The Fire Test

Life exists through duality. The very process of life depends on polar opposites. Life is like a river:

for the river to exist, two banks are needed. The river cannot exist without two banks to support it, just as the bird cannot fly without two wings and you cannot walk without two legs.

Life needs duality. Everywhere you will find it, till the ultimate arrives. The ultimate, the absolute, or call it God, transcends duality. But then life disappears. Then you become invisible. Then you have no form, no name; then you have gone beyond. That is nirvana.

These two things have to be understood: life cannot exist without polar opposites. Life is a dialectical process - between man and woman, between darkness and light, between life and death, between good and bad. Life cannot exist without this duality; manifestation is not possible without duality.

Hence, another vision becomes possible to be understood: if duality disappears, life as you know it disappears. Life in time and space disappears. Then another door opens. You move to another plane: the plane of the invisible, the plane of the mysterious, the plane where there is no form, no name. All remains, but unmanifest. That is called nirvana, moksha: the ultimate state of samadhi where all disappears.

If duality is the way of life, then nonduality is the way of religion - because religion is nothing but an art of transcending the manifested form and going into the unmanifest, going to the original source from where we come and for which we long. Because we belong there. Wherever we are we cannot feel at home; something remains unfulfilled. We go on missing the original source, because only in the source is rest.

Today's sutras are of immense value. Meditate over each word:

THE PURE MAN UNITES TWO IN ONE; THE LOVER UNITES THREE IN ONE.

The gnostic tradition says there are two paths to transcend duality, to transcend multiplicity, to transcend this constant conflict between life and death. The first path is called by the gnostics VIA PURGATIVA:'through purity'. And the second path is called VIA UNITIVA:'through unity'. The first is the path of meditation, the second the path of love. The first is Zen, the second is Sufism.

On the path of meditation, one has to eliminate, one has to empty oneself totally. On the path of love, just the reverse process has to be followed: one has to become more and more full. One has to become so full that one starts overflowing.

On the path of meditation, one has to become so empty that nothing remains, one is just a pure nothingness. That's why Buddha says that there is no soul. He says in the ultimate experience, nothing is found; only nothing is found. It is utter emptiness, state of no-self: ANATTA. Hence he has called it nirvana. Nirvana means "putting out a candle" - the ego just disappears as if you have put out a candle. Nothing remains.

Only when nothing remains is there purity. If something is there, that is impurity. When on the mirror there is nothing then the mirror is pure: no reflection, no dust, no content in the consciousness.

Nothing remains to be known - then one is pure. This is VIA PURGATIVA: go on eliminating.

The Upanishads say, "NETI NETI: this is not That, that too is not That, neither this nor that." Go on denying, go on negating, go on eliminating, until nothing remains. And when you have arrived at that utter emptiness, that is the goal. Then all is peace, all is silence. One has moved beyond duality, beyond multiplicity.

In this state, the observer becomes the observed. There is no distinction between the observer and the observed. Hence J. Krishnamurti's famous statement, "The observer is the observed": it is the very essence of meditation. Then there are not two - neither the knower nor the known, no subject, no object. Only one is there. But you cannot even call it one, because there is nobody to call it one.

One is there, but utterly quiet and calm. One is there, but there is nobody to declare it. One is there, but as if all is absent, not present.

This is what Hakim Sanai says:

THE PURE MAN UNITES TWO IN ONE...

The observer and the observed. "The pure man" means the man of meditation. "The pure man"

means one who has been trying the path of VIA PURGATIVA - who has been simply emptying himself of all that is foreign and who goes on eliminating all that is not his essential self. And then nothing is left in the hand.

That's what Zen people say, that man is like an onion: you go on peeling, layer upon layer, go on peeling, and finally nothing is left. But that's what the search is. When the hands are empty, nothing is left, you have arrived. Now there can be no misery, because there is nobody to be miserable.

Now there can be no pain, because there is nobody to feel pain. Now there is neither knowledge nor ignorance, because there is no knower. Now there is neither bondage nor liberation, because there is nobody to be bound or to be liberated. All is gone, all has disappeared. You have fallen back into the source.

The manifest is there no more; you have become unmanifest. In this state you are neither man nor woman, in this state you are neither happy nor unhappy, because those are all parts of the dual world: happy/unhappy, man/woman, beautiful/ugly, good/bad. That is all gone. You are neither good nor bad. There is no Devil now, and no God - that is part of duality, the same duality. And in duality there is always tension, in duality there is always conflict. In duality there is always the other.

And the Zen people will agree with Jean-Paul Sartre when he says, "The other is hell." The Zen people will also say, "Yes, the other is hell, the other has to disappear. But the other can disappear only if you also disappear." "I" and "thou" exist as two aspects of the same coin. If "thou" disappears "I" disappears, if "I" disappears "thou" disappears. They cannot exist separately; they are part of one phenomenon. So there is neither "I" nor "thou."

That's why Buddha would not say anything about the soul or God. His is the purest path of meditation. And this has been a very confusing thing to others who don't understand the path of purity. Buddha called it VISUDDHI MARGA. That has exactly the same meaning as VIA PURGATIVA: the path of purity.

Christians, Hindus and Mohammedans cannot understand what Buddha is trying to say. No God, no soul - then what is religion? And Buddha says this state of no God and no soul is religion. Christians or Mohammedans or Hindus cannot conceive of what kind of religion he is talking about, because they think of religion as something centered on the idea of God. Without God how can there be religion?

