Only the unreal dissolves

Once a visitor asked many people in a small town about the mayor: 'What type of man is your mayor?'

Said the priest, 'He is no good.'

Said the filling-station attendant, 'He is a bum.'

And said the barber, 'I never in my life voted for that rascal.'

Then the visitor met the mayor, a much maligned man, and the visitor asked, 'What pay are you getting for your job?'

Said the mayor, 'My goodness, I am not getting any pay for it. I have accepted this job just for the honor of it!'

This is the situation of the ego - only YOU think about your ego, no one else. Only you think that your ego is enthroned; for everyone else it is not so. No one agrees with your ego except you; everyone else is against it. But you go on living in a dream, in a delusion. You create your own image. You feel that image, you protect that image, and you think the whole world exists for it. This is a delirium, a madness. This is not reality.

The world is not existing for you. No one is concerned with your ego; no one at all. Whether you are or you are not, it makes no difference. You are just a wave. The wave comes and goes; the ocean is not worried about it. But you think yourself very important.

Those who want to dissolve the ego have first to recognize this fact. And unless you can put aside your egoistic structure, you will not be able to see the reality, because whatsoever you see, whatsoever you perceive, your ego distorts it. It tries to manipulate everything for itself. And nothing is for it, because reality cannot help anything which is false. Remember that.

Reality cannot support anything which is not, and your ego is the most impossible thing, the greatest falsity. It is not there; it is your creation, your imaginative creation. The reality cannot help it. The reality is always shattering it, always destroying it. Whenever your ego comes in contact with reality, the reality proves shocking. Just to defend yourself against these shocks which are always coming, continuously coming to destroy your ego, by and by you avoid seeing reality.

Rather than lose your ego, you try to avoid seeing the reality. And then around your ego you create a false world which you think is the reality. Then you live in your own world. You are not in contact with the real world, you cannot be, because you are afraid. You are living in a glasshouse of the ego.

The fear is there: whenever the reality comes in contact, your ego may be destroyed, so it is better not to come in contact with the reality. We go on escaping from reality just to protect, to defend, this impossible ego.

Why do I call it impossible? Why do I say it is false? Try to understand this. The reality is one: the reality exists as a whole, as a totality. You cannot exist alone, or can you? If the trees are not existing you will not be able to exist, because they are producing oxygen for you. If the air disappears you will simply die, because that air is giving you vitality, life. If the sun goes out you will be no more here, because thew warmth, the rays, they are your life.

Life exists as a cosmic totality. You are not alone, and you cannot exist alone. You exist in a world.

You exist not as an atomic, separate, isolated existence; you exist in the cosmic whole as a wave.

You are interrelated. And the ego gives you the feeling that you are individual, alone, separate, isolated. The ego gives you the feeling that you are in island - you are not. That's why the ego is false. It is unreal, and the reality cannot support it.

So there are only two ways. If you come in contact with reality, if you become open to it, your ego will dissolve. Or, you have to create your own dream-world, and then live in it. And you have created that world. Everyone is living in his own dream.

People come to me and I look at them, and I see that they are fast asleep, dreaming. Their problems are out of their dreams, and they want to solve them. They cannot be solved because they are not real. How can you solve an unreal problem? If it exists, it can be solved - but it is nowhere; it cannot be solved. An unreal problem - how can it be solved? It can be solved only by an unreal answer.

But that unreal answer will create other problems which again will be unreal. And then you fall ad nauseum; there is no end to it.

If you want to come to meet reality.... And to meet reality is to meet God. God is not something hidden somewhere in the sky; it is the reality around you. God is not hidden; you are hidden in an unreality. God is the nearest immediate presence, but you are hidden in a capsule of your own unreal world and you go on protecting it - and the center of it is the ego.

The ego is unreal, because you are not isolated; you are one with reality. You exist as an organic part of it. You cannot be separated from it. If separated, not even for a single moment can you be alive. Every breath, and you are bridged with the cosmos; every moment you are moving in and out, meeting the real and coming back.

