Desire: The Link with Life

Question 1:

THE past is not dynamic at all: it is totally dead. But still it has a weight - a dead weight. That dead weight works; it is not dynamic at all. Why the dead weight works has to be understood.

The past is so forceful because it is the known, the experienced, and mind always feels fearful of the unknown, the unexperienced. And how can you desire the unknown? You cannot desire the unknown. Only the known can be desired. So desires are always repetitious. They repeat, they are circular. You always move in the same pattern, in the same circle. The mind becomes just a groove of repetitions, and the more you repeat a particular thing, the more weighty it becomes, because the groove goes deep.

So the past is important not because it is dynamic; it forces you to do something and to desire not because it is forceful, powerful, alive - but only because it is a dead groove. And the past has been repeated so many times that to repeat it has become easy and automatic. The more you repeat a particular thing. the more easy and convenient it becomes. The basic convenience is this: that if you are repeating a thing, you need not be aware.

Awareness is the most inconvenient thing. If you are repeating a particular thing, then you need not be aware. You can be just deep asleep, and the thing can be repeated automatically, mechanically.

So it is convenient to repeat the past because you need not be aware. You can go on sleeping, and the mind will repeat itself.

That's why those who say that desirelessness is the state of bliss also say that desirelessness is synonymous with awareness. You cannot be desireless unless you are totally aware. Or, if you are aware you will find that you are desireless, because desires can have a repetitive force upon the mind only when you are not aware. So the more asleep the mind is, the more repetitive and the more mechanical. So the past has the grip only because it is a repetition - and because it is the known. How can you desire the unknown?

For the unknown there can be no desire. The unknown is inconceivable. That's why, even when we begin to desire God, we are not desiring the unknown. By "God" we must mean something which is known. So go deep: what do you mean by "God"? - particularly YOUR God. What do you mean by it? You will find under the garb of "God" something known, something experienced.

It may be eternal pleasure. So the so-called religious persons go on saying, "Why are you wasting your life in desires which are momentary? Come to us! Here is the fulfillment; here is the possibility to achieve permanent, eternal pleasure." The language can be understood. You know the momentary pleasure, so you can desire permanent pleasure - but under the garb of God there is pleasure.

You may be seeking God only because you are fearful of death. Then, under the garb of God, you are really asking for immortality, not to die ever, an eternal life. You know this life - that is your experience - now you want to make it eternal. So whenever we talk about God, the Divine, Liberation, mokhsa, don't be deceived by the words because the words may be hiding something totally different. And they are hiding it - because how can you desire the unknown? How can you conceive of it? How can you ask for it?

Really, the phenomenon is quite different. When you are not in desire, the unknown comes to you - you cannot desire it. When you are desireless the unknown comes to you. You cannot desire it!

The state of desirelessness is the opening for the unknown to come. You cannot desire it because the very desire will become the hindrance.

So mind goes on repeating; it is a mechanical thing. So the dynamism is not in the mind - mind is just a dead, mechanical thing - the dynamism is in your consciousness, and if your consciousness is identified with the mind then the dead mind becomes dynamic. The dynamism belongs to your energy, it is not part of your mind. You are the dynamism behind it. If you are identified with the mind, if you think that you are the mind, then the mind begins to be dynamic. If you are not identified with the mind, then the mind is just dead - just a dead weight, just a mechanical accumulation.

It is a long accumulation - millennia of evolution, many, many, many lives are accumulated there. It is not only that your mind belongs to this life - it belongs to life as such. It has evolved, so it has deep grooves. It is not only that you fall in love: your father and mother have fallen in love before you; their fathers and their mothers and theirs and theirs - they have all fallen in love. The mind has a deep groove of falling in love, so when you fall m love don't be deceived that you are falling in love. The whole humanity is behind you; the whole humanity has made the groove. It is in your bones, it is in your cells, it is in your very metabolism. Every cell has a sex part in it, and every cell has a groove, and every cell has a mind, memory - long memories, beginningless memories. So if you are identified with this mind, it becomes a force - a dynamic force. You give the energy, but the dead machine begins to move. You pedal it.

So remember: energy belongs to you; dynamism belongs to you. Mind is a mechanical thing produced by millennia of evolution, but it has deep grooves. And if you are identified, then you will have to flow through those grooves. There is no escape then.

