Become each being

Existence as such is one. The human problem arises because of human self-consciousness.

Consciousness gives everyone a feeling that they are separate, and the feeling that you are separate from existence creates all the problems. Basically this feeling is false, and whatsoever is based on a falsity will create anguish, will create problems, will create confusion. And whatsoever you do, if it is based on this false separateness, it will go wrong.

So from the very beginning the problem of human anguish has to be tackled: how does it arise?

Consciousness gives you a feeling that you are the center of your being, and consciousness makes you aware that others are 'other', that you are different from them. This difference is just because you are conscious. While you are asleep there is no difference - you are again merged with the universe. Hence so much bliss comes out of sleep. In the morning you feel refreshed, rejuvenated, again alive, fresh.

What is happening in deep sleep? You are losing your ego, you are losing yourself, you are falling into a unity with the universe. That falling back int the unity makes you fresh and alive, and in the morning you feel blissful. All the anguish disappears; all conflict, all disturbance, disappears; all fear, all death disappears - because death is possible only if you are separate. If you are not separate, then death is impossible. Who is going to die if you are not separate? Who can suffer if you are not separate? So all Tantra, yoga and other methods of meditation are just to make you aware that separateness is false and inseparateness is real. And if you can become aware of that you will be totally different, because the center will have disappeared from you and it will take its right place in the universe. You will be just a wave on this vast ocean. You will not be separate so you will not be afraid. You will not feel insecure. You will not feel the anguish of approaching death and annihilation.

All that disappears with the ego.

Hindus have always believed that samadhi is conscious sleep.In sleep it happens automatically that you are no more. The existence is, and you are no more; but you are deeply unconscious so you don't know what is happening. If this same phenomenon can happen consciously, you become enlightened. Buddha moves to the same source, to the same source that you move every night in deep sleep, in dreamless sleep. But Buddha moves to that source consciously, alert, aware. He knows where he is moving to, he knows what is happening, and when he comes back from that deep source, he comes totally different. The old has disappeared and a new being, a new energy has arisen out of it. Of this being, the center is the universe; and with this transfer of the center, all your worry, all your anguish, all your hell disappears, simply disappears. It is not solved, it is simply not there. It cannot exist there without the ego.] So how to be consciously deep asleep? How to move into sleep consciously? How to remain alert while you are losing the ego? The ego is a by-product, a by-product of your whole upbringing, a by-product of the natural course of life. It has to be there. There is no other way. No being can evolve without being involved with the ego. But a point comes when the ego can be dropped and should be dropped, and the being should transcend it.

The ego is just like the shell of the egg. It is needed, it protects. Just like the shell of a seed, it is needed, it protects. But the protection can become dangerous also, if it protects too much. If it goes on protecting and doesn't allow the seed to sprout, then it becomes a hindrance. It must dissolve into the earth so that the inner life evolves out of it. It must die.

The seed must die. Every man is born as a seed. The ego is the outer covering; it protects the child. If a child is born without the ego, without the feeling that "I exist", he cannot survive. He will to be able to protect himself, he will not be able to struggle, he will not be able in any way to exist. He needs a strong center. Even if it is false, it is needed. But a moment comes when this help becomes a hindrance. It protects you from outside, but it become so strong that it will not allow you, the inner being, to spread, to go beyond it, to sprout. So ego is needed - and then ego-transcendence is needed.

If someone dies with the ego, he has died as a seed. He has died without really attaining the destiny that was possible, without attaining existence consciously These techniques are for how to destroy this seed.

The first technique:

FEEL THE CONSCIOUSNESS OF EACH PERSON AS YOUR OWN CONSCIOUSNESS.

SO, LEAVING ASIDE CONCERN FOR SELF, BECOME EACH BEING.

FEEL THE CONSCIOUSNESS OF EACH PERSON AS YOUR OWN CONSCIOUSNESS. In reality it is so, but it is not felt so. You feel your consciousness as yours, and others' consciousnesses you never feel. At the most you infer that others are also conscious. You infer because you think that because you are conscious, other beings like you must be conscious. This is a logical inference; you don't feel them as conscious. It is just like when you have a headache you feel your headache, you have a consciousness of it. But if someone else has a headache, you infer - you cannot feel the other's headache. You simply infer that whatsoever he is saying must be true and he must have something like you. But you cannot feel it.

The feeling can come only if you become conscious about others' consciousnesses - otherwise it is a logical inference. You believe, you trust, that others are saying something honestly, and whatsoever they are saying is worth believing because you also have similar types of experiences.