You are a pulsation, not a dead entity, and that pulsation exists in a deep harmony with the real. But you have forgotten that pulsation. You have created a dead ego, a concept - I AM - and this I AM is always against the whole: defending itself, struggling, in conflict, in war. Hence the emphasis of all religions to dissolve the ego.

The first thing: it is unreal; that's why it can be dissolved. Nothing real can be dissolved. How can you dissolve it? If something is real, it cannot be destroyed; it will remain. And it will remain whatsoever you do. Only unreal things can be dissolved. They can disappear, they can simply evaporate into nowhere, into nothingness. Your ego can dissolve because it is unreal. It is just a thought, a notion; it has no substance to it.

Secondly: you cannot even carry this ego continuously for twenty-four hours. It is so unreal that you have to constantly fuel it, feed it. While you are asleep, the ego is not there. That's why in the morning you feel so fresh, because you have been in a deep contact with reality. The reality has rejuvenated you, revitalized you.

In deep sleep, your ego is not. Your name, your form, all have dissolved. You don't know who you are - educated or uneducated, poor or rich, a sinner or a saint - you don't know. In deep sleep you have fallen back to the cosmic whole; the ego is not there. In the morning you feel vitalized, fresh, young. Energy has come to you from some deep source. You are again alive. But if in the night there are dreams and dreams and dreams, in the morning you feel tired because in the dreams the ego persists. In the dreams the ego persists, it is there, so it is not allowing you to fall into the original source. You will feel tired in the morning.

In deep sleep, the ego is not. When you are in deep love, the ego is not. When you are relaxed, silent, the ego is not. When you are absorbed in something so totally that you have forgotten, the ego is not. Listening to music, you have forgotten that you are - the ego is not. And really, the peace that comes to you is not coming through music; it is coming because you have forgotten the ego.

The music is instrumental.

Looking at a beautiful sunrise or sunset, you forget yourself. Then suddenly you feel that something has happened to you. You are not there; something greater than you is there. This presence of the great... Jesus calls it God - that word is just symbolic. Mohammed calls it God - that word is just symbolic. 'God' means greater than you - a moment when you feel that something greater than you is happening to you. And you can feel this only when you are not. While you are there, the greater cannot happen to you, because you are the barrier.

In any moment, if you are absent, the God is present there. Your absence is the presence of the divine. Remember it always: your absence is the presence of the divine; your presence is the absence of the divine. So really the question is not how to reach God, the question is not how to attain God; the question is how to be absent.

You need not worry about the divine, you can forget it completely. There is no need to remember even the word god. It is irrelevant, because the basic thing is not God, the basic thing is your ego. If it is not there, God happens to you. And if you try, if you make effort to reach God, to attain God, or to be liberated, you may miss, because this whole effort may be ego-centered.

That's the problem for the spiritual seeker. It may be just the ego which is thinking to attain God.

You cannot be satisfied by your worldly successes. You have achieved; in the outer world you have reached a certain status, position, prestige. You are powerful, you are rich, knowledgeable, respected, but your ego is not satisfied. The ego is never satisfied. And the reason? - the same. A real hunger can be satisfied. The hunger of the ego is false; it cannot be satisfied. Whatsoever you do will be futile. Because the hunger is false, no food can satisfy it. If the hunger is real, it can be satisfied.

All natural hungers can be satisfied - it is nothing, not a problem at all - but unnatural hungers cannot be satisfied. In the first place they are not hungers - how can you satisfy them? And they are unreal; just emptiness exists there. You go on throwing food, and you are throwing food into an abyss, a bottomless abyss. You will not reach anywhere. The ego cannot be satisfied.

I have heard that when Alexander was coming to India someone said to him, 'Have you ever meditated upon the fact that there is only one world, and if you win it then what will you do?'

And it is reported that upon hearing this Alexander became very sad and he said, 'I have not thought about it, but it makes me very very sad. Really, there is only one world and I am going to win it. And when I have won it, what am I going to do then?'

Even this whole world will not quench your thirst, because the thirst is false, unreal. The hunger is not natural.

The ego can go in search of God. In almost ninety-nine cases out of a hundred this has been my feeling - that the ego is in search. And then the search is bound to be doomed from the very beginning, because the ego cannot meet the divine, and the ego is making every effort to reach it.