So the first thing is how not to identify, how to remember constantly that mind is one thing and you are something else. It is difficult, it is arduous - but it is possible. It is not impossible. And once, if you have even a moment's glimpse of unidentified Existence, then you will never be the same again.

Once you come to know that mind is not the force: "I am the force, the vitality comes from me," if even for a single moment you have the glimpse of your mastery, then mind will never be master again. And only then can you move into the unknown.

Mind cannot move into the unknown: it is produced by the known. It is a product of the known, so it cannot move into the unknown. That's why mind can never know what Truth is, what God is. Mind can never know what freedom is, mind can never know what life is - because intrinsically mind is dead. It is dead: dust accumulated through centuries and centuries - just dust, memory dust.

It seems that mind forces you. It doesn't force you really, it only gives you the easiest grooves.

It supplies to you only the repeated routine tracks, and you fall victim to convenience - because to break a new route and to create a new track and to move in a new groove is very difficult and inconvenient. That is what is meant by TAPA - austerity. If you begin to move in some new grooves which are created not by the mind but created by consciousness, then you are in TAPASCHARYA - in austerity. It is arduous.

Gurdjieff had many exercises. One exercise was to deny the mechanism sometimes. You are hungry: just deny and let your body suffer. You be just calm and quiet, and remember that the body is hungry. Don't suppress it; don't force it not to be hungry. It is hungry; you know. But at the same time say to it, "I am not going to fulfill this hunger today. Be hungry, suffer! Now, I am not going to move today in this supplied groove. I will remain aloof." And, suddenly, if you can do this, you begin to feel a gap. The body is hungry, but somewhere there is a distance between you and it. If you try to occupy your mind, then you have missed the point.

If you go to the temple and begin to do kirtan and singing just to forget the hunger, then you have missed the point. Let the body be hungry. Don't occupy your mind to escape from hunger. Remain hungry, but just tell the body, "Today I am not going to fall in the trap." You remain hungry, you suffer.

There are persons who are doing fasting, but meaninglessly because whenever they fast they try to occupy the mind so that the hunger should not be known and should not be felt. If the hunger is not felt, the whole point is missed! Then you are playing tricks. Let the hunger be there in its totality, in its intensity. Let it be there; don't escape from it. Let the fact of it be there, present, and remain aloof and tell the body, "Today I am not going to give you anything." There is neither conflict nor suppression nor any escape.

If you can do this, then suddenly you become aware of a gap. Your mind asks for something. For example, someone has become angry. He is angry with you, and the mind begins to react, to be angry. Just tell the mind, "I am not going to fall in the trap this time." Be aloof. Let the anger be there in the mind, but be aloof. Don't cooperate, don't be identified, and you will feel that anger is somewhere else. It surrounds you, but it is not in you, it doesn't belong to you. It is just like smoke around you. It goes on, goes on, and waits for you to come and cooperate.

There will be every temptation. This is what is really meant by temptation. Mm? - no devil is there to tempt you. Your own mind tempts you, because that's the most convenient way to be and to behave.

Convenience is the temptation; convenience is the devil. The mind will say, "Be angry!" The situation is there and the mechanism is just on. Always, whenever this situation was there, you have been angry, so the mind supplies you again with the same reaction.

As far as it goes it is good because mind makes you ready to do something you have always been doing; but sometimes just stand off, off the track, and tell the mind, "Okay, anger is there outside.

Someone is angry with me. You are supplying, me with an old reaction, a stereotyped reaction, but this time I am not going to cooperate. I will just stand here and observe and see what happens." Suddenly the whole situation changes.

If you don't cooperate the mind falls dead, because it is your cooperation which gives it dynamism, energy. It is your energy, but you only become aware when it is used by the mind. Don't give it any cooperation, and the mind will just fall down as if without a backbone - just a dead snake with no life. It will be there, and for the first time you will become aware of a certain energy in you which doesn't belong to the mind but belongs to you.

This energy is pure energy, and with this energy one can move into the unknown. Really, this energy moves into the unknown if it is not associated with the mind. If it is associated with the mind, then it moves into the known. If it moves into the known, then it takes the shape of desire. If it moves into the unknown, then it takes the shape of desirelessness. Then there is sheer movement - a play of energy, a sheer dance of energy, an overflowing energy moving into the unknown.

Mind can only supply the known. If you can be detached from your mind, the energy will have to move, it cannot remain static. That is what is meant by energy: it has to move! Movement is its very life. Movement is not a quality of energy: movement is the very life! It is not that energy cannot be without movement - no! It is the very life, intrinsic.

