The White Flame of Life

This is one of the fundamentals of Zen - that all is a mind construct, that whatsoever we know is nothing but a mind-projection. That the so-called reality is not really real. It appears real because we believe that it is real - it is belief that creates reality. At the source of all so-called realities is nothing but your belief. If you believe, it is so. If you don't believe, it is no more so.

Zen says the mind is the SANSAR, the world, and the mind is NIRVANA too. It is all a mind-game.

And remember, en says it is all a mind-game - with no exception. Even your God is the ultimate mind-game, the meta-game. This is where Zen is very superior to other religions.

Other religions say the world is a mind-game, but they don't say MOKSHA is a mind-game. Other religions say the material world, the world of money and power and prestige, is a mind-game - but they don't say that God, heaven, virtue, are mind-games. It is here that Zen is the ultimate religion.

It says all is a mind-game. 'All' is ALL - whatsoever Zen says, it means. Mind includes everything that you can know, mind includes everything that you can experience, mind includes everything that is possible.

Then is there any way to know the real which is not a mind-game? There is a way, arid that is to drop the mind itself. When the mind is dropped, the reality is there. While the mind persists, it goes on creating its own reality. And that reality which is there when mind is dropped cannot be expressed through the mind.

That's why Zen is absolutely silent about God. Not that God is not - but the God that we can talk about will be a mind-game, it will be our projection. Meera projects Krishna, Theresa projects Christ, Ramakrishna projects Mother Kali - but these are all projections. Beautiful projections. Obviously, when Meera is seeing Krishna playing on his flute it is a beautiful dream - but it is a dream, Zen says. It is imagination. You can put so much in it that it can become more real than you. But this reality is created by you, it is invented by you.

Meera will not see Christ, that is not her investment. And Theresa will not see Krishna, that is not her investment. A Christian goes on seeing Christ, and a Buddhist goes on seeing Buddha.

Whatsoever you believe, you can see. If you believe hard enough, it becomes real. But this reality is just a relative reality, an invented reality. There is not much difference between it and dreaming.

Every night you invent a reality, and while you are dreaming it looks so real, so authentically real.

Every morning you find it was false. Millions of times you have found it was false - but again you will go to sleep tonight and again it will be real. The mind will again play the game.

Even absurd dreams look real, which are not possible, not at all possible. A rock suddenly becomes a dog... a dog starts talking to you... but in the dream it is real. Where is your logic? Where is your reason? Where have all your experiences of the past gone? You are again deceived.

Zen says the same is happening even while you are awake. Your so-called awakeness is not much of an awareness, it is happening then too. You see a woman and you call her beautiful. Maybe you are simply projecting beauty. Maybe you are seeing things which are not there. That's what Buddha says - because how can there be beauty in the body? And how can there be beauty in bones, flesh, blood? All kinds of diseases are hiding there. Death is growing there... but you see beauty. You believe. When you believe, it is there; when the belief disappears, all beauty disappears.

Watch it. You are constantly creating your own world. We live in different worlds because we live in different dreams, and we live in different worlds because we live in different belief-systems. A Hindu has a different belief-system, reality comes in a different way to him. A Mohammedan has a different belief-system, reality comes in a different way to him. What is real for a Hindu is absurd for a Mohammedan, and what is real for the Mohammedan is absurd for the Hindu. They may be neighbours, they may be friends, but they belong to different belief-systems.

So is there a way to know the real? Yes, there is a way. Zen says: Drop all belief-systems. That's what Krishnamurti goes on insisting - drop all belief-systems, then you can know. But there is no way to say that which you will know there, because there the known and the knower are no more separate. There the experiencer and the experienced are no more separate.

Hence, Zen says, SAMADHI is not an experience. God is not an experience, enlightenment is not an experience - because experiences happen in the mind, and these things happen beyond the mind. If they are experiences then they are again part of your belief.

Listening to me, you can start having experiences of SATORI. Listening to me continuously, you can create a belief-system - a strong projector. Every day listening, meditating, listening, meditating, one thing again and again becomes a constant repetition in the mind - creates a groove, a rut, becomes deeper every day. One day suddenly you experience SATORI has happened. But if it is an experience it is not the real SATORI. If you can experience it, if you can see it happening, then it is not satori - because you are there separate. Wherever you are separate from your experience, the thing that separates you is the mind.

So God cannot be an experience and samadhi cannot be an experience and truth cannot be an experience. Mind disappears, all experience disappears. Suddenly reality is there - but you are no more separate from it to KNOW it. You are it.

This is a beautiful parable. Before we enter into it, a few things have to be understood.

Master Takan was dying - a great Zen master, very much loved by his disciples. His disciples asked that he should write a death poem. In Zen it is traditional, whenever a master dies, as his last utterance he writes a death poem. It is beautiful, very indicative. Death should be a poetry, death should be a celebration, a song. And when a master is departing, when he is saying goodbye to all those who have been with him and who have been working with him and who have been growing through him - to all his children - he leaves his last legacy in a song. Maybe two lines, four lines - a small haiku. But that is his gift.

So they write death poems. And disciples ask - when they see that the master is on the verge to leave them, they say, 'The last thing is, give us a song.' Death should happen with a song - that is the meaning. Death should not be a sad affair, it should be a joy. And masters have sung beautiful songs. They have to be spontaneous because the master may not be a poet at all, he may not have composed a poem ever. But when such a great phenomenon as death is there everybody becomes a poet, if you are alert.

