True balance

Question 1:

It is neither. I have nothing to do with it. It is not my leela, my playfulness; nor is it nature balancing itself. It is something totally different from both.

The world is always a madhouse... at least up to now it has been a madhouse. But when everyone is mad, you don't become aware of it.

If one person, just a single individual, comes out of madness - becomes sane - then suddenly the distinction is seen. Then you see sanity surrounded by madness, silence surrounded by a cyclone.

If everybody else also becomes silent and the cyclone disappears, that will be a perfect balance by existence.

In our logical minds, balance happens between opposite things. In reality, balance means disappearance of the opposition, the two becoming one, their diametrically opposite ways merging into one, melting into one reality. That is balance, true balance.

I can understand your problem, that I am utterly silent; still, wherever I go, a great turmoil surrounds me.

The turmoil was there already; it is just that there was no way to contrast it. It is not that the turmoil suddenly appears. My silence is not creating it, but my silence is exposing it.

In many ways you can understand it. In a world where everybody is blind, to have eyes is dangerous because you are creating an opposition to the whole world. It is more convenient and comfortable to destroy your eyes and become blind, or at least keep your eyes closed and pretend to be blind.

But to make it known that you have eyes and you can see... and naturally, you would like everybody else also to be capable of seeing the beauty of existence, all the colors, all the stars. Without eyes a man is only twenty percent alive; eighty percent of experiences are through the eyes. Naturally you want to help. But if everybody is blind, they are not going to accept such an idea that they are blind. Their parents were such, their forefathers were such; for generations traditionally, this is the way they have been, and this is the only way to be.

And you are introducing something so new, so outrageous, so insulting to them, that rather than helping you to help them they would like to kill you, destroy you, so that any comparison, any contrast, which reminds them that perhaps they are blind, which creates a doubt in them: "Who knows, perhaps that man is right...."

They don't want to get into such doubt. They don't want to have any inconvenient ideas. Removing this man - crucifying him, poisoning him, murdering him - is far easier than for millions of people to accept a very inconvenient, uncomfortable, humiliating phenomenon: they are all blind.

The most difficult thing in the world is to accept that you are ignorant. Even the most ignorant person will not be ready to accept it. Only the greatest geniuses like Socrates have been able to accept that they know nothing.

The normal, the mediocre, the common people love to believe that they know, they know everything.

And anybody who creates a question, creates a doubt, creates an air of skepticism, is dangerous because he is disturbing so many people's comfortable lives of ignorance. He cannot be tolerated.

This is the greatest crime known to man.

So it is not my leela, not my game; nor is it nature trying to have a perfect balance - because the perfect balance will be absolute silence. There will be no opposition to it.

The situation is created because the society has lived in ignorance, believing it is knowledge. It has lived in all kinds of immoralities, believing they are moral. It has believed in all kinds of things, thinking that they are true; in reality, they are only fictions.

And anybody who tries to expose all these fictions and lies... he will be silent, because only a silent person can do that, only a person whose silence cannot be disturbed even by death. Then suddenly, all around him there is trouble of all kinds - lies, allegations - and every effort is made to prove that the majority of the world cannot be wrong.

It is a strange thing that truth is not democratic. What is true is not to be decided by votes; otherwise, we could never come to any truth ever. People would vote for what is comfortable - and lies are very comfortable because you don't have to do anything about them, you just have to believe.... Truth needs great effort, discovery, risk, and to walk alone on a path which nobody has traveled before.

Just today, Anando was giving me some information. One piece was very significant: all schizophrenic people, neurotic people, psychotic people, or any other kind of mentally disturbed people, always want to be in the crowd - they don't want to be alone. This was discovered by psychoanalysts who have been working with these mental cases for years - that these people have a great fear of being alone and that they are very comfortable in the crowd.

The reverse is also true - if you feel comfortable in the crowd, that means unconsciously you have a tendency to fall mentally sick if you go out of the crowd, if you are left alone.

In jails, the greatest punishment is the isolation cell. When a person is put into a dark isolation cell, just a piece of bread is slipped underneath the door; that is the only communication between himself and humanity. Nobody speaks to him, nobody comes to see him. And within three weeks he starts losing his sanity, he starts seeing things he has never seen - hallucinations, all kinds of illusions...

the crowd was a protection.

