Chapter 10
百度搜索 And Now, And Here 天涯 或 And Now, And Here 天涯在线书库 即可找到本书最新章节.
Religion is a Seareditation1 August 1970 pm in CCI Chambers, Bombay, IndiaQuestion 1
BEFORE DISCUSSING THE PROCESS OF ENTERIH SCIOUSLY, I WOULD LIKE TO ASK YOU: WHAT IS THE DIFFEREWEEATE OF UNSCIOUSNESS AND THE STATE OF AWARENESS? WHAT STATE OF MIND IS CALLED THE UNSCIOUS STATE? IN OTHER WORDS, WHAT IS THE INDIVIDUAL SOULS SCIOUSNESS LIKE IN ITS SCIOUS AND UNSCIOUS STATES?
In order to uand the states of sciousness and unsciousness, the first thing that o be uood is that they are not opposite states, although normally they are seen as opposites.
Actually, we are used to seeing life in terms of duality.
First we create a divisioween darkness and light and then think they are two separate things.
As soon as we take darkness and light to be two different things we it a fual mistake.
Any thought that follows this mistake is bound to be wrong; it ever be right.
Darkness and light are variations of the same thing.
They are different aspects, different stages of the same thing.
It would be appropriate to call darkness a deficy of light.
Light which our eyes ot catch, light which our eyes ot detect, looks like darkness.
Similarly, we should call light a she of darkness -- darkness which our eyes catch.
So darkness and light are not two separate things, they are varying degrees of the same phenomenon.
What is true of darkness and light is true of all other dualities of life.
The same thing is true regarding the unscious and the scious states.
You may sider unsciousness as darkness, and sciousness as light.
In fact, even the most unscious of all objects is not pletely unscious.
A rock is not all unscious -- it exists in a state of sciousoo, but the sciousness is so small it is hard to grasp.
A man is asleep, a man is awake.
Sleep and wakefulness are not two different things.
The same man is floatiween sleep and wakefulness.
What we call being asleep is also not really being asleep.
For example, five hundred people are asleep in a room and you call the name "Rama" aloud.
Only the person named Rama opens his eyes to find out who is disturbing his sleep, who has called him.
The remaining four hundred and y-nine people stay asleep.
Had this man been really asleep, he could not have heard anyone calling him; he could not have reized that his name was Rama.
His sleep was actually one of the lesser states of wakefulness, or his state of wakefulness had bee a little hazy, a little fuzzy.
You see a man running oreet.
He has heard that his house is on fire.
You greet him.
He sees you a he does not see you.
He hears you a he does not hear you.
You ask him the day why he didurn yreeting and he replies, "My house was on fire.
At that time I couldnt see anything except my house, I couldnt hear anything except the he sound around the house, people shouting The house is on fire! I am sure you must have seen me, greeted me, but I couldnt see you, I couldnt hear you.
" Now, was this man awake or asleep? In every sense he was awake, of course, a, as far as the man who met him oreet was ed, he was almost asleep.
He was more asleep thaher man, the one who heard "Rama" being called in his sleep.
So what is being asleep and being awake? The first thing I would like to say is: they are not two opposite things.
Matter and God are not two opposite things.
Sleep and wakefulness, light and darkness, devil and divine, good and bad, are not opposite things.
But the human mind immediately divides things into two.
In fao sooner does the mind raise a question than it divides the thing into two.
The moment mind thinks, it divides into two.
To think and to divide into two stitute one and the same thing.
The moment you think, you divide.
Thinking is a process of division -- you immediately divide into two.
The more a man is used to thinking, the more he will keep on dividing.
Ultimately, he will end up with fragments and the whole will be pletely lost.
And the ao every question lies in this wholeness, in this totality.
The mind is uo find the ao any question.
In fact, it raises a number of questions from easwer it finds.
No matter how signifit the answer is, the mind will immediately raise dozens of questions -- but it ever find an ao anything.
There is a reason for this: the answer lies in the wholeness.
But the mind is helpless.
It t fun without making divisions.
For example, I am sittialking to you.
You are listening to me and you are also looking at me.
The one you are looking at and the one you are listening to are not two different individuals.
However, as far as you are ed, you are looking with your eyes and hearing with your ears.
You have divided me into two parts.
If you were to sit close to me and smell my body, you would have divided me into three.
Then you will put these three parts together and create an image of me.
But that wont be my image, it will be your addition of the parts.
It will be misleading.
You ever create the whole by adding up the parts, because the whole is that which was before the parts were made.
No sooner do we ask about sciousness and unscioushan we have begun to divide.
In my view, they are one.
But when I say they are one, I do not mean they are one and the same.
