Osho - Finger Pointing to the Moon
Chapter 8. Realize the Fruits
The root of this division is mind. If there is no mind, there is no division.
Therefore, concentrate your mind on the universal consciousness which is your interiority.
Knowing that you are the perpetually blissful soul, always rejoice in this bliss within and without your very soul.
The fruit of detachment is knowledge, the fruit of knowledge is relaxedness, and the peace that descends from experiencing the self-bliss is the very fruit of relaxedness.
If each one of the aforesaid does not happen in succession, know that the previous one has gone fruitless. Abstention from the sense-objects is in itself the supreme contentment and incomparable bliss.
The root of this division is mind. If there is no mind, there is no division.
Therefore, concentrate your mind on the universal consciousness.
'Mind' and 'concentration', these two points must be deeply understood. Mind is a must for life. Mind means the flow of thoughts, and all the time your mind is flowing within you.
Take note of the first point, that mind is not a thing. Mind is a flow, not a thing. And this distinction is meaningful. A stone is lying there, it is a thing; a waterfall is flowing, that is a flow. A thing that is lying there is static; what is flowing is changing every moment.
Mind is not a thing but a flow, so mind is changing every moment. It is never the same even for a moment. It is like the changing river.
Heraclitus had said, "You cannot step into the same river again," because when you step into the river the second time, the water into which you had stepped the first time must have flowed very far away. Similarly, the same mind cannot be found again - what has flowed away has flowed away. The whole time the current is flowing within, and standing behind this current we are seeing the world.
Thus the shadow of mind is falling on everything we see. And the changing mind, a mind which is divided into thousands of pieces, divides the whole world also.
So, the first thing, mind is an ever-changing flow. Therefore it is not possible to know through the mind the one that is never changing. If the medium of knowing is changing every moment, we cannot know that which never changes. Anything known through a changing medium will also be seen as changing. It is as if you are wearing sunglasses whose color goes on changing from red to green, from green to yellow, from yellow to white. The color of everything that you are seeing will also go on changing accordingly, because the medium used for seeing is being imposed on all that is seen.
Our mind is changing every moment. So we can only know through mind that which is also changing; we can never know through mind that which does not change. And the ultimate hidden truth of this life is unchanging, it is eternal, it never changes, so mind is not the medium for knowing it.
All matter in the world goes on changing, it goes on changing like the mind. So through the mind the matter of the world can be known, but the universal soul hidden within the world cannot be known.
For example, science uses mind for discoveries; science researches the world through the mind.
Science will never be able to say there is a universal soul, it will always say there is only matter. The realization of a universal soul will never be available to science. Not because there is no universal soul, but because the medium that science uses for knowing is able to know only the changing, it will never be able to know the unchanging.
Understand it this way. If music is playing and you try to listen through your eyes, you will never be able to listen to it - in fact you will be unaware of its very presence. Eyes can see, so through the eyes you can know forms; but the eyes cannot hear so you cannot be aware of sound through them.
Ears can hear but cannot see. But if somebody tries to see through the ears he will say, "There is no form in the world." Ears can catch only sound. A medium can know only what it is sensitive to.
Mind is change. Mind's nature is change, flow. Mind can come to terms with the changing but it is never able to know the unchanging. So those who set out in search of the universal soul through the mind will, sooner or later, turn atheist. If they do not turn atheist, it only means that they are not courageous enough to fully accept what their mind is telling them. But a man working through the mind just cannot be a theist. His theism will be as false as the claim of a deaf man to have heard music through his eyes, or as the claim of a blind man to have seen beauty or light with his ears.
The theism of a person functioning through mind will be as false as these.
So there are so many theists in the world, but it is very difficult to find a real theist. You too, if you manage to bring trust it is coming through your mind, you are bringing it through calculated thinking.
Through thinking, nobody can ever be a theist; and if he is, he will be a false theist.
If one wants to become a theist through thinking, only atheism will come. Try hard to understand this - because the very medium of mind is incapable of grasping the unchangeable. It is another matter to deceive oneself. Just think about your theism! You believe in God, but it is a thought-out entity, it is brought out of your logic, guessing, thinking, scriptures, traditions and doctrines. Such a god is not real and such a god only tells about your dishonesty, because God can never be born out of mind.
In this world, ninety-nine percent of the people called theists are hidden atheists. There is no strength in their theism, it is spineless, it is impotent. Only a slight hit and their theism will wither away. It has no inner root. One becomes a theist only if one sees the world directly, putting the mind aside. Then it is not the world that is seen, because with the removal of the mind that which is changing cannot be seen. When on removal of the mind the consciousness sees the world, it can relate only to that which is unchanging.
Consciousness is eternal, it is unchanging. Consciousness falls in tune only with that which is eternal. What is seen on the removal of the mind is the supreme self; what is seen when bringing the mind in is the world. Let us define it this way - that those who have known existence without the mind have said, "There is nothing but the supreme self." And those who have known existence through mind have said, "There is everything except the supreme self."
So through the mind you will never be able to know. Yes, you will be able to know the world - the world in fact will be known only through the mind - but not the truth. And whatsoever is known through the mind are the things that will be changing every moment. This is why science is never stable. Science will never be stable, science will never be able to say that such and such truth is permanent. Science will only be able to say, "Tentatively, temporarily, out of all that we know so far, this is the truth. What will be the outcome of what we will know tomorrow cannot yet be said."
