The Secret of Totality

Question 1:

THE END is always the same, but the beginning differs, and all the differences belong always to the beginning. The nearer you reach, the less is the difference between paths.

In the beginning will and surrender are diametrically opposed. Surrender means absolute will- lessness. You have no will of your own, you feel helpless, you feel you cannot do anything. You are so totally helpless that you cannot even say that will exists; the very concept of will is illusory.

You have no will. Rather, on the contrary, you have destiny, not will, so you can only surrender. It is not that you surrender: rather, it is that you cannot do anything else.

So surrender is not an act. Rather, it is a recognition. It is not an act! How can surrender be an act?

How can you surrender? If you surrender, then how will you call it surrender when you remain the master? If you surrender, then you remain the "willer", the surrender has been willed, and these two things are diametrically opposed. You cannot will surrender. So surrender is not an act; rather, it is a recognition - the recognition of the phenomenon of will-lessness.

There is no will, so you cannot will. You cannot do anything. Everything is just happening. You have happened, and all else that has followed has just been a happening. To feel this, to know this, is a recognition. Suddenly you become aware of the fact that there is no will in you. With this recognition ego disappears, because the ego can exist only if there is will.

So ego means the totality of willed acts. If there is will, then you can be. If there is no will, you disappear. Then you are just a wave in a great infinite ocean - and you cannot will anything. You are as a happening; you will not be as a happening. What can a wave do in an infinite ocean? It has been "waved" by the ocean. It is not: it only appears to be.

If you feel this and this feeling is a deep search, digging down deep in yourself - is there any will? - then you find you are just a dead leaf blown by the wind. So sometimes you go north and sometimes you go south, and the dead leaf may begin to think that it is going south - only the wind is blowing and the dead leaf following. If you go deep down in yourself you will become aware of a total will- lessness. The recognition of it is surrender. It is not an act. And if you surrender, if the surrender happens, there is no need to offer. You cannot!

So on the path of surrender, really, offering is not possible, because offering is really based on will: you offer, you are there. On the path of surrender offering happens, but the surrenderer never knows. He cannot know; he cannot say, "I have offered my mind to the Divine." Really, he cannot speak in terms of acts; he can only speak in terms of happenings. So at the most he can say. "The offering has happened." Without a will you cannot have an ego and without an ego you cannot talk of anything as an act. So "happening" is the phenomenon on the path of surrender. Surrender itself is a happening.

But on the path of will there is a different process. The moment I say "the path of will", the will is taken for granted. You do something. This is a fact on the path of will, taken for granted. It is never questioned, because those who follow the path of will say that even to question a thing is to accept will. Even to question a thing means the will is there. To question is an act, to answer is an act, to doubt is an act, to say no is an act. So the will cannot be questioned. On the path of will, the will cannot be questioned. That is a basic hypothesis.

On the path of surrender, will-lessness is the basic hypothesis. You cannot question that. So this must be understood: on every path something is a hypothesis. It is bound to be, because you have to begin somewhere and you have to begin in ignorance. Because of these two factors a hypothesis is needed. So even in science you begin with a hypothesis - something assumed which cannot be questioned - and if you question it the whole edifice falls down.

For example, one of the most accurate, scientific dimensions is geometry, but you begin with a hypothesis. You begin with something taken as an assumption which can neither be proved nor disproved, because only that thing can be disproved which can be proved. So to begin with, you take something in ignorance, in faith. So, really, science is not as scientific as it looks. If you go back to the beginning every science begins with a hypothesis, and if you question the hypothesis no answer is possible. And this is as it should be because you cannot begin from nowhere.

Look at it in this way: if I come to a strange city and I ask someone where the person A lives, he may say, "A is a neighbour of B." But I say, "This is not an answer at all because I do not know B either. So where does B live?" Then he says, "B is a neighbour of C." But I say, "I am in a strange land. I don't know anything about C or D or E, so please tell me in such a way that I can understand.

Everything is unknown to me, so from where to begin?" If he says, "D, E, F, G," they are all hypothetical. So from where to begin? A beginning can only be possible if I assume one thing as known which is not really known; otherwise no answer is possible.

