... destroyed their hunger and the feeling of the body. They have reason to be egoists: they are somebodies. Look in their eyes, there is nothing except ego. Their bodies may be almost dead but their egos are at the supreme-most peak. They have become Everests. These monks and saints will not be able to understand what Bankei means.He says, "We know only one miracle -- to allow nature to have its own...

... monk opened his eyes, looked at the prostitute, jumped to his feet and said, "why are you coming in ? Get out!" His whole body trembled. The prostitute went nearer. The monk jumped out of the hut and cried, "This woman is trying to seduce me!" The prostitute returned, she told the whole thing and the old woman sent her servants to burn the hut of the monk. She said, "This man...

... even if she had embraced him, why should he be afraid? He has been telling me for thirty years, 'I am not the body.'If he is not the body then why should he be so much afraid of the body? No, his saintliness is cultivated, it is a pose. It is not from the inner, it is from the outer. He has managed it all right, but inside he is not innocent, he is not childlike." And unless saintliness becomes...

... interfering. In the beginning it will be difficult but for just three weeks allow nature. When you feel hungry, eat, when you feel sleepy, go to sleep. When you don't feel hungry, don't eat. It is not a fast, remember, because a fast is from the mind, and you are feeling hungry but you are on a fast. There is no harm if you don't feel sleepy; there is no harm because the body doesn't need it, so don't force...

... body? Should we preserve it? Should be burn it, as Hindus do, as Buddhists do? Should we bury it in the ground, as Mohammedans and Christians do? We don't know who you are, a Hindu, a Buddhist, a Mohammedan? You have confused us too much we don't know who you are, so what should we do?" Bankei said, "Wait, let me die first. Why are you in such a hurry? The mind always jumps ahead. Why are...

... said, "I want to live only on water because everything else is a hindrance to spirituality. Now I want to live on pure water." This man is going to die. There have been a few people who have lived on pure water but that happened to them naturally, it cannot be practised. They were freaks, accidents; their body mechanism and chemistry worked differently. It has happened -- somebody can...

... survive on water but nobody can practise it. Someday science may be able to find the basic chemical change and then everybody will be able to survive on water; then science will change your body chemistry and you will survive just on air. It is possible but you cannot practise it. And the whole effort is meaningless and the whole suffering is unnecessary, but there are mad people who try things like...

... anything; then it seemed a miracle. It was not a miracle. Yoga says there is a possibility of a body change, of a body chemistry change. Right now you are doing the same just by an intermediary. You cannot eat sunrays directly because your body chemistry is not in such a state; the mechanism is not such that it can absorb sunrays directly. So first the fruit of the tree absorbs the sunrays, it becomes...

... vitamin B in the fruit, then you eat the fruit, then the vitamin B goes into your body. The fruit is just an intermediary; the fruit is working just as your agent to absorb the sunrays and then give them to you. You can absorb them through the fruit, not directly. But if the fruit can absorb directly, why not you? So someday there is going to be a scientific discovery that some body changes will help...

... the body, and the body rejects only things which are not needed. Whatsoever you are eating is somehow needed by the body. If you are taking animal food, if you are taking non-vegetarian food, your mind, your body, your whole being is violent. And it is needed. don't change it otherwise your violence will have to find another channel. Change yourself and food will change, clothes will change, sex...

... almost all children. Whenever they feel sleep is not coming they will put the thumb inside the mouth, feel at ease, and fall asleep. Why? The thumb becomes a substitute for the mother's breast, and food is relaxing. You cannot go to sleep on a hungry stomach, it is difficult to get sleep. When the stomach is full you feel sleepy, the body needs rest. So whenever the child takes the breast in his mouth...

... profound sutras of Gautama the Buddha: LOVE YOURSELF.... Just the opposite has been taught to you by all the traditions of the world, all the civilizations, all the cultures, all the churches. They say: Love others, don't love yourself. And there is a certain cunning strategy behind their teaching. Love is the nourishment for the soul. Just as food is to the body, so love is to the soul. Without food the...

... body is weak, without love the soul is weak. And no state, no church, no vested interest, has ever wanted people to have strong souls, because a person with spiritual energy is bound to be rebellious. Love makes you rebellious, revolutionary. Love gives you wings to soar high. Love gives you insight into things, so that nobody can deceive you, exploit you, oppress you. And the priests and the...

