Osho - Finger Pointing to the Moon
Chapter 12. Die To The Future
When no desire arises for objects worthy of being enjoyed, know this as the limit of nonattachment. When no i-ness arises, know this as the limit of knowing.
When the dissolved desires do not arise back again, this is the limit of relaxedness, and such a sthitpragya, a seeker, stable in wisdom, ever remains in bliss.
He whose self is absorbed only in brahma, the ultimate reality, remains desireless and actionless. When purified by its oneness with brahma and drowned in this one single rapture, the activities of mind are choiceless and remain only as the consciousness, then it is called pragya, the wisdom.
He who always has such a pragya is called jivanamukta, the one liberated while living.
One who has no i-ness for his body and the senses, and no my-ness for the other things, is a jivanamukta, the one liberated while living.
When no desire arises for objects worthy of being enjoyed, then know this as the limit of nonattachment. When no i-ness arises, know this as the limit of knowing.
Ordinarily vairagya, meaning nonattachment, is understood by people as viraga, meaning detachment. Raga and viraga - attachment and detachment - are opposites. Attachment means the arising of a desire to indulge on seeing an object. If beauty is seen, a tasteful food is seen, a comfortable situation is seen, then the desire that arises to enjoy it, to drown in it, to be lost in it, is attachment.
Attachment means a desire to become attached, a desire to become drowned in something by losing one's own self. If a pleasure is seen outside oneself, then the desire to drown oneself in that pleasure is attachment.
Detachment means a repulsion arises on seeing something enjoyable; a desire arises to go away from it, to turn one's back towards it. According to language, raga is attraction, viraga is repulsion.
Where there is a desire to go towards a thing it is attachment, where there is a desire to move away from a thing it is repulsion. Viraga means inverted raga. In one we are drawn nearer, in the other we move away. Viraga, detachment, is not freedom from attachment, it is just inverted attachment.
Somebody desires money; if he gets money he thinks he has achieved everything. Someone else thinks that if he could give up money he would have achieved everything. But they are both focused on money. Somebody thinks there is pleasure in man or in woman, and someone else thinks there is pleasure in renouncing man or woman. But the central point to both of them is man or woman.
Somebody thinks this worldly life is heaven, someone else thinks this world is hell, but the attention of both of them is on the world.
From the point of view of language, vairagya, nonattachment, is the opposite of raga, attachment, but for a seeker of the spiritual vairagya is not the opposite of raga, it is the absence of raga. Please understand the difference properly. If you look in a dictionary, nonattachment is the opposite of attachment, but if you move into experience, nonattachment is not the opposite of attachment but its absence. The difference is subtle.
There is attraction towards women; this is attachment. If it becomes a repulsion towards women, it becomes difficult to bear their company, then a tendency is born in the mind to keep away from women. This is detachment, according to language and the dictionary; but according to samadhi, the awakening, it is still an attraction.
From the point of view of samadhi, detachment is when there is neither the attraction for women nor a repulsion; neither the pull nor the push. It is when the presence of a women or her absence are the same; when the presence of a man or his absence are the same; when poverty and richness are the same. When neither the gaining of a certain thing determines whether you are happy or the losing of a certain thing makes you happy, when happiness has nothing to do with either gain or loss, when happiness has become one's own, with no requirement of outside stimulation - neither meeting nor not-meeting, they both become meaningless - then is vairagya, meaning nonattachment.
Nonattachment means that we simply don't look for the other any longer. We are neither in favor nor against; neither in attraction nor in repulsion. This complete freedom from the other is vairagya, nonattachment.
There can be two types of bondages with the other: when we meet a friend there is happiness, when we meet an enemy there is unhappiness; or when the enemy goes away there is happiness, when the friend goes away there is unhappiness.
Buddha has said with deep satire, "Enemies give unhappiness, friends also give unhappiness; when friends leave us there is unhappiness, when enemies meet us there is unhappiness. What is the difference?"
There is some attachment to an enemy as well as to a friend. If your enemy dies, then too something breaks within, a place falls empty within. Many times the death of an enemy creates a bigger emptiness in you than the death of a friend because there was an attachment to the enemy also. It was inverted attachment; you were related with his presence as well.
One is related with a friend as well as with an enemy. So you are related even with those things and people that you are opposed to.
Nonattachment means there is no relationship whatsoever; you have become unrelated, alone. So in this sutra the definition of the ultimate limit of nonattachment has been given: when no desire arises for objects worthy of enjoyment.
In language, the word viraga, detachment, means renouncing and going away from the objects worthy of enjoyment. Whereas vairagya, nonattachment, means that no desire arises for enjoying an object even though it may be present; it means even if you are enjoying it there is no desire for it.
King Janaka, an enlightened man mentioned in the Ramayana, lives in his palace where everything is available that can be enjoyed, but there is no desire to enjoy. You may choose to leave and run away into a jungle where there is nothing enjoyable, but your desire for enjoyment will then turn itself into dreams, will excite your passions; your mind will go every now and then to the place where there are things that are enjoyable.
So the question is not of the presence or absence of the enjoyable things, the question is of the existence of desire. And it is very interesting to note that where there are no objects of enjoyment the desire is felt even more intensely; it is not felt so intensely where the objects of enjoyment are present. In the nonavailability the desire is more acute.
This sutra says that even if someone has renounced everything still it is not the limit of nonattachment. This too is not the ultimate form of nonattachment, because it is possible that the attachment may be there deep within. It is also possible that running away might have been just a form of attachment. What then is the ultimate definition? - when everything enjoyable is present but there is no desire to indulge. Who will decide about it? Everyone has to decide it for himself. It is not a matter for others to decide; you are your own judge.
When no desire arises within, when the enjoyable objects may be present but no desire arises, neither in favour nor against, when mind simply does not run this way or that and you do not swing in any direction; you remain where you are, as if there is nothing outside - the object may be there outside but its reflection within does not create any attraction or repulsion - this then is the limit of nonattachment.