Science is changing every day. All that was true yesterday becomes false today.
The difficulty now is such that whatever science is taught in the schools and the colleges, most of it has already become 'nearly false', because it takes about twenty years to bring down new discoveries to the level of the schools. During these twenty years it has become untrue. Today no big books can be written on science because, if someone is writing a one-thousand-page book, by the time it is written, printed and published, many things would have been proved to be wrong. So science is gradually coming down to smaller books. Actually even small books are not being written, only small essays and articles, because they can be written immediately and there is no fear of their being outdated by the time they are published.
Science is bound to change, because nothing that is discovered through mind can be eternal. So the thinkers in the West find it difficult to understand how something that was said by Mahavira two thousand five hundred years ago, or something that was said by the seers of the Upanishads five thousand years ago, is still true. Five thousand years! When even things said only five years ago have become outdated and untrue, things which were said five thousand years ago must have become untrue long ago.
What they are saying seems to be rational, because when things said even five years ago are now dubious, it is only natural that things said five thousand years ago should be thought dubious.
But no, what the Upanishads have said is still true - they are true today and will still remain true tomorrow. Now this can mean two things. One, that the intelligence of India has become dull and is not developing any further, that it has become static at the point of five thousand years ago and is sitting down clutching whatsoever had been discovered then. It has not moved any further from there; otherwise all those things would have become wrong by now.
Even in India today those who do any thinking - and very few people do - they do almost borrowed thinking which is more or less a shadow of Western thinking. So whether it is in the West or in India, according to the manner of thinking of science today it will appear that these thousands-of-years'- old statements of India must have become untrue long ago. Because India has stopped thinking any further it has not been able to make any amendments and so things have remained where they were. And for those who think through mind, what they are saying is right too.
The fact is that these truths have not been attained through the mind. They were attained five thousand or fifty thousand years ago, they may be attained five thousand or fifty thousand years from now - and this attainment is not through the mind. What is not attained through mind does not change. There is no way for it to change, because no sooner is the mind dropped then one enters into a world which is eternal, timeless; where nothing ever changes, where everything is unchanged; where time has stopped, where there is no movement in time, where time has frozen. These truths shall always remain truths. As they have been realized in a beyond-the-mind state, no changes of this world can bring about any change in them. Yes, if these had been realized within the scope of the mind, the changes in the world would go on bringing changes in them.
This is the original discovery of India, that existence can also be known without mind. This is the difference between science and religion. Science says that whatsoever can be known, can only be known through mind. Religion says that whatsoever is known through mind is functional, it is 'almost true', but the truth is that which is known by transcending the mind. And it is only beyond the mind that the real knowing is possible.
So how to get rid of the mind? How to quiet or empty the mind? This sutra says that if you can concentrate the mind it will quiet down, it will become empty.
This is the second thing to be understood: the very nature of mind is not to concentrate. If you try to concentrate it even for one moment it will not concentrate, it will seek to flow.
If I ask you to concentrate your mind on Rama, you will find that no sooner do you think of Rama than the whole chain of events in the life of Rama will begin to come to the mind. Sita will enter from the backdoor, Hanuman will begin to peep in, and the whole mess of them will be there. While concentrating your mind on Rama, Dasharatha will come in, Ravana will come in, all of them will come in. Just try and single out Rama - no Dasharatha, no Ravana, no Sita, no Hanuman, no Lakshamana, nobody - exclude the whole company, just Rama alone, then the mind will be in difficulty!
But then there is another way out for the mind, to divide Rama into several parts: say, to begin from the feet. First see Rama's feet, then see his body, then the face, then the eyes; this will give the mind relief because the flow has begun again. If you select only the eyes of Rama, the mind will go on moving from one eye to the other eye. So select only one eye, select a half blind Rama having only one eye. Now when you concentrate your mind on only one eye, the thinking will start about the eye and its functions.
To flow is the nature of mind. So no matter what you do, the mind will discover a channel in it for flowing. It will immediately discover a channel and start thinking. This is the difference between meditation and thinking. Meditation means cessation of thinking, stoppage of flow. Concentration means only one point remains, without any thinking about it.
What will happen then? This is against the nature of mind. It is impossible for mind to remain this way. If you do insist and try for the impossible there is only one way: first the mind will struggle hard, and it will try in every possible way to convince you, to persuade you, to trick you into thinking. It will say, "No problem, let us think about Rama; that is good, to think about Rama is a religious act." It will say, "Okay, if you don't want to think about Rama let us do some chanting: Rama, Rama, Rama, Rama." But "Rama, Rama, Rama, Rama," and the flow has begun. The first Rama, the second Rama, and the flow has begun, the mind has found movement, it has started moving.
At first mind will make effort to seek channels to flow along, because that is its nature. But if you persist and remain aware and you say, "I will not allow any flow at all, I will stick to only one point, I will not move from it this way or that" - and if you continue your insistence, not letting the mind move in any direction whatsoever, then the second way for the mind is that it will drop, because concentration is simply not possible for the mind.
