Fall into trust

Question 1:

The witness is not part of the brain, but the witness uses the brain as a mechanism. A part of the brain remains awake, as if the witness is looking through a window. The window itself is not awake, but the witness behind the window keeps it open. Even in the night, a part of the mind is open for the witness to use it. If the mind is completely closed, it is impossible for the witness to look outside. It can be aware of its inner reality, but it cannot be aware of the outer reality. The brain is the mechanism that makes it capable of becoming aware of the outer reality.

But the brain itself has no witnessing power, and the witness has a totally separate reality: it is not part of the brain. It is the master, and the brain is only a servant.

Those who have meditated long enough slowly start becoming aware, even in their sleep. The body sleeps, but there is an awareness underneath the sleeping body. It can be a disturbance in sleep, too - if the awareness is too much, then sleep becomes difficult, almost impossible. For sleep to become possible, the awareness has to be very small, just a small window that takes care of the outside world while you are asleep. It is just a guard: in case something happens, some emergency, it will wake you up.

But after achieving the ultimate in meditation and awareness, sleep becomes such a thin layer that it is just a restfulness, not sleep. And this is enough.

This reminds me of a few other things which enlightenment disturbs in the ordinary mechanism of body and brain, because it is not an inbuilt process. It is not necessary that one should become enlightened just the way one becomes a youth, one becomes old - these are inbuilt processes.

Enlightenment has to be earned. The opportunity is there, the potential is there - but you can miss it, or you can get it. Because it is not an inbuilt process, the body and brain have no way to adjust themselves with the phenomenon.

And for centuries there has been continuous concern... Ramakrishna died with a cancer of the throat, Raman Maharshi died with a cancer. Krishnamurti suffered almost forty years with the most intense migraine possible. Buddha was often sick, so much so that one of his disciples - an emperor, Prasenjita - offered him his own personal physician. For his whole life, King Prasenjita's physician followed Gautam Buddha with a large wagon full of all kinds of medicines, books on medicine, particularly those which might be needed for Buddha. Mahavira continuously suffered from stomach troubles and finally died from the same troubles.

The question was raised again and again: these people are enlightened; their bodies should be more healthy. And that seems to be very logical, but existence does not listen to logic. Existentially, to be enlightened is to go beyond the capacities of body and brain. You are bringing something into your body and brain for which they have not been made, for which they are not ready. So this new phenomenon... and the new phenomenon is so powerful that it is going to create many kinds of disturbances. Particularly sleep can be disturbed; most often it will be disturbed, because enlightenment has brought so much awareness that you cannot exhaust it during the day, you cannot exhaust it whatever you do.

Just as for the ordinary man it is difficult to be awake - the sleep is so strong, and the gravity of sleep drowns all his efforts to be awake - he tries for a moment and forgets; sleep takes over. Just the opposite is the case when enlightenment happens: there is so much awareness that it is impossible for sleep to enter your body. At the most your body can relax - it can relax more than ever, it can rest more than ever - but sleep has disappeared.

It is recorded that Buddha never changed his posture in sleep; he would sleep in the same posture the whole night. His disciple, Ananda, was puzzled. Many times he would wake up and look, and he could not believe how Buddha managed. In sleep you cannot manage to keep the same posture.

People cannot even manage the same posture while they are awake; there is so much restlessness that they have to turn this way and that. But in sleep you are unconscious...

One day Ananda finally asked, "How do you manage the same posture the whole night long?"

Buddha said, "You will understand one day when you become enlightened. I will give you the answer but it will be difficult for you to grasp it. I simply rest, I don't sleep. Since the day I became awakened, sleep has disappeared."

Other things may be disturbed in the bodies of different persons for different reasons, but the idea that enlightenment will bring better health is absolutely wrong. It will bring a wholeness of your consciousness, which is tremendously fulfilling. But just as the bird in the egg one day has to leave the egg behind... and it has been its protection, its life. Without it, it could not have survived. But the bird doesn't look backwards. It opens its wings and finds that the whole sky is his.

The body is also a certain kind of egg, in which the ultimate potential of enlightenment can happen - and unless it happens you will continue to have new bodies - but the moment it happens, the body becomes useless.

Most of the people who become enlightened die instantly. They simply cannot breathe anymore.