This will look very difficult to us because so far we have understood detachment as the opposite of attachment. If a person renounces his wife and children, family and house and runs away, we call him a viraga, meaning a renouncer. But in his very escaping he shows that he is still in some way attached. When somebody escapes, he is not escaping out of fear of his house, he is actually escaping out of fear of his own inner desires. How can a house make one run away? And if a house can make one run away, then that inner state of nonattachment is not yet within him.
One person is looking to buy a house; now the house is making him run in one direction. Another person is escaping to the jungle in fear of his house; here too it is the house that is making him run in another direction. He has his back to the house, but he is still connected with the house. And there is yet another person... things do not cause him to run. Such a person is not gripped by things any longer.
But then nonattachment will mean being in the self, being settled within oneself. None of us are settled within ourselves.
There was a king whose life-force was kept in a parrot. These are old stories created for children where this kind of fantasy can still happen. Whatsoever anyone did to the king, the king would not die unless the parrot was killed. His soul was hidden in the parrot. As long as the parrot did not die, the king would not die. This is not only a story - it indicates that our souls are also imprisoned somewhere else, encased in something else. It may be that your soul is not imprisoned in a parrot but in your safe.
In 1930-31, when there was a sudden depression and the American dollar was devalued, many of the top millionaires of Wall street in America committed suicide. The depression came so swiftly and acutely that most speculators and millionaires became poor overnight. Their bank balances suddenly disappeared. Many of them committed suicide instantly by jumping from the fiftieth or sixtieth floor of the buildings.
What happened to these people? What happening took place that suddenly there was no other option left for them but to die? Their souls were imprisoned in their safes. When the safe died, they died. This jumping... nothing else had happened, the whole world was unchanged, just some digits in the bank's ledgers had disappeared. Digits! In somebody's name there had been a ten-digit figure, now only two digits remained. Where there had been a long row of figures in credit to his account, now there remained none. All this happened in the banks, on paper, but their souls were imprisoned in those bank ledgers. Those ledgers were their lives. Any direct attempt to kill them would not have succeeded, but the safes became empty and they simply died.
Somebody is in love with someone. Then one of the two lovers dies and the life is finished for the other also. If we all search within ourselves we will find that our souls are also imprisoned somewhere or other, in some parrot or other. As long as your soul is imprisoned somewhere you are not settled in your self. Your life then is not present where it should be. It should be within yourself - but it is not there, it is somewhere else.
Now this being somewhere else can be of many types. One person thinks that his body is his soul; then this person is also somewhere else. Tomorrow he will start becoming old; then he will be in pain, he will feel miserable because his body is waning away, becoming wrinkled, ugly, sick and aged. Such a person will feel himself dead before his actual death because the young body in which he had kept his soul is now fading.
There can be differences as to where you have imprisoned your soul, but if your soul is outside you, you are living in attachment. Attachment means your soul is not in its rightful place, it is somewhere else. You may run in a reverse direction, but still the soul will be somewhere else.
The definition of nonattachment is that your soul is within you, settled in yourself; nothing pulls you and nothing creates any sort of ripples or waves in you. Hence nonattachment is the door to bliss, because for one who has settled in one's self... there is no way to make him unhappy.
Remember, those children's stories are saying the right thing. One who has settled in one's self, one whose soul has come back within one's self - there remains no way to kill him. Souls never die, it is only the parrots that die. Wherever else you put your souls, those things slip away, they die.
Hence the person starts feeling himself as good as dead. The soul is immortal, but we attach it to mortal things. Those mortal things are bound to disintegrate - if not today, tomorrow. That is their very nature. When those things disintegrate you will have an illusion that you have died. This dying of the self is an illusion that is created by attaching yourself to mortal things.
Nonattachment is when in the breaking away of all relationships one has come to know that which was relating - one's own self.
When no desire arises for objects worthy of being enjoyed... and is it okay for the opposite desire to arise? No, when desire as such does not arise - desire of any sort then ...
Know this as the limit of nonattachment.
This sutra is being given for one's own self - do not go out judging others with it. We are very clever:
if we are given definitions, then we use them to judge others: "Okay, let us see if so and so is really nonattached or not." It is none of your business. You have nothing to do with the other. If the other is in attachment he will suffer unhappiness; if he is in nonattachment he will be enjoying bliss. It is none of your concern. But we are so clever in deceiving our own selves that if we have a definition, a touchstone, we immediately begin to evaluate others without bothering to evaluate our own selves.
Test yourself; this sutra is for you. This sutra is not for making you think about others - whether Mahavira is a nonattached being or not, whether Krishna is a nonattached being or not. They may be or may not be, you have nothing to do with it. It is their own business. If they are nonattached they would enjoy bliss, if they are not they would suffer pain, but you don't figure anywhere in it.
Many people come to me and ask, "How to know that such and such a person is really enlightened?"
Where is the necessity for you to know whether a person is really enlightened or not? If you can stay aware of whether you are enlightened or not, that is enough. Even if the other has become enlightened, this in itself does not make you enlightened. If the other has not become enlightened, this does not bring any hindrance to your enlightenment.
But why do we think in this manner? There are reasons for it. We want to make sure that nobody has attained to nonattachment. That gives us a sort of relief. Then there is no harm... if I have not attained to nonattachment then there is no harm, nobody else has attained it either! This gives a consolation to the mind, a support to the mind, that I am fine as I am because nobody has ever attained, and neither have I.
This is why our mind is never willing to accept that anybody has attained to nonattachment. We try to find all kinds of loopholes to show that the person has not yet attained. If somebody has attained to nonattachment it creates an inner discomfort within us. That discomfort is that if somebody else has attained, it only means that I can also attain but am unable to do so - and this creates anxiety and guilt. Hence nobody in this world accepts the other to be right. It has nothing to do with the other, but in not accepting anybody as right it becomes easier to accept one's own evils.