Remember well, your meditation, your prayer, your worship, should not be an ego-trip. If it is, you are unnecessarily wasting your energy. So be perfectly aware.

And this is only a question of awareness. If you are aware, you can find out how your ego moves and works. It is not difficult; no particular training is needed. You can close your eyes and you can see what the search is. You can ask the question whether you are really seeking the divine, or whether it is again just an ego-trip - because it is respectable, because people think you are religious, because deep down you think, 'How can I be satisfied - I - unless I possess God?'

Is God going to be your possession? The Upanishads say that one who says that he has achieved God, has not achieved, because the very assertion that 'I have achieved God', is an ego-assertion.

The Upanishads say that one who claims that he has known, has not known. The very claim shows that he has not known, because the claim that 'I have known', comes from the ego. And the ego cannot know. The ego is the only barrier.

Now we will enter the techniques. First:

FEEL:

MY THOUGHT, I-NESS, INTERNAL ORGANS - ME.

A very simple and a very beautiful technique. Feel: MY THOUGHT, I-NESS, INTERNAL ORGANS - ME. The first thing is not to think but to feel. These are two different dimensions. And we have become so intellect-oriented that even when we say that we are feeling, really we are not feeling, we are thinking. Feeling has completely stopped; it has become a dead organ in you. Even when you say, 'I love,' it is not a feeling, it is again a thought.

And what is the difference between feeling and thought? If you feel, you will feel yourself centered near the heart. If I say, 'I love you,' this very feeling of love will flow from my heart, the center will be near the heart. If it is just a thought, it will come from my head. When you love someone, try to feel whether it is coming from the head, or whether it is coming from the heart.

Whenever you deeply feel, you are headless. In that moment there is no head; there cannot be. The heart becomes your whole being - as if the head has disappeared. In feeling, the center of being is the heart. While you are thinking, the center of being is the head. But thinking proved very useful for survival, so we have stopped everything else. All other dimensions of our being have been stopped and closed. We are just heads, and the body is just a situation for the head to exist. We go on thinking; even about feelings we go on thinking. So try to feel. You will have to work on it, because that capacity, that quality, has remained retarded. You must do something to re-open that possibility.

You look at a flower and immediately you say it is beautiful. Ponder over the fact, linger over the fact.

Don't give a hurried judgement. Wait - and then see whether it is just from the head that you have said it is beautiful, or whether you have felt it. Is it just a routine thing, because you know a rose is beautiful, supposed to be beautiful? People say it is beautiful, and you have also said many times that it is beautiful.

The moment you see the rose, the mind supplies you; the mind says it is beautiful. Finished. Now there is no contact with the rose. There is no need; you have said. Now you can move to something else. Without any communion with the rose... the mind didn't allow you even a glimpse of the rose.

The mind came in between, and the heart couldn't come in touch with the rose. Only the heart can say whether it is beautiful or not, because beauty is a feeling, it is not a concept.

You cannot say from the head that it is beautiful. How can you say? Beauty is not mathematics, it is not measurable. And beauty is not really just in the rose, because to someone else it may not be beautiful at all; and someone else may just pass without looking at it; and to someone else it may even be ugly. The beauty doesn't exist simply in the rose; the beauty exists in a meeting of the heart with the rose. When the heart meets with the rose, beauty flowers. When the heart comes in deep contact with anything it is a great phenomenon.

If you come in deep contact with any person, the person becomes beautiful. The deeper the contact, the more beauty is revealed. But beauty is a phenomenon that happens to the heart, not to the mind.

It is not a calculation, and there is no criterion by which to judge it. It is a feeling.

So if I say, 'This rose is not beautiful,' you cannot argue about it. There is no need to argue. You will say, 'That is your feeling. And the rose is beautiful - this is my feeling.' There is no question of argument. Heads can argue. Hearts cannot argue. It is finished, it is a full stop. If I say, 'This is my feeling,' then there is no question of argument.