... whole edifice, their whole structure of exploitation. If a man is not allowed to love himself, his spirit, his soul, becomes weaker and weaker every day. His body may grow but he has no inner growth, because he has no inner nourishment. He remains a body almost without a soul or with only a potentiality, a possibility, of a soul. The soul remains a seed, and it will remain a seed if you cannot find...

... energy around yourself. Love your body, love your mind. Love your whole mechanism, your whole organism. By "love" is meant: accept it as it is, don't try to repress. We repress only when we hate something, we repress only when we are against something. Don't repress, because if you repress, how are you going to watch? And we cannot look eye-to-eye at the enemy; we can look only in the eyes of...

...;Close your eyes and relax," said the shrink, "and I will try an experiment." He took a leather key case from his pocket, flipped it open and shook the keys. "What did that sound remind you of?" he asked. "Sex," she whispered. Then he closed his key case and touched it to the girl's upturned palm. Her body stiffened. "And that?" asked the psychiatrist. "...

... does not say what has to be watched - everything! Walking, watch your walking. Eating, watch your eating. Taking a shower, watch the water, the cold water falling on you, the touch of the water, the coldness, the shiver that goes through your spine - watch everything, TODAY, TOMORROW, ALWAYS. A moment finally comes when you can watch even your sleep. That is the ultimate in watching. The body goes to...

... sleep and there is still a watcher awake, silently watching the body fast asleep. That is the ultimate in watching. Right now just the opposite is the case: your BODY is awake but you are asleep. Then YOU will be awake and your body will be asleep. The body needs rest but your consciousness needs no sleep. Your consciousness IS consciousness; it is alertness, that is its very nature. The body tires...

... because the body lives under the law of gravitation; it is gravitation that makes you tired. That's why running fast you will be tired soon, going upstairs you will be tired soon, because the gravitation pulls you downwards. In fact, to stand is tiring, to sit is tiring. When you lie down flat, horizontal, only then is there a little rest for the body, because now you are in tune with the law of...

...; hence it never gets tired. Gravitation has no power over consciousness; it is not a rock, it has no weight. It functions under a totally different law: the law of grace, or, as it is known in the East, the law of levitation. Gravitation means pulling downwards, levitation means pulling upwards. The body is continuously being pulled downwards. That's why finally it will have to lie down in the grave...

...; that will be the real rest for it - dust unto dust. The body has returned back to its source, the turmoil has ceased, now there is no conflict. The atoms of your body will have real rest only in the grave. The soul soars higher and higher. As you become more watchful you start having wings - then the whole sky is yours. Man is a meeting of the earth and the sky, of body and soul. FIRST ESTABLISH...

... boiling water. Naturally the frog immediately jumped out of the water - instantly, he didn't lose a single moment; it was a question of life and death. He really jumped high, as he had never jumped before. Then the scientist put the frog into another bucket of water of the same temperature as the frog's body. The frog was very happy, was resting at the bottom. And then the scientist started heating the...

... of breathing that change the rhythm of the breath, the temperature of your body increases. Or if it is too hot, if you are passing through a desert, then change again to a different rhythm... and your body has an automatic, inbuilt, air-conditioning system. Gurdjieff learned his first lessons in hypnosis with these nomadic groups. If the wife and the husband are both going to sell some things in...

... they come the child is still inside the circle. Gurdjieff started wondering how it happened, why it happened, and soon he was able to figure out that it is just a question of your unconscious accepting the idea. Once your unconscious accepts the idea, then your body and your conscious mind have no power to go against it. In his own exercises that he developed later on when he became a Master...

... you suddenly become a frozen statue - and in that state you can see yourself transparently. You are constantly engaged in activity - and with the activity of the body, the mind's activity is associated. You cannot separate them, so when the body completely stops, of course, immediately the mind also stops then and there. You can see the body, frozen, as if it is somebody else's body; you can see the...

... mind, suddenly unmoving, because it has lost its association with the body in movement. It is a simple psychological law of association that was discovered by another Russian, Pavlov. Gurdjieff knew it long before Pavlov, but he was not interested in psychology so he never worked it out that way. Pavlov also got the idea from the same nomads, but he moved in a different direction - he was a...

... discovery, he had just found what those nomads had been doing all along. Gurdjieff would shout "Stop!" and everybody would freeze. And when the body suddenly freezes, the mind feels a little weird: What happened? - because the mind has no association with the frozen body, it is just shocked. They are in cooperation, in a deep harmony, moving together. Now the body has completely frozen, what is...