And this is the situation, this is how we are in this world: everything is unknown, so from where to begin? If you say we must begin with knowledge, then how can you begin? When everything is unknown, how can you begin with something as a known fact? Then you cannot begin. And if you begin with an unknown fact, then too you cannot begin.

A hypothesis means an unknown fact taken in faith as known. A hypothesis means an unknown fact knowingly taken as known. Then you can begin. So a hypothesis cannot be questioned - nowhere, not even in mathematics.

So on the path of will, will is the hypothesis, and on the path of surrender, will-lessness is the hypothesis. So if one path appeals to you, you will not be able to comprehend the other, because both have opposite hypotheses. If will-lessness appeals to you, then will does not have any appeal.

Then it is absurd. And if will appeals to you, then surrender is meaningless.

With will, it is taken for granted that you can do, so now the question is - what to do? You can do something which leads you away from the Divine and you can do something which leads you nearer to Him. And you are responsible - I have discussed that yesterday. How can you will, by and by, to be near and, ultimately, totally with That? But remember this fact: that will is taken as a hypothesis.

Once you take it as a hypothesis, you go on willing, ultimately you will totally - that is, your mind is arrowed totally towards That - in that total tension, on that climax and peak, will dissolves, because perfection is death. The moment anything is perfect it dies.

That is why Lao Tzu says, "Never be perfect. Stop half way - never go to the end!" If you go to the end, success will become failure and life will become death. If you go to the very end, love will turn into hate, friendship will be reduced to enmity - because perfection means death. And when something dies, it dies into the polar opposite.

When will is perfect, when mind is wholly arrowed, will dies, the will disappears - because perfection is the point of evaporation, just like water evaporates at a hundred degrees heat. The hundred- degree limit is the perfection. As far as water is concerned, the heat has come to the peak. Now if heat continues to be, water will not be there. And if water wants to be there, then heat must not come up to the peak. So when you are a hundred percent will, you are on the verge of explosion, you will die, your will will die. The very phenomenon of will disappears. And when will disappears, you come to the same point where one who begins with will-lessness comes. Now it is will-lessness.

So either zero or perfection: both go to the same end. It will depend on you, on your type of mind. If you can conceive of will-lessness, then there is no question. But that is difficult - not only difficult:

in a certain way it is impossible. It is inconceivable. It happens, sometimes it happens. But that happening also has a long, long effort of will. Many, many lives lived according to the will give you the experience that you have been dreaming of. One who has willed for a long time and yet reaches nowhere may come to a point where suddenly he becomes aware that he is working with something which is not.

A Buddha, for example: he reaches the Ultimate through will-lessness. But he worked very arduously on the path of will for six years in this life. He went to every teacher, inquired about every path, endeavoured his best, tried everything that was taught and said. He did everything that a human being can do, and with every teacher he worked hard. No teacher was able to say, "You are not achieving because you are not working," because he was working even more than the teacher.

So every teacher had to say to him, "I cannot say that you are not working - you are working hard, impossibly hard - but now this is all I can teach you. You must go somewhere else." So he went around to every teacher, worked on every method. And Bihar was a very potential place in those times. Only twice have such great peaks happened. Once it was in Athens, in the Greek civilization. Athens was a very potential city, and a very potential situation happened in Athens. And another time was in Bihar: it happened that Bihar became the peak of all that mind can do. And in Bihar, in Buddha's time, every method had been evolved and every method had its own teacher, its own Master And Buddha worked with every one. He worked so hard and so sincerely that every teacher had to ask him to leave, because he had worked totally and nothing was coming out.

Really, he was not the man meant for the path of will. Mahavir, a contemporary of Buddha, reached through the path of will and achieved. But Buddha could not achieve. After working hard in every way, in a sudden moment of helplessness he became frustrated. He felt helpless. He had done everything and nothing was achieved, and he remained the same with no transformation. A total frustration set in, and one day he left everything.

