Beyond the capacity of the mind

Question 1:

Antar Devopama, mind is capable of creating all kinds of illusions, hallucinations. But mind is not capable of creating the illusion of meditation, for the simple reason that meditation is an absence of mind. All other illusions and hallucinations need mind to be present; they are mind projections.

Only meditation is beyond the capacity of mind. Because it is beyond the mind, mind has no experience of meditation; it cannot delude you. If you are feeling meditative, silent, thoughtless, innocent, a pure space, you can trust that you have entered the temple of meditation.

Mind is certainly cunning, but there is a limit to that cunningness, and mind finds that limit in meditation. Meditation actually is the death of the mind; the mind cannot manage it. So if something of meditation is happening, you can trust it totally.

The questions arise only when you come back to the mind. Your meditation is only for a few moments, then you are back to the mind; and mind starts creating distrust. That is the nature of mind, to create distrust. It starts creating questions. But when you are in meditation - those few moments - mind cannot speak at all. For those few moments, mind virtually does not exist; its function stops.

A Catholic priest, a Protestant minister, and a Jewish rabbi met on a golf course and decided to bet on who would win their game. But first they had to decide what proportion of their winnings should be given back to God.

"Let us draw a small circle on the ground, throw our winnings up in the air, and what lands in the circle goes to God," the Catholic priest suggested.

"No, let us draw a large circle," said the Protestant minister, "throw the money up, and what lands outside the circle will go to God."

"Wait," cried the rabbi. "Forget all about circles. Let us throw the money up, and what stays up God can keep."

Mind is very clever. But as far as meditation is concerned, mind is absolutely impotent.

Your question is, "For the past few weeks, I have been able to sit and allow my mind to be quiet - sometimes for only a second, but sometimes for longer. Since this has been happening, I have experienced many beautiful spaces, as if this quietness somehow invites the universe in. Inside these glimpses, there is no doubt, no 'me' to doubt. Coming out, I doubt. I do not know whether this doubt comes from my mind, or simply from an inner knowledge that there is yet so much more.

Can I trust that I am moving into meditation, or is my mind cunning enough to make me believe that I am?"

Mind is not capable of that. But one thing more has to be remembered: that whatever beautiful experiences may be happening to you, your inner being knows perfectly well that there is yet so much more. Mind does not know that. In a way, mind is very poor. All its experiences are very mundane - about money, about power, about prestige, about borrowed knowledge, about a thousand and one things but they are all trivia.

Mind has no understanding, or even a suspicion that there exists a dreamland within you, a golden place. Mind cannot conceive what blissfulness is, what it is to be totally conscious, what constitutes ecstasy. Mind is not meant for that.

Make the division clear: mind is for the objective world - there it has tremendous capacity. The whole of science is a creation of the mind.

Meditation is for the inner world, the subjective. That's why in the East science could not develop, and in the West, Gautam Buddhas could not be born. The West remained confined to the mind, reached to the deeper secrets of matter but could not manage even a single glimpse of the inner world. Rather than accepting its inability, the mind simply says there is no inner world. In that way, it can hide its impotence.

For centuries, the East worked only on meditation. Meditation cannot create technology. Meditation can give you tremendous experiences of your immortality, of the universal godliness, of an oceanic ecstasy. But meditation is incapable - in the same way as mind is incapable - of knowing anything about matter. That's why, in the East, the mystics have denied the very existence of the outside world, saying it is maya, it is illusion.

It is the same logic. Mind denies the inner world - that there is no inner world, no spiritual world, no soul, nothing divine, all is solid matter. Meditation, on the other hand, in a similar way denies that there is anything real outside - the real is inside.

That's why the East has remained poor - at least outwardly poor; its richness is of the inner. The West has become rich outwardly; its poverty has remained of the inner.

The man I conceive of in the future should not deny either; there is no need - there is no conflict, there is no contradiction. Mind is for matter, and matter is a reality not an illusion. Meditation is for consciousness, and consciousness is a higher reality - not a by-product of matter, or just a hypothesis; it is an experiential fact.

Without any exception, whoever has gone in has found consciousness.

I want the new man to rebel against the West and to rebel against the East, because they have divided man and they have divided man's conception.

They both have created a certain kind of poverty, when man can be rich on both the sides. There is no conflict at all. You can meditate in a golden palace; the gold in the palace is not going to disturb your meditation.