I am not saying sciousness itself is unsciousness.
When I say darkness and light are one, I dont mean you walk in the dark as you do when there is light.
When I say darkness and light are one, I meaence is made of varying degrees of the same maiy.
The difference sists in being a little more or a little less, in being present or not present.
Now it will be easier for you to follow me.
What is this thing which appears as sciousness when it is present in a greater degree and bees unsciousness when it exists in a lesser degree? The name of this very element is attention.
The deeper and sharper the attention, the same is the state of sciousness.
Unsciousness and sciousness are but differeies of attention.
The more profound the state of attention, the same will be the sciousness.
The more tenuous the attention, the same will be the state of unsciousness.
In fact, the differeween a rod a human is that the rock does not have density of attention at any level of sciousness.
At whatever level the attention bees densed, sciousakes place, and at whatever level the density of attention decreases, unsciousness occurs.
If you let the suns rays pass through a lens, fire is immediately produced.
A densed light creates fire.
When it loses its density, when it bees tenuous, light remains.
There is fire in an ember because it tains highly densed light.
Whenever light is densed, fire is produced.
When the light bees tenuous -- that is, when its density is reduced -- then even fire remains just light.
As density decreases darkness increases.
With an increase iy, light increases.
If we travel towards the sun, the light will keep on increasing, because the rays are very dense on the sun.
As we move farther and farther away from the sun, the light will go on decreasing.
At the farthest distance from the sun there will be nothing but darkness, because of the reduced density of light.
I apply the same principle to the states of unsciousness and sciousness.
The basic principle is attention.
Its fluidity, density, tenuity, solidity, determine whether to call one awake or asleep, whether to call one unscious or scious.
We must remember, however, that all these words are used in a relative sense.
For example, when we say there is light in this room, it only means there is more light ihe room than there is outside.
There is light in this room because it is dark outside.
Were there bright sunshiside, this room would look darker.
So when we say somebody is awake or asleep, we simply mean, in parison to someone else.
Language has its own difficulty; it would be a problem to tinually express things in suparative terms.
Thats why we use words in the absolute sense -- which is nht.
The right way is always to express iive terms.
For instance, we are all sitting here and in a way we are all awake.
But thats not really true.
Eae present here is awake to a respective degree.
Not every oting here is awake uniformly.
He is possible that, pared to you.
the person to your left is less awake, or the person to yht is more awake.
The element that moves between sciousness and unsciousness is attention.
So if we uand what attention, dhyana is, well uand what sciousness and unsciousness means.
Attention means: awareness of something.
It means refle of something in the sciousness.
It is not that every moment, twenty-four hours a day, one is equally awake -- it is never like that either.
As an example, it would be good to know a few things about the pupil of the eye.
When you go out in the sun, the pupil tracts because there is no need for so much light to go in.
Less light is enough for you to see; hehe pupil tracts and the focus is narrowed.
When you e out ht light into a dark place, the pupils dilate and the focus is enlarged, because in order to see in the dark, more light o go within.
So acc to the degree of darkness and light it is exposed to, the pupil of the eye keeps ging its focus -- the same way we keep adjusting the focus of the camera lens while shooting pictures.
Just as every moment ones eye is flexible, so is otention.
You walk along a street.
If the street is familiar your attention will be tenuous; if the street is unfamiliar your attention will be dense.
You need not be alert if it is a street you cross every day, because in an unscious state you are sure to make it.
If the street is totally unfamiliar, one you have never crossed before, you will cross it with awareness.
Because of the unfamiliarity of the street, great attention will be needed.
Hehe more a man lives in security, the more unscious he will be.
In security everything is known, familiar.
The more one lives in insecurity, the more aware he will be.
So ordinarily, except for the moments of danger, we are never aware, we are always asleep.
If I suddenly point a dagger at your chest, you will bee alert at once.
You will bee scious, awake, quite different from what you are now.
Seeing the dagger poi you will create su emergency, such a critical situation, that at that moment you t afford to be asleep.
That means you t be sleepy in such a moment.
If you stay sleepy in such a dangerous situation you will be near death.
In that threatening moment your whole being will e to the point of crystallization, your whole attention will bee densed.
Your whole attention will remain fixed on the dagger and you will bee fully aware of it.
It is possible this situation may last only for a sed; heless, the fact is, your attention ordinarily bees dense only in critical moments.
Ohe danger is over, you go back to your previous state, you go to sleep once again.
That seems to be the reason datracts.
We love to take risks.
A man gambles, for example.
You may have hardly given a thought as to what makes him gamble.
It is the element of dahat draws him to gambling.
At the moment of plag his bet, he is more aware than ever.