If the whole world is a thief, then you don't feel any guilt in being a thief yourself. If the whole world is bad, then your being bad is only natural. But if the whole world is good, your being bad starts piercing you like a thorn. Then comes a self-condemnation, a sadness, a feeling of guilt, and one starts feeling that what should happen is not happening. And it creates a great uneasiness in your life.
In order that that uneasiness is not created and we can go on sleeping in deep sleep, we never see any good in the other. If someone comes and tells you that such and such a person has attained to the state of nonattachment, you will say, "No, he has not." You will try to find dozens of reasons to prove that he has not. This is part of a deep-seated conspiracy of our minds. It is necessary to become aware of this. The concern is not with the other at all.
A friend has been coming to me the last three days. He wanted abundant time with me. He has been saying, "Yes, I want to take sannyas but before that I have a few very important questions to ask." I thought maybe he had some important questions, but not one question was important or necessary. The questions were about others, not about himself. He was here to take sannyas, and the questions were about others: "Was Krishna really enlightened? If he was, why have the Jainas put him in hell?"
The Jainas have put Krishna in hell in their scriptures because they have their own definition of nonattachment and Krishna does not fit into it. One should renounce everything and escape from the world is their definition. And Krishna does not renounce anything to go anywhere. This is the problem.
But Krishna's own definition is that if you are renouncing and running away, you are not yet a nonattached person. This is why the Hindus have not mentioned Mahavira's name anywhere in their scriptures. He was not considered worth mentioning. But at least the Jainas have shown some love towards Krishna, putting him in hell! The Hindus did not even mention Mahavira's name. They did not even consider him worth talking about. Even in putting somebody in hell one is giving him some consideration. The Jainas could not ignore Krishna completely; some statement about him had to be made, some space for him had to be allotted - be it hell, it does not matter. The Hindus have not cared enough to put Mahavira even into hell, they simply dropped the matter. But if anyone clings to Krishna's definition of nonattachment, difficulty arises.
Remember, all definitions are for you, the seeker, so that you go on continually searching within yourself, so that there is a criterion, a touchstone in hand that you may go on testing yourself. But we are all very clever, we go on testing others with that touchstone. It has nothing to do with others; if Krishna is in hell, it is his business. What does anybody else have to do with it? You can be ready to take Krishna's place in hell and allow him to go free. If Krishna is liberated, it does not create your liberation.
All your thinking about others is meaningless.
Another friend came and asked me that if a meeting between me and Krishnamurti was arranged, was I ready to meet him? This is a matter between me and Krishnamurti. What has this person to do with it? Then he also asked, "If a meeting of you two happens at all, who will initiate the greetings?"
Now, this too is a matter between me and Krishnamurti.
Our minds are busy thinking about others and not thinking about ourselves at all. A seeker must decide that all thinking about others is useless and, "Nothing except me and my inner growth concerns me - all else is meaningless." Do not get entangled in questions arising out of your curiousity about others. It will not help you at all in altering your life.
Remember, these definitions are meant for you. The Upanishad has given you these measuring rods so that you may go on weighing yourself inside, so that you may not have any difficulty on the inner journey. Keep watching within yourself. As long as any desire arises within on seeing things, understand that nonattachment has not yet been attained. Direct all your energies toward nonattachment. We are slowly going to discuss these efforts.
When no I-ness arises, know this as the limit of knowing.
These seers of the Upanishads are very strange people. They do not say that when you have seen God, know this as the ultimate knowing. They have maintained that even the seeing of God is not the limit of knowing; that when all your chakras have opened up, the kundalini has awakened and the thousand-petalled lotus has bloomed, know this as the limit of knowing. No, they don't say that.
Nor do they say that when you have crossed all the seven heavens - and only goodness knows how many kinds of such calculations are prevalent - or when you have completed the journey of all the fourteen realms and entered the sach khand, the realm of truth... No, the Upanishads say: these things have nothing to do with the matter, the only criterion is that I-ness does not arise.
Even kundalini creates arousal of the ego. The seeker feels that now he is not an ordinary person, his kundalini has arisen. Someone feels that his third eye center has awakened, he is able to see the light; now he is no ordinary person. Someone feels that his heart center is awakened, the blue diamond has appeared in the heart, the blue flame has been seen; now he is liberated, now there is no world for him.
Remember, whatever creates 'I' is still out of ignorance - no matter what beautiful names you go on giving it. The Upanishad says, as long as the 'I' is created - no matter what the cause - as long as one feels "I have become something," till then knowing has not ripened. No flowers have yet blossomed, no explosion has yet taken place.
The only criterion given is that no 'I' is created. So it is also possible that a person sitting in his shop whose kundalini has not awakened, who has not seen the blue light, who has not traveled to the realms of truth - who has done nothing, who is simply working in his shop but whose ego does not arise - has reached to the ultimate limit of knowing. Even a great yogi standing on a high crest of the Himalayas, if his ego is also high like a peak of the Himalayas, if he thinks that only he has arrived and no one else, if he thinks that only he has achieved and no one else, then understand that knowing has not yet happened to him.
There is only one touchstone - that a state is attained inside where nothing whatsoever creates any ego. Then anything may go on happening - even if God himself comes the feeling will not arise:
"How lucky I am, I have achieved even God! See, there is God standing before me and I am seeing him."
When the very disposition of 'I' does not arise inside, then know it as the ultimate limit of knowing.
Keep watching within you, otherwise everything creates conceit - everything. Mind is very clever, it derives ego from anything. It is so clever that it can derive ego even from humility, and a person starts saying, "No one is more humble than I am. There is no one more humble than I." But that "No one more than I" still remains. It may be anything - it may be wealth, it may be prestige, it may be power, it may be knowledge, it may be liberation, it may be humility, but that "No one more than I"...
that 'I' goes on surviving.