There is a logical school which says that nothing can be known about the other, it is impossible. At the most there can be an inference but nothing certain can be known about others. How can you know that others have pain like you, that others have anxieties like you? Others are there but we cannot penetrate them, we can only just touch their surface. Their inner being remains unknown.

We remain closed in ourselves.

The world around us is not a felt world, it is just inferred - logically, rationally. The mind says it is there but the heart is not touched by it. That is why we behave with others as if they are things not persons. Our relationship with persons is also as it is with things. A husband behaves towards his wife as if she is a thing: he possesses her. The wife possesses the husband just like a thing. If we behaved with the other as if they were persons then we would not try to possess them, because only things can be possessed.

A person means freedom. A person cannot be possessed. If you try to possess them, you will kill them, they will become things. Our relationship with others is really not an 'I-thou' relationship, deep down it is just an 'I-it' relationship. The other is just a thing to be manipulated, to be used, exploited.

That is why love becomes more and more impossible, because love means taking the other as a person, as a conscious being, as a freedom, as something as valuable as you are.

If you behave as if everything is a thing, then you are the center and things are just to be used. The relationship becomes utilitarian. Things have no value in themselves - the value is that you can use them, they exist for you. You can be related to your house - the house exists for you. It is a utility.

The car exists for you, but the wife doesn't exist for you and the husband doesn't exist for you. The husband exists for himself and the wife exists for herself. A person exists for himself; that is what being a person means. And if you allow the person to be a person and don't reduce him to being a thing, you will by and by start feeling him. Otherwise you cannot feel. Your relationship will remain conceptual, intellectual, mind to mind, head to head - but not heart to heart.

This technique says, FEEL THE CONSCIOUSNESS OF EACH PERSON AS YOUR OWN CONSCIOUSNESS. This will be difficult because first you have to feel the person as a person, as a conscious being. Even that is difficult.

Jesus says, "Love your neighbor as you love yourself." This is the same thing - but the other must first become a person for you. He must exist in his own right, not to be exploited, manipulated, utilized, not as a means but an end in himself. First, the other must become a person; the other must become a 'thou', as valuable as you are. Only then can this technique be applied. FEEL THE CONSCIOUSNESS OF EACH PERSON AS YOUR OWN CONSCIOUSNESS. First feel that the other is conscious, and then this can happen - you can feel that the other has the same consciousness that you have. Really, the 'other' disappears, only a consciousness flows between you and him. You become two poles of one consciousness flowing, of one current.

In deep love it happens that the two persons are not two. Something between the two has come into being and they have just become two poles. Something is flowing between the two. When this flow is there you will feel blissful. If love gives bliss, it gives bliss only because of this: that two persons, just for a single moment, lose their egos - the 'other' is lost and oneness comes into being just for as ingle moment. If it happens, it is ecstatic, it is blissful, you have entered paradise. Just a single moment, and it can be transforming.

This technique says that you can do this with every person. In love you can do it with one person, but in meditation you have to do it with every person. Whosoever comes near you, simply dissolve into him and feel that you are not two lives, but one life, flowing. This is just changing the gestalt.

Once you know how, once you have done it, it is very easy. In the beginning it seems impossible because we are so stuck in our own egos. It is difficult to lose it, difficult to become a flow. So it will be good if in the beginning you try with something that you are not very scared or afraid of.

You will be less afraid of a tree so it will be easier. Sitting near a tree, just feel the tree and feel that you have become one with it, that there is a flow within you, a communication, a dialogue, a melting. Sitting near a flowing river just feel the flow, feel that you and the river have become one.

Lying under the sky, just feel that you and the sky have become one. In the beginning it will be just imagination but by and by you will feel that you are touching reality through imagination.

And then try it with persons. This is difficult in the beginning because there is a fear. Because you have been reducing persons to things, you are afraid that if you allow someone to be so intimate he will also reduce you to a thing. That is the fear. So no one allows much intimacy: a gap is always to be kept and guarded. Too much closeness is dangerous because the other can convert you into a thing, he can try to possess you. That is the fear. You are trying to convert others into things, and others are trying to convert you - and no one wants to be a thing, no one wants to become a means, no one wants to be used. It is the most degrading phenomenon to be reduced to just a means to something, not valuable in yourself. But everyone is trying. Because of this there is a deep fear and it will be difficult to start this technique with persons.

