoming less and less. We are therefor unable to know life as it really is. But before the doors are locked tight those who have even a little amount of courage and a little bit of enterprise should begin to experiment upon themselves They should try to enter their inner beings, to experience the inner flame, the true light for themselves. If only a hundred or so persons with this experience existed, they would be able to drive away the darkness of ignorance from millions of people. A small lamp is able to provide light for many.

If only one man in a village has known the immortality and eternity of the soul, the whole atmosphere, the whole life of the village will be completely transformed. The villagers will come to view life with a new perspective. A tiny flower blossoms and spreads its fragrance far and wide. In the same way, a man who has gained the true knowledge of the soul's existence can guide and purify the souls of his fellow villagers.

But our country is overflowing with sadhus and others who shout at the top of their lungs about the immortality of the soul. They preach their belief in the soul and profess their experience of its existence. Believe me, there is a huge crowd, a very long queue of such sadhus! But then why is there so much baseness and immorality in our nation! This is all fake, all a thorough deception, the sadhu circus!sadhus and so-called holy men are spread over the entire length and breadth of this country, but they are just performing, simply deceiving the public. It is just not possible that the moral and spiritual life of this country could sink as low as it has if the vast host who claim the soul exists eternally really knew what they were saying.

And those who say that it is the common man who has lowered the moral character of the world are absolutely wrong. The ordinary man has always been the same as he is today. At one point the level of morality in the world was high but only because a few great men had attained to spiritual realization. The man in the street has not changed at all. A few were able to pull themselves out of the mass and raised the general social conscience along with them. Such men gave others the incentive to elevate their own standards. And if the world has fallen to its present state morally and spiritually, these sadhus and mahatmas, these hypocrites who profess to know religion and who preach so-called religion, are entirely responsible. The ordinary man is not responsible at all. The responsibility has never been his. He wasn't at fault before; he isn't to blame now.

If you want to change the world for the better then stop all this meaningless talk and moral sermonizing about reforming each and every individual. If the world it truly to be transformed, a small number of people will have to undergo very intensive spiritual ordeals and exercises. Many are not required. If only one hundred persons in a country attain to self-realization, the spiritual life of the country will be automatically uplifted.

I agreed to speak on this subject in the earnest hope that some courageous man might step forward and ask for initiation into this inner journey. I would have extended my heartiest welcome to him. I would have told him that I am always ready to help a man to go inside and to give him a glimpse of the eternal soul that resides in his body. If you are ready, come forward and I will show you what life is, what death is.

The ultimated experience is of God. The ordinary man's experience is confined to the physical body, the yogi's to the invisible body and the experience of the self-realized man is of God himself.

God is one; physical bodies are many. The invisible body is the causal body, and energy that is invisible to the mortal eye is constantly flowing from it into the physical body.

Electric current can illuminate many light bulbs. The light, the electricity is one, but it spreads its power throughout many bulbs. The physical appearance of the bulbs may differ, but the current is one - just as the spirit is one.

The consciousness, the spirit within us is one, but it has two facets - one is the invisible body, and the other is the outer physical body. Man's experience is centered around the exterior body alone, and as a result of this imbalance he suffers. He is in agony, in pain; his life is full of darkness, full of utter darkness.

Some men are able to reach only as far as the invisible body, and then they believe there are a number of souls, as many as there are individuals. But those who transcend the invisible body confirm out of their own experience and without a shadow of a doubt that God is one, that the soul is one, that brahman is one.

As such, there is no contradiction in either of my statements although they may look contrary to each other on the surface. When I speak about the entry of the soul I mean that particular soul whose invisible body has not yet been discarded. This is the main basis for the assertion that the soul, which is destined for the glory of ultimate liberty, is not bound by the shackles of birth and death, that it is completely free from the cycle of birth and death. The soul experiences neither birth nor death because it is never born and it never dies.

When the invisible body perishes there is no longer any birth or any death because it is this invisible body that is the cause of each death and each resulting new birth. The invisible body is the sum total, in seed from, of all our thoughts, desires and aspirations, of all our longings and cravings, of all our knowledge and study, of all our experiments and experiences. It is this invisible body which leads us on new travels, to fresh births. But the man whose thoughts and dreams have ended, whose desires and yearnings have finished, whose emotions and feelings have vanished has no place to go. There is no longer any reason for him to go anywhere. And so no cause remains for him to be reborn.

There is a very strange and puzzling incident that occurred in the life of Shree Ramakrishna Paramahansa. Those who knew him well, who knew him as a man who had attained to the highest pinnacle of samadhi, were astonished by his great love for good food. He would often get very excited and become quite anxious about his food and many a time he walked straight into the kitchen and asked his wife, Sharada, "What's the matter? It's getting very late. Are you cooking any special delicacy today?

