Beyond the Shadow

Once a great enlightened master was using a fan when a philosophic monk came up to him and said, "The wind-nature - that is, wind-in-itself or the noumenal reality of wind - is permanently ubiquitous so that there is in the whole world no place which is not pervaded by it. If so, why are you using the fan?"

"What you know is only the theory that the wind is diffused throughout the world," said the master.

The monk said, "What is, then, the real meaning of the wind being diffused throughout the world?"

The master just went on fanning himself.

The monk made a reverential bow.

Religion is not anything abstract, religion is something very down-to-earth. Religion is not a philosophy but an experience. So those who go on thinking about God go on missing him. Thinking is not the way to him but the barrier, not the bridge but the wall. It is thinking that is keeping you separate.

Burn your thinking in intense thirst. When a man is lost in a desert and is thirsty, a moment comes when thirst is no more a thought in him, when he does not think about thirst, when he is simply thirst - his whole being involved in it, his every cell and fiber aflame with it. He is simply fire, he is thirst.

In that intensity, religion becomes real - in that kind of passionate intensity.

So remember that the greatest problem to be faced is speculation, philosophy, theorizing. Once can go on and on theorizing; there is no end to it, it is a process ad infinitum. One thought leads to another thought, and so on, so forth. You will never come to the end of the process - there is no end. It is a vicious circle. You will be moving in a circle like an ox in the mill. Movement will be there, but there is not going to be any arrival. And it is arrival that fulfills.

Religion has nothing to do with thinking, but it has everything to do with a tremendous thirst for truth.

One day, a master took his seat in the lecture hall and said, "Over the lump of your reddish flesh there is a True Man without any rank. He is constantly going in and coming out through the gates of your face - that is, through your sense organs. If you have not yet encountered him, catch him, catch him here and now!"

At that moment, a monk came out and asked, "What kind of a fellow is t his True Man without any rank?"

The master suddenly came down from the platform, grabbed at the monk, and urged him, "Speak, you speak!" The monk hesitated for an instant. The master on the spot thrust him away, saying, "Ah, what a useless dirt-scraper this True-Man-without-any-rank of yours is!" And immediately he retired to his private quarters.

The monk hesitated for an instant, that is to say, he reflected a moment in order to give an adequate response to the violent urging of the master. This was the moment when discursive thinking became activated. Note that at that very moment the True-Man-without-any-rank turned into a useless dirt- scraper.

The difference between the truth and the untruth is not great. The distance is almost none, I say - almost that of a kind of nothingness, as if just a small hair divides them. Just a moment's thinking, a single thought's coming into being, a small cloud of thought moving into your clear sky, just a little layer of dust on the mirror, and you have lost, and you have fallen from truth into untruth, from awakening into deep profound sleep.

Beware of thinking.

The moment religion becomes involved in thinking, it falls into an ugly sleep called theology. It starts dreaming of God, heaven and hell, angels and devils, and it goes on creating a thousand and one things, but they are all dream stuff. Truth has nothing to do with all those thoughts.

And you can be very clever and you can be really very argumentative about your thoughts. You may even convince others, and finally yourself, but all thinking is just absurd.

Truth IS. You are not to think about it - you have to see it, you have to be it.

The last sutras of Hakim Sanai.

NO ONE KNOWS HOW FAR IT IS FROM NOTHINGNESS TO GOD.

No one can ever know, because it all depends on the seeker, on his passionate and intense search.

It depends on your intensity. If you are just lukewarm in your search, then God is very very far away from your nothingness. If you are total in your thirst, nothing is being held back, you have taken a jump into it, you have not left anything behind, no part of you is missing, you have jumped as a whole organic unity - your anger, your love, your hate, your greed, all together - you have staked whatsoever you have, whatsoever nature has given you, then the distance is almost nil.

It depends on your intensity. The proportion of your intensity will decide the proportion of the distance between God and your ungodly sleep.

NO ONE KNOWS HOW FAR IT IS FROM NOTHINGNESS TO GOD.

AS LONG AS YOU CLING TO YOUR SELF YOU WILL WANDER RIGHT AND LEFT, DAY AND NIGHT, FOR THOUSANDS OF YEARS; AND WHEN, AFTER ALL THAT EFFORT, YOU FINALLY OPEN YOUR EYES, YOU WILL SEE YOUR SELF, THROUGH INHERENT DEFECTS, WANDERING AROUND ITSELF LIKE THE OX IN A MILL; BUT, IF, ONCE FREED FROM YOUR SELF, YOU FINALLY GET DOWN TO THE WORK, THIS DOOR WILL OPEN TO YOU WITHIN TWO MINUTES.

Have you watched it, that whenever you are intense in anything the self disappears? You are in love with someone: in the very intensity of your love, the self disappears. You are no more, there is only love. Or you are in anger: in the intensity and totality of anger, the self disappears. You are no more there, only the anger is.

You can watch it in your own life. Whenever something is there, possessing you, all in all, the self is not found. That is a great clue: the self is there only when you are half-hearted in something. That which you keep back becomes the self.

If you are totally involved in painting, in doing some work, singing a song or dancing or playing guitar, if you are totally in it, you will immediately see you are not there. Something of the beyond has taken possession of you. The self is not there, unself is.