So start with a river, with a hill, with the stars, with the sky, with trees.Once you come to know the feeling of what happens when you become one with the tree; once you come to know how blissful you become when you become one with the river, how without losing anything you gain the whole existence - then you can try it with persons. And if it is so blissful with a tree, with a river, you cannot imagine how much more blissful it will be with a person, because a person is a higher phenomenon, a more highly evolved being. Through a person you can reach higher peaks of experience. If you can become ecstatic with even a rock, with a person you can feel a Divine ecstasy happening to you.

But start with something that you are not much afraid of, or, if there is a person you love, a friend, a beloved, a lover, of whom you are not afraid, with whom you can be really intimate and close without any fear, with whom you can lose yourself without getting scared deep down that he may turn you into a thing - if you have someone like that, then try this technique. Lose yourself consciously into him. When you lose yourself consciously into someone, that someone will lose himself into you; when you are open and you flow into the other, the other starts flowing into you and there is a deep meeting, a communion. Two energies melt into each other. In that state there is no ego, no individual - simply consciousness. And if this is possible with one individual, it is possible with the whole universe. What saints have called ecstasy, samadhi, is just a deep love phenomenon between a person and the whole universe.

FEEL THE CONSCIOUSNESS OF EACH PERSON AS YOUR OWN CONSCIOUSNESS.

SO,LEAVING ASIDE CONCERN FOR SELF, BECOME EACH BEING. We are always concerned with our own self. Even while we are in love, we are concerned with our own self, that is why love becomes a misery. It can become heaven but it becomes a hell, because even lovers are concerned with their own selves. The other is loved because he gives you happiness, the other is loved because you feel good with him, but the other is still not loved as if he is something valuable in himself or herself. The value comes through your enjoyment. You are gratified, you are satisfied in some way, that is why the other has become significant. This is also using the other.

Concern for the self means exploitation of the other. And religious consciousness can come into existence only when the concern for the self is lost, because then you become non-exploitive. With existence your relationship becomes one, not of exploitation, but of sheer sharing, sheer bliss.You are not using, you are not being used - it becomes a sheer celebration of being.

But concern for the self has to be thrown away... and it is very deep-rooted. It is so deep-rooted that you are not even aware of it. In one of the Upanishads it is said that the husband loves his wife, not for the wife, but for himself; and the mother loves the child, not for the child, but for herself.

The concern for the self is so deep-rooted that whatsoever you do, you do for yourself. This means that you are always gratifying the ego, feeding the ego, feeding a false center which has become a barrier between you and the universe.

Lose the concern for the self. If even sometimes, even for a few moments, you can lose concern for the self and can become concerned with the other, with the other's self, you will be entering a different reality, a different dimension. Hence so much emphasis on service, love, compassion.

Because compassion, love, service, mean concern for the other's self, not your own.

But look... human mind is so cunning that it has converted service, compassion and love into concerns for the self. A Christian missionary serves, and his service is sincere. Really, no one else can serve so deeply and intensely as a Christian missionary. No Hindu can do that, no Mohammedan can do that, because Jesus has emphasized service so much. A Christian missionary is serving poor people, ill people, diseased people, but deep down he is concerned with himself not with them. This service is just a method to reach heaven. He is not concerned with them, he is not really concerned with them at all, he is concerned with his own self. Through service he can achieve a greater self, so he is doing service. But he has missed the basic point, because service means the concern for the other - the other is the center and you have become the periphery.

Try it some time. Make someone the center - then his happiness becomes your happiness, his misery becomes your misery. Whatsoever happens, happens to him and flows to you. But he is the center. If once, even once, you can feel that the other is the center and you have become just a periphery to him, you have entered a different type of existence, a different dimension of experience.

Because in that moment you will feel a deep bliss, unknown before, unexperienced before. Just by making the other the concern, you will lose all misery. In that moment there will be no hell for you; you have entered paradise.

Why does it happen? It happens because the ego is the root of all misery. If you can forget it, if you can dissolve it, all misery dissolves with it.

FEEL THE CONSCIOUSNESS OF EACH PERSON AS YOUR OWN CONSCIOUSNESS. SO, LEAVING ASIDE CONCERN FOR SELF, BECOME EACH BEING. Become the tree, become the river, become the wife, become the husband, become the child, become the mother, become the friend - it can be practiced every moment of life. But in the beginning it will be difficult. so do it for a least one hour every day. In that hour, whatsoever passes around you, become that. You will wonder how it can happen. There is no other way to know how it can happen - you have to practice it.

Sit with the tree and feel that you have become the tree. And when the wind comes and the whole tree starts shaking and trembling, feel that shaking and trembling in you; when the sun rises and the whole tree becomes alive, feel that aliveness in you; when a shower of rain comes and the whole tree is satisfied and content, a long thirst, a long awaiting has disappeared and the tree is completely satisfied and content, feel satisfied and content with the tree. and then you will become aware of the subtle moods, of the nuances of a tree.

