The Atomic Moment

ONE DAY, a king called his clever jester and gave him a staff in front of all the court saying, 'Take this staff as a wand of office and keep it till you find a greater fool than yourself. If you find one, give this wand to him.'

Some time later, the king was sick and lay dying. He wanted to see his jester, of whose truthfulness he was sure. When the jester came, the king said to him, 'I have called you to tell you that I am going on a long journey.'

'Where are you going?' asked the jester.

'To a faraway country - to another world.'

'My master, have you made provision for your journey and your stay there?'

'None whatever, my little fool.'

'Have you any friends to welcome you there?'

'No one!' replied the king.

Then the jester shook his head sadly and put the staff into the king's hand and said, 'Take this staff, your Majesty. This belongs to you, for you are going to another world without preparation. Surely this wand belongs to you and to nobody else.'

Life is an occasion to prepare for death and the beyond. If you don't prepare for death and for the beyond you are a fool; you are missing a great opportunity.

Life is only an opportunity. This life that you know is not real life, it is only an opportunity to attain to real life. The real life is just hidden somewhere in this life, but it has to be provoked, it has to be awakened. It is fast asleep, it is not yet aware of itself. And if your real life is not aware of itself, your whole so-called life will be nothing but a long dream. And it cannot be sweet either - it will be a nightmare.

To live without being rooted in the real life is to live like a tree without being rooted in the soil. That's why there is no beauty, that's why there is no grace. That's why you don't see the splendour of man that the Buddhas talk about.

Jesus goes on saying again and again, 'The kingdom of God is within you.' But you don't seem to be like an emperor. Jesus says to his disciples, 'Look at the lilies in the field. How beautiful they are! Even Solomon, the great king, was not so beautiful attired in all his grandeur as these poor lily flowers.'

Why are the lilies so beautiful and man so ugly? Why is only man ugly? Have you ever seen an ugly parrot, or an ugly peacock, or an ugly lion, or an ugly deer? Ugliness seems to be something human.

A peacock is a peacock and a deer is a deer. But a man is not necessarily a man. A man is man only when he is a Buddha or a Christ or a Krishna - when he has become aware of his total being.

Otherwise you live groping in the dark; you live in the dark caves of the unconscious.

You only appear to be conscious. Your consciousness is very fragile, it is very momentary. It is a very thin surface - it is not even skin-deep - just a little scratch and you lose your consciousness.

Somebody insults you; just a word, or just a glance, and all your consciousness is gone and you are a rage, anger, violence, aggression. In a moment your humanity disappears, you are again wild, again an animal. And man can fall below the animals, because when he falls there is nothing to stop him. Man can rise above the angels, but it rarely happens because to rise above the angels is an uphill task, arduous. One has to work for it. It needs hard work, it needs guts, courage, to explore the unknown.

Millions of people are born and die, but they never live. Their life is only apparent, because they remain rooted in unconsciousness. And whatsoever you do on the surface may not be true about you at all; in fact, exactly the opposite is the case. That's why Sigmund Freud has to go into your dreams to see your reality. Just see the irony of it: your reality has to be searched for in your dreams, not in your reality. You cannot be believed - what you say about yourself. Your dreams have to be asked, because you have become so false and you are wearing so many masks that it is almost impossible to penetrate to your original face.

But it is very difficult to know your original face even from dreams and dream analysis. Who is going to do the analysis? Freud is as unconscious as you are. One unconscious person is trying to interpret the dreams of another unconscious person. His interpretations are bound to be very limited; his interpretations will reflect more about him than about you.

That's why if you go to a Freudian analyst with the same dream you will get a different interpretation than you will get if you go to a Jungian analyst or to an Adlerian analyst. And now there are many.

And you will be puzzled: a single dream has different interpretations. They are not saying anything about you, they are saying something about themselves. The Jungian is saying, 'I am a Jungian.

This is my interpretation.'

Your dreams cannot reveal your truth. If your conscious activities cannot reveal you, how can your sleep activities reveal you? But, still, Freud is on the right track. One has to go a little more deeply.

One has to go beyond the dreams to a state of mind where no thought, no dream, no desire exists; when all thinking... And dreaming is a kind of thinking, a primitive kind of thinking, thinking through pictures, but it is still thinking. When you have gone beyond thinking, and if you can still remain alert, aware - as if one is fast asleep but still alert, and deep down at the very core of one's being a lamp goes on burning, a small candle of light - then you will see your original face. And to see your original face is to be back in the Garden of Eden. Then you drop all your clothes.

Your personality consists only of clothes and clothes and clothes - clothes upon clothes. Remember two words which will be very important to understand this strange but immensely valuable book, THE SECRET OF THE GOLDEN FLOWER: one word is 'essence', the other word is 'personality'.

'Personality' comes from a root, PERSONA which means a mask. In ancient days, the actors in Greek dramas used to wear masks. PERSONA means a mask. 'Personality' comes from PERSONA. The actors used to wear one mask, you are wearing many, because for different situations you need different masks. When you are talking to your boss you need one kind of mask. And when you are talking to your servant, of course, you need another kind of mask. How can you use the same mask?

Have you ever watched? When you are talking to your boss, you are all smiles; your every breath says, 'Yes, sir.' Even though you are offended, angry, you are ready to kiss his feet. And when you are talking to your servant, have you seen the arrogance on your face? You have never smiled. How can you smile talking to your servant? It is impossible. You have to dehumanize him. How can you smile and relate to him as a human being? You have to possess him as a thing: he is a slave. You have to behave in a different way than you behave with your boss. There, you are a servant; he remains arrogant, he remains bossy. When you are talking to a friend you have a different mask to use. When you are talking to a stranger, of course, a different mask is needed.