But there is a religion, Jainism, which is without God. Jainas agree so far with Buddha, that there is no God. But when Buddha says there is no soul, even Jainas don't agree. They say, "Without a soul how can there be a religion?" Christians, Hindus and Mohammedans say, "Without God and the soul there can be no religion; those two are essential." And Buddha says, "Unless those two are dropped, you don't enter into the world of religion. Those two are the barriers."

Jainas say, "God can be dropped, it is an unnecessary hypothesis. Just purify yourself, that's all. There is no need for God, there is no need for prayers, just meditation will do. You go on purifying." They agree with Buddha halfway. And they also agree with Hindus and Mohammedans and Christians halfway.

That's why in India although Buddhism and Jainism were born together, Hindus destroyed Buddhism completely. They did not destroy Jainism, they allowed it to exist side by side with them. Because Jainism seems to be agreeing at least to one basic ingredient: the soul. Buddha goes too far in Hindu eyes, in at he denies both.

But he has a point there: if God is not, then the soul cannot be. "I" and "thou" can only be part of a pair. They exist as a couple, they cannot be divorced. What will the word 'I' mean if there is no "thou"? It won't mean anything. It will be meaningless; the meaning is given only through the other.

What will light mean if there is no darkness? And what will life mean if there is no death?

Just see the duality of language. All language is dual; the meaning comes from the opposite word. It looks very strange that the meaning should come to a word from the opposite word.

Light has meaning only because of darkness, love has meaning only because of hate, compassion has meaning only because of anger, and the saint has meaning only because of the sinner. The monastery is meaningful because of the marketplace. This is strange, but this is how it is. Words depend on their opposites.

If you look in the dictionary of the philosophers and enquire, "What is matter?" you will find the answer, "Not mind." And if you enquire, "What is mind?" you will find the answer, "Not matter." This is very absurd. You define matter by saying, "Not mind" and you define mind by saying, "Not matter."

And it seems you don't know what matter is or what mind is. Nobody knows.

Language depends on duality, as the whole of life depends on duality. Language arises out of life experiences; it is utterly rooted in life experiences. That's why truth is inexpressible.

And Lao Tzu is right when he says, "The moment you utter the truth it becomes a lie. Say it, and you have falsified it. The Tao that can be said is not the true Tao. The truth that can be expressed is no longer truth, the God that can be formulated and defined is no longer God."

What he is saying is that language is rooted in duality, and truth is transcendental to duality - nothing can be said about it.

That's why Buddha does not say anything about truth, not even yes or no. He will not even nod his head, this way or that. If you ask about truth he remains like a stone statue. No response comes from him - no response, negative or positive, as if he has not heard what you have asked. He HAS heard it, but to say anything will be wrong. ANYTHING will be wrong. Even to say that nothing can be said about it will be wrong, because you have already said something. "Nothing can be said about truth" is already a statement which defines it, an expression which gives it meaning.

Buddha is the most misunderstood man in the world. And the reason? - he has chosen the path of the negative, the path of emptying oneself, the path of elimination. He is the purest form of meditation, where two become one. And when two become one, nothing can be said. He cannot even dance, because that will be a statement. He cannot even sing, because that will be a statement.

He cannot even give you an indirect indication, not even a gesture. He is utterly quiet. He is just pure silence. If you have the eyes to see, you will be able to see. If you have the heart to understand, you will understand. But he is utterly unavailable to the world of language and communication.

Hakim Sanai says:

THE PURE MAN UNITES TWO IN ONE; THE LOVER UNITES THREE IN ONE.

He says: But what about the lover? His unity is far richer, because he unites three in one: the lover, the beloved, and love. His unity is a kind of trinity. That is the second path - the path of the devotee, the BHAKTA, the Sufi, the lover. And Sanai says it is far richer than the path of purity. Because of the unity of three, it had richness and it is far more juicy. And because it is a path of love, it does not negate, it affirms.

The path of the meditator says NETI NETI: neither this nor that. The path of love says ITI ITI: this too, this too. It accepts, it affirms. it welcomes, it is positive. It does not empty one; rather, it fills one with the Beloved. It invites God, it becomes a host to God. And there arises a unity which is not a unity of the disappearance of the observer into the observed or the observed into the observer. It is not a unity of disappearance: it is an orgasmic unity. It is like when two lovers move to the height of their passion - when they dissolve into each other but they ARE, and far more so than they have ever been.

Have you observed it? If somebody takes your hand very lovingly in his hand and presses it with warmth and love and caring, suddenly your hand becomes alive. It pulsates with new joy. Just a moment before, you may not have even been aware of your hand. Now the hand is alive, more alive than any other part of your body. The hand stands out; it becomes warmer and warmer. It feels the joy of the other in greeting you, it feels the love of the other pouring into you; it starts responding. It vibrates, it pulsates, it streams.

The psychologists say that a child who has not been hugged by the parents remains somehow dead.

His body never comes alive. The child needs to be hugged. The child needs to be hugged again and again, caressed and kissed. Otherwise the child will never know the life pulsating in his body.

He will remain literally cold, because he will never know warmth pouring into him. And when warmth is not pouring into him, he cannot respond with his own warmth. His warmth has to be challenged, provoked, seduced.

But our world has become more and more non-loving, non-caressing, non-hugging. People keep apart, people live at a distance. Even if they are standing side by side in a train, touching each other's body, still they keep themselves distant and aloof. That touch has to remain cold, because if the touch becomes warm the other may feel offended. You have transgressed, you have entered into his territory - and how dare you! The bodies may be touching, but the souls should not touch. The bodies may be touching, but they should touch as corpses touch; they should not become warm, they should not respond.

