Beyond mind to awareness

The first question:

They have reached! They have not reached to meditation, but they have reached to madness! And the difference between the mad who are in the madhouses and the mad who are outside is only of degrees. There is no qualitative difference, the difference is only of quantity. You may be less mad, they may be more mad, but man as he is, is mad.

Why I call man as he is, mad? Madness means many things. One, you are not centered. If you are not centered you will be insane. Not centered, many voices in you - you are many, you are a multitude. And no one is a master in the house, and every servant of the house claims to be the master. There is confusion, conflict, and a continuous struggle. You are in a continuous civil war. If this civil war is not going on, then you will be in meditation. It continues day and night, twenty-four hours. Write down whatsoever goes on in your mind for a few minutes, and be honest. Write down exactly whatsoever goes on, and you yourself will feel that this is mad.

I have a particular technique I use with many persons. I say to them that, sit in a closed room and then start talking loudly, whatsoever comes in the mind. Talk it loudly so that you can listen. Just fifteen minutes of talking, and you will feel you are listening to a madman. Absurd, inconsistent, unrelated fragments floating in the mind. And that is your mind! So you may be ninety-nine percent mad and someone has crossed the boundary, he has gone beyond one hundred percent. Those who have gone beyond the hundred percent we put into madhouses. We cannot put you into madhouses because there are not so many madhouses. And there cannot be - then the whole earth has to be a madhouse.

Kahlil Gibran writes a small anecdote. He says one of his friends became mad, so he was put in a madhouse. Then just out of love, compassion, he went to see him, to visit him. He was sitting under a tree in the garden of the madhouse, surrounded by a very big wall. Kahlil Gibran went there, sat by the side on the bench with his friend and asked him, "Do you ever think about why you are here?" The madman laughed, and he said, "I am here because I wanted to leave that big madhouse outside. And I am at peace here. In this madhouse - you call it madhouse - no one is mad."

Mad people cannot think that they are mad; that is one of the basic characteristics of madness. If you are mad, you cannot think that you are mad. If you can think you are mad, there is possibility. If you can think and conceive that you are mad, you are still a little sane. The madness has not occurred in its totality. So this is the paradox: those who are really sane, they know that they are mad, and those who are completely mad, they cannot think that they are mad.

You never think that you are mad. That is part of madness. You are not centered, you cannot be sane. Your sanity is just superficial, arranged. Just on the surface you appear to be sane. That's why, continuously, you have to deceive the world around you. You have to hide much; you have to prevent much. You don't allow everything to come out. You are suppressive. You may be thinking something else, but you will say something else. You are pretending, and because of this pretension you can have the minimum superficial sanity around you; inside you are boiling.

Sometimes there are eruptions. In anger you erupt, and the madness that you have been hiding comes out. It breaks all your adjustments. So psychologists say anger is a temporary madness. You will again regain balance; you will again hide your reality; you will again polish your surface; you will again become sane. And you will say that "It was wrong. I did it in spite of me. I never meant it, so forgive me." But you meant it! That was more real. This asking for forgiveness is just a pretension. Again you are maintaining your surface, your mask.

A sane man has no mask. His face is original; whatsoever he is, he is. A madman has to change continuously his faces. Every moment he has to use a different mask for a different situation, for different relationships. Just watch yourself changing your faces. When you come to your wife you have a different face; when you go to your beloved, your mistress, you have totally a different face.

When you talk to your servant you have a different mask, and when you talk to your master, a totally different face. It may be that your servant is standing on your right and your boss is standing on your left then you have two faces simultaneously. On the left you have a different face; on the right you have a different face, because to the servant you cannot show the same face. You need not. You are the boss there, so one side of the face will be the boss. You cannot show that face to your boss you are a servant there; your other side will show a servile attitude.

This is continuously going on. You are not watching, that's why you are not aware. If you watch, you will become aware you are mad. You don't have any face. The original face has been lost. To regain the original face is what meditation means.

So Zen Masters say, "Go and find out your original face - the face you had before you were born, the face you will have when you have died." Between birth and death you have false faces. You continuously go on deceiving-and not only others: when you stand before a mirror you deceive yourself. You never see in the mirror your real face. You don't have that much courage to face yourself. That face in the mirror is also false. You create it, you enjoy it; it is a painted mask.