Sharada Devi would only look at him in consternation, in her innermost heart she did not approve of this habit of his at all. He even went to the extreme of walking out of the middle of spiritual discussions to go to the kitchen to find out what was being prepared especially for him and to see what kind of snacks he could lay his hands on. Sharada would ask, "What are you doing here? What will people think? You have left a serious conversation about brahman to come down to the kitchen to ask about something as mundane as food!"

Ramakrishna would just smile and say nothing.

At times even his disciples would point out that people were saying all sorts of things about him because of this particular idiosyncrasy of his. They said people would lose faith in him, that they would wonder how a man who was so attached to a worldly thing like food and so devoted to eating could impart knowledge, could show the path to light.

One day Sharada lost her temper and told him off. She said the way she saw it, his love for food was such a compulsion that it was beyond his power to control it. In a very calm and quiet tone he explained, "Sharada, you don't understand. One day I will lose interest in food. Remember that day and mark it well. I will die exactly three days after."

Totally puzzled, Sharada asked, "What do you mean?"

Ramakrishna answered, "All my desires are gone. All my longings, all my cravings have vanished.

All my thoughts have been destroyed. But I wish to remain in this world a little longer, for the good of humanity. And that is why I am consciously holding on to one straw, to desire. When all the chains that more a boat have been broken loose but one - the one that keeps the boat attached to the dock - the ship will sail off into the limitless ocean towards its ultimate destination if ever that last chain breaks. I am holding on purposely. That is the main reason I take so much interest in food."

No one grasped the full significance of his explanation. But three days before his death Sharada entered his room with a plate of food in her hand. When he saw the plate he closed his eyes and turned his back on his wife. That very moment Sharada remembered what he had said to her several days before. The plate dropped from her hands and she began to weep loudly at her husband's impending death, the death he had predicted would take place exactly three days after he lost interest in food. Ramakrishna Paramahansa stayed alive by holding on to one very small desire, and as soon as that desire also vanished no chain remained to hold him in the world. When that small desire vanished, the insignificant support which caused his physical body to survive also vanished.

Those teerthankaras we regard as living incarnations of God, those we look up to as sons of God also remain alive on the basis of one desire alone. They want that desire to persist so they can survive in their physical bodies for the good of mankind. The day that last desire vanishes, their worldly existence ends and their journey to eternity begins. After that there is no life and no death for them, nothing more to be counted, nothing more to be enumerated. That is why those who know and have experienced the reality of the soul say that God is one, that brahman is one.

But it is really pointless to use the number "one" unless at least two exist. If the numbers two and three do not exist, then the number one cannot exist either. To speak of the number one is only helpful if we know two, three, four. Then there is a link between the numbers. Therefore, those who have gained true knowledge do not say that brahman is one. They say that brahman is not two, that he is not dual. It is an amazing statement. They say that God is not dual and cannot be counted in numbers. No measure exists to evaluate God. Even when we say "God is one" we make the mistake of stating his existence with a number. And this is completely erroneous.

Forget about reaching God for a moment. At present you are only conscious of your physical body, and it is many-sided, with endless facets. If you try to enter your physical body you will come upon another body, an invisible one. If you succeed in going beyond this invisible body you will find your self face to face with something that is not a body, that is nothing physical, that is something you can only feel, sense. This is the soul.

Nothing I have said today contains any contradictions whatsoever.

A friend has asked me if the soul, when it leaves one body, can enter another that is dead. Yes, it can - but there is no point, no sense to its entering a corpse. That body died because the soul that resided in it could not remain in that particular body any longer. And since that body has become useless for the soul that was in it, then what is the point in a soul leaving another body to occupy this dead one?

Yes, it is possible for the soul to enter another body. But the question of how to enter another's body is of no importance at all when you do not even know how the soul that resides in your own body came there. What is the earthly good of wasting our precious time in a futile discussion about entering the body of another when you do not even know how your soul has entered your own? You do not even know your soul lives in your body. You cannot even see your soul. You have no idea how to separate your soul from your body.

Although there is no reason for entering another's body, yet from a scientific point of view it can be said that it is possible for the soul to enter another body - because your body is not really yours and neither is anyone else's body his. All bodies are alien to the soul.