It is such a beautiful experience. To pass through death is to pass through utter relaxation, to enter into death is to enter into a non-tense rest. Everything starts becoming lax, everything starts dropping. And one is ready for the journey, and the boat has come to the shore... and the unknown surrounds... and the mysterious is all around. Even one who has never been a poet and has never written a poem, will utter something.

So they asked Master Takan to write a death poem. He refused. But when they insisted, he wrote the character YUME - it means 'dream' - and died.

Many death poems have been written, but nothing to compare with Master Takan: YUME - dream.

Life and death both are dreams: that is his last verdict. It is very definitive. That's what Hindu mystics have always said - MAYA. It is not THERE; it is there because you want it there. The mind is tremendously creative, the mind is the real creator. It goes on creating - it goes on creating anything that you want to create, it makes everything available to you. You have just to be dreaming, and reality starts changing around you.

But it is all dream. Life is dream, death is dream, God is dream. ALL is dream. Just one thing is not a dream - that is the consciousness upon which this dream happens, to which this dream happens.

You go to a movie and you see a dream projected on the screen. The screen is empty and there is nothing - just light and shadow. But you get involved, you get very much involved. You sometimes cry, sometimes your heart starts palpitating. Sometimes you laugh, sometimes you become very tense, sometimes you relax. You move with the story, you become part of the story. And you KNOW - that tacit knowing is there, that it is all a dream. But still you go on forgetting. You again and again forget - in fact you call that film the best in which you completely forget that it is just a film. The best film is that which does not allow you any remembrance that it is unreal. The best story-writer, the best story-teller, is one whose story, when he is telling it, becomes real - you start living it.

The movie moves you. It moves your emotions, you become involved. Tears flow, laughter comes, you become affected. It is no more unreal - otherwise how are you affected? If it was unreal, you would not be crying. You have forgotten the truth, that it is a projection.

This forgetfulness is what we call life. You have paid for this film - to see something unreal becoming real. And there are people who will pay even to see a very horrible tragedy, who will go to see a horrible story which will be just a torture and nothing else. And they pay for it, and they are affected by it. They live in hell for three hours. And they say the story was beautiful, it was tremendously real.

In the same proportion as they are affected by it, it becomes real. If you are not affected by it at all, it remains unreal.

When you are affected, what happens? You are no more a spectator, you have become part of it.

People start getting identified with the actors. Next time you go to a movie, just see - you must have become identified with somebody. Now his success is your success, his failure is your failure. His love is your love, his tragedy is your tragedy. When he laughs you laugh, when he cries you cry - you become identified with some part of the movie. It becomes your story. For a few moments you drop out of your life and you become part of the life of these strange people who are moving on the screen.

After three hours, when you are coming back home, suddenly you remember it was all just a story - you need not be worried about it. You need not carry the worry to your home, you need not disturb your sleep. You start laughing again - you are getting out of it. But these three hours while you were inside the movie-house, you were not only inside the movie-house, you were inside the movie. You had become part of it. You were not a spectator, you had become a participant.

Next time you go, watch. If you remain a spectator you will remain unaffected, because the spectator will go on knowing that this is just nothing. Nothing is happening. The moment you become a participant, it is no more just nothing, it has become everything. Here you lose awareness, and there the dream becomes real. Here you gain awareness, and the dream becomes a dream.

So the whole question is: What are you doing in the world? Are you a participant in it? or a watcher?

If you are a participant you have become unreal and the world has become real. It is you who put your reality into the world, and then the world becomes real. It depends on you: you can take it back. Once you take it back, you become aware, the world starts becoming unreal. The reality of the world depends on how much you participate and how much you witness. Those rare moments of witnessing, and you will see Hindus are right when they say the world is maya - illusion.

Takan is right when he says it is all a dream - life and death. His last statement should be the first too - this is the whole story.

But we have put much investment in our belief-systems. You must be aware of it - if you are not involved, you become aware. Somebody has fallen in love with somebody - you laugh. All lovers look ridiculous to people who are not in love. All lovers look foolish, stupid, mad. That's why we say that somebody has fallen in love. Fallen - he is no more upright, he is no more alert to what he is doing. That's why we say lovers are blind, love is blind. It is so, for those who are not participants.

But for the one who is participating in it, it is no more a dream, it is the only reality there is. All other realities have disappeared; only one reality is there.

When two lovers are moving hand in hand, the world that you see they don't see. They have their own world, a private world. That's why lovers have never been liked by other people - because lovers don't live in the common world, they live in their own private world. They have a private language. They feel enough; together they are enough. If the whole world disappears they don't care, they couldn't care less. In fact the world just seems a hindrance. Lovers want to be alone, they don't want to be interfered with. They are moving into a different reality.

When love disappears even these lovers will laugh about their own past, and they will say, 'How foolish I was!' That's what all old people say - they say how foolish they were when they were young. That does not necessarily mean that they have become wise. If they are young again, if some miracle happens and they become young again, they will again be as foolish as ever.

In fact, an old man starts going to the temple or the mosque or GURUDUWARA or the church - now he has started living in another dream, the religious dream. Now he talks with Krishna. First, he used ro talk with his beloved - the beloved may be thousands of miles away, and he used to talk to her, and he was constantly filled with her image. Now he thinks of Krishna, Christ, God, and is talking, praying. This is again entering into another dream.

It is easy to drop out of one dream and enter into another. It is very difficult to drop out of all dreams - and that's what Zen is all about. It says: It has no meaning just changing one dream to another. The basic thing remains, that you go on creating new dreams. And if you dream strongly, if you dream with deep trust, with no doubt, with no suspicion arising in you, you can transform any thought into a thing.