This has created a very encapsulated man who lives in a kind of grave, who lives in a cold world, dark and cold.

When somebody hugs you and the hug is not just an empty motion, an empty gesture, when the hug is real and authentic and he pours his love into you, your love energy rises to the occasion. Your body becomes alive, you feel a totally different kind of life. You start moving towards the optimum.

Otherwise, people live at the minimum. They live a dull life, their life has no sharpness - it can't have without love.

I am saying observe your body when you are lovingly holding somebody - what happens? The part of the body that is in touch with the other's love and is feeling the other's love becomes more alive.

Love gives a life that nothing else can give.

The meditator is cold. It is no accident that Buddha is the first man of whom marble statues were made. He is the first, and the marble fits with him perfectly. He is cold as marble, and of course as silent as marble. But he is more a statue than a man.

You cannot make a statue of a Sufi, because the statue will not express his dance, the statue will not express his song, the statue will not express his love, his prayer, his gratitude. His ecstatic madness will not be expressed by the statue. Statues can be made only of a meditator. The meditator is a statue - cold, silent, empty. Emptiness has a purity, that is true, but something is missing in it.

Richness is missing in it, life is missing in it, orgasmic joy is missing in it.

And that is what happens to the people who move through the path of VIA UNITIVA: their path is of orgasmic unity. Just as two lovers embrace each other, penetrate each other - not only physically but spiritually too - become dissolved and a kind of unity arises... Two individuals become one. And when these two individuals become one, in fact there are three things becoming one: the lover, the beloved and the love.

Love is a very solid phenomenon to the lovers. In fact the lover and the beloved are nothing compared to the reality of love. The love is far more real than their existence separate from each other. So when lovers meet, three things meet.

To symbolize this, in India we have created a beautiful sacred place, Preyag, where three rivers are said to meet. Two are visible, the third is invisible. One is the Ganges, very visible; another is Yamuna, very visible, and the third is Saraswati - nobody can see it. It is there, but it just has to be believed in; it is invisible.

To the scientific mind it looks absurd. How can there be an invisible river? Nobody has ever seen it, but Hindus go on saying that there is a meeting of three rivers: two are of this world, and the third is of the other. Two belong to the earth and the third belongs to the beyond.

This is really a metaphor of love. When two lovers meet, three things meet, three energies meet:

two are of this earth, one is of the beyond. Two are visible, you can see the lover and the beloved - but you will not be able to see love, which is far more valuable than both. In fact it is because of the third that the two are meeting, it is in the third that the two are dissolving. And when the two dissolve, the third also dissolves - but again, it is a totally different phenomenon.

Bahauddin is totally different from Buddha, Hakim Sanai is totally different from Sosan. And the difference is: Buddha will be utterly empty, Bahauddin will be utterly full. Buddha will be cool and cold, aloof, detached and silent. Bahauddin will be dancing in tremendous ecstasy. Buddha will be just peace. Bahauddin will be bliss also - peace will be secondary, bliss will be primary. In Buddha, peace will be primary, bliss will be secondary. In Buddha, peace will be visible, bliss will remain invisible. In Bahauddin, bliss will be there dancing - very visible, tangible, you can almost touch it - but peace will remain hidden, peace will be just a shadow. You can only infer it; you can guess, but you cannot touch it.

In Sosan you will find purity but emptiness. And in Sanai you will find fulfillment, utter fulfillment, overflowing.

These are two ways to meet the beyond: either disappear completely like Buddha, or become total like a Sufi or a BHAKTA.

THE PURE MAN UNITES TWO IN ONE; THE LOVER UNITES THREE IN ONE.

That's why Sanai calls his path "the path of the garden." The path of the meditator is a kind of desert.

The desert has its own beauty: if you have been in the desert in the night, it has a coolness you will never find anywhere else, and it has an immense silence, a huge enormous silence, and it has infinity. It has a taste of its own. Under the starry sky, of you have been in a desert alone, you will never find that aloneness anywhere else.

No other place on the earth is as full of solitude as a desert. And there is no variety, so you cannot be distracted. It is the same for miles and miles - as far as you can see up to the horizon it is the same. There is nothing to see; if you have seen one desert you have seen all. It is the same: the same scene goes on stretching farther and farther away. There is no distraction.

That's why many meditators have moved to the desert. Down the ages, many people have moved to the desert. The attraction has been the silence and the beauty of a non-distracting situation.

Nothing distracts, nothing moves, all is utterly quiet. Death can only be as quiet as the desert. It has a beauty of its own - but it lacks in richness and variety.

The garden has variety: many trees, much green foliage, many flowers, many colors, birds singing, streams flowing by, the sound of running water and the wind passing through the pines. And there are a thousand and one things happening together. The garden is full, the desert is empty.

The inner being of a meditator becomes like a desert, and the inner being of a lover becomes like a garden. Hence, Sanai has called these sutras THE HADIQA: the Garden.

Still, it depends on you. One may like the desert more than the garden, then that is his path. Nothing is wrong in it, one should go on that path. One has to look within oneself and see one's potential, one's possibilities, one's leanings.

It is possible the desert may be a garden to you or the garden may be a desert to you, because one man's food is another man's poison. It is Sanai who says the lover's world is far richer - it is a lover talking about his world, remember it.

BUT I AM FRIGHTENED LEST YOUR IGNORANCE AND STUPIDITY LEAVE YOU STRANDED ON THE BRIDGE.

