Towards a Total Flowering of Consciousness

Man is a seed, a possibility, a potentiality. Man is not only what he is - he is also what he can be.

Whatsoever man is, it is just a situation, just an opening, just a becoming. Much is hidden, and the hidden part is more than the manifested part. That's why I say man is a seed. He can grow, and man can be only if he grows.

If a seed remains a seed, that means death. If a seed is not growing, then it is dying. And you cannot remain in between. Either you have to grow or you have to die. There is no midpoint. Grow or die! There is no other alternative. The seed is just a situation to grow. And to grow means to transcend, to grow means to die on a particular level and to be reborn on another. what is growth for a seed? The seed must die as a seed - only then is the tree born. The possibility begins to become actual.

A seed can die in two ways. It can just die without growing; then it is negative death. Or, a seed can die to grow; then it is positive death, and positive death is the door to more life. Positive death means dying for something - dying to grow, disappearing from one plane to appear on another.

Man can remain a seed, and many men die negative deaths without growing, without transcending themselves, without disappearing from one plane to appear on another.

Nietzsche has said somewhere that man is only when he transcends himself: you are only when you are disappearing from below and appearing above. It is a continuous process of dying to the material and being born more conscious. But a seed can be satisfied and can remain satisfied to be a seed. It is even difficult for a seed to conceive of what he can be. Even to dream about it seems impossible. How can a seed dream of what he can be? Even to conceive of the possibility of being a tree will look just absurd. How can a seed be a tree? Even if the tree is there just by the seed, the seed cannot conceive that this tree was once a seed, and that "I also can be a tree." Buddha has said, "I cannot give you Truth, but I can give you a dream. Look at me, and your potentialities, your possibilities, will begin to stir. Something will begin to throb for the future; something within you will begin to long for that which can be." A Buddha is a tree - not only a tree, but a tree which has come to flower. We are seeds. Think of man as a seed. Then what can be the flowering? For man's tree, what can be the flowering? Flowers of consciousness, of course.

This sutra says:

WHAT ARE THE FLOWERS FOR WORSHIP? - TO BE FILLED WITH CONSCIOUSNESS.

To be conscious totally - to be conscious! To use the symbol of flower for consciousness is multi- meaningful. It is not only a symbol - because consciousness is factually a flowering in man. When man flowers, comes to his omega point, suddenly there is a burst of flowering. That flowering is of consciousness.

But man as he is is just a seed. He is not conscious, he is not a consciousness. This will be difficult and very humiliating, because we go on thinking that we are conscious. And this is the most fatal belief - dangerous, poisonous - because if you think that you are already conscious, then there is no possibility for you to flower. If a seed thinks and believes that it is already a tree, already flowering, then there is no possibility for the seed to grow. It has deceived itself completely.

Gurdjieff has said that you are in a prison, but you can come to believe that you are not in a prison - that this is your home. You can decorate your prison in such a way that it begins to look like your home. You can even be proud of it, you can boast of it, your chains can become your ornaments. It depends on you. You can interpret, and this interpreting is, in a way, very satisfying, because then there is no need to fight against this imprisonment. Then you can be at ease. It is very convenient.

All human beliefs are conveniences, but dangerous. Because of them the possibility to evolve is nullified completely, negated completely. The prisoner can think that he is not a prisoner, but already a free man. This is convenient to believe because then there is no burden. But then this prisoner can never be free. So Gurdjieff says that the first necessary step towards freedom is to recognize the humiliating fact that you are a prisoner - only then does growth become possible.

The first thing about this sutra that I would like to say to you is: Be completely aware that you are not conscious. This is the first step towards awareness. You are not conscious at all; you live an unconscious life. Whatsoever you are doing is a robot-like thing, mechanical. For example, you are listening to me. You are listening to me but you are not aware of the fact that you are listening. Now you can become aware after I have said it, but you were not previously. For a moment you can become aware that you are listening to me, but only for a moment and then you will slip again into unconsciousness. And then you will listen to me, but not as a conscious being; you will listen to me like a mechanical thing.