You will probably find it strange to know that mind simply cannot concentrate. This is why you are asked to concentrate, because if you do become concentrated your mind will cease. It is impossible for the mind to concentrate. When you are concentrated there is no mind. As long as there is mind, you are not concentrated.
Concentration means stoppage, cessation of all flow, end of all time, disappearance of all movement.
If you incessantly continue your efforts to concentrate and remain aware and watchful that mind is not searching for a trick that may trigger the flow, a moment comes when, because of the effort to concentrate, the mind ceases. Because of the effort to concentrate, the mind does not concentrate but ceases; it quiets, it disappears. When you do not listen, and remain engaged in the efforts to concentrate it, the mind drops.
Cessation of the mind is in becoming concentrated, so when we say, "Concentrate the mind," we are saying an incorrect thing. This is why I said that Buddha and Mahavira are saying 'almost false' things. They have to. When we say, "Concentrate the mind," we are giving an incorrect statement because mind cannot become concentrated, and if it did the mind would no longer remain.
Concentration and mind are opposite phenomena. In the effort for the opposite, the mind dies. But it is a very difficult thing... difficult because it is necessary to understand concentration. Concentration means not allowing the flow to be born. Thinking is a flow, meditation is stoppage of the flow. A river is flowing. If it freezes into ice so that all flow stops, there is no movement. Similarly if the mind stops so that all flow ceases, it freezes like ice, then that very moment there is no mind, the mind has disappeared - and what remains then is the consciousness.
This sutra says, the root of this division is mind. If there is no mind, there is no division.
Therefore, concentrate your mind on the universal consciousness which is your interiority.
We do not exactly know if there is any universal soul. But there is no need to know that. The big question is not whether there is a universal soul or not, the big question is to concentrate the mind.
Concentrate on anything, even if you can concentrate on an imaginary thing that will do. So the question is not that the problem will be solved only if you concentrate on something real. The sutra does not ask you to first find out the universal soul and then concentrate. It says, even if you feel that a universal soul is imaginary, nothing to worry about; because if the mind can be concentrated even on an imaginary object it will disappear. And as soon as the mind disappears one starts seeing that which is real. So there is no harm in moving with a make-believe object.
A universal soul or God is an hypothesis for meditation. For seekers the universal soul is not something to believe in, it is an imaginary point for concentration of the mind. And when I am saying an imaginary point, do not think that I am saying there is no universal soul. It is just not there for you yet. You are only concentrating your attention on an imaginary point. That point can be anything, it can have any form. Its name may be Rama, or Krishna, or Allah, any name will do, it makes no difference. It is not important what you are concentrating on, what is important is that you are concentrating. So all religions of the world serve this purpose. If there are differences in their doctrines, it makes no difference for the seeker. All those differences are for scholars, for those who have to indulge in futile discussions. For a seeker these things make no difference; Allah, Rama or Jehovah - any name will do.
The science of religion, the process of religion, does not attach any value to the thing you concentrate upon - it is irrelevant. What is important is that you are concentrating. It may be anything, A, B, C, D, or anything, but you are concentrating. In the very process of concentrating, the mind ceases. And what is known after the death of the mind - its name is not Allah, or Rama or Krishna. It has no name. All names are imaginary. They are utilitarian, they are amulets, they work; and when understanding dawns they can be thrown away. Then they are not needed anymore.
This is a very revolutionary thought. The ordinary religious man finds it difficult to conceive that his Rama, his Krishna, his temples and the idols in them are all imaginary. Imaginary does not mean false, it means hypothetical. They can be used; the journey can begin from them, though at the end of the journey one discovers that the journey could have been accomplished even without them.
Also at the end of the journey one finds that it could have been performed with any other name as well. But that cannot be known at the beginning of the journey nor is it necessary to know it. Let a Hindu proceed like a Hindu, let a Mohammedan proceed like a Mohammedan and let a Christian proceed like a Christian. On reaching the destination it would be known that Hindu, Mohammedan, Christian - all these were just utilitarian things, and had no relationship with the actual ultimate truth.
These divisions have a relationship with our ignorance, not with our knowledge. They have something to do with making us begin the journey from where we were standing in the world, but nothing to do with the destination we reached. After attaining, nobody remains a Hindu or a Christian or a Mohammedan; on attaining, one just remains religious.
So remember, as long as you are a Christian, a Hindu or a Mohammedan, know well that you are not religious. These are only the beginnings of the journey toward religion.
Gurdjieff has said a very valuable thing. Whenever someone would come and ask, "What is the path to the truth?" Gurdjieff would say, "Do not talk big, I can only indicate ways to find the path. After that it is up to you. Right now it is enough that you first find the path. Do not ask what the path is, first ask of the direction that may take you to the path. First be concerned about finding the path." Remember, Hinduism, Mohammedanism, Christianity, etcetera are all small sidetracks to reach to the path. None of them is the path; religion itself is the path. Hinduism is a sidetrack, Mohammedanism is a sidetrack, Christianity is a sidetrack. Religion is the path. Once you reach the path all the small sidetracks disappear.
Being concentrated is valuable, because the effort to become concentrated is against mind. But it is necessary to be very careful, because there are two ways to detour while becoming concentrated.
One, you are likely to create a chain of thoughts. And once thinking begins, the whole thing becomes meaningless. The second difficulty is, if the chain of thinking did not happen then you may just go to sleep at once.