This is one of the oldest sayings in the Bible: 'As a man thinketh, so he becomes.' Yes, you create your world, you create yourself too. Thoughts become things. Believed deeply, thoughts become things - a thing is nothing but a condensed thought. Every reality in life arises first as a thought.

Just watch: the aeroplane was once a thought in somebody's mind. Maybe the thought remained and persisted in many minds. It took thousands of years to become a reality, but that doesn't matter. Man wanted to fly. Since the very beginning, man wanted to fly - and the idea persisted and persisted and persisted. And one day the idea became a reality. The Wright brothers went into the air, the dream became reality.

All scientific discoveries are nothing but dreams persistently dreamt by humanity. If you go on, if you go on - if you go on dropping into that dream again and again and putting your energy there, investing your life into it, it is going to become a reality. It is not possible that it can escape you; the only thing needed is persistence.

And that's what modern physics says too - from a very different angle. Albert Einstein has unknowingly brought Zen to modern physics. Modern physics says matter and energy are convertible. The psychologists have always asserted that thoughts can be converted into things, and all things have once been just thoughts. A condensed thought becomes a thing; it becomes a materialization. Now modern physics says energy and matter are convertible. A thought is energy, a thing is matter. Einstein's great formula: e = mc2 is of great importance. Whatever you call material is not material, it is as much a thought as any other thought.

Eddington is reported to have said: 'The more I look into reality, the more I feel that it appears more like a thought than like a thing.' And now in scientific circles there is great talk about alternate realities. Euclidean geometry creates one kind of reality. Non-euclidean geometry creates another kind of reality, just the opposite kind of reality. Now there is talk of many kinds of mathematics, and there is talk of many kinds of logic systems. And it depends. If you believe in one logic system, you will come across one kind of reality. If you don't believe in it, you will never come across it, because you will never move in that dimension.

So reality is not one, realities are many. And you don't live in a universe, you live in a multi-verse.

And it happens every day - if you watch, you will find it every day.

A child lives in a different kind of world - the distinction between the dream and the real has not yet arisen. Maybe that's why we all remember our childhood with nostalgia. We all think it was beautiful, it was incredible, it was wonderful. What was the wonder of it all? The wonder was, there was no distinction between reality and a dream - you could easily slip from one dream into another dream.

It was easy to get out of one dream and enter into another; there were no hindrances.

The child had no problems because he had no fixed beliefs. Liquid beliefs... and no belief was yet a settled phenomenon, no belief had yet become a concrete thing. All was liquid, flowing - and so was the child and his consciousness.

Men live in a different kind of reality than women, because they live in a different system of thoughts and a different system of beliefs. Man lives in an aggressive belief, woman lives in a receptive belief.

All that they do, all that they think, all that they believe, is deep down very different.

When a man thinks about a woman he thinks about love, he never thinks about marriage. When a woman thinks about a man, she thinks about marriage. Love is secondary, security is first. She lives in a different kind of world - maybe in the future she may not, but in the past the only problem for the woman was how to be secure. She is fragile, she is soft, she is weaker, she is afraid. All around is a man-created world, and she is a stranger in it. She needs security. So when she falls in love, the first concept, the first idea, is how to be secure, safe. She would not like to make love to a man unless marriage is settled. Marriage has to be the first thing, then anything else can follow.

Man is less interested in marriage, very much less interested. In fact not interested at all. If he agrees, he agrees only reluctantly - because marriage means responsibility. Marriage means bondage, marriage means now you are imprisoned. Now you are no more free to move with other women. For a man, marriage looks like a prison. For a woman, marriage looks like safety, security, a home. For a woman marriage means home, and for a man marriage means slavery. Total different beliefs, so they act differently. Conflicting beliefs.

For a young man the world is different, for an old man it is different. For the young, death does not exist. Death has not yet shadowed his belief-system at all; he lives as if he is going to live for ever.

He is ambitious, he wants to do something, he wants to show to the world: 'I am here. The world should know that I have come into the world.'

A small boy was saying to his mother, 'The world has changed a lot.' The mother was surprised by this statement, because the child was only five. What world has he seen, to say that the world has changed a lot? And she asked, 'What do you mean, the world has changed a lot? I don't see much change since you came into the world. Five years is not a long time. And how do you KNOW? You have not yet lived long enough to say such a thing.'

And the child said, 'Yes, the world has changed a lot. Now I am in it.' The world is no more the same, certainly. And everybody wants, when he is young, to show his mettle. Death does not matter yet, life is all.

When a man becomes old, life is receding. Death becomes a big shadow - it overshadows everything. Now he is no more ambitious, now he does not want to prove anything. Now he knows he is going to disappear within days or months or years - the day of departure is coming closer.

Now there is not time enough to prove anything. And now he knows that whatsoever you do, nothing can be proved, nobody bothers.

He has lived his life, and now the frustration has settled. He is no more ambitious. His eyes are no more full of dreams - the eyes are full of fear, the eyes are full of death. He can hear the footsteps of death all around. Now he cannot run. No - when he goes upstairs he becomes tired, he cannot breathe rightly. He cannot enjoy the food that he always liked, he cannot love the woman. Things are disappearing... part by part, he is dying. Death is coming, and death has to be reckoned with.

Now he thinks of God. Now temples for the first time start becoming significant. He had passed those temples before, but they were not there.

What I am saying is, we are moving in different tracks. He had passed many times through the street, and the temple was there - but it was never before him. For him it was not there, it was not part of his reality. Those temple bells he had never heard before, he was so full of other things.