What is the difference? If you are listening to me, you are conscious of me, the speaker; you are not conscious of the listener. Your consciousness is one-arrowed. The arrow is towards the speaker, and you are just in the shadow. The light is focused towards the speaker and you are in darkness.

For a moment, if I say something about it, you can become conscious. But the moment you become conscious of the listener you will become unconscious of the speaker. If you can become conscious of both, if you can have a double-arrowed consciousness - simultaneously aware of the speaker and the listener - then you are conscious.

When I say you are not conscious, I don't mean that sometimes there are not moments when you are not conscious. Sometimes there are moments, but very few. And they show only the possibility, not the actuality. It is just like if you jump and then again you are on the ground. You can defy the gravitation for a single moment, and again you are under it. It is just like this. Sometimes, in particular situations, we jump out of unconsciousness. For a single moment we are out of the pull of gravitation, but not really out of it because the gravitation is working all the time and will bring you down again. But you can have a feeling of freedom for a single moment; then again you are back on the ground.

In certain dangerous situations you become conscious. Someone has come to murder you:

suddenly you are conscious - not only of the murderer, but also of yourself, the one who is to be murdered. Then the consciousness is double-arrowed, but only for a single moment and again you are on the ground. Sometimes in deep love you jump out of your unconsciousness. Then you are not only aware of your lover or beloved: you are also aware of yourself - but only for a single moment, then again you are back.

Suddenly, in some accident, in some deep, touching experience, on e becomes aware. But there are very few such moments. You can count them on your fingers. In a long life of one hundred years you can have certain experiences which can be counted on your fingers. They show only a possibility that you can be conscious.

Ordinarily we exist as automata. And, really, we find it convenient to exist as automata: it is very comfortable to exist as automata. You are more efficient when you work on mechanical lines. You need not worry. Your body, your mind, works as a machine; it is efficient. And it is convenient not to be aware, because to be aware will bring such a sensitivity about things around you that it is going to be painful.

To be a Buddha is not only blissful. It is blissful as far as Buddha himself is concerned. He comes to a peak experience of bliss. But at the same time he has to pay very dearly, because he becomes so sensitive that everything around him gives him pain. He suffers because of others' suffering. A beggar meets you: you pass him unconsciously; there is no problem, it is very convenient. If you become conscious, then it is not so convenient. Then you are bound to come to realize that you have a hand in it, you are part of this ugly world. You are responsible for all that is, whether it is a Vietnam war or a Hindu-Mohammedan riot or poverty. Whatsoever is there, if you become conscious you become responsible. It is difficult now to escape. This is the cost to be paid.

So never think that Buddha is just bliss. No one can be. Everyone has to pay a cost, and the greater the experience, the greater the cost is going to be. A Buddha is peaceful, blissful in himself.

He comes to this bliss because of being so conscious. But simultaneously, because of so much consciousness, he becomes sensitive to everything that goes on around him - he suffers for it.

So it is convenient to exist as unconscious beings. We go on, we prolong, being sleepy. It is a deep somnambulism. We go on walking, doing things profoundly asleep. Nothing touches us; we are absolutely insensitive. Sensitivity depends on consciousness. The more conscious you are, the more sensitive; the less conscious, the less sensitive. And to be sensitive is dangerous. To be non-sensitive is convenient - so you can move like a dead block, you need not be concerned.

Because of this convenience, we remain seeds. To me, to lose this convenience, to throw this convenience, is the only renunciation. Really, this is the comfort to be thrown - not a house, not a family; they are nothing. This convenience-oriented mind is to be thrown. One has to be sensitive and vulnerable to whatsoever there is; only then can you become conscious.

So the first thing to be understood is why we go on remaining unconscious. There is a reason for it; it has a rationale - because it is convenient. To live a dead life is convenient, to move like a dead corpse is convenient, because then you are not affected, you are not concerned. You have a routine to work and to do from morning to evening. You move in a circle; throughout your life you go on moving in your old pattern. The older the pattern, the less the inconvenience. Ultimately, you are settled in it.

