Riding on a Miracle

AN OLD FABLE has it that when God was creating the world he was approached by four questioning angels. 'How are you doing it?' the first one asked. The second queried, 'Why?' The third one said, 'May I have it when you finish?' The fourth one said, 'Can I help?'

The first one was the question of the scientist, the second, the philosopher's, the third, the politician's, and the fourth was the question of the religious one.

The scientific inquiry into existence is that of detached observation. The scientist has to be objective. To be objective he has to remain uninvolved; he cannot participate, because the moment he becomes a participant he becomes involved. Hence the scientist can only know the outer circumference of life and existence. The innermost core will remain unavailable to science; its very methodology prohibits it.

The philosopher only speculates, he never experiments. He goes on asking AD infinitum, 'Why?'

And the question is such that whatsoever the answer, it can be asked again - 'Why?' There is no possibility of any conclusion through philosophy. Philosophy remains in a state of non-conclusion. It is a futile activity; it leads nowhere.

The politician simply wants to possess the world, to own it. He is the most dangerous of all because he is the most violent. His interest in life is not in life itself but in his own power. He is power-hungry, power-mad; he is a maniac, he is destructive. The moment you possess something alive, you kill it, because the moment something becomes a property it is no more alive. Possess a tree, and it is no more alive. Possess a woman or a man, and you have killed them. Possess anything, and death is the outcome, because only death can be possessed.

Life is freedom. It remains basically free. You cannot possess it, you cannot put it into the bank, you cannot draw a line around it. You cannot say, 'This is mine'; to say so is disrespectful, to say so is egoistic, to say so is mad.

Life possesses us. How can we possess it? We have to be possessed by life more and more.

The whole gestalt has to change: from being possessive, one has to become capable of being possessed by the whole.

The politician never comes to know the truth of life.

The religious person participates. He dances with life. He sings with existence. He helps life. He is surrendered to existence, and he is not detached and aloof. He does not really ask any question, he is not after knowledge; his whole effort is how to be in harmony with existence, how to be totally one with it. Hence the Eastern word for the ultimate experience: SAMADHI.

It comes from two words. SAM - SAM means together with. The same root SAM has moved into English, too; it is in 'sympathy', it is in 'symphony'. A little bit changed, it is in 'synthesis', 'synchronicity'. SAM means together with. ADHI means the lord, God. SAMADHI means union with God, to be one with God. And that is exactly the meaning of the English word 'religion'. It means to become one with existence; not to be divided, not to remain separate but to become one. And only in this oneness does one come to know, see, experience, and be.

Religion is also a great experiment - the greatest, in fact - but with a difference. Science experiments with the object, religion experiments with the subject itself. Its whole concern is: Who am I?

One should begin from the beginning. Unless I know myself, I am not going to know anything else.

If deep down I remain ignorant, then my whole knowledge is just garbage. It is based on ignorance, it is rooted in ignorance. First the light has to happen inside me, and then it can spread. Then it can go to the very boundaries of existence - if there are any boundaries. But first this has to happen within me. The first flame has to come from my subjectivity. When my centre is full of light, then only will whatsoever is known really be known. Unless you know yourself, unless the knower is there, how can you know anything else? If you yourself are in deep darkness, all the lights that you have created outside are deceptions, illusions.

The religious quest is the greatest quest in existence. A few things have to be understood about this quest.

The first thing: religion cannot creep; it has to dance or die. And that's what is not happening in the world - religion is not dancing, hence it has died. Religion is creeping and crawling; it has forgotten how to fly. Religion has become dogma. Dogma is death; it is a corpse. To be flowing and alive and flying, religion has to exist as an experience - not as a theory, not as theology, but as meditation; not as a philosophy about God but as a personal experience of God. And, know perfectly well: to know about God is not to know God. You can go on knowing about and about, but you will never know God. To know about is to go round and round without penetrating the very centre of it.

Religion cannot creep, and religion is creeping. Christianity, Hinduism, Islam - they are all creeping.

They have all become apologetic. They are all afraid of the scientific growth in the world. They have been fighting against science. They tried all that they could do to prevent scientific growth, but they failed. Now they try to get all of their support from science - whatsoever they can manage - but they know perfectly well that they have become secondary. They can exist only if science supports them.

They can exist only if scientific argument becomes a prop. This is creeping. Religion is no more on its own ground, on its own feet; it needs support from science. It is living a borrowed existence, a borrowed life. Its time is gone.

Why has it happened? Once a religion becomes dogma and is no more experience, it dies automatically. And a dead body cannot stand on its own, it needs support. All the churches and the temples are supported, they are not standing on their own.

When there is a Buddha he stands on his own. When there is a Christ he stands on his own. Then religion dances, sings a song. Then it is alive, it blooms, there are a thousand and one flowers, and great fragrance is released.

My effort here is to make religion dance again. There is no need for any support, because religion in itself is the greatest authentic experience. Others should look towards science for support, not religion! If religion starts dancing, starts becoming alive, science will need its support, because science itself is losing ground. It is becoming uglier and uglier every day. It is becoming more and more life-negative every day. It is becoming more and more political every day. All that science discovers is possessed by the politician. And all that science discovers serves death; it is no more serving life. Ninety percent of scientific effort goes on war. Science is losing face. Unless religion starts dancing, even science will no longer have any future. Science will need some release of energy from religion to support it. And if religion can be alive again and science becomes a part, a shadow of religion, then only can it be free of the politician and his madness. Otherwise it seems impossible.