You may have observed that some nights, if there are too many thoughts in your mind, you cannot fall asleep. Some thoughts are going on in your mind - there is some worry, some stream of activity in your mind - and sleep becomes impossible because these thoughts are hindering sleep. And the night when there is no thinking, no thoughts in the mind, the mind is empty - then you fall into a deep sleep immediately. As soon as you lie down, sleep descends on you.
A coolie, a farmer has deep sleep. The reason for it is that his work has no concern with thinking, worrying, thought processes or mental gymnastics. He does not need them; he is digging a ditch or working in a field. This is just routine work, no thinking is required. In the evening he comes back home tired and tattered, and he falls on his bed; thoughts are absent, and he falls into a deep sleep instantly.
But with people whose work is mostly mental, sleeplessness becomes their main suffering. Those who are busy thinking and deliberating the whole time, their thinking continues non-stop even at night and they are unable to fall asleep.
I am saying all this so that its opposite also becomes clear to you.
While experimenting with the mind on concentration, the second danger is that at first the mind will try to induce thinking - which is convenient for it, being its nature; but if this did not happen and you remained insistent upon concentrating, the second thing that can happen is that, in the absence of thinking, instead of moving into meditation you will fall asleep because as soon as thinking stops, it is an old habit that we fall asleep.
So many people, in the name of meditation, go on sleeping and enjoying a nap. Sitting in the temple, they go on dozing. It is not their fault. They do not know what is happening. They are trying to concentrate and in the effort to concentrate two misfortunes can happen: either thinking may begin or, if that does not happen, sleep may begin.
So one has to avoid thinking and sleeping as well. These are the two ditches, and in between the two is meditation.
Zen masters in their monasteries have one monk move about with a stick in his hand while the others are meditating. The moment he sees some meditator has begun to doze, he gently hits him on the head.
Soon we will also make this arrangement. And it is not that it is all useless. No, it is very useful, because the dozing is instantly disrupted. Thinking was going on - that stopped and the dozing began. You avoided one ditch and fell into the other. The dozing begins only when the flow of thinking breaks.
And then came the monk who gave a hit on the head. The flow of thinking had stopped, the dozing had set in, the monk gave a hit on your head - for a moment the dozing was broken. In that single moment a glimpse of meditation happens. And if even a moment's glimpse happens, that is a big support to your meditation. One starts feeling that there is no darkness where one is going, everything is clear there.
It sometimes happens that because there are so many meditators it is not so easy for the master to really see each moment who is dozing and who is not. So there is an arrangement in Zen that if any meditator feels that he is getting sleepy, he brings both hands near his chest. Thus the master can easily see that in that person there is arising a danger of falling asleep. This gesture is an invitation for the hit; that, "Dozing is just about to begin, the waves of sleep have just begun to give me their featherlike touch; the waves are overpowering me and I am afraid that now I will be lost in sleep."
If thinking does not begin and dozing does not happen, meditation will take place. Meditation means the absence of thinking and sleeping. You will then be in meditation.
Keep these two things in mind, whatsoever may be the point of concentration.
Knowing that you are the perpetually blissful soul, always rejoice in this bliss within and without your very soul.
This second thing is also very valuable. We rejoice, but never in ourselves, only in others. It is a very curious fact that we find delight, we take interest, we sometimes even get a little happiness - but always in the other. Did you ever rejoice in yourself? You would never have done that. We simply pay no attention to ourselves!
This sutra says that the seeker should slowly give up delighting in others and start delighting in himself. You are sitting unoccupied and feeling unhappy: you think that if some friend arrives then there could be some fun; if some companions turn up then there could be some joy and frolic. Alone, you begin to be sad. Alone you are not happy. In aloneness, boredom sets in, boredom from one's own self.
Nobody likes themselves! The interesting thing is that everybody wants others to like him, and you yourself do not like yourself. You get bored with yourself and you want others to be very pleased when they see you. How is this to happen? It is impossible. You think of giving others great happiness. You cannot give happiness to your own self, how can you give it to others? And what you don't have yourself you cannot give, there is no way of giving it to others.
This sutra says, rejoice in your own self. You are sitting alone, be joyous. This state has been described by fakirs as masti, ecstasy. There seems to be no external reason but one is simply intoxicated with joy, as if some stream of joy is flowing within on its own. One is enjoying oneself, on one's own, there is no medium of the other.
There are many different spiritual disciplines using ecstasy. Sufis highly regard and use the spiritual practices of ecstasy. Their fundamental principle is that you do not make your happiness depend on the other. Whosoever associates his happiness with others, his sorrow also gets associated with the other.
Do not associate your happiness with others, associate it with your own self. You are sitting unoccupied under a tree - be happy. It will seem difficult: How to be happy, when there are no reasons for being happy? We usually only become happy for some reason... a friend is approaching, you have not seen him for a long time, so you are happy. We are always happy for some reason.
Happiness without any reason is masti, ecstasy. There is no visible cause for the happiness, one is just rejoicing in something from within. Sometimes such a thing happens to mad persons, so it sometimes becomes difficult to distinguish between the mad and the masta, the ecstatic one. Those whom we have called masta, many of them... in the West exactly the same type of people are put into lunatic asylums, because there is no way to distinguish them. The West has no idea how to distinguish between a masta and a mad person. To them the man appears mad. In the West they have made it a definition of healthiness that if one is joyous due to some reason his mind is alright, but if one is joyous without any reason, he is mad. How can there be happiness without any reason?