You have seen that tree for many years, but you don't know its moods. Sometimes it is happy; sometimes it is unhappy. Sometimes it is sad, dead, worried, frustrated; sometimes it is very blissful, ecstatic. There are moods. The tree is alive and it feels. And if you become one with it, then you will feel it. Then you will feel whether the tree is young or old; whether the tree is dissatisfied with its life or satisfied; whether the tree is in love with existence or not - is anti, against, furious, angry; whether the tree is violent or there is a deep compassion in it. As you are changing every moment, the tree is also changing - if you can feel a deep affinity with it, what they call empathy.

Empathy means you have become so sympathetic that really you become one. The moods of the tree become your moods. And then, if this goes deeper and deeper and deeper, you can talk, you can have a communication with the tree. Once you know its moods you start understanding its language, and the tree will share its mind with you. It will share its agonies and ecstasies.

And this can happen with the whole universe.

For at least one hour every day try to be in empathy with something. In the beginning you will look foolish to yourself. You will think,"What kind of stupidity am I doing?" You will look around and you will feel that if someone looks or someone sees or someone comes to know, they will think you have gone crazy. But only in the beginning. Once you enter this world of empathy the whole world will look crazy to you. They are missing so much unnecessarily. Life gives in such abundance and they are missing it. They are missing because they are closed: they don't allow life to enter into them.

And life can enter you only if you enter life through many, many ways, through many paths, through multi-dimensions. Be in empathy for at least one hour every day.

This was the meaning of prayer in the beginning of every religion. The meaning of prayer was to be in an affinity with the universe, to be in a deep communication with the universe. In prayer you are talking to God - God means the totality. Sometimes you may be angry with God, sometimes thankful, but one thing is certain - you are in communication. God is not a mental concept, it has become a deep, intimate relationship. That is what prayer means.

But our prayers have gone rotten because we don't know how to communicate with beings. And if you cannot communicate with beings, you cannot communicate with the Being - Being with a capital 'B' - it is impossible. If you cannot communicate with a tree, how can you communicate with the total existence? And if you feel foolish talking to a tree, you will feel more foolish talking to God.

Leave one hour aside every day for a prayerful state of mind, and don't make your prayer a verbal affair. Make it a feeling thing. Rather than talking with the head, feel it. Go and touch the tree, hug the tree, kiss the tree; close your eyes and be with the tree as if you are with your beloved. Feel it.

And soon you will come to a deep understanding of what it means to put the self aside, of what it means to become the other.

FEEL THE CONSCIOUSNESS OF EACH PERSON AS YOUR OWN CONSCIOUSNESS. SO, LEAVING ASIDE CONCERN FOR SELF, BECOME EACH BEING.

The second technique:

THIS CONSCIOUSNESS EXISTS AS EACH BEING, AND NOTHING ELSE EXISTS.

Scientists used to say in the past that only matter existed, nothing else. Great systems of philosophy arose based on the concept that only matter existed. But even those who believed that matter existed had to concede that there was something like consciousness. Then what was it? They said that consciousness was just an epi-phenomenon, just a by-product of matter. It was nothing but matter in disguise, something very subtle but still material. But this half century has seen a very great miracle happen.

Scientists tried and tried to find out what matter was, but the more they tried, they more they came to realize that there was nothing like matter. Matter was analyzed and it was found that it had disappeared. Nietzsche had said just a hundred years before, "God is dead." With God dead there can be no consciousness because God means the totality of consciousness. But within a hundred years matter is dead - and it is dead not because religious people believe it so but because scientists have come to a definite conclusion that matter is just appearance. It appears to be as it is because we cannot see very deeply. If we can see deeply it disappears, and then energy is left.

This phenomenon of energy, this non-material energy force, has been known by mystics since long ago.In the Vedas, in the Bible, in the Koran, in the Upanishads - all over the world mystics have penetrated into existence and have always concluded that matter is just an appearance; deep down there is no matter, only energy. With this science now agrees. And the mystics have said one thing more which science has yet to agree with - but with which it will have to agree one day! The mystics have come to another conclusion also. They say that when you penetrate deep into energy, energy also disappears and only consciousness remains.