So go on searching within, checking within, otherwise even the spiritual search can turn into a worldly search. The difference between the spiritual search and the worldly search is not that of things but of ego. One person accumulates a large amount of wealth in the world, it strengthens his ego. Another person renounces all the wealth and strengthens his ego by renunciation. Both are on a worldly trip.
The spiritual journey begins with the dropping of the ego. There is only one renunciation worth carrying out and that is the renunciation of 'I'. All other renunciations are useless, because they too only inflate your 'I'.
Just yesterday one man came to see me. He told me, "I have not taken any food grains for fourteen years." And his pride was worth seeing. The amount of conceit that has been generated in him through not taking food grains is not possible even through the taking of food grains. This non-taking of food grains has turned into a poison. What a conceit he has! He has not eaten food grains for fourteen years - conceit is bound to arise. Now who are you obliging by not taking food grains?
Don't eat them if you don't want to. But he is going around declaring that "For fourteen years I have not taken food grains" - now this has become his ego. Even food grains don't fill the ego as much as this "No food grains" is filling it!
People come to me and say, "I have taken only milk for years." For them this seems to be becoming a poison. They are not walking on earth, because they are only drinking milk! What real difference are you bringing through this? What great revolution is happening through this only drinking of milk?
But there are reasons. Such people feel that they are doing something special - which others are not doing. But the moment one thinks of being special the ego begins building up - no matter what that special thing may be related to. You can create a speciality for yourself about anything, it only creates ego.
What is the meaning of being a seeker? Being a seeker means that one stops creating any speciality about oneself from within and slowly, slowly becomes a nobody. Then slowly, slowly you become so ordinary from within yourself that the feeling does not even arise that you are something, and you become a nothing. The day a seeker becomes no-thing, the ultimate limit of knowledge has been arrived at - not through accumulation of knowledge but by dropping the ego, not through accumulation of information but by the death of the 'I'.
When the dissolved desires do not arise back again, this is the limit of relaxedness, and such a sthitpragya, a seeker stable in wisdom, ever remains in bliss.
When the dissolved desires do not arise back again... Many a time the desires dissolve, but they are just suspended for a while and return again and again. One day it feels your mind has become completely peaceful, but the next day it again becomes restless. One day it feels that you are in great bliss, but the next day you are again being drowned in miseries.
There are certain laws of the mind which must be understood. One law is that the mind never remains constantly the same; change is its nature. So the peace which comes and goes, understand well that it is not spiritual peace, it is only of the mind. A bliss that is attained and then lost, understand well that it is not the spiritual bliss, it is of the mind. Anything that comes and goes is of the mind, but something that comes once and remains forever, which comes and settles and cannot go away by any means whatsoever, which cannot be removed even by effort...
Remember this difference. If your peace is the peace of the mind, however much you may try it will not remain for long, it will change. And if the spiritual peace comes, however much you may try to destroy it you will not be able to do so, it will remain there.
Constancy cannot be added to the mind even with effort, and in the soul it cannot be disrupted even with effort.
So if some desires stop arising, don't be in haste; do not conclude that you have arrived. Just wait and see if they do not arise again. If they do arise again, understand that everything is still going on on the mental level. And what is the value of the mental peace? That will come and go and restlessness will again follow.
With the mind, in every moment there is movement towards the opposite. When you are restless the mind starts moving towards peace, and when you are in peace the mind starts moving towards restlessness. Mind is duality, hence the opposite will always be there and it will keep moving.
How will you know that what is happening is of the mind? There is one basic difference. When the peace is of the mind and it has not reached to the deeper layers within, then immediately on becoming peaceful a desire will arise that this peace should continue to remain, that it should not go away. If this desire arises, take it that it was all mental, because the fear of losing is that of the mind.
If peace comes and no fear of losing it follows, understand that it does not belong to the mind.
The second thing: mind gets bored with everything - everything. It gets bored not only with unhappiness, but also with happiness. This is another law of the mind, that it becomes bored with everything that is stable. If you are unhappy, it becomes bored with that and wants happiness.
What you do not know is that it is the law of the mind that if it gets happiness, it gets bored with happiness too, and then it starts looking for unhappiness.
I see this constantly - when so many people are here doing the meditations - that even if happiness settles with them for some days they start getting uneasy; peace stays with them for a few days and they start getting uneasy, because even that creates boredom.
Mind gets bored with everything. Mind is always asking for the new, and all the trouble arises out of the demand for the new. When you are beyond the mind there is no demand for the new, there is no feeling of boredom with the old; there is so much oneness with what is that there is no demand for anything other than that.
The sutra says that, when the dissolved desires do not arise back again, this is the limit of relaxedness. Only then can you accept that you have attained to rest. If desires keep on arising again and again, understand that it has all been a trap of the mind. Why? Why is it necessary to understand this? - because our relations with the mind are so deep that we take the peace of the mind itself as our peace. That brings great suffering - because it disappears.
What can we do? It is helpful to use the principle of witnessing in this connection. Thereby a way of going beyond the mind is created and the ultimate relaxedness is attained. And what are we normally doing? When the mind becomes restless we want to get away from it, and when the mind becomes peaceful we want to cling to it. We want to save the peace and remove the restlessness.
When the mind is miserable we want to get rid of it; when the mind is in happiness we embrace it and want to keep it with us. By continually looking for the opposite you will never be able to be free of the mind, because that is the very function of the mind: to be rid of the unhappiness, to catch hold of the happiness.