When the soul enters the mother's womb it enters a body. That body is very tiny, just an atom, but it is a physical body all the same. That tiny atom in the mother's womb is hiding the physical body which will become fully grown in time. After fifty years, your hair will begin to grey - and this potentiality is also hidden in that minute atom. In seed form, that atom contains the color of your eyes, whether your hair will be curly or straight, whether your hands will be long or not, whether you will be healthy or prone to illness, and all the other aspects of physical appearance. That atom is a tiny body and it is into that atom in the womb of the mother that the soul enters. The soul enters that atom according to the particular condition or construction of that atom in that particular situation.

The main reason for the deterioration of mankind is that married couples do not create opportunities for higher souls to be born. The situations that are being created invite the entry of lower souls.

It is not necessary that the soul should find an opportunity to take birth in a new body immediately after death of the old one. In general, most of the souls which are neither very high nor very low seek out new bodies to enter within thirteen days. The lower souls have to wait longer because low bodies are difficult to find. These lower souls are known as ghosts and demons. Very high souls also have to wait because they do not often get the right opportunity to enter proper bodies. These high souls are known to us as godly spirits.

In olden days the number of ghosts was much smaller and the number of godly spirits was much greater. In the modern world the number of ghosts is increasing and the number of divine spirits is decreasing. The opportunities for the birth of divine souls lessen every day. And it isn't possible to see ghosts today, because those who have been waiting to enter bodies have already done so.

It isn't necessary to see them either. Look at the common man and you get an idea of what these ghostly souls are like. In his actions and behavior man resembles the lower spirits and ghosts so much these days. And our faith in God is slowly vanishing. How can we believe in godliness, in divinity, when we never encounter godly men in this world?

There were times when gods were as much a reality as anything else in our lives. The saints who recorded the Vedas speak of divine, heavenly spirits, and I do not feel they only spoke out of their imaginations. They spoke of godly spirits who talked to them, who sang songs to them, who laughed with them, who walked with them upon this earth, and whose presence they felt close by, all around them. Our contact with such divine spirits has been totally destroyed. And the cause of the destruction is that there are no men among us who can form a bridge between men and the gods. There are no men who can declare their existence to the world, who can describe their form and appearance to mankind. And the responsibility for the disappearance of such men can chiefly be laid at the door of our matrimonial system. It has become incredibly ugly and grossly perverted.

The first and foremost reason for this is that we have discouraged marriage for love in India for hundreds of years. All our marriages are finalized without taking the factor of love into account. A marriage that deliberately ignores the importance of love cannot possibly result in a mutual inner bond, in an harmonious blending of the hearts of husband and wife. This is only possible through mutual love.

Neither harmony, nor oneness, nor heavenly music can exist between two people who are bound together in a purely material marriage. And out of such a marriage there is no opportunity created for the birth of a higher soul. Whatever love there is, is just the result of staying together and is nothing more than worldly attachment. The love of such a couple is not from the innermost depths. It does not touch the tender cords of their inner hearts, the ties that unite the two into one. And so children that are born out of such marriages can never be the children of love. The children themselves can never have the higher qualities, the attributes of love, kindness or understanding. On the contrary, they are more like ghosts and demons. Contrary to divine or godly lives, they will lead lives of sin, contempt and violence.

One small thing changes the whole picture, however, if the foundation of the union is based on personalities that live in harmony and beauty, amazing changes take place.

You probably have no idea why the woman is more beautiful than the man, why there is a shapeliness, a roundness to her person. Why isn't this to be found in a man? Perhaps you do not know that there is a music, an inner dance in the personality of the woman that is not evident in a man. The reason is so small, so minute, so insignificant you will never guess it. And this tiny reason accounts for such great differences in their personalities.

When the child is conceived in the mother's womb there are twenty-four female atoms and twenty- four male atoms present. If all of these masculine and feminine atoms mix together then the first cell that develops is composed of these forty-eight atoms. The life that evolves out of these forty-eight atoms is that of a baby girl and after birth she will grow into a woman. Each side of this body consists of twenty-four atoms. In this body there is perfect balance.

The male cell consists of forty-seven atom, twenty-four on one side and twenty-three on the other.

And so there is imbalance. Because of this there is also discord in the masculine personality. The harmony is broken.

The atoms in the feminine personality are in complete balance and therefore she is beautiful and shapely, full of art and poetry, aglow with a sense of and an appreciation for the aesthetic. In the body of a man there is one less atom. The atoms a baby boy receives from the mother number twenty-four; those he receives from his father, twenty-three. This slight imbalance in the number of atoms causes him to remain discontented throughout his life. His discontent is always intense.

What to do, what not to do, why to do this, why not to do that, this worry, that dissatisfaction - these are the things that plague a man all his life. And this discontent comes form this imbalance in his atomic structure. One atom less results in this personality imbalance.