The tradition of the mastas says that happiness can only be without any reason: there has never been any happiness because of some reason. Now this is rather a difficult statement! The tradition of the mastas says that there has never been any happiness because of some reason - only a false notion of happiness. From reasons, only suffering has arisen. Let this be understood - it has a complete psychology of its own.
When you seek happiness for a reason - in some person, in some thing, in some event - the end result is never anything but unhappiness. Suffering upon suffering follows. The wife is seeking happiness from the husband, the mother is seeking happiness from the son, the father is seeking happiness from the son, from the daughter. Happiness is always looked for somewhere else - in relations, in money, in position, in prestige, but always somewhere else. We are all seeking happiness everywhere except within our own selves. And the fun of the matter is that the others themselves are also seeking happiness somewhere else. It is as if we are digging a mine we think is a diamond mine, and the mine itself has gone away in search of the diamonds; and the diamonds themselves from this so-called mine have gone searching still somewhere else.
We are like a 'postage unpaid' letter which has no address on it. So the search is on. We have no idea who we are looking for. And again we have not inquired of the person whose place we are going to, whether he himself has not gone somewhere else in a similar search.
Every person is somewhere else, so a meeting never happens with anybody. To whomsoever's place you go, that person is not there. Whomsoever's hand you hold in your hand, that person is not there. Whomsoever you embrace, that person is not there, he is somewhere else.
Everybody has gone somewhere else, so nobody is able to meet anybody - nobody will ever be able to. So whoever is seeking happiness in some cause will go on falling into deeper and deeper misery, because every time there will be hope that this particular cause will bring happiness, and when it is attained the hope will be shattered.
The scripture of the masta sect says that only sorrow comes from others, never happiness; happiness always comes from one's own self. And whenever it feels as if it is coming from the other, the tradition of the mastas says that the other is not the cause, but you.
Understand this also a little. You feel that you are in love with someone. The presence of that person feels to be pleasing. Is it really the presence of the other that is giving you happiness? Or is it your idea that you are in love, and the presence of your beloved gives you happiness? Now which is giving you happiness?
If it was the presence of that person who was giving you happiness, then that person's presence should give happiness to everybody. But that does not happen. That same person's presence can give unhappiness to someone else. If water quenches thirst, it must quench the thirst of everybody.
If you say that this water quenches my thirst only, then it is something that has to do with you, not with the water.
One should learn to distinguish between subjective truth and the objective truth. If water is water, it will quench my thirst, it will quench your thirst, it will quench anybody's thirst. It will quench the thirst, it will have nothing to do with different people; whosoever may be thirsty, it will quench their thirst.
Somebody's beauty pleases me but does not please someone else. If it is beauty, then whosoever is in search of beauty, has a thirst for beauty, should get happiness from it. But this does not happen.
This beauty pierces someone else like a thorn and they want to run away from it, whereas the same beauty gives you happiness. Someone derives unhappiness; someone does not seem to even notice that there is any beauty; someone simply laughs and says that you are out of your senses, seeing beauty where there is none!
What does it all mean? It means that the beauty you are seeing is attributed by you. There is nothing there - you are the cause of it. And that is why it becomes possible that from the same beauty that you derived happiness in the morning, you can derive unhappiness by noon and by the evening again derive happiness. Or today you derived happiness, tomorrow you start to derive unhappiness.
An interesting incident happened. One film actress came to me and said, "I am in great difficulty and so I have come to seek your advice. My difficulty is that I had made a love-marriage, but within a year or two it felt that it was a mistake and there was nothing else but quarreling and pain in my life. However, I still carried on for ten years, but the quarreling and the hell went on deepening and there remained no sense or even a possibility to carry on any further."
She was very perplexed, because her husband had loved her and had courted her with great persistence, but then her husband also became weary of the whole thing. So after ten years they divorced, and now it was ten years since the divorce. They had a daughter who was now grown up and had recently married. That is when the husband and wife met again - on the occasion of their daughter's marriage. That film actress had come to tell me that her husband had once again fallen in love with her and asked that they should marry again. Now, what was she supposed to do?
There is difficulty. It is clear that nobody falls in love with anybody; others are only screens and, seeing our own images in them, we go on falling in love. When we feel that we are getting happiness from the other, then too it is nothing but our own illusion. The deeper we go the clearer it will be that the occurrence of happiness is our own projection. And because we believe that happiness is in the other, and since no happiness ever comes from the other, we suffer.
A person who discovers that the source of happiness is within himself does not go anywhere else searching for it; he starts experiencing himself drowned in happiness. He dances not because of any external cause but because of his own existence. One's own existence is enough delight, one's own existence is enough bliss; there is no need to search for any other cause. Breathing is happening, even this is supreme bliss; the heart is beating, even this is supreme bliss.
Experiment with this a little.... Just sit under a tree alone and fall in love with your own self for the first time; forget the world, just be in love with your own self.
The spiritual search is in fact the search for falling in love with one's own self.