Look at this attitude! If this attitude persists you are not going to transcend the seed. When a seed is transcended it is calling for dangers. A seed is protected, but a plant is not so protected. A plant is always in danger; a seed is never in danger. A seed lives a dead life, but a plant becomes alive, delicate, unprotected. It is dangerous!

A child in his mother's womb is totally protected. The womb is the most comfortable place to be found anywhere - no worry, no struggle for survival; a completely relaxed state. Psychologists say, and they say rightly, that this hankering after peace, equilibrium, harmony, is really a remembering of the womb state - because a child in the womb is just in heaven.

Hindus have a myth of a wish-fulfilling tree - kalptaru - in heaven. Under that tree, kalptaru, the wish-fulfilling tree, there is no gap between demand and supply. You demand, and there is supply - no time gap. You desire, and it is fulfilled.

The womb is a wish-fulfilling tree. There is no gap between wish and fulfillment. The child has not even to desire. whatsoever is needed is fulfilled - no effort, no desire, no tension. The child is in perfect moksha. And if we were to ask a child to leave the womb and come out, if it were up to him, no child would be born. It is dangerous! It is taking a very dangerous step! Going out of the womb is going out of heaven. It is being thrown out of the Garden of Eden. Now everything is going to be a struggle. Now demand and supply are not going to meet so easily and desires cannot be fulfilled so easily. Now there will always be a gap between the desire and its fulfillment. And even when it is fulfilled, it is not going to be a fulfillment - because through its fulfillment many other desires will have been born meanwhile. So it is going to be a constant struggle.

So if it is up to a child to decide whether to leave the womb or not, no child will leave. It is very comfortable - absolutely comfortable. But it is a dead existence. No growth is possible. Growth is possible only when you choose dangers consciously. When you move on unknown paths, you grow. when you take risks, you grow. Just like this, man is again in a womb - the womb of the unconscious. Mm? Try to understand this: the womb of the unconscious. To leave it is a second birth.

In India we call the person who was born again "twice-born" - dwij. The Brahmins were called twice-born only because of this: that the first birth is the birth out of the womb of the mother, and the second is the birth out of the womb of your own unconscious. And unless you are born out of your unconscious and become conscious, you are not a Brahmin. If you are not conscious, you are not a Brahmin. "Brahmin" means one who knows the Brahma, the Ultimate. If you are perfectly conscious, you come in contact with the Ultimate: you become a Brahmin. This second birth is out of your own unconscious.

What is this unconscious? Freud has said that a man is just like an iceberg: ninety percent under water and only ten percent above it - nine parts hidden under water and only one part, one tenth, above it. Man is an iceberg! Only one part is conscious, nine parts are unconscious, and that one part, one tenth, is impotent against the other nine. The greater part is unconscious; only a very small fraction is conscious. That's why you are always pulled by the unconscious, manipulated, maneuvered. You may go on thinking that you are the deciding factor - you are not!

The unconscious, hidden mind always decides.

You fall in love. Is it your decision? Is it your conscious decision? Are you in love consciously? You say, "It happened." What does it mean: "It happened"? It means some unconscious forces within you are pulling you. You are just a puppet. That's why, if it has happened, suddenly one day it disappears again. What can you do? You were just a victim; you were never asked. And not only with love:

penetrate deep into whatsoever you think, you do, you feel, and you will come to the conclusion that some unknown force goes on manipulating you. You are not. You may deceive yourself that these are your decisions - they are not.

You decide not to be angry, and then there is anger. everyone has felt the impotence of his own decisions. Every moment you feel it. You decide not to do this, and in spite of yourself, you have to do it. Then you go on creating rationalizations. Those rationalizations are again conveniences. You decide not to be angry and you are angry. Then one possibility is that you will go deep, dig deep within yourself and come to a conclusion that you are not capable of deciding anything - you don't have the power to decide, you have no power, you are absolutely impotent.