Sanai says: But remember one thing... Each and every master has said it, because the problem is there on both the paths. The problem is, one can be stranded on the bridge. The meditator may become so addicted to meditation that he may be stranded on the bridge. The lover may become too much addicted to love, then he will be stranded on the bridge. Love is a bridge, meditation is a bridge. And you have to go beyond the bridge.

In the ultimate state, the meditator has to drop his meditation and the lover has to forget all about his love. Otherwise you will just be close to the door but you will not be able to enter into the temple.

The method has to be forgotten.

Buddha said that each method is like a raft, like a boat: use it to go to the other shore, but then leave it there and forget all about it and go on your way. There is no need to carry the raft on your head. If you carry the raft on your head you are just stupid.

But this is what is happening: millions of people become too addicted to their method. And the method CAN be addictive because it gives such beautiful experiences. The last barrier is the method, the last barrier is the bridge.

Just see the point - it is very paradoxical. The bridge takes you to the other shore: certainly it is a help, and you should be grateful to it, and you should be thankful to it. But it can become a problem.

You may fall in love with the bridge and you may make your house on the bridge. And if you start living on the bridge, you are neither of this shore nor of that shore; you are in a kind of limbo. And many so-called religious practitioners live in a kind of limbo - they are neither of this world nor of that. They have become addicted to the bridge.

And the bridge IS beautiful! Hence the fear of Sanai. Sanai says: I am afraid...

I AM FRIGHTENED LEST YOUR IGNORANCE AND STUPIDITY LEAVE YOU STRANDED ON THE BRIDGE.

Every disciple has to be told this in the beginning: "One day the method that has helped you so far has to be dropped. When its work is finished, don't carry it, not even for a single moment longer.

When your illness is gone, you have to drop the medicine. If you continue the medicine then IT will become your illness."

ALL methods are methods, all means are means. And if you want to reach the end you will have to drop all means and all methods. That is the only way to enter into the ultimate. The lover will have to forget all about love, and the meditator will have to forget all about meditation. Yes, there comes a moment when the meditator does not meditate, because he has become meditation himself; now meditation is not a separate activity. And there comes a moment when the lover does not love, because he is love himself. There is nobody else separate from love, love has become his being - he has forgotten all about it.

A great Indian Sufi, Kabir, says:

Since the day when I met with my Lord, there has been no end to the sport of our love...

I see with eyes open and smile, and behold his beauty everywhere.

I utter his name, and whatever I see, it reminds me of him; whatever I do, it becomes his worship...

Wherever I go, I move round him, all I achieve is his service:

when I lie down, I lie prostrate at his feet...

Whether I rise or sit down, I can never forget him; for the rhythm of his music beats in my ears.

Slowly slowly, gradually, ALL that you do becomes your prayer, your worship. All that you are becomes your meditation.

Kabir says:

I see with eyes open and smile, and behold his beauty everywhere.

I utter his name, and whatever I see, it reminds me of him; whatever I do, it becomes his worship...

Wherever I go, I move round him, all I achieve is his service.

Each act of the devotee or the meditator becomes suffused with his meditation or love. Slowly slowly, there is no doer left. Just as trees are blooming unselfconsciously, the meditator is in meditation unselfconsciously and the lover is in love unselfconsciously.

But man's stupidity can create trouble.

The Sufi master, Najmaini, dismissed a student with these words: "Your fidelity has been tested. I find it so unshakeable that you must go."

The student said, "Go I shall, but I cannot understand how fidelity can be a ground for dismissal."

Najmaini said, "For three years we have tested your fidelity. Your fidelity to useless knowledge and superficial judgments is complete. That's why you must go."

Fidelity to the useless is stupidity. Fidelity is not always good, not unconditionally good. Fidelity to the useless is a dangerous thing. And there are people who are very faithful to their stupidity, who are very faithful to their prejudices, who believe tremendously in their ignorance, who are very much attached to all that they have gathered. It is useless. It may even be harmful, it may be poisonous.

But whatsoever people have, they cling to it; they cannot let it go.

So what to say about beautiful experiences, spiritual experiences? People are even addicted to their misery, they cannot even drop their misery. They go on suffering but they cannot drop it, they cannot detach themselves from their misery. so what to say about ecstatic experiences of meditation and love? The danger IS there.

If one can become so attached to pain, one can easily become attached to those pleasant, utterly pleasant experiences that happen on the path of meditation and love. One can become stranded on the bridge: remember it! No method is so valuable that you have to cling to it. Use it, but use it wisely. Use it when it is helpful, use it when it helps your growth. Stop using it the moment you see that now you have used it enough and it is no longer helping your growth. Then it has to be dropped.

A master is needed for many things. This is also one of the needs, a very essential need of the disciple - being told in the right moment, "Now stop, it is enough. You have used this method, it has been of great help to you, but carrying it any more will become detrimental."

People live with such tremendous stupidity that if you watch their life you will be surprised. How do they manage? How can they go on befooling themselves?

I have heard:

Two Irish Catholic laborers were repairing the underground cables in the street opposite a well- known house of prostitution. While they had the advantage of seeing the street, they could not be observed.

Along came a rabbi who carefully looked in all directions to make sure he was not being observed and quickly ducked into the house. Pat turned to Mike: "Look at that dirty no-good Jew going into that evil house!"

A few moments later they saw the Methodist minister look carefully about him before he too entered this house. Again Pat turned to Mike: "Look at that heathen bastard sneaking into the evil house."