We are not deceiving others only, we are deceiving ourselves also. Really, we cannot deceive others if we have not deceived ourselves already. So we have to believe in our own lies, only then can we make others to believe. If you don't believe in your lies, nobody else is going to be deceived.

And this whole nuisance that you call your life leads nowhere. It is a mad affair. You work too much. You overwork; you walk and run. And the whole life you struggle and you reach nowhere. You don't know from where you are coming, you don't know to where you are moving, to where you are going. If you meet a man on the road and you ask him, "From where are you coming, sir?" and he says, "I don't know," and you ask him, "Where are you going" and he says, "I don't know," and still he says, "Don't prevent me, I am in a hurry," so what you will think about him? You will think he is mad.

If you don't know from where you are coming and where you are going, then what is the hurry? But this is the situation of everybody, and everybody is on the road. Life is a road; you are always in the middle. And you don't know from where you have come; you don't know where you are going. You have no knowledge of the source, no knowledge of the goal, but in much hurry, making every effort to reach nowhere.

What type of sanity is this? And out of this whole struggle, not even glimpses of happiness come to you - not even glimpses. You simply hope someday, somewhere tomorrow, day after tomorrow, or after death, in some afterlife - happiness is waiting for you. This is just a trick, just to postpone, just not to feel too much miserable right now.

You don't have even glimpses of bliss. What type of sanity is this? Continuous misery - and, over and above, that misery is not created by anybody else. You create your suffering. What type of sanity is this? You create your suffering continuously! I call it madness.

Sanity will be this: you will become aware that you are not centered. So the first thing to be done is to be centered, to get centered, to have a center within yourself from where you can lead your life, you can discipline your life, to have a master within you from where you can direct, you can move. The first thing is to be crystallized, and then the second thing will be not to create suffering for yourself. Drop all that creates suffering - all those motives, desires, hopes which create suffering.

But you are not aware. You simply go on doing it; you don't see that you create it. Whatsoever you do, you are sowing some seeds. Then trees will follow, and whatsoever you have sown you will crop it. And whenever you crop anything, there is suffering, but you never look that these seeds were sown by you. Whenever suffering happens to you, you think it is coming from somewhere else, you think it is some accident or some evil forces are working against you.

So you have invented the devil. The devil is just a scapegoat - you are the devil. You create your suffering. But whenever you suffer, you simply throw it on the devil, the devil is doing something. Then you are at ease. Then you never become aware of your own foolish pattern of life, stupid pattern of life.

Or you call it a fate, or you say "God is testing me." But you go on avoiding the basic fact that you are the sole cause of whatsoever happens to you. And nothing is accidental. Everything has a causal link, and you are the cause.

For example, you fall in love. Love gives you a feeling, a feeling that bliss is somewhere nearby. You feel for the first time that you are welcomed by someone, at least one person welcomes you. You start flowering. Even one person welcoming you, waiting for you, loving you, caring for you, you start flowering. Just in the beginning, and then immediately your wrong patterns start working-you immediately want to possess the beloved, the loved one.

And possession is killing. The moment you possess the lover you have killed. Then you suffer. Then you weep and cry and then you think that the lover is wrong, the fate is wrong, "The destiny is not in my favor." But you don't know you have poisoned love through possession, through possessiveness.

But every lover is doing that and every lover suffers. Love which can give you the deepest blessings becomes the deepest misery. So old cultures, particularly in India in the old days, they completely destroyed the phenomenon of love. They had arranged marriages for children - no possibility of falling in love, because love leads to misery. This was such a known phenomenon - that if you allow love, then love leads to misery - so it is better not to have the possibility. Let the children, small children, be married. Before they can fall in love, let them be married. They will never know what love is, and then they will not be in misery.

But love never creates misery. It is you who poison it. Love is always joy, love is always celebration. Love is the deepest ecstasy that nature allows you. But you destroy it. So just not to fall into misery, in India and in other old, ancient countries, the possibility of love was completely closed. So you will not fall in misery, but then you have also missed the only ecstasy that nature allows. So a mediocre life will be there. No misery, no happiness, just a pulling on anyhow. This is what marriage has been in the past.