With the head, argument can continue and we can come to a conclusion. With the heart, the conclusion has already happened. With the heart, there is no procedure towards the conclusion; the conclusion is immediate, instantaneous. With the head, it is a process - you argue, you discuss, you analyze, and then you come to a conclusion about whether this is so or not. With the heart, it is an immediate phenomenon - the conclusion comes first. Look at it: with the head, conclusion comes in the end. With the heart, conclusion comes first, and then you can proceed to find the process - but that is the work of the head.

So when such techniques have to be practised, the first difficulty will be that you don't know what feeling is. Try to develop it. When you touch something, close your eyes; don't think, feel. For example, if I take your hand in my hand and I say to you, 'Close your eyes and feel what is happening,' immediately you will say, 'Your hand is in my hand.' But this is not a feeling, this is a thinking.

Then I again say to you, 'Feel. Don't think.' Then you say, 'You are expressing your love.' That too is again thinking. If I insist again, 'Just feel, don't use your head. What are you feeling right now?' only then will you be able to feel and say, 'The warmth.' Because love is a conclusion. 'Your hand is in my hand' - this is a head-oriented thought.

The actual feeling is that a certain warmth is flowing from my hand to your hand, or from your hand to my hand. Our life energies are meeting and the point of meeting has become hot, it has become warm. This is the feeling, the sensation, the real. But we go on with the head continuously. That has become a habit; we are trained for it. So you will have to re-open your heart.

Try to live with feelings. Sometimes in the day when you are not doing any particular business - because in business, in the beginning it will be difficult to live with feeling. There, head has proved very efficient, and you cannot depend on feeling. While you are at home playing with your children, the head is not needed, it is not a business - but there too you are with the head. Playing with your children or just sitting with your wife, or not doing anything, relaxing in a chair, feel. Feel the texture of the chair.

Your hand is touching the chair: how are you feeling it? The air is blowing, the breeze is coming in.

It touches you. How do you feel? Smells are coming from the kitchen. How do you feel? Just feel.

Don't think about them. Don't start brooding that this smell shows that something is being prepared in the kitchen - then you will start dreaming about it. No, just feel whatsoever is the fact. Remain with the fact; don't move in thinking. You are surrounded from everywhere. Everywhere so much is converging on you. The whole existence is coming to meet you from everywhere, from all your senses it is entering you, but you are in the head, and your senses have become dead; they don't feel.

A certain growth will be needed before you can do this, because this is an inner experiment. If you cannot feel the outer, it will be very difficult for you to feel the inner, because the inner is the subtle.

If you cannot feel the gross, you cannot feel the subtle. If you cannot hear the sounds, then it will be difficult for you to hear the inner soundlessness - it will be very difficult. It is so subtle.

You are just sitting in the garden, the traffic is passing by and there are many noises and many sounds. You just close your eyes and try to find the most subtle sound there around you. A crow is cawing: just concentrate yourself on that crow's noise. The whole traffic noise is going on. The sound is such, it is so subtle, that you cannot be aware of it unless you focus your awareness towards it. But if you focus your awareness, the whole traffic noise will go far away and the noise of the crow will become the center. And you will hear it, all the nuances of it - very subtle, but you will be able to hear it.

Grow in sensitivity. When you touch, when you hear, when you eat, when you take a bath, allow your senses to be open. And don't think - feel.

You are standing under the shower: feel the coolness of the water falling on you. Don't think about it. Don't immediately say, 'It is very cool. It is cold. It is good.' Don't say anything. Don't verbalize, because the moment you verbalize, you miss feeling. The moment words come in, the mind has started to function. Don't verbalize. Feel the coolness and don't say that it is cool. There is no need to say anything. But our minds are just mad; we go on saying something or other.

I remember, I was working in a university, and there was a lady professor who would always be saying something or other. It was impossible for her to be silent in any situation. One day I was standing on the verandah of the college and the sun was setting. It was tremendously beautiful.

And she was just standing by my side, so I told her, 'Look!' She was saying something or other, so I said, 'Look! Such a beautiful sunset.' So, very reluctantly she conceded. She said, 'Yes, but don't you think there should be a little more purple just on the left?' It was not a painting; it was a real sunset!

We go on saying things, not even aware of what we are saying. Stop verbalizing; only then can you deepen your feelings. If feelings are deepened, then this technique can work miracles for you.