You have to use many masks, and you have many faces, and you go on changing them as circumstances change. Your personality consists only of false faces.

And what is essence? Essence is your original face, without any masks. Essence is that which you brought into the world when you were born. Essence is that which was with you in the womb.

Essence is that which has been given to you by God - or whatsoever you call totality, the whole, existence. Essence is a gift from existence to you.

Personality is a gift of the society, parents, school, college, culture, civilization. Personality is not you, it is pseudo.

And we continue to polish this personality, and we have completely forgotten the essence. And unless you remember the essence, you will have lived in vain, because real life consists of essence.

A real life is the life of essence. You can call it 'soul', or 'God within you', or whatsoever you will. But remember the distinction.

You are not your clothes - not even your psychological clothes.

I must remind you of Moses. When he came face to face with God, when he saw God on the mountains as fire arising out of a green bush - and the bush was not burning, the bush was as fresh, as green as ever - he was puzzled. He could not believe his eyes. It was impossible... such fire! The bush was aflame and yet the bush was not burning. And then he heard from the bush a voice coming to him, 'Moses, put off your shoes, because you are on holy ground.'

This is one of the most beautiful of Jewish parables.

God is the fire, your personality is just the bush. And God is a cool fire - it will not burn your personality, the personality can remain green. God gives you so much freedom that if you want to be false, it is allowed, it is okay with him. If you want to be pseudo, it is allowed. Freedom means that you can be right or you can be wrong - this is up to you. Your essence is there, the flame is there, and your personality is also there. The personality is false, and naturally one will think, 'Why doesn't the fire within you burn it?' The fire is cool, the fire cannot burn it. If you have decided to have this personality, the fire allows it. You can remain green in your personality, the personality can go on gathering more and more foliage: you can become more and more false, you can become utterly false. You can be lost in the falsehood of the personality and God is not going to interfere.

Remember this: God never interferes; freedom is total. That is the dignity of man, the glory of man, and the agony too.

If you were not given freedom you would not be false. No other animal is false, no animal has personality. And I am not counting pet animals. Because they live with you, they are destroyed, they start having personalities. Your dogs forget their essence. The dog may be angry but goes on wagging his tail. This is personality. He knows who is the boss, and he knows how to buttress the ego of the boss. He has become diplomatic, he is as much a politician as the people who live in New Delhi; he goes on wagging his tail.

Have you seen the dog puzzled sometimes? A stranger comes in and the dog does not know how to behave - what face to show to the stranger. Ambiguous, he barks - maybe that is the right thing to do - and still he goes on wagging his tail. He is watching for the right hints from the boss - whether the person who has entered the house is a friend or a foe. If he is a foe he will stop wagging his tail. If he is a friend he will stop barking at him. He is waiting for a hint, a signal - how the master behaves. He has become a shadow of the master, he is no longer a real dog. To live with human beings is contagious; they destroy.

You even destroy animals if they live with you. You don't allow them their natural essence, you civilize them just as you have become civilized. You don't allow nature to have its own way, you don't allow Tao to have its own flow.

Essence is that which you bring into the world. The personality is that which the world imposes upon the essence. The world is very afraid of the essence because the essence is always rebellious, the essence is always individualistic. And the world does not need any individuals, it needs sheep. It does not need rebellious people, it does not need people like Buddha, Krishna, Lao Tzu, no; these people are dangerous. It wants people who are obedient - obedient to the status quo, obedient to the vested interests, obedient to the organized church, obedient to the state and the stupid politicians.

Society requires obedience, and society requires efficiency. The more mechanical you are, the more efficient you are. When you are more alive, you cannot be so efficient. A machine is more efficient than man. The society's effort is to reduce every man into a machine. And how to reduce a man into a machine? Make him more and more unconscious, make him more and more robot-like. Let his essence completely disappear from his consciousness. Let him become perfectly pseudo. Let him be a husband, let her be a wife; a servant, a boss, this and that, but never let him be his essential self. Don't allow that because that essential self is not obedient to anybody except to God. It has no other commitment. Its sole commitment is to the source. It knows no other masters.

That type of being will be very inconvenient to this so-called society, because this society is not created to fulfil the needs of human beings, it is created to exploit human beings. It is not according to you and for your growth; it has no intention to help you to grow. And it has every intention not to allow you to grow because the more you grow, the more independent you become. The less you grow, the more dependent you remain. And a dependent person is reliable because a dependent person is always afraid. A dependent person always needs somebody to lean on, ALWAYS needs somebody to lean on. He is childish. He leans on the parents, he leans on the priests, he leans on the politicians. He cannot stand on his own feet. The society goes on covering you with many many clothes - not only physical but psychological too.

The society is very much afraid of physical nakedness, because physical nakedness is the beginning of psychological nakedness. The society goes into a panic seeing a naked man because this is the beginning. If he is naked physically, he has taken the first step. Now who is going to prevent him from becoming psychologically naked?

And the voice that called forth from the burning bush to Moses said, 'Put off your shoes.' It is a very symbolic thing. 'Put off all your clothes,' it says. 'Put off your shoes.' Shoes cover your feet.

Shoes cover you. 'Be naked on the ground. Be without shoes.' The shoe represents personality, and nakedness represents essence. 'You are on holy ground, put off your shoes.'

The moment you encounter your essence, the burning bush within you, you will have to put off your shoes, you will have to put off all your clothes. You will have to put off ALL that is hiding your essence. That is revolution, METANOIA. That is the turning point in a life: the society disappears and you become an individual. And only individuals can relate with God.

But a great consciousness will be needed.

Gurdjieff once - in 1933 - treated Peters to a demonstration of this at the former's New York apartment in the Henry Hudson Hotel where Peters was convoked.