Man is coming closer and closer to the ultimate destruction of life on the earth. Only a release of religious energy can save him, can save humanity.

What we are doing here may look like a very small experiment, but its potential is infinite. The future of humanity depends on only one thing: that religion can again lead man, that religion can again become the central influence on man, that religion can again become humanity's dream.

And remember, it is a very difficult dream - almost impossible. To dream to be with God, to dream to be in God, is bound to be something like an impossible dream. Man has lost courage. His dreams are tiny now, his dreams are very mundane; he no longer dreams of the transcendental. And remember, if you stop dreaming about the transcendental, you will live a meaningless life. Meaning arises only in contact with the transcendental. Meaning arises only when you are part of a greater whole, when you are part of something higher than you, something bigger than you. When man tries to surpass himself then there is religion. And that's what I call the dance of religion - man trying to transcend himself. No other animal can do it. No other animal is capable of it. Only man has the potential and the possibility to surpass himself. And a few men have surpassed themselves; a few men have reached to the other shore.

And when I am talking to you, I am talking from the other shore. Hence, I am not saying it from borrowed knowledge, I am saying it from my own experience. I know the impossible can become possible. It has become possible in me, it can become possible in you. Once your inner being becomes full of light, once you know no darkness within yourself, then you are religious.

Dream the impossible dream. It may look almost absurd in the beginning - it does look - but if it is strong enough, it transforms your reality.

I have heard...

Three trees once grew on a hillside, and as they swayed in the breeze they would dream what they would like to be.

'I should like to be cut down one day,' said the first tree, 'and turned into a baby's cradle.'

'I should like to be cut down one day,' said the second, 'and become a great ship sailing the seas, carrying treasure and precious stones.'

And the third said, 'I should like to stand on a hill-top and point people to heaven.'

One day the woodcutters came along and cut down the first tree. 'Let's make it into a cattle stall,' they said.

'But I don't wish to be a cattle stall,' cried the tree. 'I want to be a baby's cradle.' But they turned it into a cattle stall, and when the child Jesus was born, they laid him gently in the cattle stall for there was nowhere else to put him. And the tree said, 'Why, this is far far more wonderful than ever I dreamed.'

The woodcutters said of the second tree, 'Let's make this tree into a fishing boat.'

But the tree said, 'No! I don't wish to be a fishing boat; I want to be a great ship carrying treasure and precious stones.' But they turned the tree into a fishing boat and put it on an island lake. And a fisherman called Simon Peter bought the boat, and Jesus sailed in the boat and taught the people from it. And the tree said, 'Why, this is far far more wonderful than ever I dreamed.'

And of the third tree they said, 'Let's make it into a cross.' But the tree said, 'I don't want to be a cross - a thing of shame on which men die. I want to stand on a hill-top and point people to heaven.'

But they turned the tree into a cross and Jesus was nailed to that cross. And all down the years, men have looked to that cross, and it has pointed them to God.

Even if trees can dream something, they become it. So what to say about man?

Man has the greatest potential on the earth, in existence. If you are lacking something, it means you are lacking a great dream of surpassing yourself. You have become satisfied with the mundane.

You have started creeping on the earth, crawling on the earth. You don't look upwards. There is a great beyond calling you forth! There is a great beyond challenging you. And only that man is truly a man who accepts the challenge of the beyond. All others are only men in name, in form, but not really men.

Be a man! Accept the challenge of the unknown, of the beyond. Let it become a great dream in your being. That which you appear to be is only a seed. The seed has to fall into the soil, and has to die, and has to become a tree, and has to bloom.

If you cut the seed, you will not find flowers there. That's where science is missing the whole point - it goes on cutting the seed. It says, 'You say this seed will bring great flowering? We will cut and dissect the seed, and see.' And they cut and dissect the seed, and they have the methodology to dissect the seed, but no flower is found. So they say there is no flower. That's how they have come to the conclusion that there is no God in existence, that there is no soul, that there is no beyond, that life is just an accident and there is no destiny to life.

There is a famous saying of the Zen Master, Ikkyu.

'If you break open the cherry tree, where are the blossoms?

But in springtime how they bloom!'

Wait for the springtime. If you want to see, then wait for the springtime. And then you will find a Buddha, not a man; and you will find a Jesus, not a man; and you will find a Krishna, not a man.

Then you will find the flower, and the seed is no more found there; the seed has disappeared, its function fulfilled. It was protecting something of immense value, it was carrying a blueprint; now it is no more needed. The soil has been found, the spring has arrived, and the seed was courageous enough to die.

Man's ego is nothing but a seed. It is very protective. People ask me, 'If ego is such a barrier towards God, then why in the first place does ego exist? If mind is such a barrier to God, then why does mind exist at all?' It exists to protect you, just as the hard shell of the seed exists to protect the potential. The potential is very soft; it will be destroyed if the hard shell is not around it. The hard shell is not the enemy. The hard shell will be the enemy only if the spring has come, and the soil has been found, and the seed rejects death. If the hard shell says, 'Now, I will go on protecting you, even against the spring. I will protect you against this soil,' then there is going to be trouble.

That's where the problem arises. The ego in itself is not a problem. The child needs it, otherwise the child will be very unprotected. He will not know how to survive in this world of struggle. He will not know how to protect himself against so many hazards. He is so soft, tender, he will die before he becomes a Buddha. The ego helps him. The ego is a kind of armour, and so is the mind - it protects him.