Energy means movement, so it moves. If mind supplies it grooves, then it moves into the grooves.

If there is no supply of grooves and if you have just put off the mind, then too it moves, but now the movement is into the uncharted. This movement is the play, the leela this movement is creative; this movement is spiritual. And it is desireless. It is not because there is some desire that you move.

It is because you cannot do anything else but move: you are energy and movement. So see the difference.

When mind works, it works as a dead weight, a mechanical weight, through the past. It pushes you towards the future. Because the past is pushing towards the future, the past again projects its own desires. So first understand the repetitiveness of desires.

There are not so many desires. Really, there are very few. You go on repeating them. Just count how many desires you have. They are not many - very few! You will not even be able to find enough to count on your fingers. How many desires do you have? Very few! And, really, if you look deeply, you may even find that only one desire is there. There are modifications of it, but really only one desire, and the same desire is being repeated continuously. Life after life it is being repeated. You go on repeating and then it begins to seem, it begins to appear, that you are helpless, that the wheel is moving and you cannot do anything. It is not so. You are helpless only because you have forgotten totally that the energy by which the wheel is moving is given by you.

Because of the past, the future is just a repetition. It is the projected past. You again desire the same thing, and you go on again and again. That's why I said that past and future are parts of mind, not parts of time. Time is just here and now, the present. If mind is not working, then energy will be here and now in the moment. It will move because it is energy, but now the movement will be into the unknown. The known is not there at all. Mind is not, so the known is not.

Someone asked Hui-Hai, "How did you achieve? How did you reach?" Hui-Hai said, "When I became a no-mind, then I achieved, then I reached." We are minds. That means: tethered to the past. If we can become no-minds that means untethered to the past - then the moment is free, fresh, and energy moves - not for something but because it is energy. Remember the difference exactly: it moves not for something; it moves because it is energy.

A river is moving; ordinarily we think it is moving for the sea. How can it know? It is not moving for the sea. It is moving because it is energy. Ultimately, the sea happens to be there; that is another thing. So when you move into the unknown, ultimately you reach to the Divine. It happens to be there. If your movement is pure, you reach it.

The river goes on moving without knowing, without any map. The past cannot supply the map because the river is not going to move on the past tracks again, so every step is into the unknown.

And where it is going, there is no way to know. It is not moving because of any desire; it is not moving for something. The future is unknown - just unknown, dark. It moves. Why does it move? It moves because it is energy.

A seed is moving, a tree is growing, stars are moving. Why do they move? Have they to reach somewhere? No! They move because they are energy; pure energy is moving. Because pure energy cannot do anything else, it moves. So when you become just pure energy. not mind but no-mind energy, you move; and then every step is just into the unknown. Then life becomes a bliss, it becomes ecstatic, because the old is never repeated again. Never will the morning be the same again, never again this moment. Now it is a sensation, a thrill every time. This thrill creates Meera's dance; this thrill creates Chaitanya's singing with this thrill, every moment something new is bursting, exploding. A Buddha is never bored. He looks fresh.

Maulingputta came to Buddha. He was a very inquiring young man, a great scholar, one who knew all that can be known from scriptures, a great pundit. When he came to Buddha he began to ask many questions. The second day again he asked many questions. The third day again he asked many questions. Ananda, another disciple of Buddha's, was just bored. He asked Buddha, "Are you not bored? He is repeating the same questions again and again." Buddha asked Ananda, "Has he repeated? Has he repeated a single question?" Every moment is so new for a Buddha-conscious mind. For a Buddha-like mind, everything is so new, how can you repeat the old question again? Even the questioner does not remain the same.

How can you ask the same question you asked yesterday? The Ganges has flowed so much, so how can you ask the same question again? You will never be the same again yourself.

And Buddha said, "Even if he is asking the same questions, he is not asking the same person. So how can I say he is repeating? He must have asked someone else. Yesterday where was l? The energy has moved." Someone was very angry, insulted Buddha; then felt sorry, and the next day came to ask Buddha's forgiveness. Buddha was just bewildered, and he said, "You are a strange man! You insult one person and then you ask pardon from somebody else." The man said, "What are you saying? Am I strange, or are you? I came yesterday and insulted you.

I felt very sorry and I couldn't sleep." Buddha said, "That's why you are still repeating. But I could sleep and now I am a different man.