Peters was a young disciple of Gurdjieff, and Gurdjieff was one of the greatest Masters the world has ever known - and not a conventional Master at all, because no Master can be conventional.

Conventionality is the quality of the priest, not of the Master. The Master is always revolutionary.

And this is a beautiful experiment. Listen attentively.

When he arrived he was asked to wash dishes and prepare vegetables for 'some very important people' who were coming to dinner. Gurdjieff said he needed Peters to give him an 'English lesson' consisting of words for all those parts and functions of the body 'that were not in the dictionary'.

By the time Gurdjieff had mastered the four-letter words and obscene phrases the guests started arriving, who turned out to be some fifteen 'well-dressed, well-mannered New Yorkers', of which a number were reporters or journalists.

After staging a late and obsequious entry, the host humbly began responding at table to the guests' blase questions on his work and reasons for visiting America, when with a wink to his 'English teacher' he suddenly changed tone and explained that the sad degeneration of humankind and its transformation into a substance only describable by a four-letter expletive was particularly striking in their country, whence his coming to observe this phenomenon in the raw. The cause behind this distressing state of affairs, he continued, lay in the fact that people - especially Americans - never followed the dictates of intelligence or propriety, but only that of their genital organs. Then, signalling out one particularly handsome woman, he complimented her on her attire and make-up, after which he confided that in all honesty between them the real explanation behind her adornment was an irresistible sexual urge she felt for some particular person - graphically spelled out by Gurdjieff with his newly acquired vocabulary. Before the guests could react, he launched into a discourse on his own sexual prowess, followed by intimate and detailed descriptions of the sexual mores of various races and nations.

By the time dinner was over and the guests well plied with 'good old armagnac as always', they lost their inhibitions and joined in an exchange of obscenities which soon became more than verbal.

Gurdjieff retired with the lady he had insulted, and the others, by now conditioned to believe that an orgy or something was in the tenor of the evening, began entangling physically in different rooms of the apartment in various stages of undress.

Just when the carousel was at a climax, Gurdjieff briskly disengaged himself and thundered forth orders for the revels to cease, proclaiming that the lesson had been accomplished, that the guests had already amply verified through their comportment the soundness of his observations made earlier in the evening - that thanks to him they were now partly conscious of their true condition and that he would gladly accept from them cheques and cash in payment for this 'important lesson'.

Peters noted - without surprise, knowing Gurdjieff - that the take came to 'several thousand dollars'.

When everyone had left, Gurdjieff went into the kitchen to help Peters with the dishes, asking at the same time how he had enjoyed the evening.

'I was disgusted,' came the reply. Gurdjieff laughed and scrutinized his companion with a 'piercing look'. 'Is fine feeling you have - this disgust. But now is necessary ask yourself one question: with who you disgusted?'

This is the real situation. What you show on the surface is one thing. Those guests were annoyed, angered by the observation of George Gurdjieff that humanity has become very degraded, that what you do on the surface is one thing, what you mean deep inside is another. You may give explanations and you may rationalize, but your rationalizations are just rationalizations and nothing else. Deep down something else goes on working in the unconscious. You are not even aware of it.

Psychologists say that when a woman is raped, in the majority of cases, the woman wanted to be raped - she had the desire. She was inviting it, she was using certain gestures; the way she walked, the way she dressed, the way she talked were all gestures inviting rape. And then one day it happens...

And then she looks surprised, angry, violent, goes to the police, fights in the court. And if she had looked deep down in her own mind she would have been more surprised: that it was her own effort, her own desire which had been fulfilled.

There are people who go on living in this double way, not even aware what their real motives inside are. Watch, and that watching will make you very very alert. Just watch. What is your real motive?

Don't try to convince yourself that this is not so. Just become a mirror and see your behaviour. Just become a silent watcher of your behaviour, always alert as to why you are doing a certain thing, from where it is coming. And then you will see you have a dual being: one is the personality which says one thing, and the other is your reality which goes on doing just the opposite. And somehow they both have to manage with each other, hence the conflict, the friction, and the wastage of energy.

And it happens almost in all cases that you have one desire inside and just the opposite on the outside. And why the opposite? - because through the opposite you are repressing that desire.

The person who feels inferior deep inside pretends to be very superior on the outside. Only inferior people want to be superior. Those who are really superior don't care a bit. All people who suffer from inferiority complexes become politicians, because that is the only way to prove that they are very superior. The person who has the look on his face of 'holier-than-thou' knows that deep inside just the opposite is the case. He is suffering from guilt, he is suffering deep down from unworthiness; he knows that he is unholy. Now, the only way to hide it from the world is to have a mask of holiness.

Your so-called saints are not a bit different from the sinners. The only difference is: sinners are honest and your saints are not honest.

Out of one hundred saints, if you can find even one saint who is really a saint, that will be more than enough, more than one can expect. Ninety-nine are just pretending. And I am not saying that they are pretending only to you. The pretension can go so deep that not only are they deceiving others, they start deceiving themselves. In fact, to deceive yourself, first you have to deceive others, only then can you believe in it. When others start believing that you are a saint, only then can you believe in it.

The real saint is not concerned with others at all. He knows who he is. Even if the whole world says that he is not a saint, that doesn't matter. His understanding is inner. His encounter is directly with himself. His experience is immediate and existential. He knows his essence. And to know one's essence is the first step in knowing God, in becoming immortal, in going beyond death.

Henri Bergson spoke at the beginning of this century. He said, 'The addition to the body brought by technology calls for a corresponding addition to the soul.'

The modern man looks more soul-less than in any other age, and the reason is: science and technology have added much to the body. The body has become stronger, lives longer. The brain has become stronger, has become more knowledgeable. Compared to the body and the brain - and the brain is part of the body - the soul has remained very very poor. It is almost neglected, ignored.