Previously, he had left the world: that was the first renunciation. But the second one, which is not mentioned in the scriptures, was greater. The Buddhists don't talk about it. A second, greater renunciation happened: after six years of tortuous effort, Buddha left the path of will. He said, "I feel helpless - and it seems that nothing is possible, nothing can be done, so I leave all efforts." That was a full-moon night and he was sitting under a tree. The world he had left; now all religions, all philosophies, all techniques, he left on that evening. He relaxed under the tree. For the first time he could relax after lives and lives - because somehow or other we are always working, doing, achieving. But on that evening there was no achieving mind in him. He was so totally helpless that time ceased, future dropped, desires became meaningless. Effort was not possible; will was not found at all.

So he was really dead - psychologically dead. He was alive only in the sense that a tree is alive - with no desires, with no future, with no possibility. He was just like the tree he was Lying under.

Conceive of it. Try to conceive of it! If there are no desires and no future and no morning to follow, and nothing is to be achieved and everything has been just absurd, and the thought that "I cannot do" penetrates deep, then what is the difference between you and the tree? No difference! He was as relaxed as the tree. He was as relaxed as the river flowing by.

He slept. This sleep was strange. There was not even a dream, because dreams belong to desires, effort, will. He slept as trees sleep. The sleep was total. It was just like death - no movement of the mind, no motivation inside. Everything stopped. Time stopped.

In the morning at five o'clock he opened his eyes. Rather, it would be good to say that eyes opened, because there was no motivation. As the eyes dropped in the evening, in the morning they opened. Refreshed by the night, refreshed by relaxation, refreshed by a deep desirelessness, Buddha opened his eyes. The last star was disappearing in the sky, and it is said that just by seeing the last star disappear Buddha became Awakened. He Realized!

What happened? It was because there was no effort; effort had ceased. There was not even desire.

Now there was not even frustration - because frustration is part of desire and expectation. If really expectations cease, there is no frustration. He was not asking, he was not praying, he was not meditating, he was not doing at all. He was just there - empty. When the last star disappeared, something disappeared in him also. He became just space, he became just nothingness. This is surrender, with no feeling of surrender - because who is to surrender to whom? But this also happened as a culminating peak of long efforts.

This is what I mean to say: one has to begin with will. Begin with will! If you are the type who can reach to perfect will, you will just disappear from that peak. If you are not the type then you will reach a perfection of frustration, and from that peace of frustration you will disappear. If the first is the case, will will be known as the path; if the second is the case, then surrender.

But begin with will. You cannot begin with surrender, because surrender cannot have any beginning.

Action can have a beginning - but how can a happening have a beginning? You can begin w!th action; you cannot begin with happening - that is the difference. You can begin with something to do, but how can you begin with surrender?

So begin with will and put your whole being into it. Only then will you be able to know whether this path can work for you or not. If it can work, then it is okay. Then you reach to the most perfect ego.

And when the ego is perfect the bubble bursts. Or, if you are not of that type, then you will go round and round and round and round... and frustration and frustration. Then you reach another peak - the peak of frustration - and surrender happens.

So even for surrender don't think that you have not to do any thing - remember this! Don't think - because mind is very cunning and the mind can say. "Surrender is our way. That means I am not going to do anything. Surrender is my way!" This is a cunning deception. If surrender is your way, then surrender can happen this very moment - because surrender needs no time. There is no tomorrow necessary for it. If you say, "Surrender is my way," then don't wait for tomorrow, because surrender can come just here and now. No effort is needed in surrender so no time is necessary.

If it is not coming just this moment, then know very well surrender is not your way. Mind is deceiving; mind is just trying to postpone effort. And mind can do everything. Mind can rationalize: "There is no need to will because there is no will, so I am ready to be on the path of will lessness." But remember well that your "readiness" will not do. Your readiness is not really a readiness: your preparedness is not really a qualification for surrender. Your total helplessness is the qualification. Really, are you totally helpless? Have you felt it, that nothing can be done, If you feel it, then surrender can happen this very moment.

Surrender cannot be postponed; will can be postponed. So with will you can take time, lives, and you can go on working slowly. But with surrender there is no go, and you cannot think of the future - future is not allowed. So if you say, "Surrender is my way and someday it will happen," you are deceiving yourself. If surrender is your way, then surrender would have happened already.