The sound of money was too much, he was so much concerned with ambition and ego, he was so much concerned to become powerful - the temple was not yet existential. It was a faraway distant phenomenon - maybe it was there, maybe it was not there, but it didn't matter at all.

Now suddenly money does not matter, power does not matter. He is no more moving towards power, prestige. Suddenly the temple stands there, out of all proportion. The movie-house disappears, the woman disappears, the money disappears, the friends, the club - they all disappear. Suddenly the temple is there, very real. Death has become part of his belief-system, and his-reality has changed.

Now, Zen says, this is how we go on changing from one belief-system to another. A bit changed here, a bit changed there - but the belief-system remains enclosing us. Is there a way to drop all belief-systems? Yes, there is a way to drop all belief-systems - and only when you drop all belief- systems do you know what really is real. So the so-called reality is not the reality, the so-called reality is only relatively called so. The really real cannot be known by any belief-system - your belief-system pollutes it, your belief-system enters into it, makes it different.

Come naked, come nude, to reality. Come without clothes, and without theories and without philosophies. That's why Zen is so much against scriptures, against theologies. It is against thinking.

Don't come with the mind to see reality. Otherwise you will see something which is not there. You will see something - and if you want to see it you will even find it. That is the beauty - that if you believe, you will find it. You will create it. Your mind is creative: beware of the mind.

And this is not only modern physics but this is the whole philosophy behind the science of hypnosis, down the ages from Mesmer to Coue. This is the whole philosophy of hypnosis, hypnotism: Believe it, and it will be so. Coue used to teach his patients, 'Just believe that you are getting better and better every day, that you are getting healthier every day. Believe it.' And if you rightly believe, if you really believe without any doubt, it happens. The disease can disappear - you can make it disappear. If you believe rightly, the disease is bound to disappear. If you start believing in the disease then the disease is going to stay there, and will go on increasing.

That's why hypnosis is of tremendous value, because people live in their minds. Because people live in their minds, hypnosis can be of great help. It can give you better beliefs. It cannot give you reality, remember, but it can give you better beliefs. It is better to believe that you are healthy than to believe that you are ill. If you believe you are ill, you become ill.

I was a student in a university, and one of my professors was very much against hypnosis. And I have always been a lover of it - because in both the ways hypnosis is very important. First, it can help you to live in a better belief-system. Secondly, it can make you aware that it is all belief-systems - disease and health, strength and weakness, happiness and unhappiness, heaven and hell, are all belief-systems. Hypnosis will show you that too.

So hypnosis can help you to live in better dreams, one thing. And hypnosis can help you to be aware that ALL is dreaming. And then you take another step into a higher hypnosis - and the higher hypnosis becomes de-hypnosis. Higher hypnosis means dropping hypnosis. Knowing it well, that you can change your belief and you can change your reality, one day you come to realize that now you can drop all beliefs - and all relative realities disappear. Hypnosis has not taken the ultimate step of de-hypnosis. In fact, hypnotists think that de-hypnosis is something against their science. It is not. It is the ultimate growth of it. Start through hypnosis, reach to de-hypnosis.

Zen is de-hypnosis. All other religions are hypnosis, so all other religions are only beginnings. Zen is the ultimate end. No other religion will fulfill you; it will give you a better belief-system, it will make you happier. And you can see it - in America there is everything now, and people are not happy.

They have a wrong hypnosis.

In India, people don't have anything to be happy, and still they are happy. They have a better kind of hypnosis - the difference is just of hypnosis. America has everything to be happy, the missing link is just that a better hypnosis is not there - in fact, a very wrong attitude. So you have ALL. The society is affluent, rich, science has given you a thousand and one gadgets to live. But still misery. Because one thing is missing - just science won't be of much help, unless you change your belief system.

In India you can find a beggar, and as happy as an emperor. He has nothing to be happy with, but one thing he has - he has a hypnotic belief. He believes that this is how God has made it. 'This is how God wants me to be, and God takes care. This is my fate.' He has reconciled himself with it. He thinks, 'I have done bad karmas in the past, that's why I am a beggar. No more bad karmas, next life I am going to be an emperor.' Finished. Simple. The only thing is, now he is not going to do any bad karmas. And the past is past - what can you do? You cannot do anything about it, so why get miserable unnecessarily?

Misery comes in when you think you can do something about it. Then there is rejection, then there is not an acceptance of reality as it is. In India people accept - they are reconciled with fate, and they are happy. They have nothing to be happy about - just a belief, a belief-system. A far better belief-system than the American way of life.

The American way of life is rooted in a wrong hypnosis, that you cannot be happy - that is deeply rooted there. You cannot be happy if somebody else has a bigger car than you - how can you be happy? How can you be happy if somebody else has a bigger house than you? How can you be happy? - somebody else is the president, and you are not the president. How can you be happy? - somebody has married a beautiful woman, and you missed. How can you be happy? So whatsoever you have is never enough, because others are having more joy, more life - more ecstasy is there.

You go on comparing.

In the East, whatsoever you have got is God's gift. This is what he wanted you to receive: receive it with gratitude. It is not competitive, it is not comparing with others. It is a simple acceptance.

This belief-system gives a healthier attitude. Hypnosis can teach you how to have a better healthier attitude, how to have a more positive attitude, how to be addicted with positive beliefs - people are addicted with negative beliefs. That's what other religions do; that is half the work. Good - because it is better to have a positive belief than to have a negative belief. Rather than creating misery by having a wrong belief, it is better to create joy by having a positive belief.

But remember, Zen says, both are beliefs. Misery and happiness, both are your mind constructs. It is not real, it is not really real.