There is no need to renounce the world; in fact, it is so surprising that the people who have called the world illusory have insisted on renouncing it. If it is illusory, what are you renouncing? If it does not exist, then where are you going? What is there to renounce? Your every sense says the world is real - it is just that your meditation is incapable of penetrating the objective reality.

If the world were really unreal, then renouncing the world would not have been considered something saintly, but something stupid. You don't renounce your dreams in the morning - "I renounce all my dreams of the night, they were all unreal." If they were unreal, what is there to renounce? I have never heard of anybody renouncing his dreams.

But all the mystics in the past have been calling the world unreal, and yet insisting on renouncing it, going to the mountains and to the deserts. There is some fear, there is some need to escape.

And the fear is that their mind and all their senses insist on the reality of the world - which goes against their experience of meditation. They find themselves in a very great dilemma. Just to have a peaceful state, it is better to call one of the two illusory, and escape from it so that you are no longer split, in a dilemma, in any problem. They are trying to make life simple.

The scientist has been denying consciousness, he has been denying anything of the inner. It is so stupid because simple logic will say if there is something outer, the inner must exist. Without the inner, how can the outer exist? They are together, inevitable, inseparable.

But the scientist's problem is the same, the same dilemma. His whole knowledge, experience, experiments and conclusions are about the objective world. He has to deny meditation because that becomes a distraction to him. If there is something like meditation, if there is something like a divine being within man, then all his great effort in physics, in chemistry and in biology becomes trivia. It is easier to say that there is no soul, no consciousness. This way, in the past, man has been solving his conflict. But in fact this has not solved anything, it has made him both in a way rich, and in a way poor.

My own perception for the new man is that he has to be rich on both sides, there is no need to be poor. He has to be rich in science, in technology, in whatever mind can do, and he has to be rich in meditation, in love, in ecstasy. And there is no need to create any contradiction. Mind's function is limited, and meditation's function is limited. Their spheres don't overlap.

Devopama, there is certainly much more to experience, and this statement will remain true forever.

Whatever you experience, you will find there is still much more ahead of you. The inner is as inexhaustible as the outer.

In the Middle Ages, religious people used to think that the earth was the center of the whole universe, and that all the stars were hanging around like lanterns to give light in the night when the sun sets - they were almost touchable, very close. As science grew more and more in its understanding, it was astounding to know that these stars are far away - the closest star is four light years away.

They had to invent a new measurement, the light year, because miles wouldn't do. One light year is the measurement of a ray traveling in one year's time, and the speed of light traveling is one hundred and eighty-six thousand miles per second. With that speed, the closest star can be reached in four years - and we have discovered almost four million stars. With the naked eye in the night, you see only about three hundred stars. You will be surprised, because you think you see thousands of stars... try to count!

Nobody has been able to count more than three hundred. Then he gets mixed up, then he starts forgetting whether he has taken this star into account or not. But scientists say the eyes cannot see more than three hundred stars, and there are four million.

And every day new stars are being discovered which are farther away, so far away that it becomes almost unimaginable. Stars have been found whose light started coming towards the earth when there was no earth... that means four billion years, and their light has not yet reached us - four billion years with that speed. And scientists say that there are stars which will never know that the earth ever existed, because by the time their light will reach it, the earth will be gone, the sun will be dead. They started the journey when the earth and the sun were not in existence, and they will reach when both are finished. They will never know that a planet like earth ever existed.

And scientists have been shocked and surprised because every day new stars go on bubbling up.

As our instruments for measuring distance become more and more subtle and refined, new stars are discovered.

Albert Einstein, perhaps the only man in history who has devoted his whole life to the stars, finally said, "Their number is infinite, and above all they are running away with the same speed as light from some center which we don't know about. They are all spreading farther and farther away."

It seems perhaps the idea in the Middle Ages may have been an old, ancient idea, but stars were closer! In millions of years, they have run far away - and certainly the earth is not the center; it is so small that it is almost negligible. Even our great star, which is six thousand times bigger than the earth, is a mediocre star; there are stars thousands of times bigger than our sun. And science has not been able to find the center from which they are escaping in all directions.

Bertrand Russell has a beautiful story....

A Christian priest had a dream that he had died, and of course reached heaven. But he was very shocked because the doors of heaven were so big that he could not see where they ended. In all directions, as far as he could see, there was the door. And he himself, compared to the door, looked like an ant. He was very shocked: "This is very disrespectful. I was hoping that God would be here at the gate, and angels would be playing on their harps, 'Allelujah!'"