The river has gone on. It is not the same bank again, and I will never be the same so now you are in difficulty, because you cannot ask pardon of a man you will never meet. If I ever meet him I will tell him whatsoever you have said to me." This energy moves into the unknown. It is fresh, young, so a Buddha can never be old. The body, of course, will become old, but a Buddha can never be old. He will remain young. That's why we have never pictured Ram, Krishna or Buddha as old. They became old, but we have no pictures of Krishna's old age, of Ram's old age, of Buddha's old age, of Mahavir's old age. We have no pictures!

It is not that they never became old - the body has to follow the common lot - but by not creating pictures of their old age we have just meant something more. Really, they were never old because they were so moving - so moving and so young. For such persons death is not an end. It is again a further movement. It is not an end at all.

So mind is not dynamic: mind is mechanical. It can become dynamic if you cooperate with it. Don't cooperate with it! Remember your aloofness, create a distance. Be aware, and then the mind will be there but you will be outside.

The English word "ecstasy" is very beautiful and meaningful. You may not have even conceived of what this word means - "ecstasy". It means to stand outside; the word means to stand outside. If you can stand outside of yourself, if you can be outside of yourself, you are in ecstasy. Someone has suggested that to translate "Samadhi" as "ecstasy" is not good because the word "Samadhi" doesn't mean to stand outside. Really, Samadhi means to stand inside. So someone has suggested a new word, he has coined a new word: instead of ecstasy he says it is better to translate Samadhi as "instasy" - to stand inside.

Really, these two words mean two different things, but in a certain way they mean the same. If you can stand out of your mind, then you will be able to stand in yourself. If you can stand outside yourself - the so-called self - then you will be, for the first time, inside. So ecstasy IS "instasy". Then you will be in your center.

If you are out of your mind, then you will be centered in yourself. So going out of the mind is going into consciousness. That's why mind has to be understood as mechanical, as a mechanism, as accumulation, as the past. And once you feel it, you are out of it. But we go on, we continue to identify ourselves with it.

Whenever you say, "This is my thought," you are identifying. Change the language, and sometimes it helps very much - if you can just change the language! Language has such a deep grip. Say, "This belongs to my past mind," and feel the difference. When you say, "This is my thought," you are identified. Say, "This belongs to my mind, my past mind," and feel how only a change of language creates a distance.

For example, we say, "My mind is tense." Then you are identified. We even say, "I am tense." Then there is even more identification. When I say, "I am tense," there is no gap. When I say, "My mind is tense," there is a little gap. If I can say, "I am aware that the mind is tense," then there is a greater gap, and the greater the gap, the less will be the tension.

When we say, "I am tense," it looks as if someone else is responsible. So psychology suggests never to say "I am tense," because subtly it makes someone else responsible. They say that rather than to say "I am tense," one should say, " I am tensing." Then the responsibility is yours.

So break the old habits of language, mind, thoughts, and then your energy will move. And once the mind is not there, you are free for the first time.

Question 2:

Desire is related to life, but life can be desireless also. But then bodily life will become impossible.

Really, desire is the link between life and body. If all the desires drop, then the body cannot continue any more because body is just an instrumentality for desires to be fulfilled. Now biologists say that we have developed the senses because of desires, and if you can desire persistently then your body will develop new senses.

It is only because of desires that we have eyes. Ordinarily, we think that because there are eyes we see. No! Biologists say that because there is a desire to see, eyes develop. If the desire is not there to see, then eyes will just drop. The whole body comes into existence because of desires.

Buddha lived forty years after his Enlightenment, so there was a question: If desires have stopped totally, then Buddha must die - how is he alive?

The body has a momentum. If you are running and want to stop suddenly, you cannot stop. Your mind has stopped. you have decided to stop, but you will have to run a little more because of the momentum. You have been pedalling a bicycle, and now you have stopped pedalling, but the wheels have accumulated momentum. They will run on, and it will take a little more time for the bicycle to stop completely. That's why I always say that if the bicycle is going uphill, then it will stop soon. If you have stopped pedalling and the bicycle is going uphill, then it will stop soon. It may even stop the same moment you stop pedalling. But if it is going downhill, it may go on much longer.

So if Enlightenment happens before the age of thirty-five. the body may die soon. If it happens after thirty-five then it is downhill, it may continue more. So a Shankara dies soon. He was just thirty-three, and he became Enlightened at the age of twenty - so it was rare! And he had to die.