A gambler has placed a huhousand dollars on a bet and is about to throw the dice.
Its a very critical moment.
In a blink, a huhousand dollars go this way or that.
At this moment he ot afford to be asleep; he will have to be aware.
That moment of betting is certain to crystallize his attention.
Now this may intrigue you, but in my view a gambler is also in seareditation.
Whether he knows it or not is another matter.
A man brings a wife home.
Then, as the days go by and she bees more and more familiar, he bees less and less atteowards her.
She bees as well known to him as the street he crosses every day -- and suddenly the woma door looks more attractive.
The reason is nothing more than the fact that her unfamiliarity excites his attention.
Looking at her, his attention has to bee dehe focus of his eye ges immediately.
Actually, the eyes of husbands and wives dont ge focus when they look at each other.
In fact, a husband hardly ever looks at his wife; he avoids her.
The way he lives and moves around her doesnt require him to pay any attention to her.
Hence, in my view, the attra for another woman or another man is really the attra of attention.
In that one moment, in that moment of thrill, the mind bees fully aware.
It has to -- because only then is it possible to see somebody.
There is a chase going on -- to have a new house instead of the old, new clothes instead of the old, new positions instead of the old.
Deep down, all this chasing indicates a profound desire to experience a crystallized attention -- meditation.
And all the joys in ones life depend on how crystallized the meditation is.
The moments of bliss are the moments of crystallized meditation.
Hence.
those who wish to attain joy must awaken.
You ot attain joy by staying asleep.
Religion is a seareditation, and so is gambling.
One who goes to battle, sword in hand, is in seareditation too.
One who goes hunting a tiger in the forest is also searg for meditation.
And the one who is sitting in the cave with his eyes closed, w hard on his agya chakra, his third eye ter, is searg for meditation as well.
The search be both good or bad, desirable or undesirable, but the search is one and the same.
A search may be successful or unsuccessful, but the desire for searg is one and the same.
Meditation means: the power of knowing that lies within you bees ma in its ey.
No part of it should remain potent within you, in seed form.
Whatsoever capability of knowing you have should not remain just a potential, it should bee actual.
Only in that moment a person bees fully aware does he really flower as a being.
Both events occur simultaneously.
For example, a tree is hidden in a seed, but potentially.
It is just a potentiality: the seed die without materializing into the tree.
It is not necessary that the tree has to e out of the seed, it is simply a possibility.
It is only a potentiality, not yet an actuality.
The later turning of the seed into a tree is yet aate of its being, the ma state.
It would not be wrong to say that the seed is the unma state of the tree, because pears in the form of a tree is the same as was hidden within the seed.
Following the same analogy, it would not be incorrect to say that unsciousness is the potential state of awareness, or that awareness is the ma state of unsciousness.
What is it that moves between these states? What resent in the seed and also exists iree? There must be a eg liween the seed and the tree.
There must be something that makes the journey from the seed to the tree, that exists in both.
How else there be a e between the seed and the tree? What was hidden in the seed and has maed iree? It either be the seed nor it be the tree.
This o be uood.
The third power that was hidden in the seed and which became ma iree could not have been the seed alone.
Then it could never have bee the tree.
And if it were the tree alone, how could it have been in the seed? It existed in both.
That third power is the vital energy.
Awakening and unsciousness are two states.
The element that travels betweewo is meditation.
Thats the third force, the vital energy.
So, the more meditative you are, the more aware; the less meditative, the more asleep.
A rock is a sleeping God -- totally asleep, absolutely like a seed, no sprouting anywhere.
Man is not a tree, he is a broken seed with a tiny sprout.
He has not yet bee a tree, but he is no longer like a rock either.
He is on a journey somewhere iween.
Man is on a journey -- or it would be eveer to say that man is in transit, at a halting pla a journey.
Man is a seed on its way to being a tree.
He is also a sprout iween.
Thats all man is -- a sprout, a sprouted seed.
What we ordinarily know as being awake is also just a sprouting.
What we call being awake is also a very blurry state.
What we call being awake is still a very sleepy state.
The wakeful state in which we go about our daily routine is not very different from the state of somnambulism.
In a dream, a mas up, goes to the kit and drinks a glass of water, or sits at his table and writes a letter, and then goes back to sleep.
He remembers nothing of this in the m, he did it all in the dream.
His eyes were open, he followed the right path, opehe door without difficulty, wrote the letter, but still he was asleep.
This means that, except for a tiny little er, his entire mind was asleep, and hence could nister his as in its memory.
So the man is at a loss in the m to explain what happe night.
What we call being awake is a state similar to somnambulism.