And to be in the state of unself is to be in God. To be in the state of self is to be far away from God - the self is the distance. And this mechanism has to be understood. Once this mechanism is understood well, there is no problem: then God is so obvious.

And you have come to this point many times, unawares of course. Seeing a beautiful sunset, you were so lost in the beauty of it that for a moment there was no idea of the self. You were not there.

There was a totally different quality: you were not there. Something was there, but you cannot call it 'I', you cannot call it any frozen state of the ego. You were fluid, flowing.

This is what Krishnamurti calls the moment when the observer becomes the observed.

The sunset was there and the sunset was too much. It possessed you. The observer disappeared into the observed. The sunset was all; you were not separate, you were not standing aloof and watching, you were not a spectator. You were in it, you were part of it, you started feeling a kind of melting, merging.

Hence the liberating experience of beauty, hence the liberating experience of love, hence the liberating experience of music, great music. These moments you have known - they come naturally, and they go. But you have never been able to reduce them to a scientific approach. You have not meditated over them, you have not looked into the keys that are hidden in them.

The key is that whenever you are not, God is.

This can be done consciously. then there is no need to wait for a sunset, because that will be, after all, a kind of dependence. Then there is no need to wait for love - again, that will be a kind of dependence; it may liberate for a moment, but then it will become a bondage.

If you fall in love with a woman or a man, it is liberating. That's why people fall in love. But sooner or later they find that the liberating experience has disappeared, evaporated, and instead of that liberating experience they suddenly wake up in bondage - chained, imprisoned.

What happened to the love that was so liberating? How did it become an imprisonment? You became dependent on it, you became addicted to it; it was so beautiful, it became a drug to you.

And once anything becomes a drug, once you are addicted to anything, whatsoever it is, you are in bondage. Then it does not liberate, it cannot liberate. It becomes ugly; everything goes sour, bitter, poisonous.

No, one cannot be liberated by these small experiences of beauty, love, music. True, they give you glimpses, but those glimpses cannot become your state of being. You have to learn the secret of unselfing yourself.

Each experience that has given you some kind of freedom was basically an experience of unselfing.

So now, rather than depending on something, start unselfing yourself. Sitting silently, disappear:

don't be. Working, disappear: don't be. Whenever you can find time, disappear. And then, slowly slowly, the knack arises. Then twenty-four hours you can go on working, living your ordinary life, and yet you are not there. There remains a kind of pure, silent space within you.

That silent space is God.

And this can happen instantly, because not for a single moment is God far away from you. You may be far away, but God is never far away from you. You may have fallen into a deep slumber, but any moment you can wake up. The capacity to wake up remains always yours.

... AND WHEN, AFTER ALL THAT EFFORT...

Of going right and left, doing this and that - yoga methods, prayer, meditations; there are a thousand and one methods. Doing this, doing that, one day suddenly you wake up. You simply open your eyes and great laughter arises in you at the whole ridiculousness of your effort - because you were trying to get that which you have already got. Hence the absurdity.

It is said that Hotei, when he became enlightened, started laughing. He lived for years but the laughter continued. Whenever people would say to him, "Say something to us. What is your message?" he would start laughing, a belly laugh, he would start rolling on the floor.

Why was Hotei doing such absurd things? From his standpoint, the very idea of searching for God is ridiculous, because God is already the case. You need not go anywhere, you have just to open your eyes. You have never missed him.

He is your life. He is the beat of your heart, you breathe him in and out, he circulates in your blood.

He is your consciousness, and he is your sleep too. Just open your eyes.

... AND WHEN, AFTER ALL THAT EFFORT, YOU FINALLY OPEN YOUR EYES, YOU WILL SEE YOUR SELF, THROUGH INHERENT DEFECTS, WANDERING AROUND ITSELF LIKE THE OX IN A MILL...

What is the inherent defect of the self? The inherent defect is that the self is a false entity - and the false cannot meet the true.Darkness cannot meet light; if you bring light in, darkness disappears. If you want darkness to be in, you will have to take light out; they never meet.

There is an inherent defect in darkness. What is that inherent defect? It is nonexistential; it is a shadow. The shadow follows you, and it follows so constantly, so consistently, that you can start thinking of it as if it is something real. Wherever you go, it is with you; it never leaves you. But still, it does not exist.

Ohrenstein, his hands in his pockets, was walking through a fashionable park, deep in thought, when a police sergeant came running up to him.

"You'll have to put that dog on a leash," the police sergeant shouted, pointing to a huge yellow dog who was frolicking at Ohrenstein's feet.

Ohrenstein, his hands in his pockets, walked away without so much as looking at the policeman.

The police sergeant came after him. "What's the matter with you?" the policeman said. "There are signs everywhere that no dogs are allowed in this park unless they're on a leash!"

Ohrenstein, his hands in his pockets, walked away without saying a word. "Well, we can't have that,"

said the police sergeant, bewildered. "I'm going to have to give you a fine."

"A fine?" asked Ohrenstein. "Whatever for? That's not my dog!"

"That's not your dog?" said the police sergeant. "Then why the hell is he running after you?"