There is a third state of being where all beliefs are dropped - negative and positive, all, in toto.

When all beliefs are dropped, then it is real. And that reality is neither miserable nor happy. Misery comes out of a certain belief-system, happiness comes out of an opposite belief-system. And when you drop all belief-systems, it is a pure is-ness. There is no happiness, there is no unhappiness.

There is no heaven, no hell.

Heaven is a belief, hell is a belief. And there is every possibility that people who believe that they have sinned will go to hell. There is every possibility - they are creating it. By believing it, they are creating it. Have you watched? Some day you go to sleep with fear in your mind, anguish, anxiety - and in the night you see hellish dreams. You are being tortured, you have been thrown into a concentration-camp by Adolf Hitler, and his men are torturing you, killing you. You are being thrown from a hilltop, and a rock is falling on your chest... and you can create.

Go into sleep with beautiful ideas, dreams, and you will have a sweet dream. You create your dream.

Heaven and hell are created phenomena. The person who believes he is a sinner will go into hell, and the person who is believing that he is a saint and he has never done anybody any harm, will go to heaven.

But Zen says both are belief-systems. Both are your creations, both are unreal. If you have to choose between two unreals, it is better to choose the positively unreal than the negatively unreal.

That is the first step of hypnosis - and hypnosis still lingers around it. Hypnosis needs a little more understanding, a little more insight. Hypnosis needs a shower of Zen.

If Zen showers on hypnosis, hypnosis will have the courage to take another step, the further step, into de-hypnosis. First, help people to change their belief-systems. That's what Santosh goes on doing here - -he tries to pull you out of your negativity to positivity. And once he has pulled you out, I pull you out of your positivity too. So whatsoever Santosh does, I go on undoing - I have to do it.

Remember, it is easier to take you out of the positive than it is to take you out of the negative. That too is something to be understood. People cling to misery more. People have been trained to be miserable for so long that they cling to misery more. And there is some reason too: in misery the ego exists. So you cling more, because the misery gives you a chance to BE. When you are miserable, the ego is very very much there. When you are happy, the ego relaxes.

People are ready to come out of their happiness more easily than they are ready to come out of their misery. This is strange, but this is my observation, working with thousands of people. A happy person is easily ready to drop his belief; for an unhappy person it is very difficult to drop his belief.

The unhappy person clings. He has nothing else, only the misery, but still he clings. He says, 'If I lose my misery then what is there? Even misery is gone! At least the misery is familiar. And I have lived with it so long, we have become friends.'

The happy person is ready, for many reasons. One, the happy person can believe that more happiness is possible. The unhappy person cannot believe that. The unhappy person thinks, 'If I lose this unhappiness I may fall into an even deeper unhappiness.' The unhappy person is very negative, pessimistic. He knows that life never gives any happiness. So whatsoever is, cling to it, don't lose it - otherwise you may become even more unhappy. And a new misery is far worse than an old misery. With the old misery you have become adjusted, with the new misery again you have to become adjusted.

But the happy person feels more optimistic. He has seen happiness, he can trust more. He can try - he can go on an adventure. He can move a little beyond the limit of the known, to see - 'Maybe there is more happiness also. Maybe there is a still higher state of consciousness.'

That's why I say whenever a country is in deep misery it loses contact with religion. Whenever a country is happy it keeps more contact with religion. Happy persons can become religious more easily than unhappy persons. Unhappy people become communists, fascists. Happy people can move towards higher states - they have more freedom, more buoyancy. And more trust. They can trust life - it has given them something, maybe there is more to come.

The whole science of hypnosis is this, that we create our own life according to our belief-system.

Hence, if you want to know the really real, you have to drop all beliefs - positive, negative, all, in toto.

Go on watching continuously how you look at things. Each look will show you some kind of belief hidden behind it. Each look is again an expression of a belief-system. Watch. Whatsoever you say, whatsoever you see, whatsoever you interpret, go on watching silently how your belief-systems are reflected everywhere.

'The bird is on the wing,' said the poet. 'But that is absurd,' contradicted the logician. 'The wing is on the bird.'

It depends how you look at life. The poet can say, 'The bird is on the wing.' But the logician, he has a different approach. He cannot say, 'The bird is on the wing' - it is absurd. 'The wing is on the bird'

- that is more logical, more factual, more close to the reality the logician lives in.

As a great Zen master, Roshi Taji, approached death, his senior disciples assembled at his bedside.

One of them, remember ing the roshi was fond of a certain kind of cake, had spent half a day searching the pastry shops of Tokyo for this confection, which he now presented to Roshi Taji. With a wan smile the dying roshi accepted a piece of the cake and slowly began munching it. As the roshi grew weaker, his disciples leaned close and inquired whether he had any final words for them.

'Yes,' the roshi replied.

The disciples leaned forward eagerly. 'Please tell us!'

'My, but this cake is delicious!' And with that he died.

A Zen master does not talk about God, does not talk about death, does not talk about the beyond.

He talks about the immediate. He has been munching a piece of this cake; now this is the reality.

At this moment, this is what is real. The immediate is the real. The answer is very unexpected: 'My, but this cake is delicious!' - so present to the moment. You cannot imagine Ramakrishna saying that. You cannot imagine a Christian saying that, you cannot imagine a Mohammedan saying that - impossible. Only a Zen master....

At this moment, this deliciousness in his mouth is God. This is truth at this moment. This moment's truth is all there is. Even while dying, a Zen master will not bring in any belief-systems, will not bring in his mind. He will remain true to whatsoever is.

I have been reading a beautiful dream of J. B. Priestly. Meditate over it.

