There is no Self, no Other

The first question:

Question 1:

A MASTER IS NOT: A PSYCHOTHERAPIST IS. The Master is a hollow bamboo, a mere passage, for the divine to descend. He is not on his own. He has nothing to say, he has nothing to do - but much happens through him. But it is always through him. He is not the doer of it. He is just a watcher. He allows it, he does not hinder it. He cooperates with it, but he is not the originator of it.

He is just a vehicle.

The psychotherapist IS. He is a doer, knowledgeable. He has all the expertise available. He is not a hollow bamboo. He is not an absence. Hence much cannot happen through him. He can only do a patchwork: here and there a little polishing, a little white-wash, a little adjustment - that's all. His work is trivial. Man's work is bound to remain trivial. Only God is great. And only that which comes from God is vast.

Man's doing is bound to remain petty, small - of no significance in fact, or only of momentary importance. But when God descends, something of the eternal reaches into your being.

The psychotherapist knows about the mind and the workings of the mind. But man in his deepest core is not a mind at all. That's the problem. Man's disease, man's illness, is not only that of mind - it is spiritual, it is metaphysical, it is existential.

The physiologist, the physician, can help you about the body; and the psychologist, the psychotherapist, can help you about the mind - but these are just your surfaces. You are not your surface: you are your depth. Neither the physician can touch that depth, nor the therapist can touch that depth. That depth can only be touched by a Master - because he IS that depth.

A Master is a no-mind. And that is the greatest difference that is possible. The psychotherapist knows about the mind, is a very cultivated mind, cultured, educated, efficient. Technologically he knows the know-how.

The Master is a no-mind. He has no know-how. He makes his nothingness available to the disciple, but that nothingness IS a healing force. The psychotherapist TRIES to heal, but never succeeds.

The Master never tries to heal, but always succeeds. His love is his therapy. Out of his absence flows his love.

And that love is God's love in fact.

When Jesus says again and again, I and my Father are one, this is exactly what he is saying: Don't think of me as myself. I only represent. I am just a symbol. I am just a door. LOOK through me and you will find the beyond.

The Master lives in a totally different reality. The psychotherapist lives in the same reality where you live. There is no qualitative difference between you and the psychotherapist; between the patient and the doctor there is no qualitative difference. The difference is that of knowledge, that of quantity.

He knows more than you know, but he is nOT MORE than you are! He is exactly at the same level.

He is worried with the same anxieties. He is troubled by the same nightmares.

Sigmund Freud himself remained obsessed with the fear of death his whole life. How is he going to help? And he is the founder of psychoanalysis. How is he going to help? All his help can only be a pretension. He himself is trembling. He was so afraid of death that even to mention the word 'death' was enough... and he would start perspiring. Just the mention of ghosts was enough... and he would fall in a swoon. And it was not only so with him.

Carl Gustav Jung was exactly the same. He was so afraid of death that he could not see a dead body. He always wanted to go to Egypt to see the ancient mummies. He was very much interested in the occult, and certainly the pyramids of Egypt have great keys of occult knowledge, and those mummies are carrying some great messages to be deciphered and decoded. He had become aware of it. He wanted to go, and many times he tried to go but never could he manage. He would fall ill. Whenever he would arrange to go to Egypt he would fall ill - just the idea of seeing the dead mummies, three thousand years old, was enough to shake him to the very roots. Slowly slowly, he became aware that whenever he made the arrangement he fell ill - that illness was psychological.

Once it happened: somehow he dragged himself to the airport; even though he had a fever out of his fear, he went to the airport - but could not manage to enter into the aeroplane. From the airport he rushed back home. He became so frightened that he dropped the whole idea for ever, and he never went to Egypt to see those mummies. And he was very much interested in them.

Now, how are these people going to help?

A Master knows there is no death - not only knows through others but through his own experience.

He has looked deep into his life, and death has disappeared like a fog - evaporated. A Master is one who is absolutely free, not only from pathological psychology but is free of psychology itself, is free of mind. He has cut the very root of all pathologies.

With the psychotherapist your relationship is that of a patient and doctor. It is not intimate - it cannot be. It is professional. With the Master your relationship is that of love; it is not professional. It is intimate. It is the most intimate relationship there is. Yes, not even between lovers does such intimacy exist as exists between a Master and a disciple. It is a marriage. And such a marriage where not only bodies, not only minds, but two beings meet.