So these are the three layers. Matter is the first layer, the surface. If you penetrate the surface then the second layer becomes apparent: you can perceive the second layer which is energy. Then if you penetrate energy, the third layer becomes illumined - that third layer is consciousness. In the beginning, science said that mystics were just dreaming, because science saw only matter and nothing else. Then science tried to penetrate, and the mystics' second layer was uncovered:

matter is just apparent - deep down it is nothing but energy. And the mystics' other claim is:

penetrate more into energy and energy also disappears, then there remains only consciousness.

That consciousness is God. That is the deepest-most core.

If you penetrate into your body, these three layers are there. Just on the surface is your body. The body looks material, but deep down there are currents of life, PRANA, vital energy. Without that vital energy your body would be just a corpse. It is alive, with something flowing in it. That flowing 'something' is energy. But deeper, still deeper, you are aware, you can witness. You can witness both your body and your vital energy. That witnessing is your consciousness.

Every existence has three layers. The deepest is the witnessing consciousness. In the middle is vital energy and just on the surface is matter, a material body.

This technique says, THIS CONSCIOUSNESS EXISTS AS EACH BEING, AND NOTHING ELSE EXISTS. WHAT ARE YOU? Who are you? If you close your eyes and try to find out who you are, ultimately you are bound to come to a conclusion that you are consciousness. Everything else may belong to you, but you are not that. The body belongs to you, but you can be aware of the body - and that which is aware of the body becomes separate. The body becomes an object of knowledge and you become the subject. You can know your body.Not only can you know, you can manipulate your body, you can activate it or make it inactive. You are separate. You can do something with your body.

And not only are you not your body, you are not your mind either. You can become aware of your mind also. If thoughts move, you can see them, and you can do something with them: you can make them disappear completely, you can become thoughtless. Or, you can concentrate your consciousness on one thought and not allow it to move from there. You can focus yourself on it and make it remain there. Or, you can allow a riverlike flow of thoughts.You can do something with your thoughts. You can even dissolve them completely until there is no thought - but still you are.

You will know that there are no thoughts, that a vacuum has come into being; but you will be there, witnessing that vacuum.

The only thing you cannot separate yourself from is your witnessing energy. That means you are that. You cannot separate yourself from it. You can separate yourself from everything else: you can know that you are not your body, not your mind, but you cannot know that you are not your witnessing because whatsoever you do you will be the witness. You cannot separate yourself from witnessing.

That witnessing is consciousness. And unless you come to a point from where separation becomes impossible, you have not come to yourself.

So there are methods by which the seeker goes on eliminating. He goes on eliminating - first the body, then the mind, and then he comes to the point where nothing can be eliminated. In the Upanishads they say, NETI, NETI. This is a deep method: "This is not, that is not." So the seeker goes on knowing, "This is not, this is not me, this is not I." He goes on and on until ultimately he comes to a point where he cannot say. "This is not I." Just a witnessing self remains. Pure consciousness remains. This pure consciousness exists as each being.

Whatsoever is in existence is just a phenomenon of this consciousness, just a wave, just a crystallization of this consciousness - and nothing else exists. But this has to be felt. Analysis can be helpful, intellectual understanding can be helpful, but it has to be FELT that nothing else exists, only consciousness. Then behave as if only consciousness exists.

I have heard about Lin Chi, a Zen master. As he was sitting one day in his hut someone came to see him. The man who came was angry. He may have been fighting with his wife or with his boss or something - but he was angry. He pushed open the door in anger, he threw down his shoes in anger and then he came, very respectfully, and bowed down to Lin Chi. Lin Chi said, "First go and ask forgiveness from the door and from the shoes." The man must have looked at Lin Chi very strangely.

There were other people also sitting there and they started laughing. Lin Chi said, "Stop!" and then said to the man, "If you don't do it then leave. I will have nothing to do with you." The man said, "It will look crazy to ask forgiveness from the shoes and from the door." Lin Chi said, "It was not crazy when you expressed anger. Will it now be crazy? Everything has a consciousness. So you go, and unless the door forgives you, I am not going to allow you in."

The man felt awkward but he had to go. Later on he became a monk himself and became enlightened. When he became enlightened, he related the whole anecdote and he said, "When I stood before the door, asking forgiveness, I felt awkward, foolish. But then I thought that if Lin Chi says so, there must be something in it. I trusted Lin Chi, so I thought that even if it was foolish do it. In the beginning whatsoever I was saying to the door was just superficial, artificial; but by and by I started to get warm. And Lin Chi was waiting and he said that he would watch. If the door forgave me, only then could I come in; otherwise I had to stay there until I had persuaded the door and the shoes to forgive me. By and by I became warm. I forgot that many people were looking. I forgot about Lin Chi - and then the concern became sincere and real. I started to feel the door and the shoes were changing their mood. And the moment I realized that the door and the shoes had changed and that they are feeling happy, Lin Chi immediately said that I could come. I had been forgiven."