'I dreamt I was standing at the top of a very high tower, alone, looking down upon myriads of birds all flying in one direction; every kind of bird was there, all the birds in the world. It was a noble sight, this vast aerial river of birds.

'But now in some mysterious fashion the gear was changed, and time speeded up, so that I saw generations of birds, watched them break their shells, flutter into life, weaken, falter and die. Wings grew only to crumble; bodies were sleek and then, in a flash, bled and shrivelled; and death struck everywhere and at every second. What was the use of all this blind struggle towards life, this eager trying of wings, all this gigantic meaningless biological effort? As I stared down, seeming to see every creature's ignoble little history almost at a glance, I felt sick at heart. It would be better if not one of them, not one of us at all, had been born, if the struggle ceased for ever.

'I stood on my tower, still alone, desperately unhappy, but now the gear was changed again and time went faster still, and it was rushing by at such a rate that the birds could not show any movement but were like an enormous plain sown with feathers. But along this plain, flickering through bodies themselves, there now passed a sort of white flame, trembling, dancing, then hurrying on: and as soon as I saw it I knew this flame was life itself, the very quintessence of being.

'And then it came to me, in a rocket-burst of ecstasy, that nothing mattered, nothing could ever matter, because nothing else was real but this quivering hurrying lambency of being. Birds, men or creatures not yet shaped and coloured, all were of no account except so far as this flame of life travelled through them. It left nothing to mourn over behind it; what I had thought of as tragedy was mere emptiness of a shadow show, for now all real feeling was caught and purified and danced on ecstatically with the white flame of life. I had never felt before such deep happiness as I knew at the end of my dream.'

This is what our whole life is. A dream of millions of forms, a dream of millions of names, a dream of millions of identities. We become this, we become that. We are born, we live, we love, we do a thousand and one things, and we die. And in fact, all was just forms. Empty forms, empty shadows.

The real is the flame of life, the white flame of life. To know that white flame of life one has to drop all forms from the eyes. The eyes have to become utterly empty. Hence, the Zen emphasis on being empty. If you want to know, be empty. If you want to know, be nothing. If you want to know, disappear into nothingness. Only in that nothingness will you see the flame of life. All forms disappear. The trees are no more trees and men are no more men and birds are no more birds. It is one life, one infinite life.

But to know that one infinite life, one has to drop living in forms.

Now this story.

Of course, he was a great warrior. A great warrior lives with the belief of victory, and a great warrior cannot be defeated, because of his belief. Unless he comes against another warrior who has a stronger belief, he cannot be defeated. He is impregnable, he is invulnerable. His belief is the armour.

It happened once, a great warrior had a servant. And the servant fell in love with his wife. The warrior had gone to the war - when he came back he found out the fact. He was very angry. He was a great samurai - he gave the servant a sword and challenged him for a duel.

Now the servant was at a loss. The servant said, 'Master, why don't you kill me directly? I am a poor servant - I don't even know how to hold a sword. And fighting with you, a great warrior, a great master, who has thousands of disciples in swordsmanship.... There is nobody who can compete with you in the whole country - and you are giving me this sword to fight with you! Why don't you kill me directly? If you want to kill me, kill me - but what is the point of me fighting with you?'

But the samurai said, 'That is how it has to be. I cannot kill you, that is against my honour. You will have to fight. Accept the challenge and come into the ground.'

Now the servant - seeing no way possible, no way of getting out of it, knowing perfectly well that death has come - in a moment changed. When death is so certain he has nothing to lose. Death is absolute, so what is there to lose? He takes the sword and jumps on the master. And the master has never seen such a furious man in his life, and he has been fighting his whole life. And he starts backing away. And the servant is just mad energy. He does not know how to hold the sword, and he sees that he is not holding it rightly - but what is the point of right and wrong when you are going to die? And within seconds the master is pushed against the wall - there is no further to go back.

And the master says, 'Wait. Don't kill me right now. You can kill me after a few days, but first teach me your art. I have been fighting my whole life - I have never seen such a great warrior!'

And the servant laughed. He said, 'There is nothing, no art. But when death is certain, why not try?

You are just playing. It is a question of life and death to me. To you it is just a game, you cannot put that much belief into it. That's why you have been defeated.'

And that's true, sometimes it happens. If the other has no way to get out of it, then he becomes immensely strong. Then an ordinary servant can defeat a warrior. But a warrior means one who has been trained - who has a trained hypnotic belief that he is going to win.

The moment you think that you are going to be defeated, you are going to be defeated. It has happened many times in the history of swordsmanship in Japan that two warriors were competing for years. Again and again they would challenge, and nobody was able to defeat the other because their belief-systems were equal. They both believed that they were going to win. And their belief- systems were equal, the potentiality was equal. And years passed and nobody was able to win over the other.

Victory comes through a higher, positive, stronger belief. If you are ready to accept defeat easily, you will be defeated. It has happened, down through history, many times. It always happens - a richer society is defeated by a poorer society very easily. The master being defeated by the servant.

In India it has happened, down the ages, for two thousand years. Poor societies came and conquered India very easily. India was rich. Those poor societies had nothing to lose, they had everything to gain. If they are killed and defeated there is nothing to lose, because they were going to die anyway - they were hungry, starving. But India had much to lose. When you have much to lose you become afraid. When you have much to lose you want to compromise; you are not so certain of victory.

That's why America goes on being defeated by very poor, weak cultures. It may be Vietnam, it may be Korea, it may be anywhere else - America is going to be defeated everywhere, because America has much to lose. Vietnam has nothing to lose. Vietnam is the servant - the poor, already starving.