The way to be free of the mind is to remain a witness when the mind is giving you happiness, and do not try to hold onto it. For example, you are meditating here; suddenly, sometimes in meditation, a stream of peacefulness will arrive. Then don't just embrace it; keep watching it, standing at a distance: "Peace is happening and I am a witness." When a fountain of bliss rises up in some moment and pervades every fiber from within, then keep watching that too from a distance; don't hold onto it with your full force, "Alright, now liberation has come." No, keep watching that too as a witness: "Bliss is happening and I will not catch hold of it."
The interesting thing is that one who does not hold onto happiness, his unhappiness also vanishes; one who does not hold onto peace, his restlessness vanishes forever. It is in the holding onto peace that the seeds of peacelessness are sown, and in holding onto happiness is the birth of unhappiness. Simply don't cling! Clinging is the mind. Do not cling to anything. The moment your fist is open you will be beyond the mind and you will enter where desires do not arise anymore - their ultimate dissolution happens. This ultimate dissolution has been called here uparati, relaxedness.
Such a sthitpragya yati, a seeker stable in wisdom, ever remains in bliss.
Sthitpragya is a very beautiful word. Its meaning is: one whose wisdom has become stable in himself, one whose wisdom has become self-contained, one whose consciousness does not leave him and move anywhere else, one whose consciousness has become stabilized. Such a seeker, such a sannyasin, ever attains to bliss.
All dualities are created by the mind: happiness and unhappiness, peace and peacelessness, good and bad, birth and death. The moment mind recedes, there is nonduality, bliss. There is no opposite word for bliss; it is beyond duality. And the seeker who is beyond duality ever attains to bliss.
We have a great problem: our problem is that we want to attain bliss very much, and hearing this kind of thing our greed is stirred up. If perpetual bliss can be had, then we too want to have it; if somebody can show us the way we too may also have it forever. But remember, this definition is only indicative of a certain state. If it gives birth to desire in you, you will never be able to attain to this state. Try to understand the difference well.
A friend came to me saying, "I want liberation soon; I want to have deep meditation, samadhi, soon."
I told him that the more haste you create the more delayed you will be, because a hasty mind cannot become peaceful. It is the haste itself which is the restlessness. And we all know what sorts of problems arise when we are in a hurry.
We have to catch a train and so we are in a hurry. Now those things which usually could have been done in two minutes take five minutes. The buttons on our coat get wrongly done up. You undo them again, you do them up again. You pick up your spectacles, they slip out of your hands and break. You are trying to lock your suitcase, the key keeps missing the keyhole. It's the hurry. Haste always makes waste, because in haste your mind is very much topsy-turvy and you are bound to make mistakes. And if haste creates delay in small matters, it will create enormous delays in matters pertaining to the journey to the ultimate.
I told that friend, "Do not be in a hurry, otherwise things will be delayed. In this area, if you stay with the attitude that whenever it may happen you are willing - there is no hurry - then probably it will happen early."
He said, "Oh, is it so? So if I am ready to wait forever, that will make it happen earlier?"
If you are ready to wait it will happen fast, but that fastness is the outcome of a waiting mind. If you say you will wait so that it can happen quickly, it means you are not waiting at all, and it will never happen quickly. How can an awaiting emanate from the desire of haste?
This is an everyday problem. We all feel that we want bliss, so how can we get it? This thought and desire, "How to get bliss?" is the very obstacle to bliss. Bliss is an outcome. Please do not make it a desire - it will happen on its own. Just go on traveling silently and quietly - it will happen on its own.
Thus a great difficulty can arise, that on the reading of this sutra many people will become full of the desire for bliss. So many people down the centuries have become full of desire after reading such sutras, and these sutras are for freedom from desire. Instead a new desire catches hold of you:
How to achieve bliss? How to become a sthitpragya, the one stable in wisdom? How to achieve relaxedness? How to achieve nonattachment? And then people go on running about with such desires birth after birth and this event does not happen in their life at all. Then they start wondering whether it could be that all these talks are all lies, because they had been told that bliss will happen and so far it has not happened.
I would like to tell you one more thing in connection with this. We see that with each passing day the world goes on becoming more and more irreligious; people are losing their trust in religion. Do you know the reason for this? The reason is given here in this sutra.
Everyone of you has already entertained the desire in many lives to achieve bliss, enlightenment, God; but you have neither achieved bliss, nor enlightenment, nor God. The result it was bound to bring is there. The result is that you have lost all faith in such sutras and now you feel that these are things that can never be achieved.
Man has known these sutras for the last ten thousand years. During these ten thousand years almost all the human beings that are now on the earth have gone through the desire for this bliss. Some were near Buddha, some were near Krishna, some were near Jesus, some were near Mohammed, and all have made efforts to achieve it; sometimes doing meditation, sometimes doing yoga, sometimes practicing tantra, sometimes using a mantra and so on and so forth. You have done everything.
When I look at people on their inner plane, I have not found a single person so far who has not strived to do such things in some lifetime or other. Every person has traveled on the path of seeking - but full of desires. Because of those desires all endeavors have become fruitless, and this failure has become embedded deep in your consciousness. This is the reason why irreligiousness seems to be increasing in the whole world, because for most people religion has failed.
You do not even remember, but you have made religion a failure within you. And you are the cause of that, because you have committed a mistake by desiring something which cannot be desired. So this is the outcome. But if you move on the spiritual path these things will happen, you don't have to bother about them. Neither you have to think about them, nor desire them, nor make haste for them to happen. It is due to that haste that all goes topsy-turvy.
Irreligiousness will go on increasing in this world as long as we form desires even for religiousness.
And you are not new, nobody is new on this earth. Everybody is old and ancient. And all have trodden so many roads and paths and, having met with no success, they have lost all hope.
That despondency has settled deep into your being. The greatest difficulty today is to break that despondency. And if someone wants to break this despondency, the only feasible method seems to be that of exciting your desires once again very intensely and telling you that this will deliver the goods - only then will you gather some courage. But that very thing, the arousal of the desire, is the root cause of all the troubles in the first place.
