671

(part 2)

Remember this: all effort will lead you to a point where you leave all effort and you will become effortless. And the whole search will lead you to a point where you simply shrug your shoulders, sit down under a tree and settle.

Every journey ends in the innermost suchness of being, and that you have every moment. So it is only a question of becoming a little more aware. What is wrong with you? – I have seen millions of people and I have not seen even a single person who has really something wrong, but he creates it. You are creators, great creators of illnesses, wrongs, problems, and then you chase them – how to solve them? First you create and then you go chasing. Why create them in the first place?

Just drop hope, desire, and simply look at the case that you are already; just simply close your eyes and see who you are – and finished! Even in the blinking of the eye this is possible, it needs no time. If you are thinking it needs time, gradual growth, then it is because of your mind that you will need time; otherwise time is not needed.

[The supreme accomplishment
is to realize immanence...]

All that is to be achieved is in. That is the meaning of immanence: all that is to be achieved is already there inside you. You are born perfect; otherwise is not possible because you are born of the perfect. That is the meaning when Jesus says, “I and my father are one.” What is he saying? He is saying that you cannot be otherwise than the whole because you come out of the whole.

Take a handful of water from the ocean, taste it: it tastes the same. In a single drop of seawater you can find the whole chemistry of the sea. If you can understand a single drop of seawater you have understood all seas, past, future, present, because a small drop is a miniature ocean. And you are the whole in a miniature form.

When you go deeper inside yourself and realize this, suddenly laughter happens, you start laughing. What were you seeking? The seeker himself was the sought; the traveler was himself the goal. This is the supreme-most accomplishment: to realize oneself, one’s absolute perfection, without hope. Because if a hope is there it will stir; it will continually stir your disturbance, you will again start thinking, “Something more is possible.” Hope always creates dreams: “Something more is possible.”

Of course it is good… People come to me and they say, “Meditation is going very well; of course it is good, but give us some other technique so that we can grow more.” Even sometimes people have come to me saying, “Everything is beautiful…” And then they say, “Now what?” Now hope stirs. Everything is beautiful, then why ask, “Now what?” Everything was wrong, then again you were asking, “Now what?” And now everything is beautiful, again you ask, “Now what?” Now leave it, this hope.

Just the other day somebody came, and said, “Everything is going very beautifully now but who knows, tomorrow…?” Why bring tomorrow in when everything is going absolutely right? Can’t you remain without problems? Now everything is good, but there is a worry whether it may be good tomorrow or not. If it is good today, from where is tomorrow going to come? It will be born out of today, so why be worried? If today is silence, tomorrow is going to be more silent; it will be born out of today. But because of this worry you can destroy today; then tomorrow will be there and you will be fulfilled in your frustration and you will say, “This is what I was thinking and worried about. It has happened.” And it has happened because of you. It was not going to happen! Had you remained without future, it would not have happened.

This is the self-destructive tendency of the mind, suicidal; and in a way it is very self-fulfilling, so the mind can always say, “I was warning you before. I had warned you beforehand, you didn’t listen to me.” Now you will think, “Yes, that’s right; the mind warned and I was not listening to it.” But it has come only because of the warning of the mind.

Many things happen… If you go to the astrologers, jyotishis, palmists, and they say something to you, then when it happens you will think they predicted your future. Just the opposite is the case: because they predicted, your mind got into it and it happened. If somebody says that you are going to die next month, on the thirteenth March, the possibility is there – not because he had known your future, but because he had predicted the future. Now the thirteenth March will move in your mind continuously: you will not be able to sleep without it, you will not be able to dream without it, you will not be able to love without it. Twenty-four hours a day: “The thirteenth March and I am going to die.” It will become a self hypnosis, a chanting. It will go round and round; the nearer the thirteenth March will come, the faster it will move. And it will self-fulfill. The thirteenth March…