"And you?" asked Ohrenstein, taking his hands out of his pockets. "Aren't you also running after me? Well? And you're not my dog either!"

The shadow that is constantly running after you may give you the feeling that it is something real, that it belongs to you. You may get identified with it.

The ego is just a shadow, the shadow of the self. It is not the self, it is not your authentic being, it is just a shadow. To know it as a shadow is to be free of it; nothing more is needed. You are not to fight with it, you are not to go and do something to get rid of it - because if you try to get rid of it, that will simply prove that you still think it is real.

It happens, many times people come to me and they ask, "How to get rid of the ego?" The very question is meaningless. And there are people, so-called religious saints, who will give you methods, practices, to get rid of the ego. In the first place, the question is absurd. And the answers that are provided are even more stupid.

You are not to get rid of the ego, because you cannot get rid of something which is not. In the very effort to get rid of it, you have accepted its reality - and that is where the basic defect is. Know that the ego is just a shadow, and you are free of it. Let it follow you, it doesn't matter. It is NOT: it can't affect you, it can't do a thing to you.

Even when one becomes enlightened, one has to use the word 'I'. Krishna uses it, Christ uses it, Buddha uses it; they still use the word 'I'. You also use the word 'I' but the meaning that you give to it is not given by Buddhas. Buddhas use it only as a linguistic device, you use it as if it is something real. Buddhas use it only as a utility, as something arbitrary but linguistically meaningful. But there is no ego corresponding to the 'I', there is no reality that conforms to it.

When you use the 'I' you think there is somebody inside you who conforms to the idea of 'I'. That's the only difference. You think the shadow is real, and then you want to get rid of it, or you want to make it more and more strong, bigger and bigger - both are the same. There are people who would like to make their egos very big and great, and there are people who would like their egos to disappear completely. And both are in the same boat.

The real man of understanding, of awareness, simply laughs at the whole thing.

Never as a wrong question, otherwise there are people who will supply you with wrong answers.

And as far as the ego is concerned, all questions are wrong.

Mr. and Mrs. Gotbaum celebrated thirty years of marriage by going to a fancy restaurant. Awed by the elegant ambience, they nevertheless enjoyed selecting and tasting the strange-sounding dishes.

At the end of the meal, however, the waiter brought over two finger bowls and left them at the table.

Mrs. Gotbaum looked at Mr. Gotbaum, and Mr. Gotbaum looked back at Mrs. Gotbaum. Neither of them knew what to do.

"Ask the waiter," suggested Mr. Gotbaum.

"Are you kidding?" exclaimed her husband. "Show our ignorance? How embarrassing!"

"Yes," she said. "But it would be more embarrassing not to use them at all."

"True," said the man. So he called over the waiter and said, "Pardon me, but could you tell me the purpose of these dishes of... of liquid?"

The waiter was polite. "Sir, those are finger bowls. You dip your fingers into the perfumed waters and then dry them on your napkin."

Mr. Gotbaum waited until the waiter left. Then he turned to his wife, and said, "See, Molly? You ask a foolish question, and you get a foolish answer!"

Remember, there are a few things about which all questions are foolish and all answers are foolish.

The ego is one of those things. Don't ask a question about the ego - rather, watch it. Look into its workings, observe its subtle ways, without condemnation, without evaluating, just with simple observation, to know what it is, just to be acquainted with it, whatsoever it is. Don't say it is good, don't say it is bad, don't try to enlarge it, and don't try to make it disappear. Just watch. It is something that is always with you, and follows you: what is it?

And don't ask anybody else, there is no need. You have it: you can watch it.

And in that very watching, non-judgmental watching, you will be surprised: one day you will see that the ego does not really exist. And the moment you have seen that it doesn't exist, your eyes open to that which is beyond the ego, to that which is beyond the shadow. The infinite light for the first time penetrates you.

Don't become obsessed with the ego. The egoist is obsessed with it, and the so-called humble person is also obsessed with it. In fact the humble person is trying to create a more sophisticated ego, more subtle, more decorated, more precious - that's all. He carries the idea that "I am humble; nobody is more humble than me."

When Thomas Mann was visiting America for the first time, one of Hollywood's literati abased himself before the novelist, emphasizing that he was nothing, a mere hack, his work not to be mentioned in the same breath with that of the master. Mann listened with infinite patience and courtesy, but when the party was over, he turned to his host, an old friend, and said, "That man has no right to make himself so small. He is not that big."

Humbleness also makes people big. Humbleness is the most subtle way of the ego, the subtlest - very refined, cultured, sophisticated. The egoist is a little gross, the humble person is not gross, but the game is the same. See the game, watch the game. And don't go to watch with already accepted ideas. This is the problem, this is why people cannot go beyond the ego: they have already decided what it is.

Western psychologists say it is a very good thing; it has to be strengthened, the ego has to be made stronger. You have to be aggressive, only then can you act and function in the world. And you need a strong ego to survive, because life is a constant conflict; if you have a weak ego, anybody will crush you.

So the whole Western culture depends on strengthening the ego, making it more and more strong, and more and more crystallized. And the East has taken the polar opposite: become humble, just think of yourself as if you are nothing. But that "as if" is just a make-belive: debase, abase yourself, be humble, let the ego disappear completely.