Contrary to this, a woman's personality is in complete harmony, and so there is concord, a continuous music to her life. This had given women beauty but has not allowed them to progress, not permitted them to develop themselves significantly. The reason for this is that a personality that is in balance does not develop, but stagnates.

The imbalance in man's personality is why he is so active, why he is able to progress. He climbs Mount Everest, he forges rivers, he scales mountains, he reaches the moon, he yearns for the planets, he writes important books, he creates poetry. And it is man who gives religion to the world.

A woman will not achieve any of these things. She will not reach the moon and the planets, she will not write profound books or present religious principles to the world. The balance that exists in her personality does not give her that intense desire, that deep urge to achieve things beyond the ordinary routine of life. The absence of one tiny atom in man's personality has enabled him to develop all of science, all of culture for the benefit of mankind, but the balance in a woman's personality has proven to be a handicap and stagnated her progress.

I am saying these things to you because they are biological facts and the scientists will have to agree with me. And if such a small difference in the makeup of men and women can have such repercussions, how much more difference will the bigger discrepancies cause?

The characteristic of the child who is conceived when a man and woman meet depends on the mutual love and respect that exist between the father and mother, on the sacredness of the feelings they hold for one another and on the oneness of their hearts and spirits. How high and how divine the soul is that is attracted to them depends on their approach to each other during their joining.

If they come together in a holy and prayerful attitude a divine soul will choose to enter the womb.

Higher consciousnesses will be pleased to house themselves in such bodies.

With the passing of time humanity is becoming poorer, growing weaker and more and more unhappy.

And the main cause of this deterioration in the human race is the ugliness that prevails in marriage.

Unless we accept the sanctity of the marital state and begin to look upon it from a spiritual point of view there will be no future change in mankind.

To a very great extent, the blame for the frailty and misery of humanity, especially here in India, can be laid at the feet of those who condemn the institutions of marriage and family life in favor of lives of asceticism. They have condemned family life and have paid no more attention to it. But I would like to state that the path of asceticism does not necessarily lead to God. Very few ordinary people reach God this way. Most men reach their goal through happy marriages and family lives.

This is a much easier way than that of asceticism - and enough thought has been given to this way of reaching God.

Up to the present, religion, for the most part, has praised this path and looked down on family life.

But religion has unfortunately not provided proper directions as far as marriage and family life are concerned. If religion had fully grasped the true meaning and importance of the role of the family in the development of mankind, we would have already give ample consideration to the process of birth and to the quality of the soul being invited to enter the body of the child that is destined to see the light of the world. If real religion can be properly preached, if everyone is given the opportunity to learn the true meaning, the underlying truths, the noble thought and deep feelings of religions principles, then in the next twenty years a whole new generation will have a completely fresh and new perspective on life.

The man who indulges in sex without considering the life to be born out of that physical union, without extending a loving invitation to a spirit to enter the body of his child, is really committing a great sin. That man is guilty of sin even if his children are born within the state of matrimony. If he has not, with a prayerful and devotional attitude to God, invited a spirit to enter the child he and his wife are conceiving, he is guilty, a condemned man. The type of soul that enters the woman's body ultimately decides the future.

We pay great attention to our children's clothes, to their fads, to their education, to their health - but we totally ignore their souls. This will never result in the creation of a sound race of humans on this planet.

So, it is of much more importance to discover how your soul has entered your body, rather than how a soul can enter someone else's.

In somewhat the same vein, another friend has asked whether we can know anything of our previous births. Yes it is certainly possible to know about one's previous births, but when you know nothing about his life it is very difficult to know about past ones. It is possible to be conscious of previous births because whatever has happened to you whatever has been imprinted on your unconscious cannot be really erased. Deep down in your unconscious mind whatever has happened to you is always present. Whatever you have known you do not forget.

If I ask you what you did on January 1, 1950, you may not be able to recall anything. You will say you cannot remember anything and you will be very definite about it. But if you are hypnotized - and this can be done very easily - you will be able to relate the detailed happenings of January 1, tea you had that morning had a little less sugar in it than usual, and you will also be able to tell me who served you that tea. You would also be able to say the man stank of sweat. You would even be able to remember the smallest things like the fact that a shoe you wore on that day was pinching your foot. In a hypnotized state your memories can be brought to the surface.

I have done a lot of research into these things and those who want to know about their past lives can be taken back to them. But first you will have to go back in this life, to the moment you were conceived in the womb of your mother. Only after this can you be taken back to the memories of a previous life.