But this is humiliating, so one never goes to the root - one begins to rationalize. One says, "I had to be angry because it is going to help the person. I had to be angry to change the person. I had to be angry for righteous reasons." Then you create a myth that this is your decision. You are deceiving yourself! find out whether you have rally ever decided anything. Has anything ever been your decision? The conscious part of the mind is absolutely impotent. The unconscious is so much - nine times more. Your conscious is nothing but an instrument in the hands of the unconscious. So go on deciding whatsoever you like in the conscious. The unconscious is not a bit worried. Whatsoever is to be done is to be done by the unconscious, and when it needs to do it, the conscious is just impotent.

But one has to dig into oneself. This unconsciousness is your womb. You have to grow out of it, transcend it. Otherwise, you are bound to be a slave, you can never be a master; and you are bound to remain just an egg - a seed. You cannot be a tree which can flower. Then the flowering can never be for you.

First begin to feel what this unconscious is, where it is. This is a good start - to be conscious of the unconscious, to be conscious of one's own imprisonment, of one's being a seed. Don't deceive yourself! Don't go on thinking that you are this and that. find out what you really are. Don't create an image.

Gurdjieff has reported a story. He said there was a magician who had many sheep. Every day a sheep was to be murdered, killed for his food. And there were many sheep. They would see that every day a sheep is killed, but they would never rebel, they would never go against him. Some visitor was staying with the magician, so the visitor said, "This is a miracle! Every day a sheep is chosen, killed before other sheep, and they have not yet become aware that their day is also to come soon. They can escape! They can revolt!" The magician laughed and he said, "there is a trick. I have hypnotized all the h'sheep. All the sheep are hypnotized, and I have told them in their hypnosis: 'You are not a sheep. You are not a sheep at all. All the others are sheep, but you are not. You are a lion!' So every sheep believes that he is a lion and that every other sheep is just a sheep. So when a sheep is killed no one is bothered, because they are all lions in their own images." This is a good story. This is the story of the human mind. You go on thinking about what you are not and you go on deceiving yourself about what you are. To recognize the "facticity" of what one is, is the beginning. And that is the only right beginning. So recognize first that your working is unconscious, not conscious. Your love, your hate, your anger, your friends, your foes, they are all part of your unconscious. You are not a conscious being. You have only a very minute part of consciousness. That's why this can be understood: that you are not a conscious being.

If a madman can be taught that he is mad, that means that a part of his mind is still not insane. If a madman can realize that he is mad, that means a part of the mind is not yet mad. But you cannot convince any madman that he is mad. And if you can convince a madman that he is mad, it means you are wrong. He is not mad. At least a part of the mind is still sane. So if you can come to realize that you are an unconscious being, this is good news. It shows that a part is conscious - a very minute part, a very small fragment. But that fragment can be used now.

You can use it in two ways: either in rationalizing that you are already conscious; that's what we are doing. Or, in digging deep and realizing that we are unconscious. That minute part of consciousness, that one-tenth part of the human iceberg, can be used in two ways: one is to go on rationalizing, thinking, imagining, dreaming, that you are a conscious human being; this is what we are doing. Or, you can use it in digging within and recognizing that you are not conscious at all. This is what a seeker is expected to do.

And once you begin to feel that you are not conscious, consciousness has dawned on you. You are on the path. Now much can be done! Once you realize that you are imprisoned and that "this is not my home but a prison", now something can be done so that you can break out, escape. Now devices can be used, now something can be arranged. Now some contact can be made outside the prison. Now the guard can be bribed or something can be done. But nothing can be done if you go on thinking that you are not in the prison, that it is your house, that the prison guard is your watchman and he is in your service. And if you were really born into a prison, it would look like that - as if everyone is in your service. The whole prison establishment seems to be in your service if you were born into the prison. How can you think that this is a prison?

To realize this, that this is a prison, is the first basic step for going out, because then something can be done. So you are unconscious. And this is not a theory - mm? - this is a simple fact.

And this is not a theology: this is simple science. It is not concerned with religions and their hypothetical mythologies. Now it is a fact of science. That was the reason Freud was despised so much, condemned so much.

They say there have been three revolutions. One was the Copernican. Copernicus said that the earth is not the center of the universe and the sun is not going around the earth, but the earth is moving around the sun. The earth was deposed, the earth was dethroned. It was very humiliating to man's mind, because when the earth was the center, man was the center of the universe. Everything was moving around man and man's earth. Suddenly earth was not in the center at all - not only not in the center, but it was even not a very significant star. It was negligible, as if not. The earth was found to be moving around the sun, and the sun - our sun itself - was found to be moving around some greater sun, so we were not the center.