If I ask what you did on January 1, 1950, you will be at a loss to answer.
You may simply say.
"There was a first of January indeed, and I must have done something on that day, but I have no idea what exactly.
" You will be surprised to know, however, that if you were hypnotized and asked the same question you could easily give a detailed at of that very day.
What occurred on that day was recorded in some er of your mind, a er of which even you are not fully aware.
It was recorded a unused.
Similarly, the memories of our past lives are also lying there undisturbed.
We are not fully izant of them.
In the previous life some part of our being was awake, and that part had dohe rec.
Now the same part is inactive, asleep; the other part is awake, active.
The part which is awake in this life has no knowledge of the immense amount of work already aplished by another part in a previous life.
It is ignorant of the fact that a seed had already sprouted in the previous life and subsequently died.
It has no idea at all that su attempt was already made once before.
As a matter of fact, infiempts have been made before.
Should you ever enter into the memories of your past lives, you will be in freat surprise.
The memories of past lives are not restricted to human lives alone.
Entering these memories is very easy; one do so without much difficulty.
However, prior to many human lives, assed through animal lives as well.
It is difficult to pee them because they are hidden under even deeper layers.
And even prior to our animal lives, we have lived through many lives as trees as well.
Peing them is even more difficult because they are buried even further, at deeper levels.
Prior to having lived as trees, we have gohrough many lives as rocks and minerals.
Memories of these lie at even lower levels.
Access to them is even more difficult.
Up to now, experiments in remembering past lives have not gone beyond the level of animal life.
Even the experiments carried on by Buddha and Mahavira did not go beyond the level of animal life.
The memory of being a tree is yet to be revived.
As for the memory of being rocks and minerals, it is still further down the road.
But the memories of all these past lives are clearly recorded.
This rec, however, must have taken pla a state of somnoleherwise oire mind would be aware of it.
It may not have occurred to you, but there are certain things we never fet.
Why is it so? For example, lets assume someone slapped you when you were five years old.
Even after so many years the i is still fresh in your mind, and you will never fet it for the rest of your life.
What seems to be the matter? At the moment you were slapped, your attention must have been very sharp.
Thats why the i made such a deep impression on you.
It is only natural that at the moment one is slapped, otention would be at its highest point.
This is the reason man ever fet the moments of insult, the moments of pain, the moments of happiness.
These are all intense moments.
In these moments he is so filled with awarehat their memory pervades his entire sciousness, while the ordinary run-of-the-mill happenings are fotten by him.
How are we to uand what attention is, what meditation is? Because it is an experieo uand it is a bit difficult.
If I were to stick a pin in your body what would happen inside? All your attention would at once begin to rush to the point where the pin had stuck you.
All of a sudden that point in the body would bee signifit.
One should say, rather, your whole being would verge upon it.
At that moment you would only remain aware of that part of the body where the pin was hurting.
So what really did occur in your body? Even without the pin that part of your body was there, but you were not aware of it, not izant of it; you didnt even know such a part existed.
And then, suddenly, the pain caused by the pied a crisis and your whole attention rushed to where the pin was hurting.
What is it that rushed towards that point? What happened inside you? How are things different now? What is it that was not present at that point a moment ago, but now is? It is the sciousness, the awareness, that was absent from this point a moment ago.
Its absence made you so oblivious to that part of the body that whether it existed or not was all the same.
You had no knowledge of it; it made little difference whether it was there or not.
Suddenly you became aware that part also exists in your body.
Suddenly it makes a lot of difference whether it exists or not.
Now its existential awareness bees apparent to you.
So, attention means awareness.
There be two kinds of attention.
This also o be uood, because it will be useful in following your question.
There are two kinds of attention.
One, we may call tration.
In order to uand what tration is, it is necessary to know that when your attention is tered on one point, you bee oblivious to all other points.
As I mentioned earlier, if a pin is thrust into your body, your eention will go to the point where the pin is hurting.
You will bee unaware of the rest of the body.
In fact, a sick person remains aware only of those parts of his body which are not well.
He begins to live only in and around the afflicted parts of his body; the rest of the body does for him any more.
One who suffers from a headache bees identified with the head alohe rest of his body ceases to be.
One whose stomach hurts, his whole attentioers only oomach.
If a thorn pricks your foot, the foot bees everything.
This is tration of attention.
This is how y all your sciouso one point.
Wheire sciousness verges on one point as there, obviously all other points bee ed, disappear into darkness.
As I pointed out earlier, when someones house is on fire, he bees oblivious to everything but the fire.
He only knows his house is on fire; everything else is dead as far as he is ed.
The only thing he remains aware of is that his house is on fire.
He bees unscious towards the rest of the world.