He couldn't complete the thirty-fifth year, he couldn't reach even to the middle. If the Enlightenment happens after thirty-five, then you are downhill, then the body can continue.

With desires stopping totally, really you have stopped being a body. Now the old momentum will work, and it will depend on many things.

Buddha died because of food poisoning, and he could not be cured; not because the food poisoning was so dangerous - it was very ordinary - but he had no bodily link, so he couldn't be helped. So now medicine accepts this: that if you have a lust for life, medicines wiLl he more helpful. If you don't have any lust for life, then medicines may not prove helpful at all.

So now there are many experiments. Two persons are ill, just on their deathbeds. One is more serious, and there is no hope for him - but he is hopeful and he wants to live longer. Medical science is not hopeful, doctors are not hopeful, but he himself is hopeful. Another is not in such a serious state. Everyone is just hopeful: "He will survive; there is no problem." But he himself is hopeless. He doesn't want to survive. Suddenly, inside, something has dropped from the body. Now medicine cannot help. He will die - and the seriously ill man will survive. Medicine can help him.

Body and consciousness are related by desires. That's why, if a person dies without desire, then he will not be reborn; because now there is no necessity, no causality to create a body again.

I have seen one person who cannot go to sleep because he is fearful of death. Death may occur in sleep, then what can he do? So he is afraid; he cannot sleep. And I think his fear is valid, his fear has a significance - because he has no desire to live. He is not desireless! He just has no desire to live. Rather, he has a desire to die, and if a person has a desire to die, he can die in sleep very easily.

You can get up in the morning again, not only because the morning has come, but because you have something which forces you to get up. This person has nothing; nothing forces him to get up.

So he cannot sleep because of the fear, and in the morning he doesn't feel at all like getting up.

There is nothing! Still, I say. he is not desireless. He is just frustrated; all his desires have become frustrations. When all desires are frustrated, you create a new desire - a desire to die.

Freud, in his old age, stumbled upon a new thing of which he had never dreamed. For his whole life he worked on "libido" - the desire to live. He based his whole structure of thinking on this force of libido - this sex, this desire for life - and in the end he stumbled upon a second desire. The first desire he calls "Eros" and the second he calls "Thanatos". Thanatos means deathwish, a desire to die. Freud began to feel that if there is no desire to die, how can a man die? There must be hidden somewhere a desire to die; otherwise, biologists say that the body itself can continue - even forever. There is no necessary reason why a man should die so soon, because the body has a built-in process to renew itself. It can continue renewing - but there are many things....

The body is born, as we have said always, because of some desire to live. Mm? Really, Freud is right. A second desire is needed to complete the circle. A desire must be hidden there to die. That death-desire helps you to die, and the life-desire helps you to be reborn. That death-desire comes many times to everyone. Many times you become suddenly aware of it. Whenever something is frustrated, such as in the case of someone having lost a lover or beloved, suddenly the death-desire comes up and you want to die - not because you have become desireless, but because your most longed-for desire is now impossible. So you begin to desire death.

This difference has to be noted, because many religious persons are really not religious - they are only desiring death, they are suicidal. It is very easy to change the desire from life to death. It is very easy, because life and death are not just two things - they are two aspects of one phenomenon, so you can change.

So it happens that the persons who commit suicide are really those who are very, very deeply attached to life. Because they are so much attached to life, whenever they are frustrated they cannot do anything else but commit suicide. A person who is not too much attached to life cannot commit suicide. And suicides can be committed in two ways: they can be long-term and they can be short-term. You can take poison just now, or you can go on dying slowly for many years. It depends how much courage you have.

Sometimes it happens that you have no courage to live and you have no courage to die, then you have to die slowly. Then a long-term suicide is chosen. Then one just goes on dropping by and by - dying, dying, dying. Then death is a long, delayed process - by degrees.

This deathwish is also there, and there are many things, many implications in it. Bernard Shaw, in his later life, left city life and went to live in a small village. And someone asked him, "Why have you chosen this village?" He said. "I was just passing by the cemetery and I came upon a stone on which it was written:'This man died at the age of one hundred and ten - the death was untimely.' So I thought this village is worth living in. If people here think that one hundred and ten is untimely, then it is good to be here." And, really, he lived very long.