Now America is trying, West is trying, to revive love. But much misery is coming through that, and sooner or later western countries will have to decide for child marriage again. Few psychologists have already proposed that child marriage has to be brought back because love is creating so much misery. But I again say it is not love. Love cannot create misery. It is you, your pattern of madness, which creates misery. And not only in love, everywhere. Everywhere you are bound to bring your mind.

Many people come to me. For example, they start meditating. In the beginning there are sudden flashes, but only in the beginning. Once they have known certain experiences, once they have known certain glimpses, everything stops. And they come weeping and crying to me, and they say, "What is happening? Something was going to happen, something was happening, now everything has stopped. We are trying our best, but nothing, nothing comes out of it."

I tell them, "For the first time it happened because you were not expecting. Now you are expecting, so the whole situation has changed When for the first time you had that feeling of weightlessness, feeling of being filled by something unknown, feeling of being carried from your dead life, feeling of ecstatic moments, but you were not expecting it, you had never known such moments. For the first time they were falling on you. Unaware you were, unexpecting. That was the situation.

"Now you are changing the situation. Now every day you sit for meditation, you are expecting. Now you are cunning, clever, calculating. When for the first time you had the glimpse, you were innocent, just like a child. You were playing with meditation, but there was no expectation. Then it happened. It will happen again, but then you will have again to be innocent.

"Now your mind is bringing you misery, and if you go on insisting that 'I must have the experience again and again', you will lose it forever. Unless you forget it completely, it may take years. Unless you become completely inattentive that somewhere in the past such a happening was there, then the possibility will again be open to you."

This I call madness. You destroy everything. Whatsoever comes in your hand, you immediately destroy it. And remember, life gives you many gifts, unasked. You have never asked life, life gives you many gifts. But you destroy every gift, and every gift can become greater and greater. It can grow because life never gives you anything dead. If love has been given to you, it can grow. It can grow to unknown dimensions, but the very first moment you destroy it.

If meditation has happened to you, just feel thankful to the divine and forget it. Just feel grateful, and remember well that you don't have any capacity to have it, you are not in any way authorized to have it; it has been a gift. It has been an overflowing of the divine. Forget it. Don't expect it; don't demand it. It will come next day again-deeper, higher, greater. It will go on expanding, but every day drop it from the mind.

There is no end to its possibilities. It will become infinite; the whole cosmos will become ecstatic for you. But your mind has to be dropped. Your mind is the madness. So when I say there are only two alternatives madness and meditation, I mean mind and meditation. If you remain confined in the mind, you will remain mad. Unless you transcend the mind, you cannot transcend madness. At the most you can be a functioning member of the society, that's all. And you can be a functioning member of the society because the whole society is just like you. Everybody is mad, so madness is the rule.

Become aware, and don't think that others are mad. Feel it deeply that you are mad and something has to be done. Immediately! It is an emergency! Don't postpone it because there may come a moment when you cannot do anything. You may go so much mad that you cannot do anything.

Right now you can do something. You are still within limits. Something can be done; some efforts can be made; the pattern can be changed. But a moment can come when you cannot do anything, when you have become completely shattered and you have lost even the consciousness.

If you can feel that you are mad, this is a very hopeful sign. It shows you can become alert towards your own reality. The door is there; you can become really sane. At least this much sanity is there - that you can understand.

The second question:

Yes, the center of right knowledge, praman, is still within the mind. Ignorance is of the mind; knowledge is also of the mind. When you go beyond mind, there is neither; there is neither ignorance nor knowledge. Knowledge is also a disease. It is a good disease, a golden one, but it is a disease! So, really, Buddha cannot be said that he knows; he cannot be said that he doesn't know. He has gone beyond. Nothing can be asserted about it, whether he knows or whether is ignorant.

When there is no mind, how can you know or not know? Knowing is through mind, not knowing is also through mind. Through mind you can know wrongly, through mind you can know rightly. When there is no mind, knowledge and ignorance both cease. This will be difficult to understand, but it is easy if you follow: mind knows so mind can be ignorant; when there is no mind how can you be ignorant and how can you be knowing? You are, but knowing and not knowing both have ceased.

Mind has two centers; one, of right knowledge. If that center functions it starts functioning through concentration, meditation, contemplation, prayer - then whatsoever you know is true. There is a wrong center: it functions if you are sleepy, live in a hypnotic-like state, intoxicated with something or other-sex, music, drugs or anything.