The psychotherapist is trying to become the Master in the West. A strange phenomenon is happening: the psychotherapist is trying to become the Master, is trying to become the guru - and the priest, the guru, is trying to become the psychotherapist! Now priests talk about psychology, and psychologists talk about religion - because priests are seeing that whatsoever they have been selling up to now cannot be sold any more - it is out of date. People are no more interested in it.

People are no more interested in theology. People are interested in knowing about their mind and its working; people are more interested in having a better mind, more efficient, more calm and quiet and collected.

So the priest is moving, slowly slowly, from theology to psychology. And the psychoanalyst, the psychotherapist, is becoming aware of the phenomenon that the people's real problems are not psychological but religious.

Carl Gustav Jung is reported to have said: "observing thousands of patients in my life, this has been one of my most important conclusions - that people who come to me after the age of forty-two, or nearabout, are not really suffering from any psychological problems but are suffering from religious problems."

I perfectly agree with Jung - that is the time when a person suddenly becomes aware of death. Just as at the age of fourteen a person suddenly becomes aware of sex, and sex becomes important, and sexual fantasies come rushing towards his being from all over the place, and each thing starts taking a sexual color - the dress, the way he walks, the way he talks, the way he looks - everything starts taking a sexual tinge, just like that, at the age of forty-two suddenly death is encountered for the first time. Life starts declining. One has to be ready for the second phase of life. And the modern society does not prepare people for the second phase.

For life you have been prepared in the school, college, university - for almost twenty-five years you have been prepared! You have been taught how to live, but you have not been taught at all how to die. And death is the culmination of life. It is a great art.

Religion is the art of death - how to die joyously, how to die with hallelujah on your lips, how to die dancingly. How to transform the quality of death into the quality of samadhi. How to transform the experience of death into the experience of communion with the divine.

It is near about the age of forty-two that suddenly religion starts becoming important. And modern man does not accept that, so a thousand and one problems arise. Jung is right: people suffer from something which is not psychological but religious. They need an understanding that can help them to go through death. They need some awareness of the immortality of the soul. They need something that is not part of the body but is part of the beyond, so they can trust it. They need a boat so when they leave the body they can move to the other shore.

The psychologists are becoming aware that people's problems are fundamentally religious, so they are turning to be gurus. And the priests and the gurus, seeing that their old theologies, their old gods, are just out of fashion, nobody is interested in those old gods and old scriptures... people may not say anything out of politeness, but the moment you mention the word 'god' people feel a little embarrassed. They start looking sideways. They want to avoid the subject and the topic completely.

They don't want to hear about the angels and heaven and hell. And certainly they are not interested in your so-called great theological problems about how many angels can dance on a single pin-point.

These things look stupid now. Man has grown out of all this. These are hangovers.

So a strange phenomenon is happening. But remember, when the priest talks about psychology he looks stupid, because he is just trying from the back door to bring religion in. ale cannot find any other proofs, so now he is calling on psychology. And psychology cannot give ANY proofs Torn religion. So all the proofs that he gathers through psychology are just imaginary, artificial, arbitrary, somehow managed and manipulated, not valid. He looks stupid.

And so is the case with the psychotherapist who turns to be a guru - because it is not only through knowledge that you can become a Master: you will have to grow in being. No university can make you ready for it. You will have to go inside yourself; you will have to travel a long way in your inferiority.

So all that the psychologist or the psychotherapist talks about religion remains just bare, mere philosophy. His personality gives no evidence of it.

I hove heard:

"There is nothing wrong with you," said the psychiatrist to his patient. "You are just as sane as I am."

But, doctor," cried the patient, as he brushed wildly at himself, "it's these butterflies - they're all over me!"

"For heaven's sake, "cried the doctor, "don't brush them off on me!"

Now that man is mad - there are no butterflies - but to work with mad people, how, long can you remain sane? It has been the observation of many people that in a madhouse, the maddest person it the doctor. Working with mad people continuously, slowly slowly, rather than changing them, which is very difficult, he becomes changed by them.

In the midst of her psychiatric session. Mrs Blossom suddenly exclaimed, "I think I have taken a fancy to you, doctor! How about a kiss?"