Nobody cares about it. Who thinks about one's own essence?

Going to the church or to the temple is not going to help. You will have to go within yourself. You will have to put off your shoes. You will have to go into your naked essence. Only then will you be able to reconnect yourself with the cosmos. It is from there that you can be bridged again with reality.

Now the sutras.

Master Lu-tsu said: ONLY THE PRIMAL SPIRIT AND THE TRUE NATURE OVERCOME TIME AND SPACE.

What I have been telling you about essence, Master Lu-tsu calls the primal spirit. The primal spirit is your essential soul, that which you have brought from God, untaught, unconditioned - as you were in your mother's womb. How did you exist in your mother's womb? Nothing was taught to you, you had no mind, you existed in a state of no-mind, hence the blissfulness of it.

Psychologists say that because of the experience of the mother's womb, those nine months, man has been searching for God - because of that nine months' experience. The memory haunts him. Those nine months were the most beautiful that you have known. Maybe you have forgotten consciously, but deep down in the very cells of your body, in the very fibres of your being, those days are still pulsating. Those days are still carried by your existence. They may not be conscious in your mind, but they are there. Just as when in the night you fall into deep sleep, you don't know where you go and what happens to you, but in the morning you feel the relaxation, the freshness, the joy.

Life has again happened to you. All the dust that you had gathered has disappeared. You are again fresh, you are rejuvenated.

Your body carries the feeling. Your body is calm and quiet and remembers something. The remembrance is not in the brain; you don't know what happened exactly - where you had gone.

Only a Buddha knows where he goes in his deep sleep, because even in his deep sleep he remains alert. You are not alert even when you are aware, the so-called awareness. You are not alert when you are in that so-called wakeful state. Your eyes are open, but your mind goes on weaving and spinning a thousand and one thoughts. The inner talk continues, the inner noise continues. You see and yet you don't see and you hear and yet you don't hear, because deep inside there is a wall of thoughts - dreams continuously floating in the sky of your consciousness. You are not alert even when you are awake. The Buddha is alert even when he is fast asleep. Only he knows where he goes.

Where does he go? He goes to the essence, to the source, to the primal spirit. And even if for a few moments at night you fall into the primal source, you are rejuvenated. The man who cannot fall into deep sleep is really in hell. He goes to bed tired, exhausted, bored with life, and gets up in the morning even more tired, more bored, more exhausted. His life is hell.

In deep sleep you simply slip back into the primal source of your being. That primal source is always there; you have not lost it, you have only forgotten it. And that primal source is beyond all dualities. It is neither the life nor the death that you know, it is transcendental. It is beyond all kinds of dualities.

It is God.

ONLY THE PRIMAL SPIRIT AND THE TRUE NATURE OVERCOME TIME AND SPACE.

When you are in the primal spirit you are in your true nature. When you are in your personality you are untrue, you are just a plastic phenomenon. Watch, and you will be surprised how many things are plastic in you. You smile when there is no smile in the heart, then it is plastic. You sympathize when there is no sympathy in you, it is plastic. You show joy when there is no joy in you, it is plastic.

You can even cry and weep without your heart feeling anything, then those tears are plastic. Just watch how many things are plastic in you. And remember, whatsoever is plastic is not you. God has not made you a plastic thing. God has given you eternal life. But that eternal life you can find only when you put off your shoes.

Put off your personality. Drop all PERSONAS all masks. Let all masks disappear. It will be painful because you have become identified with those masks; you think they are your faces. It is going to be almost a very painful process of death; and not only once - you will have to die many times, because each time a face falls you will find a death has happened. But again new life will be released in you, fresher, deeper, more vibrant.

When all the faces disappear and the essence is left alone, you have transcended all duality, even the duality of time and space. When you enter deep meditation, when you enter your essential being, there is no space and no time. You cannot say where you are - all 'wheres' disappear - you cannot pinpoint the place. Either you are nowhere, or you are everywhere: these are the only two possibilities. Both mean the same.

A few people have chosen to say one is everywhere - Vedanta has chosen to say that in deep meditation one is everywhere: AHAM BRAHMASMI, 'I am God.' 'God' means one who is everywhere, who permeates the whole existence. You become space itself. 'And I am always, I am eternal.' It means you permeate time. This is one way of expressing it, the positive way.

Buddhism has chosen the other: the negative way. Buddha says: In deep meditation you are nowhere. All space has disappeared. And there is no time; you are in a timeless state. And when there is no time and no space, how can you exist?

Man exists only at the crossing point of time and space. One line of time, another line of space cross, and at that crossing the ego arises. Take away these two lines and the point of the ego disappears.

It was only a crossing of two lines. It was a fallacious idea. So Buddha says: There is nobody. In deep meditation, time disappears, space disappears, and you disappear. All disappears, there is only nothingness, SHUNYA, zero. This is the negative way of saying the same thing.

Either you can say, 'I am God,' if you choose the positive expression - which has its own dangers, its own beauties too - or you can choose the negative expression, ANATTA, no-self, nothingness, NIRVANA. It has its own beauties and its dangers too.

The very idea of nothingness puts people off - that is the danger. Who wants to be nothing? In his forty years of ministry again and again Buddha is asked, 'Why should one try to be nothing? That would be a death, ultimate death.'

And Buddha says, 'Yes, it is an ultimate death. But it is beautiful.'

And the questioners ask, 'But to whom is it beautiful - because there is nobody?'

And Buddha says, 'There is only beauty, beatitude, and nobody to experience it.'

Naturally the human mind says, 'But then what is the point? If I am not there... And it is very beautiful, so let it be beautiful, but I am not there, so whether it is beautiful or not makes no difference to me.