It is not your enemy. It is the enemy only when the moment has come and you are ready to move into meditation - you have found a Master, you have found a method and you are ready - but the mind says, 'No, I cannot die. Just think of all the blessings that I have showered upon you. Just think of all the benefits that I have given you. Just think of all that I have done for you! Feel grateful, and don't try to destroy me.'

Then the problem arises: then the protector becomes destructive. Then you have to fight against your own mind, you have to fight against your own ego, you have to fight against your own armour, because the armour is no more needed. You have to release your inner potential - spring has come.

So when spring has come, only then is it a problem; otherwise it is not a problem, it is a help. The helpful can become a hindrance. When its time is gone, it has to go.

Dream of the impossible. Dream of surpassing yourself. Dream of NIRVANA, dream of MOKSHA, dream of the kingdom of God; only then will you start working and moving towards it, and only then with that dream, will your feet have the quality of dance.

Without the dream you will become dull. That's why people are dragging. How can they dance? For what? Just to go every day to the office and work, and come back home and quarrel with the wife and listen to all the complaints of the children? And next day the same rut starts again - year in, year out. What is there to dance about? In fact, it is a miracle how man goes on living, why he does not commit suicide. What does he live for?

There is nothing that is awaiting him, there is nothing that he can look up to. There is no star in the night; it is all darkness. It is a miracle how man goes on living, how he manages. The people who commit suicide seem to be more logical. The people who go on living seem to be very illogical.

Miserable, bored, dragging - but they go on living. But it shows something. It shows one thing: that your innermost being knows that the possibility is there. Any day you may become alert about the potential, about the possible. Any day, the dream will possess you. And then there will be meaning and there will be dance.

'Religion is art,' said William Blake. 'Religion is art, not money.'

This is a very very pregnant statement. And only a man like William Blake could have made it. He is a mystic poet.

What is art? 'Art is a way,' he says, 'of doing something': painting, poetry, dancing, sculpture, music, pottery, weaving. 'Art is a way of doing something.' He does not say anything about creating oneself.

But that is exactly what religion is. It is not painting, it is not poetry, it is not sculpture, it is not music, but something on the same lines, something beyond - creating oneself.

Religion is a way of doing something also - living, loving, seeing, being. All art is 'making'. It is helping God to create. That's why I call the man who said to God, 'Can I help?' the religious man.

If you want to know the creator you will have to become a creator in some measure on your own.

Poetry may not be religion proper but it points in the right direction. When a poet is really in a creative state, he knows something of religion - a faraway distant music, because when he is in a creative state, he is no more himself. He participates - although in a very small measure, but he participates in God.

Just a drop of divinity enters into him. That's why great poets have always said, 'When we write poetry, we are not the creators of it. We become possessed. Some unknown energy enters, sings, dances in us. We don't know what it is.' When a painter is lost into his painting, he is utterly lost into his painting, his ego disappears. Maybe only for moments, but in those egoless moments God paints through him.

If you participate in God, God participates in you. Art is an unconscious form of religion. Religion is conscious art. Art is as if you are religious in a dream, but it is pointing in the right direction. The artist is the nearest to the religious. But it is not understood that way. You don't think of a poet as religious or a painter as religious, on the contrary, if somebody fasts, tortures his body, makes his being ugly, you start thinking that HE is religious. He is simply being violent with himself. He is just suicidal, he is neurotic, and you think he is religious.

Neurotics become MAHATMAS; they are respected and worshipped as saints. They are not religious at all. The difference between a so-called saint and a murderer is not much. The murderer murders somebody else, and your so-called saint murders himself. But both do the same thing: both are violent, both are destructive. And whenever you are destructive you are farthest from God, because God is creativity. To me, aesthetics is the closest neighbour of religiousness, not ethics.

Lenin is reported to have said, 'Ethics will be the aesthetics of the future.' I say: No, just the contrary; aesthetics will be the ethics of the future. Beauty is going to be the truth of the future, because beauty can be created. And a beautiful person, who loves beauty, who lives beauty, who creates beauty, is moral - and with no effort. His morality is not a cultivated morality, it is just his aesthetic sense that makes him moral. He cannot kill because he cannot think of killing as being beautiful. He cannot cheat, he cannot be dishonest because all these things make him feel ugly. His criterion is beauty.

And I agree with William Blake that religion is art.

All art is making. All making neCessitates a kind of faith. You see what is not there, and work in such a way that what was invisible, intangible, inaudible, is given shape in time and space. What is produced will be apparent to the senses - a painting, a poem, or a garden. Art is not to be confused, however, with the object it produces.

It is a beautiful distinction to be remembered. It will help you immensely to understand religion.

Art is not a painting or a piece of sculpture. What art dealers buy and sell are works of art, not art itself. Works of art are a form of property. Just as art is not the same thing as works of art, so religion is not to be confused with the objects and effects its produces - such as dogmas, doctrines, Bibles, Korans, Gitas, churches, temples, cathedrals. These are WORKS of art. You can call them works of the art of religion, but religion should not be confused with them.

A church is a church. It may be beautiful, but it is not religion in itself. It is a by-product, a spin-off.