There is no reason why they should breathe. The experience is so big that the heart stops. They have never seen anything like it, it is so unknown. It takes their breath away - literally.

Very few people survive enlightenment, and the reason why these people survive is strange: people who have been adventurous, people who have enjoyed taking risks, who have lived like a tightrope walker, whose lives have been on a razor's edge, may survive. The shock will be there, but they are accustomed to smaller shocks. They have never had such a big shock, but smaller shocks have prepared them to accept even this enormous phenomenon. They still continue to breathe; their heart still continues to beat. But still the body suffers in many ways because something has happened that the body cannot understand.

The body has its own wisdom, it has a certain kind of understanding. It functions well within its limits.

But enlightenment is not within its limits, it is too far away. It is stretching the body's capacities too much. So anything that is weak in the body is going to break - and because this is going to be the last body, it will never be needed again. It has fulfilled its function. It has done the miracle. So if you think of the ratio... out of ten enlightened persons at least nine die immediately. And out of ten who do survive, nine remain silent. They lose their grip on the brain.

This has never been said. Many things have never been said, because nobody has asked, nobody has bothered, nobody has enquired. So there are a thousand and one things which are worth taking note of, but nobody has ever talked about them.

For example, why do nine people out of ten die immediately? No scripture of the world discusses it. The question of discussion does not even arise - no scripture even mentions it, and it has been happening for centuries. Perhaps they were afraid that if they say it... People are already not interested in enlightenment, and if you tell them that this is going to be the reward - that you become enlightened and your fuse goes off - this may prevent even those few who might try. They will say, "What nonsense it is. You work hard to attain enlightenment and what do you get as a reward? - that you are finished! You are not even going to see yourself enlightened. So what is the point? It is a strange game."

Perhaps that's why it was never mentioned. No scripture mentions that enlightenment disturbs the body and the brain. But I want to say everything exactly as it is, because my understanding is that those who are not interested are not going to be interested, and those who are interested are not going to be prevented by any truth. And in fact it will be good for them to know it ahead of time.

Enlightenment certainly disturbs much psychosomatic health, because it is something for which the body is not ready or prepared. Nature has not built in anything in the body so that enlightenment can be absorbed. Suddenly a mountain falls on you - you are bound to be crushed.

Why do nine persons out of ten remain silent? At the most it has been said, "Because truth cannot be said." It is true, but there is a far more important thing which has not been mentioned. Out of ten people, nine people's brains get disturbed. They are no longer able to use the brain mechanism for speaking, so it is better, they feel, to remain silent.

They can see perfectly that their brain mechanism is no longer in a functioning state. And naturally...

the brain is a very subtle phenomenon; in the small skull of man almost seven million small nerves create your brain. They are so small and so delicate that any small shock can disturb them, can destroy them - and enlightenment is a tremendous lightning shock. It goes through the brain disturbing many cells, many nerves.

Only one person out of ten can save his brain, and that is the person who has used his brain so much that by sheer use it has become stronger and stronger. If he had not become enlightened, he would have been a great philosopher, a great logician, a great mathematician or a great physicist.

He had a strongly built machine which could have been a Bertrand Russell or an Albert Einstein - or a Gautam Buddha.

But ordinarily, people don't use the brain so much. For ordinary work it is not needed. Only five percent of your capacity - the average human being uses five percent of his brain. And the people you call very great geniuses use only fifteen percent. But if a person has used his brain to at least one-third of its capacity - that is, thirty-three percent - then it has strength enough to survive enlightenment. Not only can it survive enlightenment, it can serve it too.

Out of ten persons whose brains survive, nine never become masters; only one becomes a master.

The nine can at the most be teachers. They can talk about their experience. They can quote scriptures. They can be very famous teachers. People can mistake them for masters; they will have many followers - but they are not masters, because the quality of the master is missing in them.

The master is not only a teacher but a magnet. To teach is one thing, but to teach with a magnetic force so that just by hearing it you are transformed... then there is a master. The teacher can give you words, but he cannot give you life. The teacher can give you explanations, but he cannot give you experience. The teacher can approach your mind, but he cannot reach your heart.