Why should I lose myself? It is better to be in a world which is not so beautiful but where at least I am.'

The goal of nothingness puts people off. That's why Buddhism disappeared from India. And it learned a lesson: in China it dropped the negative language, in Tibet it dropped the negative language. Indian Buddhism, the original Buddhism, was absolutely negative. Under the influence of Buddha thousands were transformed, but you cannot find a man like Buddha every day. The impact of Buddha was such that people were even ready to die and become nothing. That was because of Buddha, otherwise there is no enchantment, no charm in being nothing. But Buddha's magnetism was such, his charisma was such, that thousands of people were ready to become nothing. 'If Buddha says it, it must be right.' His word was so important, his eyes were a witness to it. 'He has disappeared, so let us also disappear. And if he says so then we can trust.'

But once Buddha disappeared from the earth, Buddhist priests could not convince people. They had to disappear from India completely. Then they learned a lesson. Outside India Buddhism started using positive language, started using all that Buddha had denied. It survived; but it did not really survive as Buddhism, it survived as Vedanta, it survived as a positive language. And Buddha's greatest contribution was the negative expression.

The beauty of the negative expression is that it never allows your ego ANY satisfaction, ANY gratification. That is the danger of the positive language. If you say, AHAM BRAHMASMI, 'I am God,' ANA'L HAQ, 'I am truth,' the danger is that truth may become secondary and the 'I' may become primary. Truth may become your shadow. The emphasis may start concentrating on the word 'I': I am God. If the emphasis remains on God and the 'I' remains just a shadow to God, it is perfectly good. But that is very difficult. The 'I' is very cunning, the ego's ways are very subtle. It will use the opportunity, it will jump upon the idea, it will say, 'Right, I am God and nobody else is. I am truth and everybody else is a lie.'

But then the whole point is missed. But one thing is certain: time and space disappear. Either you have to declare, 'I am all' - the whole space, the whole time - 'I am everywhere and "everywhen",' or you have to use the Buddhist expression, 'I am not. Time is not. Space is not. There is only an absolute silent nothing from eternity to eternity. A silence, not even a ripple.'

But both statements indicate the same thing. Expressions are different, fingers are different, but they point to the same moon. That moon is your essence.

Master Lu-tsu said: ONLY THE PRIMAL SPIRIT AND THE TRUE NATURE OVERCOME TIME AND SPACE.

And unless you overcome time and space you will not overcome death. Death exists in time, and death exists in space. Unless you overcome time and space you will not overcome mind and body.

Try to understand.

Body corresponds to space and mind corresponds to time. Mind is a time phenomenon and body is a space phenomenon. Body exists somewhere and mind exists 'somewhen'. Think of mind without time and you will not be able to think of it. Mind is either past, present or future: either memory or imagination or the present facticity.

Mind exists in three tenses. You are listening to me attentively, alert: mind is in the present. If you are here thinking of other things - you have read something in the Bible and it corresponds with me or does not correspond with me - you have gone into your imagination or into your memory. You cannot think of mind if time disappears; time is synonymous with mind.

Man is a miniature cosmos, a miniature universe. All that exists outside on a greater scale exists on a small scale in man. If you can understand man you will have understood the whole universe. As above, so below. Man is the atomic constituent of this whole universe. If one atom is understood you have understood all matter. If one man is understood, if you can decipher your own mystery, you have deciphered all the mysteries possible, past, present, future - all.

And these two things have to be remembered: body is space, mind is time. When you meditate you disappear from the body, you don't know who you are: man, woman, ugly, beautiful, black, white; you simply don't know who you are. When you go in, the body is left far behind. A moment comes when you cannot even locate your body, and you cannot even feel its presence. You are no more attached to the form; you have become formless. And the same happens with the mind:

you don't know where your mind is, where that mind has gone. All that noise, that traffic noise that was constantly inside, becomes distant, distant, distant, and disappears. Suddenly a great silence explodes in you. In this state of no space and no time, you come to know your essence. And to know one's essence is to have the first glimpse of Tao.

THE PRIMAL SPIRIT IS BEYOND THE POLAR DIFFERENCES.

All the polar differences disappear: man/woman, summer/winter, hot/cold, love/hate, positive/negative, time/space, life death; all polar opposites disappear.

THE PRIMAL SPIRIT IS BEYOND THE POLAR DIFFERENCES.

And that's why I insist again and again that you don't get attached to any polarity. You have been taught to become attached to some polarity. Your so-called religions have been teaching you: either be worldly or renounce and go to the monasteries. I say remain in the world and don't be of it, otherwise you will become attached to a polarity. If you go to the monastery you will be afraid of the market-place. What kind of attainment is this? If there is fear there is no attainment.

And I know people who have lived in the Himalayas. Then they become afraid. Then they don't want to come to the world because whatsoever they have been experiencing in the Himalayas disappears when they come to the market-place. If it disappears in the market-place it is no attainment. It may have been just the silence of the Himalayas that you mistook for your silence. It was borrowed.

Certainly, the Himalayas are silent, and if you live in that silence, slowly slowly that silence starts permeating you. But it is not your music; it is borrowed. Go away from the Himalayas and it will disappear.

This is creating a fallacy. This is enjoying a reflected glory. This is not your own glory. Live in the market-place and create a Himalaya in the heart. Become silent in the noise. Remain a householder and yet be a sannyasin. That's why I emphasize so much that I don't want my sannyasins to renounce. Nothing has to be renounced. The way of renunciation is the way of the escapist, and the way of renunciation will make you attached to a polar phenomenon. That will not give you freedom.

Freedom is in transcendence, and transcendence comes only when you live in the polar opposites simultaneously, together. So be in the world, but don't let the world be in you.