A Koran is a beautiful poem, but as a work of art, a spin-off. Something happened in Mohammed's heart - that was religion, but that remains invisible. Because something stirred in his soul, he started singing, he went into a mad expression. That's exactly what he thought when for the first time alone on the mountains he started feeling the presence of God. He became so frightened, so afraid, he thought he had either gone mad or become a He rushed home. He was in a feverish state, trembling. His wife thought he had suddenly got a high fever. She asked, 'What has happened to you?' And he said, 'Either I have gone mad or I have become a poet. Something tremendously great is happening, and I don't know what it is or from where it is coming. And I am so unworthy of it... I cannot believe my own eyes, and I cannot believe my own heart - what I am feeling. It is so immensely beautiful, so great, so vast, I am incapable of conceiving it.'

That was religion.

A few days fever, and Mohammed cooled down and settled into his new state, his ecstasy, his SAMADHI. And then the flow started: the beautiful Koran was born. But the Koran is a by-product, so is the Gita, so is the Dhammapada. Remember always that no scripture contains religion - cannot contain it. All scriptures are by-products of religion - shadows, footprints, left on the banks of time. But footprints are footprints.

When Buddha walks on a sea beach, naturally, he will leave footprints, but those footprints are not Buddha himself, those footprints are beautiful because they belong to Buddha. Bow down to them!

but don't forget they are just by-products. And you have to be a Buddha, not just the worshipper of a footprint .

Works of art are a form of property, that's why you can sell them, purchase them; but you cannot sell art and you cannot purchase art. If you ask Pablo Picasso to sell you his art, it will be impossible.

You may be ready to pay any fantastic price for it, but he cannot sell it. He can sell his paintings, but he cannot sell his art. There is no way of selling it because it is not a thing. It remains always invisible. Only effects become visible.

God remains invisible, only in the world does he becomes visible. You are invisible, only the body is visible.

That's why Blake says religion is not money. He is right. He meanS religion is not property. Religion is not like that, religion is like love - you cannot buy it, sell it, or keep it in a bank. You cannot possess it; on the contrary, it possesses you.

The work of art can be possessed; it is property, it is dead. You can learn the Koran and the Gita and the Bible, but you cannot learn religion. You have to live it - there is no way of learning it. You have to be possessed by God, you have to become available to God. You have to open up your being. You have to withdraw. You have to become empty so that God can enter and possess you totally. In that very possession, you have transcended humanity. You are no more a human being, you are a god, a Christ, a Buddha.

These sutras are the secrets to help you release this Buddhahood that you are carrying as a blueprint, that you are carrying in a seed form; to help it bloom; to help it become a great tree with great foliage and many flowers.

The sutras.

Master Lu-tsu said: 'RELEASE IS IN THE EYE...

This potential that I have been talking to you about, this Buddhahood, this Christ-consciousness or Krishna-consciousness, or whatever you wish to call it, is in the third eye. Just between your two physical eyes there is an empty space, and that empty space is the seed of your being a god. Unless that third eye starts functioning, your potential will not be released.

Hence, Master Lu-tsu said: 'RELEASE IS IN THE EYE...'

Release means NIRVANA, MOKSHA, deliverance, freedom. Release means enlightenment. If your third eye can start functioning... It is dormant, non-functioning; your energy has not reached up to it. It is a mechanism - perfect, but without any energy reaching it. Your energy is flowing downward into your sexuality, into your greed, into your anger, into your worldly affairs - your energy is moving downwards and outwards. You don't have enough energy to bring to the third-eye centre. Unless you have an abundance of energy, it will not reach the third eye.

You have to become a reservoir of energy. And when you become a reservoir and energy is not wasted, its level starts going higher and higher every day. One day it reaches the third eye, and the moment the energy touches the third eye, immediately, instantly, it starts functioning. And then you know, and then you see for the first time. Then you have the vision of life - what it is. And only through the third eye will you be able to know God, reality, that which is.

Through the two physical eyes you know the world. And because your eyes are two, the world is divided, it is dual. Your two eyes make the world divided. The world in itself is not divided, but your way of seeing it divides it.

It is like a ray passing through a prism. The ray is one; the moment it passes through a prism, it becomes seven; it is broken up into seven colours. That is how the rainbow is created: sunrays passing through drops of water hanging in the clouds. Those hanging drops function as prisms, and the sunrays passing through them are immediately split into seven colours .

Your energy moves through your two eyes and the whole world becomes dual. Then you see day and night as opposite, life and death as opposite, love and hate as opposite, matter and consciousness as opposite. Your two eyes make all things dual and polar. And because of these two eyes you cannot see the oneness of existence. Unless your two eyes become one eye, you will never know the indivisible, the universal.

The book, THE SECRET OF THE GOLDEN FLOWER, says: energy going outwards becomes dual; if you bring it backwards it becomes again one - it loses duality, it becomes non-dual. When energy moves back from the two eyes, it starts falling into the original source.

If you mix the seven colours of the rainbow into one, it becomes white, it becomes one colour. The method is the same. Energy moving outwards passes through two eyes and the whole existence becomes dual. Energy moving backwards passes through two eyes and moves into one eye, the third eye - which is just exactly in between the two - and suddenly all is one. This is SAMADHI.

YOU are one with God.

'RELEASE IS IN THE EYE... THE SEED-BLOSSOMS OF THE HUMAN BODY MUST BE CONCENTRATED UPWARD IN THE EMPTY SPACE.'

Right now it is an empty space. But once energy starts moving inwards, it becomes full of light.

IMMORTALITY IS CONTAINED IN THIS AND ALSO THE OVERCOMING OF THE WORLD.