Buddha had made a unique experiment. In his time also the conditions were the same as they have become today. They always become like this. Whenever people like Buddha or Mahavira are born in this world a sort of shadow-period follows their death for thousands of years. It is bound to be so. When a person like Buddha or Krishna is born, seeing him, being in his presence, in his milieu, thousands of people become full of desire for religion and they feel that it is possible also for them.
A confidence arises seeing Buddha: "If it can happen to him, it can also happen to me." And if they make the mistake of turning it into a desire, then these people are tortured by that desire and, just because of that desire, they become irreligious for thousands of years afterwards.
Just understand the condition. Bliss can be attained, but do not make it a goal. Ultimate peace is possible, but do not make that a goal. That is not the goal. Make knowledge and understanding your goal, make meditation your goal, make stability within you your goal, make stopping still and going within yourself a goal - and the bliss will follow as an outcome, it just naturally follows. Do not do the reverse, do not make bliss the goal. One who makes bliss the goal will simply fall into difficulty.
Outcomes are outcomes and not goals.
Let us understand it by taking an illustration from common life. You play a game - football, hockey, tennis or anything - and you find great pleasure in it. Now you are telling this to someone, that while playing these games you have great pleasure. That person says, "I also want pleasure, I shall come tomorrow and see if I can get pleasure." This man comes to play and keeps a constant watch to see whether pleasure is coming yet or not. Because of this desire for pleasure, the constant thought about whether or not pleasure is coming, he will not be able to get absorbed in the play. The play will become secondary and pleasure will become the primary concern. While playing he will be continuously searching within to see whether there is any pleasure. He will feel that he is not having any pleasure, and that pleasure should have been experienced by now if there was any to be had in the game. This man will only be exhausted by the end of the game and complain, "There is no pleasure here. What is this nonsense?"
One who goes to seek pleasure in the game will not only not get the pleasure but he will also spoil the game. Pleasure is a by-product. If you become fully absorbed in the game the pleasure happens. If the idea of pleasure dominates your mind and you are unable to be absorbed in the game, how can pleasure happen? Your whole life is like that. In life everything significant is a by- product. Whatsoever is significant happens quietly. Whatsoever is a deep experience is not to be turned into the goal. In the very making a goal of it, the doors close.
Bliss happens effortlessly, bliss is a spontaneous happening. If someone sits consciously to try to receive it, in that very conscious sitting so much tension is generated that the doors close; the tension becomes a barrier and bliss does not happen.
Keep this sutra in mind - this is a dangerous sutra. This sutra is present in all the scriptures. And all those who have studied the scriptures have had their desire aroused and they go out in search of how to gain liberation. No, self-realization cannot be grabbed: it is attained through dissolving. How to attain bliss? No, bliss is not attained that way. Do something in which you are drowned so deeply that neither you are remembered nor bliss is remembered. And on suddenly waking up it is found that only bliss has remained; that what you were searching for and not finding even after strenuous search, has been found.
This is very clearly shown in Buddha's life. Buddha was relentlessly striving for six years in order to achieve self-realization, to achieve peace, to achieve truth. But he could not. He searched at the feet of all the masters; even the masters became weary of him because he was really a seeker, a determined one. His was the obstinacy of a kshatriya, a warrior, for reaching the goal; his was the ego of a kshatriya. It was a challenge to him: How can a thing be and still not be possible to attain? A kshatriya never believes that there is anything impossible - that is what is meant by being a kshatriya.
So to whichever master he went, they were all in great difficulty, because whatever the master would ask him to do, he would do it immediately. Howsoever difficult it may be, howsoever long he may have to stand in the hot sun or in the pouring rains, howsoever many fasts have to be performed - whatsoever was required of him he at once did it to the satisfaction of his masters, and nothing would happen. The masters became tired. They would say, "What more can we do?"
A so-called master is never tired of an ordinary disciple because an ordinary disciple never fully does what he has been asked to do. Hence such a situation never arises that the master may have to say, "Now what can we do? Whatsoever we could do we have done."
When one has a disciple like Buddha great difficulty arises, because anything that the master asked, Buddha would accomplish. Even the master could not find any fault with it. And yet nothing was happening. In the end the master would say, "Whatsoever I could do, whatsoever I could show, I have shown. Now I myself don't know beyond this; now you will have to move on to somewhere else."
All the masters were tired of Buddha. And Buddha was really obstinate. For six years he did everything that anybody asked - right or wrong, rational or irrational - and with great sincerity.
Not even one master could say that it was not happening because he was not doing what he was asked to do. He was doing everything so fully and so well that the masters themselves asked for forgiveness and said, "If something more happens to you, inform us also, because we have told everything to you that we know."
Nothing did happen, however. Not that what they preached to Buddha had not happened to those masters. No, it had happened to them through that understanding. And Buddha was exactly following the same techniques his masters had pursued and attained with. So the master was also at a loss that this Buddha was following the same technique, even more accurately than he had - "And even I had not done it with so much sincerity; why then is it not happening to him?"
But there was a reason. It might have happened to the master because he had done the technique without any expectation or preconceptions. Buddha's expectation was intense. He was doing it, but his eyes were set on the goal: when would the truth, the bliss, the self-realization be achieved? So he was certainly following all the techniques fully, but that goal-orientation was the obstacle.
Eventually Buddha also became tired. After six years, one day he left off doing everything. The world he had already left earlier - now he left sannyas also. He had left all sorts of pleasures before and had wasted six years in practicing yoga; now he left that too. One night he decided that he would not do anything further and that he would not search any longer. He simply understood that nothing was going to be achieved.
He had reached the maximum tension of the search. His endeavor, the effort, had reached the extreme. So he dropped everything. That night he went to sleep under a tree. That was the first night in many lifetimes when Buddha had slept in such a way as if nothing existed to be done the next morning. And there really was nothing left to be done. He had already left his kingdom, his family and any planning about the world; he had begun another plan of life, that too had failed. Now there was nothing to do. If he woke up tomorrow morning, good; if he did not wake up, that too would be good. If he lived on, it made no difference; if he died, it made no difference - all was the same.
