From the wave to the cosmic ocean

Sri Aurobindo says somewhere that the whole life is yoga - and it is so. Everything can become a meditation. And unless everything becomes a meditation, meditation has not happened to you.

Meditation cannot be a part, a fragment. Either it is - and when it is you are wholly in it - or it is not.

You cannot make a part of your life meditative. That is impossible, and that is what is being tried everywhere.

You can become meditative, not a part of you; that is impossible because meditation is a quality of your being. It is just like breathing: you go on breathing whatsoever you are doing. Irrelevant of what you are doing, you go on breathing. Walking, sitting, lying, sleeping, you continue breathing. You cannot arrange it in such a way that sometimes you breathe and sometimes you don't breathe. It is a continuum.

Meditation is an inner breathing, and when I say "an inner breathing," I mean it literally; it is not a metaphor. Just as you are breathing air you can breathe consciousness, and once you start breathing consciousness in and out you are no more just a physical body. And with that start, beginning with a higher breathing - a breathing of consciousness, of life itself, as it were - you enter a different realm, a different dimension. That dimension is metaphysics.

Your breathing is physical; meditation is metaphysical. So you cannot make a part of your life meditative. You cannot meditate in the morning and then forget it. You cannot go to a temple or to a church and meditate there and come out of your meditation as you come out of the temple. That is not possible, and if you try it you will be trying a false thing. You can enter a church and you come out of it, but you cannot enter meditation and come out of it. When you enter, you have entered.

Wherever you go now meditation will be you. This is one of the basic, primary, elemental facts to be remembered always.

Secondly, you can enter meditation from anywhere because the whole life is in a deep meditation.

The hills are meditating, the stars are meditating, the flowers, the trees, the elements are meditating, the very earth is meditating. The whole life is meditating, and you can enter it from anywhere; anything can become an entrance. This has been used. That is why there are so many techniques; that is why there are so many religions; that is why one religion cannot understand another - because their entrances are different. And sometimes there are religions which are not known even by the name of religion. You will not recognize certain persons as religious because their entrance is so different.

For example, a poet. A poet can enter meditation without going to any teacher, without going to any temple, without in any way being religious, so-called religious. His poetry, his creativity, can become an entrance; he can enter through it. Or a potter who is just creating earthen pots can enter meditation just by creating earthen pots. The very craft can become an entry. Or an archer can become meditative through his archery, or a gardener, or anyone can enter from anywhere.

Whatsoever you can do can become a door. If the quality of awareness changes while you are doing something, it becomes a technique. So there can be as many techniques as you can imagine.

Any act can become a door. So the act, the technique, the way, the method, is not primary, but the quality of consciousness that you bring to the act is the basic thing.

Kabir, one of India's greatest mystics, was a weaver, and he remained a weaver even when he attained. He had thousands and thousands of disciples, and they would come and they would tell him, "Now stop your weaving. You don't need it. We are here and we will serve you in every way.

" Kabir would laugh and he would say, "This weaving is not just weaving. I am making clothes - that is the outer act - but something goes on within me simultaneously that you cannot see. This is my meditation." How can a weaver be a meditator through weaving? If the quality of the mind that you bring to weaving is meditative, then the act is not relevant; it is irrelevant.

Another mystic was a potter; his name was Gora. He worked on earthen pots, and he would dance and he would sing while he was making his pots. While he was making a pot on the wheel, as the pot would center on the wheel he would also center within himself. One would see only one thing:

the wheel was moving, the earthen pot was emerging and he was centering the earthen pot. You were seeing only one centering. Another centering was happening simultaneously: he was also being centered. While centering the pot, while helping the pot to emerge, he was also emerging in the unseen world of inner consciousness. When the pot was created, that was not the real thing he was working on; he was also creating himself.

Any act can become meditative, and once you know how an act becomes meditative you can transform all your acts into meditation. Then the whole life becomes yoga. Walking on the street or working in the office or just sitting and not doing anything - just idling, or anything - can become meditation. So remember, meditation doesn't belong to the act; it belongs to the quality you bring to the act. Now we will enter the techniques.