"Absolutely not!" the doctor replied indignantly. "That would be contrary to the ethics of my profession. Now continue as before."

"Well, as I was saying," the patient continued, "I'm always having arguments with my husband about his father, and just yesterday... I'm sorry, but it just occurred to me again. What harm would there be if you gave me just one little kiss?"

"That's absolutely impossible!" the doctor snapped. "In fact, I shouldn't even be lying on this couch with you!"

The psychotherapist is not much different from you, cannot be. He knows a little bit more than you know about the mind. But by knowing more about the mind, nothing is helped. One has to go beyond the mind.

Psychotherapy thinks that there are unhealthy minds AND healthy minds - but the experience of the Buddhas is totally different. They say: Mind as such is unhealthy. There are no healthy minds.

Mind AND unhealthy are synonymous. So you cannot make the mind healthy. Yes, you can make it more adjusted, you can make it normally unhealthy, not abnormally unhealthy. You can bring it to a point where it is just like everybody else. That is normal unhealthy, normal neurosis. But you cannot make mind healthy. It is impossible. Can you make a disease healthy? If the disease is there, you are unhealthy. You cannot say, "Now I have a very healthy disease."

Mind is the disease! The Master is one who has seen it and gone beyond the mind, who lives in the land of no-thought, who lives in that absolute silence. But from that absolute silence, the impossible becomes possible. Just to be with a Master is to be in a healing presence.

The Master is not a therapist, but his presence is therapy. His presence heals, and heals wounds of so many lives. But his process of healing is not psychological: it is existential. He does not go on tackling each of your diseases separately: he simply cuts the root in one single stroke. He cuts the mind. He does not bother about the branches and the leaves.

The psychotherapist goes on cutting the leaves. You have this fear, afraid the psychotherapist will try years of psychoanalysis and somehow you become adjusted to the fear.

A man continued to piss in his bed in the night. Now he was getting to be thirty-five - it was already too late. He was married, he had children. Now it was time for the children to piss in the bed - and he was still doing it.

The wife suggested, "Why don't you go to the psychotherapist?"

So he went. Then the LONG psychotherapy continued... analysis is a long process, and very costly.

And after six months a friend asked, "How are things going?"

He said, "Perfect!" He was buoyant, flowing with joy. He said, "Perfect. I have found the greatest psychotherapist there is in the world."

The friend asked, "So he has cured you?"

He said, "No, but I no longer feel guilty about it. He has convinced me that this is perfectly natural, normal - in fact, he himself does it."

The psychotherapist is in the same boat as you are in. All that he can do is a little bit of patchwork.

The Master KILLS you, destroys you, in your totality - gives birth to a new man. The Master becomes a mother to you, a womb. To be a disciple is to enter into the womb of the Master. It is a death and a resurrection.

Second question:

Question 2:

YES, VANDANA, THIS IS PRAYER. Prayer is not a formality. You need not go to a church to pray - and those who go, they don't understand what prayer is. You need not go to a temple or a mosque or a GURUDWARA - and those who go, they are only pretending.

Prayer is something of the heart. It can happen anywhere. And wherever it happens, there is the temple. You need not so to the temple to pray, but WHEREVER you pray, you create a temple, an invisible temple. Wherever somebody bows down in prayer to existence, that place becomes sacred.

To a praying heart, any stone becomes Kaaba, any water becomes Ganges water. To a praying heart, each tree is a Bodhi Tree. The question is not of formality: it is of the feeling of being, uplifted. Yes, exactly that's what prayer is: when you suddenly feel you are being uplifted, when gravitation has no more pull over you, when you know that all the weight has disappeared, that you are weightless; when there is no past hanging around your neck like a rock, and when there is no future distracting you, driving you away from the present - when THIS moment is all, THIS HERE, THIS MOMENT, is all in all, something opens up in the heart and a fragrance is released.

Sometimes in words, sometimes in silence. Sometimes in meaningful words, and sometimes just like a child babbling. Sometimes it may become a song, or a dance. Sometimes you may just be sitting like a Buddha - utterly quiet, unmoving; a center of a cyclone sometimes.

Prayer has no fixed form. And the moment you give it a fixed form, you destroy it. Prayer is spontaneity. And whenever it comes, it always comes with a new flavor. You cannot predict it.

