The Desire for Sensation

KILL OUT DESIRE FOR SENSATION. We live for sensations, we hanker for sensations. We go on seeking newer and newer sensations; our whole life is an effort to obtain new sensations. But what happens? The more you seek sensations, the less sensitive you become. Sensitivity is lost.

It looks paradoxical. In sensations, sensitivity is lost. Then you ask for more sensations and the 'more' kills your sensitivity more. Then you ask for even more, and finally a moment comes when all your senses have become dull and dead. Man has never before been so dull and dead as he is today. He was always more alive before, because there were not so many possibilities to fulfill so many sensations. But now science, progress, civilization, education, have created so many opportunities to move further and further into the world of sensation. Ultimately, you turn into a dead person; your sensitivity is lost. Taste more foods - stronger tastes, stronger foods - and your taste will be lost. If you move around the world and go on seeing more and more beautiful things, you will become blind; the sensitivity of your eyes will be lost.

Change your love object every day - your girlfriend or boyfriend, your wife or husband. If you change them every day, your sensitivity to love will die. You are moving in a dangerous terrain. You will never move in depth; you will only be moving on the surface, the periphery. The more things you experience, the less your capacity to experience becomes. And then in the end, when everything around you has gone dead, you ask for the divine, you ask for bliss, you ask for truth. A dead man cannot experience the divine. To experience the divine you need total sensitivity;. you need aliveness. Remember, only the similar can bring out the similar.

If you want the divine - 'the divine' means the most alive, the ever-alive, ever-young, ever-green - if you want to meet the divine, you will have to be more alive. How to do it? KILL OUT ALL DESIRE FOR SENSATION. Don't seek sensation; seek sensitivity, become more sensitive.

The two are different. If you ask for sensations, you will ask for things; you will accumulate things.

But if you ask for sensitivity, the whole work has to be done on your senses, not on things. You are not to accumulate things. You have to deepen your feelings, your heart, your eyes, your ears, your nose. Every sense should be deepened in such a way that it becomes capable of feeling the subtle.

We cannot even feel the gross, and we must become capable of feeling the subtle. The world appears to be gross only because we cannot feel the subtle. The invisible is hidden in the visible.

Look at these trees. You look at the gross: the body of the tree. You never look, you never feel, the life within. The growth! The tree itself is not growing: the tree is just a body. Something else - the invisible - is growing in it. And because of it, the tree grows The inner is growing and, because of it, the outer is growing. But you look only at the tree, so only the outer is seen.

Look around you. Look into your friend's eyes. You only look at the eyes, not at the one who sees through them. Touch your friend's body. You touch only the gross; you never feel the subtle within.

Only the body, the external, is felt; because your eyes (your senses) have become so dull that they cannot feel the inner, the invisible.

More sensitivity is needed. Ask for less sensations and grow in sensitivity. When you touch, become the touch. When you see, become the eyes. When you hear, your whole consciousness must come to the ears. Listening to a song, or listening to the birds, become the ears. Forget everything else so it is as if you are only the ears. Come to the ears with your total being. Then, your ears will become more sensitive.

When you are looking at something - a flower or a beautiful face or the stars - become the eyes.

Forget everything else, as if the whole rest of your body has gone out of existence and your consciousness has become just eyes. Then your eyes will be able to look more deeply, and you will become capable of looking at the invisible also. The invisible can also be seen, but you need more penetrating eyes to see it.

KILL OUT ALL DESIRE FOR SENSATION, and grow in sensitivity. Think about the world less and about your senses more. Purify them. When you don't ask for sensations they become purified.

When you ask for more and more sensations, you are killing your senses.

The man who finds the divine is the man whose senses are totally alive. to their maximum capacity Then it is not only that you can see the divine. You can taste the divine. you can smell the divine.

The divine can enter in you through any of the senses. Only when the divine enters you from all the senses does the ultimate realization happen. If you can only see the divine. it is just a partial realization. Then you are not really enlightened. You are only partially enlightened if you cannot touch the divine. if you cannot taste it.

To use such words looks illogical. To taste God? Is he a food? Yes he is everything. You can taste him, but then you need a very subtle capacity to taste. Your very food will become divine. Through food, the divine will be felt. The Upanishadic rishis have said that food is brahma. "Anna is brahma."

They must have tasted him, they must have eaten him.

We go on thinking that God is a logical problem so we go on arguing about, and about, for or against.

We go on arguing whether God exists or not. It is irrelevant. God is not a question of argument, of logic, of reasoning. God is really a question of sensitivity. If you don't feel him, become more sensitive. No logical thinking will be of any help. Become more sensitive! If you are sensitive, he is there. He has always been there, but you are not sensitive. Things make you dull, sensations make you dull. Kill out desire for sensation.