It happened once that a German palmist predicted his own death. He had been predicting many people’s deaths and they happened, so he became certain that his prediction was something. “Otherwise, how is it happening?”
And he was getting old so a few friends suggested: “Why not predict your own death?” So he studied his hands and charts and everything – all foolish – and then he decided on his own death: that it was going to happen on such and such a date, at six o’clock, early in the morning.
And then he waited for it. Six was approaching; from five o’clock he was ready, sitting by the clock. Each moment…and death was coming nearer and nearer and nearer. And then came just the last moment. One moment more and the clock will say it is six, and he is still alive, how is it possible? Seconds started passing, and exactly when the clock struck six he jumped out of the window, because how it is possible… And of course, died exactly as predicted.

Mind has a self-fulfilling mechanism. Be alert to it. You are happy; the mind says, “Of course, you are happy, it is okay, but what about tomorrow?” Now already the mind has distorted, destroyed this moment, it has brought tomorrow in. Now tomorrow will come out of this mind, not out of that blissful moment that was there.

Don’t hope this way or that, for or against; drop all hope. Remain to the moment, in the moment, with the moment, for the moment. There is no other moment than this. And whatsoever is going to happen will happen out of this moment, so why worry? If this moment is beautiful, how can the next moment be ugly? From where will it come? It grows, it will be more beautiful, has to be. There is no need to think about it.

And once you accomplish this, remaining with your innate perfection… Remember, I have to use words and there is a danger that you may misunderstand. When I say remain with your inner perfection you may be worried because sometimes you may feel that you are not perfect – then remain with your imperfection. Imperfection is also perfect! Nothing is wrong in it, remain with it. Don’t move away from this moment; here and now is the whole existence. Everything that has to be accomplished is to be accomplished here and now, so whatsoever is the case, even if you feel imperfect – beautiful, be imperfect! That’s how you are, that is your suchness. You feel sexual – perfect, feel sexual; that’s how you are, that’s how God meant you to be. Sad – beautiful, be sad, but don’t move from the moment. Remain with the moment and, by and by, you will feel that the imperfection has dissolved into perfection, the sex has dissolved into the inner ecstasy; the anger has dissolved into compassion.

In this moment, if you can be your total being this moment, then there is no problem. This is the supreme accomplishment. It has no hope, it need not have. It is so perfect there is no need for hope. Hope is not a good situation; hoping always means something is wrong with you – that’s why you hope for the “against,” for the opposite. You are sad and you hope for happiness; your hope says that you are sad. You feel ugly and you hope for a beautiful personality; your hope says you are ugly. Show me your hope and I can tell you who you are because your hope immediately shows who you are: just the opposite.

Drop hope and just be. At first, if you try this, just being, this will happen:

[At first a yogi feels his mind
is tumbling like a waterfall;
in mid-course, like the Ganges,
it flows on slow and gentle;
in the end, it is a great vast ocean
where the lights of son and mother merge in one.]

If you are being here and now, the first satori will happen, the first glimpse of enlightenment.

And this will be the situation inside:
[At first a yogi feels his mind
is tumbling like a waterfall…]

... because your mind starts melting. Right now it is like a frozen glacier. If you remain loose, natural, true to the moment, authentically here and now, the mind starts melting. You have brought sun energy to it, this very being in the here and now conserves such a vast energy. Not moving into the future, not moving into the past, you have such tremendous energy in you, that the very energy starts melting the mind.

Energy is fire; energy is of the sun. When you are not moving anywhere, completely still, here and now, no going, converging upon yourself, all leakage stops – because leakage is through desire and hope. You leak because of the future. Leakage is because of motivation: “Do something, be something, have something. Why are you wasting your time sitting? Go! Move! Do!” Then there is leakage. If you are simply here, how you can leak? Energy converges, falls back upon you, it becomes a circle of fire, and then the glacier of the mind starts melting.