Love, and yet don't be lost in it. Relate, and yet be alone, utterly alone. Know perfectly well that all relationship is a game. Play the game and play it as beautifully as possible and as skilfully as possible. A game is after all a game and has to be played beautifully. And follow all the rules of the game, because a game cannot exist without rules. But remember always that it is just a game. Don't become attached to it. Don't become serious in it. Always allow the sense of humour to remain alive in you. Remain sincere but non-serious. And then, slowly slowly, you will see that the polarities are disappearing. Who is worldly, and who is other-worldly? You are both or neither.

THE PRIMAL SPIRIT IS BEYOND THE POLAR DIFFERENCES. HERE IS THE PLACE WHENCE HEAVEN AND EARTH DERIVE THEIR BEING. WHEN STUDENTS UNDERSTAND HOW TO GRASP THE PRIMAL SPIRIT THEY OVERCOME THE POLAR OPPOSITES OF LIGHT AND DARKNESS AND TARRY NO LONGER IN THE THREE WORLDS.

The world of heaven, the world of earth, and the world of hell - the three worlds - they all disappear for the person who knows how to transcend polarities.

I told you just a few moments ago that past, present, future - these are the three worlds. Past is hell, because it is dead, it is ghostly: ghosts following you. Present is the earth: the facticity, the fact, that which is right now and here. And future is heaven: hopes, aspirations, desires, longings. These are the three worlds, and you have to move in these three worlds constantly; you are shuttled back and forth. From the past you jump to the future, from the future you jump to the past. And this goes on.

And the present is so minute that you are not very aware of it. It is sandwiched between the past and the future, and they are vast. And the present is a very minute, atomic moment - so small that you don't even see it. The moment you become aware of it, it is already past.

To be present to the present one needs to be very attentive, utterly attentive. And that's why to be present to the present becomes the door to go beyond time. You cannot go from the past, because the past is so vast - infinite. You can go on and on, you will not find the end of it. That's why I say psychoanalysis will not help. It goes into the past, and it goes on unravelling the past, digging up the past. You can go on... Psychoanalysis continues for years: three years, seven years, then too it is not complete. One simply becomes bored with the psychoanalyst, and then changes the psychoanalyst and goes to somebody else and starts from ABC again.

And one thing I would like to say to you: sooner or later psychoanalysis is bound to discover that this life is not the end of the past. You can go moving backwards, and you can come to what Janov calls 'the primal scream'. Primal scream is the ultimate of psychoanalysis: the first scream of the child when he started breathing - through it he started breathing - the first scream. But once you have reached there you will be surprised: that is not the beginning either. Then you have to move into the womb.

In the East we have tried it. We have a very very deep-going method called PRATI PRASAV - going back, going back. Mahavir used it, Buddha used it - they went through the womb. And then again you have to go through death, because before the womb you died, and then the whole life again...

layer upon layer. It is through deep psychoanalysis that the East became aware of the phenomenon of many lives. Christianity, Judaism, Islam are not aware of it. They never tried so hard. They have never tried psychoanalysis.

Freud is the first Jew to have tried it, and of course Christians and Jews and all the so-called religious people were against him. The fear is that if psychoanalysis goes deeper, sooner or later the Hindu idea of rebirth will be proved right. That is the fear. If you go on digging you will find layer upon layer.

Where will you end? Thousands of lives you have lived as man. And we have tried to penetrate all those. But then too there is no end. One day, suddenly, you see that before this life you were not a man, you were an elephant or a tiger or a dog. And then you start moving into animal lives. And after millions of lives, you will suddenly one day discover that before that you were a bush or a tree, and then a rock.

In India we say you have passed millions of lives. Where can it lead? The analysis of the past cannot lead anywhere. It can drive you crazy, but it leads nowhere. And so is the case with the future. Where to stop? How far is far enough? Where to make a point that 'Now we will not look ahead'? In the East we have tried that too, because we have worked tremendously on the concept of time. And both are unending: memory is unending, imagination is unending. Between the two is the present moment, very tiny, so tiny that you cannot become aware of it if you are not absolutely alert. It goes so fast, it is so fleeting.

But if you become aware of the present, then a door opens, the door to eternity. It is from there that mind moves into no-mind. It is from there that personality moves beyond personality into essence.

You know perfectly well Jesus was crucified. There were two thieves who were crucified with him:

one was on his left side, the other was on his right side. You may not have ever thought of it as a tremendously significant symbol but Jesus represents the present moment. One thief is the past, the other thief is the future. And Jesus represents the present moment - closest to God, closest to essence. One thief mocked Jesus - the past always mocks you, he condemned Jesus - the past always condemns you. The other thief asked Jesus about the future, 'What will happen after death?

will I be able to see you in heaven?' One is past, the other is future, and Jesus is just sandwiched between these two thieves.

And why call them thieves? Past is a thief, future is a thief, because they go on stealing your present.

They ARE thieves. To me this is a parable. I don't know whether any Christian will agree with me or not, but that is not my business at all. I don't care whether anybody agrees with me or not.

Jesus is present, herenow, closest to the essence, just ready to die and disappear from the body and the mind. He hesitates a little bit - everybody hesitates. When you come to the present, you will see eternity facing you - no past, no future, but eternity - a totally different dimension.

Past, present, future are horizontal; eternity is vertical. Again, to me, the cross is the symbol of these two lines crossing. A cross is made of two lines: one horizontal, the other vertical. This is a representation of time and eternity. Everybody hesitates when one faces eternity, nowhereness, nothingness, or all-ness. It is so much. One is going to disappear into it like a drop. And the ocean is so big, one will not be found again. Even a dewdrop falling into the ocean from a grass leaf hesitates.

Jesus hesitated, and I love this man because he hesitated. His hesitation shows that he was human.