And whenever it comes, it comes from the blue - you cannot drag it. Yes, you can invite it, but you cannot produce it on order. When it comes, it comes. It comes like a breeze, and suddenly you are full of it. And then it is gone. Its coming is beautiful - its going, too, is beautiful. When it comes you are bathed, basked. When it goes, it leaves a GREAT silence, the primordial silence, behind it. Just as when a storm goes and all becomes utterly silent.

Its coming is beautiful: its going is beautiful. But never for a single moment think, Vandana, that you can manage it. If you try to manage it, you will miss its spontaneity. You will kill it. Then it will not be the bird on the wing in the sky. Then it will be just the bird in your golden cage - looks only like the bird. Where is that beauty? Because beauty is intrinsically part of freedom. No beauty can exist without freedom. Wherever freedom is lost, beauty is lost. Slavery is ugly.

Yes, the bird was beautiful on the wing in the sky, whispering with the clouds. There was great benediction. Weighing its wings high up in the sky, just floating in a kind of let-go. And there was great joy. Just to WATCH it was an ecstasy. Now you have caught hold of the bird, and you may have put it in a golden cage studded with diamonds - but what are diamonds to a bird? What is gold to a bird? Its gold is the open sky, and its diamonds are the free-floating clouds and the sun and the moon and the stars.

The bird in the cage looks alive but is no more alive. It is just appearance. So is the prayer. If you manage it, it is a bird in the cage. Never manage prayer. These are great things. Man should be very very respectful about these great things.

And man has not been respectful! That's why there is so much prayer going on in the world - Hindus praying, Mohammedans praying, Christians praying - everybody is praying, and WHERE IS PRAYER? If so much prayer were really going on, the world would be a paradise. If so much prayer were coming out of the hearts, there would be duds of prayer gathering all over the earth and showering. But there seems only to be hatred, violence, war. Prayer is nowhere to be found.

Something is wrong.

This prayer is artificial.

Vandana, whatsoever is happening to you, allow it. Never catch hold of it. The mind tries to catch hold of it. That's why I am insisting, so that you remain aware. Whenever something beautiful happens - mind is a hoarder, mind is very greedy - whenever something beautiful happens it immediately wants to catch hold of it. It immediately wants to become a master of it, so that it can reproduce it again and again whenever it wants.

But there are things which are beyond you: love, meditation, prayer, beauty, grace, God. These are things beyond you! You can at the most OPEN yourself, INVITE them, and wait. But you cannot drag them in. Dragged, you will have something artificial, plastic. The real will never come to you.

These are things you can have only with open hands.

But the mind says, "When it is there, don't lose the moment - catch hold of it. Keep it in your fist, or put it in your safe-deposit and lock it up."

You cannot Lock flowers in a safe-deposit. Money you can lock because money is dead. Flowers you cannot lock because they are alive. They have to be on the trees, rooted in the earth and rooted in the sun, and rooted in the wind. They exist only in that aliveness all around. Cut from all sources of life they will die and stink.

Yes, this is prayer:

A GRATEFULNESS FALLS AND RISES WITH EACH BREATH AND PEACE FLIES ON BEATING WINGS TO SETTLE DEEP WITHIN MY SOUL...

OH

IS IT PRAYER THAT'S THERE?

Yes. This is prayer. Now be watchful. Let it come and let it go.... Never hinder its process. When it comes, feel thankful. When it doesn't come, wait. Don't complain - it will come. It will come more and more. If you can wait, with great longing, AND patience, it is bound to come. It always comes.

The third question:

Question 3:

SELF-KNOWLEDGE IS A CONTRADICTION IN TERMS. When it really happens, there is no self and there is no knowledge. If the self is there, it can't happen. If knowledge is there, it has not happened. So a few preliminary things to be understood.

First: for self-knowledge to happen, the self has to go. You have to forget all about your ego. You have to be in a state of egolessness.

And the second thing: you have to forget all about knowledge too. If you are continuously hankering to know, that very hankering will prevent you. God reveals himself only to those who are not hankering for anything, who are not desiring anything - not even to know God. Mysteries are revealed only to those who simply wait, who make no demand on God. They wait with open eyes, they wait with open heart, but with no demand.