[At first a yogi feels his mind
is tumbling like a waterfall…]

Everything falls. The whole mind is falling, falling, falling – you may be scared. Near the first satori, the master is needed very, very deeply and intimately, because who will tell you, “Don’t be afraid; it is beautiful – fall.” Just the word fall and fear comes in because falling means falling into an abyss, losing your ground, moving into the unknown. And falling carries a sense of death – one becomes afraid.

Have you gone to some mountain, a high peak, and from there looked into the abyss, down into the valley? Nausea, trembling, fear, come in as if the abyss is death and you can fall into it. When the mind melts everything starts falling, everything I say. Your love, your ego, your greed, your anger, your hate, all that you have been up to now suddenly starts becoming loose and falling, as if the house is falling apart.
You become a chaos: no more order, all discipline falling. You have been maintaining yourself somehow; somehow you were together: forcing a control upon yourself, a discipline. Now, being loose and natural everything is falling. Many things that you have suppressed will bubble up; they will surface. You will find chaos all around; you will be just like a madman.

The first step is really difficult to pass through because whatsoever society has forced on you will fall, whatsoever you have learned will fall; whatsoever you have conditioned yourself to will fall. All your habits, all your directions, all your paths will simply disappear. Your identity will evaporate; you will not be able to know who you are.
Up to now you knew well who you were: your name, your family, your status in the world, your prestige, your honor, this and that; you were aware of them. Now suddenly everything is melting, the identity is lost. You knew many things, now you will not know anything. You were wise in the ways of the world; they will fall and you will feel completely ignorant.
This is what happened to Socrates. That was his first satori moment, when he said, “Now I know only one thing: that I don’t know anything. I have only one knowledge: that I am ignorant.” This is the first satori.

Sufis have a particular term for this man, this type of man, who comes to this state; they call him mast, they call him the madman. He looks at you without looking at you. He roams around not knowing where he is going. He talks nonsense. He cannot keep a relevant coherence to his talk. One word and then a gap; then another word absolutely unrelated; one sentence, then another sentence not connected at all: no coherence, all consistency is lost. He becomes a contradiction; you cannot rely on him.

For these moments a school is needed, where people can take care of you. Ashrams came into existence because of this, because this man cannot be allowed in society, otherwise they will think he is mad and they will force him into a prison or a madhouse, and they will try to treat him. They will try to bring him down, back to his normal state – and he is growing! He has broken all the chains of the society; he has become a chaos – hence my insistence on chaotic meditations. They will help you come to this first satori. From the very beginning you cannot sit silently; you can befool, but you cannot sit, that is not possible. That can happen only in the second satori.

In the first satori you have to be chaotic, dynamic; you have to allow your energies to move so that all straitjackets around you are broken and all chains are thrown away. You become for the first time an outsider, no longer part of the society. A school is needed where you can be taken care of. A master is needed who can say to you, “Don’t be afraid,” who can tell you to fall easily, to allow it to happen, not to cling to something because that will only delay the moment – fall! The sooner you fall, the sooner madness will disappear; if you delay, then the madness can continue for long.

There are millions of mad people in madhouses around the world who are not in fact mad, who needed a master, who don’t need a psychotherapist. They have attained their first satori, and all the psychotherapies are forcing them back to be normal. They are in a better situation than you; they have reached a growth, but the growth is so outlandish. It has to be so in the beginning – they are passing through the first satori, and you have made them guilty. You say, “You are mad,” and they try to hide it and they try to cling, and the longer they cling the longer the madness will continue.

Only just recently a few psychoanalysts, particularly R. D. Laing and others, have become aware of the phenomenon that a few mad people have not fallen lower than the normal, really they have gone beyond the normal. Just a few people in the West, very perceptive people, have become aware of it – but the East has always been aware, and the East has never suppressed mad people. The first thing the East will do: the mad people have to be brought to a school where many people are working and where a living master is. The first thing is to help them to attain a satori.