So, tration is one form of attention.
In tration you bee tered on one point while remaining unscious of the infinite number of other areas.
Hence, although tration is the density of attention, at the same time it is the expansion of unsciousoo.
Both things happen simultaneously.
The other form of attention is awareness -- not tration.
Awareness means attention which is not tered on any particular point.
This is a little difficult to uand, because we only know the poitention.
A man knows about the thorn hurting his foot, the headache, the house on fire, the taking of an examination and so on, so we know attention directed towards a particular point; we know what tration is.
But there is oher kind of attention which is not focused on a given point.
As long as a mans attention is narrowed down to a particular point, he will be unscious of the remaining areas.
If we believe God is, then he must indeed be an awakened God, fully aware.
But what would he be aware of? And should there be a point of which he is aware, then he would obviously have to be unscious of all the rest.
So there t be any object, aer of awareness as far as God is ed.
Its an awareness without a ter.
In such a case, awareness bees infinite, all pervading.
This all-pervading awareness is the ultimate state, the highest possible.
Thats why, when we define God as sat-chit-anand, the word chit means this state of being.
Ordinarily, people take chit to meaana, sciousness, which is not really its meaning, because sciousness is always about something.
If you say, "I am scious," then it be asked, "scious about what?" Chit means objectless sciousness.
It is not sciousness aimed at something, it is just a pure state of being scious.
sciousness will always be object-tered, while the state of being scious is c<u>９9lib?</u>entrifugal, radiating into infinity.
It does not rest on anything; it does not stop at anything, it pervades all over.
In this state, which extends to infinity, there is no single point where unsciousness gain a foothold.
This is the ultimate state.
We may call it the state of total awareness.
There is a state exactly opposite to this which we call sushupti, the state of total, dreamless sleep.
And this o be uood too.
In tration, ones sciousness is tered on one object, unscious of the rest.
Awareness is tered on one point only.
Iate of total awareness, however, there is no particular point to be aware of -- the awareness is all-permeating.
One should say there is just awareness, not an awareness of a particular object.
Iate of total awarehe object disappears, only the subject remains.
Only the knower remains; that which is to be known remains no more.
The knower alone remains.
The energy to know spreads into infinity and no longer is there anythio know.
There is always a price for whatsoever knowledge one wishes to attain.
If you want to know<big>藏书网</big> about something, you will have to be ignorant of something else.
Remember, it is with ignorahat one alays the price of knowing.
As man goes on being knowledgeable of many things, he has to remain equally ignorant of many others.
Now, for example, a stist is quite a knowledgeable person, but if he is a chemist he will know nothing about physics, if he is a mathemati he will know nothing about chemistry.
If he wants to know a great deal about mathematics, he will have to be tent with not knowing about many other things.
He will have to make this choice.
If you want to be an expert in a particular field, you will have to have the ce to remain ignorant about many other things.
Thats why Mahavira and Buddha were not men of knowledge in this sense.
They did not have any specialized knowledge; they were not experts in any field.
Hence, on the one hand we say Mahavira was omnist, but the fact is he didnt even know how to fix a puncture in a bicycle tire.
He was not a specialist.
One who o know how to fix a puncture in a bicycle tire will have to keep himself from knowing about many other things.
His sciousness will have to bee object-tered and allow many things to be left in the dark.
The very meaning of sce is knowing more and more about less and less.
As the amount of knowledge grows, the area of knowledge bees more and more narrow.
Finally, only one point remains to be known and the rest of the areas are filled with ignorance.
Thats the reason a stist who may be able to produce a hydrogen bomb be easily fooled by an ordinary shopkeeper -- because whatsoever he knows is in such a limited sphere that he knows nothing about the rest.
About the rest he is as dull as a villager, even worse.
A villager knows about a good many things; he is not a specialist.
Thats why an old-fashioned man knows about many things while a modern man does not.
The modern man has had to make a choice.
In order to know a lot about ohing he has had to give up knowing about many other things.
tration is bound to end up like this.
One particular object will gain importance while all remaining objects will fall into .
Yet another result of tration is that the more an object grows in importahe more the one who knows about it bees sedary.
A stist knows a great deal, but he has no knowledge of the knower, of the knowing element within himself.
He bees object-tered.
If you ask him about an object he will explain it to you, but if you ask him to say something about himself, you will often times find him at a loss.
There is an iing episode in the life of Edison, who made a thousand discoveries.
Perhaps no one else has made so many discoveries.
In the first world war, when rationing was introduced in America, Edison had t his ration card to the shop and stand in the queue as well.
When his homas Edison, was called out, he looked around with indifference, as if someone elses name was being called.