Then came Darwin, and he said man is related not to the Divine but to the animals. He is not a descendant of God, but linked with apes, baboons, chimpanzees. He is a link in a long animal process. This was the second revolution - a very humiliating one, very ego-destroying. The earth was not the center, and man was not just below the angels - he was just a bit above the animals and nothing more, and even that "above" was not certain. Man was dethroned, deposed. He was just an animal.

And then came the third revolution, that of Freud, who said you are not a conscious being - you are just in the hands of unconscious forces. So Aristotle was absolutely wrong according to Freud, because he said man is a rational being. Man is not! Man is the most irrational animal. Dogs are more rational. All other animals are more rational in the sense that they are predictable. Man is unpredictable - most irrational! You cannot depend on him, because reason is a mathematical thing. If a dog has behaved in a certain way you can predict he will go on behaving this way. You cannot predict man.

And, moreover, he is not rational, because his whole working of the mind is unconscious. He falls in love, he fights, he goes to war, he goes on accumulating money, he goes on being worried without any rationality in it. He is the most mad animal. Only one thing is certain about him which is exceptional, and that is that he believes certain things about himself which are not. That is the only exceptional thing about man.

Animals are down to earth. They don't have any fictions; they are what they are. Man is a dreaming animal; he can dream, and he can believe in his dreams. He can auto-hypnotize himself, and he can be convinced that whatsoever he is imagining is true. So now it is not simply a religious matter to say that man is unconscious. It is now founded on scientific facts.

Indian psychology is very much older than the Western. In the West, psychology is just a child.

Really, Freud is the father, so only this century has given birth to psychology. But with India, it is a long-standing science. Patanjali is a psychologist and Buddha is a psychologist and Kapil is a psychologist. And it will be good to look at them as psychologists rather than as religious persons, because then different dimensions become clear and then you can really understand what they are saying.

Buddha says that only awareness can make you a man; otherwise you are just an animal. The very word "Buddha" means the "Awakened One". That was not his name. His name was Gautam siddharth, but Gautam Siddharth was an unconscious being. When Gautam Siddharth became conscious, then he was called the Buddha, the awakened One. Buddha, when he became totally conscious, said - not anything about God, not anything about moksha, not anything about Nirvana - he is reported to have said, "Now I am awake. I was asleep; hitherto, I was asleep. Now I am awake!" Mahavir's name is "Jin". From that word "Jin" the name of "Jain" is derived. "Jin" means "the conqueror". Mahavir said, "I was asleep. Then I was a slave of the unconscious. Now I have become a conqueror, a Jin, because now there is no unconscious to enslave me." All the sutras of Patanjali are just a technology, techniques, to produce more consciousness. The whole of yoga is concerned with how to produce more consciousness in man.

For the East this has been a long-standing fact, a recognized fact, that man is asleep. But now Western science recognizes the fact also. So what to do? If man is unconscious? How to make him conscious? How to make him awake? The first thing is to recognize the fact of unconsciousness in yourself. It is not difficult to recognize that man is unconscious. That is not difficult, because then you are not included. Then "man" is unconscious, not you. But when I say "man is unconscious", I mean you, not humanity.

There exists no humanity, only man - man A, man B, man C. There exists no humanity - only individuals. "Humanity" is just a collective name. you are unconscious. Listen to this fact with a double-arrowed consciousness. I repeat: you are unconscious! Don't rationalize it and don't deceive yourself. Whatsoever you are doing, remember that this is the unconscious working.

Suddenly you have become sexual; remember, this is the unconscious. Now the unconscious is forcing you towards certain acts. don't fight because the fight is also unconscious. Because the society has said, "Sex is bad, evil, sin," that has gone deep into the unconscious. So the unconscious has two parts: one is biological; another is sociological. Instincts are there and social taboos. The society has put many things into your unconscious. They call it "conscience". Certain things are "bad"; certain things are "good". They have forced them into your unconscious.