Why does it happen to only one person in ten? Before enlightenment, if a man has been a teacher already... if, although he has not experienced, his intelligence is so comprehensive that he can understand what has happened to others, he need not have to commit mistakes to learn. He can see others committing mistakes, and that is enough for him to learn.

And if he has been articulate from his very birth, has enjoyed the very sound of words - their music, their poetry - if he has been expressive, has never found himself in any difficulty as far as expression is concerned, and his expression has been convincing... not that his argument was greater than your argument, but the way he managed to express himself, the poetry of his expression, the argument of his expression, the music of his expression is convincing, and yet he has not experienced himself...

If this kind of man happens to become enlightened, then he is coming with the skill of being very articulate. His enlightenment will add something to his articulateness. It will make it authoritative; it will give it magnetism. It will make it a presence to be felt, a presence to be overpowered by, a presence in which you easily fall into love, into trust.

The teachers who start teaching after their enlightenment remain amateur. But this man, who has been a teacher already, is immensely enriched by enlightenment as far as being a master is concerned.

It is reported that when Sariputta - one of Gautam Buddha's chief disciples, and one of the few who became enlightened in Gautam Buddha's lifetime - when he came to Gautam Buddha, he had come to argue. He was a well-known teacher, and many thought he was a master. He had come with five thousand disciples to argue with Buddha about the basic principles.

Buddha received him with great love and said to both his disciples and Sariputta's disciples, "Here comes a great teacher, and I hope that one day he will become a master." Everybody was puzzled what he meant by it - even Sariputta.

Sariputta asked, "What do you mean?"

Gautam Buddha said, "You argue well, you are articulate, you are an influential intellectual. You have all the qualities of a genius teacher. You have five thousand very intelligent people as your disciples, but you are not a master yet. If you were a master I would have come to you, you would not have come to me. You are a great philosopher, but you know nothing.

"And I trust in your intelligence, that you will not lie: say before all these people that you are a thinker but you have not experienced anything. If you say you have experienced, I am ready to discuss with you. But remember, lying is not going to help. You will be caught immediately, because experience has so many things which are not available in the scriptures. So it is better you be clear about it.

"I am ready to discuss with you if you say that you have experienced the truth. If you say you have not experienced the truth, I am ready to accept you as my disciple. And I will make you a master, it is a promise - because you are promising. You can choose to lie and discuss with me, or to be true and be a disciple and learn with me, experience with me. And one day when you are a master if you want to discuss with me I will be overjoyed."

For a moment there was immense silence. But Sariputta was really a man of truth. He said, "Buddha is right. I have never thought about it, that he is going to ask about experience. I have been debating around the country, defeating many great so-called teachers, making them my disciples" - that was the rule in India. You discuss, and whoever is defeated becomes a disciple.

So he said, "Many of these disciples were themselves teachers, but nobody ever asked me about experience. I don't have any experience, so there is no question of discussing right now. Right now I touch the feet of Gautam Buddha. And I will wait for the time when I have experienced, when I am a master myself."

After three years of being with Buddha, he became enlightened. He was certainly a very potential case... just on the verge. The day he became enlightened, Buddha called him and asked him, "Do you want to discuss now?"

Sariputta touched Gautam Buddha's feet again and he said, "That time I touched your feet because I had no experience. This time I touch your feet because I have the experience; the question of discussion does not arise. That time it was impossible to discuss; this time too it is impossible to discuss. There is nothing to discuss. I know, you know - and the knowing is the same. And I am your disciple. I may become a master to others, but to you I will always remain a disciple. You transformed my whole life; otherwise I would have died just arguing unnecessarily, wasting my time and other people's time."

The people who have remained silent really got damaged. There was no other way for them except to be silent; the mechanism was broken. They had the experience but they didn't have the vehicle.

So it is a very rare phenomenon: first to be enlightened, then to survive enlightenment, then to save your brain so that you can be a master. And that depends on whether you exercised your brain before enlightenment to at least one-third of its potential. Less than that won't do.

Hence my insistence: Don't believe.

Doubt, think, enquire.

Sharpen your intelligence, at least to one-third of its potential. And meanwhile meditate, so the day you become enlightened, you can say something to the world. You owe it.