Someone asked Mozart, "Who is your teacher? From whom have you learned your music?" Mozart said, "No one is my teacher. I have learned it myself, alone." So the questioner said, "Then tell me, can I also learn it myself?" Mozart said, "But I never asked this question to anybody. Even to know this you have come to ask me, so it will be difficult for you to learn music by yourself. Even this you have to ask someone else - whether you can learn music without any teacher. A teacher is even needed to decide this! So you will not be able." The man persisted. He said, "Why? When you are able, why am I not?" Mozart said, "If you were capable of it you would have done it already." So if surrender can happen and if you are really ready for it, it would have happened. You cannot choose it. Choose will, because with choice will has an affinity. With surrender choice has no affinity.

Choice needs will. So choose will, work hard. And there are only two types. Either you succeed or you fail; but work so hard that if you succeed you succeed totally, or if you fail you fail totally, and that totality will decide.

Mild efforts and mediocre efforts lead nowhere, because you can never decide what your type is with mediocre efforts. With mild, lukewarm efforts you can never decide what your type is. You can never know. Work hard! Either succeed totally or fail totally. Both the ways you will reach the same point.

If you succeed totally, then will disappears. Being perfect, it dies. If you totally fail, then will-lessness becomes a recognition and surrender follows.

All efforts are on paths of the will. When someone tries with his whole heart and fails, then the other path opens. It is a sudden path! It is like an emergency door. In any air crash you have emergency doors. You may not even be aware of them. You need not be. Ordinarily, you open, you enter and you come out of the common, usual door. The emergency door opens only when there is an emergency and total failure. Now the usual door will not do.

Surrender is an emergency door. You begin with the usual - the will. When will fails totally, the emergency door opens and you are out of it. And if you succeed, then there is no need for the emergency door to be opened. You may not even become aware of it. You may reach your destination without the awareness that there was a door, an emergency door, which could have opened any moment.

So you cannot begin with surrender - no one can. Everyone has to begin with will. The only point to remember is: be total in it so that you can decide either way.

Question 2:

Three points to be understood. First, mind has two meanings: one - the content; another - the container. When I say "content", I mean thoughts, memories, the dead past, the accumulation of it. But that is only the content. If the whole content is thrown out, then the container remains. That container you can offer. These thoughts, memories, the past, are really worthless, not worth offering - but the container is. Mind has two meanings, so whenever mind is written with a capital M it means "the container". That container you can offer, and that is the meaning of the sutra: "The mind constantly arrowed towards That" - -the container.

"Constantly arrowed towards That" means now the container has no other contents than that - no thought, no memory, no past, no desires, no future, nothing. Now the mind as container has only one content - That. This is the offering.

These contents are really dead, because your mind absorbs them only when they are dead. For example, your mind either moves in the past or in the future. When it moves in the past, it moves among the dead - everything has died, nothing is alive. The past is nowhere except in your memory.

Where is the past? It is nowhere! You cannot find it anywhere. It is only in your memory. If I have some memory that is private, secret to me, and if it is just my memory and no one knows about it, then if I die, where will that memory be? It will not be anywhere. What will be the difference?

Whether it ever was or not - what will be the difference? Whether it ever existed or not, there will be no difference.

The dead past is only in the memory. It is nowhere else. And because of this past, future becomes projected. Future is there only because of past. I loved you yesterday, so I want to love you tomorrow.

I want to repeat the experience. I heard your song, so I want to hear it again, I want to repeat. The past wants to repeat itself, the dead wants to be born again, so the future is created.

These are the contents of the mind - past and future. If both these contents drop and your mind becomes just vacant, thoughtless, contentless, then you are just here and now, in the present, with no past, with no future. And here and now, That is present. In everything, simultaneously, That is present. When your mind is not, I mean when your past and future are not, you become aware of That. And in that awareness the experience of the That is the only content. This is what is meant by "Mind constantly arrowed is the offering": nothing should be a content of the mind except the universal Existence.