These two standpoints seem to be very very opposite, diametrically opposite. But deep down they are not really opposite but complementary. The Eastern man has been creating a very subtle kind of ego - a religious kind, but it is the same game. The West is a little gross, and the reason is that the West is a new phenomenon.

The real Western mind is just the by-product of three hundred years of scientific upbringing. The East has lived for at least ten thousand years; it has learned better ways of egoing. It has become very very clever and cunning.

The West is a little childish, the East is old and has all the cunningness of an old man. But whether you strengthen the ego or you weaken the ego, one thing is absolutely certain, that you both have accepted its existence, its reality.

And that is where the defect lies: it is unreal. You need not strengthen it, you need not weaken it. All that is needed is a penetrating insight into its functioning, and that very insight dissolves it.

It remains then, but just like a shadow - a linguistic device, arbitrary, with no existential truth in it.

Then you can use it but you are not used by it.

... AND WHEN, AFTER ALL THAT EFFORT, YOU FINALLY OPEN YOUR EYES, YOU WILL SEE YOUR SELF, THROUGH INHERENT DEFECTS, WANDERING AROUND ITSELF LIKE THE OX IN A MILL; BUT, IF, ONCE FREED FROM YOUR SELF, YOU FINALLY GET DOWN TO WORK, THIS DOOR WILL OPEN TO YOU WITHIN TWO MINUTES.

Yes, it opens within two minutes. Why two minutes? Why not one minute? it is a metaphor, a Sufi metaphor: one minute for you, one minute for God. One minute for you to open up, and one minute for him to enter in you. In fact those two minutes are not two, but two sides of the same coin. Here you disappear, there he immediately appears.

GOD WILL NOT BE YOURS, AS LONG AS YOU CLING TO SOUL AND LIFE:

YOU CANNOT HAVE BOTH THIS AND THAT.

BRUISE YOUR SELF FOR MONTHS AND YEARS ON END; LEAVE IT FOR DEAD, AND WHEN YOU HAVE DONE WITH IT, YOU WILL HAVE REACHED ETERNAL LIFE.

God will not be yours, as long as you cling to the soul and life. As long as you cling to the idea of separation, that "I am separate from existence," God will not be yours, because God is in the union with existence: UNIO MYSTICA. God is in fact the union. God is not a person but the union.

When the river meets the ocean, that meeting-point is God. When two lovers dissolve into each other, that dissolution is God. When the painter is lost in his painting, that moment is God. God is a space - a space where dualities dissolve, disappear, and oneness arises.

A famous Taoist story says a great emperor asked the greatest painter of his land to paint the wall of his bedroom with Himalayan mountain peaks. "Paint the Himalayas" - he was a lover of the Himalayas. The painter worked for two or three years, and when the painting was completed he asked the king to come and see.

The curtain that was covering the wall was removed. The emperor was simply transported to another world. He had been to the Himalayas many times, he was a lover of the mountains, but the painting even surpassed the real. He looked and looked and looked. He was so mystified that he could not utter a single word for many minutes.

Then he suddenly said, "But I have been to these parts. I have never seen this path that goes round and round the mountains. Where did you get the idea of this path?"

And the story says the painter said, "I don't know, really. Let me go and see." And he went onto the path and disappeared behind the mountain - in the painting! - and never came back again.

A strange story, unbelievable. How can you go into the painting and never come back again? But it is of tremendous significance. It is not a historical event but a mythological, poetic event, which says much.

It says that the painter can disappear into his painting: only then is he a painter. The poet can disappear in his poetry: only then is he a poet. If he cannot disappear in his poetry then his poetry is just rubbish. If he cannot disappear in his painting, then he may know all the techniques of painting but he is not a great artist. He may be a technician, he may know about colors and canvasses and he may know how to paint, but he has no real genius in him. His painting is something separate from him; he has not yet found the union with his painting.

And whenever the union is found, God is found.

That's why I say there are as many doors to God as there are people. All that is needed is, whatsoever you are doing, get lost in it; be so totally one with it that nothing is left behind. In that very moment, God is. God is UNIO MYSTICA: the mystic union.

GOD WILL NOT BE YOURS, AS LONG AS YOU CLING TO SOUL AND LIFE...

If you are clinging to your separate existence, if you are clinging to your separate life, God will not be yours - because God is the union.

... YOU CANNOT HAVE BOTH THIS AND THAT.

You cannot have both separation and union; that is impossible. That is not possible because of the very nature of things. Either you can be united or you can remain separate.

BRUISE YOUR SELF FOR MONTHS AND YEARS ON END; LEAVE IT FOR DEAD, AND WHEN YOU HAVE DONE WITH IT, YOU WILL HAVE REACHED ETERNAL LIFE.

And the paradox is, when you are no longer interested in your separate life, in your separate being, you will have infinite being and you will have eternal life. You may disappear as a small flame of a candle, but you will become the sun of all the suns. You may disappear as a drop, but you will become the ocean.

REMAIN UNMOVED BY HOPE AND FEAR.

TO NONEXISTENCE MOSQUE AND CHURCH ARE ONE; TO A SHADOW, HEAVEN AND HELL LIKEWISE.