Existence waits millions of years for somebody to become enlightened, and when someone becomes enlightened existence wants him to share, to spread the word, whatsoever the cost, to all those who are fast asleep. They are not all going to awake, but somebody may hear the call.

Even if a few hear the call, that is enough reward.

Question 2:

We are living in a network of invisible forces, connecting us to each other. So whenever something happens to one person, it vibrates in many other people. They may be far away, but if it happens to many people then the vibration is very strong. It can go from one island to another island, from one continent to another continent, without any visible means of communication.

Once Albert Einstein was asked, that if he had not discovered the theory of relativity, did he think it would have ever been discovered? The answer Einstein gave astonished the man who had asked it. He said, "If I had not discovered it, then within months somebody else was going to discover it. I was just quick enough."

And later on it was found that one German physicist had already reached the conclusion in his notebooks; it is just that he was late in publishing them. Einstein published his research first; otherwise, somebody else had already discovered it, he was just late in publishing it... just the lazy type. And one man in Japan was coming near the end of his research and he had no idea... he did not understand English or German, so he had no idea what was happening in other parts of the world. He knew only Japanese. But he had almost come to the same conclusion, just a few days' work more...

It seems that whenever there is something happening, it is not only happening in one person, it is a certain wave. Whoever can catch that wave, whoever is capable, intelligent, trained to catch that wave, will also get the same idea.

No discovery is such that it depends on the individual. It becomes attached to the name of the individual because he is the first. Because it is a very specialized subject, not everybody will be able to discover it, but there are many people who are working in the same fields, with the same specialization. And if a certain wave is surrounding the earth, it will be caught by many minds.

You can try a few experiments that will help you to understand why it is so. Again, remember that thirty-three percent: for no apparent reason, everything that has happened in the world in science, in art, in religion, in any direction, in any dimension, has happened through a certain section of humanity. That is the thirty-three percent. And these are the most intelligent people. These are the people who can be easily hypnotized. These are perfect mediums.

We have a primitive educational system; otherwise each child should be hypnotized first, before he enters any school, to explore his potential. Does he belong to the thirty-three percent, or does he belong to the remaining two-thirds? If he belongs to the remaining two-thirds, he should be sent to a school for the common people, and if he belongs to the one-third, then he should be sent to a more specialized school, where geniuses can be produced in thousands.

Right now it is all mixed up, and in this mixture the genius suffers. Because if there is a genius in a class... the teacher has to teach in such a way that the most mediocre of the students can understand him. Do you see the implication of it? The implication is that the lowest common denominator prevails over the higher, more intelligent person with more potential.

Now, for a genius what the teacher is teaching is useless. He needs something better, something deeper, something higher. His time is wasted being with the mediocre students. It is an unnecessary mixture. There is no need; they can be sorted out.

And this experiment that I am going to tell you about will be more successful with the thirty- three percent. You can sit in another room separate from someone with whom you have a loving relationship, a deep friendship, a trust, something that is of the heart. And you both sit for ten minutes in silence. Then you decide that one person should take out one card from a pack of playing cards and make some signal - maybe a knock on the door - that "the first card has been taken; now you can take the first card." And the other person has to find one card from among all the cards. He has to be just silent and in tune, open only to what is happening in the other room, and take one card.

This way, take ten cards one by one. And you will be surprised to know that if both persons are intelligent enough, then around seven cards will be the same. That is the minimum; even all ten cards can be the same.

But if even three cards are the same, then all that is needed is a few more experiments and your percentage will grow. And once you can do it with cards, then you can do it with things. You can draw a picture, and the other person will also be drawing a picture - no visible communication, but something invisible reaches from one person to another. And you can change partners, and you can see with whom it functions better. That means your minds function on the same wavelength.

In my opinion, before any two persons decide to live together they should be checked by experts to see whether their minds are in tune or not. They should be given exercises: "First you tune your minds. Your minds should be at least seventy percent in tune, only then is it worth living together; otherwise don't create hell for each other. You love each other - forgive each other."

But you can try to improve your attunement before you decide to live together. You need not go to a court really, because what can a magistrate do? This is something that should be a part of a university - there should be a department which helps people to find out their percentage of attunement, and which helps people increase their attunement. And if they are so far apart that it seems impossible, then it should be suggested to them that, "You will be getting into trouble, and if you love each other... Don't get into trouble. It is better to say goodbye now rather than after you have messed everything up and disturbed each other."