Somebody in the queue happenize him.
He came up to him and said.
"Pardon me, I have seen your photograph in the neers.
You yourself seem to be Edison.
"
Edison gave a start.
He thahe man for reminding him who he was.
He said, "In the last thirty years I have had little free time or leisure to meet myself.
" For thirty years this man had been so busy in his laboratory that he had no time for himself.
He was su important figure that in thirty years no one had ever called him by his given name.
Obviously, he had fotten it.
tration happens when the arrow of sciousness strikes an object with great iy.
With that, however, the entire world, including ones own self, falls into darkness.
Iimate state that I am speaking to you about the particular object will have vanished; instead, everything will be illuminated, including yourself, including that which you are.
It will be an unfocused light.
Instead of calling it light, we should rather call it luminosity.
Light and luminosity are not synonymous; there is a slight distin betweewo.
pears with the sunrise is light, but when the night is past and the sun is yet to rise, what then appears is luminosity.
It is unfocused, uered, just luminosity.
So, God is just luminosity -- or, luminosity is the state of ultimate awakening.
Exactly opposite to this is the state of darkness or of dreamless sleep.
Lets put it this way.
Iate of total awareness her the subjeor the object remains.
What remains is just infinite luminosity.
In a manner of speaking, this luminosity is a state of knowing all, but in another se is a state of knowing nothing at all.
It is all-knowing, because now nothing remains that falls outside the radius of its light.
And it knows nothing, because now there is nothi whieeds to be known.
If oempts to know something in particular, many other things will obviously be left unknown.
So this is not the kind of knowledge that is acquired by a stist, it is knowledge in the sense a poet is known to have it.
The sed on state of awareness is that of tration, where you know about ohing and fet about all the rest, including yourself.
And there is yet aate whies before this.
It is the primary state in which you know her the objeor yourself.
It is the state of total darkness.
her do you know about anything -- it is not even tration; nor do you know about everything -- it is not even awareness.
Nor do you know yourself.
The knowing is still in the embryo state.
It is still in seed form; it is still unma, hidden in the roots.
So there is sushupti, the state of dreamless sleep, and there is the state of total awareness.
Iween these infinite points of attention we oscillate.
When you are aware in the day, the pendulum of your attention swings a little towards awareness.
At night, when you are asleep, it swings towards sushupti.
The fact is, in sleep we e o matter.
When we are awake we e closer to the divine, just a little closer.
We swing tod.
Should we tio lean towards awareness like this, should this journey tihen a moment es when even in sleep you are not really pletely asleep.
Then you begin to remain aware even in your sleep.
Then sleep bees merely a physical relaxation, not a state of spiritual darkness.
Then you sleep and also remain aware of the fact that you are asleep.
You turn in your sleep and know that you are doing so.
Then the current of awareness keeps flowing within.
The reverse happens too.
For example, a man falls into a a or bees unscious ets drunk.
In all these cases the man is unaware of what is going on outside or inside himself.
The knower, as well as that which is to be known, are both lost, lost in darkness.
Similarly, both disappear iate of ultimate sciousness as well, but they disappear in infinite light.
If you uand what I am saying, then, in brief, it means that the journey of attentioends from total sleep to total awareness.
Iween, it is divided at many levels.
A tree knows something too.
For a long time we had no knowledge of this fact.
When some people brought this to our attention for the first time, it seemed as if they were talking fi; what they said sounded like a story from the Puranas.
But now, even stists are providing proof that a tree knows as well, that a tree listens too.
The bark of some trees also has eyes -- not like ours of course, but heless, trees have the ability to see, to listen, to experience.
Retly, I was reading about some experiments ducted at the de la Warr Laboratory of Oxford Uy.
Through stific means they have brought certain astonishing experieo our attention.
One of the most amazing experiences was that seeds from one packet were divided equally and sown in two separate flower pots.
Both pots were given equal care and attention.
Then a holy man, a monk, was asked to pray before one of the two pots so its seeds should sprout early, so they should bear flowers and fruit and attain to their ultimate potential.
The same prayer was not made before the sed pot.
To everyones great surprise the seeds iher pot sprouted very late in spite of the fact that all arras for both pots were the same; there was not the slightest difference.
The gardeners were her informed of the differeniven any instrus to treat them differently.
heless, the pot which had been prayed over looked very distinguished.
The seeds in it grew early, bore flowers and fruit early.
All its seeds sprouted, while all the seeds of the other pot did not.
Whatever seeds grew in the sed pot took the normal time; their growth was slower.
And there was a marked differen the quality of flowers and fruit.