Those psychoanalysts have not said what the basic reasons behind it are. The crowd is a protection because it supplies you with a common hallucination in which everyone believes. So you need not be worried about it, you need not think that this is something sick: "It is healthy to be a Christian, to be a Mohammedan, to be a Hindu, to go to the temple and to bow down before a stone statue and pray to a god who lives in heaven. Everybody is doing it, it must be true; so many people cannot be wrong...." It is a common hallucination.

Now, by putting a person into an isolation cell you have taken him out of the crowd, out of the comfort and the coziness of the crowd. He has never been on his own. Now, for the first time, in darkness, with nobody to talk to, with nobody to say anything to... his mind goes berserk. And now, to keep himself engaged, he has to do something, his mind has to do something.

One Russian scientist was kept in an isolation cell for years, but he kept himself sane by just counting figures. From one he would go counting up to millions and millions, and then he would count backwards, and then again... he was a great mathematician. And he was a chess player, so when he would get tired with figures, he would start playing chess with an imaginary partner. Just by playing chess and thinking of ways to win, he kept himself sane.

But the ordinary man within three weeks breaks down and starts having hallucinations. These are private hallucinations. That is the difficulty: they don't have the sanction of the crowd. And that is why the jail authorities have thought keeping people in isolation the greatest punishment you can suffer. It is really the most terrible torture.

The crowd is living - it may be miserable, it may be suffering, but so is everybody else. If somebody wakes up and sees that everybody is asleep and having nightmares - unnecessarily suffering, creating illusions which have no counterpart in reality - that man will be looked upon as an enemy.

He is the greatest friend, but he is bound to be looked upon as an enemy.

This is the whole history of man: all the friends have been looked upon as enemies, and all the enemies have been looked upon as friends.

I am carrying a silence around me. It is simply a by-product of my silence inside. And when I stand in the marketplace, naturally everybody feels disturbed, humiliated, contradicted - his beliefs are being destroyed; otherwise, what danger can I be?

I am a danger only because they are living in false beliefs. And I am doing my best to make it clear to them: whatever you believe is nonsense - and unless you drop it you cannot have any experience of blissfulness, you cannot become in touch with truth as it is.

I will go on doing it because I cannot think that there is not a possibility of humanity waking up - if not today, then tomorrow; if not by me, then by somebody else. But to lose hope means to drop all possibilities of future growth for human beings. So I will continue to do whatsoever I feel is right...

and they will continue to avoid whatever they feel is dangerous.

Even if a few people are turned on, that's enough - more than enough - because those few people will turn on a few more people. It can become a wildfire.

The turmoil, the disturbance, the ugliness all around has to be destroyed, and it cannot be destroyed by anybody who is using destructive means. It can be destroyed only by silence, by peace, by love, by compassion.

Question 2:

There is no word in any language for what transpires between the master and the disciple. It is the strangest phenomenon in life. It is not a relationship, it is something far deeper, far greater, far more eternal. Once you have known the taste of being a disciple, the last problem for the master will be how to help you drop it - the idea of disciplehood - because it is so fulfilling, so perfect, that one doesn't want to stop it.

It is said about Mahakashyap, one of Gautam Buddha's disciples, that he never said anything. He was asked again and again by other disciples - because he was a great philosopher before he came to Gautam Buddha, and he had thousands of followers; he was one of the sharpest minds around Gautam Buddha, perhaps next only to Gautam Buddha - "Why don't you speak? Why don't you say anything?"

Because the disciples were persistently harassing him, he finally said, "The truth is that I don't want to say anything because I don't want to go beyond disciplehood. Saying anything, coming into the light, becoming important in Gautam Buddha's eyes, is dangerous. I simply want to sit in a corner and just enjoy the presence of the master. I had come to seek truth, but now I do not have any desire for it. I had come here for enlightenment - I have dropped the idea. Just to be in the presence of this man - just to feel his love showering, his silence penetrating to the very core of my being - is so much, that to ask for more is simply ungratefulness."

But these are the paradoxes of life: Mahakashyap was the first to become enlightened. His totality in being a disciple was enough to make him enlightened. And the only thing known about him in the Buddhist scriptures is that he laughed. That was the first time that he made any gesture.

Buddha looked at him and said, "Mahakashyap, you never speak - why are you laughing?"