..., the exercise continues. If your hand is in an uncomfortable position under your body, you are not to make it comfortable because that means you have not given a chance for the mind to stop. You are still listening to the mind. The mind says, "It is uncomfortable, make it comfortable." No, you are not to do anything. In New York when he was giving his demonstration of the dance, Gurdjieff...

... body.... I said just the other day to you that a point comes for the body, if you fast, when after five days it changes its system. That is, the body starts absorbing its own fat, and then there is no more hunger. That is one method which has been used. This is also a similar method - in the opposite direction. There is a point beyond which you cannot eat, but the Master says, "Go on." He...

... is trying to bring you to the brink of the capacity of your whole physiology, and you have never touched that. We are always in the middle. Neither are we fasting, nor are we feasting like Gurdjieff; we are always in the middle. The body is in a settled routine; hence, the mind is also settled in its way of movement. Fasting destroys that. That's why fasting became so important in all religions. It...

... eat anymore - and that is the point when Gurdjieff would force you to eat. If you say yes even then, suddenly there is an immediate state of no-mind because you have broken the whole rhythm of body and mind. Now it is inconceivable for the mind to grasp what is happening. It cannot work any longer in this situation. It has not known it before because - always remember - mind is exactly like a...

... go almost crazy; so drunk that they would forget completely who they were. And he would go on giving it to them. If they fell he would shake them, sit them up and pour them some more, because there is a moment when the person has come to a point where his whole body, his whole consciousness is completely overtaken by the intoxicant. In that moment his unconscious starts speaking. Freud took three...

... for evolution." In fact that's what Mohammedans say. They have a very strange idea - it's this idea that I am telling you. They say that you have to eat animals because only by eating them do you transform them and make them capable of moving upwards. Because you absorb their body and their soul, it goes upwards: so release as many animals as you can. And God has made it clear in the Koran that...

... philosophical reasoning, argumentation; was so sophisticated that Thomas, a poor, uneducated man - who was going to listen to him? But perhaps South India would be receptive; and it was. The whole state of Kerala is eighty percent Christian; and it is not a new phenomenon - it was Thomas' work. Goa is completely Christian - Thomas' body is still in Goa. It reminds me to tell you of one thing: Thomas' is the...

... only body, outside Tibet, which is still the same as it was on the day the person died. It has not been preserved by any chemicals, or by any scientific methods. It is one of the rarest phenomena on the earth. Every year the body is brought out of the inner chambers of the church for the public to see. And I have seen the body, and you can see: it is as if the man has just gone to sleep, and not even...

... died. Yes, he is not breathing, but in two thousand years the body has not deteriorated. Scientists have tried to find out how it is preserved. There is nothing to find because it is not preserved by any preservatives; it is through a long training in yoga and certain breathing exercises that have the capacity to change the inner workings of biochemistry. For thirty years Thomas practiced yoga...

.... Thomas lived like a Hindu brahmin. If you see a picture of Thomas you will be surprised. What kind of Christian is this? - his head shaved like a Hindu brahmin monk, with a small piece of hair on the top of his head left uncut, the choti. He even wore a thread, yagyopavit, that is only worn by born brahmins. He used only a small piece of cloth just to cover the lower part of his body, the loincloth as...

... he really performed a miracle. He said, "After my death don't bury my body and don't make a grave for me. I have managed to change its inner workings." It was predicted by Thomas - and that prediction may come true - that his body would remain preserved till the very end of the world. Two thousand years have passed and the body is preserved. Only last year, for the first time, was a...

... little sign of deterioration detected. Perhaps the end of the world is close. If the man was right about his body, saying not to destroy it, it is going to remain till the very end of the world - and according to many sources the end of the world is coming closer - his prediction may also be true. Only last year, that was 1984, for the first time a little deterioration appeared. Perhaps by the end of...

... this century the body may have deteriorated completely. Thomas' prediction is: the day my body deteriorates completely, that is the end of this world. Thomas and Jesus both brought to India the word messiah which became masiha. It happens, when a word changes from one language to another language, it has to be adapted to the whims of the other language. "Messiah" will not fit in Hindi...