This small experiment can be extended to reach around the earth. For example, you can make arrangements: first try it in one house with ten people, and if you find that there is a certain common wavelength with these ten people then these ten people can spread out around the world. At a fixed time they should start the same experiment - and the result will be the same. The percentage will be the same because the distance makes no difference; it is not a physical phenomenon.

And this phenomenon is possible particularly in animals because they are so innocent. Gurdjieff remembers about his childhood... He lived in a very different kind of world in the Caucasus. It is a tribal world made up of small and mostly ancient tribes who have not yet settled. They are still moving; they live in tents - they are vagabonds, gypsies. Gurdjieff's parents died early - he was only nine years of age - so he was moving with any gypsy tribe where he found someone friendly.

And people loved the boy. He was so intelligent that he learned the many languages of all those tribes - they all spoke different languages. And he learned many things which came in very handy for his work in the future.

One thing he remembers is that in all those tribes they used to hypnotize animals. Their animals were never tied down, there was no need. They would just look into the animal's eyes for a few seconds and his head would fall down, and then he would remain in that posture, frozen as long as you wanted. He would not move unless he was awakened again by the same person looking into his eyes and waking him up.

And Gurdjieff said that it was the simplest way... their horses, their cows, were never lost and they were never tied up. They were always free. Small children were simply hypnotized, so that they wouldn't go out of the camp. Just a circle would be drawn around them and they would never go out of the circle. Whatever you did, they would never go out of the circle. And this had become so deep in their unconscious that even after a person became adult, young or old, if a circle was made around him along with a certain chanting, he would be frozen; he could not get out of it.

Gurdjieff could not believe it - what kind of thing is happening! This man is completely free; that line which has been drawn around him cannot prevent him, but really he is prevented. He talked to a few people to try to get them to come out of it: they tried hard but, as if an invisible wall was preventing them, they could not get out of it.

And all these tribes used hypnosis in different kinds of teachings. For example, they wanted a certain boy to become a great wrestler - he would learn wrestling, but that would be secondary. The primary part would be hypnosis. He would be hypnotized and told, "You are a great wrestler," and this would be repeated continuously. And Gurdjieff said, "I saw with my own eyes that the person was changing. His muscles were changing, his body was changing; his fighting was becoming very refined."

Each year there used to be a fair of all these tribes where champions would be declared in different arts; wrestling would be one of them. And all those wrestlers were trained through hypnosis, which was the easiest way. The same can be done for any teaching, but hypnosis is condemned.

For example, I told you that two persons can try with cards. The best will be that first they are hypnotized, attuned in hypnosis; then the results will be a far higher percentage - nine or ten out of ten cards.

We are going to use hypnosis for many things - for meditation too. If you are finding difficulty in meditation, then first go through hypnosis so that it gets deep into your unconscious that meditation is a simple thing and you are perfectly capable of it. Hypnosis can create that conviction in you. And then sitting you will simply go into meditation without any difficulty, because your whole unconscious will be supporting it; there will be no opposition, no objection.

In Australia, there are tribes which use a very strange method of sending letters - even today. The chief of one tribe goes to a certain tree - and every tribe's camp has a certain tree which has been hypnotized. Trees can be hypnotized; they are very sensitive beings. He goes to the tree and he tells the tree to connect to the tree of another tribe, maybe fifty miles away: "I have a message for a certain man there. Call the chief so he can find the man."

The other tribe's chief will receive the message and will deliver the message to the man. He goes into a hypnotic trance. Something happens at the other end - the chief of the other tribe goes into a hypnotic trance by the side of his tree, and the person to whom the message is given is sitting there, and the chief starts repeating the message. And this is the way they send messages, letters, and they are absolutely accurate. "Your mother is sick, come back home" - simple telegrams, but with a strange method. The trees are used to connect them.

It was because of Mesmer that hypnotism became known as mesmerism in the West - it was the same thing as hypnotism, but because he was the first to use it in the West it got his name. He had a beautiful tree in his garden which he had mesmerized - and this is recent; this is not a very ancient thing. He had given the tree the idea that it could cure any kind of disease. That was his work every morning, first thing, to hypnotize the tree and tell it, "People will be coming and you are capable of curing them."