But remember, nature has arranged things this way, has arranged for these memories to be lost in oblivion. Quite apart from the memories of past lives, if you even recall the detailed happenings of one month in you life they will haunt you and you will go mad. If during the night you remembered everything that happened to you throughout the day, you would go insane. And so nature has arranged it so that you are only allowed as much memory as your mind can easily digest without any strain. All remaining memories are buried in the dark valley of the past.

Just as you have a place in your house where you store unwanted things, the memory also has a hidden, unconscious storehouse where things that are not necessary for you to remember are stored. In the memory's storeroom recollections of countless lives are to be found. They have been collecting there for ages and ages. But if anyone, without proper understanding, unknowingly enters that storeroom of memories he will go mad that very moment. The collection of memories is that stupendous!

One woman I know wanted to probe into her past lives and began experimenting at my place. I explained to her she had to be fully prepared to shoulder the responsibility for anything that might happen. I told her that the knowledge of her past lives would shatter her peace of mind and leave her worried and anxious. But she said she would not get upset at all. She said that the past was over and couldn't see why knowledge of it should create problems for her in the present. And so she continued her experiments.

She was a learned and courageous college professor, and with my guidance she went into very deep meditation. Gradually the curtain of her memory began to lift and the day she entered a past life she came running to me. She was trembling from head to toes and tears poured down her cheeks. She cried and shouted that she wanted to forget what she had seen about her past life.

She also refused to go back any further into the past.

I calmly asked her why she now wanted to close her eyes to her past when she had been so interested before, when she had meditated so much for this very reason. She became very upset and said it would be better if I knew nothing about it at all. Finally she admitted that in her past life she had been a prostitute, a devadasi in a temple in the southern part of the country. "I enjoyed sex with countless men," she said, "I gave my body to them. I was prey to their desire and lust. I thought I was loyal to my husband, true to him in body and soul, but knowing my past has thoroughly disillusioned me. I don't want to remember that awful past of mine at all!"

I told her that it is easy to remember, but not so easy to forget. To forget the past is very, very difficult indeed.

To enter one's past is possible, but those who want to do it must follow certain methods. The greatest contribution of Mahavira and Gautam Buddha to humanity is not their principle of non-violence, but the knowledge of the art of entering past lives. They are the first men who stressed that anyone who wants to know reality of this soul must also explore the past.

When a man learns the truth about his past he will know when he is repeating the same thoughts and actions as he has done in past lives and will then realize the futility of those thoughts and actions.

Then he will be a completely changed man. Then he will realize his madness, his foolishness, because he will come to know that in past lives he has earned millions, built palaces, attained to high posts, attained knowledge, reached honored positions in society and many times has sat on the thrones of Delhi. And how may times, how many hundreds and hundreds of times has he done the same things again and again in his present life! Every life has been a story of failure and this life will be just the same, just as unsuccessful. As soon as this realization dawns upon him fully, his quest for wealth, power and position will cease.

In this way, knowledge of his past lives can stop a man's insane pursuit of wealth and statue. Men will know how many women they have taken to bed in their past lives and women will know how many men they have slept with, and both will know they are doing the same things again - living lives of lust and enjoyment once more. But even with all this past indulgence in physical and material pleasures neither men nor women have found satisfaction or contentment.

The irony of it all is that in this life they want to do the same things - indulge in sensual pleasures, think about sleeping with this woman, about sleeping with that man. And this has happened millions of times in the past. But once the futility of all this has been understood through knowledge of past lives, the same things will not be repeated. If after all of this repetition, failure is the only outcome, then doing them again in this life makes no sense whatsoever.

To remember their past lives, both Mahavira and Buddha engaged in deep mediation. And once any man passes through the scenes of his past lives and remembers his behavior and actions in those lives he is thoroughly changed, completely transformed.

And so I can reply to my friend's question by saying that it is both easy and possible to recall the memories of past lives. But how can a man have the courage and boldness to face his past lives when he drinks wine to forget the worries and anxieties of this one! He drinks, he plays cards, he goes to the cinema, he gambles - only to forget the present. He drinks wine at night so that the worries of the day can be lost in the oblivion of forgetfulness. How can a man who doesn't have the guts to remember the happenings of the day, who seeks forgetfulness in wine and women, have the daring to review his countless past lives and expect to find the courage to bear that knowledge?

All the religions have condemned wine and spirits. Our ignorant leaders state that the religions prohibit liquor because it debases the individual's character, because money that is needed for the family is squandered on liquor and because when a man is drunk he quarrels and fights with his friends. This is wrong. This argument in favor of prohibition is simply superficial. Religions have forbidden the drinking of spirits because the man who drinks is only trying to forget himself in alcohol can never know his soul. To know one's soul one has to try to understand oneself. This is the main reason wine and meditation are opposed to each other.