His hesitation shows that he belonged to us - he was son of man. He cried to God, 'Have you forsaken me? What are you doing to me? Have you abandoned me? Are you no more with me?

I am disappearing and I don't see your hands protecting me.' The dewdrop is falling in the ocean.

'Where are you? I am falling into a deep nothingness. Death has arrived, and I had always hoped that in death you would be there waiting and you would embrace me, you would take me in your fold, you would be warm and loving. But where are you? Have you forsaken me? Have you abandoned me? I don't see you anywhere.'

In fact, there is no God to be seen. God is not a person, God is a positive name for this absolute nothingness. But Jesus has lived with the Jewish idea of God as a person, hence this turmoil in his mind, the fear in his mind. He can't see he was waiting to see the beloved, the Father. He used to call the Father 'ABBA'. He was waiting to find his father, but there seems to be nobody. The world is finished and beyond is nothing but a yawning nothingness, an abyss with no bottom.

It is very human. The life of Jesus is very human, and that is the beauty of it. That's why it has impressed so many people - his very humanity is touching. But then he saw the point. He must have looked deep into the eternity, the nothingness. He must have seen the point: that 'God cannot have a human face, this is his face,' that 'God cannot have human hands, this nothingness is ready to embrace me, to take me deep into its heart.' And then he said to God, 'Thy Kingdom come. Thy will be done. So, be it so. Let it be so. So you are nothingness. I am ready, I trust you. I will trust even your nothingness.'

Every Christian, every Mohammedan, every Hindu, every Jew - whosoever has lived with the idea of God's personality will have to face this, will have to go through this anxiety period, this anguish.

That is the beauty of the Buddha's idea and the Taoist idea that God is nothingness, another name for nothingness. One who has lived with that idea of nothingness from the very beginning will not hesitate, he will simply disappear into it.

THE PRIMAL SPIRIT IS BEYOND THE POLAR DIFFERENCES. HERE IS THE PLACE WHENCE HEAVEN AND EARTH DERIVE THEIR BEING. WHEN STUDENTS UNDERSTAND HOW TO GRASP THE PRIMAL SPIRIT THEY OVERCOME THE POLAR OPPOSITES OF LIGHT AND DARKNESS AND TARRY NO LONGER IN THE THREE WORLDS. BUT ONLY HE WHO HAS ENVISIONED HUMAN NATURE'S ORIGINAL FACE IS ABLE TO DO THIS.

Unless you have been able to see your own inner nothingness you will not be able to do it. First meditate and go into your inner nothingness, then you will be able to enter into the nothingness of existence itself.

WHEN MEN ARE SET FREE FROM THE WOMB, THE PRIMAL SPIRIT DWELLS IN THE SQUARE INCH...

This is a Taoist map. Don't get puzzled. There are different maps of human consciousness. Different maps use different symbols. This is a Taoist map.

Taoists say that after a child is born from the womb, the primal spirit starts dwelling in the third eye.

Between the two eyes, between the two, exists the third, exactly in the middle - what the Yoga map calls AJNA CHAKRA, the third-eye centre. That's what Taoists call the dwelling place of the primal spirit.

... THE PRIMAL SPIRIT DWELLS IN THE SQUARE INCH, BUT THE CONSCIOUS SPIRIT DWELLS BELOW IN THE HEART - the ordinary physical heart. THIS HEART IS DEPENDENT ON THE OUTSIDE WORLD. IF A MAN DOES NOT EAT FOR ONE DAY EVEN, IT FEELS EXTREMELY UNCOMFORTABLE. IF IT HEARS SOMETHING TERRIFYING IT THROBS; IF IT HEARS SOMETHING ENRAGING IT STOPS; IF IT IS FACED WITH DEATH IT BECOMES SAD; IF IT SEES SOMETHING BEAUTIFUL IT IS DAZZLED. BUT THE HEAVENLY HEART IN THE HEAD - that is, in the third-eye centre - WHEN WOULD IT HAVE MOVED IN THE LEAST? DOST THOU ASK: CAN THE HEAVENLY HEART NOT MOVE? THEN I ANSWER: HOW COULD THE TRUE THOUGHT IN THE SQUARE INCH MOVE!

This physical heart is constantly dependent on the outside world. It is affected by the outside world, it is part of the outside world inside you. This is not the true heart. Taoists say the true heart is in the third eye; it moves not, it is unmoving; it is always the same. The physical heart is always in chaos, and the spiritual heart in the third eye is always in order. It is order itself. That's why Hindus have called it AJNA CHAKRA - the centre from which orders arise, discipline arises. If something comes from the third eye it is immediately followed; the whole body follows it, the whole being follows it. It is the centre from which commandments are issued. But it is fast asleep. You live from the physical heart. You have not known your spiritual heart yet.

THE LOWER HEART MOVES LIKE A STRONG, POWERFUL COMMANDER WHO DESPISES THE HEAVENLY RULER BECAUSE OF HIS WEAKNESS...

But the physical heart thinks that the spiritual heart is weak because it moves not. And because it moves not you remain unaware of it. You only become aware of things when they move. If something remains absolutely unmoving you become oblivious to it. And the lower heart thinks itself very strong and thinks the heavenly heart, the spiritual heart, as being weak, almost dead, because it moves not.

... AND HAS USURPED THE LEADERSHIP IN AFFAIRS OF STATE.

And because of this, the lower heart has become the master of you.

BUT WHEN THE PRIMAL CASTLE CAN BE FORTIFIED AND DEFENDED, THEN IT IS AS IF A STRONG AND WISE RULER SAT UPON THE THRONE.