The gate was closed. He knocked, but he himself wondered, "Who is going to hear?" The gate was so vast; his knock was such a small sound, almost inaudible. It took him three days continuously knocking.

Then Saint Peter opened a window and looked down. He had one thousand eyes. The priest immediately fell on his knees, and said, "God."

Saint Peter said, "I'm not God, I'm just the gatekeeper. You must have heard, my name is Saint Peter. As far as God is concerned, I have not yet been able to see him. It is a very vast space.

Although I have one thousand eyes, I have not yet been able, in two thousand years, to find him."

The priest said, "This is unbelievable. What about Jesus Christ?"

Saint Peter said, "I have not found him either, the place is so big. I have been searching for two thousand years. And who are you?"

He said, "I am a Christian priest from the earth."

Saint Peter said, "This won't do. What is the index number of your earth, which earth? There are millions of earths; each star has its own solar system, has its own planets, its own moons, its own earths. So you give me the index number, and I will run to the library to find out from which earth you are coming."

The priest said, "My God! I have never heard about any index number. I'm coming from the solar system."

Saint Peter said, "Each star has its own solar system, and there are millions of solar systems. Again, you will have to give me the index number."

It became a nightmare. There was no question of his getting a welcome. First, he had to give his identity; only then would the doors open. Saint Peter disappeared, telling him, "I'm going to the library. Perhaps the librarian can help me."

Waiting, and waiting, and waiting... perhaps thousands of years passed... he woke up from this nightmare, and he said, "My God! It is better to be alive; I don't want to go to such a heaven. I cancel all the prayers that I have made before. It is so humiliating."

But this is the situation. To us, our earth looks so big; compared to the sun, it is nothing. To us, our sun looks so big; compared to the stars, it is nothing. And the stars compared to the universe are nothing - just soap bubbles.

Just as mind is getting more and more baffled as it is approaching into the deeper realms of objective reality, in the same way, meditation goes on and on - new spaces go on opening up. It is never that you come to a place at which you can say, "This is the dead end of the street." There is no dead end of the street - neither inwards, nor outwards. Both are infinite.

Hence, the feeling coming to you that there is "yet so much more," is absolutely correct - and it is going to remain relevant forever! It is not that one day you will say, "Now the journey is finished."

There is no goal, there is only a beautiful pilgrimage. Make the most of it - outwardly and inwardly.

Have all possible experiences, and move on.

Gautam Buddha used to end his sermons every day with the word charaiveti: move on, move on.

Never stop and think that you have come to the end.

Question 2:

Anand Asimo, in the first place, your idea of being a disciple is not right. You say, "To be a disciple has always meant to me to follow you." I have been saying almost every day not to follow me; follow your own consciousness! And the word 'disciple' comes from the same root as discipline; its basic meaning is learning. Follow your consciousness, follow your own light; and if you can learn anything from me, don't believe it - experiment with it. If it proves right to you, it is yours, not mine.

Your idea of a disciple is not right: "To be under your guidance, as if not to have a self of my own..."

Do you hear me or not? I'm saying that you should have your own self, your own individuality; that here you are not expected to surrender yourself, or your individuality, and become a slave, a spiritual slave. All the religions have been doing that for centuries: making millions of people spiritual slaves - which is the greatest slavery.

My insistence has been that, at the most, you are my fellow traveler; we are on the same journey.

Maybe I am a step ahead of you, and my experience can help you to take that one step. But there is no insistence that you have to take that step, because it may not be suitable to you, to your individuality.

In the light of my experience, you have to find your own way. My experience can only give you hints.

My finger can point to the moon, but my finger is not the moon. You don't have to become my finger, nor do you have to worship my finger. You have to forget my finger, and look at where it is pointing.

Because of your wrong conception, the second part of your question arises: "I was never aware of the fact that being a disciple is to be as you are." No, that is not right either. You are not to be as I am, or as Jesus Christ is, or as Gautam Buddha is.

You have to be yourself. Existence never repeats. That's why, in twenty-five centuries, there has not been another Gautam Buddha and there never will be again. Existence is so creative, so innovative that it need not repeat an old model.

It happened once... a super-rich man purchased a painting of Picasso for one million dollars.

Naturally, he asked a critic of paintings, "Is it authentic? - because if not, I'm wasting one million dollars."

The critic said, "About this painting, I can say with an absolute guarantee that it is authentic. It is Picasso."