When I say "offer the mind", I mean the container - because you can offer the contents, but they are meaningless, they are dead. When you offer the container - the living mind, the living capacity to know, the living capacity to be - when you offer that, it is an offering. And it is not ordinary: it is rare because it is arduous. And it is worth offering. And whenever there is a happening, whenever a Buddha or a Krishna or a Christ offers himself, offers the mind to the Divine, it is not only that a Buddha or a Jesus is enriched: the Divine is also enriched.

This will be very difficult to understand. When a Buddha is offered to the Divine, the Divine is enriched also - because even in Buddha the Divine flowers, even in Buddha the Divine reaches to a peak. So the Divine is not something set apart. It is not something which is not in us. So offering is not something made to someone else. It is to the common pool of consciousness, it is to the common Existence, the common Being. So when a Buddha is offered, Buddha is enriched because Buddha becomes the Total. But the Total is also enriched, because through Buddha a peak has been touched.

The Divine lives through you, so when you fall the Divine falls, when you rise the Divine rises, when you laugh the Divine laughs, when you weep the Divine weeps - because He is not something set apart. He is not an observer sitting far off in heaven just looking. He is in you. So every act, every gesture is His. So whatsoever is done, is done with Him, through Him, by Him, to Him.

Stories are there. They are beautiful, they are poetic, and they show much. It is said that when Buddha achieved Enlightenment the whole universe became blissful: flowers were showered from the sky, deities began to dance around Him, Indra himself - the king of all the DEVAS - came down with folded palms. He surrendered at Buddha's feet. Trees began to flower out of season; birds began to sing out of season. The whole Existence became a celebration.

This is poetic. It has never happened like that, but in a deep sense it has happened. And it is symbolic - because it is how it should be. When somewhere someone achieves Buddhahood, how is it possible that the whole Existence is not enriched? And it will feel the vibrations; the whole universe will become happy. So through poetic symbols a fact has been shown.

But there are foolish, stupid minds who go on thinking that either this should be a historic fact; otherwise it must be a lie - they have only two alternatives. They say, "This must be a historic fact, so where is the proof that flowers came upon the trees out of season? Where is the proof? Historic proof is needed, and if it is not there, then it is a lie!" They don't know that there is a realm beyond fact and beyond lies - the realm of poetry that expresses many things which cannot be expressed otherwise. It is just an indication that the whole world became a celebration. It must be so, it has to be so, it has been so!

So when this mind is offered, the contentless mind, simply the container - purified, pure, empty - when this container is offered, it is worth offering. Even the Divine is enriched, because the Divine becomes more divine. So another thing: God is not a static entity. He is a creative force, a dynamic force. So it is not only that man is evolving: God is evolving also. For those of us who are confined to ordinary logic, God cannot evolve, because to us, if he evolves, then He is not perfect. How can perfection evolve? Ordinary logic cannot conceive that something can be more perfect than perfect.

It cannot conceive - it looks illogical!

But life is not confined to your logic, and there are possibilities that a perfection can be more perfect, more enriched. A perfection can evolve. It is perfection at every moment; still, it is not static. For example, a dancer: every gesture is perfect. Every moment, every gesture, is perfect. Still, there is a dynamic movement, and the total is more perfect than the parts. Each dance is perfect; still, another dance can be more perfect.

Mahavir has a very beautiful concept. He says that there are infinite perfections, multi-perfections, so God is evolving. To me, God is an evolving force; otherwise there can be no evolution. If He is not evolving, then there is no evolution, because through evolution He evolves. This is the concept of That: if there is a flower, then He is flowering there; if there is a man, then He is "manning" there.

So whatsoever happens, it happens to Him; and nothing can happen without Him, outside of Him.

So when Buddha happens, the Total becomes more.

Buddha says, "Do not go to any deity to worship. Be Enlightened, and they will come to worship you." And he shows and he says it not as a theory - he knows it! Deities have come to worship him.

This has been an experience. So this is something to be pondered over. Only Buddhists and Jains have said this: that when you are Enlightened, the deities will come and worship you - because, they say, deities are not without desires, and when yoU are Enlightened you are desireless.