You can be addicted with food; then it becomes an intoxicant. You may be eating too much. You are mad, obsessed, with food. Then food becomes alcohol. Anything that takes possession of your mind, anything without which you cannot live, it becomes intoxicating. So if you live through intoxicants then your center of wrong knowledge functions, and whatsoever you know is false, untrue. You live in a world of lies.

But these both centers belong to the mind. When mind drops and meditation has come to its totality... In Sanskrit we have two terms: one term is dhyana; dhyana means meditation; another term is samadhi: samadhi means perfect meditation where even meditation has become unnecessary, where even to do meditation is meaningless. You cannot do it, you have become it - then it is samadhi.

In this state of samadhi there is no mind. And there is neither knowledge nor ignorance, there is only pure being. This pure being is a totally different dimension. It is not a dimension of knowing, it is a dimension of being.

Even if such a man, Buddha or a Jesus, wants to communicate to you, he will have to use mind. For communication, he will have to use mind. And if you ask a certain question, he will have to use his center of the mind for right knowledge. Mind is the instrument of communication, of thinking, of knowing.

But when you are not asking anything and Buddha is sitting under his bo tree, he is neither ignorant nor a knower. He is there. Really, there is no difference between the tree and the Buddha. There is difference, but in a way there is no difference. He has become just as if a tree; he just exists. There is no movement, even of knowledge. The sun will rise, but he will not know that sun has risen. Not that he will remain ignorant - no, simply that is not now his movement. He has become so silent, so still, that nothing moves. He is just like the tree. Tree is totally ignorant. Or, you can say tree is just below the mind. The mind has not started functioning. The tree will become man in some life, the tree will become mad like you in some life, and the tree will try for meditation in some life, and the tree will also become one day a Buddha. The tree is below mind, and Buddha sitting under the tree is beyond mind. They both are mindless. One is still to attain the mind, and one has attained and crossed it over.

So when mind is transcended, when no-mind is achieved, you are a pure being, satchitananda. There is no happening in you. Neither action is there nor knowing is there. But it is difficult for us. Scriptures go on saying that all duality is transcended.

Knowledge is also part of duality - ignorance, knowledge. But so-called saints go on saying that Buddha has become "a knower". Then we are clinging to the duality. That's why Buddha never answers. Many times, millions of times it has been asked to him, "What happens when a person becomes a Buddha?" He remains silent. He says, "Become and know." Nothing can be said about what happens, because whatsoever can be said will be said in your language, and your language is basically dualistic. So whatsoever can be said will be untrue.

If it is said that he knows it will be untrue, if it is said that he has become immortal it will be untrue, if it is said that now he has achieved bliss it will be untrue - because all duality disappears. Misery disappears, happiness disappears. Ignorance disappears, knowledge disappears. Darkness disappears, light disappears. Death disappears, life disappears. Nothing can be said. Or, only this much can be said-that whatsoever you can think will not be there, whatsoever you can conceive will not be there. And the only way is to become that. Then only you know.

The third question:

The first thing: out of hundred cases, ninety-nine cases will be of imagination. You imagine - that's why to a Christian Krishna never appears in visions, to a Hindu Mohammed never appears in his visions. Leave Mohammed and Jesus; they are far away. But to a Jain, Ram never appears in his visions, cannot appear. To a Hindu, Mahavira never appears. Why? You don't have any imagination for Mahavira.

If you are born a Hindu, you have been fed with the concept of Ram and Krishna. If you are born a Christian and you have been fed - your computer, your mind, has been fed - with the image of Jesus. Whenever you start meditating, the fed-in image comes up in the mind; it flashes in the mind.

Jesus appears to you; Jesus never appears to Jews. And he was a Jew. He was born a Jew, he died a Jew, but he never appears to Jews because they never believed in him. They thought he was just a vagabond they crucified him as a criminal. Jesus never appears to Jews; he belonged to Jews - he had Jewish blood and bones.

I have heard a joke that in Nazi Germany soldiers of Hitler were killing Jews in a town. They had killed many. Few Jews escaped. It was a Sunday morning. They escaped; they reached in a church because they thought that will be the best hiding place, the Christian church. The church was filled with Christians; it was a Sunday morning. So a dozen Jews were hiding there.