There was absolutely nothing left to be done tomorrow morning, there simply was no meaning in tomorrow for him any longer.
And when someone goes to sleep at night in such a way that there is no plan for tomorrow, samadhi happens. Sushupti, the deep sleep, becomes samadhi. There was no desire for tomorrow, there were no goals remaining, there was nothing left to be achieved, there was nowhere to go. The question had been, "What would I do if I am here in the morning?" Up to now there was only doing and doing and doing, but now there was nothing to be done at all. Buddha slept that night so free of any purpose that there was no idea what he would do if he woke up in the morning. The sun would rise, the birds would sing, but what would he do? And there was a void as the answer.
When there are no goals the future dies, time becomes meaningless. When there are no goals all plans are shattered to pieces and the movement of the mind stops. For the movement of the mind plans are necessary, goals are necessary; for the movement of the mind something to achieve is necessary, a future, some time is necessary. And all these had vanished.
Buddha went to sleep that night as if he were a person that has died while alive. He was alive, yet death had happened. In the morning around 5 a.m. his eyes opened. Buddha has said, "I did not open my eyes." What would he do by opening the eyes? There remained nothing to be seen, nor anything to be heard, nor anything to be attained; there was no reason to open the eyes. Hence Buddha said, "I did not open the eyes, they opened on their own. They were tired of remaining closed; they had been closed the whole night and now the resting was complete and the eyelids opened on their own." Inside him was a void.
When there is no future, the inside turns into a void. In such a void Buddha saw the last morning star setting, and in that seeing he became enlightened. Along with that disappearing star disappeared the whole past of Buddha. Along with that disappearing star the whole journey, the whole search disappeared.
Buddha has said, "For the first time I saw a star purposelessly setting in the sky - it did not require a purpose." There was no purpose in it. And seeing was as fine as not seeing it would have been.
There was no question of any choice either, this way or that - the eyes were open, so the star was seen. The star was setting, went on setting. "There the star went on setting, there the sky became empty of stars; here I was completely empty within, the meeting of two empty skies took place." Buddha has further said, "What I could not attain through incessant search was attained that night without any searching. What could not be attained by running after it, was attained that night just sitting, just lying down. What could not be attained with effort was attained that night with restfulness."
But why did he attain at that time? Because bliss is the natural outcome of your being a void within.
When you run after bliss and by so doing are unable to become a void, the chase after bliss itself is the barrier; you are unable to become a void, hence its natural outcome does not take place.
He whose self is absorbed only in brahma, the ultimate reality, remains desireless and actionless. When purified by its oneness with brahma and drowned in this one single rapture, the activities of mind are choiceless and remain only as the consciousness; then it is called pragya, the wisdom.
He who always has such a pragya is called jivanamukta, the one liberated while living.
Thus when the inner sky becomes one with the outer sky, when the inner emptiness merges with the outer emptiness, everything becomes desireless and actionless. Desires cannot arise without a thought: thought is disturbance of mind. Remember, a thought arises only because one wants to do something.
People come to me and tell me they are unable to be free of thoughts. You will not be free of thought; you have a desire to do something. And when you want to do something, how can you be free of thought? That desire to do something, that very plan is thought. Even if you wish to be free of thoughts you won't be, because there will be thoughts engaged in planning it. People tell me that they sit and try hard to become thoughtless. But this planning to be thoughtless by itself is an opportunity for thinking. So the mind goes on thinking, "How to become thoughtless? Up to now you have not become thoughtless. Will it ever be possible for you to be thoughtless? When?"
Remember, as long as there is any desire - for heaven, for self-realization, for meeting God - thoughts will continue. Thoughts are not at fault. All that is meant by thought is that whatever you desire, your mind thinks about how to achieve it. As long as there is anything left to be achieved, thoughts will continue. The day you are willing to accept the fact that, "I don't want to achieve anything, not even desirelessness," suddenly you will find that the thoughts have started to disappear; they are not needed anymore.
When everything within becomes a void, when there are no plans, when nothing remains to be achieved and there remains nowhere to go, when all running about becomes meaningless and the consciousness settles down on the side of the road... dropping all concern for the goal, the goal has been attained.
He whose self is absorbed only in brahma, the ultimate reality, remains desireless and actionless.
Such a person remains desireless and actionless. Nothing arises within him, his mirror is empty, there are no images upon it. And he remains actionless. There remains no impulse to do anything.
It does not mean that he goes on lying down like a corpse. No, actions do happen, but there is no plan for them. Understand this difference rightly.
I came here, I am to speak on this sutra of the Upanishad. If I come after planning it, thinking about what is to be said, what is not to be said, then there will be movement of thoughts in the mind, it will be disturbed. Mind will go on working. But if I just come, see the sutra and begin to speak, and remain content with whatever happens to come out of my mouth, then the act of my speaking is not an act. If I leave after speaking and on the way I feel that what I spoke was not good, that it would have been better had I said this or that, or it would have been better had I not said this or that, then this is just pollution. But if the moment I finish speaking nothing remains within me regarding what I had spoken, no current of thought, then this is nonaction.
I have heard about Abraham Lincoln. He was returning home one night with his wife after having delivered a speech. When he arrived home his children asked him, "How was the speech?" Lincoln said, "Which speech? The one that I had prepared prior to delivering it or the one that I actually delivered, or the one that I thought I should have delivered after having actually delivered it? Which one are you asking about? Three I have delivered so far - one that I was rehearsing within my mind before going there, the second that I actually delivered, and the third that I kept repenting afterwards that I should have said this and that and I forgot to say this, etcetera."