FOR SOMEONE WHOSE GUIDE IS LOVE.

BELIEF AND DISBELIEF ARE EQUALLY A VEIL, CONCEALING THE DOORWAY OF THE FRIEND; HIS VERY BEING IS A VEIL WHICH HIDES GOD'S ESSENCE.

Remain unmoved by hope and fear. How to enter into that mystic union? What keeps you separate?

What divides you? Everybody wants to get rid of fear, but nobody wants to get rid of hope - and fear is part of hope, the other side of hope. So if you want to save hope, fear comes from the back door.

Everybody wants to drop all pain, but nobody wants to drop pleasure - and pain is part of pleasure.

You want to be happy, you don't want to be unhappy, but unhappiness is part of happiness.

See this duality. Love and hate are together, birth and death are together. Go and watch it in your life: everything you will find is part of its opposite. And the problem, the dilemma, is that we want to drop half and we want to keep the other half. This is not possible: you cannot drop one side of a coin and keep the other side. You either have to keep both or you have to drop both; you cannot choose one. Either choose the whole coin or drop the whole coin.

You want love but you don't want hate - this is not possible.

Now this ancient truth has become part of modern psychotherapies too. Modern psychology has also agreed with the truth that love and hate are not two things. In fact to use two words separately with 'and' dividing them is not right; it may be grammatically right, but existentially it is not right.

So those who are more alert to the phenomenon have started using a single word: 'lovehate'.

'Love and hate' is wrong; then a few psychologists started using 'love-hate' with a hyphen; now the more insightful have even dropped the hyphen, because not even a hyphen exists between the two.

Lovehate is simply one word. Hopefear is one word, painpleasure is one word, birthdeath is one word.

Once you remember that these dualities are not dualities, then something of tremendous importance has been understood. Now if you want to, you can keep both - but who wants to keep hate, and who wants to keep death, and who wants to keep misery? Then drop both.

And in that disappearance, the barrier between you and reality disappears - because when all dualities are dropped, you start falling into oneness with existence.

God is one, you are dual - that is the problem. When you drop dualities, you also become one.

REMAIN UNMOVED BY HOPE AND FEAR.

TO NONEXISTENCE MOSQUE AND CHURCH ARE ONE...

And watch - we have created dualities everywhere: the mosque and the church, the Koran and the Bible, the Hindu and the Christian. We have crated so many dualities. There are natural dualities like lovehate, and there are unnatural dualities like the Catholic and the communist, the Kremlin and the Kaaba. We have crated many - there are natural dualities and there are man-made dualities; we are surrounded by dualities. And existence is non-dual.

The moment you drop choosing between these duals, the moment you become a non-chooser, the moment you remain in a choiceless awareness, suddenly a great illumination happens. Then it doesn't matter whether you live or die, because all is one. It does not matter what happens to you, because your deepest core always remains beyond all happenings. You are neither a sinner nor a saint then.

Taoists, Sufis, Zen people, they never call their masters saints - never; they call them sages. And they make a great distinction between the saint and the sage. The saint is against the sinner, the saint is part of the dual world. The sage is one who has dropped all duality; he is not against the sinner, he knows nothing of the sinner and the saint, he is neither.

Hence it is very difficult to understand a sage. It is very simple to understand a saint; the saint is within your understanding, because he lives in the same world of duality that you live in. You can understand the sinner and the saint both. But to understand the sage, you will have to go beyond your duality.

The sinner is easy to understand, the saint is easy to understand. One has chosen the dark side of life, and another has chosen the light side of life, but both are choosers. And the moment you choose, you are in bondage.

Freedom is choicelessness. The sage does not choose: he lives moment to moment, without any choice. He allows life to flow through him. He allows God to do whatsoever is his will; he has no will of his own.

The saint has his own will, sometimes far stronger than the sinner's. That's why it is said of sinners that they are weak people, that they have many weaknesses, that they are victims of human weaknesses. And the saint is a strong person, a man of willpower. If this is so, then the sinner is closer to God than the saint, because less willpower means less ego.

And this is my experience too. I have watched both, observed both saints and sinners. Sinners are more innocent than the saints. Saints are very cunning, very clever, cultivated hypocrites. The sinner is simple, innocent, animal-like.

The sage is one who has dropped both being a sinner and a saint, who simply lives spontaneously, naturally. He has no idea of how to live his life. He is neither worried about sins, nor is he practising virtues. He is innocent like a child.

My sannyasins have to keep it always in their consciousness that I am not creating saints here, not at all. The world is burdened too much but the saints, they have been making too much fuss in the world. They have destroyed man's naturalness, they have made man phoney.

I am for sages, not for saints. And sage-consciousness is where dualities have been dropped, choice has been dropped. One has surrendered to God - one flows with the river, one no longer has any private goals. One simply feels part of the whole. "Wherever the whole is going, I am also going. If it si not going anywhere, I am not going anywhere. I am utterly in tune with the whole." That is the state of a sage.

REMAIN UNMOVED BY HOPE AND FEAR.

And you will become a sage.

TO NONEXISTENCE MOSQUE AND CHURCH ARE ONE...