Even an Indra is not without desires. Deities may be living m heaven, but they are with desires. So with Buddha and Mahavir, human dignity was raised to its ultimate. If you can become desireless then everything will worship you, because the desireless consciousness is one with That. That contentless mind is not only worth offering: the Divine needs it, the Divine waits for it. When a child returns Enlightened, the father is enriched, the home is enriched.

Really, when a child returns Enlightened, when the father sees his child Enlightened, the father cannot be the same. So when a Buddha flowers, the whole universe flowers with him. He shows the potentiality, the peak possibility. Now you may not attain it, but you may rest assured that you can attain it. The whole universe becomes confident with a Buddha happening. The whole universe becomes a promise, a certainty. The same can happen to each particle, to each "monad", to each mind - and now it is up to you.

When Buddha is dying, Ananda says to Buddha, "When will you be back?" Buddha says, "It is impossible. I will not be back again." Ananda begins to weep. Buddha asks him, "Why are you weeping? You have been with me for forty years continuously. If you are yet not profited by me, why do you ask for my next coming?" Ananda says, "It is not for me that I am asking. Even if we have not attained to That, you have attained, and we have become certain. And it is more than enough. We have become certain! Now this certainty cannot be lost. I am asking for others who have not seen you. So when will you be coming back? Because if they get a glimpse of such a certainty as you, only then can they proceed on the path.

"I am not asking for myself. For lives together I may wander, but this certainty cannot be lost. I have seen you, and I have seen the peak possibility. So it is not for me but for others. When will you be coming back? Because you are the only certainty - we look at you and doubts drop. We look at you - we may not be capable of doing the same, so we follow you - but in that moment of looking at you, we are you in a sense. So when will you be coming back?" So the offering is not only worthwhile; it is being awaited. The Divine waits, the Total waits, for you to come enriched, to come back home with your potentiality actualized, for the seed to come not as a seed but as a full manifestation. But with a "content-full" mind, offering is worthless - you are offering rubbish.

Question 3:

The first meaning of "total" is that you are in it without any part outside - with no withholding, with no division. So any method of meditation will do. If you are totally in it, absorbed, not a part standing outside, if you can just cry "Ram" totally with not a part as an observer in you, if you become the cry and not even a part is observing that you are crying "Ram", if you become the cry - then it is total, and then a single cry is enough. There is no need to go on repeating "Ram-Ram-Ram" - there is no need. One total cry in which nothing is left is enough. So only you can decide whether you are total in something or not.

The second meaning of totality is that whatsoever you are doing, whatever technique of meditation, your doing must be without any doubt. A very minute doubt will make it partial; a very small doubt will not allow it to be total. But that also you can decide - whether there is any doubt. We go on doing things with doubts inside. Those doubts kill every effort. It is not so much that you are not reaching because of not enough effort. It is more because of your doubts standing behind. So whatsoever you do. that sceptical part of the mind goes on denying, goes on waiting to be sceptical. Even if you achieve something, the doubting mind will create doubts. Totality means there is no doubt. Effort becomes total.

And, thirdly, we have many layers of energy, so you may be making a total effort on the first layer and you may not be aware of the second layer at all. All the layers should become committed, involved, then it becomes total. So when you are doing with one layer and you feel you are doing, totally, don't be deceived so soon. Go on doing - and when you feel that "Now nothing can be done; I have done everything and there is no energy left," continue! This is the moment: continue! And soon you will become aware that a sudden rush of energy is coming to you from the second layer. A new earth has been broken. Then go on doing this. And when you are totally involved with all the layers, how will you know?

There are signs. One sign is that when all the layers have been broken and your total energy is involved, total energy is involved, you will never feel exhausted. You will never feel that the point has come when "I cannot do more." That feeling always comes when one layer is exhausted When the second layer is exhausted, that feeling will come again. And there are seven layers. When the seventh is broken, that feeling will never come again - never! You will not feel that "Now I cannot do more." You will go on doing more and more and more, and you will feel that still more is left. Then you are total in it.

The total is never exhausted, remember. Only the part is exhausted. The total is never exhausted!

You cannot empty it: the more you empty it, the more it is filled. So whatsoever happens with your totality cannot be exhausted. If love happens with your totality, then love cannot be exhausted. If meditation-happens with your totality, then meditation cannot be exhausted.