But the rich man said, "I would like to give you your fee, but only if you take me to Picasso and he confirms that it is actually his painting. I want to be absolutely certain."

The critic said, "I was staying with Picasso when he did this painting but if you insist, we can go. He is one of my friends."

They went to Picasso, and Picasso flatly denied that it was authentic. The critic said, "This is too much. I was present when you were painting this."

Picasso's girlfriend was also present and she said, "Why you are lying? I was also present when you were painting it."

Picasso said, "Who has said that I did not paint it? But it is not authentic."

They were all puzzled, "What does he mean, he has painted it and it is not authentic?"

Picasso said, "You are looking puzzled, but the simple fact is, I painted the same painting before.

One rich man was asking for a painting, and I had no new ideas so I simply painted again an old idea. The authentic painting is still in the gallery in Paris; this is only a copy. It does not matter who made the copy. Somebody else could have made it or I could have made it, but it is a copy - it is not new, an original. Hence I cannot say it is authentic."

His sense of authenticity and originality is very clear. Existence is always original and always authentic. It never creates two persons exactly the same.

You don't have to be like me or like anybody else. That is not disciplehood, that is becoming a carbon copy. And to be a carbon copy is one of the ugliest things in the world. But all the religions have been doing that - creating carbon copies, calling them great saints. They are simply fake, actors, they are simply acting. How can you have the heart of Jesus ? How can you have the perceptivity of Jesus? How can you have the courage...? You can pretend. You can have hair like Jesus, you can have the beard, you can carry a cross. You can even start believing that you are Jesus Christ.

One man in America started believing that he was Abraham Lincoln. Every effort was made, but he would stutter just the way Abraham Lincoln used to stutter and he would walk the way Abraham Lincoln used to walk - he was a little lame. And his face was very similar and he had grown the beard. The family was tired. Finally, they took him to a psychiatrist, who used a lie detector.

There exists a machine now that can detect lies. You don't know it but it may be hidden just underneath you - you may be standing on top of it. It is like a cardiogram. A few questions are asked - very simple, no possibility for lying - such as "What do you think, is it day or night?" And then the man naturally says, "It is day."

"What do you think, are the trees green or blue?" The man naturally says, "They are green." A few questions were asked in which he could not lie, and the detector was making a harmonious graph.

Then suddenly the psychiatrist asked him, "Are you Abraham Lincoln?"

The man was getting tired; everybody was making a laughingstock of him. The family thought that he had gone insane and he was being dragged to this doctor, to that psychoanalyst. So finally he dropped the idea. He thought, "It is better to lie." He said, "I am not Abraham Lincoln." The family was surprised. But the lie detector said that he was lying, because deep in his heart he knew perfectly well he was Abraham Lincoln.

Copying, imitation, can go so deep. Although he was saying that he was not Abraham Lincoln - and he was not Abraham Lincoln - the machine was detecting his heartbeats and making a graph, so suddenly when he said, "I am not Abraham Lincoln," the graph went berserk. It lost its harmony.

When the graph was taken out and the psychoanalyst studied it he said, "My God, unless he gets assassinated this man is not going to change."

Only assassination would prove whether he was Abraham Lincoln or not. But what would be the point - after assassination what is the need of any proof? In fact, my feeling is if that man had been assassinated and if he had had a few minutes before dying, he would have said, "Look, I have been telling all you idiots that I am Abraham Lincoln. Now the final act has come. I am assassinated."

You are filled with wrong ideas. But those wrong ideas are very prevalent down the centuries.

"... And to allow your presence, your eyes and your actions to put light on my being present, on my actions, on my ability to see clearly, what is happening inside..." That is all imitation, that is all destructive; that's how man has been destroyed, that is how the whole of humanity has been enslaved.

You are just to be a friend to me, neither a believer, nor a follower, nor an imitator - just a friend.

You have to listen to me and experiment. I may be right, I may be wrong; it is your experiment which is going to decide. It is only your experimentation with yourself that will bring authentic growth, consciousness, enlightenment. There is no other way. There has never been.

And now you are asking: "Is there another word to describe this relationship with you?" What relationship? I have been against all relationships - just friendliness, not even friendship. That word 'friendship' gives a distant echo of some relationship. Just friendliness, that's enough; there is no need for more. Now you need a new name to describe this relationship? I don't have any relationship with anybody.

You are here out of freedom, out of love, out of friendliness. Why drag into it the dirty word, 'relationship'? And to you, 'disciple' does not seem appropriate, because of that relationship. You want to hang around my neck a little more closely. Just have mercy on me. It is going perfectly well:

you are yourself, I am myself; you love to listen to me, I love to talk to you - that's all.