The world is a journey of falling in love with others, spirituality is a journey of falling in love with one's own self. Spirituality is very selfish. It is a search for one's own self, a search for the meaning of one's own self. It is to rejoice in your own self, it is to have a taste of your own self. And when this taste starts happening within... wait a little, search a little. Feel your uniqueness, delight in your own existence - because, "What could I have done, had I not been born? How could I have complained - and with whom - had I not been here?" You are in this existence; even this fact, even this much consciousness, this much awareness that "I am," the very possibility of a glimpse into bliss - just rejoice in all this a little. Let the taste of all this soak into your every pore. Allow yourself to be swept away in the thrill of it. Start dancing if you feel like dancing, start laughing if you feel like laughing, start singing a song if you feel like singing a song, but remember to remain the center of it all yourself and let the springs of happiness flow from within yourself, not from outside. Slowly, slowly this moves deep into your experience, and the state that it brings about is the state of a masta, the ecstatic one.
Masta means one who has become ecstatic in oneself.
This sutra is the foundation sutra of the mastas.
Knowing that you are the perpetually blissful soul, always rejoice in this bliss within and without your very soul.
The fruit of detachment is knowledge...
This sutra is very valuable.
The fruit of detachment is knowledge, the fruit of knowledge is relaxedness, and the peace that descends from experiencing the self-bliss is the very fruit of relaxedness.
If each one of the aforesaid does not happen in succession, know that the previous one has gone fruitless. Abstention from the sense-objects is in itself supreme contentment and incomparable bliss.
Try to understand each step. For the seeker each step is worth keeping in mind and examining constantly. This is a touchstone.
The fruit of detachment is knowledge...
Just as I said earlier, realize the meaninglessness of the body. If you look with a piercing eye, you will come to know that the body is meaningless. Come to a clear and deep realization that the world is unable to give any happiness. And there is no impediment; it will become clear if you search because it is so. It is just like asking a man with closed eyes to open his eyes and to see that the light is there. All these are as simple as that. This is the case. There is no happiness through the world, there is no happiness through the body, there is no peace through the other - this is the case, it is only a matter of seeing with open eyes. Out of the fear of coming to know the truth we have kept our eyes closed for lives upon lives. Our closing of our eyes is on purpose. We have fear.
One friend came to me. He wanted to marry as he was in love with somebody. I asked him, "Are you really in love? Just think over it a little more."
He said, "Think? What is there to think about when love is there?"
I still said, "What is the harm? Rather than think afterwards, it is much better to think beforehand.
And what is the hurry? Wait for a fortnight."
He appeared a little nervous and restless.
I said, "If love is really there, it will certainly last for fifteen days. What is the nervousness?"
He waited for a fortnight. I had told him to come back after a fortnight, and to think during this period if he really was in love.
He came after fifteen days and said to me, "You have confused me. My mind has fallen into great uncertainty. Fifteen days ago I was very clear and certain in my mind. What have you done to me?
I had come to you to receive your blessings so that my love-marriage might be a success."
I told him, "Because you had come for my blessings - it was out of fear - I asked you to think again.
One goes looking for blessings only when one is not sure of oneself. So if you had not asked for my blessings I would not have said anything. You are not sure within yourself that you will be happy, so you ask for my blessings so that the responsibility shifts over to somebody else, so that you are no longer responsible. You were trying to trap me; you are in love and you were trying to trap me. Now you think some more, and if you are still confused, wait for another fortnight."
He said, "I cannot wait any longer, because if I wait for another fortnight there will be a divorce before the marriage happens."
We are all afraid. And we do not open our eyes and look around to see what the matter is, because we are already in fear that what we are seeing is not really there. We are hiding our wounds. If we uncover them and see, then it will be known that there is a wound. So we have hidden the wound and worn gold bracelets on top of it. The bracelet is seen, not the wound. And seeing the bracelet we think that everything is alright. But have bracelets ever healed any wounds? That wound goes on growing bigger and bigger inside, till it becomes an ulcer.
Our whole life is a self-deception where there is nothing worthwhile. We also feel that there is nothing, but we are also afraid that we are living just with the help of these illusions and if we open our eyes and find out that these too do not exist, then how shall we live?
This difficulty has arisen in the West. Try to understand this.
During the last three hundred years, the West has tried to see things as they are. Now the West is in difficulty. The difficulty is that this attempt has succeeded in showing that there is nothing in things.
What to do now? Only one feeling prevails in the West now, that everything has become empty and useless, there seems to be no meaning. What to do now?
During these three hundred years, the West has thought much about all the relationships in life and the outcome is that all relationships have become suspect. Today no lover in the West can be bold enough to say to his beloved that his love is eternal, permanent. It has become impossible to say so, because the more research that was done on love the clearer it became that nothing else is more momentary than love. It was only the talk of poets and blind people who used to say their love was eternal.
It needs blind eyes before one can say that love is eternal. It appears so, but in reality it is not so.
When you are in love with somebody it seems that this love will last forever and no power on earth can break it. You are in a great illusion. No big powers are needed, in fact no outside powers at all are needed; you will do the job of breaking it yourself, you alone are enough for it.
Love is ephemeral. When a flower blooms in the morning, who can believe that it will fade away in a few hours? Its flowering deceives and makes one feel that it will remain so forever, but it does not happen that way. Whatsoever has blossomed will fade. When love blossoms, that too is a flower and it will fade.