Psychologists say it is a fixation. If the whole country thinks that seventy is the maximum, then it becomes a fixed mind-attitude. If the country thinks that one hundred is the maximum, then one hundred will become the maximum. If the country begins to think as a whole, collectively, that there is no need to die so soon and that a man can live three hundred years, if the whole country becomes fixed with three hundred years as the maximum, then the body can live for three hundred years. It is just a collective hypnosis.

We know a person is going to be old at a particular age, everyone knows. The child becomes aware of when one becomes old. The young man knows when youth will be gone. Everyone knows! And it is so repeatedly known, it is so suggestive, that everyone knows that seventy, or eighty at the maximum, is going to be the limit. We die at eighty because we believe that eighty is the limit. If you can change the limit, there is no need to die so soon. Basically, there is no need for the body to die so soon. It is a self-regenerating process. It goes on regenerating, it can continue.

This collective hypnosis and the deathwish become conjoined, they both become one. But if life needs desires, then death also needs desires. That is why we never say that Krishna died - never!

We say that he entered Samadhi. We never say Buddha died - mm? - it was Nirvana, deliverance.

We never say that they died because, really, for them, how can death be possible when life has become impossible? Understand the implication: if for Buddha life has become an impossibility, then how can death be possible? A person who cannot desire life, how can he desire death? If he has become so desireless that life is impossible, then death will also be impossible. So we never say that a Buddha dies. We say only that he enters a greater life. We never say that he dies.

How is it that we die? We die because we live, because we are attached to life. We have to be detached from life, broken. When a Buddha lives, he lives as a momentum. He is in the car, and the car is going downhill. Wherever it stops he will not have any grudge - wherever. At the very moment the car stops, he will get down. Not for a single moment will he feel something wrong. He will not feel anything is wrong: it is as it should be. He can live as if not living; he can die as if not dying. But if you want to continue, then some desire has to be there.

Ramakrishna tried to be alive for some time just to give the message to a right person. He felt that if there was no desire left and no momentum either, then the body would just drop. So he cultivated, he created, he forced a desire to be there. He continuously tried that at least one desire must be alive until the moment he could deliver the message to a right person. It never happened to a Buddha; it never happened to a Mahavir. Why did it happen to Ramakrishna?

Really, it is not a question of why it happened to Ramakrishna. It is a question concerned not with Ramakrishna, but with our age. At Buddha's time it was never impossible to find persons - never! There were so many, and at any moment the message could be delivered to anyone. But for Ramakrishna it was such an impossibility to find a person. So for the first time, Ramakrishna alone is the man, in the whole history of mankind, who tried forcibly to be alive a little more - just to get the right man.

And when Vivekananda came to him for the first time, Ramakrishna said, "Where have you been?

I have waited so long! I have waited so long!" And when Vivekananda, for the first time, achieved the first glimpse of Samadhi, Ramakrishna stopped him; he said, "Now no more, because then you will also have the same difficulty. So just remain here, don't go further. Just remain here until the message is delivered. Now I will take your keys with me so you will not have to suffer the same as I have suffered. First I achieved something, then I had to be rooted in the earth and it was very difficult - very difficult. So now I will take your keys with me, and these keys will be given to you only before your death - three days before." And Vivekananda remained without having the glimpse again. Then he couldn't achieve. This happening, what Ramakrishna had said, became the barrier. He couldn't cross the barrier. He crossed only before his death - three days before.

Life is desire - mm? - the life we know is desire. But there is another life which is desirelessness - the life we don't know. This life is through body; that life is through pure consciousness - direct, immediate. This life is through body, through mind, through instruments. That's why it is so dim and faint. It is not an immediate thing.

When something reaches you through many mediums, it is distorted. It is bound to be. You have never seen the light: your eyes see the light. Then the light is transformed into chemicals, into electric waves. You have never seen those electric waves, you have never seen those chemicals.

Those chemicals carry the message, then they are decoded in your mind. They are just codes.

Then they are decoded, and the mind gives you the message that you have seen the light. And then you begin to say, "I have seen the light; the sun has risen." You have never seen the sun rising. It is just a chemical process that reaches you - never the sunrise. It is only the picture that is again decoded.

Our whole experience is like this - indirect. I touch the hand of my beloved, of my lover, of my friend. I have never touched them. I cannot - because touch remains at my fingertips. And then, just through my system, an electric wave comes to my mind. That wave is decoded and I say, "How beautiful!" This touch can be created if my eyes are closed; this touch can be created by a mechanical device. And if the same wave frequency can be created as is created by my beloved's touch, I will say, "How beautiful!" No touch is even needed if the message-carrying system in the mind can be stimulated by an electrode. Again I will feel, "How beautiful!" Just an electrode can be put in your skull, and if we know what the frequencies of your experiences are - when you feel love, what frequency waves you receive - then we can push the buttons and the same frequency is created by the electrode in the mind and you begin to be in love. What frequency do you receive when you interpret it as anger?