And about one hour later who should appear on the scene but the parish priest who also looked carefully in both directions before entering the house. Pat turned to Mike: "Poor Father O'Toole, I wonder who happens to be sick at that place?"

Now it is different. Now it is your own priest, the whole interpretation has changed. This is stupidity.

Not being able to see one's prejudices, clingings, attachments and addictions, is stupidity. And man is really very stupid.

The EST people illustrate it with a little parable. They use the parable telling that if you release a rat into a cage which has many rooms and in room number seven you always put a little piece of cheese, the rat will go around, he will search in all the rooms and will find the cheese in room number seven. Once, twice, thrice, you do it, then the rat immediately goes to room number seven.

He knows where the cheese is.

When he becomes accustomed to going to room number seven you change it: you put the cheese in room number three. He will rush to room number seven, will look around, will not find it, will be a little puzzled, will run around the house and start searching in other directions. Once or twice he will go into room number seven, again hoping. But sooner or later he will find the cheese in room number three, and he will stop going into room number seven.

Not so with man. He will continue going to room number seven his whole life! Even if cheese is no more found there, that is not the point. His fidelity, his devotion, to room number seven, his consistency: how can he change?

The Christian goes to the church, whether the cheese is available there or not. The Hindu goes to the Hindu temple - the cheese disappeared thousands of years ago. The Buddhist goes on worshipping the Buddha - yes, there was cheese, but twenty-five centuries have passed since then.

Now the cheese is here!

Man is like that. Man is the most stupid animal on the earth. No other animal is so stupid; all animals are clever in that way, intelligent in that way. You cannot expect the rat to go on and on for ever and ever, whether the cheese is there or not. At least he is alert - if the cheese is not there, finished!

Why go on reciting the Koran if you don't find any cheese there? But because your fathers were reciting it... and they were also not finding the cheese, but they were reciting it because THEIR fathers were reciting it.

Now look: not only will you go to room number seven, your children will also gi, and your children's children, and it will continue. This is stupidity!

A wandering dervish ran to where a Sufi master sat deep in contemplation, and said, "Quick! We must do something. A monkey has just picked up a knife."

"Don't worry," said the master. "so long as it was not a MAN."

When the dervish saw the monkey again he found, sure enough, that it had thrown the knife away.

Animals have a very intrinsic intelligence of their own. No animal is as stupid as man is. And the reason is because no animal lives through the head. Animals live through their experience, you live through your head. You make a ready-made program for your life and you go on following the blueprint. And if you don't follow it you feel guilty. If you don't go to the church you will feel guilty.

Many people come to me and they say, "We pray, we meditate." And I ask them, "Have you been growing through it?" They say, "Nothing is happening. But if we don't pray then we feel guilty."

Do you think the rat will feel guilty because this time he has not gone to room number seven? What does he care about room number seven? All that he cares about is cheese. You go on praying - you start feeling guilty because your father told you to pray, your mother told you to pray, and if you don't pray you feel as if you are betraying your father and mother.

You are betraying your own intelligence! And that is the only betrayal to be worried about. Never betray your intelligence. Remain alert that you don't betray your intelligence, otherwise you will be stranded somewhere or other - on the bridge. Because the bridge is immensely beautiful: you have not known anything like it. If you start moving into the world of meditation you will come across beautiful psychedelic experiences, so utterly mysterious that you are bound to be caught by them.

For example, one day you find great energy rising in your spine and it feels so cooling. Suddenly you feel transported to another world. You feel so alive, tingling with life, and as the energy moves higher and higher in the spine you are moving higher and higher. You are no more here on the earth, you have moved somewhere else. And it is so beautiful, so gratifying, so pleasant, that a thousand sexual orgasms are nothing. Just a single penetration of the energy through the spine to the head, and a thousand sexual orgasms are nothing. Then you will sit every day and wait for it and pray for it and work for it. You will try somehow to help the energy to move.

Do you know how Indian yogis started standing on their heads? Because of this experience. Mm?

It is a natural inference that it will be easier for the energy to move towards the head if you are standing on your head. Naturally - gravitation will work, it will pull up your energy. When you are sitting upright the energy finds it difficult to go up, because it has to be pumped all the way up, pulled all the way up, against gravitation. so stupid people devised the idea: Why not stand on your head?

Then it will be simply pouring without any effort.

And sometimes it happens, standing on your head it goes easier. But you are caught, stranded.

And the experience is so beautiful, so otherworldly, so superb, and so independent - now you are not dependent on a woman or on a man. You are utterly independent, you are free, and enjoying all that no love affair can ever give to you. You are stranded.

That's how people become addicted to drugs. These are inner drugs; these are also part of your body chemistry. There is nothing spiritual in kundalini, it is as physiological as your blood. It is really the electricity of your body, gathering at the base of the spine. When really too much of it is there it starts rising upwards in the spine and the very movement of the electricity makes you stoned. But this is no different really - whether you take LSD or you try some method of yoga posture to create that inner drug, it is the same! It can happen through fasting. It can happen through certain exercises of breathing, because when you exercise in a certain way it changes your body chemistry; certain glands are pressed and it changes your inner chemistry. When you breathe in a certain method, with a certain process, more oxygen goes in, more carbon dioxide goes out, and the balance changes inside you.

And I am not saying not to enjoy these things - just remember that these are beautiful experiences but you should not be stranded. The bridge is immensely psychedelic, and as you reach more and more close to the other shore, experiences will become more and more ecstatic and outlandish.