The sage is nonexistential; he does not exist as a separate entity. Hence the sage makes no distinction between the mosque and the temple, the church and the GURUDWARA. It is all the same for him; all houses are God's houses, even ordinary houses are temples.

TO NONEXISTENCE MOSQUE AND CHURCH ARE ONE; TO A SHADOW, HEAVEN AND HELL LIKEWISE.

Only egos think of hell and heaven. Those who have dropped their egos, or have understood that there are no egos but just shadows, for them there is no hell, no heaven. Again, remember, hell and heaven are not two words; we should use one word, heavenhell.

FOR SOMEONE WHOSE GUIDE IS LOVE...

And in this state of choicelessness, love becomes your guide. In choicelessness, love starts overflowing.

FOR SOMEONE WHOSE GUIDE IS LOVE, BELIEF AND DISBELIEF ARE EQUALLY A VEIL...

The sage does not believe, does not disbelieve. He simply lives a very ordinary life. Utterly ordinary he is: hungry, he eats; sleepy, he sleeps. He has nothing imposed upon himself, he has no ideals.

He does not believe, he does not disbelieve; he is silent about that.

And what are your beliefs? Just repressed doubts. Look into each of your beliefs, and deep down at the bottom you will find just the opposite of it: a great doubt. The greater the doubt, the greater the energy you have to pour into your belief.

When somebody says, "I strongly believe..." that simply shows he strongly doubts. Fanatics are the greatest doubters. They HAVE to become fanatics, otherwise they will not be able to repress their doubts. And this creates hypocrisy.

I have heard about a Christian Scientist, a faith healer.

There was a faith healer of Deal Who said, "Although pain isn't real, If I sit on a pin And it punctures my skin I dislike what I fancy I feel."

This is going to be so. You can impose beliefs upon yourself, but you cannot dispose of reality so easily. You will become a hypocrite.

FOR SOMEONE WHOSE GUIDE IS LOVE, BELIEF AND DISBELIEF ARE EQUALLY A VEIL...

Because love opens the doors of the heart, and belief and disbelief are only intellectual. Somebody believes God is: that is preventing him from knowing God, because without knowing God he already believes God is. His belief is insincere, his belief is untrue, because he has not known yet. See the insincerity of so-called believers.

And the man who says, "I don't believe in God" is also insincere, because if you have not known yet, how can you disbelieve?

The sincere person will be an agnostic. He will not choose; he will not say yes, he will not say no.

He will remain untethered, free. He will say, "I will search. I will go into myself as deeply as I can, as totally as I can. I will melt myself into existence, I will drop this separation and see what happens, whether union is possible or not. If it happens, I will know; if it doesn't happen, I will know."

But remember, when you don't know, belief is irrelevant. When you know, then too, belief is irrelevant. When one knows, one knows; there is no question of believing.

... BELIEF AND DISBELIEF ARE EQUALLY A VEIL, CONCEALING THE DOORWAY OF THE FRIEND...

Sanai's statement is of tremendous significance. Both belief and disbelief, both the atheist and the theist, go astray: they go on moving away from God.

God's door is open only to a heart who does not believe, who does not disbelieve, who is simply open. A believing or disbelieving mind is a closed mind; he has already gathered a prejudice. And once you are prejudiced you are polluted, poisoned by others. Beware of it.

Your parents have been poisoning you, your politicians, your priests, your teachers, all have been poisoning you. They are giving their beliefs to you. Everybody likes to give his belief to other people - why? Because once somebody has started believing the way you believe, he becomes a slave to you. You feel good: your dominion has become bigger, your domination has expanded, one more person has become part of your domination.

Parents jump upon their children when they are very young. Priests are continuously anxious to get hold of children as young as possible, so that they can force their beliefs into the purity of the child's consciousness. And the child is so helpless, he cannot even say no; he does not know how to say no. He cannot resist, he cannot fight against them. This is very undemocratic; this whole religious nonsense that goes on and on is very undemocratic.

If democracy is really to happen in the world, priests and parents should be prevented from giving their beliefs to their children. Children should be left alone; only after they have become mature should they start enquiring on their own.

Yes, give them a thirst for truth, but don't give them a belief. Give them a passionate desire to enquire, but don't give them a concept. Give them a kind of meditativeness: tell them how to be silent, tell them how to sit without doing anything, how to remain unoccupied. Tell them all these things, because these are not beliefs; but don't tell them what to believe in and what not to believe in. Don't make them Christians and Hindus and Mohammedans. Make them meditative, that's all.

Help them to become more intelligent, sharpen their intelligence, so that when they stand on their own, when they are mature enough, they will be able to find their way. They will be able to find the way to God.

And it will be very easy. Millions of people can reach God, it is our birthright. But we are not reaching him, because before we reach God we have already been burdened with so many beliefs. And all those beliefs are insincere - they have destroyed our enquiry, they have destroyed our openness, we have become closed.

The doorway of the friend is closed because of our beliefs and disbeliefs.

... HIS VERY BEING IS A VEIL WHICH HIDES GOD'S ESSENCE.