It is generally taken for granted that drunkards are bad people. I know some drunkards and I also know people who never touch alcohol. Through thousands of my own experiences I say that the drunkard is a better human being than the one who does not drink. I have found a deep sense of kindness and humanity in drunkards that is missing in the man who abstains from drink. I have found that those whom the world brands as drunkards are more humble in their behavior, kinder in their attitude to their fellow men than those who do not drink. Those who do not drink definitely are more conceited and more full of selfpride than those who do.

Bat these are not the grounds upon which religions have based their condemnation of liquor, and the preaching of our present day leaders that this is the basis of religion's attitude is absolutely untrue.

Religion has supported the prohibition of alcohol on the grounds that those who drink forget themselves and lose the necessary courage to recall the past. Setting memories aside for a moment, there is also the fact that he haphazard way of life of the man who drinks ultimately dulls his senses.

But in any case, how can one who is trying to forget the present ever have the courage to probe into his past? And if one does not recall the events of his past life, how can he hope to remold the present one in a proper manner? Then it will just be the same old story of blind repetitiveness that has gone on and on through countless lives.

The same thoughts and actions recur again and again, endlessly. You will be reborn again and again and will repeat the same foolish things you have done so many times before. And there will be no end to these recurrences unless you are able to dive into your past lives. This tedious chain of events is pointless, because you will be reborn again and do exactly the same things you have done before. It will be a never ending circle. This is why human life is compared to a revolving wheel, going around and around over and over again.

God knows what the thinkers and ideologists of our country had is their minds when they embossed the wheel on our national flag! Perhaps they did not realize the full significance of what they are doing. Ashoka the Great had the wheel carved on his pillars and STUPAS with the express purpose of helping mankind realize that life is like a wheel that keeps revolving around itself. In the wheel of life everything returns to the same point and from that point begins circling again. The wheel represents life, revolving, circling again and again. It is nothing but a dreary repetition. But every time we forget and so we go on repeating the same old things with fresh desire and new enthusiasm.

A young man who approaches a young girl to show his love, to show his longing, does not know how many times and to how many young women he has made the same kind of approaches in his past lives. And when he gives expression to his tender feelings in this life he thinks he is doing it for the first time, and that it is the most important event in his life. But if he becomes conscious that his seemingly important incident of first love has happened countless times before in countless lives he will see the futility of it. He will feel just like a man who has seen the same movie thirty or forty times.

If you see a film today you enjoy it. If you are made to go see it again tomorrow you may tolerate it. If you are asked to see it again on the third day you will want to avoid it because it will be boring for you. But if you are forced, say by the police to see the same film for fifteen days running, on the sixteenth day you will want to kill yourself. You will have reached a point where you cannot tolerate the repetition of the film one more time.

But, if you are given opium after seeing the film each time you will forget what you have seen before and you will be able to watch the same movie again and again. Not only would you be able to watch it, you would enjoy it every time you saw it.

When a man discards this body after he dies, the door to all the memories connected with this body and contained in it is permanently shut - and a whole new drama begins all over in the new body.

Although it is a new drama it is the same old plot. It is a repetition of the same old story, of the same happenings, of the same goings-on. If the past is remembered somehow, you will realize that it is the same tiresome film you have seen so many times before, that the dialogue is the same, that you have heard that song sung countless times before - and then it will be beyond your powers of endurance to put up with the repetitiveness any more. So after the memories of past lives parade before you in a passing panorama a wish to discard all that is of this world arises in you. It is because of this that the remembrance of past lives generates a sense of the futility of worldly things Nowadays this sense of futility does not happen to many people, because no one has the desire to probe into the secret memories of past lives. If any of my friends wish to carry on experiments of this nature I am willing to guide them I give my word that at a signal from any of them I am ready for such experimentation. If anyone comes forward it will make me very happy.

Only yesterday I received a few letters from friends saying they were ready, that they were waiting to be called. Now that the call has come I trust they are prepared to come forward. I am ready to guide them on the path of exploration into the past. I will accompany them as far as they want to go. At this stage of the world's progress and development, we badly need people who possess this ability.

If only a few men can attain to this knowledge I am certain we can remove the darkness that is so quickly enveloping the whole world.

Two experiments, totally different from each other, have been carried on in India during the last fifty years. One experiment was Gandhi's; the other, Shree Aurobibdo's.

Gandhi tried to elevate the personal character and integrity of each individual, of every human being. And it seemed for a while that Gandhi was succeeding - but he failed completely. Those whom Gandhi thought he had uplifted proved to be no more than images painted on clay, pictures that lose their luster and color if a little rain falls on them. The past twenty years have shown that the light of Gandhi's vision has faded into nothingness.