First:

"AS WAVES COME WITH WATER AND FLAMES WITH FIRE, SO THE UNIVERSAL WAVES WITH US."

First try to understand what a wave is, and then you can feel how this consciousness of waves can help you to enter into meditation. You see waves in the ocean. They appear; they are in a sense, and still in a deeper sense they are not. This is the first thing to be understood about a wave. The wave appears; it is there in a sense, but still it is not there in a deeper sense. In a deeper sense only the ocean is. You cannot have a wave without the ocean, and even while the wave is there, only the ocean is. The wave is just a form, not a substance. The ocean is substantial; the wave is just a form.

Because of language many problems are created. Because we say "wave," it looks as if a wave is some thing. It would be better if we use not wave, but "waving." There is no wave, just waving - just an activity, not a thing; just a movement, not a substance; just a process, not matter. The matter is the ocean; the wave is just a form. The ocean can be silent. The waves will disappear, but the ocean will be there.

The ocean can be silent or in movement or in much activity or in no activity, but you cannot find a silent wave. A wave is activity, not a substance. When the activity is there, the wave is there: it is a waving, a movement - a simple form of movement. But when the silence comes, when inactivity comes, the wave is no more and the ocean is there. In both the cases the ocean is the reality. The wave is just a play-form. The wave happens and disappears, the ocean remains.

Secondly, waves appear as individuals. Each wave has its own personality - unique, different from any other. No two waves are similar. Some waves are big, some waves are small. They have their own peculiar characteristics. Each wave has its own character, and, of course, each wave is different from the other. One wave may rise, another may die. While one is rising, another is dying.

Both cannot be the same because one is rising, another is dying. Still, the reality behind both is the same. They look different, they look separate, they look individual, but the look is fallacious.

Deep down only one ocean is, and no matter how they look unrelated they are related. And while one wave is rising and another is dying, you may not see any relationship; the relationship may not appear, because how can a rising wave be related to a dying wave?

An old man is dying and a child is born: how are they related? If they are related, they will die both together or they will be born together. The child is born and the old man has died; one wave is dying, another is arising. But the rising wave may be gathering energy from the dying wave. The dying wave may be helping it, by its death, to rise. The dispersing wave may be the cause of the wave that is rising.

Deep down they are related to one ocean. They are not different; they are not unrelated, they are not separate. Their individuality is false and illusory. They are non-individual. Their duality appears to be, but it is not so: their non-duality is the truth.

Now I will read the sutra again: "AS WAVES COME WITH WATER AND FLAMES WITH FIRE, SO THE UNIVERSAL WAVES WITH US." We are just waves in a cosmic ocean. Meditate on it, allow this feeling to go deep down within you. Start feeling your breathing as just the rising of a wave.

You breathe in, you breathe out, and the breath that is entering you was someone else's breath just a moment before and the breath that is leaving you will become someone else's breath the next moment. Breathing is just waving in the ocean of life. You are not separate - just waves. You are one deep down. We have a togetherness; individuality is false and illusory. Hence, the ego is the only barrier. Individuality is false. It appears to be, but it is not real. The real is the non-individual, the oceanic, the togetherness.

That is why every religion is against the egoistic attitude. The person who says there is no God may not be irreligious, but the person who says "I am" is irreligious.

Gautam Buddha was an atheist; he didn't believe in any God. Mahavira Vardhaman was an atheist; he didn't believe in any God. But they achieved, they arrived, they realized the totality, the wholeness.

If you don't believe in any God you may not be irreligious, because God is not basic to religion. Non- ego is basic to religion. And even if you believe in God, with an egoist mind you are irreligious. With a non-egoistic mind there is no need to believe in a God. You fall into the divine automatically. With no ego you cannot cling to the wave; you have to fall to the ocean. With the ego, you go on clinging to the wave. Look at life as an ocean, and feel yourself just as a wave, and allow this feeling to enter in you.

You can use this technique in many ways. While breathing, feel that the ocean is breathing in you.