But the soldiers got the news that some Jews have gone to the church and they are hiding there, so they went into the church. They told the priest that, "Stop your services!" The leader of the soldiers went to the rostrum and said that "You cannot deceive us. There are a few Jews hiding here. So anyone who is a Jew should go out and stand in a line. If you follow our orders you can save yourself. If someone tries to deceive, he will be killed immediately."

So, by and by, Jews came out of the church and they stood in a line. Then suddenly the whole crowd in the church became aware that Jesus has disappeared, the statue of Jesus. He was also a Jew, so he was standing outside in the line.

But Jesus never appears to Jews. He was not a Christian. He never belonged to any Christian church. If he comes back, he cannot recognize a Christian church, he will move to the synagogue; he will go to the Jewish community. He will go to see the rabbi; he cannot go to see a Catholic or Protestant priest. He doesn't know. But he never appears to Jews because he has never been a seed into their imaginations. They refused him, so the seed is not there.

So whatsoever happens, ninety-nine possibilities are it may be just fed-in knowledge, concepts, images. They flash before your mind, and when you start meditating you become sensitive. You become so sensitive that you can become a victim of your own imagination. And the imagination will look so real, and there is no way to judge whether it is real or unreal.

Only in one percent cases it will not be imaginary, but how to know? In that one percent of case, there will be no image really. You will not feel that Jesus standing before you crucified, you will not feel Krishna standing before you, dancing with him, you will feel the presence, but there will be no image, remember this. You will feel a descendence of divine presence. You will be filled with something unknown, but without any form. There will be no dancing Krishna and there will be no crucified Jesus and there will be no Buddha sitting in siddhasan, no! There will simply be a presence, a vital presence that is flowing within you, in and out. You are overwhelmed, you are in the ocean of it.

Jesus will not be within you, you will be in Jesus. That will be the difference. Krishna will not be in your mind, an image, you will be in Krishna. But then Krishna will be formless. It will be an experience, but not an image.

Then why call it Krishna? There will be no form. Why call it Jesus? These are simply symbols, linguistic symbols. You are acquainted with the word "Jesus", so when that presence fills you and you become part of it a vibrating part of it; when you become a drop in that ocean, how to express it? You know the most beautiful word for you may be "Jesus" or the most beautiful word may be "Buddha" or "Krishna" - these words are fed in the mind, so you choose certain words to indicate that presence.

But that presence is not an image; it is not a dream. It is not a vision at all. You can use Jesus, you can use Krishna, you can use Christ, or whatsoever, whatsoever name has appeal to you, whatsoever name has a love appeal for you. That's up to you. That word and that name and that image will come from your mind, but the experience itself is imageless. It is not an imagination.

One Catholic priest was visiting a Zen Master, Nan-in. Nan-in has never heard about Jesus, so this Catholic priest thought, "It will be good. I should go and read some parts from THE SERMON ON THE MOUNT, and I will see how Nan-in reacts. And people say that he is enlightened."

So that Catholic priest went to Nan-in and he said, "Master, I am a Christian, and I have got a book and I love it. And I would like to read something from it just to know how you respond, how you react." So he read a few lines from THE SERMON ON THE MOUNT - New Testament. He translated it into Japanese because Nan-in could understand only Japanese.

When he started translating, the whole face of Nan-in changed completely. Tears started flowing from his eyes, and he says, "These are the words of Buddha." The Christian priest said, "No, no, these are the words of Jesus." But Nan-in said, "Whatsoever you give the name, but I feel these are the words of the Buddha because I know only Buddha and these words can come only through Buddha. And if you say they have come through Jesus, then Jesus was a Buddha; that doesn't make any difference. Then I will tell my disciples that Jesus was a Buddhist."

This will be the feeling. If you feel the presence of the divine, then names are just immaterial. Names are bound to be different for everyone because names come from education, names come from culture, names come from the race you belong. But that experience doesn't belong to any society, that experience does not belong to any culture, that experience doesn't belong to your mind, the computer - it belongs to you.

So, remember, if you see visions, they are imagination. If you start feeling presences - formless, existential experiences - envelop in them, merge in them, melt in them, then you are really in contact.

You can call that presence Jesus, you can call that presence Buddha, it depends on you; it makes no difference. Jesus is a Buddha and Buddha is a Christ. Those who have gone beyond the mind, they have also gone beyond personalities. They have also gone beyond forms. If Jesus and Buddha are standing together, there will be two bodies, but one soul. There will be two bodies, but not two presences, one presence.