That's why, if you teach any morality to a child before seven years of age, only then can your teaching succeed. After seven years of age you cannot succeed. That's why every religion is much concerned with children, and every religion has an establishment. Through parents, through family, they condition the mind - when the mind is totally unconscious. Not even a single part is conscious, so there is no resistance. Whatsoever you say to the child, it goes deep into the unconscious. There is no resistance. Once a child is grown, then it is difficult to penetrate into the unconscious.

So whatsoever one learns in the first seven years becomes the background. Then whatsoever you do in your life, even if you go against the society which has trained you and given you your conscience, you will not really be able to go against it. Even in going against it, you will follow the instructions put into the unconscious. Even to rebel against a certain thing is to remain attached to it.

If humanity is to be saved from so-called religious dogmas, it must be made criminal to teach them to children. Don't teach children any creeds, dogmas, fanatic beliefs - don't teach them! Let them grow first. When they become adult, only then - but then it is very difficult. Then the conscious mind has come into existence. It begins to choose and think.

One part is biological, hereditary; another is sociological. There is sex: become aware that the unconscious instinct is forcing your body mechanism towards a particular object, towards a particular act. But don't fight it because that fight is again, from the sociological part of the unconscious which says that sex is sin. Be aware of both, be conscious of both: there is sex, and there is the concept that sex is sin. Both are coming from some place you don't know - from a deep darkness within. Be conscious - don't do anything! Just remain conscious. Try to be in an alert state. Don't fight with the sex, don't condemn it - don't go to indulge in it. Simply remain conscious of the fact that something is happening inside. If you can remain conscious of the fact that something is happening inside. If you can remain with the fact without dong anything, you will feel that your consciousness is growing and penetrating the dark realm of the unconscious.

Anger has come to you: don't do anything for or against it. Don't indulge in it, don't suppress it - meditate on it. Close your eyes and meditate on the fact of anger. when I say meditate, many things have to be understood. Don't judge. Don't say anger is bad; don't say it is good. don't do anything.

Anger is there just like when a snake has come in the room - just be aware. Is the snake a god to be worshipped? No! Is the snake an enemy to be killed? No! Just be aware that the snake has come. Use this snake as an object for being aware.

Just like this anger has flashed within you - be aware, be conscious, remain alert, and don't do anything! Just remain alert, because the moment you begin to do anything you cannot remain alert.

You have such a small quantity of energy that if you begin to act that energy moves into action. Don't do anything. Be silent and quiet - alert. Use your total energy capacity to be just alert to the fact that the anger is there. And suddenly you will become aware that the focus of your consciousness is growing - you are penetrating into the unconscious. Your light of the conscious is going deep into darkness. And the more you penetrate into the darkness of the unconscious, the more conscious you are.

This is a long effort, arduous; arduous because it will create very deep inconvenience. You will feel very uneasy. Try, and you will come to know. You can do two things. either you can act out your anger - it is easy, you are relieved. whatsoever the consequence may be, for the moment you are relieved; you are relieved of an inner unconscious tension. Or you can fight with your anger. If you fight with it, then again you are relieved because in fighting anger the same energy is being used which is used in being angry.

Remember this, that one who is fighting with his anger is really changing only the object. I am angry with you. I was going to fight with you, but I turn this whole fight against my own anger, I invert it. I was going to fight with you, but I am a moral man, I am a saint, I am a religious man, so I cannot fight with you. But I have to fight with someone, so I fight with myself, I fight against my anger. The same energy and the same release will happen. I have fought, and there will be a deep satisfaction.

The so-called satisfaction seen on so-called saints' faces is nothing but a deep satisfaction from fighting and winning. And really, it is more cunning, because to fight with someone is to create a long series of consequences. If you become both, if you divide yourself in two - the good one who never becomes angry, and the bad one, the unconscious one, who gets angry - if you divide yourself in two, you can fight forever. Outwardly you will become a saint, but inwardly you are just a volcano, just a deep turmoil and nothing else - a disease inside, a constant conflict.