The ocean comes to you, goes out, comes in, goes out. With every breath feel a wave rising, with every exhalation feel a wave dying. And between the two, who are you? Just a nothingness, shunya - a void. With that feeling of the void you will be transformed. With that feeling of nothingness all your misery will disappear, because misery needs a center - and a false center at that. The void is your real center. With it there is no misery; you are in a deep ease. Because you are not, who can be tense? You are bliss-filled. It is not that you are bliss-filled, but because you are not, only bliss is.

Without you, can you create misery?

That is why Buddha never says that in that state, the ultimate state, there will be ANANDA - bliss.

He never says it. He says that there will be no misery, that is all. To talk about bliss may mislead you, so Buddha says don't ask about bliss; simply try to know how you can be without misery. And that means how you can be without yourself.

What is our problem? The problem is that the wave thinks itself separate from the ocean; then there are problems. If a wave thinks itself separate from the ocean, the fear of death will immediately come. The wave has to die and the wave can see all around dying waves. And you cannot deceive yourself for long. The wave is seeing that other waves are dying, and the wave knows that even in its rising, death is hidden somewhere, because those other waves a moment before were rising and now they are falling down, dispersing. So you are to die. If the wave thinks itself separate from the ocean the fear of death is bound to appear sooner or later. But if the wave knows that it is not and only the ocean is, there is no fear of death. Only a wave can die, not the ocean. I can die, but not life. You can die, you will die - but not the cosmos, not the existence. The existence goes on waving.

It has waved in you, it will wave in others. And while your wave may be disappearing, just by your dispersal other waves will arise and the ocean continues.

Once you detach yourself from the wave form, and you become one and feel one and realize oneness with the ocean, the formless, there is no death for you. Otherwise the fear of death will create misery. In every pain, in every anguish, in every anxiety, the basic fear is of death. You are afraid, trembling. You may not be conscious of it, but if you penetrate within you will find that every moment there is a trembling because you are going to die.

You may create many securities, you may create a citadel around you, but nothing is going to help.

Nothing is going to help! Dust unto dust! You are going to fall back down. Have you ever observed or have you ever meditated on the fact that when you are just walking on the road dust clings to your shoe? The dust may have been the body of a Napoleon, of an Alexander. Somewhere, Alexander is just dust now, and the dust clinging to your shoe may have once been the body of Alexander.

The same is going to be the case with you. Now you are here, and the next moment you will not be; the same is going to be the case with you! Sooner or later the dust will go unto dust, the wave will disappear. Fear grips. Just imagine yourself as dust clinging to somebody's shoe or imagine some potter making an earthen pot of you, of your body, or of your beloved's body, or imagine yourself moving into a worm or becoming a tree. But this is happening. Everything is a form and form has to die. Only the formless is eternal. If you cling to the form, if you identify yourself with the form, if you feel yourself as a wave form, you are getting into trouble by yourself. You are the ocean, not the wave.

This meditation can help; it can bring a metamorphosis for you, it can become a mutation. But allow it to spread all through your life. While breathing, think; while eating, think; while walking, think.

Think two things - that the form is always the wave and the formless is always the ocean. The formless is deathless; the form is mortal. And it is not that you will die someday, you are dying every day. Childhood dies and "youth-hood" is born; then "youth-hood" dies and the old age is born; then the old age dies and the form disappears.

Every moment you are dying into something else; something else is born. Your first day of birth is not the first day of your only birth; that is simply part of many more births to come. And your death of this life is not the first death: it is only the death of this life. You have been dying before. Every moment something is dying and something else is born. A part of you dies; another part is born.

Physiologists say that within seven years nothing old remains in your body; everything changes - every cell. If you are going to live for seventy years, ten times over your body is renewed again and again. Every seven years you have a new body. Not suddenly, but every moment something is changing.

You are a wave, and that too not substantial; every moment you are changing. And a wave cannot be static, a wave has to be changing; a wave has to be constantly in movement. There can be no phenomenon like a non-moving wave. How can there be? A non-moving wave makes no sense.

There is movement, process; you are a process, a movement. If you become identified with this movement and process and think yourself confined between birth and death, you will be in misery.

Then you are taking appearance as reality. This is what Shankara calls MAYA - illusion. The ocean is the BRAHMAN, the ocean is the truth.