Your demand is basically ego-oriented. Why do you want to know? Because knowledge gives power.Try to understand it. Knowledge IS power. The more you know, the more powerful you become. Ego is always interested in becoming knowledgeable. If you know about nature, you become powerful over nature. If you know about people, you become powerful over people. If you know about your own mind, you become powerful over your own mind. If YOU KNOW about God, you will become powerful over God.

The search for knowledge, deep down, is really the search for power. And how can you be powerful over reality? The very idea is ridiculous. Allow the reality to be powerful over you... relax. And allow the reality to take possession of you, rather than you trying to take possession of reality.

To be really in a state of self-knowledge, one has to forget self and forget ALL inquiry into knowledge.

Then it happens! and only then it happens.

There have been three efforts in the whole history of human consciousness concerning self- knowledge.

The first effort is of the realist. The realist denies the self; he says there is no self inside, no subject; only the object exists, the thing, the matter, the world. That is his way to avoid the inner journey.

The inner journey is dangerous. You will have to lose all! Self-knowledge and all, root and all - you will have to lose all. The realist cannot take that risk. He finds an explanation. He says, "There is no soul. There is no self. All that exists in the world is objects." So he becomes concerned with knowing the objects. He forgets the subjectivity and becomes occupied with the objectivity. That's what science has been doing for three hundred years. It is a way of escaping from oneself.

The second way is that of the idealist who says there is no object: the world is MAYA - illusion.

There is nothing to know outside, so just close your eyes and go in. Only the knower is true - the known is false. The realist says only the known is true and the knower is false; the idealist says only the knower is true and the known is false. And just see the absurdity of it - because how can there be a knower if there is no known? And how can there be a known if there is no knower?

So the idealist and the realist are only choosing half of the reality. About the other half they are afraid.

The realist is afraid to go in, because to go in means to go into emptiness, into utter emptiness. It is to fall in a bottomless pit, in an abyss... unpredictable. Where one will land nobody knows, or whether there is any landing at all.

The realist is afraid of the knower, so he denies it. Out of fear he says it is not: "My whole concern is with the known, the object." And the idealist is afraid of the object, of the world, of the enchantments of the world, of the magic of the world. He is afraid of getting lost into the desires and passions. He is afraid of getting entangled into things - money, power, prestige. He is SO afraid that he says, "All is dream. The world that is outside is not real. The real world is inside."

But both are being half true. And remember: a half-truth is far worse than a total lie. At least the total lie has one quality about it: it is total - the quality of totality. And one thing is beautiful about a total lie: it cannot deceive you long - because it is such a lie, even the stupid person will be able to see sooner or later that it is a lie. But the half-truth is dangerous - even an intelligent person can get lost into it.

And then there is the third way: the way of the mystic. He accepts both, and rejects both. That is my way. He accepts both because he says, "On one plane both exist - the knower and the known, the subject and the object, the inner and the outer. But on another plane, both disappear and only one remains - which is neither the known nor the knower."

The mystic's approach is total. And I would like you to understand the mystic's approach as deeply as possible. On one level both are right. When you are dreaming, the dream IS true, and the dreamer is true. When you are awake in the morning, it is no more true. Now the dreamer is gone, the dreaming is gone - both have gone. Now you are awake. Now you are existing on a totally different level of consciousness.

The world is true, the ego is true, when man is ignorant, unconscious, unaware. When man becomes aware, when Buddhahood happens, then the world is not there, neither is there any ego - both have disappeared. "Both have disappeared" does not mean that nothing is left: both have disappeared into each other. Only one is left now, two are not left. The knower and the known have become one.

That oneness is what is really meant by self-knowledge. But the word is not right. No word can be right. About such great experiences which go beyond duality, no word can be right.

Man tries in two ways to overcome the epistemological dichotomy which is inherent in self-knowing.

One way is to confine his knowing to objects of the world of the non-self. This way is to escape from self-knowledge. The people who want to escape from self-knowledge condemn it as introverted, unsocial, abnormal, even perverted. They call it a kind of intellectual masturbation, navel gazing:

they call these people lotus-eaters, dreamers, poets, mystics, somehow gone astray from reality.

How much of the pursuit of research in the natural sciences is motivated by the effort to keep our attention off ourselves? This question has to be asked.