And the moment you have reached the one point in your being... Jesus says, 'When your two eyes become one, you have entered the kingdom of God.' You know immortality, because now you know life and death are not opposite but two wings of the same bird. Death does not destroy life but helps it to renew itself again. Death is not the enemy but the friend. It simply helps life to change its garments because they have become rotten; they have been used and they cannot be used anymore. It simply helps you to change the house, it does not end you. It only gives you a new beginning, a fresh lease of energy.

Then darkness and light are not two. Then opposites disappear and they become complementaries.

Then the whole existence becomes a dance between the masculine energy and the feminine energy.

Then it is an orgasmic dance. Then both are one, meeting, melting into each other. The conflict disappears. And when you see the whole existence without any conflict, certainly, great joy arises.

There is no death.

Death one sees only from the outside. You see somebody else dying, you have never seen yourself dying. Nobody has ever seen himself dying.

When Socrates was given poison, he was very enchanted. His disciples were crying and weeping, and he said, 'Don't weep. Soon I will be gone, and then you can weep to your heart's content Right now, see this great experiment that is happening to me. I am very intrigued by the idea of death - whether I am really going to die or not. Don't miss this opportunity. Just sit around me and watch.'

A Master teaches through his life and also teaches through his death. A Master uses every opportunity - even his own death he will use to teach his disciples. Because he shouted and was very angry and said, 'Stop crying and weeping and come close! Don't miss this opportunity!' the disciples looked. And Socrates said, 'Wait. The poison is being given to me. Now I will tell you what is happening to me inside, so you can become aware of something that you cannot see.' And then he said, 'Up to my knees, my legs are dead. But as far as I am concerned, I am intact and as whole as I was before.' Then he said, 'My whole legs have gone dead - below the waist I cannot feel anything.' He asked a disciple to touch his feet, to pinch them, but he could not feel anything.

He said, 'I cannot feel them, so half of my body is dead, but I am as whole as ever. My inner feeling is not that I am half-dead and half-alive, I am as alive as ever! Half of the body is gone, but my being is untouched by it.'

And slowly slowly his hands became dead, and his chest started sinking. And then he said the last words. He said, 'My tongue will not be able to say any more words. It is getting numb. But the last thing that I want to tell you is this: that although almost ninety percent of my body is dead, I am a hundred percent alive. If it is an indication of something, it shows that even when the body is one hundred percent dead, I will be alive, because I have seen ninety percent of my body go, but I am as whole as before. So ten percent more will go... You cannot see what is happening to me inside, but I can see it.'

Socrates is not an ordinary philosopher as are the other Greek philosophers. Even his own disciples, Plato, Aristotle... Aristotle, in fact, is not a disciple but an enemy. He does not understand Socrates at all, and what he proposes is absolutely against Socrates.

Socrates is a mystic. His philosophy is just a method of inquiry - and a very penetrating inquiry. He will not even leave death aside; he inquired into death. To the very last moment he was true to his method of inquiry.

Death one sees only from the outside: you see other people dying. But to be alive is different: you can see it from the inside. To be alive is to feel pain and pleasure, to love and to fear. To be alive is to be able to create, to think of something which is not and make it happen.

That's why the creative person only knows the highest form of life because when you create you are at the optimum point of your energy. When you create you are part of God. How one can do it is a mystery. How one can exist is a mystery. Every effect must have a cause. That is what we call the law of causation - that is what we are taught. But I can see no cause for the effect which I am.

I wake up riding on a miracle. My reason serves me well, but with the mystery of my being it fails.

My reason itself is a tool of this mystery, hence it cannot know it.

You have to look within. To see what life is, first you have to feel it from the interior. And the best way to feel your life is to be creative, because then you are at your maximum. Ordinarily, people live at their minimum, and whatsoever people go on doing can be done at the minimum because those are just habits; those are just routine things your body has learned. They have been transferred from your consciousness to the robot part of your body which goes on functioning on its own - as, for example, once you have learned to drive. When you first learn, you are very alive, very alert, because there is danger. You have to be alert - you don't know what is going to happen. You have to keep aware of so many things: the steering wheel, the road, the clutch, the gears, the accelerator, the brakes - so many things to be aware and alert about - and the traffic, and the people passing by, and the cars passing by. But once you have learned, your knowledge is transferred to the robot part of your body. Then you need not bother; you can talk to your friend, you can sing a song, you can smoke, you can listen to the radio, and your body goes on doing. You need not be alert - only exceptionally. If some accident is going to happen, you will wake up for a moment because the danger is so great and the danger is so unknown that the robot part cannot face it. It has not happened before; it is new.

Ordinary life becomes a mechanical routine, and you start living at the minimum. You never flare up to your maximum. In creativity you flare up.

And that is going to be one of my messages to my sannyasins. Be creative, because to be creative is worship. To be creative is prayer, to be creative is meditation. And to be creative is to be close to God. There is no need to go to the Kaaba, because God is here as much as in the Kaaba. There is no need to go to the Himalayas, because God is everywhere equally available - but available only to those who live at their maximum, whose life flame is not a dull flame, who pour their whole energy into it. And that happens only through creativity.

So, to me, the definition of a sannyasin is not the definition of the old kind of saint, sitting there dull and dead. The definition of a sannyasin is to be creative. Dance, sing, create music, paint, sculpt, or whatsoever you feel like doing. Find out what is your innermost joy and do it! And doing means:

bring it from the invisible to the visible. Doing means: make the dream exist on the earth. Let the dream become actual. Transform the potential into the actual. And that is the greatest joy there is.