I am reminded of Bokuju, a Zen patriarch who Realized, who became Enlightened, when he was twenty years of age. But he continued meditating. His teacher came and said, "Bokuju what are you doing? Now there is no need. I see you have become Enlightened." But Bokuju said, "But how can I end meditation? No end-is coming. I go on and on and on, and I am not exhausted. So how can I end it? How can I come out of it? I see no end to it!" The teacher said, "When one falls into the Infinite, there is only a beginning: there is no end. Come out of it. Come out and move! Of course, I know now you cannot come out of it. Move! It will be with you. Don't go on sitting!" He was sitting for seven weeks continuously after his Enlightenment. He was just sitting. For his teacher, for the monastery, there were seven weeks. He became Enlightened: there was light all around; he was transformed. Everyone became aware that something had happened. His teacher came and went, came and went every day. He waited for when he would open his eyes and he would talk about it, but he was not opening his eyes. Then ultimately the teacher had to stop him and ask him to come out.

Bokuju said, "But how can I come out? It is not ending at all. There is no end to it. And they say, 'You have been sitting here for seven weeks continuously. It is so long!' But I don't remember. I feel as if not a single moment has passed. There has been no time for me." So when the total energy is there working, there will be no end to it and time will drop. You cannot feel time. You will feel time only with partial energy because it is exhausted. Time is felt only with something limited; otherwise time cannot be felt. Time is really a feeling of limitations. So whatsoever has a limit, you will feel time around it. It is relative.

So this strange phenomenon happens: if your whole day has been vacant without any events, just empty, nothing of any note, nothing worthwhile, the whole day just passed by, then time will seem to be more when it is passing. Unoccupied time will look very long. You will feel that the day is not going to end at all, that it has become so lengthy. But that is only when it is passing. If you remember afterwards, then the day will look very small - because later on you cannot feel the time without events, so the day will look very small.

We feel time around certain things. So when you are on a holiday and many things are happening, on that day the day will look small. Because it was so filled, it becomes comparatively small. But if you remember your holiday when you are back home, it looks very long - because each event spread in a sequence becomes very long.

Bokuju said, "I don't know about time. What has happened lo time? It stopped." Mahavir says that the basic element that changes totally when one enters Samadhi is time - there is a stopping of time.

Someone asked Jesus, "What will happen in your Kingdom of God?" and he said, "There will be time no longer." This is a basic indication that time will stop, because time can be felt only with partial energies.

That's why a child feels time less, because he is more full. An old man feels time more, because he is now empty, emptying. So with an old man time becomes a problem. With a child time is not a problem at all; he lives in a timelessness. And the same happens with civilization: whenever a civilization becomes over-conscious of time, it means the civilization is going, by and by, towards death. Whenever a civilization is absolutely unaware of time, it means it is in its childhood - innocent.

It is not old. Time consciousness means death is coming near. So the more death you feel, the more time you will feel.

In India we have not felt time so much because we have a conception of a circle of continuous births.

So each time you die, it is not death - again you are reborn. So, really, India destroyed the concept of death totally. It is not a death at all if you are reborn again. That's why India never became time conscious. We are so lethargic, and we can waste time so easily. The reason is that death is not there in the Indian mind; after death there is birth. So time is infinite, and there is no hurry.

But the American mind, the Western mind, has become very time conscious, and the reason is Christianity - because once you say that there is only one life and that this death is going to be the final one, that there is no rebirth, then death becomes very meaningful. And everything has to be taken in reference. If death is so final and occurs only once, time becomes very valuable. It cannot be lost. And a strange phenomenon happens: the more you become conscious of time, the less you can use it. You can only hurry and run. The less you can use it, because you are in such a hurry.

And to use time you need a very, very patient attitude, a very slow-moving attitude; then only can you use it.

So when your mind is in a total effort of will, there will be no time and there will be no end to the energy coming. But these are all inner subjective feelings. You can ask, "Can we be deceived?" Yes, deception is possible. But whenever deception is there, you will become aware. The awareness will come in this form: in any inner feeling, any inner realization, if you become doubtful whether it is true or imaginary, then it is certainly imaginary - because the Truth is so self-evident that you cannot doubt it. The doubting mind just disappears.