The electrode can create the same frequency and you will begin to be angry.

What are you living in life? What have you known? You have known nothing - because everything is through so many mediums that only an indirect message reaches you.

There is another life without the body, without the mind. Then the experience is immediate, without any medium. It is direct, there is nothing in between. If the light is there, there is nothing in between, then for the first time you are filled with light, not with a coded message. That experience is the experience of the Divine.

I can say it in this way: if you are experiencing Existence through mediums, it is the world. If you are experiencing the Existence without any mediums, it is God. That which is experienced is the same:

only the experiencer experiencing in different ways.

One way is through something else. I give you a message, then you give it to somebody else, then he to somebody else. Then it reaches to whomever it was to be given - to whom it may concern.

Then it reaches - and it has changed. Every time it is given to someone, it is changed. With our eyes we don't see alike. We cannot see alike because in a subtle way every instrument is different.

So when I see light I feel it in a different way. When you see light you feel it in a different way.

When a Van Gogh sees the sun, certainly he sees it in a different way, because he will become just mad, begin to dance, cry, scream. He will just be mad when he sees the sun. For one year Van Gogh continuously painted only sun pictures. He would not sleep: he was just mad. And in Arles, where the sun is very hot, for one year continuously the sun was beating down on his head, and he was in the field painting - painting for one year continuously. He went mad. For one year he had to be put in a madhouse, and the only reason was that he couldn't stand so much sun.

But no one goes so mad! He committed suicide and he wrote a letter. And in the letter he had written, "Because I have painted all the faces of the sun, now there is no need to live. I have painted all the faces possible. I have known the sun in every mood - now there is no need to live. Now I can drop dead." Certainly he must have seen the sun in a different way. No one goes so mad after the sun. Why this madness?

He must have had a different message system. And now psychologists say he must have had some difFerent chemicals, built-in chemicals. It is possible that soon we will come to a conclusion that poets have a different quantity of certain chemicals, and only because of that do they begin to be mad after flowers, after clouds. For all others it is just nonsense. It is okay that there is a flower, but it is nonsense to go on painting it, creating poetries and living for it. Certainly something like LSD must be a built-in chemical with them. A dancer has a different chemistry. It seems that the bioenergy works in a different way.

So when I say that life is bound with desires, I mean this life, not that. This life is bound with desires.

So the more desires you have, the more you will have the feeling of this life. Mm? That's why those who are after desires, running and running, seem to us to be very much alive; we say they are very much alive. What are you doing? Run! Everyone is running and everyone is so alive! Are you just dead?

But there is another life also - greater, deeper, more vital, more immediate and direct. We have a word for it, aparokshanubhuti - immediate experiencing. God must be seen, but not by eyes. He must be heard, but not by ears. He must be embraced, but not by hands, not by the body. But how can it happen?

We know only two things - life of desires and death of desires. We don't know another dimension - desireless life and desireless Liberation. But if we become aware of the very mechanism of desire, we can create a gap; and the moment the gap is created, life begins to move into another life.

Question 3:

Many things are possible, and it will depend. Certainly many desires will drop and many actions also. Those actions which were just caused by desires will drop. If I was running for a particular desire, how can I run if the desire has dropped? My running will stop. At least the same running on the same route will stop. So when a person becomes desireless, at least for an interim period, for an interval - and how long it will be will depend on the individual - he will become inactive. The desires will have dropped - and all the actions that he had been doing were concerned with desires, so how can he continue? They will drop.

But by dropping desires and actions, energy will be accumulated - and now energy will begin to move. When it moves, how it moves will vary from individual to individual, but now it will move.

There will be a gap, an interim period, an interval. This I call a pregnancy period. The seed is born, but now it will gestate for at least nine months. And it may seem strange, but it happens. This nine months period is meaningful. Near about this, eight months or ten months, will be the interim period, and you will just become inactive. This inactivity will also vary. Someone may become so inactive that people may think that he has just gone into a coma. Everything stops.