His followers stand naked in Delhi with none of the coloring or intensity Gandhi endeavored to impart to them. Before the honors of high office rained down of them their faces showed dignity and conviction. Their snow-white hand-woven khadi garments were dazzling in their purity; the khadi caps seemed as if they could lift an empire out of the dust and turn it into something solid, into something beneficial for a suffering people. But today those same khadi caps, once regarded as symbols of purity, have fallen so low into the dust that they deserve to be burned in the public squares. Now they are totally bourgeois; now they are emblems of red-tapism and corruption.

Gandhi's experiment failed miserably. But experiments like this have been carried on in our country many many times. Even long before Gandhi.

Shree Aurobindo conducted an experiment in which he achieved almost no success and ultimately failed - but the direction he pursued was quite right and correct. His aim was to uplift a few souls so that they would be able to beckon others to their level, so that their very presence on earth would be a sublime invitation to other men. He felt that if it were possible to elevate even one man's soul; on high that the souls of all humanity would rise along with it; his conviction was that the level of all souls would be raised in this way. He felt this is possible, but only because he saw no other alternative.

Mankind has sunk so low at present that if one man cares enough to try to change the entire human race it is likely he himself will be corrupted. You know quite well that public benefactors can turn into public pickpockets within a few days, and instead of benefiting the common man they harm him.

They want to improve the lot of the people, they want to serve them, but within a few days they themselves turn out to be the ones who need improving! No, Aurobindo's idea was impossible. It could not happen.

Perhaps you are not aware that the history of spirituality shows that during certain time periods the spiritual level of man reaches unimaginable heights. Twenty five hundred years ago Gautam Buddha was born in India; Prabuddha Katyayana, Makkhali Goshal and Sanjaya Vittaliputra were also born in this country. Socrates, Plato and Aristotle were born in Greece and Lao Tzu, Confucius and Chuang Tzu were born in China. Twenty-five hundred years ago some ten or fifteen men out of the entire population of the world, some ten or fifteen men of towering stature appeared on the scene and in that century the spiritual standard on this planet rose so high it almost touched the sky. It seemed as if the golden age of the world had come. Never had there been such powerful, enlightened and sublime souls before.

Fifty thousand people followed Mahavira and thousands of Buddha's bhikkhus showed the path of righteousness and enlightenment to a suffering humanity. The very dust was transformed whenever Buddha and his retinue of ten thousand bhikkhus appeared in a village. In whatever village those ten thousand performed their collective prayers it seemed as if darkness had been driven away and the whole village was illumined with a spiritual, celestial glow. At every stopping place they left an awakening of spirituality in their path. It was as if all the flowers bloomed at once. Nothing like this had ever happened before. Some rose on high, and following them, others looked up and responded to their summons.

Unless there is some cause to turn one's vision on high, no one ever raises his eyes. If there is nothing to attract your vision upwards you will never look at all. Yet there seems to be so much to look downwards for!

When a man focuses downwards he keeps going lower and lower until he has a big safe to keep his money in and owns a Cadillac. By looking downwards, you achieve material prosperity. See how low Delhi is! It is almost in hell. And whosoever wants to go to Delhi will have to stoop lower and lower! There is nothing to be seen above, but there is so much below to attract your attention.

Even if you want to raise your vision upwards you cannot see anyone there because there is no one to be seen. What a misfortune there are no souls above to whom you could be attracted! What a shame there is no one to call on you with insistence, no one whose presence makes you feel ashamed and generates an urge in your heart to be like him!

You could be that light, that nectar yourself. You could be Buddha, you could be Mahavira, you could be Krishna, you could be Christ. Once this idea enters your mind, once the thought is planted in you that you could be like them the upward journey of your soul commences. But there must be higher souls to whom you can turn for inspiration. Remember, the soul is never stagnant. It is always moving - up or down, higher or lower. Spiritual consciousness does not make rest stops. Life is one continuous flux. And spiritually, man MUST move upwards!

In his last moments Vivekananda said he had been calling for one hundred people to come forward to work with him, but that they had not come and that he was dying a very unhappy and disappointed man. Vivekananda was convinced that he could have changed the world if those hundred men had come forward. But they never came. And Vivekananda died.

I have decided not to call but to go to the villages and search out those hundred men. I will look deep into their eyes to fathom the depths of their souls. And if they do not heed my call I will bring them forward by force, by compulsion. If I am able to bring together one hundred such men I assure you that the souls of those hundred men will stand out like Mount Everest, casting their brilliance on an erring mankind and leading it to the right path.