Mick was walking down a street in Dublin, when suddenly two men pulled him into an alley. Mick put up a terrific fight, but the thugs succeeded in getting him pinned down and robbed him.

When they found only thirty pence, one of the men said angrily, "You mean to say, you put up that fierce fight for a measly thirty pence? If you had sixty pence perhaps you would have killed both of us."

Mick replied, "Ah, no. I thought you were after the five hundred pounds I have hidden in my shoe."

You have been hiding your whole ideology too long. You must have thought that you are bringing a great gift in your question, but I don't accept any relationship; I have accepted the word 'disciple', because it simply means a learner - it is not a relationship.

All relationships are binding, they create trouble. You start expecting something, and the person who has allowed you to be related starts expecting something from you - and the trouble begins.

And the door to hell is not far away.

Here, no relationship exists at all. Everybody is himself. And my whole philosophy is to give you dignity, selfhood, the glory of being yourself. I am not here to make you a Christian, or a Hindu or a Buddhist.

My whole effort and love is to make you just yourself. It is easy to copy. It is difficult to be original.

But unless you are original, your life will not have any juice.

Question 3:

Puja Melissa, I am just a storyteller. From my very childhood I have loved to tell stories, real, unreal.

I was not at all aware that this telling of stories would give me an articulateness, and that it would be of tremendous help after enlightenment.

Many people become enlightened, but not all of them become masters - for the simple reason that they are not articulate, they cannot convey what they feel, they cannot communicate what they have experienced. Now it was just accidental with me, and I think it must have been accidental with those few people who became masters, because there is no training course for it. And I can say it with certainty only about myself.

When enlightenment came, I could not speak for seven days; the silence was so profound that even the idea of saying anything about it did not arise. But after seven days, slowly, as I became accustomed to the silence, to the beautitude, to the bliss, the desire to share it - a great longing to share it with those whom I loved was very natural.

I started talking with the people with whom I was in some way concerned, friends. I had been talking to these people for years, talking about all kinds of things. I had enjoyed only one exercise, and that was talking, so it was not very difficult to start talking about the enlightenment - although it took years to refine and bring into words something of my silence, something of my joy.

You are asking what the relationship is between enlightenment and language. No relationship at all, because enlightenment happens in silence; there is no language, no chattering of the mind, not even a single word. And most of the enlightened people have remained silent their whole life.

Just here in this city a few years ago was a man, Meher Baba. He lived more than thirty years in silence. He was announcing every year that he would be speaking. The date would come, his disciples would gather, they would come from faraway lands - and again he would not speak. He could not manage a connection between silence and language.

If you have not been a poet before you become enlightened, after enlightenment you cannot express yourself in poetry. But if you have been a poet before then you have a mind trained for poetry. Now this mind can be used as an instrument to express what has happened to you - the mysterious.

If you have been a painter before, you can paint your enlightenment. Your paintings will give a peace to the eyes and those who sit by the side of your paintings - just watching them - will fall into meditation. So it all depends on what kind of mind you had at the time of enlightenment.

If you were an architect, after enlightenment you can create a Taj Mahal, or the temples of Khajuraho, or the caves of Ajanta and Ellora. But your mind has to be ready for it before enlightenment. After enlightenment you cannot do anything with the untrained mind.

I have loved talking on all kinds of subjects. I was a trouble in school; mostly I was standing outside the room, because the teacher would throw me out. He would give me the alternative, "Either you remain silent or you go out." I thought it was better to go out. But from the window I continued questioning.

My teachers used to hit their heads with their hands. "What kind of person are you? You don't even understand that you are punished! Just go and run seven rounds of the whole campus." I would say, "If I do ten rounds, do you have any objections?" He said, "My God, I am not rewarding you." And I would say, "Because I have not done my everyday morning exercise - it is a beautiful exercise...."

I was expelled from many colleges, expelled from universities, because no professor could cope with me. They would threaten the vice-chancellor, "We will resign if this boy continues to be in the university, because he is not allowing us to move a single inch. You say a single word and he raises so many questions - when are we going to do the course?"

I was told by vice-chancellors, "We cannot lose our well-respected professor - he has served many years, and he is known all over the country - just because of an unknown student." I said, "I'm perfectly ready; you will just have to make arrangements for me in another university. I will do the same there, because I am not wrong. Your professor is saying things which are out of date - things which have been proved wrong. He's not up to date in his information. And you are punishing me just because I am an unknown student. But remember, someday I can become a well-known person."