What is there to lose? The American is afraid; he has a thousand and one things to be afraid about.

He is afraid of life, he's afraid of his joys, he's afraid about his wife, his children, and things like that.

He's afraid - he wants to go home. He does not want to be in the war any more, somehow he wants the war to stop. He is not interested in war.

Rich societies are always defeated by poor societies. This is a miracle - but nothing is a miracle. It is simple logic: the rich cannot fight with the poor.

Karl Marx has said: 'Proletariat of the world, unite. You have nothing to lose but your chains.' And he is right - nothing to lose but your chains. You can give a good fight: if you lose anything, you lose your chains. And if you are really going to give a strong fight you may not lose anything, you may gain everything. The whole world.

'A GREAT WARRIOR' means one who has been trained from his very childhood in a certain hypnotic belief that he is going to win. That's what the training is, the discipline is. What is the discipline of a warrior? Basically, it is not the discipline of swordsmanship and archery and wrestling - those are secondary things. The basic substantial thing is the hypnotic belief that 'I am going to be the winner', that 'nobody can win over me'.

In fact there is no need to give such a big training and long training; it takes years - twenty years, fifteen years. Hypnotists can do it very easily, within months - but nobody has yet tackled it.

Hypnotists can do this very easily, and many things have been done through it.

One Chinese hypnotist has tried one thing with amateur painters. He just gives them a suggestion.

He hypnotizes them, brings them to deep sleep, and then suggests to them. An ordinary student of an art college is learning painting, and he suggests to him: 'You are Picasso.' And he goes on insisting this idea into his unconscious mind: 'You are Picasso.' And like a miracle, within a few days his painting is suddenly changed. His hand becomes more articulate, and something original starts happening. And he does not know anything - because whatsoever is said to him is said when he is fast asleep. He does not know that he has been given the idea that he is Picasso or a Van Gogh, but his painting starts changing. And within months, he becomes a great painter. If not Picasso, then too, a great painter.

And if he was to be trained by traditional means, what takes only months would have taken at least six years.

Now hypnosis can become a great force in the world - in the coming world it HAS to. There is no need to teach children for years ordinary things which they can be taught very easily through hypnosis. There is no need to go on parading soldiers for years - in and out, right turn, left turn, move forward, move backward, for three hours, four hours, five hours, every day. Just foolish - a very old hypnotic method. This is hypnosis, but a bullock-cart method. You are destroying the man's old system and creating a new system, but in a very very crude way. This can be done very easily by hypnosis.

Soon you will see, the soldiers will be trained by hypnosis and not on the battle-field. And the people who will use the hypnosis first will be the people who will win.

A samurai is trained absolutely to win, he is programmed to win. So Nobunaga knows that he is going to win, there is no problem about it... BUT HIS SOLDIERS WERE IN DOUBT. Soldiers are soldiers, they are not yet warriors.

A pure experiment in hypnosis, but he hypnotized the whole army. And didn't use any ordinary traditional methods to hypnotize them - didn't say to them to concentrate on a dark point on the wall, didn't say to repeat a mantra, didn't say 'close your eyes', didn't say anything. A pure method he used, a very subtle method. He went into the shrine, prayed silently.

The soldiers would have been standing outside the shrine waiting for the result - must have been very afraid. The enemy is ten times stronger, defeat is certain. Those soldiers must have been afraid for their life - they are going to be killed, butchered. They will not come back. The enemy is ten times stronger, and everybody knows it. And this Nobunaga is mad. This is no way to fight, this is simply going into death. This is not even called for - 'We can wait, we can prepare.' This Nobunaga IS mad - but they have to follow their general.

They must have been waiting with palpitating hearts, with trembling, with great anguish. And Nobunaga comes and tosses the coin, and heads comes. Now he has changed, in a single moment, the whole gear. Now they know they are going to win.

And in an Eastern country, and hundreds of years before, where it was an absolute belief that whatsoever is going to happen, IS going to happen, destiny is all. Now there is no problem of being defeated at all, now the whole climate has changed. They are going to win.

Destiny is with them, the gods are with them - of course, they became eager to fight. Just a moment before, they were eager to run away, they were eager to hide somewhere. And defeat was certain - just a moment before, defeat was certain. And just a moment afterwards, victory is certain. They rushed into battle. They must have been very very powerful that day - who can win over such an army, who believe that 'destiny is with us'.

That's what Adolf Hitler was trying to do. And he did it, he almost did it. He was trying to hypnotize the whole German race: 'You are Nordics. You are the purest Aryan race in the world. You are MEANT to rule, God has made you for this. You are the chosen few.' A small race, but he had almost taken over the world - almost. The whole world had to unite against him to defeat one man, a small country. He forced the whole world to its knees. What was the secret? The secret was hypnosis. He created this hypnotic climate, he created this belief: 'You are going to be the winners.

Destiny is with you, God has already decided. If you don't win you are simply foolish - God has decided for you. The Nordic, the Aryan, is the chosen race. God is waiting for you!'

In fact, this was an old Jewish trick that he had taken from the Jews. The Jews have been thinking, down the ages, that they are the chosen people of God. In fact, that hypnotic belief has saved them.

So many tragedies they have faced, so many times they have been massacred - no other race has been so many times massacred, so much tortured. But still they survive. And not only survive, they survive with tremendous energy.

The reason? A hypnotic belief Moses created in them. Moses was a warrior - a great warrior. And what he created still persists: 'You are the chosen few, you are the chosen race of God. All others are just servants; you are the masters. You HAVE to be the masters.' This is an old Jewish trick.