He said, "It's hilarious! I was trying to hide myself so that I wouldn't come into the direct focus of you.

And there are so many who are desirous of enlightenment, of truth, of the ultimate, that I thought, 'Let all of them reach; I can wait. This waiting is so beautiful.' But I had to laugh because I'm the first to have entered the world of enlightenment - and I never asked about it."

Buddha said, "It is because you never asked about it. You in fact even dropped the desire for it. You were coming closer to it, you even became afraid that it might happen, so you were hiding in corners, you would never ask a question. And I knew that it was going to happen to you first - before anyone else - because these are the qualities that are needed. Unknowingly you fulfill all the conditions.

And don't be angry with me; I have nothing to do with it. You are solely responsible for what has happened."

Mahakashyap said, "I have only one desire: though I have become enlightened - and it is a tremendous experience - please allow me, while you are alive, not to be sent anywhere else. Let me remain in your commune wherever you move."

It was a moving, wandering commune - a few days here, a few days in another place. Buddha said, "I cannot say no to you; you have never asked anything."

Mahakashyap remained his whole life with Gautam Buddha. When Gautam Buddha died, then he started speaking. Asked why, he said, "Now I have to create the same atmosphere for those who don't have any taste of disciplehood. I had no intention of becoming a master, but destiny would not allow me not to. I wanted to die before Gautam Buddha so I wouldn't have to carry this burden." He proved to be one of the great masters - of the same caliber as Gautam Buddha - and he created a lineage of great disciples and great masters.

I have talked about Zen: Mahakashyap was the first - not Gautam Buddha - to initiate the process which culminated in Zen, because it was his disciple, Bodhidharma, who took the message to China.

And perhaps Gautam Buddha would not agree with everything Zen consists of, because the real master of Zen and its origin is Mahakashyap, who has a totally different personality from Gautam Buddha - less serious, with a sense of humor, with no idea of holier-than-thou.

The man who was finally the decisive factor was Bodhidharma; he comes in the fifth generation of disciples of Mahakashyap. He was very decisive in giving a certain character to Zen, which it still carries.

Bodhidharma is farther away still from Mahakashyap. He has a great sense of humor, is very straightforward, knows no etiquette, no manners, is very simple and innocent, has no philosophical background, speaks in an ordinary way. But ordinary words from the mouth of a man like Bodhidharma start having such freshness, such authority - more than any philosophical jargon can ever have.

Philosophical words are vague, wishy-washy, big - much ado about nothing. Bodhidharma speaks exactly telegraphically; if ten words will do, he will not use eleven words.

But nobody would have conceived that this small stream arising in a silent man like Mahakashyap would become the world's most purified and essential religiousness. But Mahakashyap has the quality of humbleness - so humble that he drops even the idea of enlightenment, of truth. Certainly, he has experienced something in the presence of his master: he is ready to forsake everything - truth included. If Gautam Buddha is going to hell, he would like to go to hell; he is not interested in going to heaven.

It is a strange phenomenon, that the West has no idea about. It knows students, it even knows the word 'disciple', but it has never gone very deep into the existential experience of it. The word disciple comes from the same root as discipline, and the root meaning of disciple is the capacity to hear.

Everybody hears, but not like the disciple. Everybody hears because everybody has ears. But the disciple hears not only with his ears but with his whole being, with his heart. While hearing, he is not thinking about it - whether it is true or not. That is the way of the student. The disciple simply drinks it, soaks it up, allows it to penetrate every fiber of his being.

The culmination of disciplehood is the devotee. When the disciple is perfect he enters into a new phase, which is that of the devotee. Now he feels no distinction from the master. Now there are two bodies but one soul. Now he even hears things which are not said, he understands things which are not indicated. He starts feeling the very vibration of the master's being. The devotee is absolutely unknown to the West.

You are right: what is happening here is not of this world. It is in this world but not of this world. We are trying to bring the other world in - to smuggle it into this world.

Question 3:

Kaveesha, I am also very happy.

It does not matter where awareness happens; what matters is that it happens. If it happens in a casino, then the casino has become a temple, a sacred place. For most people it does not happen, even in temples, in synagogues, in churches. For them, those places are not sacred because they have not tasted anything sacred there.

The place does not count, the act does not count. What counts is: can you do it absolutely unidentified? Let it happen in different situations and it will bring more and more flowers to your being.