This experiment and many others were ducted in this laboratory, and to everyones surprise it was felt that plants are able to sense prayer too, that they are receptive to prayer too.
An even more surprising experiment took place, one which caused great excitement.
The holy man who was asked to pray was a Christian and he wore a cross around his neck.
As he prayed for a particular seed with his eyes closed and his arms raised, the seed hotographed.
And the photograph turned out to be spectacular, far beyond anyones prehension.
In the photograph of that seed the holy mans cross and raised arms were clearly visible.
What does this mean? There are very wide implications.
I believe these experiments will prove much more useful to mankind than the discovery of atomiergy.
The seed is accepting, the seed is receiving something too.
The seed has a sciousoo.
Indeed, it is asleep.
pared to man it looks even more asleep.
Ahere is a certain awareness in its state of sleep.
A rock looks even more asleep, but even its state of sleep tains a kind of awareness.
Not all rocks are absolutely rocks, and not all rocks are equally asleep.
Rocks have their respective individuality too.
It was the search for their respective singularity that led to the discovery of precious stones; otherwise they would not have been found.
Not just any stone is taken to be a precious stone.
Also, dont be uhe wrong impression, normally created by applying the law of eics, that certain things bee valuable because of their rarity.
This is not how these stones are valued.
It is as if a buddha is standing somewhere and an ordinary man stands near him.
If someone from Mars were to land oh and e across these two men, how would he differentiate between them? He her knows our language nor our culture nor our manners.
He will only judge by appearances.
If the Martiao spend an hour or so watg these two men, would he ever observe any distin betweewo? Returning to his pla, he would not be wrong if he told his fellow Martians he had seen two people who looked very much alike.
He had seen them both breathing, walking, talking, resting -- and all alike.
So when we see two pieces of stone, our uanding is similar because we are unaware of their individualities.
Precious stones are a great discovery of man.
Those who were able to read the stones ih, able to go deep in their research, to ect with them, found out that.
even with stohere are some which are awake.
Certain stones are more awake; certain others, more asleep.
People also came to know that certain stones are awake in a particular dire and therefore be used only for particular reasons.
Some unpreted events will start taking pla your life if you carry certain kinds of stones, make a charm of them, wear them in a necklaount one in y -- because such stones have their own lives too.
With the ownership of a stone of that kind is will iably occur, because now you are in a symbiotic relationship with the stone.
Without it suts would not happen.
There are stones which have a long history of misfortune.
Whosoever possessed such a stone found himself in difficulty, found it hard to get out of it.
And whehe stone passed to someone else, he got into trouble too.
There are stones which have a history of hundreds of years, and some of thousands of years, showing that whosoever possessed them was besieged by trouble.
These stones are still very much alive, still doing their job; they will cause trouble to anyone who possesses them.
Then there are other stohat have brought good fortuo those who owhem, and became more and more costly.
So stones have their own individuality, as do plants.
In this world everything has individuality, and this individuality depends on the degree to which a thing is awake or asleep.
In other words, to what extent the attention is active or inactive determihe individuality of a particular thing.
You look at it this way too: a dynamic attention means awareness, while a passive attention means sleep, unsciousness.
The ultimate passivity of attention is matter, the ultimate dynamism of attention is God.
Question 2
YOU HAVE DESCRIBED TWO STATES, ONE OF PLETE UNSCIOUSNESS AND THE OTHER OF ABSOLUTE AWARENESS.
ORAVELS FROM PLETE UNSCIOUSO ABSOLUTE AWARENESS.
THE QUESTION IS, WHERE DO WE REACH AFTER ATTAINING THE STATE OF ABSOLUTE AWARENESS? ALSO, FROM WHICH POINT DOES THE PLETE UNSCIOUSNESS BEGIN, AND WHERE DOES IT E FROM?
Actually, as soon as we use the words absolute or whole we o take a few ditions that go with it into at.
For insta is wrong to ask "Where does wholeness end?" because wholeness means that which ever e to an end.
Should it ever end somewhere it will not be whole.
It will remain fi that very point; right there it will cease to be whole.
When we ask, "From where does wholeness begin?" we are asking a wrong question, because the whole means that which has no beginning.
If it has a beginning then it ot be whole.
The whole, the absolute is beginningless and endless.
It her has a beginning before nor an end afterwards.
If there were ends on any side it would not be the whole.
Therefore, we t ask any questions about the beginning or the end of the absolute.
If one o ask a question at all, then one should only ask before he es to the question, "What is whole?" As such, the very meaning of whole is something about which all questions are meaningless.
Questions occur in our minds: "Where did this unsciousness e from? Why did it e? When did it e? Where will it end? Why will it end? When will it end? Where ience is this state of sciousness located? And where ience could the state of plete unsciousness be?" It is natural that questions such as these should arise.