Beware - because the more ecstatic they are, the more is the possibility for you to think, "I have arrived."

HE IS THE PROVIDER OF BOTH FAITH AND WORLDLY GOODS; HE IS NONE OTHER THAN THE DISPOSER OF OUR LIVES.

HE IS NO TYRANT:

FOR EVERYTHING HE TAKES, HE GIVES BACK SEVENTY-FOLD; AND IF HE CLOSES ONE DOOR HE OPENS TEN OTHERS TO YOU.

Sanai says: Remember when these spiritual experiences, so-called spiritual experiences, start happening, remember that you are not the doer of them; it is again his gift. Then you will not become addicted. If you think, "I am the doer, and I have become a SIDDHA and I have achieved, and now I am capable of creating these experiences," then you are caught, your ego has come back in from the back door. It used to feel strengthened by having more money, by having a bigger house, by having a beautiful woman, this and that. Now, the same ego is enjoying another trip of spiritual experiences.

Sanai says: If you become egoistic in any way about your experiences that happen on the way, you will become addicted and be stranded on the bridge. Then what has to be done? Remember:

HE IS THE PROVIDER OF BOTH FAITH AND WORLDLY GOODS; HE IS NONE OTHER THAN THE DISPOSER OF OUR LIVES.

HE IS NO TYRANT:

FOR EVERYTHING HE TAKES, HE GIVES BACK SEVENTY-FOLD; IF HE CLOSES ONE DOOR HE OPENS TEN OTHERS TO YOU.

Remember that all comes from him. This is possible only on the path of love. On the path of meditation you are left alone. There is more danger of ego arising on the path of meditation than on the path of love, because you are utterly alone. There is no God. You cannot surrender yourself to anything, you cannot use God to protect you from yourself. But on the path of love, that beautiful help is available.

Remember: HE IS NO TYRANT. why? Because there is another thing of which you need to be reminded: when these beautiful experiences happen, simultaneously many painful experiences will also happen - because you are being uprooted from your identity, old identity, and there will be pain.

Whenever you move into the new reality there will be great bliss, and whenever you are uprooted from the old there will be great pain. There will be nights and days, there will be pain and pleasure moments. don't take those pleasure moments as you creation: surrender them to God. He is the provider of all; he is the giver of life itself.

And then pain comes and agony comes and you are in a great chaos and confusion, a dark night of the soul, don't be worried. Remember: HE IS NO TYRANT. How can he be? He is the source of your life. He is your mother, your father.

... FOR EVERYTHING HE TAKES, HE GIVES BACK SEVENTY-FOLD...

Remember it. Yes, it happens exactly like that. If you have to suffer a little bit, remember, seventy- fold will be given to you. Whatsoever is taken away, much more will be given to you - because that which is taken away from you is illusory, and that which is going to happen to you is going to be far more real.

And at each step this will be so, at each step you will become richer and richer. But you will have to be ready for one thing: you will have to pass through many fires. Each experience of passing through the fire is a new growth experience. Passing through the fire will be pain, utter pain, but the moment you are out of it you will see the point that it HAD to be gone through. Now you will be on a higher plane, and far more superior joys will become available to you.

It is by passing through fire that one becomes pure gold. Remember: HE IS NO TYRANT. That will help you. He is not a sadist, he does not enjoy torturing you. If you feel the torture, that is your interpretation. He is simply making more and more joys available to you, but you have to drop your toys. And dropping your old toys is painful. The pain is created by your attachment to the toys.

We believe immensely in our toys. And we KNOW they are toys and still we believe in them, our foolishness is such. We know that money is a toy and it will be taken away when death comes - all will be taken away. But still we go on gathering things, and hoping meanwhile that "This happens to everybody but this is not going to happen to me. I am special, I am an exception."

Nobody is an exception: all will be taken away from you. But we go on playing, we go on believing in our fantasies, we go on projecting.

A French mouse and an elephant go to the magistrate and ask for a special license to be married right away. The magistrate shakes his head and says it is impossible, because elephants and mice just don't mix. And the little mouse looks up with tears in her eyes and says, "But please, monsieur Magistrate, we've got to."

People go on believing in absurd things. Now the little mouse thinks she is pregnant: "We've got to; now there is no way of avoiding it!"

Look at your own absurdities. Look at your own life, at what you go on doing. It is so ridiculous, the way people live, the way people waste their lives. And when these toys are taken away - and they HAVE to be taken away, otherwise you will never become mature - there will be pain.

On the path of love, God is available to you.

HE IS NO TYRANT:

FOR EVERYTHING HE TAKES, HE GIVES BACK SEVENTY-FOLD; AND IF HE CLOSES ONE DOOR HE OPENS TEN OTHERS TO YOU.

But the trouble is with the human mind. The human mind becomes focussed on certain things. For example, if you have become accustomed to going through one door, you create a kind of tunnel vision: you cannot see any other doors. You only see that door, you become oblivious of other doors.

And when that one door closes you are in a panic, because of your tunnel vision.

The man who is searching for God has to learn how to drop tunnel vision, how to remain alert and available to all possibilities.

If one door closes, ten doors are immediately opened for you. This is not a philosophical statement, this is simply a fact. But you only look through your past. You are so obsessed by the past that you cannot see that other doors are opening. You cannot even believe that there are other doors. You know only one door, you have become familiar with it. You can go out and in from that one door mechanically, with no awareness - there is no need; you have become habituated to it.

Now it closes, and there is great pain and great fear and great agony. The agony is not happening because the door is closed, the agony is happening because you have tunnel vision. You cannot see anywhere else, you only have a focussed vision.