So think yourself as a wave, or as a continuum of waves rising and falling, and just be a witness to this. You cannot do anything. These waves will disappear. That which has appeared will have to disappear; nothing can be done about it. Every effort is absolutely useless. Only one thing can be done, and that is to be a witness of this wave form. Once you become a witness, suddenly you will become aware of something which is beyond the wave, which transcends the wave, which is in the wave also and out of the wave also, which forms the wave and still goes beyond, which is the ocean.

"AS WAVES COME WITH WATER AND FLAMES WITH FIRE, SO THE UNIVERSAL WAVES WITH US." The universal waves with us. You are not, the universal is - and he is waving through you. Feel it, contemplate over it, meditate on it. Allow it to happen to you in many, many ways.

I told you about breathing. A sex desire arises in you: feel it - not as your desire, but just as the ocean waving in you, just as life pulsating, just as life having a wave in you. You meet in a love act:

don't think of it as two waves meeting, don't think of it as two individuals meeting. Rather, think of it as two individuals merging. There are no more two individuals. Waves have disappeared; only the ocean has remained. Then the sex act becomes a meditation. Whatsoever happens to you, feel it not as if it is happening to you, but as if it is happening to the cosmos. You are just a part of it - just a wave on the surface. Leave everything to the Universe.

Dogen, a Zen master, used to say, when he felt hungry he would say, "It seems the universal feels hungry through me." When he would feel thirsty he would say, "The existence is thirsty within me."

This is what this meditation will lead you to. Then everything disperses from your ego and becomes part of the universe. Then whatsoever happens, happens to existence itself; you are no more here.

Then there is no sin, then there is no responsibility.

I don't mean that you will become irresponsible; I don't mean that you will become a sinner. Sin will be impossible because sin can happen only around an ego. There will be no responsibility because sin can happen only around an ego. There will be no responsibility because now you cannot be irresponsible. Only you are, so to whom can you be responsible? And now if you see someone dying, you will feel you are dying with him, within him. The Universe is dying and you are part of it.

And if you will see some flower flowering, you will flower with it. The whole universe will become you now. To be in such a deep affinity and harmony is to be in SAMADHI.

Meditation is the way, and this harmony of oneness, this feeling of oneness with all, is the end, is the goal. Try it! Remember the ocean and forget the wave. And whenever you remember the wave and start behaving as the wave, remember, you are doing something wrong and you will create misery because of it.

There is no God who is punishing you. Whenever you fall a prey to some illusion, you punish yourself. The law, DHARMA, the Tao is there. If you move in harmony with it, you feel blissful. If you move against it, you feel yourself to be in misery. There is no one sitting there in the skies to punish you. There is no record of your sins; there is no need for this. It is just like gravity. If you walk rightly, the gravity is a help. You cannot walk without it. If you walk wrongly, you will fall down, you may get a fracture. But no one is punishing you; it is just the law, the gravity - the impersonal gravity.

If you walk wrongly and you fall down, you will have a fracture. If you walk rightly, you use gravity.

The energy can be used wrongly or rightly. When you feel yourself as a wave, you are against the universal law, you are against the reality. Then you will create misery for yourself. This is what the law of KARMA means. There is no law-giver; God is not a judge. To be a judge is ugly, and if God were a judge, he would be completely bored, or else he would have gone mad by now. He is not a judge, he is not a controller, he is not a law-giver. The universe has its own laws, and the basic law is that to be real is to be in bliss, to be unreal is to be in misery.

The second technique:

"WHEREVER YOUR MIND IS WANDERING, INTERNALLY OR EXTERNALLY, AT THIS VERY PLACE, THIS."

This mind is the door - this very mind. Wherever it is wandering, whatsoever it is thinking, contemplating, dreaming, this very mind, this very moment, is the door. This is a very revolutionary method because we never think that the ordinary mind is the door. We think that some supermind - a Buddha, a Jesus - can enter, that they have some superhuman mind. This very mind that you have - this mind which goes on dreaming and imagining relevant or irrelevant thoughts, which is crowded with ugly desires, passions, anger, greed, all that is condemned, which is there beyond your control, pulling you here and there, pushing you from here and there, constantly a madhouse - this very mind, says this sutra, is the door. Wherever your mind is wandering - wherever remember; the object is not relevant - wherever your mind is wandering, internally or externally, "AT THIS VERY PLACE, THIS."