The real bliss is attained only when you are able to bring something from the unknown to the known, when you make, create, when you are able to transform a dream into reality, when you have helped God. When in a certain way, in your own way, you have made the world a little more beautiful, when you have enhanced its joy, then you are a sannyasin.

And to know this way, your inner life, will help you to know that you are deathless, because once you know who you are in your utter capacity, when your inner torch is burning from both ends together, at the optimum, then you will know there is no death. And at the optimum your third-eye centre starts functioning - and only at the optimum. So don't live life as a drag. Don't live it as if it is a burden, a duty to be fulfilled, make it a dance, let it be a celebration.

IMMORTALITY IS CONTAINED IN THIS AND ALSO THE OVERCOMING OF THE WORLD.

If you can allow your flame of life to reach the third eye, you will see there is no death. And you will suddenly see that you are no more attached to the world.

Now, the difference has to be remembered. The old sannyas, the so-called, old religious way of life, has been teaching people to renounce the world. I don't teach renunciation, I teach you to bring your life energy to the optimum. And once you have seen the true in your being, the world carries no meaning anymore. The higher has happened, the lower becomes insignificant. You need not renounce it; it has already dropped. You need not escape anywhere. You can live in the world, but you have overcome it. And remember, escaping and overcoming are two totally different things.

The real sannyasin has to overcome the world, not renounce it.

THE LIGHT IS NOT IN THE BODY ALONE, NOR IS IT ONLY OUTSIDE THE BODY.

And once you have seen the light inside, then you will become aware that it is not only inside, it is also on the outside. It is not confined to you. Remember, darkness is individual, light is universal Death is individual, life is universal. Misery is individual, bliss is universal. For misery to exist, you have to exist - you have to exist as separate. And for bliss to come into existence, you have to become part of the whole, in harmony with the whole.

THE LIGHT IS NOT IN THE BODY ALONE, NOR IS IT ONLY OUTSIDE THE BODY. MOUNTAINS AND RIVERS AND THE GREAT EARTH ARE LIT BY SUN AND MOON; ALL THAT IS THIS LIGHT.

Once you have seen it on the inside you will recognize it everywhere: in the moon, in the sun... All light is the same - inner and outer make no difference.

THEREFORE IT IS NOT ONLY WITHIN THE BODY. UNDERSTANDING AND CLARITY, PERCEPTION AND ENLIGHTENMENT, AND ALL MOVEMENTS (OF THE SPIRIT) ARE LIKEWISE THIS LIGHT...

It is the same light that you see in the moon, and that you see inside yourself in the third eye. Once you have seen that it is the same light, the inner and the outer are no longer distinct. The inner is the outer, the outer is the inner. That's why the Zen Masters say that SAMSARA IS NIRVANA, the world - this very world - is enlightenment. This very body the Buddha, this very earth the paradise.

That's why when Buddha became enlightened, he said, 'It is incredible, it is unbelievable that the moment I became enlightened, the whole existence became enlightened with me.'

Down the centuries Buddhist meditators have been meditating over it, 'What does he mean?

What does he want to say - "The moment I became enlightened the whole existence became enlightened"? But how can it be? - because there are still so many unenlightened people. What can he mean?' The meditator himself thinks, 'I am as yet unenlightened, so how has the whole existence become enlightened?' It has become enlightened for the Buddha because he has seen that the distinction between the inner and the outer was nothing but the ego - the small thin curtain of the ego. Once that curtain has fallen there is nothing inner, nothing outer.

So Buddha cannot say, 'I have become enlightened.' He says, 'The whole has become enlightened.'

All the trees, and all the rivers, and all the mountains, and all the people, and all the animals, and all the planets - all have become enlightened, because now he has no separate identity. He does not mean that you have become enlightened, he is simply saying, 'I cannot say that I have become enlightened. I was in bondage, that much I can say. I was ignorant, that much I can say. I was in misery, that much I can say. But now, I am no more.'

Existence is blissful. Existence is full of light. And the inner and the outer light are the same - there is nothing inner, there is nothing outer. All distinctions disappear when the light enters into the third eye - the one eye, the single eye. All distinctions disappear. The rainbow again becomes a single ray of white light.

Just the other day there was a question, 'Osho, why do you tell us to wear orange when you wear white?'

It is just symbolic, just to tell you that you have to come to the point where colours disappear and the single white ray remains without any distinctions.

UNDERSTANDING AND CLARITY, PERCEPTION AND ENLIGHTENMENT, AND ALL MOVEMENTS (OF THE SPIRIT) ARE LIKEWISE THIS LIGHT; THEREFORE IT IS NOT JUST SOMETHING OUTSIDE THE BODY.

It is neither outside nor inside, it is everywhere - inside too, outside too. And it is the same light - the same light that you see shining on the greenery and the flower, and dancing on the lotus. It is the same light that becomes clarity inside - enlightenment, perception, understanding.

And remember, the Master says, understanding, not knowledge. The Master says, clarity, not answers. One simply becomes so clear that the questions disappear. Not that you attain to some answers, only you are so clear that the confusion is no more there, that's all. It is absence of questions not presence of answers, hence it is called understanding, not knowledge.

Just the other day, Aniruddha also asked, 'What is the difference between our knowledge and your knowledge? I don't see any difference,' he says.