People become interested in scientific research - why? Are they really interested in some scientific project? or are they simply trying to avoid going in? The greater possibility is that they are avoiding going in.

Albert Einstein said before he died that if God were going to give him another chance to be born, he would not like to become a scientist again. A friend who was by the side of the bed asked, "Then who would you like to become?" And he said, "Anybody, but not a scientist. I would like to become a plumber even, but not a scientist."

Why? Albert Einstein was a man of great sensitivity, of great intelligence; a man who could have easily become a Buddha. Had all the potential, and missed - because he poured ALL his intelligence into the objective world. He became too much concerned about the stars and time and space, etcetera, and he forgot completely about himself. He became so much engaged with other things and other problems that he forgot completely who he was, or that some time has to be given to oneself too.

One of the socialist leaders of India, Dr. Ram Manohar Lohia, went to see him. He was telling me that when he went to see Albert Einstein he had to wait six hours. The time had been fixed by Albert Einstein himself, and again and again the wife would come and bring tea and other things and would say, "We are sorry but he is taking his bath." So long?

Dr. Lohia asked, "How long is he going to take his bath?"

The wife said, "Nobody knows, because when he sits in his tub he starts thinking of great things.

And he forgets completely where he is. And we are not allowed to disturb him, because he may be chasing some subtle train of thought, and if we disturb him it may be a loss to humanity."

Dr. Lohia became more interested. He said, "But what does he go on doing sitting there?"

The wife, said, "Please don't ask... he plays with soap-bubbles. He keeps himself engaged with soap-bubbles, and goes on thinking. All the great problems that he has solved, they have been solved in his tub."

You must have heard of great scientists becoming absent-minded. Those are not just jokes - there is a truth in it. They lost track of their own being.

It is said of Immanuel Kant: one night he came back home, he knocked on the door, it was getting dark, and the servant looked from the window, from the top floor, and said, "The master is not at home."

It is Emmanuel Kant's house, he is the master, but the servant thought somebody had come to see the master. So he said, "The master is not at home. He has gone for a walk."

And Immanuel Kant said, "Okay, then I will come later on."

And he went! After walking for one hour, then he suddenly realized, "What nonsense has this servant been playing with me? I am the master!"

If you become too much engaged in outer things, there is a possibility your whole consciousness will start moving into extroversion. Nothing points to yourself.

Another night, Immanuel Kant came back home. He used to carry a walking-stick. He went in the room and forgot what is what, so he put the walking-stick on the bed, and he himself stood in the comer. Only in the middle of the night, suddenly he recognized the fact that something was wrong.

This IS possible. One can become really so much obsessed with the objective... one can lose all track of oneself. One can fall in a shadow. Scientists live in that kind of shadow. Philosophers live in that kind of shadow.

Subjectivity is eliminated when objects and objective interests take over. The onto logical imperialism of scientific methodology is a pressing danger. It is one matter to hold that if something cannot be known by scientific methods, it cannot be KNOWN, but it is quite another matter to hold that if something cannot be known by scientific methods it does not EXIST.

And once you become too much obsessed with the objective, then naturally you become obsessed with the methodology of science too - then that is the only valid method to know. If something is not available to THAT method, then not only do you say it cannot be known, you start saying, slowly slowly, unconsciously, unawares, that if it cannot be known through scientific method it cannot exist.

That's why scientists go. on saying God does not exist. Not that God does not exist - it is just their methodology. Their methodology is for the object and God is your subjectivity. Their methods are meant to catch hold of that which is separate from you. And God is not separate from you: God is your innermost being, your inferiority.

Through scientific methods, love cannot be proved. That does not mean love does not exist. For it, a different methodology is needed, a different approach, a different vision, a different way of seeing.

The scientist avoids the problem of self-knowing by getting more and more interested in the objective world. By getting more and more into things, he goes farther and farther away from himself.

And there is a third effort also to overcome the subject/object dichotomy, and that is the way of the mystic. One way to AVOID this problem of subject and object is that of the scientist: only object exists. The other way to avoid the dichotomy - because it is insoluble - is that of the idealist: to say that the world is illusory, it doesn't exist, it is MAYA, close your eyes. Both are wrong. The third is the method of the mystic: he TRANSCENDS. He does not deny reality to the object, he does not deny the reality to the subject - he accepts the reality of both. He bridges them.