Many things have to be understood. One, the ordinary mind is not so ordinary as we think. The ordinary mind is not unrelated to the universal mind: it is part of it. Its roots go down to the very center of existence; otherwise you cannot be. Even a sinner is grounded into the divine; otherwise he cannot be. Even if the devil is there, he cannot be without divine support.

Existence itself is possible only because of the groundedness into the being. Your mind is dreaming, imagining, wandering, tense, in anguish, in misery. Howsoever it moves and wheresoever it moves, it remains grounded in the totality. Otherwise is not possible. You cannot go away from existence; that is impossible. This very moment you are grounded in it.

So what is to be done? If this very moment we are grounded in it, then it will appear to the egoist mind that nothing is to be done. We are already the divine, so why so much fuss? You are grounded in the divine, but you are unaware of the fact. When mind is wandering, there are two things - the mind and the wandering, the objects in the mind and the mind itself, clouds wandering in the sky and the sky. There are two things - the clouds and the sky.

Sometimes it may happen, it happens, that there are so many clouds that the sky disappears, you cannot see it. But even if you cannot see it, it has not disappeared; it cannot disappear. There is no way to help the sky to disappear. It is there; hidden or unhidden, visible or invisible, it is there.

But clouds are also there. If you pay attention to the clouds, the sky has disappeared. If you pay attention to the sky, the clouds are just accidental, they come and they go. You need not be too much worried about them. They come and they go. They have been coming, they have been going.

They have not been destroying the sky even an inch, they have not made the sky dirty; they have not even touched it. The sky remains virgin.

When your mind is wandering, there are two things: one is the clouds, the thoughts, the objects, images, and the other is the consciousness, the mind itself. If you pay too much attention to the clouds, to objects, thoughts, images, you have forgotten the sky. You have forgotten the host; you have become too much interested in the guest. Those thoughts, images, wandering, are just guests.

If you focus yourself on the guests, you forget your own being. Change the focus from the guests to the host, from the clouds to the sky. Do it practically.

A sex desire arises: this is a cloud. Or a greed arises to have a bigger house: this is a cloud. You can become so obsessed with it that you forget completely to whom it has arisen, to whom it has happened. Who is behind it? In what sky is this cloud moving? Remember that sky, and suddenly the cloud disappears. You need just a change of focus from the object to the subject, from the outer to the inner, from the cloud to the sky, from the guest to the host - just a change of focus.

Lin-Chi, one Zen master, was speaking. Someone said from the crowd, "Answer me only one question:Who am I?

"Lin-Chi stopped speaking. Everyone was alert. What answer was he going to give? But he didn't answer. He came down from his chair, walked, came near to the man. The whole crowd became attentive, alert. They were not even breathing. What was he going to do? He should have answered from the chair; there was no need. The man became afraid, and Lin-Chi came near him with his piercing eyes. He took the man's collar in his hand, gave him a shake and asked him, "Close your eyes! And remember who is asking this question, 'Who am I?'" The man closed his eyes - afraid, of course. He went within to seek who had asked this question, and he would not come back.

The crowd waited and waited and waited. His face became silent calm, still. Then Lin-Chi had to shock him again. "Now come out and tell everybody, 'Who am I?'"

The man started laughing and he said, "What a miraculous way of answering a thing. But if someone asks me this now, I am going to do the same. I cannot answer."

It was just a change of focus. You ask the question "Who am I?" and your mind is focused on the question and the answer is hidden just behind the question in the questioner. Change the focus; return to yourself.

This sutra says, "WHEREVER YOUR MIND IS WANDERING, INTERNALLY OR EXTERNALLY, AT THIS VERY PLACE, THIS." Move from the objects to the mind itself, and you are no more an ordinary mind. You are ordinary because of the objects. Suddenly you become a buddha yourself. You are already a buddha, you are just burdened with many clouds. And not only are you burdened: you are clinging to your clouds, you won't allow them to move. You think that clouds are your property. You think that the more you have, the better: you are richer. And your whole sky, your inner space, is just hidden. In a way, it has disappeared amidst the clouds and clouds have become your life. The life of the clouds is sansara - the world.