FEEL:

MY THOUGHT, Close your eyes and feel the thought. A continuous flow of thoughts is there, a continuum, a flux; a river of thoughts is flowing. Feel these thoughts, feel their presence. And the more you feel, the more will be revealed to you - layers upon layers. Not only thoughts that are just on the surface; behind them there are more thoughts, and behind them there are still more thoughts - layers upon layers.

And the technique says:FEEL: MY THOUGHT. And we go on saying, 'These are my thoughts.' But feel - are they really yours? Can you say 'my'? The more you feel, the less will it be possible for you to say that they are yours. They are all borrowed, they are all from the outside. They have come to you but they are not yours. No thought is yours - just dust gathered. Even if you cannot recognize the source from where this thought has come to you, no thought is yours. If you try hard, you can find from where this thought has come to you.

Only the inner silence is yours. No one has given it to you. You were born with it, and you will die with it. Thoughts have been given to you; you have been conditioned to them. If you are a Hindu, you have a different type, a different set of thoughts; if you are a Mohammedan, of course, a different set of thoughts; if you are a communist, again a different set of thoughts. They have been given to you, or you may have taken them voluntarily, but no thought is yours.

If you feel the presence of thoughts, the crowd, you can feel this also - that they are not yours. The crowd has come to you, it has gathered around you, but it doesn't belong to you. And if this can be felt - that no thought is mine - only then you can throw the mind. If they are yours, you will defend them. And the very feeling that 'this thought is mine' is the attachment. Then I give it roots in myself.

Then I become the soil and the thought can remain rooted in me. If anything that I can see is not mine is uprooted, then I am not attached to it. The feeling of 'mine' creates attachment.

You can fight for your thoughts, you can even become a martyr for your thoughts. Or, you can become a killer, a murderer for your thoughts. And thoughts are not yours. Consciousness is yours, but thoughts are not yours. And why will this help? - because if you can see that thoughts are not yours, then nothing is yours because thought is the root of all. The house is mine and the property is mine and the family is mine - these are the outer things. Deep down the thoughts are mine. Only if thoughts are mine can all these things, the superstructure, be mine.

If thoughts are not mine then nothing matters, because this too is a thought - that you are my wife, or you are my husband. This too is a thought. And if basically thought itself is not mine, then how can the husband be mine? Or how can the wife be mine? Thoughts uprooted, the whole world is uprooted. Then you can live in the world and not live in it.

You can move to the Himalayas, you can leave the world, but if you think that your thoughts are yours, you have not moved a single inch. Sitting there in the Himalayas, you will be as much in the world as here because thoughts are the world. You carry your thoughts to the Himalayas. You leave the house - but the real house is inner, and the real house is built by the bricks of thought. It is not the outer house.

So this is strange, but this happens every day: I see a person who has left the world but still he remains a Hindu. He becomes a sannyasin and still he remains a Hindu or remains a Jain. What does it mean? He renounces the world but he doesn't renounce the thoughts. He is still a Jain, he is still a Hindu - the thought-world is carried still. And that thought-world is the real world.

If you can see that no thought is yours.... And you will see, because you will be the seer and thoughts will become the objects. When you silently look at the thoughts, thoughts will be the objects and you will be the looker. You will be the seer, the witness, and thoughts will be flowing before you.

And if you look deeply and feel deeply, you will see that there are no roots. Thoughts are floating like clouds in the sky; they have no roots in you. They come and go. You are just a victim, and you unnecessarily become identified with them. About every cloud that passes by your house you say, 'This is my cloud.' Thoughts are like clouds: in the sky of your consciousness they go on passing and you go on clinging to each one. You say, 'This is mine' - and this is only a vagrant cloud that is passing. And it will pass.

Go back in your childhood. You had certain thoughts, and you used to cling to them and you used to say that they were your thoughts. Then the childhood disappeared, and with that childhood those clouds disappeared. Now you don't even remember. Then you were young: then other clouds which are attracted when you are young came to you and then your started clinging to them.