The difference is not in knowledge. He must have been thinking that I know more than he knows.

Just the contrary is the case. I don't know more than you know; in fact, you know and I have no knowledge. I am only clear - a clarity, an understanding, not knowledge. Here are many people who know more than me, and that is their problem. They will have to drop that knowledge.

I don't know anything, there is only clarity. When you ask me a question, it is not that I have an answer for it, but I just focus my clarity on it - try to understand - and whatsoever response comes out of the clarity I give to you. It is not knowledge, it is just a capacity to see.

Knowledge makes people blind. Their eyes become so full of knowledge they cannot see. Even before you have asked the question they have the ready-made answer there. They are ready to answer it. They don't listen to your question, they don't listen to the questioner, they don't listen to his being, they don't look into him to see what he means, they have a ready-made answer. They are in a hurry to answer you - and they must prove the answer with arguments and scriptures, and they must give all kinds of support to it.

I have only a kind of understanding, a vision, a capacity to see. That's why the Master says:

UNDERSTANDING AND CLARITY, PERCEPTION AND ENLIGHTENMENT... It is not knowledge, it is just an utterly cloudless sky within.

THE LIGHT-FLOWER OF HEAVEN AND EARTH FILLS ALL THE THOUSAND PACES. BUT ALSO THE LIGHT-FLOWER OF THE INDIVIDUAL BODY PASSES THROUGH HEAVEN AND COVERS THE EARTH.

It is a light-flower, this whole existence. This is the experience of the mystics: that existence is made of nothing other than light. It is all light; light is the basic constituent of existence. And modern physics agrees with it. They call it electricity. 'Light' is much too poetic a word for them, they have to drag it down to earth; it becomes 'electricity'. But what they are saying is exactly the same.

Matter has disappeared from modern physics, matter is no more. At the deepest core of matter is nothing but electricity, electrons, electrical particles dancing, energy particles dancing, with no matter in them, no weight. This has been experienced by mystics down the centuries, unexceptionally; whether the mystic was born in India or in China or in Tibet makes no difference.

This has been the most fundamental experience of all the mystics: that the existence is made of light and nothing nothing else.

THE SECRET OF THE GOLDEN FLOWER says, 'This light, this flower of light, these petals of light fill all the spaces outside and also inside.'

THEREFORE, AS SOON AS THE LIGHT IS CIRCULATING, HEAVEN AND EARTH, MOUNTAINS AND RIVERS, ARE ALL CIRCULATING WITH IT AT THE SAME TIME.

The same thing that Buddha said is said in different words. The moment you see light circulating in you, you will be able to see the dawn of light all over. Stars moving, and mountains and rivers - all will be nothing but streams of light, a tremendous dance of light energy.

TO CONCENTRATE THE SEED-FLOWER OF THE HUMAN BODY ABOVE IN THE EYES, THAT IS THE GREAT KEY OF THE HUMAN BODY. CHILDREN. TAKE HEED! IF FOR A DAY YOU DO NOT PRACTISE MEDITATION, THIS LIGHT STREAMS OUT, WHO KNOWS WHITHER? IF YOU MEDITATE FOR A QUARTER OF AN HOUR, BY IT YOU CAN DO AWAY WITH THE TEN THOUSAND AEONS AND A THOUSAND BIRTHS. ALL METHODS END IN QUIETNESS. THIS MARVELLOUS MAGIC CANNOT BE FATHOMED.

The Master Lu-tsu says only fifteen minutes in twenty-four hours will do. If you can sit silently for fifteen minutes, concentrated in the third eye, that will be enough to change your whole future. You will not need to be born into the body again. You will not need to be thrown into the world again. You have learned the lesson, you have become worthy of moving without the body and the limitation of the body. Your soul will be free, unentangled, without any bondage. And then there will be no death, no birth. You will be an eternal flowering of light in this infinite existence.

Only fifteen minutes? Yes, only fifteen minutes can do the miracle. But people are not even ready to give fifteen minutes to quietness, to silence.

I have heard...

When Ignatius Loyola heard the news that an unfriendly man had been elected Pope, he was asked what he would do if the new head of the Church should order the Society of Jesus dissolved, the work in which Loyola had invested his whole life. He replied, 'Fifteen minutes in prayer and all will be the same.'

An immensely significant reply.

An unfriendly Pope had come into power and there was every possibility that Loyola's whole work would be dissolved. He had created a small society of mystics. The work was esoteric, and Christianity has always been against esoteric work, has always been afraid of the mystics because these are the dangerous people. They bring truth to the world, and once they bring truth to the world, people are no longer interested in rituals, impotent rituals. Who cares about the Church then?

So Christianity has consistently been destroying all mystic schools so that nobody can go outside the Church, so that nobody can have any other door to reach God, so that everybody has to come to the priest. Whenever the desire to seek and search for God arises, no alternatives are to be left.

Because of this stupid idea, Christianity destroyed religion in the whole world, because there are different people and they need different types of schools, and they need different types of techniques.

And those who are really sincere in their search have to find esoteric groups. They cannot become part of the formal religion - that is not enough for them; it is very lukewarm, it is very superficial .