Mad people have been highly respected in the East; in the West they are simply condemned, forced to have electric shocks, insulin shocks, forced somehow, even if their brains are destroyed –now there are surgical things going on. Their brains are operated on and a few parts of the brain are removed. Of course then they become normal, but dull, idiotic, their intelligence is lost. They are no longer mad, they will not harm anybody; they will become a silent part of the society – but you have killed them without knowing that they were reaching a point from where a man becomes superhuman. But of course, the chaos has to be passed through.

With a loving master and a loving group of people in a school, in an ashram, it passes easily. Everybody takes it easily, helps it; one moves to the second stage easily. This has to happen because all order is imposed on you, it is not real order. All discipline is forced on you; it is not your inner discipline. Before you attain to the inner, the outer has to be dropped; before a new order is born, the old has to cease. There will be a gap. That gap is madness. One feels like tumbling, falling like a waterfall into the abyss, and there seems to be no bottom to it.

[…in mid-course…]
If this point is passed, if the first satori is lived well, then a new order arises that is from within, that comes from your own being. Now it is no longer of the society. It is not given to you by others; it is not an imprisonment. Now a new order arises which has a quality of freedom. A discipline comes to you naturally; it is of your own. Nobody asks about you, nobody says, “Do this!” You simply do the right thing.

[...in mid-course, like the Ganges,
it flows on slow and gentle...]

The tumbling, the roaring waterfall has disappeared, the chaos is no more. This is the second satori. You become like the Ganges, flowing gently, slowly; not even a sound is created. You walk like a bridegroom, silently, gracefully. An absolutely new charm happens to your being: grace, elegance.

This is the stage, the second stage, in which we have caught all the buddhas in the statues; because the third cannot be caught, only the second or the first. All the buddhas and Jaina tirthankaras… Go and look at their statues: the elegance, the grace, the subtle feminine roundness of their bodies. They don’t look masculine, they look feminine; a roundness, their curvature is feminine. That shows their inner being has become very slow, very gentle: nothing of aggression in them.

Zen masters: Bodhidharma, Rinzai, Bokuju have been pictured in the first state. That’s why they are so ferocious. They look like roaring lions; they look like they will kill you. If you look at their eyes, their eyes are volcanoes, fire jumps at you; they are like shocks.
They have been pictured in the first satori state for certain reasons. Zen people know that the first is the problem; and if you know Bodhidharma in this state, when the same state happens to you, you will understand – don’t be afraid, even to Bodhidharma… But if you have been always watching buddhas and tirthankaras in their silent and slow flowing rivers and their feminine grace, you will become very much afraid when ferociousness comes to you, when you become like a lion – exactly, one starts roaring. You become a waterfall – tremendous!

That’s why in Zen the ferocious state has been pictured more and more. Of course there were buddhas in the shrine, but that is the next state. And that is not a problem at all; when you become silent there is no problem. In India the second stage has been too much emphasized and that became a barrier because one should know from the very beginning how things are. A buddha is already an accomplished being. It can happen to you, but in the gap from you to a buddha, something else is going to happen, and that is complete madness.

What happens when you accept all madness, you allow it? – it subsides by itself. The old order goes; society forced, simply evaporates. Old knowledge is no longer there; all that you knew about the scriptures is no longer there.
There is a Zen monk burning all scriptures – his picture is one of the most famous pictures. That comes in the first state. One burns all the scriptures, one throws away all knowledge; everything that has been given to you looks rubbish, rot. Now your own wisdom is arising; there is no need to borrow it from anybody. But it will take a little time, just like a seed takes time to sprout.

If you can manage to pass through the chaotic state, then the second follows very, very easily, automatically, on its own accord. You become silent, everything has calmed down, just like the Ganges when it comes to the plains. In the hills it is roaring like a lion, falling from great heights into depths, much turmoil; and then it comes to the plains, leaves the hills. Now the terrain changes, now everything flows silently. You cannot even see whether it is flowing or not; everything moves as if it is not moving, at ease.