Maybe that's why Adolf Hitler was so angry against the Jews - because there were only two chosen races, the Jews and the Aryan. And of course the Jews had to be destroyed, to prove that God had changed his mind.

The Jews had to be utterly destroyed. And why? There is a psychological reason, if you go into it.

Each time a Jew was killed, a Nordic was born. Each time Jews were destroyed and massacred, the faith of the German race became higher and higher. Because the Jews have been, down the ages, the chosen race, and suddenly they are disappearing from the earth. It proves the hypothesis of Adolf Hitler. God is not protecting them, God is protecting us, the Aryans. God is against them, they are disappearing.

Whole towns of Jews disappeared within seconds. Thousands of Jews were burnt in concentration camps within seconds - in electric ovens, just within a second, they all disappeared. Now it was a certain thing: 'God is with us. Either he has never been with these Jews and these Jews were just deceiving themselves, or he has changed his mind. Or he has got fed-up with these Jews - they have not done anything. Mm? Down the ages, they have been here and they have not done anything, so God has changed his policy. Now he looks to us.'

Adolf Hitler created such a hypnotic climate. And in that hypnotic climate the race became powerful.

And the race had just been defeated in the First World War - just ten years ago the race had been defeated. Within ten years the hypnotic methodology of Adolf Hitler worked.

Nobunaga tricked his army. The coin had been doubled, with heads facing either way. But once you believe, you create the reality. This is the whole structure of hypnosis, and this is the whole structure of your world - the world in which you live.

Zen wants you to go beyond it. Zen wants you to see that your defeat is a belief, your victory is a belief, your strength is a belief. your weakness is a belief. your being a sinner is a belief. your being a saint is a belief. All are beliefs, mind-concepts, mind-games. Your God is a meta-game.

Drop all beliefs. Then the relative disappears and the real arises.

A small story, a Tibetan story.

Once long ago a pilgrim found himself in. the desert beyond Tibet. It was a starless night, the sky like black lacquer, the dusty wind importunately pulling at his hair and beard, and the jagged rocks rising to wound his stumbling feet. The pilgrim had hoped to reach a great spiritual teacher beyond the wilderness, but now that hope was gone. He might well die of thirst before morning. Fervently, the pilgrim prayed to Amida Buddha - the Lord of Light - for help.

Immediately, his foot struck something that was not a stone. It was a silver bowl filled to the brim with pure cold melting snow. The pilgrim drank all he could, in his weakened condition, and then, with a cracked prayer of gratitude, sank down upon the sand. He fell asleep.

When dawn awakened him, the pilgrim reached once again for the saving silver bowl. It proved to be a human skull. Bits of flesh, fringing the bare bone still, showed that the skull must have been full of life until quite recently. Besides, the hollow of it held what seemed to be brain-fluid, swimming thick with maggots like dirty grey thoughts. The pilgrim vomited at the sight. As he did so, SATORI came to him. He turned homeward, without delay. That which he sought was accomplished. He had found his teacher, and his temple as well - the temple of the skull.

This story is of tremendous importance. What happened? How did the SATORI happen? In the night he believed in his thirst that Buddha has given him this silver bowl. It was a dark night, starless - it was just his belief; created by his thirst. He was dying, he was on the verge of death - his mind must have dreamed, must have projected. In a human skull he saw a silver bowl - he projected.

And he thought the brain-fluid was just pure ice-water - he drank it. And it was so - when he thought it was pure ice-water, it was pure ice-water; and when he thought it was a silver bowl, it was a silver bowl.

You live in your projections.

Happy, he thanked Buddha and fell asleep. In the morning when the sun was rising, he opened his eyes. He wanted to see the silver bowl that had saved his life... and it was a human skull.

You can think of that man, that poor man. He vomited. Now it was no more a silver bowl, and it was no more pure ice-water. He vomited. And in that vomiting, something dawned in his consciousness.

He could see that it is all a mind game: if you see it as a silver bowl, it becomes a silver bowl.

In the night, there was no nausea. He had drunk the brain-fluid with maggots in it, but there was no nausea and no question of vomiting. And he had thanked God, thanked Buddha, in great gratitude.

And he had fallen asleep, and he slept the whole night beautifully, and there was nothing wrong.

And now, seeing it, the vomiting comes - after hours.

A great understanding happened - that it is all the mind. If it is all the mind, then there is no need to go anywhere: you can drop the mind at your own home. That was the satori, just seeing the point of it - it is just an idea. If he had got up early in the morning and had left, then there would never have been any vomiting. It is just an idea. And who knows? - in the night, maybe Amida Buddha had managed to produce a silver bowl. Mm? these Buddhas are strange people, they can do things like that. In the night he may have drunk out of a silver bowl - who knows? - and there was nothing to vomit over. Or maybe in the morning Amida Buddha had managed to produce this skull filled with brain-fluid, streaming with maggots, dirty maggots. Who knows?

But that is not the point. One thing is certain - that when you believe one thing you live in one reality, when you believe another thing you live in another reality. It is only a question of belief. All your worlds are belief-worlds.

Hence the satori. He must have laughed: that vomit was a great experience. He must have laughed, he must have understood the very root of it all. And then there was no need to seek the teacher, the teacher has been found. And there was no need to go to the temple where he was going, the temple has been found... in the human skull.

He must have come back dancing, he must have come back celebrating, he must have come back a totally different man. A man who is no more asleep in thoughts, in the mind - a man who lives no more in projections, a man who dreams no more. A man who now sees - whose clarity has become absolute, whose consciousness now has a transparency.

This is what satori is.