This can happen in a single moment even, this change of focus - and it always happens suddenly.

I don't mean that you need not do anything and it will happen suddenly; you will have to do much.

But it will never happen gradually. You will have to do and do and do, and one day, suddenly, a moment comes when you are at the right temperature to evaporate. Suddenly there is no water; it has evaporated. Suddenly you are not in the object. Your eyes are not focused to the clouds:

suddenly they have turned inward to the inner space.

It never happens gradually that one part of your eyes has turned inward and one part is with the outward clouds - nor does it happen in percentages, that now you have become ten percent inner and ninety percent outer, now twenty percent inner and eighty percent outer - no! When it happens it happens a hundred percent, because you cannot divide your focusing. Either you see the objects or you see yourself - either the world or the BRAHMAN. You can come back to the world, you can change your focus again; you are the master. Really, only now are you the master - when you can change your focus as you like.

I remember Marpa, one Tibetan mystic. When he realized, when he became a Buddha, when he turned inward, when he came to encounter the inner space - the infinity, someone asked him, "Marpa, how are you now?"

Marpa's answer is exceptional, unexpected. No buddha has answered that way. Marpa said, "As miserable as before."

The man was bewildered. He said, "As miserable as before?"

But Marpa laughed. He said, "Yes, but with a difference, and the difference is that now the misery is voluntary. Sometimes, just for a taste of the world, I move outwards, but now I am the master. Any moment I can go inwards, and it is good to move in the polarities. Then one remains alive. I can move!" Marpa said, "I can move now. Sometimes I move in the miseries, but now the miseries are not something which happen to me. I happen to them and I remain untouched." Of course, when you move voluntarily, you remain untouched.

Once you know how to change your focus inwards, you can come back to the world. Every buddha has come back to the world. Again he focuses, but now the inner man has a different quality. He knows that this is his focusing. These clouds are allowed to move. These clouds are not masters; they cannot dominate you. You allow them, and it is beautiful. Sometimes, when the sky is filled with clouds, it is beautiful; the movement of the clouds is beautiful. If the sky remains itself, the clouds can be allowed to move. The problem arises only when the sky forgets itself and only clouds are there. Then everything becomes ugly because the freedom is lost.

This sutra is beautiful. "WHEREVER YOUR MIND IS WANDERING, INTERNALLY OR EXTERNALLY, AT THIS VERY PLACE, THIS". This sutra has been used deeply in Zen tradition.

Zen says your ordinary mind is the buddha-mind. Eating, you are a buddha; sleeping, you are a buddha; carrying water from the well, you are a buddha. You are! Carrying water from the well, eating your food, lying down on your bed, you are a buddha. Inconceivable! It looks puzzling, but it is the truth.

If when carrying water you simply carry the water, if you don't make any problem out of it and you simply carry water, if your mind is unclouded and the sky vacant, if you are just carrying water, then you are a buddha. Eating, just eat without doing anything else. When we are eating we are doing thousands and thousands of things. The mind may not be here at all. Your body may be eating just like a robot; your mind may be somewhere else.

One university student was here some days before. His examination is coming near, so he came to ask me, "I am very much confused and the problem is this: I have fallen in love with a girl. While I am with the girl, I think of my examination, and while I read I think only of my girl. So what to do?

While reading, studying, I am not there, I am with my girl in my imagination. And with my girl, I am never with her; I am thinking about my problems, about my examination which is drawing near. So everything has become a mess."

This is how everyone has become a mess, not only that boy. While in the office you think of the house; while in the house you are in the office. And you cannot do such a magical thing. While in the house you can be only in the house, you cannot be in the office. And if you are in the office, you are not sane, you are insane. Then everything gets into everything else. Then nothing is clear. And this mind is a problem.