This incident became a transforming phenomenon in his life because for the first time he became aware that everything is really a crystallization of consciousness. If you cannot see it, it is because you are blind. If you cannot hear it, it is because you are deaf. There is nothing the matter with the things around you. Everything is condensed consciousness. The problem is with you - you are not open and sensitive.

This technique says, THIS CONSCIOUSNESS EXISTS AS EACH BEING, AND NOTHING ELSE EXISTS. Live with this notion. Be sensitive to this and wherever you move, move with this mind and this heart - that everything is consciousness and nothing else exists. Sooner or later, the world will change its face. Sooner or later, objects disappear and persons start appearing everywhere.

Sooner or later, the whole world will be suddenly illumined and you will know that you were living in a world of dead things just because of your insensitivity. Otherwise everything is alive - not only alive, everything is conscious.

Everything deep down is nothing but consciousness. But if you leave it as a theory, if you believe in it as a theory, then nothing will happen. You will have to make it a way of life a style of life - behaving as if everything is conscious. In the beginning it will be an 'as if', and you will feel foolish, but if you can persist in your foolishness, and if you can dare to be foolish, soon the world will start revealing its mysteries.

Science is not the only methodology to use to enter the mysteries of existence. Really, it is the crudest methodology, the slowest. A mystic can enter existence in a single moment. Science will take millions of years to penetrate that much. The Upanishads say that the world is illusory, that matter is illusory, but only after five thousand years can science say that matter is illusory. The Upanishads say that deep down energy is conscious - science will take another five thousand years more. Mysticism is a jump; science is a very slow movement. The intellect cannot jump; it has to argue - argue every fact, prove, disprove, experiment. But the heart can jump immediately.

Remember, for the intellect a process is necessary, then comes the conclusion - process first, then the conclusion - logical. For the heart, conclusion comes first, then the process. It is just the reverse. That is why mystics cannot prove anything. They have the conclusion, but they don't have the process.

You may not be aware, you may not have noticed, that mystics simply talk about conclusions. If you read the Upanishads you will find only conclusions. When for the first time they were translated into Western languages, Western philosophers couldn't see the point - because there was no argument.

How do you reach this conclusion? What is the proof? On what premises do you declare, "There is Brahma"? The Upanishads don't say anything, they simply come to a conclusion. The heart reaches a conclusion immediately. And when the conclusion is reached, you can create the process. That is the meaning of theology.

Mystics reach the conclusion and theologians create the process. Jesus reached the conclusion and then the theologians - St. Augustine, Thomas Aquinas - they created the process. That is secondary. The conclusion has been reached, now you have to find the proofs. The proof is in the life of the mystic. He cannot argue about it. He himself is the proof - if you can see it. If you cannot see, then there is no proof. Then religion is absurd.

Don't make these techniques theories. They are not. They are jumps into experience, jumps into conclusion.

The third technique:

THIS CONSCIOUSNESS IS THE SPIRIT OF GUIDANCE OF EACH ONE. BE THIS ONE.

The first thing is that you have the guide within you but you don't use it. And you have not used it for so long, for so many lives, that you may not even be aware that a guide exists within you. I was reading Castaneda's book. His master, Don Juan, gives him a beautiful experiment to do. It is one of the oldest experiments.

On a dark night, on a very hilly track, dangerous, without any light, Castaneda's master said, "You simply believe in the inner guide and start running." It was dangerous. It was a hilly track, unknown, with trees, bushes, abysses. He could fall anywhere. Even in the daylight he had to be alert walking there, and at night everything was dark. He could not see anything and his master said, "Don't walk, run!" He couldn't believe it! It was simply suicidal. He became scared - but the master ran. He ran off just like a wild animal, and came running back. And Castaneda could not understand how he was doing it. Not only was he running in this darkness, but each time he came running directly to him, as if he could see. Then by and by Castaneda gathered courage. If this old man could do this, why not he? He tried, and by and by he felt an inner light coming in. Then he started running.

You only ARE whenever you stop thinking. The moment you stop thinking, the inner happens. If you don't think, everything is okay - it is as if some inner guide is working. Your reason has misguided you. And the greatest misguidance has been this: you cannot believe in the inner guide.