Those who fight with sex will have to fight continuously with sex; those who fight with anger will have to fight with anger continuously. It is a constant fight. There is no silence within - there cannot be. That's why we divide ourselves into two: the bad one and the good one. You have two parts within you. Remember, the bad one is the unconscious and the good one is the conscious. And once you take your unconscious as the enemy, you can never change and transform it. Then there can be no mutation - because the unconscious is not the enemy. That is your energy, your source, your biological source of energy. You can never be healthy divided in yourself - you will become a disease.

Don't fight, don't indulge. Both are easy. Both are easy! The only thing which is very uncomfortable and uneasy, is to remain alert. The whole mechanism of habit will force you to do something: "What are you doing? Do something! Anything will do, but do something!" This habit has to be broken.

So the first thing is to recognize and realize that you are unconscious. The second thing is that whenever the conscious begins to manipulate you, be aware, and remain aware and alert. A very simple, passive alertness is needed.

If you are alert, two things happen: the energy that was going to be used as indulgence or as suppression will become part of your alertness. Your alertness will be strengthened through that energy. That energy will move to your alertness; you will become more alert. That energy will become a fuel to your consciousness. You will be more conscious, and for the first time the unconscious will not be able to force you. For the first time unconsciousness will be incapable of manipulating you. And once you know the feeling of this freedom, that the unconscious cannot manipulate you - without any fight, without any struggle, without any conflict - then your consciousness has become stronger.

And, by and by, the filed of consciousness will grow and the field of unconsciousness will shrink.

your human iceberg will have gained one part more: you will be two parts conscious, eight parts unconscious. This is a long journey, and by and by you will become three parts conscious, seven parts unconscious. As you gain more it is just like reclaiming land from the ocean. The unconscious is a vast ocean; you have to reclaim land inch by inch. But the moment you reclaim land, the ocean shrinks back. A day comes, just like it came to a Buddha or to a Jesus, when you are conscious all the ten parts and the unconscious has disappeared. You are just light inside and no darkness.

This is the flowering. And for the first time you become aware of your immortality. for the first time you are not now a seed. For the first time now for you there is no becoming - you have become a being. If this expression can be allowed: You have become a being! Now you are a being!

In this enlightened state of being, there is no suffering, no conflict, no misery. You are filled with bliss. Inside you are bliss, outside you are compassion. You have become sensitive to everything.

Because of that sensitivity, a Buddha is compassion outside; inside a deep silent pool of bliss and outside a compassion. Buddha's lips are smiling with a deep bliss, and his eyes are filled with tears - in a deep compassion.

That's why you can work both ways. If you grow in consciousness, you will grow in compassion; if you grow in compassion, you will grow in consciousness. But to grow in compassion is very difficult - because you can again deceive. So the only right path is to grow in consciousness, then compassion comes as a shadow. Otherwise you can deceive and your compassion can just be a facade, a deception. Your compassion can again be an unconscious act. Then it is sentimental, emotional - not existential. Then you can weep, you can sympathize and you can serve. But this is going to be again an unconscious thing. The surest and most certain path is to grow in consciousness.

This sutra says, "What are the flowers for the worship? - to be filled with consciousness." And when you have flowered into consciousness, only then can you be accepted. Then and only then do you enter the temple of the divine - not with flowers, but with your own flowering. Then you have become a flower.

Every one of you must have seen Buddha sitting on a flower, Vishnu sitting on a flower, Ram standing on a flower, but you might not have understood the symbol. Those flowers simply say, "These are flowered human beings. They have come to a deep flowering." You might have heard that the seventh chakra in yoga is sahasrardal kamal - the one-thousand- petalled lotus on the seventh chakra in your head. That seventh chakra is the last stage, the peak, the Everest of consciousness. The first chakra is muladhar - the sex center, and the last chakra is sahasrar. Sex is the most unconscious thing in you, and the sahasrar is the most conscious. These are the two poles.

We live around the sex center, move around it. Whatsoever we do is related with sex, howsoever distant it may look. Your earning money, your accumulating wealth, may not look at all related with sex, but they are related. The more wealth you have, the more sex you can have; it becomes more possible. The more power you have, the more sex you can have; it becomes more possible.