Now you are old: those thoughts are no more there, you don't even remember them. And they were so significant that you could have died for them, and now you don't even remember. Now you can laugh at the whole nonsense that you once thought that you could die for them, you could become a martyr for them. Now you are not ready to even give a single penny for them. They don't belong to you now. Now those clouds have gone but other clouds have come, and you are clinging to them.

Clouds go on changing but your clinging never changes. That's the problem. And it is not that only when you are no longer a child they will change; every moment they are changing. A minute ago you were filled with certain clouds; now you are filled with other clouds. When you came here, certain clouds were hovering on you; when you leave this room, other clouds will be hovering on you - and you go on clinging to every cloud. If in the end you find nothing in your hand, it is natural because nothing can come of clouds - and thoughts are just clouds.

This sutra says: FEEL. Be established in feeling first. Then MY THOUGHT. Look at that thought which you have always been calling MY - MY THOUGHT. Established in feeling, looking at thought, the MY disappears. And MY is the trick because out of many MY'S, out of many ME'S, the I evolves - this is MINE, this is MY. So many MINE'S; out of them the I evolves.

This technique starts from the very root. Thought is the root of all. If you can cut the feeling of MY at the very root, it will not appear again, it will not be seen anywhere again. But if you don't cut it down there, you can go on cutting everywhere and it is useless; it will go on appearing again and again.

I can cut it. I can say, 'My wife? No, we are strangers, and marriage is just a social formality.' I cut myself away. I say, 'No one is my wife' - but this is very superficial. Then I say, 'MY religion,' Then I say, 'MY sect.' Then I say, 'This is MY religious book. This is the Bible. This is the Koran. This is MY book.' Then the MY continues in some other field and you remain the same.

MY THOUGHT, and then I-NESS. First look at the traffic of thought, the process of thought, the river-like flow of thought, and find out whether any thought belongs to you or whether they are just passing clouds. And when you have come to feel that no thought is yours, to attach MY to any thought is an illusion, then the second thing; then you can move deeper. Then be aware of I-ness.

Where is this I?

Raman used to give a technique to his disciples: they were just to enquire, 'Who am I?' In Tibet they use a similar technique, but still better than Raman's. They don't ask, 'Who am I?' They ask, 'Where am I?' - because the WHO can create a problem. When you enquire, 'Who am I?' you take it for granted that you are; the only question is to know who you are. You have presupposed that you are. That is not contested. It is taken for granted that you are. Now the only question is WHO you are. Only the identity is to be known, the face is to be recognized, but it is there - unrecognized it is there.

The Tibetan method is still deeper. They say to be silent and then search within for where you are.

Go on in the inner space, move to every point and ask, 'Where am I?' You will not find it anywhere.

And the more you seek, the more it will not be there. And asking 'Who am I?' or 'Where am I?' a moment comes when you come to a point where you are, but no I - a simple existence has happened to you. But it will happen only when thoughts are not yours. That is a deeper realm - I-NESS.

We never feel it. We go on saying I. The word I is used continuously - the most used word is I - but you have no feeling. What do you mean by I? When you say I, what do you mean? What is connoted through this word? What is expressed? I can make a gesture. Then I can say, 'I mean this.' I can show my body - 'I mean this.' But then it can be asked, 'Do you mean your hand? Do you mean your leg? Do you mean your stomach?' Then I will have to deny, I will have to say no. Then the whole body will be denied. Then what do you mean when you say I? Do you mean your head?

Deep down, whenever you say I, it is a very vague feeling, and the vague feeling is of your thoughts.

Established in feeling, cut from thoughts, face I-ness, and as you face it, you find that it exists not.

It was only a useful word, a linguistic symbol - necessary, but not real. Even a Buddha has to use it, even after his enlightenment. It is just a linguistic device. But when a Buddha says I, he never means I, because there is no one.

When you face this I-NESS it will disappear. Fear can grip you at this moment, you can be scared.

And it happens to many who move in such techniques deeply that they become so afraid that they run out of it. So remember this: when you feel and face your I-NESS you will be in the same situation as you will be when you die - the same. Because I is disappearing, and you feel death is occurring to you. You will have a sinking sensation, you will feel you are sinking down and down. And if you get afraid, you will come out again and you will cling to thoughts because those thoughts will be helpful. Those clouds will be there: you can cling to them, and then the fear will leave you.