That is the meaning of the famous Upanishadic statement: TAT-TVAM-ASI - That art thou. This is a bridging. In this bridging, self-knowledge happens. Self disappears, knowledge disappears - knowing remains. A clarity, a transparency. All is clear. There is nobody to whom it is clear, and there is nothing which is clear - but ALL IS clear. It is only clarity and clarity....

This is called by the Buddhists: The Lotus-Land of Buddha. All is clear and fragrant, and beautiful, and graceful. Then the splendor opens its doors.

The mystic transcends the problem by attempting a form of knowing in which the knower and the known are merged into one unit. Now nothing is left in the concept of 'knowledge'. Knowledge cannot be divided into direct and indirect. All knowledge is indirect. Knowledge is a salute, not an embrace. It is a representation, a symbolization, a universalization, an analysis. In a sense, knowledge is a form of falsifying; for reality is concrete, particular, specific, unanalyzed. Knowledge is a dry and dead fact - it is not wet experience. And experience is not knowledge but knowing.

That's why Krishnamurti always uses the word 'experiencing' rather than 'experience'. He is right.

He turns the noun into a verb: he calls it experiencing. Remember that always: transform nouns into verbs and you will be Dover to reality. Don't call it knowledge: call it knowing. Don't call it life: call it living. Don't call it love: call it loving. Don't call it death: call it dying.

If you can understand that the whole life is a verb, not a noun, there will be great understanding following it like a shadow.

There is no self and there is no other.

The great Jewish mystic and philosopher, Martin Buber, says that prayer is the experience of I and thou, a dialogical experience a dialogue. Yes, in the beginning prayer is so, but not in the end. For the beginners, prayer is a dialogue between I and thou. But for those who have arrived, prayer is not a dialogue because there is neither I nor thou - only one. Dialogue cannot exist. It is not communication: it is communion. It is not even union, but unity.

Self-knowledge is of great importance. Nothing else is of more importance than that. But remember these two pitfalls: one is denying subjectivity and becoming a realist; another is denying reality and becoming an idealist. Avoid these two pitfalls. Walk exactly in the middle.

And then you will be surprised - the self has disappeared, the knowledge has disappeared. But then descends knowing. Great light descends, and a light that not only transforms you but transforms your whole world.

Buddha is reported to have said: The moment I became enlightened, the whole existence became enlightened for me. This is true. I am a witness to it. Exactly that's hove it happens. When you become enlightened, the WHOLE existence becomes full of light and remains full of light. Even darkness becomes luminous, even death becomes a new way of living.

The fourth question:

Question 4:

I AM SO SIMPLE - something must be wrong with you. You must be knowledgeable. You must be carrying great prejudices in you. Otherwise, what I am saying are such simple truths; there is no way to make them more simple. But you must be waiting to hear something else - then problems arise.

I say one thing. You were waiting to hear something else. And there is collision, they collide. And, naturally, if anything collides with you, you cannot accept it. It creates confusion. I am here to clarify things for you, but if you have ideas, a priori ideas, fixed attitudes, prejudices, conditioning, then my simple statements will collide with your deep-rooted beliefs - and there will be confusion. You want to hear something else... if I say it then it is perfectly okay. You say, "I understand." That's what you mean when you say, "Yes, I understand." It means I am agreeing with you, but I have no obligation to agree with you. How can I agree with you? If I agree with you, how am I going to change you?

All hope is, all promise is, in my disagreeing with you, because that's the only possibility for you to grow beyond yourself.

But it happens. You have a certain idea. I say something: either you hear something which I have not said, or your belief is hurt, wounded, you become restless, and in that restlessness you cannot hear what is being said. Otherwise I am saying such simple things.

The husband came home drunk again. His wife could not stand it. She screamed at him, "If you don't stop this damnable drinking, I am going to kill myself!"

The hapless husband retorted, "Promises, that's all I get, promises."

It is very difficult to hear what is being said. You hear what you CAN hear.

One parent was listening to her six-year-old at his math lesson: "Three plus one, the sonuvabitch is four," he said. "Three plus two, the sonuvabitch is five. Three plus three, the sonuvabitch is six."

The mother's jaw dropped in astonishment. "Johnny, where in the world did you ever learn to talk like that?" she angrily asked.