It is just like you put two lamps in a room. The lamps are two, just their bodies, but the light has become one. You cannot demarcate that this light belongs to this lamp and that light belongs to that lamp. The lights have merged. Only the material part of the lamp has remained separate, but the non-material part has become one.

If Buddha and Jesus come close, if they stand together, you will see two lamps, separate, but their lights have already merged. They have become one. All those who have known truth have become one. Their names are different for their followers; for them, now there are no names.

The fourth question:

No, awareness is not part of the mind. It flows through the mind, but it is not part of the mind. It is just like this bulb - the electricity flows through it, but the electricity is not part of the bulb. If you break the bulb, you have not broken electricity. The expression will be hindered, but the potentiality remains hidden. You put another bulb, and the electricity starts flowing.

Mind is just an instrument. Awareness is not part of it, but awareness flows through it. When mind is transcended, awareness remains in itself. That's why I say even a Buddha will have to use the mind if he talks to you, if he relates to you, because then he will need flow, flow of his inner pool. He will have to use instruments, mediums, and then mind will function. But mind is just a vehicle.

You move in a vehicle, but you are not the vehicle. You go in a car, or you fly in an aircraft, but you are not the vehicle. Mind is just the vehicle. And you are not using the mind to its total capacity. If you use it to its total capacity, it will become right knowledge.

We are using our mind as if someone can use an airplane like a bus. You can cut the wings of the airplane and use it like a bus on the road. That will do; it will work like a bus. But you are foolish. That bus can fly! You are not using it to its right capacity!

You are using your mind for dreams, imaginations, madness. You have not used, you have cut the wings. If you use it with the wings, it can become right knowledge; it can become wisdom. But that too is part of the mind; that too is the vehicle. The user remains behind; the user cannot be the used. You are using it, you are awareness. And all the efforts for meditation mean to know this awareness in its purity, without any medium. Once you know it without any instrument, you can know it! And this can be known only when mind has stopped functioning. And mind has stopped functioning - you will become aware that awareness is there; you are filled with it. Mind was just a vehicle, a passage. Now, if you want, you can use the mind; if you don't want, you need not use.

Body, mind, both are vehicles. You are not the vehicle, you are the master hidden behind these vehicles. But you have forgotten completely. And you have become the cart; you have become the vehicle. This is what Gurdjieff calls identification. This is what, in India, yogis have called tadatmya becoming one with something which you are not.

The fifth question:

They never cease to be, but just by witnessing identification is broken. Buddha lived in his body for forty years after his enlightenment; the body has not ceased. Continuously for forty years he was talking, explaining, making people understand what has happened to him and how the same can happen to them. He was using the mind; the mind has not ceased. And when he came back after twelve years to his home town, he recognized his father, he recognized his wife, he recognized his son. The mind was there, the memory was there; otherwise recognition is impossible.

The mind has not really ceased. When we say the mind ceases, we mean your identification is broken. Now you know this is the mind and this is "I am". The bridge is broken. Now the mind is not the master. It has become just an instrument; it has fallen to its right place. So whenever you need it, you can use it. It is just like a fan! If you want to use it, we put it on, then the fan starts functioning. Right now we are not using the fan, so it is non-functioning. But it is there, it has not ceased to be. Any moment you can use it. It has not disappeared.

Just by witnessing, identification disappears, not the mind. But identification disappearing, you are totally a new being. For the first time you have come to know your real phenomenon, your real reality. For the first time you have come to know who you are. Now mind is just part of the mechanism around you.

It is just as if you are a pilot and flying an airplane. You use many instruments; your eyes are working on many instruments, continuously aware of this and that. But you are not the instruments.

This mind, this body and many functions of the body-mind, are just around you, the mechanism. In this mechanism, you can exist in two ways. One way of existence is forgetting yourself and feeling as if you are the mechanism. This is bondage, this is misery; this is the world, the samsar.

Another way of functioning is this: becoming alert that you are separate, you are different. Then you go on using, but now it makes a lot of difference. Now the mechanism is not you. And if something goes wrong in the mechanism, you can try to put it right, but you will not be disturbed. Even if the whole mechanism disappears, you will not be disturbed

Buddha dying and you dying are two different phenomena. Buddha dying knows only the mechanism is dying. It has been used, and now there is no need. A burden has been removed; he is becoming free. He will move now without form. But you dying is totally different. You are suffering, you crying, because you feel you are dying, not the mechanism. It is your death. Then it becomes an intense suffering.