Remember, this fear is very good, a very hopeful sign. It shows that now you are going deep - and death is the deepest point. If you can go into death you will become deathless, because one who goes into death cannot die. Then death is also just around; never in the center, just on the periphery.

When I-NESS disappears you are just like death. The old is no more and the new has come into being.

This consciousness which will come out is absolutely new, uncontaminated, young, virgin. The old is no more - and the old has not even touched it. That I-NESS disappears, and you are in your pristine virginity, in your absolute freshness. The deepest layer of being has been touched.

So think of it in this way: thoughts, then below them I-NESS, and thirdly:

FEEL:

MY THOUGHT, I-NESS, INTERNAL ORGANS - ME.

When thoughts have disappeared or you are not clinging to them - if they are passing it is none of your business, you are aloof and detached and unidentified, and the I-NESS has disappeared - then you can look at the internal organs. These internal organs.... This is one of the deepest things. We know the outer organs. With hands I touch you, with eyes I see you - these are the outer organs.

The internal organs are those through which I feel my own being. The outer are for others. I know about you through the outer. How do I know about me? Even that I am - how do I know about it? Who gives me the sensation of my own being? There are internal organs. When thoughts have stopped and when I-NESS is no more, only then, in that purity, in that clarity, can you see the internal organs.

Consciousness, intelligence - they are internal organs. Through them I am aware of my own being, of my own existence. That's why if you close your eyes, you can forget your body completely, but your own feeling that you are, remains. And it is conceivable that when a person dies.... It is a fact.

When a person dies, for us he is dead, but it takes a little time for him to recognize the fact that he is dead because the internal feeling of being, remains the same.

In Tibet they have special exercises for dying and they say one must be ready to die. One of the exercises is this: whenever someone is dying, the master or the priest or someone who knows the bardo exercises will go on saying to him, 'Remember, be alert, you are leaving the body.' Because even when you have left the body it will take time to recognize that you are dead because the internal feeling remains the same; there is no change.

The body is only to touch and feel others. Through it you have never touched yourself, through it you have never known yourself. You know yourself through some other organs which are internal. But this is the misery - that we are not aware of those internal organs and our image in our own eyes is created by others. Whatsoever others say about me is my knowledge about myself. If they say I am beautiful or if they say I am ugly, I believe in it. Whatsoever my senses say to me through others, reflected through others, is my belief of myself.

If you can recognize the internal organs you are freed from society completely. That is what is meant when it is said in old scriptures that a sannyasin is not part of the society, because now he knows himself through his own internal organs. Now his knowledge about himself is not based upon others, it is not a reflected thing. Now he doesn't need any mirror to know himself. He has found the inner mirror, and he knows through the inner mirror. And the inner reality can be known only when you have come to the inner organs.

INTERNAL ORGANS. You can then look through those internal organs. And then - the ME. It is difficult to express it in words, that's why ME is used. Any word will be wrong - ME is also wrong - but the I has disappeared. So remember, this ME doesn't have anything to do with I. When thoughts are uprooted, when I-NESS has disappeared, when internal organs are known, the ME appears.

Then for the first time my real being is revealed - that real being is called ME.

The outer world is no more, thoughts are no more, the feeling of ego is no more, and I have come to recognize my own internal organs of knowing, consciousness, intelligence - or whatsoever you call it - awareness, alertness. Then, in the light of this internal organ, ME is revealed.

This ME doesn't belong to you. This ME is your innermost center, unknown to you. This ME is not an ego. This ME is not against any YOU. This ME is cosmic. This Me has no boundaries. In this ME everything is implied. This ME is not the wave. This ME is the ocean.

FEEL: MY THOUGHT, I-NESS, INTERNAL ORGANS. Then there is a gap, and suddenly the ME is revealed. When this ME is revealed, then one comes to know, 'Aham Brahmasmi. I am the God.'

This knowing is not any claim of the ego; the ego is no more there. You can mutate yourself through this technique, but first get established in feeling.

The second technique:

BEFORE DESIRE AND BEFORE KNOWING, HOW CAN I SAY I AM?