The West has come to know this well, has come to understand this well, and has fallen into great difficulty: to love has become difficult, because to love, that illusion of its being eternal is necessary.
Without that illusion there can be no love. If that illusion breaks, love also falls apart.
So only sex has remained in the West. There seems to be no possibility of love, only sexuality has remained. But it is very difficult to give life depth on a foundation of sexuality. And it is very difficult to create the family on the basis of sexuality. And if only sexuality is the reality, then it is worthless to undergo so many troubles, the so many responsibilities of the family system.
In the West, husbands and wives are disappearing, boyfriends and girlfriends are increasing. The husband-and-wife relationship has ceased to be of importance. Boyfriends and girlfriends - that means the friendship is still well and alive. If tomorrow it changes then there is no legal headache.
But then an emptiness sets in. Love is uprooted, and if meditation cannot be made available there will be serious trouble. The energy is released and there is no other route for it to travel. This is why people keep their eyes closed and feel that where they are walking is heaven - even in hell. When the eyes are open, hell is seen. You also come across occasions every day where you see hell. Life is such that you will choose detachment on your own.
Life is such that detachment is bound to happen, it is not that you have to make tireless effort for it.
In fact you are making tireless effort so that detachment does not arise. Just think, look back on your life, take a bird's-eye view and you will find that the whole of life is leading you towards detachment.
The whole message of life is detachment, the whole flow of life is towards detachment. Life brings you sorrow from all directions but still detachment does not arise in you. Life disappoints you in every respect, breaks you down, tears you asunder, but detachment still does not arise in you - it is a miracle! Otherwise the natural flow of life is towards detachment.
In attachment is the birth of life, and detachment is the end result. We are born out of attachment, but if we die also in attachment it only means that we have not heard the message of life.
Detachment is the language of life. If you search, if you do not deceive yourself, then all are helpful - a friend as well as an enemy; near and dear ones as well as distant people, all are helpful in leading you toward detachment.
The fruit of detachment is knowledge.
The day you stand firm in detachment and you have no desires about this world, you have no demands from this world, and the futility of this world is revealed to you - the outcome is knowledge.
Then you are full of wisdom; then for the first time wisdom arises in you and a lamp is lit within you.
In the state of detachment the lamp of wisdom burns. If the lamp of knowledge does not burn, understand well that the detachment is false. This is the second part of the sutra. If the second step does not follow, then the first step has been false; it has proved fruitless. In our country there is no shortage of people who have renounced attachment - these people are sitting in every temple and monastery - but it is difficult to find the wise.
I have been meeting so many sadhus and sannyasins. They ran away years ago, but they say, "Nothing has happened so far, knowledge has not happened." But even they are not ready to accept that their detachment is false and that is why knowledge has not happened to them. They believe that their detachment is complete; it is only the knowledge that has not happened. If knowledge has not happened, then the first step has gone wrong, your detachment is false. It is not a product of ripe attachment, it has not come out of ripe attachment; you have run away from the world prematurely, you have run away without opening your eyes - let this be remembered.
There is a man walking in hell with closed eyes and cherishing dreams in which he is in heaven.
He does not open his eyes lest he see hell. He hears the statements of the seers and sages that the world is hell; he himself feels within that it may be so and he is afraid of opening his eyes. Or sometimes when his eyes open up in some accidental happening he sees the hell, and what the seers and sages are saying appears to be true. But he does not keep his eyes open, he goes on becoming more nervous, and the voices of the seers and sages go on hiding deeper inside him. He starts feeling from inside that everything is wrong and he runs away from the world. But he runs away with his eyes still closed. He moves into detachment, but he does not look at attachment with open eyes. With eyes closed he was in attachment; with eyes closed he has moved into detachment.
This will not bear the fruit of knowledge, because there is no change in the state of mind in this man - his eyes are still closed. Till yesterday he was walking like a blind man in attachments; today he is walking like a blind man in detachment.
The detachment that takes place by opening one's eyes within attachment is the ripened detachment, mature. It is in this maturity that the lamp of knowledge is lit.
The fruit of knowledge is relaxedness.
When the lamp of knowledge is lit what is the result? The result is relaxedness, tranquility. The mind, consciousness, body, being - everything attains to relaxedness. There is no effort left anywhere; there is no tension, no strain, not even a trace of any of these left anywhere in the person. A tranquility, a relaxedness happens.
If knowledge does not bring relaxedness, understand well that the knowledge is false. Then each successive step must be false. If a person with knowledge looks tense, if a person with knowledge is not relaxed, if a person with knowledge has to impose discipline upon himself, then know that the knowledge must have come from the scriptures, not through his own experience. He may have attained knowledge by listening to others but it is not through his own knowing. In such a case, the knowledge may well be in the intellect but it has not yet entered the being. Such a knowledge is a weight over the head, it has not become wings with which one may fly in the sky.
The fruit of knowledge is relaxedness, such that there remains no effort at all within oneself. There remains no effort of any kind, one becomes effortless. Whatsoever happens is right - a state of suchness prevails, relaxedness happens. Whatsoever is, is right. There is no effort to achieve anything, there is no fear of losing anything, no fear grips you that something may go wrong, no uneasiness hovers that some mistake may happen, no tension that you may miss, you may fall down, you may go astray - this is called uparati, the relaxedness.