The very idea that "I am" hides God's essence. And beliefs and disbeliefs are of immense importance for the ego, they are props for the ego. Just think: if you are neither a Hindu nor a Mohammedan nor a Christian, a part, a great chunk, of your ego has already disappeared. If you don't believe in the Bible and you don't believe in the Koran and you don't believe in DAS KAPITAL, another chunk has disappeared. These are nourishments for the ego.

Just think for a moment: if you don't have any belief or any disbelief, a kind of space arises in you, pure. In the beginning it may be frightening, because you have not known it for so long, you have completely forgotten that once it was your space.

When you were born, you were born TABULA RASA - clean, pure, just a space. You were born an empty sky. And then clouds gathered, clouds and clouds, and all the purity and all the openness and all the space was lost.

Sannyas means to create that space again.

Just the other day, a woman wrote a letter to me. She is a Catholic, and because she missed church last Sunday, because she could not go to church, she has been feeling very guilty, very frightened.

Now she wants to become a sannyasins, and is afraid what will happen to her Catholic upbringing and the church and the priests.

I can understand her fear, it is natural. But nobody is born as a Catholic or as a Protestant; we have been taught these things.

And remember, God cannot be taught. Religion cannot be taught; it has to be caught, it cannot be taught. To be a Catholic is just to be foolish. If you can find Christ somewhere, be with him by all means; be totally with him, don't miss the opportunity - because religion can be caught from him.

But no Catholic priest can teach it to you, no church can give it to you.

You have to be in communion with a living master. If you can find Christ, be with him. If you cannot find Christ, be with Buddha; if you cannot find Buddha, be with Mohammed - but find somebody alive. And you will be surprised: whether you are with Buddha or Christ of Mohammed or Sanai, it doesn't matter. It is the same religion that you will catch, it is the same God. If you are here, you can catch it - rather than thinking of going to a church where a priest is simply telling you things which he has been told by others, where he is only functioning as a mechanism. He has no insight of his own; he is a believer, he will give you his belief. But belief is not religion. You will have to catch religion: it can be imbibed.

Fortunate were those few people who lived with Jesus, but all those who go to the churches are just unfortunate. Fortunate were those few people who lived with Buddha, but those who call themselves Buddhists because they have been taught to be Buddhists are just unfortunate - because of their so-called belief, they cannot search for a living Buddha again.

I would like to tell this woman: Being a sannyasin will bring you closer to Christ than anything else can. The form may differ, but the essence is the same. My language is different from Jesus', my form is different from Jesus' my ways of working are different from Jesus'. But the essence is the same, the flowering is the same.

You are with Jesus when you are here. By becoming a sannyasin, you have really entered into the world of Christ-consciousness. It is not a church; churches arise only when masters are gone, a church is a dead religion.

And catch God when he is alive somewhere, living in the body just like you. Those moments are few; very few fortunate people are capable of doing that, because their beliefs hinder them. Somebody is a Catholic, he cannot come here; somebody is a Protestant, he cannot come here; somebody is a Hindu, he cannot come here - their beliefs prevent them. Somebody is a communist, he cannot come here.

And that was the case when Jesus was there: because somebody was a Jew, he could not go to him. That was the case when Mohammed was there: somebody was a Christian, and somebody was a Jew, so they could not go to him. That's how people go on missing.

Religion has to be imbibed from a living source.

UNTIL YOU THROW YOUR SWORD AWAY, YOU'LL NO BECOME A SHIELD; UNTIL YOU LAY YOUR CROWN ASIDE, YOU'LL NOT BE FIT TO LEAD.

A very potential, pregnant statement.

UNTIL YOU THROW YOUR SWORD AWAY...

The sword represents your search for security, your defensiveness. Everybody is searching for security, to be secure, to be safe. And it is because of his stupid search for security and safety that you are missing God and you are missing aliveness, because security is possible only if you are almost dead. The more dead you are, the more secure you are.

If you want to live, there is danger: life means danger. There is only one way to live. Friedrich Nietzsche said, "Live dangerously." That is the only way to live: you have to live in insecurity.

And the beauty of insecurity is that once you have become courageous enough to live in insecurity, all insecurity disappears from life. Alan Watts called it "the security of insecurity."

There is something like the insecurity of security. Whatsoever you think is secure is not; deep down, there is an undercurrent of insecurity. You have money in the bank, but the bank can go bankrupt - what kind of security is there? You have a strong body, but even the strongest body can become ill: you can have a heart attack, sooner or later death is going to overtake you. You have a beautiful body, it can become ugly any moment - a car accident or anything. You have a beautiful woman who loves you, but tomorrow she may fall in love with somebody else; if she could fall in love with you, why can she not fall in love with somebody else?

You are in love with somebody today - who knows about tomorrow? All is insecure. You only pretend that things are secure. Your security is just a camouflage: behind it all is insecurity. Your friends can become enemies, your brothers can betray you; nothing is secure.

So first see that all our security is superficial, a facade; behind it is insecurity. And vice versa - if you start living in insecurity you will be surprised: insecurity will be only on the surface, and deep down you will be secure.

How does it happen? When you drop the fear of insecurity, insecurity disappears; it exists in the fear of it. Rather than being afraid of it, you start enjoying its thrill - because insecurity is adventurous, it brings new surprises to you, it is a constant venture into the unknown. It has a great thrill: it takes you from the known to the unknown every moment, there are always surprises, and each moment of your life becomes unpredictable.