Those who accept my challenge and have the strength and courage to walk that difficult path with me must remember that the path is not only difficult, it is also unknown. It is like a tremendously vast sea, and we have no map, no chart of its depths. But the man who has the courage to enter the deep water should realize that he only has that strength and power because God himself has called on him. Otherwise he would never be so brave. In Egypt it was believed that when a man called on God for strength and guidance it was because God has already called on him and that there would have been no call otherwise.

Those who have this inner urge have a responsibility towards mankind. And today it is of the utmost urgency to go to the four corners of the world, to sound the call for men to step forward to sacrifice their whole lives to reaching the heights of spirituality and enlightenment.

All life's truths, all the experiences which were real at one time are now turning into blatant lies. All the heights that were once reached are now becoming myth, fantasy. They are becoming legends, fairy tales. After another hundred or two hundred years, people will not even know that Buddha or Christ were actually born and really lived in this world. They will think that tales of their lives are only made-up stories from the past.

Someone has already written a book in the West wherein he as openly stated that Christ never existed, that the story of his life is nothing but a drama. In his book he also says that people eventually forgot that is was a drama and began to believe in it as a real historical fact.

At present in India we enact the RAM-LEELA pageant because we believe Ram lived and walked upon this earth - but future generations will say that RAM-LEELA was really just written by someone and that the idea was eventually created amongst the people that Ram actually existed. They will think that Ram was just a character in a drama. And it is only natural that people of the future will think like this, that RAM-LEELA was nothing but a pageant, nothing but a drama enacted generation after generation. When personalities like Buddha, Christ or Ram are nowhere to be found, how can people ever believe that men of such outstanding knowledge and wisdom and stupendous spirituality ever lived, ever walked in this ordinary mundane world?

The workings of man's mind are rather odd. He can never believe that anyone higher than him can ever exist. He can never readjust his thinking to accept the idea that a higher being than himself can live and breathe on this earth. On the contrary, his mind is always bent upon looking on himself as the highest and loftiest of all.

A man will only accept the existence of a being superior to himself under great pressure, and even then he will seek loop-holes in the other's character so that he can prove to himself the other man is really of a very low level of consciousness. Whether the defects he imagines he sees in the other give him any inner satisfaction is doubtful, but outwardly he will try very hard to prove the other is lower than him. And as soon as he is able to find the slightest flaw he will immediately shout to the world that his former idol has fallen, that the man no longer holds the same place in his heart because he has uncovered failings in his character. The search is always for shortcomings. And if he is unable to find such a flaw then he will either make one up or take for granted that one must exist; then he can have the false satisfaction of feeling he has been right.

And so, with the passage of time, mankind will gradually refuse to accept the possibility of the existence of superior beings, because there will be no signs of their ever having lived. After all, how long can idols of stone declare to the world that Buddha and Mahavira actually existed and lived wonderful lives of utter simplicity and lofty spirituality? How long can the world of the Bible bear witness to the fact that Christ really existed and walked this earth in all his glory? How many years can the BHAGAVAD GITA go on telling the world that Krishna was born as a human being and that in human voice he expounded the Gita to Arjuna on the battlefield of Kurukshetra? No, it is not possible for too many years!

It is just not possible for future generations to maintain their faith through words alone, through scriptures alone. We need something substantial to support our faith. We need men like Christ, like Krishna, like Buddha, like Mahavira. If we are unable to have such men among us, mankind will have to face the calamity of a very dark age indeed, one full of ignorance and misery. And so there is hardly any prospect at all for the future.

I am throwing out a great challenge to those who feel they have something good to offer humanity. I intend to wander through as many villages as necessary, and if I encounter eyes that can serve as lights for others, or eyes in which I feel I can kindle the burning flame of conviction, I will take those people with me and I will work on them. I will make them able. I will impart to them all the faculties necessary to enable them to hold high the torch and illumine the dark path men tread to a brighter future, to a future full of knowledge and light.

As for myself I am fully prepared, I do not intend to die like Vivekananada saying I spent my life searching for a hundred men and could not find them.

HOW CAN I SPEAK WHEN THE MOUNTAINS ARE SILENT? How can I talk to you when the sky says nothing? How can I say anything when God himself does not speak? Still I speak to you, but it is only so that you may hear their silence.

An artist will use a black background to heighten the effect of a bright blue - and I am using the same device. I am speaking to enable you to understand the language of silence. Words are only meaningful because they represent the gestures of silence. Speech is only meaningful when it leads to tranquility, and life is only significant if it prepares you to face death.