Uparati, the relaxedness, is a very deep thing. You will come across millions of nonattached people, but none with a glimpse of knowledge in them. You will come across thousands of people with knowledge also, but no glimpse of relaxedness in them. There is no shortage of pundits or knowledgeable people.
But it is very interesting to note that sometimes the ignorant and unknowledgeable people appear more relaxed than the knowledgeable. If the brain of a pundit and that of an ignorant person were examined, the brain of the ignorant person will be found in relaxation, and that of the pundit will be found in great turmoil. It all seems to have gone topsy-turvy. Even ignorance was better than this situation because at least the ignorance was yours. This knowledge is borrowed and therefore a burden. What is one's own makes one light, and what is borrowed makes one burdened. What is one's own always brings flowering, what is from others crushes one.
The fruit of knowledge is relaxedness and the fruit of relaxedness is peace. One who has attained to relaxedness, slowly, slowly sinking deeper and deeper and deeper in it, he attains to the center that has been called peace.
When a person is swimming, he will be on the surface of the water. Swimming is an effort, a doing.
But another person who has left himself loose and relaxed, who is not swimming but just floating effortlessly, moving with the river wherever it takes him - it is fine with him if it takes him somewhere, and if it does not take him anywhere that too is fine - such a person has attained to relaxedness.
Such a person who is effortlessly lying there will slowly, slowly start sinking in the river; he will go on sinking till he reaches the ultimate depth, till he touches the rock bottom of the river - that rock bottom has been named peace.
Knowledge through detachment... if the detachment is real, knowledge is bound to follow. If knowledge is true, relaxedness is bound to follow. If relaxedness is real, peace will always follow.
And if peace does not arise out of your relaxedness, know well that your relaxedness is an imposed one.
In the West many books have been written which have strange names such as, You Must Relax.
Now this title of the book is absurd. In the very word must there is tension. Now this 'you must' will become the problem, it won't let you relax. People are lying down on their beds reading such books and trying all kinds of postures. The book is saying one must relax, so they are relaxing!
They can even impose relaxation upon themselves, they can even lie down on their bed stiff like a corpse, but the tension will continue inside them because now they have to think of relaxing also.
If you have to think about your relaxation, that too will require effort, energy. And remember, if you have to do this you will come out of it even more exhausted, because that effort is what tires one.
You are concentrating on "I am resting, I am not to make any effort at all." This "I am not to make any effort at all" now becomes the effort.
No peace will be attained through such relaxation. Relaxation is an existential happening.
Relaxation means your consciousness has nothing worth achieving, your consciousness has no demands of any kind and no desire to become something - no desire to even become relaxed; there is no insistence even for relaxation to come. If it comes it is good, if it does not come it is equally good.
You may have heard Mohammedan fakirs on the road saying, "May one who gives be happy, may one who does not give be happy." The ordinary beggars also repeat this, but this statement is from Sufis. The ordinary beggar repeats it deceitfully. When he says, "May one who gives be happy," the sparkle in his eyes is remarkable, and when he says, "May one who does not give be happy," there is no sparkle at all. You will come to know the difference by giving to him and watching, and by not giving to him and watching.
There was a Sufi fakir named Bayajid. He had made a little change in this statement. He used to say, "May one who gives be happy and may one who does not give be even more happy." Somebody asked Bayajid, "We had so far only heard 'May one who gives be happy and may one who does not give be happy,' but what does this addition mean?"
Bayajid replied, "When somebody gives I am pleased, but when somebody does not give I am even more pleased. My sense of gratitude becomes more intense. When somebody gives, it is alright, I am pleased; but when somebody does not give, then also the inner pleasure still remains. I feel like bowing down to him. I feel that if he had given, I would have been deprived of this opportunity of remaining happy when not receiving. This is why I say, 'May one who does not give be even more happy.' He is kind that he gave me one more opportunity to see my stream of happiness remaining uninterrupted when not receiving."
Relaxation comes from within, it is not acquired through effort. So the whole process is by steps.
Nonattachment is the first step towards tranquility. Everybody wants relaxation, but detachment comes first - that is the first step towards relaxation. The Upanishads imposed conditions and made everything difficult. Who is there who does not want relaxation? Everybody is in search of relaxation, everybody is in search of peace. But then its whole science has to be followed. You desire flowers but do not sow the seeds. You sow the seeds but you do not water them. Or if you water them, you do not raise a fence to protect the plants from animals. No, one has to move through each step.
Detachment means to remove one's mind from all sorts of desires. As the mind is removed from desires, the energy that was being destroyed in running after these desires is saved and it becomes a flame.
The fruit of knowledge is relaxedness.
One who has come to know has no source of tension anymore. One who has come to know has also no reason to be uneasy. There is nothing in this world about which one needs to be uneasy.
The fruit of knowledge is relaxedness, and the peace that descends from experiencing the self-bliss is the very fruit of relaxedness.
If each one of the aforesaid does not happen in succession, know that the previous one has gone fruitless. Abstention from the sense-objects is in itself the supreme contentment and incomparable bliss.
Enough for today.