While drawing water from a well, carrying water from a well, if you are simply doing this simple act, you are a buddha. So many times, if you go to Zen masters and ask them, "What do YOU do? What is your SADHANA? What is your meditation?" they will say, "While feeling sleepy, we sleep. While feeling hungry, we eat. And that is all, there is no other SADHANA." But this is very arduous. It looks simple: if while eating you can just eat, if while sitting you can just sit - not doing anything else, if you can remain with the moment and not move away from it, if you can be merged with the moment with no future, no past, if this moment now is the only existence, then you are a buddha. This very mind becomes a buddha-mind.

When your mind wanders, don't try to stop it. Rather, become aware of the sky. When mind wanders, don't try to stop it, don't try to bring it to some point, to some concentration - no! Allow it to wander, but don't pay much attention to the wandering - because for or against, you remain concerned with the wandering.

Remember the sky, allow the wandering, and just say, "Okay, it is just a traffic on the road. Many people are moving this way and that. The same traffic is going on in the mind. I am just the sky, not the cloud." Feel it, remember it, and remain in it. Sooner or later you will feel that the clouds are slowing down and there are bigger gaps between the clouds. They are not so dark, not so dense.

The speed has slowed down, and intervals can be seen, and the sky can be looked at. Go on feeling yourself as the sky and not the clouds. Sooner or later, someday, in some right moment when your focus has really gone inwards, clouds will have disappeared and you are the sky, the ever-pure sky, the ever-virgin sky.

Once you know this virginity, you can come back to the clouds, to the world of the clouds. Then that world has its own beauty. You can move in it, but now you are a master. The world is not bad; the world as the master is the problem. With you as the master, you can move in it. Then the world has a beauty of its own. It is beautiful, it is lovely, but you need to know that beauty and that loveliness as a master within.

The third technique:

"WHEN VIVIDLY AWARE THROUGH SOME PARTICULAR SENSE, KEEP IN THE AWARENESS."

You see through your eyes. Remember, you see THROUGH your eyes. Eyes cannot see; you see through them. The seer is hidden behind, the eyes are just the opening, just the windows. But we go on thinking that we see by the eyes; we go on thinking we hear by the ears. No one has ever heard by the ears. You hear THROUGH the ears, not BY the ears. The hearer is hidden behind.

The ears are just receptive organs.

I touch you: I give you a loving touch, a handclasp. The hand is not touching you: I am touching you, through the hand. The hand is just instrumental, so there can be two types of touch - when I really touch you and when I just avoid touch. I can touch your hand and avoid touch. I may not be there in my hand, I may have withdrawn. Try this, and you will have a different, a distant feeling.

Put your hand on someone and withdraw yourself. A dead hand is there, not you. And if the other is sensitive, he will feel a dead hand. He will feel insulted. You are deceiving; you are just showing that you are touching, and you are not touching.

Women are very sensitive about it; you cannot deceive them. They have a greater sensitivity of touch, of body touch, so they know. The husband may be talking beautiful things. He may have brought flowers and he may be saying, "I love you," but his touch will show that he is not there. And women have an instinctive feeling when you are with them and when you are not with them. It is difficult to deceive them unless you are a master. Unless you are a master of your own self, you cannot deceive them. But a master would not like to become a husband, that is the difficulty.

Whatsoever you say will be false; your touch will show it. Children are very sensitive, you cannot deceive them. You may pat them, but they know that this is a dead pat. If your hand is not a flowing energy, a loving energy, they know. Then it is just as if a dead thing is being used. When you are present in your hand in your totality, when you have moved, when your center of being has come to the hand, when your soul is there, then the touch has a different quality.

This sutra says that the senses are just doors, receiving stations, mediums, instruments, receptors.

You are hidden behind. "WHEN VIVIDLY AWARE THROUGH SOME PARTICULAR SENSE, KEEP IN THE AWARENESS." While hearing music, don't forget yourself in the ear, don't lose yourself into the ear. Remember the awareness that is hidden behind. Be alert! While seeing someone... Try this. You can try it right now, looking at me. What is happening? You can look at me by the eyes, and when I say "by the eyes," it means you are not aware that you are hidden behind the eyes. You can look at me through the eyes, and when I say "through the eyes," then the eyes are just in between you and me. You are standing there behind the eyes, looking through the eyes, just as if someone looks through a window or specs.