Question 4:

It happens to many children, but because the atmosphere around is not supportive of awareness, those experiences are not nourished by the parents, the school, the friends, the teachers. And if you say that it has happened to you, people will laugh - and you yourself will think that something has gone wrong, that it was not right.

For example, all children in every culture around the world like to whirl. And every parent stops them from whirling and says, "You will fall down." It is true, there is a possibility they may fall down. But that falling down is not going to harm much.

But why do children like whirling? While the body is whirling, small children can see it whirling. They are no longer identified with it, because it is such a new experience.

With everything they are identified - with walking they are identified, with eating they are identified, with anything they are doing, usually they are identified. This whirling is such an experience that the faster the body moves, whirls, the less is the possibility of their remaining identified.

Soon they are lagging behind; the body is whirling but their being cannot whirl. It stops at a point and starts seeing its own body whirling. Sometimes it can come out of the body too. If the whirling child is not staying at one place but goes on moving - whirling and moving around the place - then his essential self can come out and watch it.

Such activities should be helped, nourished, and the child should be asked, "What are you experiencing?" and told, "This experience is one of the greatest in life, so don't forget it. Even if you fall, there is no harm; there is not much that can be harmful. But what you can gain is invaluable."

But they are being stopped in this and in many other things.

My own experience in childhood was... the flooded river of my town - nobody used to cross it by swimming when it was flooded. It was a mountainous river. Ordinarily, it was a small river, but in rainy times it was at least one mile wide. The current of the water was tremendous; you could not stand in it. And the water was deep, so there was no way to stand anyway.

I loved it. I waited for the rainy season because it always helped... there would come a moment when I would feel that I was dying, because I was tired and I could not see the other shore, and the waves were high and the current was strong... and there was no way to go back, because now the other shore was as far away. Perhaps I was in the middle; it was the same either way. I would feel so completely tired and the water would take me down with such a force that there would come a time when I would see, "Now there is no possibility of living any more." And that was the moment when I would suddenly see myself above the water and my body in the water. When it happened the first time, it was a very frightening experience. I thought I must have died. I had heard that when you die, the soul goes out of the body: "So I have gone out of the body and I am dead." But I could see the body was still trying to reach the other shore, so I followed the body.

That was the first time I became aware of a connection between your essential being and the body.

It is connected just below the navel - two inches below the navel - by something like a silver cord, a silver rope. It is not material, but it shines like silver. Each time I reached the other shore, the moment I reached the other shore my being would enter into the body. The first time it was frightening; then it became a great entertainment.

When I told my parents, they said, "Someday you are going to die in that river. This is enough of a sign. Stop going into the river when it is flooded."

But I said, "I am enjoying it so much... the freedom, no force of gravitation, and seeing one's own body completely away."

Then I moved to the university and there it happened once. I have talked about it. Just behind the university campus there was a hillock with three trees. I used to love those trees because it was impossible to sit silently in the hostels. So I used to go and climb up a tree. The middle tree was very comfortable to sit in - the way its branches were - and I would sit there for hours in silence.

One day - I don't know what happened - when I opened my eyes I saw my body lying down on the ground. It was the same experience that had happened in the river many times, so there was no fear.

But in the river, it used to happen automatically that when the body reached the shore, my being would enter into the body. I had no idea how to enter the body; it had always happened of its own accord. So I was stuck. I had no idea. I could see the cord joining me to the body, but how to enter the body, from where to enter? I had never learned any technique from anybody. I simply waited.

There was nothing to do.

A woman who used to bring milk to sell to the hostel students came by, and she saw my body lying down. She was puzzled. She just touched my head to see whether I was alive or dead, and the moment she touched my head I entered into my body with such a quick force that I still can not get the idea of how it happens.

But one thing became certain: if a man's being is out, a woman's touch to the body will help him to come into the body. And vice versa: if a woman's body is away from her being, then a man's touch - and particularly on the forehead where the third eye is.... It was just by accident that she touched me on my head to see whether I was alive or dead, to see what had happened. She had no idea that I was sitting in the tree seeing everything that she was doing. When I opened my eyes she was shocked.

She said, "What are you doing here?"

I said, "I was going to ask you what you are doing here touching my head."

She said, "I was thinking perhaps some accident had happened or something. You looked almost dead."