... Afghanistan. These tribal people have a strange idea. I am reminded of it because I said that it is as if Buddha has left something behind, as if Mahavira has left something behind. Pakhtoons believe that when a man dies he should die with his body complete. No part should be missing because God will ask, "Where is your hand? - because when I sent you into the world you were whole." So they never...

... allow any operation, any amputation. They would rather die than have their kidneys taken out, because they are simple people, primitive people, and their logic is simple: when God asks, "Where are your kidneys?..." A beautiful story happened. In Lahore, a Pakhtoon, in the first world war, got shot in the hand. The situation was such that if his hand was not cut off, then his whole body would...

... possible way to imagine myself as the elephant, but I couldn't see the rabbit. The foot is there, and the rabbit is underneath the foot - but such small eyes in such a big body... it is just not possible. Even in his elephant life Buddha was so non-violent, non-hurting, that he preferred his own death rather than killing a rabbit. He tells many stories of his past lives, and in every life he is superior...

... the Christian trinity, Hinduism has the trimurti, the three faces of God - one body but three faces. It looks almost more logical than the Christian trinity - God the Father, the Holy Ghost, and Jesus Christ the Son. This trinity looks a very incomplete family: there is no mother, no brothers, no sisters. And the story is so old that it must have been a joint family. In those days such a nuclear...

... family - only one son, and that too without a wife! Great birth control - even the wife is dropped. It doesn't seem that it can be real. The Hindu God seems to have some logic behind it: one body, three faces. Brahma is the creative face who creates the world; Vishnu is the sustainer, who sustains the world; and Shiva is the destructive part, who destroys the world. This seems to be more logical...

... the Hindu God. Sooner or later Hindus are going to brag that this is what their three faces mean - electron, neutron, proton - that this is the new way of saying the same thing; but it is one body, it is the same electricity, the same force. What does Buddha manage to do with this? He says, "When I became enlightened all three Hindu gods, Brahma, Vishnu, Mahesh - all three came to touch my feet...

... come to my house and went away very angry. Then they came to the university, but they did not recognize me because in the house I had been simply sitting with a lungi on, my body half-naked, and in the college I had on a robe. So they could not figure out that I was the same person: again they brought out the form. I said, "Listen, if you show me this form again I am going to hit you really hard...

... things; and it seems they enjoy. It is morbid. They talk about the mucus inside the body, the blood, the flesh; they talk about the stomach, about the belly full of excreta, the bladder full of urine. "This is your beautiful woman. Bag of dirt! And you are falling in love with this bag. Be alert." But this is something to understand: in the East when they want to make you aware that life is...

... dream about them. The sexual pornography depends on the body of the woman and the death pornography also depends on the body of the woman. And then they say, "You are falling in love? This young woman soon is going to become old. Soon she will he a dirty old hag. Be alert, and don't fall in love, because soon this woman is going to die: then you will weep and cry. and then you will be in...

... suffering." If you have to bring life in, the body of the woman is needed. If you have to bring death in, the body of the woman is needed. Man seems to be continuously obsessed with the body of the woman -- whether they are playboys or mahatmas makes no difference. But why? It always happens: whenever a society suppresses sex it expresses death; whenever a society suppresses death it becomes...

...;Because why are you hiding your body? These clothes are not needed." No. Please remember, be truthful to yourself. You are not needed to reform anybody else in the world. If you can grow yourself, that's enough. Don't be a reformer, and don't try to teach others, and don't try to change others. If you change, that's enough message. To be authentic means: to remain true to your own being. How to...

... your body, a current of life being transferred... because his mechanism is functioning well. Don't wear masks; otherwise you will create dysfunctions in your mechanism -- blocks. There are many blocks in your body. A person who has been suppressing anger, his jaw becomes blocked. All the anger comes up to the jaw and then stops there. His hands become ugly. They don't have the graceful movement of a...

... little bit. And angry people's hands will become knotted, ugly. If the energy was released they could have become beautiful hands. If you suppress anything, in the body there is some part, corresponding part, to the emotion. If you don't want to cry, your eyes will lose the luster because tears are needed; they are a very alive phenomenon. When once in a while you weep and cry, really you go into it...

... shock happens to the whole body. It is a shock, because so much energy is released; the whole body trembles in a shock. In that shock thoughts stop. It is just like an electric shock. A man goes mad; you go to the psychiatrist and he gives him an electric shock. For what? Because if you give an electric shock, then for a moment when the shock passes through the mind everything stops. For example, you...