Let your eyes be a little wider.

And remember, Sanai say, that he never closes a door unless he has already opened ten for you.

So just look around and you will find them.

And this is my experience too, working with thousands of meditators. It comes every day: whenever one door closes... and old doors HAVE to be closed, otherwise how are you going to grow and move upwards? If you always go on moving through the same door then there is no transformation possible. Doors will have to be closed so that you are forced to move from a new angle, into a new dimension.

The master tries in every way to close your old doors. And that's why there is fear of the master too. And that's why people keep at a distance - they keep a certain distance so they can escape. If things become too much, unbearable, they can always escape.

And it hurts whenever a door is closed. You ask for growth, but whenever a door is closed, it hurts.

You become angry, you are in a rage. And you don't understand simple arithmetic: if you desire growth you will have to be always ready to move through new visions, new territories, new planes.

And the old is safe and the old is secure and convenient - that I know and every master knows. But if you remain with the old, YOU remain the old and you remain dead.

Life is with the new. Each moment has to be a death and a resurrection. Die to the past each moment!

And that is where the disciple is tested: that is the first test. When a door is closed, the disciple believes ten others must have been opened. He forgets about the closed door and he starts looking around for the doors that must have been opened. This is trust.

Trust life, trust God, trust existence.

HE TREASURES YOU MORE THAN YOU DO YOURSELF.

Remember: God created you. You cannot be unnecessary, you cannot be accidental. And God has created you as so unique, so individual, that there is no other "you" like you. You are the only one!

He has never created a person like you before, and will never create another person exactly like you.

See how much respect he has paid to you.

God is not like an assembly line that Ford cars go on coming out of - the same Ford cars, millions of Ford cars, all alike. God is a creator, not an assembly line. Each individual has been made not according to a mould, not according to a certain fixed pattern - each individual has been paid INDIVIDUAL attention. He has painted you individually, he has cut you in a certain way, given you a certain shape, a certain being. You are unique, you are original, you are not a copy.

HE TREASURES YOU MORE...

And certainly you are his creation - if you are lost, it is his loss.

HE TREASURES YOU MORE THAN YOU DO YOURSELF.

And that's a very obvious fact. People don't love themselves, they don't respect themselves. On the contrary, they condemn themselves. You are all self-condemners. That's what you have been brought by the priests, again and again, everywhere in the world: you have been conditioned to condemn yourself. And you go on condemning yourself. You don't think yourself of any worth. And this is one of the barriers, greatest barriers.

Love yourself, respect yourself, and you will be giving respect to God - because to respect the painting is to respect the painter, and to love the poetry is to love the poet. And you are the poetry and you are the painting. You are the music created by him. You are the visible proof that God is; the creation is the visible proof that the creator is. Love the creation, relish it, celebrate it: this is the only way to celebrate God. And you are the closest creation.

The man who condemns himself cannot love anybody else either. And the man who condemns himself condemns the whole existence. The world is full of these condemners, they have poisoned everybody. And the first thing that a master has to do with the disciple is to take all this poison out of his being. The greatest problem is to make you respectful of yourself, to make you aware that you are precious, that you are incomparable, that you have a great potential in you, that buddhas are hidden in you, that you are seeds of buddhas.

RISE, HAVE DONE WITH FAIRY-TALES; LEAVE YOUR BASE PASSIONS, AND COME TO ME.

Sanai says, as every master has always said: Come to me! But you will have to leave a few things, only then can you come to the master. If you cannot leave those few things you will remain with the priests and you will never find the master. And the priests are the enemies of all the masters.

The priest is never the master, and the master is never the priest; they don't belong to the same dimension. The priest has nothing to do with God. The priest has made a business out of God: he is exploiting the hypothesis of God. The priest is so ugly that he cannot leave even the idea of God unexploited.

According to one story, when God created the world and saw that it was good, Satan joined him in his appreciation and exclaimed, as he gazed from one wonder to another, "It is good! It is good! Let us make it an institution!"

Now, that is the priest. The priest makes everything a business, the priest makes everything an institution. Every insight of the great buddhas is finally reduced to an institution, to a church. The priest is in the service of Satan.

RISE, HAVE DONE WITH FAIRY-TALES...

And it is the priest who keeps feeding you on fairy-tales. He talks about God and he talks about heaven and hell and the angels and the rewards that the virtuous one will be given and the punishments that the sinners will have to suffer. These are all fairy-tales.

The priest goes on feeding you on fairy-tales. And because you remain attached to fairy-tales you remain stupid, you never mature. Beware: the priest is a salesman in the service of Satan. And the priest's whole work consists in decorating fairy-tales. He goes on inventing more and more fairy-tales. He is not concerned about truth, in fact he is very much afraid of truth.

So whenever there is a man like buddha the priest is against him. When there is a man like Jesus the priest is against him. Immediately the priest becomes alert, there is danger - because these people like Buddha and Jesus are against fairy-tales. They will destroy all the childish nonsense that goes on in the name of religion. And the priest lives on it, and down the ages he has become really skillful. The priest is the greatest salesman in the world.

A man came into a grocery store and asked for five cents' worth of salt. The proprietor asked, "What kind of salt do you want?"

"What kind of salt do I want? I want salt, plain and simple. How many kinds of salt are there?"

"Ha ha!" chuckled the store owner. "What you don't know about salt! You come with me." And he took him downstairs and showed him a cellar that contained no less than forty or fifty barrels of salt.