Attain to inner accomplishment, innate, with no hope: not going to any goal, not in any hurry, no haste, just enjoying each moment.

[...like the Ganges,
it flows on slow and gentle...]

This second stage has the quality of absolute silence, calm quietude, tranquility, collectedness, at-home-ness, rest, relaxation.

And then:
[...in the end, it is a great vast ocean
where the lights of son and mother merge in one.]

Then suddenly, flowing silently, it reaches to the ocean and becomes one with the ocean – vast expanse, no boundaries. Now it is no longer a river, now it is no longer an individual unit, now there is no ego.

Even in the second stage there is a very, very subtle ego. Hindus have two names: one they call ahankar, ego – that’s what you have. The second they call asmita, am-ness – not ego. When you say, “I am,” not the “I” but simply “am,” am-ness, they call it asmita. It is a very, very silent ego. Nobody will feel it, it is very passive, not aggressive. It will not leave any trace anywhere, but it is still there.

One feels one is. That’s why it is called the second satori: the Ganges is flowing silently of course, at home, at peace, but still it is; it is asmita, it is am-ness. The “I” has dropped and all the madness of the I has gone; the aggressive, the ferocious I is no longer there, but a very silent am-ness follows because the river has banks and the river has boundaries. It is still separate; it has its own individuality.

With the ego, personality drops, but individuality remains. Personality is the outer individuality. Individuality is the inner personality. Personality is for others; it is a showroom thing, a display. That has dropped; that is the ego. But this inner feeling of, “I am” or rather “am,” is not for display; nobody will be able to see it. It will not interfere with anybody’s life; it will not poke its nose into anybody’s affairs. It simply moves, but it is still there because the Ganges exists as an individual.

Then the individuality is also lost. That is the third word: atma. Ahankar is ego, the I-ness; the “am” is just a shadow to it, the “I” is focused. Then the second state, asmita: the “I” has dropped; now the am-ness has become the total, not a shadow. And then atma: now the am-ness has also dropped.

This is what Tilopa calls no-self. You are, but without any self; you are, but without any boundaries. The river has become the ocean; the river is in the ocean, it has become one with it. The individuality is no longer there, no boundaries, but the being exists as a nonbeing. It has become a vast emptiness. It has become just like the sky.

The ego was like black clouds all over the sky. The am-ness, asmita, was like white clouds in the sky. And atma is like without clouds, only the sky has remained.

[...in the end, it is a great vast ocean
where the lights of son and mother merge in one.]

Where you come back to the original source, the mother, the circle is complete. You have come back home, dissolved within the original source. The Ganges has come to the Gangotri, the river has come to its original source: the complete circle. Now you are, but in such a totally different sense that it is better to say that you are not.

This is the most paradoxical state because it is most difficult to bring it into language and expression. One has to taste it. This is what Tilopa calls Mahamudra: the great orgasm, the ultimate orgasm, the supreme orgasm. You have come back from where you had gone. The journey is over, and not only is the journey over, but the journeyman is also no more. Not only is the journey over as a path, the goal is also over. Now nothing exists and everything is.

Remember this distinction. A table exists, a house exists, but God is; because a table can go into nonexistence, a house can go into nonexistence, but the God cannot. So it is not good to say that God exists; God simply is. It cannot go into nonexistence. It is pure isness. This is Mahamudra.

All that exists has disappeared, only isness remains. The body has disappeared; it existed. The mind has disappeared; it existed. The path has disappeared; it existed. The goal has disappeared. All that existed has disappeared; only purity of isness is there: an empty mirror, an empty sky, an empty being. This is what Tilopa calls Mahamudra. This is the supreme, the last; there is no thing beyond it. It is the very beyond-ness.

Remember these three stages; you will have to pass through them.