... become horses -- madmen can become anything -- if they are thinking that they have become horses just before the shock, after the shock they cannot remember what the idea was with which they were obsessed. Now a new circle starts. Shock helps. Sexual energy is as much electrical as any energy. All energies are electrical, and sex energy is bioelectricity. It comes out of your body. Have you heard about...

... a woman in Sweden? Something has gone wrong in her body. She can take a five- candle bulb in her hand and the bulb goes on. A five-candle bulb can remain lighted in her hand -- but don't start thinking that this would be good if it happens to you. She is in a danger, because when her husband touches her he gets a shock. You cannot make love to that woman -- you will be in such a shock you will...

... moves towards muladhar, the sex center, concentrates there; then comes a peak, a buildup; then sudden explosion -- shock all over the body; then peace follows. This peace is at a very great cost. You are destroying valuable life energy -- for nothing. Now, one scientist, very famous, and very dangerous for the future -- his name is Delgado -- has created a small mechanism; you can keep it in the...

... pocket. It can be connected to your sex center in the mind, from where the sex center in the body is controlled -- a wire goes and connects it. You can keep it in the pocket: whenever you want sexual pleasure you just push the button. It gives a shock from the battery to the sex center in the mind: you have tremendous happiness. This is better, but this is dangerous -- dangerous because then you will...

... observed, whenever you feel afraid something hits you just near the navel? There is the center of death and deathlessness. When the energy passes to that center, comes to that level, you feel deathless. If somebody even kills you, you know that you are not being killed: "Na hanyate hanyamane sharire" -- "By killing the body you cannot kill the soul." Then the energy goes higher, comes...

... is just a trick to create sleep in the third eye. When the energy reaches to the third eye, you feel so full of light... all darkness disappeared, infinite light surrounds you. In fact there is no shadow in you then. The oldest saying in Tibet is, "When a yogi becomes realized in awareness, there falls no shadow of his body." Don't take it literally -- the body will create the shadow. But...

... organism. People trust others, the sannyasin trusts his own organism. Body, mind, soul, all are included. If he feels like loving he flows in love. If he does not feel like loving he says "Sorry" - but he never pretends. A non-sannyasin goes on pretending. His life is a life lived through masks. He comes home, he hugs the wife, and he does not want to hug the woman. And he says, "I love...

... satisfaction comes only out of authentic living. If you are not feeling loving you have to say so; there is no need to pretend. If you are feeling angry you have to say so. You have to be true to your organism, you have to trust your organism. And you will be surprised: the more you trust, the more the organism's wisdom becomes very, very clear to you. Your body has its own wisdom - it carries the wisdom of...

... the centuries in its cells. Your body is feeling hungry and you are on a fast, because your religion says that this day you have to fast - and your body is feeling hungry. You don't trust your organism, you trust a dead scripture, because in some book somebody has written that this day you have to go on a fast, so you go on a fast. Listen to your body. Yes, there are days when the body says, "...

... the prescription. That prescription was made for somebody else, for some other disease, in some other situation. Remember to trust your own organism. When you feel that the body is saying don't eat, stop immediately. When the body is saying eat, then don't bother whether the scriptures say to fast or not. If your body says eat three times a day, perfectly good. If it says eat one time a day...

..., perfectly good. Start learning how to listen to your body, because it is your body. You are in it; you have to respect it, and you have to trust it. It is your temple; it is sacrilegious to impose things on your body. For no other motive should anything be imposed! And this will not only teach you trust in your body, this will teach you, by and by, a trust in existence too - because your body is part of...

... otherwise false. A sannyasin is one who trusts in his own organism, and that trust helps him to relax into his being, and helps him to relax into the totality of existence. It brings a general acceptance of oneself and others. It gives a kind of rootedness, centering. And then there is great strength and power, because you are centered in your own body, in your own being. You have roots in the soil...

... very body, in your very being, this very moment, God is there - and you have not celebrated it. You cannot celebrate. Celebration has to happen first in your own home, at close quarters. Then it becomes a great tidal wave and spreads all over existence. The fourth is a sense of freedom. The sannyasin is not only free, he is freedom. He always lives in a free way. Freedom does not mean licentiousness...