"Oh, that's the way they teach us at school," said Johnny.

Unable to believe it, Johnny's mother visited the teacher and demanded an explanation. But the teacher was as horrified as the mother - she had no idea where Johnny had learnt those words.

Then she realized what had happened.

"I get it," she laughed. "We teach the children to say: Three plus one, the SUM OF WHICH is four; three plus two, the SUM OF WHICH is five!"

I may be saying one thing... you may be hearing another. Then it becomes very difficult. I talk from my vision; you listen from your vision. There is a vast difference. So each word that is said to you is being translated by you, even though I am speaking the same language that you understand - still it is being translated.

The marriage counselor was advising the bride-to-be. "The first thing I must tell you is that if you want to retain the interest of your husband, you must never completely disrobe in front of him when retiring. Always keep a little mystery about you."

About two months later, the husband said to his bride, "Tell me, Jane, is there any insanity in your family?"

"Of course not!" she responded hotly. "Why do you ask such a question?"

"Well," said he, "I was merely wondering why, during the last two months since we're married, when you go to bed you never take off your hat."

People understand in their own ways. That may be creating trouble for you. You will have to come closer to my vision of things. In fact, what I am saying is very simple. It is not difficult at all.

Secondly, you will have to leave your past behind. Come fresh to me, clean slates, so I can write something that has happened to me. If you come with so many things already written on your slate, I will still write, but it will become very very confusing for you to understand what has been written.

Everything else that you are carrying in your head becomes entangled with what I say. It never reaches to you exactly as it is said.

Listen to me, not from the head but from the heart. Listen to me not argumentatively but in a kind of deep intimacy, love, sympathy. Don't be here like a spectator - become a participant. Fall en rapport with me. That is the only way to understand what is being said to you, because what is being said to you is no ordinary message. It is absolute fire. If you allow, it is going to transform you, it is going to transmute you. If you allow, you will never be the same again. If you allow, this is going to be your rebirth.

And the last question:

Question 5:

HOW AM I TO KNOW? It may mean something really great, metaphysical. Mystics say they feel homesick, but then they mean they are longing for the original source, the ultimate home. They are longing for God. But I don't know about you. You may be simply feeling homesick!

Listen to these stories:

A traveling salesman went into a hashery. He instructed the waitress, "Look, I want two eggs, and I want them fried very hard. I want two pieces of toast burnt to a crisp, and I want a cup of coffee weak, lukewarm, and practically undrinkable."

"What!" exclaimed the waitress. "What kind of an order is that?"

"Never you mind," insisted the salesman, "Just bring me what I asked for."

The waitress went back to the kitchen, told the chef there was a loony guy outside and gave him the order. The chef prepared everything just as it was ordered. The waitress brought the miserable breakfast back to the table, and said coolly, "Anything else, sir?"

"Why, yes," said the salesman. "Please sit down next to me and nag me. I'm homesick."

Or this story:

A battling couple had had the worst spat of their marriage. Enraged and disgusted, the husband grabbed his coat and stormed out of the house. To cool his ire, the sizzling spouse took the subway to Grand Central and visited some of the local bars to try to forget his troubles. Before long he was beginning to feel his oats.

By two a.m., the hapless husband decided that he was soused enough to take anything his wife could mete out. He left a bar and started walking up Eighth Avenue, looking for the subway station.

As he neared Madison Square Garden, he looked up and there in bright neon lights glared the sign:

"Big Fight Tonight." He paused, refocused his eyes, and sighed: "Ah, home at last!"

I don't know what you mean by your question. You say: I FEEL HOMESICK - WHAT DOES IT MEAN? YOU must really know. If it is the homesickness for God, I can show you the way. And every-one remains homesick unless one finds God. We have lost our paradise. We have known how it is to be, what beauty it is to be - we have lost it. We had known it in the mother's womb.

The memory persists. The memory is not mental: it is in every cell of your body, every fiber of your body. It continuously persists. It goes on haunting you, it goes on giving you a sense that something is missing. Things are as they should not be. It goes on goading you towards something that is possible.

That goal is God - or call it truth, or Nirvana, or what you like. If you are feeling homesick in this sense, I can help you. If you are feeling homesick in some other sense, go to Deeksha....