In the West, real religion had to go underground because of the Church. People have to create many false facades to hide behind. Alchemy was one of the facades. The real work was something else: the alchemist was trying to create around himself the idea that he was working to transform baser metal into gold. This was allowed. The Church was very happy. If you are trying to turn baser metal into gold, it is perfectly okay, you can do it. If you succeed, the Church will have more gold, that's all; there was no fear about it. But this was just a facade, it was not real alchemy; it was just on the outside. Behind the curtain the real work was totally different: it was transforming the lower being into the higher being. It was exactly the secret of the Golden Flower: how to transform your sexuality, the baser metal, into spirituality, the gold.

But unnecessary trouble had to be taken, they had to make arrangements on the outside such that the society remained convinced that their work was something to do with gold. And everybody is interested in gold. The Church is very interested in gold, not in God.

Loyola was a great mystic. He had created the Society of Jesus. And a very antagonistic Pope was in power. Somebody said to him, 'What will you do? What will happen now? The Society can be dissolved by the order of the Pope.'

Loyola said, 'Fifteen minutes in prayer, and all will be the same. It will just take me fifteen minutes to go deep into meditation, that's all. Because whenever I am there, nothing matters. Nothing matters at all.'

Master Lu-tsu says: Just fifteen minutes...

... BY IT YOU CAN DO AWAY WITH THE TEN THOUSAND AEONS AND A THOUSAND BIRTHS.

ALL METHODS END IN QUIETNESS.

Remember it. Whatsoever the method, the goal is the same: quietness, utter silence inside, thoughtlessness, only consciousness without any content.

THIS MARVELLOUS MAGIC CANNOT BE FATHOMED.

It is an unfathomable depth. When thoughts disappear and you are simply silent, then the silence is a bottomless abyss; it cannot be fathomed. The Pacific Ocean can be fathomed - it has a five-mile depth; but the Pacific Ocean inside you cannot be fathomed - it is infinite. You can go on digging and digging and diving deeper and deeper and you will not come to fathom it, you will not come to the bottom of it at all.

Only thoughts can be measured, thoughtlessness is immeasurable. Hence, thoughtlessness is another name for God. But remember, thoughtlessness should not be a kind of sleep, because that is very ordinary. It happens every day: deep in sleep, when dreams disappear, you fall into that abyss. That's why deep sleep is so rejuvenating, so refreshing. In the morning you feel alive again, new, reborn. But that is unconscious. Patanjali has said deep sleep and SAMADHI are very similar, with only one difference: in sleep you are unconscious, in SAMADHI you are conscious. But you go to the same space, the same unfathomable, magical space within you, where there is no thought, no desire, no vibration in your mind, all is quiet. All methods lead to it - Yoga, Tantra, Tao, Hassidism, Sufism - all methods lead to it from different angles; they have been devised for different people.

BUT WHEN THE PRACTICE IS STARTED, ONE MUST PRESS ON FROM THE OBVIOUS TO THE PROFOUND, FROM THE COARSE TO THE FINE.

In the beginning great effort is needed. One MUST press on from the obvious to the profound. What is obvious? - the obvious is your continuous process of thought. And what is profound? - just a state of no-thought. What is gross? - all contents of the mind are gross. And what is subtle? - a state of no-content is subtle. One must go pressing on. In the beginning, great effort will be needed.

In the beginning, you have to be utterly committed to the work, only then does the blissful moment arise when meditation becomes effortless.

First, meditation has to be masculine energy. Only then, in the end, can it become feminine energy.

That's why my insistence is on dynamic methods in the beginning. Bring all your effort to the maximum. Put all that you have at stake, don't hold anything back, and then, one day, you will be able to relax without effort. Just by closing your eyes you will be able to reach the third eye.

... WHEN THE PRACTICE IS STARTED, ONE MUST PRESS ON FROM THE OBVIOUS TO THE PROFOUND,FROM THE COARSE TO THE FINE. EVERYTHING DEPENDS ON THERE BEING NO INTERRUPTION.

And make it a regular phenomenon.

THE BEGINNING AND THE END OF THE PRACTICE MUST BE ONE. IN BETWEEN THERE ARE COOLER AND WARMER MOMENTS, THAT GOES WITHOUT SAYING. BUT THE GOAL MUST BE TO REACH THE VASTNESS OF HEAVEN AND THE DEPTHS OF THE SEA, SO THAT ALL METHODS SEEM QUITE EASY AND TAKEN FOR GRANTED. ONLY THEN HAVE WE MASTERED IT.

The real mastery is when no effort is needed, when all efforts can be dropped. The real mastery is when no method is needed, when all methods can be dropped. The real mastery is when meditation is no longer a thing to do but has become your very state. You live in it, you walk in it, you sit in it:

'Sitting in Zen, walking in Zen.' You eat in it, you sleep in it. You ARE it.

That moment also comes. But in the beginning one has to go with all one's energy. Remember, just as water evaporates at a hundred degrees' heat - not at ninety-nine, not at ninety-nine point nine, but exactly at a hundred degrees - so whenever you put your total energy, one hundred degrees, at stake, immediately the baser metal turns into gold. Immediately the sexual energy has penetrated into the spiritual world. Immediately the energy that was going out has taken a one-hundred-and- eighty-degree turn, and the two eyes become one eye. And then all that is inner and all that is outer is enlightened.

Jesus has said, 'Cleave the wood and you will find me. Strike the stone and I am there.' This is the ultimate state: when you cleave the wood and you find God, and you strike the stone and you find God. Then you walk on God, in God, as God. Then you breathe God, then you eat God, you drink God, because all is God.

This ultimate experience is what Master Lu-tsu says is released. And it is in the third eye.