First, you have to convince your reason. Even if your inner guide says, "Go ahead," you have to convince your reason and then you miss opportunities. Because there are moments... you can use them or you can miss them. Intellect takes time, and while you are pondering, contemplating, thinking, you miss the moment. Life is not waiting for you. One has to live immediately. One has to be really a warrior - as they say in Zen - because when you are fighting in the field with your sword, you cannot think. You have to move without thinking.

Zen masters have used the sword as a technique for meditation, and they say in Japan that if two Zen masters, two meditative persons, are fighting with those swords, there can be no conclusion.

No one can be defeated and no one is going to win, because both are not thinking.. The swords are just not in their hands, they are in the hands of their inner guide, the non-thinking inner guide, and before the other attacks, the guide knows and defends. You cannot think about it because there is no time. The other is aiming at your heart. In a flash of a moment the sword will penetrate to the heart. There is no time to think about it, about what to do. When the thought, "penetrate the heart" occurs to him, simultaneously the thought, "defend" must occur to you - simultaneously, with no gap - only then can you defend. Otherwise you will be no more.

So they teach swordsmanship as a meditation and they say, "Be moment to moment with the inner guide, don't think. Allow the inner being to do whatsoever happens to it. Don't interfere with the mind." This is very difficult because we are so trained with our minds. Our schools, our colleges, our universities, the whole culture, the whole pattern of civilization, teach our heads. We have lost contact with the inner guide. Everyone is born with that inner guide but it is not allowed to work, to function. It is almost paralyzed, but it can be revived.

This sutra is for that inner guide. THIS CONSCIOUSNESS IS THE SPIRIT OF GUIDANCE OF EACH ONE. BE THIS ONE. Don't think with the head. Really, don't think at all. Just move. Try it is some situations. It will be difficult, because the old habit will be to start thinking. You will have to be alert: not to think, but to feel inwardly what is coming to the mind. You may be confused many times because you will not be able to know whether it is coming from the inner guide or from the surface of the mind. But soon you will know the feeling, the difference.

When something comes from the inner, it comes from your navel upwards. You can feel the flow, the warmth, coming from the navel upwards. Whenever your mind thinks, it is just on the surface, in the head, and then it goes down. If your mind decided something, then you have to force it down. If your inner guide decides, then something bubbles up in you. It comes from the deep core of your being towards the mind. The mind receives it, but it is not of the mind. It comes from beyond - and that is why the mind is scared about it. For reason it is reliable because it comes from behind - without any reason with it, without any proofs. It simply bubbles up.

Try it in certain situations. For example, you have lost your path in a forest. Try it. Don't think - just close your eyes, sit down, be meditative, and don't think. Because it is futile - how can you think?

You don't know. But thinking has become such a habit that you go on thinking even in moments when nothing can come out of it. Thinking can think only about something which is already known.

You are lost in a forest, you don't have any map, there is nobody you can ask. What are you thinking about? But still you think. That thinking will be just a worry, not a thinking. And the more you get worried, the less the inner guide can be competent.

Be unworried. Sit down under a tree, and just allow thoughts to drop and subside. Just wait, don't think. Don't create the problem, just wait. And when you feel a moment of non-thinking has come, then stand up and start moving. Wheresoever your body moves, allow it to move. You just be a witness. Don't interfere. The lost path can be found very easily. But the only condition is, "Don't interfere with the mind."

This has happened many times unknowingly. Great scientists say that whenever a great discovery has been made, it was never made by the mind; it was always made by the inner guide.

Madame Curie was trying and trying to solve a mathematical problem. She did her best, all that was possible. Then she got fed up. For days together, weeks together, she had been working and nothing had come out. She was feeling just mad. No path was leading to the solution. Then one night, just exhausted, she fell down and slept. And in the night, in a dream, the conclusion bubbled up. She was so concerned with the conclusion that the dream was broken, she awoke. Immediately she wrote down the conclusion - because there was no process in the dream, just a conclusion.

She wrote it down on a pad and then slept again. In the morning she was puzzled; the conclusion was right, but she didn't know how it had been achieved. There was no process, no method. Then she tried to find the process; now it was an easier affair because the conclusion was in the hand, and it is easy to go back from the conclusion. She won the Nobel Prize because of this dream - but she always wondered how it happened.

When your mind gets exhausted and cannot do any more, it simply retires. In that moment of retirement the inner guide can give hints, clues, keys. The man who won the Nobel Prize for the inner structure of a human cell, saw it in a dream. He saw the whole structure of the human cell, the inner cell, in a dream, and then in the morning he just made a picture of it. He himself couldn't believe that it could be so, so he had to work for years. After years of work he could conclude that the dream was true.