.... And dropping it is what sannyas is all about. I will have to say about Anand Adi: I'm afraid he would recognize me even if I were a cab-driver. Maybe he would recognize me far better than he recognizes me now. He is just crazy. There are many more people who will recognize me anyway, anywhere. Only those are the people who are with me - who will recognize me anywhere. Jesus died. His body was kept...

... in a cave after crucifixion. Mary Magdalene went to see him on the third day, and the body was not there. So she looked around to inquire, and she saw a gardener working outside. So she went to the gardener and asked, "Have you seen where Jesus' body has been removed?" The gardener started laughing, and he said, "Can't you recognize me?" He was Jesus himself, resurrected. When...

... who is not closed at all -- the air flows through him, the cosmos flows through him. He has no barriers, no doors closed. He has no privacy of his being. He is porous. And whenever he feels miserable, immediately he puts himself right; immediately he takes the indication. It is a symptom! It is just like illness: when you are not behaving with your body naturally, some illness erupts. That illness...

... is a friend. It shows: "Behave, change your ways! Somewhere you are going against nature." If you don't take food for three or four days, you feel dizzy, you feel hungry, you feel sad. The whole body is saying to you, "Take food!" because the body needs energy. Always remember: The energy is neutral, so the whole quality of your being depends on you. You can be happy, you can be...

... you don't want to breathe, for a few seconds you can stop breathing, but only for a few seconds -- that much freedom is possible. But that is not very much, and soon you will feel a choking, dying sensation if you don't breathe well. All misery exists to indicate to you that somewhere you have gone wrong, you have gone off the track. Come back immediately! If you start listening to the body...

.... Allow it, help it. Then let your whole body vibrate with energy, and just let whatever happens happen. You feel again a flowing with the earth. Earth and heaven, above and below, yin and yang, male and female -- you float, you mix, you drop yourself completely. You are not. You become one... merge. After two to three minutes, or whenever you feel completely filled, lean down to the earth and kiss the...

... your religion, your scriptures, your priests. And then your inner says, "You are hungry, eat!" And you think this is outer, the Devil is tempting you. What foolishness! The priest has tempted you to fast. The Devil is not there! The priests are the only devilish forces in the world. Hunger comes, this is inner. The whole body, every cell of it says, "Eat!" and you say, "This...

... is outer. Somebody is tempting me, some evil forces." Or, "This is desire, this is the body, and the body is the enemy -- and my soul is on a fast." Soul on a fast? The soul never needs any food so how can it go on a fast? You are forcing the poor body. But there is a natural fast also; it happens in animals. No preacher is there, no priest teaching them, but it happens. If you...

... observe a dog: if he is not feeling well he will not eat -- this is the inner. A dog's fast is inner. What absurdity! And a man's fast is almost always outer. Only a dog can fast inwardly because he is still in contact with nature, you are not. When the body is ill, no animal can be forced to eat. If you force him to eat he will vomit. This is beautiful. The body doesn't need it; it is ill. The whole...

... energy is needed for the body to cure itself, and that energy will be diverted if you take food, because then the energy will be needed to digest food: it will be a burden. The body is not in a good condition; the whole energy is needed for the body to cure itself, and if food is thrown in the body, that will be a division. Now the whole of the energy will move towards curing; it will be prevented...

.... This is a false hunger. And if you wait for half an hour, it will disappear automatically. How can a real hunger disappear so easily? The real hunger will grow more and more. The fire will become more and more fiery in the stomach. You will start feeling pain in the stomach, a burning sensation all over the body. You will feel feverish. The body needs satiety, the body is demanding; energy is needed...

... that the food is absorbed, the energy used, the body becomes hungry again. How can you love twenty-four hours? And if you try the impossible, you will be in bad shape. The more you force, the more everything will become false. That's why husbands and wives lose the whole beauty of love. Everything becomes false and forced. When they were lovers everything was beautiful, because sometimes they would...

... mosque: he is every where. He is not in any image: all images are his. Treat him as a god, and if you treat him as a god he will learn how to treat others as gods - and that's what religion is all about, particularly my religion. When you are industrious you are functioning as a body-mind mechanism. When you are utterly relaxed you are functioning as a spirit - no more body, no more mind - because the...

... body can work, the mind can work. They know how to work, they are biological machines. The mind goes on working twenty-four hours a day. Even though the work is not needed, even in sleep it goes on working. That is the only way it knows how to be: functioning continuously is its very core, very substance. And so is the case with the body: the body also continuously works. Even when you are lying down...