Now this speech is an act. The act is not in delivering the speech, it is in its pre-planning. So if the mind decides in advance, or if the mind thinks about it afterwards, it is pollution of the mind. If the act simply takes place - without any pre-planning or afterthoughts - then this action has come out of nonaction.
Action will continue. Buddha becomes a buddha, yet the action will continue - but with a difference.
Krishna becomes a Krishna, the action will continue - but with a difference.
The Gita is valuable in this very respect, that whatever Krishna has said in it is totally spontaneous.
Nobody goes to a battlefield prepared to give a discourse in the first place. Krishna would never have even thought, he would never have even imagined that he would be required to do this at the battlefield. It cannot be, even in his wildest of imagination. There certainly can be no pre-planning about it. Suddenly, unexpectedly, accidentally, a happening, and Krishna's fountain spurted out.
This is not a speech, this is a speech coming out of non-speech. This is not an action, this is an action born out of nonaction. This is why the Gita became so valuable. Because it was so accidental, it became so valuable. There are many scriptures in the world, but none has such an accidental birth as the Gita.
It is a battlefield, the calls for the deadly battle have already been given by blowing the conch shells; the warriors are ready to attack and kill or be killed... a religious dialogue there? There appears no relevance. Had the Gita happened in an ashram, a hermitage, or in the commune of a master, that would have made sense. But because it is so spontaneous it went deep into the very core of India.
It is born out of nonaction, it is born without any plans. This is why we called it Bhagavadgita, Song of the Divine. In it there is no human planning. In it Krishna is simply not behaving like a human being. It is a message emanating from the divine.
When all actions are born out of one's inner nonaction, and the thoughts are arising out of one's thoughtlessness, and the words are born out of one's silence, such a person is called jivanamukta - one who is liberated while living.
In India there is the concept of two types of liberation. One type of liberated one is a jivanamukta, one who is free while living. The other liberated one is the one who is liberated at the time of his death. Both types of liberation do happen. A person goes on searching and searching his whole life - and then, just as I talked of with Buddha, he seeks and seeks and is one day tired of the seeking, and it happens.
Sometimes it so happens that a person seeks his whole life - not just six years like Buddha but his whole life - and does not get tired. He goes on seeking and seeking, and it is only when his death arrives that he realizes that all the seeking has been futile and he has attained nothing - and thus in the moment of death all his search relaxes. If just prior to death all the seeking relaxes and all the plans stop and no future remains, then what happened to Buddha under the Bodhi tree - the same happens under the tree of death. Then death and liberation happen simultaneously; because death can relax one very deeply.
If all your searching has gone in vain, if it has become your firm experience that all searching is useless, that you have not attained anything anywhere - neither in the worldly life nor in the spiritual endeavor - nothing has been achieved... Only then if this becomes absolutely clear to you and there remains no demand of any kind for the future that you still want to achieve something, only then, when not even the feeling remains that if you do not die now and you live for a few more days that you may do something further, but instead you accept the approaching death...
If everything is futile, man accepts death. Just as Buddha slept that night - not even the question remained about what he would do next morning. Similarly, if someone dies to the future at the moment of death without thinking "Now I am dying and certain things have remained incomplete...
There was something to be completed but could not be completed; should I get a couple of more days I may complete it..." When no such feelings remain and the death descends naturally, the way evening descends and man goes to sleep, then such a death also becomes liberation. Such a person is called the liberated one.
But this happening sometimes takes place during life and the person survives even after liberation.
This survival depends on other factors.
When you are born, your body has a certain in-built span of years - seventy years, eighty years. Now if this happening of liberation takes place at the age of forty years, the body is bound to complete those remaining forty years. You may have died at the age of forty, but the body will die only after completing eighty years. You as an ego are no more at the age of forty years, but the body will last for forty more years. That is its own in-built plan; it has its own arrangements of its atoms. At the time of birth the body arrived with its own capacity to last for eighty years, and it will last for that long.
So Buddha and Mahavira died at the age of forty years, but their bodies continued for forty more years. All the running within stopped, but the body continued to work. It is just like your wristwatch was wound up to run seven days and then you went to some jungle, got lost, fell down and died; but your wristwatch will continue to work for seven more days. Your watch was wound for seven days and your death makes no difference to it; it goes on running for seven days - tick, tick, tick...
Your body is a machine. You may attain to the ultimate awakening today, you may have died today, but your body will go on ticking. This state of the inner consciousness becoming as if it is not, and the ticking of the body continuing, is called jivanamukta, liberated while living.
When purified by its oneness with brahma and drowned in this one single rapture, the activities of mind are choiceless and remain only as the consciousness; then it is called pragya, the wisdom.
When the intellect does not think about the other, does not think at all and becomes thoughtless, when all thoughts are dropped and only the capacity to think remains within, when the intellect does not associate itself with any objects and remains pure - like a solitary lamp burning in the void lighting nothing - for such a state of consciousness the Indian word is pragya, the wisdom. Then you have really attained the true flame of knowledge. The one in whom such a wisdom is always a flame is a jivanamukta, the liberated while living.
One who has no i-ness for his body and the senses, and no my-ness for the other things, is a jivanamukta, the one liberated while living.
These feelings will certainly drop. 'Mine', 'I' - these have dropped long ago. It is at the dropping of the ego that enlightenment has happened. To such a person there is no 'I' or 'mine' associated with anything. Such a consciousness cannot even claim that 'I am soul'. He does not attach any sense of 'I' to anything; just the 'am-ness' remains. We use the expression 'I am'; such a person uses the expression 'am'. His 'I' drops, only the state of pure 'am-ness' remains.
This 'am-ness' has been called the state of jivanamukta. When 'I' dies and the 'am-ness' remains, you have attained to self-realization while living.
If our effort in this direction is free of desire this happening can take place right now. If desire is still present, it takes time.
Enough for today.