And then people would start coming. They had just to hold a branch of the tree, and many would go into a trance and their state would be almost hypnotic. Many would be cured. Only those who would not go into a trance would not be cured. These were the adamant people, stubborn people, egoistic people - people who think they cannot be hypnotized. The reality is that they are stupid, and stupid people cannot be hypnotized. Idiots cannot be hypnotized at all; there is no way, because an idiot has not even the intelligence to understand what suggestions the hypnotist is giving him. Trees are far better than idiots - they are not idiots. Birds are far better, animals are far better.

But those who would go into a trance would tremble or dance or sing, and their hands would remain on the branch of the tree almost as if they were glued to it, and their diseases would disappear.

The medical profession was very much against Mesmer - obviously, because he was taking so much of their business and curing people for nothing. So he was brought into court. Now these are not things which can be proved. What can he prove? - what mesmerism is and what the tree does?

He could not prove anything, and he lost the case because he had to prove that people were being cured on medical grounds; otherwise he was a charlatan.

But the strange thing was, he was not doing any harm to anybody. He may have been a charlatan, granted. But if hundreds of people were being cured by him, what is the harm? He may not have been scientific, but the people who were cured were not interested in science, they were interested in being cured.

And in fact these patients were people who had been treated by doctors, by traditional medicines and were not cured; as a last resort they had come to Mesmer, because it was embarrassing - in the society it was thought embarrassing to go to Mesmer. And if he was curing these incurable persons, he was not doing any harm. And he was not charging anything; he was simply a student who was trying to revive a science which had completely lost its roots in the West.

Wherever we establish our school, I would like trees to be hypnotized for curing people. Trees can be hypnotized for other purposes too - for helping people, encouraging people. If people are learning music, they can help them so they learn fast, so they get better in their subject matter. If they are learning mathematics and they are stuck... or they feel that they cannot learn any subject. Hypnosis can remove any obstacle without any trouble.

It is a very strange world. Here nobody bothers to see the beneficial effects of a certain thing.

Everybody is concerned with his profession, his vested interest.

Just the other day, Anando gave me the report that in Europe the Catholic church is almost on the warpath with the Hare Krishna people and the Witnesses of Jehovah. And the reason why they are on the warpath is because they are losing eighteen percent of their business to these people. It is a business. Eighteen percent of the business of the Catholic church is being taken by these people, so they are on the warpath. They cannot tolerate these competitors - they should be crushed.

I am not saying they are right; they are as foolish as the Catholic church. But they are all in the same business. And what right does the Catholic church have to prevent other people from doing the same business?

It makes it absolutely clear that to these people religion is nothing but business; they don't want any competition, they want a monopoly. These are the people who destroyed, burned, living women - thousands of them - in the Middle Ages, condemned them as witches. And those women were really using hypnotic methods and other ancient methods. Certainly they were more capable of helping people than the church.

Those women were a danger to the church's existence, so the church created a fiction that they were in conspiracy with the devil, that they were sexually related with the devil. And they tortured those women so much that they had to confess that they were in a sexual relationship with the devil, because until they confessed the torture continued. There was no way - they had to accept it.

And once they accepted, confessed, then the church was able to punish them. The punishment was being burned alive - and not one, but thousands of women - in the name of religion! But it was really a question of business.

And why were women in that category? - because women can be more easily hypnotized, and can more easily hypnotize other people. They have a more hypnotic energy, so naturally they had developed in this way. And they were helping people, they were not destroying anybody. They were not creating any religion, any organization. And with them, all that had been developed for centuries was destroyed. We don't know what else those poor women knew of the inner secrets of man's mind and its working.

All the religions of the world are against me for the same reason - it is not a religious issue at all.

They are not religious, they are only business people with a certain religious name; behind the name of a certain religion, they are doing good business. Naturally I am dangerous to them - to all of them - because I am taking their youth, the cream, their intelligent people. If this fire spreads, then their future becomes dark.

But it is a sad story that in the name of religion, in the name of science, many beautiful things have been destroyed. They have to be revived. They have not harmed anybody, and they could be of immense help and blessing.