I said, "I was almost dead, and I am grateful to you that you helped me. It was because of your touch that I came into the body."

She said, "You mean you were sitting in the tree?"

She got so frightened of me. She used to give me milk. She stopped coming to my barrack. She simply said, "I don't want to face that person. He is dangerous. What he was doing I don't know, but he was doing something dangerous."

I had to catch hold of her and tell her, "You need not be worried. I was not doing anything. I was just meditating and the body fell. You helped me, and I am grateful. And there is nobody who brings such good milk as you, so you cannot stop doing it. If you stop doing it, I will start sitting in the same tree where you have to pass, coming and going - remember! And my body will be lying down, and I will be sitting in the tree."

She said, "Don't do it again. I will give you milk - pure milk without water - but don't do it again, at least not while I am passing by, because that hill is empty... there is nobody there, and I have to pass by it to go to my village." The village was beyond the hill.

So I said, "Remember, if you stop coming and delivering milk, then I am going to do the trick there.

I can even come to your village; just in front of your house I can do it."

She said, "I am a poor woman. Don't create any trouble for me."

What happened to you was just accidental. If you had pursued it, it would have come back.

In fact, to watch in the mirror is one of the methods prescribed by the tantra system - but to watch long enough so that you become so identified with the reflection in the mirror, that when you step back, your body remains in the old position. And for women, it is more possible, because nobody wastes as much time in front of the mirror.

Mulla Nasruddin was killing flies, and his wife said, "Now it is enough. For one hour you have been killing them. How many have you killed?"

He said, "Only two: one male, one female."

His wife said, "How did you manage to find out which one was male and which one was female?"

He said, "One was sitting on the mirror for the whole hour; no male can do that. The male was also sitting there once in a while; but the female remained stuck on the mirror."

But it is a method prescribed in the scriptures, that you watch in the mirror long enough so that you become identified with the reflection in the mirror. Then you step back. Your body will not step back, but your being will step back. Then you can see three bodies.

By the way, if you go on looking into the mirror every day for a particular period of time, one hour every day just looking into your own eyes, in a few days, a few weeks - it depends on each individual - one day you will suddenly see that the mirror is empty. You are standing before it, but the mirror is empty. That, too, is a great experience. When it happens you will feel tremendous silence and a peace you have never known - as if you have gone beyond all reflections and you have come back to the real.

But it was good... it happens to many children. Many people have reported it to me, but nobody persists. So once in a while it happens, and then one forgets it, or one thinks perhaps one imagined it, perhaps it was something, just a fancy, a dream. But it is a reality. You had walked out of yourself, and what you saw is a kind of awareness outside the body.

The same awareness you have to practice from inside the body. They are not different in quality.

And the easiest way to find this out-of-body experience is to lie down on a bed, flat on your back.

Relax, and when you feel completely relaxed, then just start feeling that you are leaving the body, floating upwards toward the ceiling. In a few days you will be able to float above the body. But make sure that nobody disturbs you while you are in such a position, because if somebody disturbs you and the cord is broken, you are dead.

So the best suggestion: ask Kaveesha to be present to help you to relax and suggest to you that your soul is leaving the body and floating in the air. And you will see, from the air, Kaveesha sitting in the room and that you are lying flat on the bed.

Just keep a very dim light with candles, and burn incense. But anything that you do - burning incense, candles - then the same thing should be repeated always so that it becomes associated.

So you need not be dependent on Kaveesha forever.

After two or three sessions, just when you light the incense and the candle and you lie down, immediately you will be able to float out. But keep alert that nobody disturbs you, that nobody comes into the room and wakes you suddenly. That can be fatal. If the cord is broken, then there is no way to rejoin it.

So, first try it with Kaveesha. She can give you post-hypnotic suggestions that you will be able to float out of the body without any disturbance. And tell somebody to wait at the door so that nobody comes in for one hour and you are left alone.

When you give the suggestion that your body will be left by the soul for fifteen minutes or thirty minutes, exactly after thirty minutes it will automatically come back to the body.

Never forget that - because entering into the body is difficult. And if it happens sometimes... then anybody who is watching the door has to remember: if it is a woman, then a man should touch the third eye, or if it is a man, then a woman should touch the third eye. And the soul will simply rush back to the body. Those opposite energies are needed to attract each other.