For Meher Baba it happened like that. For one year he was just in a coma. He couldn't even move his limbs. Action was far off, he couldn't stand up because even the desire to stand had gone. He couldn't eat; he had to be forced. He couldn't do anything! For one year continuously he became just helpless - a helpless child. This was a pregnancy period, and then, suddenly, a different man was born. The man who became inactive was no more: a new energy - energy accumulated.

Lives and lives of dissipated energy create this gap - because you do not have enough energy.

When desire is not there to invoke. provoke, stimulate, you just drop. Your energy is not really energy, but just a pushing and pulling. Anyhow you go on running because the goal seems just nearby. A few moments' endeavour more and you will reach! You pull yourself on; somehow you carry yourself and run. But when the goal is dropped, when there is no desire, you will drop. An inactivity will be there. If you can be patient in this inactivity period, after it you will be reborn. Then energy will begin to move without desires.

But I say it depends. It may happen suddenly as it happened for Meher Baba: that was a sudden case. It happened in Bombay. It happened by a kiss from an old lady, Babajan. Meher Baba was just passing, coming back from his school. Babajan was an old Sufi mystic, an old lady who was just sitting under a tree for years and years and years. Meher Baba was just coming, and Babajan called him. He knew this old lady. She was sitting for years under the tree, and he had passed by that street daily on his way towards his school and towards his home. She called and he came near.

She kissed him - and he dropped as if dead just there. Then he had to be carried home.

For one year continuously the kiss remained on him and he was in a coma. It may happen suddenly like this. Mm? This was a great transfer, and Babajan died afterwards because she had just been waiting for this moment to give someone the whole energy. This was her last life, and there was not enough time even to explain what she was giving. And also, she was not the type to have explained.

She was a silent mystic. She had not touched anybody for years. She was a only waiting for this moment when she was to kiss someone and the whole energy was to be transferred in a single transfer. Before this she had not even touched anyone, so this touch was to be total.

And this child was simply unaware of what was going to happen. He was ready - otherwise this transfer would not have been possible - but he was not aware. He had worked through his past lives. He was just coming up. He might have become aware later on, but just now he was completely unaware. This happened so suddenly that he had to go again through a second pregnancy. For one year he was as if not. Many medicines were given; many, many doctors and physicians tried to help, but nothing could be done. And the woman who could do something, she disappeared, she died.

After one year he was a different man - totally different.

If it happens so suddenly, then it will be a deep coma. If it happens through some exercises, then it will never be so deep a coma. If you are doing awareness exercises, meditation, then it will never happen so suddenly. It will come so gradually, so gradually, that you will never even become aware of when it has happened. By and by, inactivity will be there, activity will be there, and very gradually inside everything will have changed. And the desire will drop, the activity will drop, but no one will ever feel that you have been lethargic or that you have become inactive.

This is the gradual process. So those who follow yoga or any method will not feel the suddenness.

There are also methods in which sudden happenings become possible, but one can be prepared.

Babajan never prepared this boy; she never even asked his permission. It was a one-way affair. She just transferred the energy.

Zen monks also transfer, but before transferring they prepare the ground. A person can be made ready to receive the energy, then this reaction will not be there. He may feel lethargy for some days, for some months, but no one will feel outside that inside everything has become inactive. But that needs preparation, and that can happen only in schools. And when I say "school", I mean a group working.

Babajan was alone; she never made anyone her disciple. There was no school, there was not a following in which she could have prepared anyone. And, also, she was not the type. She was not the teacher type; she couldn't teach. But she had to give to someone, to whomsoever passed and she felt: "Now is the moment, and this one will be able to carry it," so she could just deliver it.

So it depends. Inactivity is bound tb be there - more or less, but it will be there, a period will be there.

And only then can you be reborn, because the whole mechanism has to change completely. The mind drops, old roots drop, the old habits drop, the old association of consciousness and desires, consciousness and mind, drops - everything old drops and everything has to be new.

A waiting is needed, patience is needed. And if one is patient, one has not to do anything: just to wait is enough. The energy begins to move by itself. You just sow the seed and then wait! Don't be in a hurry; don't go every day to pull the seed out and see what is happening. Just put it inside and wait. The energy will take its own course. The seed will die, and the energy will sprout and will begin to move. But don't be impatient. One has to wait.

And the greater the seed, and the greater the possibility, the potentiality of the tree that is going to be, the more will be the waiting. But it comes. It comes! The deeper the waiting, the sooner it comes.