You may forget completely, and ends may become means and means may become ends; that's another thing. One person can go on accumulating wealth for his whole life, and he may completely forget for what he is doing it. But every power search is for sex. We move around the center of sex, we are bound to because unless we grow in consciousness we cannot go beyond it. That is the most unconscious-rooted center, the lowest, and for that reason the deepest and the most unconscious.

The higher you move in consciousness, the further you go from sex. And then there is a flowering of a different type. The whole energy moves to the seventh - sahasrar. And when the whole energy comes to the seventh chakra, it becomes a flower - one-thousand-petalled. Mm? - this is a beautiful imagery. It means with unlimited, infinite petals, the flower opens.

This sutra is not just a symbol - really, no symbol is just a symbol - it indicates a reality. And whenever you come to the state of Samadhi, to the seventh chakra state of consciousness, you have a subtle sense of flowering inside, as if something has burst open. Now you are not a bud - you are a flower. Come with this flower to the Divine temple: this is the meaning of this sutra.

Flowers purchased from the market will not do. I say "purchased from the market", because now even to grow them has become impossible. It seems that flowers grow in shops, they are produced.

Purchased flowers will not do; outside flowers will not do. Your own flowering is needed, and only that can be accepted. This is arduous, long, but not impossible. It is the only challenge for man; all else is just childish stupidity. To be fully conscious is the only challenge! To go to the moon, to move to some further star, is all childish - because you can go to the moon but you remain the same, you remain the seed. Unless you become a flower, you have not moved. With an inner flowering, you mutate, you change, you are born anew.

Effort is needed, much effort is needed. And if - and this is a big IF - IF you are ready to take the first step, the last is not very far. But the IF is concerned with the first. If you have taken the first step, half the journey is completed. The first is the most difficult. To recognize that you are unconscious is very ego-destroying; it is very shattering, shocking. But if one is ready to take this shock and welcome it, the last step is not very far.

Really, Krishnamurti has said that the first step is the last. Mm? It is in a way, because one who takes the first will take the last. Mahavir has said that if you have taken the first you have reached, because for one who is ready to take the first there is no problem. The journey has started.

To start is always difficult. To reach is not so difficult because one has to move only one step at a time. A thousand-mile journey is completed only by taking one step at a time. No one needs to take two steps simultaneously; no one is required to. If you have taken the first step you have taken one step, and only one step is the needed thing. Now go on taking one and one added to one, and you can complete a thousand-mile journey. We are all sitting only thinking and brooding about the first step. Some are just brooding, some are dreaming that they have taken the first step already.

Someone was here to meet me a few days before. He said, "I am very much advanced, so don't start with me from A-B-C." This is the mad type of man.

So I asked, "First relate to me how much you have advanced. What have you gained?" So he said, "I see visions of Krishna. Sometimes I dance with him in my visions. I have visions of very beautiful places - lakes, hills." Whatsoever he said was just dreaming, so I said, "If this is what you mean when you say that you have advanced very much, then it is very difficult to even proceed because you are simply dreaming.

You have not even taken the first step." The first is the most difficult: to recognize this, let this fact penetrate deep. Howsoever painful, welcome it - only then can something be done. If you recognize it you will become humble, if you recognize it you will become simple, if you recognize it you will become childlike - then there is much possibility, then much opens.

And then the second step: be conscious. Whatsoever happens in the inner mind, be conscious about it. Don't act! Don't be in a hurry to act. Remain with the fact - alert. And see that this alertness works miraculously. It is a miracle. Observe the unconscious, and there is a sudden change. The quality, the very quality of the mind changes the moment you become an observer inside, a consciousness inside. The very quality of mind changes! The seed is broken asunder and the plant is born.

Of course, it is delicate, very delicate. And one has to protect it continuously for many, many days, for many, many years and sometimes for many, many lives. ut once begun, once the seed is broken, the plant will become a tree - and one day there is flowering.

That flowering is the concern of religion. To make man a flower is the whole concern of religion.