KILL OUT THE HUNGER FOR GROWTH.

This sutra is very revolutionary, very dangerous.

KILL OUT THE HUNGER FOR GROWTH. IT looks absurd, because if you kill all hunger for growth then what is the need to grow into the divine? Then how can one reach the truth, how can one become enlightened? Then why this meditation and all this fuss? We will have to go deeply into this sutra.

KILL OUT THE HUNGER FOR GROWTH There are two types of growth. one which you can do something about; and another, which you cannot do anything about. For one, your effort is needed; and for the other, your effortlessness is needed.

Spiritual growth is of the second type. Your effort will be of no help; it will only create barriers. You cannot do anything about spiritual growth. The only thing you can do is to surrender and that is a non-doing. You can only do one thing: allow the divine to work within you. You can simply cooperate that's all. You can simply float your swimming is not needed - a deep let-go. This is what is meant by KILL OUT THE HUNGER FOR GROWTH.

... GROW AS THE FLOWER GROWS UNCONSCIOUSLY, BUT EAGERLY ANXIOUS TO OPEN ITS SOUL TO THE AIR. SO MUST YOU PRESS FORWARD TO OPEN YOUR SOUL TO THE ETERNAL.

But it must be the eternal!

BUT IT MUST BE THE ETERNAL THAT DRAWS FORTH YOUR STRENGTH AND BEAUTY, NOT DESIRE OF GROWTH. FOR IN THE ONE CASE YOU DEVELOP IN THE LUXURIANCE OF PURITY, IN THE OTHER YOU HARDEN BY THE FORCIBLE PASSION FOR PERSONAL STATURE.

I will repeat: BUT IT MUST BE THE ETERNAL THAT DRAWS FORTH YOUR STRENGTH AND BEAUTY, NOT DESIRE OF GROWTH - because every desire is a hindrance, even the desire to reach the divine; every desire is a slavery, even the desire to be liberated. Desire, as such, is the problem, so you cannot desire the divine. That is contradictory. You can only desire the world, you cannot desire the divine; because desire is the world, desire is sansar. You cannot desire moksha. When you are in a state of no desire, moksha happens to you; when you are in a state of desirelessness, liberation happens to you, the divine happens to you.

Allow the divine to bring forth all that is hidden in you. Don't seek growth. Surrender so that the growth happens. The growth will happen, but it is not going to be through your effort but through his grace. It is going to be through him.

There are reasons for it.

Whatsoever you do will never be greater than you. It cannot be. Whatsoever you do will always be lower than you The doer is always greater than the deed. Otherwise is not possible The painter is greater than his painting, and the meditator is greater than his meditation. Whatsoever you do will always be lower than you, so how can you reach the divine? The divine is not lower than you, so through your own efforts you cannot reach it. If there was any possibility that you could reach God through your own efforts, that God would be lower than you not higher than you, that God would be just a commodity - something that you could hold in your hands, something that you have achieved.

So remember, God cannot be achieved through your efforts. God can happen to you, but it will not be an achievement.

Then what is to be done? What can you do on your part? On your part, you have to make a negative effort. That negative effort is: don't create barriers, don't create hindrances. Remain open and waiting and ready to move, ready to go. If the magnet starts working, you will allow the magnet to work.

Then what is the meditation I am emphasizing so much? It is just to destroy your barriers; it is a negative effort. Through meditation you will not reach the divine, but through meditation you will become available so that the divine can work. Through meditation you will become open; your prayer will reach to him. You are saying that you are ready, that now you will be cooperative.

That's all that is needed on your part. Allowing, let-go, surrender. Through will, nothing can be done.

In the dimension of the divine, nothing can be done through will, only through surrender. But then, everything happens.

Through the meditations that we are doing here, you are just breaking down your barriers. That's why I emphasize that you should be like children. Go back to being children again. Forget your civilization, your culture, your manners, your postures, your personality, your faces. All that is a facade. Throw it! Become like small children.

It will look like madness. To drop your mind and go back to your childhood will look like madness.

So be mad! But whatsoever the cost, be like children again. Jesus says that only those who are like children will enter into the kingdom of my God. I also say the same. Move back to the point where civilization started to corrupt you, to the point where education started to corrupt you, to the point where society entered. Move to the point where you were unsocial or presocial, where there was no society forced on you. Up until that point you were innocent and pure, and unless you move back to that point again, banners will remain.

Become children again. In the process, you will feel that you are mad, because you are throwing out all your adult values: education culture, religion, scriptures, manners You are throwing everything.

You are moving back to the point where you were yourself where no society had yet corrupted you.

The whole process will look like madness, but it is not. It is a catharsis. And if you can go through it, you will come out saner, less mad. The madness will be thrown. You will become more pure, more sane.