And when I told them the whole problem - what the professor was saying and what my question was, they understood, saying, "You are right, but still we cannot, because that professor has not turned up for three days. He has sent his resignation. We will not expel you, but I will talk to some other college or university..."

And when I would go to some other university, their first condition was, "You are not supposed to ask any questions." I said, "What kind of university is this? If the professor is talking nonsense and I am not supposed to ask questions, this is not a seat of learning." They said, "We don't want to discuss it; your vice-chancellor phoned me saying, 'Somehow accept him.' I can accept you only on one condition - that you will not ask questions."

I said, "That is impossible. When I see someone is falling into a ditch, I cannot resist preventing him; I will forget the promise. The only solution is that you give me enough percentage for being present in the university, and I will not come at all."

And finally this was what they had to agree to - that they would give me enough percentage for being present so that I could appear in the examination, but I need not come to the university again; just when the examinations came, I would come. So most of my time was spent in the libraries, not in the classes.

It was just accidental that I became acquainted with the subtle nuances of words, their beauty, their poetry; so when enlightenment overwhelmed me, slowly slowly I was able to at least give some indication of the beyond. But it was purely an accident.

A poor Jew is walking down the street, when he sees a rich funeral procession go by - black Rolls Royces, lots of flowers, women in furs, a bronze-handled coffin. He shakes his head: "Now that's what I call living."

There is no relationship between enlightenment and language; just as there is no relationship between enlightenment and poetry, painting, singing, dancing, music and pottery. But if you become enlightened, and you were already a good potter, after enlightenment your pottery will have a new significance. It has happened in this country... Gorak, one of the great masters, was a potter. After his enlightenment, he continued - that was the only art that he knew. But the art changed totally.

His pottery became almost sculpture.

Another man was Kabir, who was a weaver. When he became enlightened he continued to weave, but his weaving of the clothes became a totally different thing than for any other weaver in the whole history of mankind. The love, the blissfulness, the silence - as if it all became part of his weaving.

Raidas, another master, was a shoemaker. When he became enlightened he continued shoemaking, but now his shoes were such that people would love not to wear them on their feet, but to keep them on their heads! They were coming from a source; they showed the love, they showed the blessings of the man. It was no ordinary shoemaking - it had a quality of its own.

A little old lady was at the doctor's to get the result of her last week's test. "Well, it will come as a shock," the doctor told her, "so brace yourself for the news."

"Don't worry, doctor," said the shriveled old crone. "Tell me the worst, I am ready to die."

"Those cramps in your stomach... well, the tests show that you are pregnant."

"But that is impossible, doctor. I'm seventy-eight years old. How am I going to tell my husband?

He's eighty-eight years old. The shock will kill him."

"I'm afraid there is no doubt about the pregnancy," the doctor told her, "but if you would like to call your husband from here, please do." The little old lady dialed her home number.

"Hello," said her husband.

"Hello, dear," she answered. "I am at the doctor's and I have some news for you."

"Yes?" said her husband.

"Well," she continued, "I had been having these cramps in my stomach, and the doctor has just told me I'm pregnant."

There was a long pause... then, "Who did you say was calling?"

A lifelong practice... it does not make any difference whether the person is eighty-eight years old - he must be having girlfriends. The wife is worried, but the old fellow asks, "Who did you say was calling?"

Enlightenment can come to anybody at any age, but you will have to use your mind to communicate it, and that mind will be the old mind. If it is articulate in something, then that will become your expression. Haridas, a great musician and a master, never spoke about his enlightenment but only sang songs - songs of tremendous beauty played on his sitar; and just his music conveyed something of his inner music.

Enlightenment is unrelated with anything, and after enlightenment it is very difficult - almost impossible - to train your mind. Mind becomes such a faraway reality, and you are so beyond....

The mind is in the valleys and you are on the sunlit peaks of a mountain. The distance is so much that unless the mind is already trained in something, there is no way other than to remain simply silent.

Most of the mystics have not spoken - not a single word - although a few very sensitive souls became aware that something great has happened to them. People started sitting by their side, at their feet, just to be showered by their silence and by their presence. It has been found to be tremendously blissful, but only for a very few, because the language of silence and the language of presence is not understood by many.

Okay, Maneesha?

Yes, Beloved Master.