Sanai says:

UNTIL YOU THROW YOUR SWORD AWAY...

The sword represents security.

... YOU'LL NOT BECOME A SHIELD...

If you carry the sword in your hand, afraid, protecting yourself, you will remain unprotected, you will not become a shield. Throw away the sword! and immediately you become the shield. Throw away the fear of insecurity, throw away the desire to be secure, and you are secure.

All security is in God, with God, with the whole. If you exist separately as a self, you are insecure. If you forget about yourself, if you merge into the whole, you are secure. In that union is security: you become a shield.

... UNTIL YOU LAY YOUR CROWN ASIDE, YOU'LL NOT BE FIT TO LEAD.

And this is the basic evil, to search for security. The selling or trading of aliveness for survival is really evil. The mind state is interested only in survival. The ego is continuously hankering to survive, the mind wants to remain secure in every possible way, and because of its obsession with security it cripples you, paralyzes you. And to trade aliveness for survival is the fundamental evil.

Drop this fear of insecurity. Love insecurity, because insecurity is life. Don't live out of fear, because one who lives out of fear does not really live, he only vegetates. Those who live out of fear live constantly focussed on death. And those who are focussed on death go on missing life, because how can you enjoy life if you are constantly thinking of death?

If a man is afraid of adventures, then he will remain closed. He will live almost in a grave. Then he will find that fear is everywhere: all kinds of fears will torment him, he will become paranoid. He will not be able to live at all; he will at the most survive. He only survives, he does not live.

You have to drop this fear - because this fear perpetuates itself; it becomes bigger and bigger and it drowns you in its mud.

THE DEATH OF SOUL IS THE DESTRUCTION OF LIFE; BUT DEATH OF LIFE IS THE SOUL'S SALVATION.

Don't be afraid to die as an ego - because the moment you die as an ego, you are reborn. Let the ego be crucified, and you will have resurrection. The death of the self is the salvation of the soul.

That's what Jesus means when he says, "Those who save themselves, lose. And those who are ready to lose themselves, save."

NEVER STAND STILL ON THE PATH:

BECOME NONEXISTENT; NONEXISTENT EVEN TO THE NOTION OF BECOMING NONEXISTENT.

Remember, the ego has not to hide behind you humbleness. Become so nonexistent that even the idea that "I am nonexistent" disappears, because that is again an ego game.

A disciple reached his master and said, "Master, now I have understood you. It took years of effort and meditations, but now it has happened: I have attained to nothingness. I have come to thank you."

The master threw him out of the room and said, "Go out, and first throw away this nothingness too.

Don't bring nothingness here!"

Because if you have become nothing, there is nobody to claim that "I have become nothing." If you still have the claim, you are there - the ego has learned a new trick.

AND WHEN YOU HAVE ABANDONED BOTH INDIVIDUALITY AND UNDERSTANDING, THIS WORLD WILL BECOME THAT.

When you have disappeared as an individual, when you no longer think in terms of separation, then who is there to understand or not understand? You become innocent.

And in that very innocence, this world disappears and that world appears. There are not two worlds, there is only one world. Seen through the idea of separation, it is SANSAR: it is THIS world - mundane, futile, fruitless. Seen with the vision of unity, non-separation, the same world is transformed: it is THAT world - nirvana, enlightenment, moksha, God.

WHEN THE EYE IS PURE IT SEES PURITY.

And the ego is the impurity. Drop all beliefs, disbeliefs, drop this idea of separation.

Remember, a way of seeing is also a way of not seeing. A focus upon object A involves a neglect of object B. "Purity of the eye" means you have no attitudes, no prejudices. A way of seeing is also a way of not seeing. So if you are a Hindu you have a way of seeing, if you are a Jain you have another way of seeing. But a way of seeing is also a way of not seeing. When you become focussed on object A you necessarily neglect object B.

And the truth is indivisible. So drop all ways of seeing, all attitudes, beliefs, disbeliefs, notions, concepts, philosophies. Just see. Be a mirror, so that whatsoever is, is reflected in you.

That is God, that is truth. It is not a question of your choice. It reflects only when you are in a choiceless state of awareness.

UNSELF YOURSELF...

This is the secret of Sufism, the whole philosophy condensed into two words.

UNSELF YOURSELF...

UNTIL YOU SEE YOURSELF AS A SPECK OF DUST YOU CANNOT POSSIBLE REACH THAT PLACE; SELF COULD NEVER BREATHE THAT AIR, SO WEND YOUR WAY THERE WITHOUT SELF.

You cannot enter into God as a self. You can enter into God only as a no-self - what Buddha calla ANATTA, no-self.

If you really want God, you have to disappear. This is the problem: people want God, but they don't want to disappear. They want to possess God as they possess other properties. Hence they can go on searching for thousands of lives but they will not find God, because they will not fulfill the basic requirement.

This is the basic requirement:

UNSELF YOURSELF...

And immediately God starts showering on you, INSTANTLY. The whole world becomes luminous; immediately all is celebration. Remember this key of Hakim Sanai. This is a master key: this can open the doors of all the mysteries.

UNSELF YOURSELF.