CONSIDER.

DISSOLVE IN THE BEAUTY.

BEFORE DESIRE AND BEFORE KNOWING, HOW CAN I SAY I AM?

A desire arises: with the desire, the feeling that I AM arises. A thought arises: with the thought, the feeling that I AM arises. Look for it in your own experience. Before desire and before knowing, there is no ego.

Sit silently. Look within. A thought arises: you get identified with the thought. A desire arises: you get identified with the desire. In the identification you become the ego. Then think: there is no desire and there is no knowledge and no thought - you cannot get identified with anything. The ego cannot arise.

Buddha used this technique and he said to his disciples not do anything else but just one thing:

when a thought arises, not it down. Buddha used to say that when a thought arises, note down that a thought is arising. Just inside, note it: now a thought is arising, now a thought has arises, now a thought is disappearing. Just remember that now the thought is arising, now the thought has arisen, now the thought is disappearing, so that you don't get identified with it.

It is very beautiful and very simple. A desire arises. You are walking on the road; a beautiful car passes by. You look at it - and you have not even looked and the desire to possess it arises. Do it.

In the beginning just verbalize; just say slowly, 'I have seen a car. It is beautiful. Now a desire has arisen to possess it.' Just verbalize.

In the beginning it is good; if you can say it loudly, it is very good. Say loudly, 'I am just noting that a car has passed, the mind has said it is beautiful, and now desire has arisen and I must possess this car.' Verbalize everything, speak loudly to yourself and immediately you will feel that you are different from it. Note it.

When you have become efficient in noting, there is no need to say it loudly. Just inside, note that a desire has arisen. A beautiful woman passes; the desire has come in. Just note it - as if you are not concerned, you are just noting the fact that is happening - and then suddenly you will be out of it.

Buddha says, 'Note down whatsoever happens. Just go on noting, and when it disappears, again note that now that desire has disappeared, and you will feel a distance from the desire, from the thought.'

This technique says:

BEFORE DESIRE AND BEFORE KNOWING, HOW CAN I SAY I AM?

And if there is no desire and if there is no thought, how can you say I AM? How can I say I AM?

Then everything is silent, not a ripple is there. And without any ripple how can I create this illusion of I? If some ripple is there I can get attached to it and through it I can feel I AM. When there is no ripple in the consciousness, there is no I.

So before desire, remember; when the desire comes in, remember; when the desire goes out, go on remembering. When a thought arises, remember. Look at it. Just note that a thought has arisen.

Sooner or later it will go because everything is momentary, and there will be a gap. Between two thoughts there is a gap, between two desires there is a gap, and in the gap there is no I.

Note a thought in the mind and then you will feel that there is an interval. Howsoever small, there is an interval. Then another thought comes; then again there is an interval. In those intervals there is no I - and those intervals are your real being. Thoughts are moving in the sky. In those intervals you can look between two clouds, and the sky is revealed.

CONSIDER.

DISSOLVE IN THE BEAUTY.

And if you can consider that a desire has arisen and a desire has gone and you have remained in the gap and the desire has not disturbed you.... It came, it went. It was there, and it is now not there, and you have remained unperturbed, you have remained as you were before it. There has been no change in you. It came and it passed like a shadow. It has not touched you; you remain unscarred.

Consider this movement of desire and movement of thought but no movement in you. CONSIDER AND DISSOLVE IN THE BEAUTY. And that interval is beautiful. Dissolve in that interval. Fall in the gap and be the gap. It is the deepest experience of beauty. And not only of beauty, but of good and of truth also. In the gap you are.

The whole emphasis has to go from the filled spaces to the unfilled spaces. You are reading a book. There are words, there are sentences, but between the words there are gaps, between the sentences there are gaps. In those gaps you are. The whiteness of the paper you are, and the black dots are just clouds of thought and desire moving on you. Change the emphasis, change the gestalt. Don't look at the black dots. Look at the white.

In your inner being, look at the gaps. Be indifferent to the filled spaces, the occupied spaces. Be interested in the gaps, the intervals. Through those intervals you can dissolve into the ultimate beauty.