... and resting, the body is doing a thousand and one things: the food is being digested, the dead cells are being thrown out of the body, the breathing continues, the blood is being purified; millions of processes really are continuously there. Since the conception in the mother's womb till the grave, the body continues to work. And the case is the same, more or less, with the mind. I am not against...

... consistency - then it has to choose. And whenever you choose, you can only choose half and the other half has to be denied. That's what has happened down the ages: those who choose the body deny the soul; they have to, to be consistent. Those who choose the soul have to deny the body; they have to deny the body to be consistent, otherwise they look inconsistent. If god is, then they have to say that the...

... say 'One does not even have to go outside one's body.' One is it. That is the meaning of svarupo: it is your very nature, your very ground. 'Thou art that' - when this recognition arises, all misery disappears and all darkness, and one is transported into a totally different kind of reality. With the change of vision, the whole world changes. So don't look for god in the churches, in the temples, in...

... contradiction. Life is not logical, so those who search for consistency in life go on missing. Life consists of contradictions. It is a constant balancing between contradictions - day and night, love and hate, life and death, summer and winter, man and woman. If one looks deeply into life one will find that contradiction is the rule, not the exception. It exists through paradoxes. The logical mind insists on...

... missing the totality, and the reason is their chronic insistence on consistency. They are not courageous enough to accept the contradiction, they are not courageous enough to accept life as it is. They have a 'should': it should be like this. We cannot impose anything on life. It doesn't care a bit about our logic, about our mathematics, about our minds. It goes on its own way. It is dialectical. And it...

... constantly contradict because I believe in life and not logic. I have to contradict to be true. Consistency is always false; truth is always inconsistent. It has to be big enough to contain the opposite polarity in it. And I also contradict continuously as a method so that you don't cling to anything. I don't give you a certain philosophy of life. I give with one hand and I immediately take it away with...

... have to write the whole of history with a totally different orientation, because the facts are trivia - although they are material, they don't matter. And the truths are immaterial but they matter. The new orientation for a future history will take care about what happened inside Gautam Buddha when he became enlightened, what went on happening while he was in the body for forty-two years after his...

... enlightenment. And what was happening in those forty-two years is not going to be discontinued just because the body drops dead. It had no concern with the body. It was a phenomenon in consciousness, and consciousness continues. The pilgrimage of the consciousness is endless. So what was happening in the consciousness inside the body, will go on happening outside the body. That is a simple understanding. So...

... this story is a story of inner happenings. For forty-two years Gautam Buddha was nothing but pure compassion. There was no need for him to live any more on this shore. He had attained everything that life is capable of giving, he had reached to the highest peak. But he continued to work, continued for forty-two years, in spite of a fragile body, old age, sickness. His compassion was great. He was...

... immediately - although the temptation is there, because you have worked for enlightenment only to get to the other shore. And now that the moment has come, to delay it feels difficult. To resist the temptation you need a tremendous compassion for those who are still blind, who are still in tremendous suffering and misery. Forty-two years, in spite of his fragile body, he continued to move from village to...

... discourse is about the ultimate reality!" Seeing her tears, Ramakrishna said, "It seems you really want to know what is the secret of it. Then don't blame me; I have been avoiding the subject, but there is a limit to everything. I will tell you the reality. Food is the only thing I am keeping myself attached to, otherwise I cannot remain in the body. That is my strategy. And the day I show...

... three days, he died. Masters have been using their unique ways of lingering on this shore, and it is almost impossible to understand their strategies. People understand them only afterwards, when it is pointless. You are asking me, will I also wait for you? I am waiting for you, and I will continue to wait for you, either in the body or out of the body. The people I have loved, the people who have...

... prescribed in the scriptures. He almost destroyed his body in practicing all those arduous methods, disciplines; they are all a kind of self-torture, and he tortured himself. He was a man with a totality of mind - if he wanted to do something, he was not the one to be defeated, he would do it - and that became the barrier. When he was born, the astrologers had declared that either he would become the...

... become enlightened a little bit, then a little bit more. You suddenly become enlightened, it is not a process. But I will certainly be waiting for you. Those who have loved me, those who have received my love, I am committed to them. I will do everything to remain in the body, and I will do everything - even if I have to leave the body - to be continuously around you. You will not be able to see me...