With Madame Curie it happened that when she came to know this inner process of the inner guide, she decided to try it. Once there was a problem which she wanted to solve, so she thought, "Why worry about it, and why try? Just go to sleep." She slept well, but there was no solution. So she was puzzled. Many times she tried: when there was a problem immediately she would go to sleep.

But there was no solution. First, the intellect has to be tried, completely; only then can the solution bubble up. The head has to be completely exhausted otherwise it goes on functioning, even in a dream.

So now scientists say that all the great discoveries are intuitive, not intellectual. This is what is meant by the inner guide.

THIS CONSCIOUSNESS OF THE SPIRIT OF GUIDANCE OF EACH ONE. BE THIS ONE. Lose the head and drop into this inner guide. It is there. Old scriptures say that the master or the guru - the "outer" guru - can be helpful only in finding the inner guru. That is all. Once the outer guru has helped you to find the inner guru, the function of the outer guru is no more.

You cannot reach to the truth through a master; you can reach only to the inner master through a master - and then this inner master will lead you to the truth. The outer master is just a representative, a substitute. He has his inner guide and he can feel your inner guide also, because they both exist on the same wavelength - they both exist in the same tuning and the same dimension.

If I have found my inner guide, I can look into you and feel your inner guide. And if I am really a guide to you, all my guidance will be to lead you to your inner guide.

Once you are in contact with the inner guide, I am no longer needed. Now you can move alone. So all that a guru can do is to push you down from your head to your navel, from your reasoning to your intuitive force, from your argumentative mind to your trusting guide. And it is not like this with only human beings, it is so with animals, with birds, with trees, with everything. The inner guide exists, and many new phenomena have been discovered which are mysteries.

There are a number of cases. For example, the mother fish dies immediately after she lays the egg.

Then the father helps the egg to be fertilized, and then he dies. The egg remains alone without a mother and without a father. It matures. Then a new fish is born. This fish doesn't know anything about father, mother, parents; she doesn't know from where they came. But although this particular fish lives in a particular part of the sea, she will move to the part from where the father and mother came to lay the eggs. She will move to the source. This has been happening again and again, and when she wans to lay an egg she will come to this bank, lay the egg, and die. So there is no communication between parents and their children but the children somehow know where they have to go, where they have to move - and they never miss. And you cannot misguide them. It has been tried, but you cannot misguide them. They will reach to the source. Some inner guide is working.

In Soviet Russia they have been experimenting with cats, with rats, and with many small animals. A cat, a mother cat, was separated from her children and the children were taken deep down into the sea; she could not know what was happening to her children. Every type of scientific instrument was attached to the cat to measure what was going on within her mind and her heart, and then one child was killed, deep in the sea. Immediately the mother became aware. Her blood-rate changed. She became puzzled and worried, her heartbeat increased.. as soon as the child was killed. And the scientific instrument said that she was feeling severe pain. Then after a while everything became normal. Then another child was killed - again the change. And the same with the third child. It happened every time, exactly at the same time, without any time-gap. What was happening?

Now Soviet scientists say the mother has an inner guide, an inner feeling-center and it is joined to her children, wherever they are. And she immediately feels a telepathic relationship. The human mother will not feel so much. This is puzzling. It should be quite the otherwise: the human mother should feel more because she is more evolved. But she will not because the head has taken everything into its hands and the inner centers are all lying paralyzed.

THIS CONSCIOUSNESS IS THE SPIRIT OF GUIDANCE OF EACH ONE. BE THIS ONE.

Whenever you are puzzled in a situation and you cannot see how to get out of it, don't think; just be in a deep non-thinking and allow the inner guide to guide you. In the beginning you will feel afraid, insecure, but soon, when you come every time to the right conclusion, when you come every time to the right door, you will gather courage and you will become trusting.

If this trust happens, I call it faith. This really is religious faith - the trust in the inner guide. Reasoning is part of the ego. It is you believing in yourself. The moment you go deep within you, you have come to the very soul of the universe. Your inner guide is part of the Divine guidance. When you follow it, you follow the Divine; when you follow yourself, you are complicating things, and you don't know what you are doing. You may think yourself very wise. You are not.

Wisdom comes from the heart, it is not of the intellect. Wisdom comes from the innermost depth of your being, it is not of the head. Cut your head off, be headless - and follow the being, whatsoever, wheresoever it leads. Even if it leads into danger, go into danger, because that will be the path for you and your growth. Through that danger you will grow and become mature. Even if the inner guide leads you to death, go into it, because that is going to be the path for you. Follow it, trust it, and move with it.