The customer was amazed.

"All these are different salts?" he asked.

"Yes, they're all different. We have salt for all kinds of prices and uses."

"My goodness, you are a specialist. I suppose, if you have all these barrels of different kinds of salt, you must sell one hell of a lot of salt. You must really know how to sell salt!"

"Oh," said the other, "me - I'm not so good at selling salt, but the guy who sold it all to me, boy, can he sell salt!"

The priest is continuously inventing fairy-tales. And he invents them for all kinds of people, for all sorts of minds. That's why there are three hundred religions on the earth - that means three hundred kinds of fairy-tales, available in all sizes, available at all prices, available according to everybody's need. Otherwise, what is the need for three hundred religions on the earth? There are not three hundred sciences on the earth. Science is one, because the scientific approach is one and the fundamental of science is one.

Religion will be one - if priests disappear and only Buddhas and Bahauddins and Sanais and Sosans are there, there will be only one religion. There will be a kind of religiousness in the world, not any religion in fact - a kind of religiousness.

You will have to drop your fairy-tales - Christian, Hindu, Mohammedan.

RISE, HAVE DONE WITH FAIRY-TALES; LEAVE YOUR BASE PASSIONS, AND COME TO ME.

There are base passions: money, power, sexuality, greed, anger, possessiveness, and so on and so forth. And man lives only in those base passions. Nothing is wrong in them, they are the foundation of the temple of life. But if there is only the foundation and no temple, then the foundation is utterly useless. It is useful in the context of the temple; if the whole temple is built then the foundation is useful. But if the temple is not built ever and you go on building only the foundation for ever and ever, it is utterly futile, pointless, a wastage of life and energy.

Sigmund Freud remained concerned with the base passions. That is his inadequacy. And because of that, psychoanalysis has not yet been able to become a temple. It is only a foundation, a bare naked foundation. It is not yet a house where you can live.

He wrote once to a friend: "I have always confined myself to the ground floor and basement of the edifice called man."

Aldous Huxley once said he should have said the basement-basement.

Man has a basement, that is true, but he also has an attic. Man is unconsciousness, true, but man also has the potential for superconciousness. And unless you start searching for the superconscious you will remain in the basement, or even the basement-basement. You will remain crawling on the earth - and you have the capacity to fly. You can become a butterfly, and you are not opening your wings because your attachment to the earth is too much. That attachment has to be transformed.

You have to start looking at the stars.

That's what Sufis call ADAB: to be in the presence of the master. Hindus call it SATSANG. To be in the presence of the master means to look at the stars, to become aware of the attic, that something higher is possible in you. Be thrilled that you are not finished as you are, that you can have wings, that you an fly as high as you desire, that even the sky is not the limit.

RISE, HAVE DONE WITH FAIRY-TALES; LEAVE YOUR BASE PASSIONS, AND COME TO ME.

And there are two kinds of people in the world. The worldly people remain the basement, they remain concerned with the base passions. And the so-called otherworldly, the religious, they become concerned with fairly-tales. And both are lost.

The real seeker will drop two things. First he will drop fairy-tales - that's why Sanai mentions first:

RISE, HAVE DONE WITH FAIRY-TALES...

The first thing is to drop fairy-tales, the inventions of the priests. And then the second thing is: watch your base passions, because in your base passions a great energy is hidden - if released, it will become the bridge which will join the earth and the sky.

... AND COME TO ME.

YOU HAVE TO REALIZE THAT IT IS HIS GUIDANCE THAT KEEPS YOU ON THE PATH AND NOT YOUR OWN STRENGTH.

But again Sanai reminds you that on the path of love his has to be remembered continuously, don't forget it even for a single moment.

YOU HAVE TO REALIZE THAT IT IS HIS GUIDANCE...

Always remember that if you start moving towards God it is he who has chosen you. Don't for a moment think, "Look! I am a great seeker of God. I am no ordinary man, I am not worldly, I am not like these worldly creatures. I am a spiritual man. I search for God, I don't seek and search for money or power." You have fallen again; again you have fallen into the basement. The ego is back.

Never for a single moment think that it is you who is searching for God. On the contrary, on the path of love, remember it must be he who has called you - otherwise how could you have searched for him? It must be he who has chosen you, it must be he who is pulling you. It must be he who is in some unknown, mysterious way taking you farther away to some unknown existence. It is he who has taken possession of you.

YOU HAVE TO REALIZE THAT IT IS HIS GUIDANCE THAT KEEPS YOU ON THE PATH...

And never for a single moment think, "It is because of my strength that I am on the path." No. If you think it is because of your strength that you are on the path, you have already gone astray. You have already become an egoist: you have created the separation between you and God.

"It is he who keeps me on the path. It is he who keeps reminding me not to go astray."

Plato used a beautiful word for truth. The word is A-LETHIA: it means non-forgetting, no-forgetting.

It means remembering, it means constant remembering.

Truth is a constant remembering. Truth is not forgetting for a single moment that "God is: only God is. He has given me life, he has given me the desire to search for truth, he has chosen me to search for him. He must have called me in some mysterious way - otherwise how could I have moved in his direction?"

The lover keeps on reminding himself, "It is the Beloved who is functioning like a magnet - I am being pulled, I am being drawn. It is not my work, it is his grace."

And if you can remember this, that it is his grace, the ego will not arise. And, slowly slowly, the ego will be dropped. And when the ego is dropped you have arrived. Then the three are one: then the lover and the beloved and the love are one. You have entered into the Garden - THE HADIQA.