Just by witnessing, mind doesn't cease and the brain cells will not cease. Rather, they will become more alive because there will be less conflict, more energy. They will become more fresh. And you can use them more rightly, more accurately, but you will not be burdened by them and they will not force you to do something. They will not push and pull you here and there. You will be the master.

But how does it happen just by witnessing? Because it has happened, the bondage has happened, by not witnessing. The bondage has happened because you are not alert, so the bondage will disappear if you become alert. The bondage is only unawareness. Nothing else is needed: becoming more alert, whatsoever you do.

You are sitting here listening to me. You can listen with awareness, you can listen without awareness. Without awareness also listening will be there, but it will be a different thing, the quality will differ. Then your ears are listening, and your mind is functioning somewhere else.

Then somehow, few words will penetrate you. And they will be mixed, and your mind will interpret them in its own way. And it will put its own ideas into them. Everything will be a muddle and a mess. You have listened, but many things will be bypassed, many things you will not listen. You will choose. Then the whole thing will be distorted.

If you are alert, the moment you become alert thinking ceases. With alertness you cannot think. The whole energy becomes alert, there is no energy left to move into thinking. When you are alert even for a single moment, you simply listen. There is no barrier. Your words are not there which can get mixed. You need not interpret. The impact is direct.

If you can listen with alertness, then what I am saying may be meaningful or may not be meaningful, but your listening with alertness will always be significant in meaning That very alertness will make a peak of your consciousness. The past will dissolve; the future will disappear. You will be nowhere else, you will just be here and now. And in that moment of silence when thinking is not, you will be deep in contact with your own source. And that source is bliss, and that source is divine. So the only thing to be done is to do everything with alertness.

The last question:

When you are not, only then it can become possible. If you are, then it cannot become possible. If you are not, if the host has completely disappeared, then the guest becomes the host. So the guest may be Lao Tzu, the guest may be Patanjali. The host is not there, so the guest takes place completely, he becomes the host. If you are not, then you can become Patanjali; there is no difficulty. You can become Krishna, you can become Christ. If you are there, then it is very difficult. And if you are there, whatsoever you say will be wrong.

That's why I say these are not commentaries. I am not commenting on Patanjali. I am simply absent, allowing Patanjali. So it is not a commentary. Commentary means that Patanjali is something separate. And I am something separate, and I am commenting on Patanjali. It is bound to be distorting because how I can comment on Patanjali? Whatsoever I say will be my saying and whatsoever I say will be my interpretation. It cannot be of Patanjali himself. And that's not good. That is destructive. So I am not commenting at all. I am simply allowing, and this allowing is possible if you are not.

If you become a witness, the ego disappears. And when the ego disappears, you become a vehicle, you become a passage, you become a flute. And the flute can be put on Patanjali's lips, and the flute can be put on Krishna's lips, and the flute can be put on Buddha's lips - the flute remains the same. But when it is on Buddha's lips, Buddha is flowing.

So this is not a commentary. This is difficult to understand because you cannot allow. You are so much inside you cannot allow anyone. And these are not persons. Patanjali is not a person: Patanjali is a presence. If you are absent, his presence can function.

And if you ask Patanjali, the same he will say. If you ask Patanjali, he will not say that these sutras have been created by him. He will say, "These are very ancient - sanatan." He will say, "Millions and millions of seers have seen them. I am just a vehicle. I am absent and they are speaking." If you ask Krishna, he will say, "I am not speaking. This is the ancient most message. It has been always so. And if you ask Jesus, he will say, "I am no more, I am not there."

Why this insistence? Anybody who becomes absent, who becomes a non-ego, starts functioning as a vehicle, as a passage - passage for all that is true, passage for all that is hidden in existence, that can flow. And you will be able to understand whatsoever I am saying only when even for moments you will be absent.

If you are too much there, your ego is there, then whatsoever I am saying cannot flow in you. It is not an intellectual communication only. It is something deeper.

If you are even for a single moment a non-ego, then the impact will be felt. Then something unknown has entered in you, and in that moment you will understand. And there is no other way to understand.