Chaos, everything gone topsy-turvy: you are no longer identified with anything, everything has become loose and fallen apart – you are completely mad. Watch it, allow it, pass through it, don’t be scared; and when I am here you need not be scared. I know it will pass, I know it always passes, I can assure you. And unless it passes, the grace, the elegance, the silence of a buddha will not happen to you. Let it pass. It will be a nightmare, of course, but let it pass. With that nightmare all your past will be cleansed. It will be a tremendous catharsis. All your past will pass through a fire, but you will become pure gold.

Then comes the second state. The first has to be passed through because you may get scared and run away from it. The second also has a different kind of danger, an absolutely different kind. The first has to be passed; you have to be aware that it will pass. It will pass; just time and trust are needed. The second has a different kind of danger: you would like to cling to it because it is so beautiful; one would like to be in it forever and ever. When the inner river flows calm and quiet, one wants to cling to the banks; one wants not to go anywhere else, it is so good. In a way it is a greater danger.

A master has to assure you that the first will pass, and a master has to force you so that you don’t cling to the second. If you do cling, Mahamudra will never happen to you. There are many people clinging to the second, they are hanging on. There are many people who are hanging onto the second; they have become so much attached to it. It is so beautiful one would like to fall in love with it; one falls automatically. Be aware! Remain aware that it too has to be passed. Watch, so that you don’t start clinging.

If you can watch your fear with the first and your greed with the second… Remember, fear and greed are two aspects of the same coin. In fear you want to escape from something, in greed you want to cling to it, but they are both the same. Watch fear, watch greed and allow the movement to continue; don’t try to stop it. You can become stagnant; then the Ganges becomes not a flowing thing, but a stagnant pool. Howsoever beautiful, it will soon be dead. It will become dirty, it will dry up and soon all that was gained will be lost.

Go on moving. The movement has to be eternal – keep it in mind. It is an endless journey, more is always possible; allow it to happen. Don’t hope for it, don’t ask for it, don’t go ahead of yourself, but allow it to happen because then the third danger comes when the Ganges falls into the ocean – and that is the last because you will be losing yourself.

That is the ultimate death. It appears like the ultimate death. Even the Ganges shudders, trembles before it falls; even the Ganges looks backward, thinks of past days and memories, and the beautiful time on the plains and the tremendous energy phenomenon in the hills and the glaciers. At the last moment, when the Ganges is going to fall into the ocean, it lingers a little while longer. It wants to look back, think memories, beautiful experiences. That has to be also watched. Don’t linger! When the ocean comes, allow: merge, melt and disappear.

Only on the last point can you say goodbye to the master, never before it. Say goodbye to the master and become the ocean. But up to that moment you need the hand of somebody who knows.

There is a tendency in the mind to avoid an intimate relationship with the master; that’s what becomes a barrier to taking sannyas. You would like to remain uncommitted; you would like to learn, but you would like to remain uncommitted. But you cannot learn, that is not the way; you cannot learn from the outside. You have to enter the inner shrine of a master’s being. You have to commit. Without it you cannot grow.

Without it you can learn a little bit from here and there, and you can accumulate certain knowledge. That will not be of any help; rather it may become an encumbrance. A deep commitment is needed, a total commitment in fact, because many things are going to happen. If you are outside on the periphery, just learning as a casual visitor, then much is not possible because what will happen to you when the first satori comes? What will happen to you when you go mad?

And you are not losing anything when you commit to a master because you don’t have anything to lose. By your commitment you are simply gaining; you are not losing anything because you don’t have anything to lose. You have nothing to be afraid of. But still, still one wants to be very clever, and one wants to learn without commitment. That has never happened because it is not possible.

So if you are really authentically sincerely a seeker, then find someone with whom you can move in a deep commitment, with whom you can take the plunge into the unknown. Without it you have wandered for many lives and you will wander again. Without it the supreme accomplishment is not possible.

Take courage and take the jump.

Enough for today.