But if you start becoming more and more alert and more and more conscious, you will find that you have fortified the primal castle in the third eye. Whenever you become aware, you will be surprised:

you start functioning from the third eye. Just become a little bit aware and you will see a little strain on the third eye. Whenever you become alert, the strain is more on the third eye. Something starts throbbing in the third eye, something starts pulsating in the third eye.

Once awareness has made the third eye function, once awareness has moved in the third eye and the third eye starts functioning, becomes alive... That's why Hindus call it a CHAKRA. CHAKRA means a wheel. The wheel needs energy; once the energy comes in, the wheel starts moving.

By 'movement' is meant that it starts functioning. Then a great revolution happens in your being:

immediately the lower heart bows down to the higher heart. When the higher comes, the lower always bows down. It rules only when the higher is not present.

And that is the difference between a real religion and an unreal religion. The unreal religion says to you, 'Try to control yourself. Do this, don't do that. Control your senses. Discipline your body.'

The real religion says, 'Just go into the third eye centre and let the spiritual heart function, and all will be controlled, and all will be disciplined. Let the master arrive, and everything will be settled immediately.'

THE EYES START THE LIGHT CIRCULATING LIKE TWO MINISTERS AT THE RIGHT AND LEFT WHO SUPPORT THE RULER WITH ALL THEIR MIGHT. WHEN RULE IN THE CENTRE IS THUS IN ORDER, ALL THOSE REBELLIOUS HEROES WILL PRESENT THEMSELVES WITH LANCES REVERSED READY TO TAKE ORDERS.

Just let the master come in, and there is no need to make any effort to create an order in your life, there is no need to cultivate character. That's why I say don't be worried about character. Simply put all your energy into being more conscious. Consciousness is followed by character as you are followed by your shadow. If you try to cultivate a character, your character will be false, pseudo, and you will become a hypocrite. And this is not the way to reach to the ultimate.

THE WAY TO THE ELIXIR OF LIFE KNOWS AS SUPREME MAGIC...

This is the supreme magic. Why call it magic? - because once the higher heart has started functioning, as if a magical miracle happens... Your senses were never in order, your mind was always confused. You were always hesitating: to do this or to do that? to be or not to be? You were in constant tension: where to go? what to choose? Suddenly, as if somebody has done a miracle, all confusion disappears, clarity arises, life becomes transparent. You simply do that which has to be done. In fact, once the heavenly heart has started functioning, all that you do is good; you cannot do wrong - it is impossible.

THE WAY TO THE ELIXIR OF LIFE KNOWS AS SUPREME MAGIC...

And three are the constituents of this supreme magic:

... SEED-WATER, SPIRIT-FIRE, AND THOUGHT-EARTH - these are Taoist symbols - THESE THREE. WHAT IS SEED-WATER? IT IS THE TRUE, ONE ENERGY: (EROS). SPIRIT-FIRE IS THE LIGHT: (LOGOS). THOUGHT-EARTH IS INTUITION.

You will have to understand these three.

Seed-water is eros, the energy that you know now as sexual energy, the energy of passion. Right now it creates only troubles for you and nothing else. Right now it pretends to be your friend but proves to be your foe. The more you follow it, the more it takes you into miseries. That's why it is said that love is blind.

Mulla Nasrudin was saying to me, 'Love is blind and marriage is an eye-opener.'

Love is blind because you don't have eyes yet, and a great energy that could have become a great blessing to you becomes only misery. Eros is your energy. And Freud is right to seek and search for everything in your eros, in your sexual energy. But he is wrong because he does not know that this ordinary state of sexual energy is not its natural state, it is a perverted state.

In its natural state sexual energy rises higher and higher, it takes you upwards not downwards. In its natural state sexual energy becomes the Golden Flower within you. In the so-called ordinary, perverted state it simply takes you into new prisons, because it moves outward and downward.

It dissipates you, it only brings your death closer and closer. If the same energy starts moving upwards, it brings a new life, life in abundance. It becomes the Elixir of Life.

Just as the mud can become a lotus - the mud contains the lotus, the seed of it - so your sexual energy contains the seed of the Golden Flower. But THE ENERGY has to move upwards, you cannot move it upwards. There are people who try to make it move upwards; they become sexual perverts and nothing else. You cannot do it directly, but you can do it indirectly. Once your third eye, your spiritual heart, starts functioning, energy starts moving of its own accord. You have created the third eye and the energy is attracted as if towards a magnet.

Right now your energy moves outwards because you have magnets outside, far greater than you have inside. You see a beautiful woman and the energy starts moving outwards; the woman functions as a magnet. When your third eye functions you have such a strong magnet that nobody can pull you outward. It is just a question of having a bigger magnet inside than the one which exists outside. Then the energy moves upwards, inwards.

If you go outwards you will move into the world of duality. If you go inwards you will move into the world of non-duality; you will become non-polar.

This is exactly the foundation of what I call metapsychology, or the psychology of the Buddhas. This is pure religion - not the religion of the rituals but pure religion: nothing to do with Christianity and Hinduism but something to do with your energy source.

The second is spirit-fire. It is light, logos; it is conscious mind. Eros moving upwards takes you beyond conscious and unconscious mind. Logos is conscious mind. It is psychology, it is science.

Thought-earth is darkness, unconsciousness, intuition. It is parapsychology, art. Thought-earth is intuition, darkness.

Women live in thought-earth, in the intuitive vision. Women live as unconscious, illogical beings.

Men live in spirit-fire, logos, logic, conscious mind. Artists are feminine, scientists are masculine.

And the seed-water, eros, the one energy, is non-dual. It takes you beyond art and beyond science.

It takes you beyond the conscious and the unconscious. It takes you beyond man and beyond woman. It takes you into the non-dual, the transcendental.

But the secret of the magic is to let your heavenly heart function, which exists between your two eyes. Later on we will go into the methodology of it - how to help it function.