So sometimes someone comes to me and says, "Tell me whether my kundalini has risen or not. My teacher says my kundalini has risen, so tell me." So I tell them that unless it becomes self-evident tc you, do not believe anyone. When that phenomenon happens, you will not go to ask anyone whether it has happened or not. If someone comes and asks you, "Tell me whether I am alive or not," what will you say to him? Certainly he is dead! Even if this has to be asked, then certainly he is dead.

Life is a self-evident fact; no proof is needed. How do you feel your life? Do you have any proof of it? Is there any proof? How do you feel your life? How do you know you are alive? Is there ever a doubt whether "I am alive or not"?

Descartes began in that way. He began to seek some indubitable fact which cannot be doubted, so he went on: God can be doubted, heaven and hell can be doubted, everything can be doubted.

Then ultimately he stumbled upon himself. and he began to think. "Can I doubt myself? Can I doubt about myself? Can I say I am or I am not?" Then he stumbled upon a self-evident truth, and he said, "Even if I say I am not, I am; so I cannot doubt this fact." This fact begins to be his foundation. So he says, "COGITO ERGO SUM - I think, therefore I am. Even if I doubt, I think therefore I am. So I cannot deny it." Life is a self-evident fact; you cannot doubt it. The same happens when more life happens to you.

When you enter more life, when you enter total life, it is self-evident, no proof is needed, no witness is needed, Even if the whole world denies it, you can laugh. The whole world may think you are mad, but you can laugh.

These are self-evident realizations. so I can describe them. But when they happen, you know; when they are there, you know. And the knowing is evident in itself: it needs no outer proof, no outer witness. Your knowing becomes the only evidence.

That's why sometimes mystics seem to be arrogant. They are not. They are the most humble people possible. But they look arrogant, and the arrogance is felt by us because they are so self-evidently true. They won't give you any proofs, they won't give you any arguments, they won't give you any reasons. They say, "I know!" This looks to us like arrogance, but the same is so if I ask you, "How do you know you are alive?" What can you say? You can say only, "I know!" Is that arrogance? It is a simple fact. How can you express it except by saying, "I know and I KNOW IT SELF-EVIDENTLY. Even for me there are no reasons why I am. I simply am." These Upanishads are such self-evident statements. They won't argue with you. They go on telling, "This is this." You cannot ask why. You can only ask how. They can tell you how you can achieve this. You cannot ask, "Why? Why is this this?" So the moment you happen to be in totality, in that totality you will know it. And it is such a phenomenon that you can doubt everything except it. You can doubt the whole world - except it. If the whole world stands against it as a witness, even then your feeling of its being true cannot be shaken.

That's how a Jesus can die, a Mansoor can be killed. They can be killed, but they cannot be changed, converted. They cannot be converted! You can kill a Mansoor: you cannot convert him. He will go on saying the same thing. Mansoor was saying, "I am the God." In Mohammedan eyes, that is KUFRA - heresy, egoism. It is not a religious expression. A religious person must be humble, and this Mansoor goes on telling, "I am the God - ANAL HAK, AHAM BRAHMASMI - I am the Brahma." So they killed him. They thought that when they began to kill him he would come back to his senses.

But he went on laughing, and someone asked, "Mansoor, why are you laughing?" Mansoor said, "I am laughing because you cannot kill a God. You cannot kill a God! AHAM BRAHMASMI! ANAL HAK! I am the God!" Jesus says as his last words, "Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do." He asked the Divine to forgive all those who were crucifying him because, "They do not know what they are doing." But Mansoor and Jesus, they are very arrogantly certain. That certainty comes from the self- evidentness of Truth. And everything can be doubted, but never a feeling that comes in your totality.

If you are a total will, then you will come to know something self-evident. If you are total surrender, then also you will come to know something self-evident. Even if you are a total doubter, then also you can come to something which is self-evident. But totality is everywhere a basic condition. You must be total in it, whole in it.