Have you seen some clerk in a bank looking from above his specs? The specs have slipped down on his nose, and he looks. Just look that way at me, towards me, as if you are looking from above your eyes, as if the eyes have slipped down a little on your nose and you are standing behind looking at me. Suddenly you will feel a change in the quality. Your focus changes; eyes become just doors.

This becomes a meditation.

When hearing, just hear through the ears and remain aware of your inner center. When touching, just touch through the hand and remember the inner one who is hidden behind. From any sense you can have a feeling of the inner center, and every sense goes to the inner center. It has to report.

That is why, when you are seeing me and you are hearing me, when you see me through the eyes and you hear me through the ears, deep down within you know that you are seeing the same man whom you are also hearing.

If I have some body odor your nose will smell it. Then three different senses report to one center.

That is why you can coordinate. Otherwise it will be difficult: if your eyes see and your ears hear, it will be difficult to know whether you are hearing the same man whom you are seeing or two different ones, because these two senses are different and they never meet. Your eyes have never known about your ears and your ears have not heard about your eyes. They don't know each other, they have never met; they have not even been introduced.

So how does everything become synthetic? Ears hear, eyes see, hands touch, the nose smells, and suddenly somewhere inside you know that this is the same man that you are hearing and seeing and touching and smelling. This knower is different from the senses. Every sense reports to this knower, and in this knower, in the center, everything falls, fits and becomes one. This is miraculous.

I am one, outside you. I am one! My body and body's presence, my body odor, my speaking, are one. Your senses will divide me. Your ears will report if I say something, your nose will report if there is some odor, your eyes will report if I can be seen and am visible. They will divide me into parts. But again, somewhere within you, I will become one. Where I become one within you is your center of being. That is your awareness, and you have forgotten it completely. This forgetfulness is the ignorance, and the awareness will open the doors for self-knowledge. And you cannot know yourself in any other way.

"WHEN VIVIDLY AWARE THROUGH SOME PARTICULAR SENSE, KEEP IN THE AWARENESS."

Remain with the awareness; keep in the awareness; remain alert. It is difficult in the beginning. We go on falling asleep, and it seems arduous to look through the eyes. It is easy to look "by" the eyes.

In the beginning you will feel a certain strain - if you try to look through the eyes. Not only will you feel a strain; the person you look at will also feel a strain.

If you look at someone through the eyes, he will feel as if you are trespassing upon him, as if you are doing something unmannerly. If you look through the eyes, the other will become aware suddenly that you are not behaving properly, because your look will become piercing, your look will go deeper.

If it comes from your depth, it will penetrate to the other's depth. That is why society has a built-in security: don't look too deeply into anyone unless you are in love. If you are in love, you can look deeply into the other; you can penetrate to the very depth because the other is not afraid. The other can be naked, totally naked, the other can be vulnerable, the other can be open to you. But ordinarily, if you are not in love, you are not allowed to see directly, to see penetratingly.

In India, a person who looks in such a way, penetratingly at someone, is called a LUCHCHA. A LUCHCHA means a seer. The word LUCHCHA comes from LOCHAN; LOCHAN means eyes, and LUCHCHA means one who has become eyes towards you. So don't try it on someone you don't know; he will think you are a LUCHCHA.

First try with objects - a flower, a tree, the stars in the night. They will not feel trespassed upon and they will not object. Rather, they will like it and will feel very good and appreciated. First try with them, then with loving persons - your wife, your child. Sometimes take your child into your lap and look at him through the eyes, and the child will understand. He will understand more than anyone else because he is still uncrippled by the society, still unperverted, still natural. He will feel deep love if you look through the eyes; he will feel your presence.

Look at your lover or beloved, and then only, by and by, as you get the feel of it and as you become more artful about it, you will be able to look at anyone - because then no one will be able to know that someone has looked so deeply. And once you have this art of standing always alert behind your senses, the senses cannot deceive you. Otherwise the senses deceive you.

In a world which is just an appearance, they have deceived you to feel it as real. If you can look through the senses and remain alert, the world will by and by appear to you as illusory, dream-like, and you will be able to penetrate to the substance - to the very substance of it. That substance is the BRAHMAN.