The questions are perfectly sistent, yet totally meaningless.
One should not be uhe illusion that just because a thing is sistent it is also meaningful.
A thing be sistent a meaningless.
So the questions are absolutely perti but the answers will have no meaning, will solve nothing.
Whatsoever ahere may be only give rise to more questions of this nature.
So what do I io tell you?
There are certaiions you never ask a stist.
Why not show the same attitude towards a religious man? There are certain things a stist is never asked to explain.
Why are they asked of a religious man? A stist refuses to answer such questions, while the silly religious man makes the mistake of answering them.
All religions make this error.
By answering such questions -- questions which ot be answered in the first place -- they get themselves into trouble.
For example, if you ask a stist, "Why is a tree green?" he will answer, "Because the tree tains chlorophyll.
" And if you ask, "Why does the tree tain chlorophyll?" the stist will disregard the question -- it is a fact; thats the way it is.
He will point out, "The tree is green because it tains chlorophyll!" If you tio ask, "Why t the tree be without chlorophyll?" the stist will state frankly, "I am not the creator, and there is no ao this question!"
In this way, sce escapes falling into stupidities.
It leaves everything to the facts.
"This is how it is; these are the facts.
" The stist says, "When we mix hydrogen with oxygen, water is created.
" No one goes on asking him, "Why is it so? Why is water created by mixing hydrogen and oxygen?" He will simply make it clear.
"The questio arise," he will say.
"We know this much, that by mixing both, water is created; by not mixing them, water is not created.
This is a fact.
Beyond this, fi begins.
"
If we could give an explanation as to why sud-such a thing happens, then I would like to say that, in this world, there is unsciousness and there is awareness.
This is a fad as yet no way has been found to go beyond them.
And I dont think a way ever be found.
This is the ultimate fact.
There is darkness at one end and light at the other.
Eventually darkness disappears into infinity, and one never knows where it began, where its point of initiation was.
Light eventually disappears into infinity too, and one never knows the point of its disappearance.
And we are always in the middle; we only see a short distan either dire.
As we look backward we find darkness increasing, being more and more dense.
As we look forward we find darkness decreasing and light growing, being increasingly dense.
But we never see either the end of darkness or of light.
Nor do we see any beginning of darkness, nor any termination of light.
This is how we are situated -- in the middle.
No matter how far we look, this is all we see.
Even the most farsighted man has not seen farther than this.
What causes the difficulty? When we form a question, some fool turns up to a.
Once a question is formulated, someone or other is bound to e up with an answer for it.
This is how philosophy has e about.
Philosophy is made of foolish ao foolish questions.
And the questions remain, right where they always were.
There be different ao each question, because easwer reflects an individuals perception.
In ao the question, "Who created man?" someone say, "God created man.
" But so what? We ask, "Why did God create man? Why did he create him the way he did? Why did God create man in the first place?" This would leave the matter right where it is.
Finally one might say, "Well, this is the way he does it!"
If this is the answer we are going to get ultimately
Someone might say, "It is all maya; it is beyond prehension.
" On the one hand this man is saying that everything is beyond prehension, that it is all an illusion, maya; however, when he is talking about everything being an illusion, he is saying something which is actually ing out of his uanding.
He appears to have fully uood that everything is maya, that everything is beyond prehension.
If everything is indeed beyond prehension, then he o shut up; then he need not say all is maya.
How there be an answer if it is really beyond prehension? So one must keep quiet; there is o answer.
Some people say God created man so man attain God.
What foolishness! If this were really true then why didnt he create man as a god in the first place? Where was the o gh all this trouble? Someone else declares, "This whole thing goes on to fulfill the unfinished karmas of previous lives.
" But then it be asked, "There must have been a first life without any other life preg it.
Then what fruits were we reaping in that initial birth?" Obviously it was without cause.
In my view, no philosophy has ever provided any ao the ultimate questions.
All philosophies are fually disho.
But the dishoy is hidden very deep.
And ohis basic dishoy escapes your notice, the remaining structure will look very ving; you wont find any difficulty.
Once you have accepted a lie -- the first lie -- all the following lies will appear as truths.
Once a person believes that God is the creator, the matter ends right there.
But how do we know God is the creator? If this question arises even o means the matter has remained right where it is -- it has her begun nor ended.
In my view, religion should also be perceived as a sce.
Some time before his death Einstein was asked, "How do you differentiate between a stist and a philosopher?" Einstein replied, "I call that man a stist who, when asked one hundred questions, answers one and shows his ignorance about the remaining y-nine.
And about the one he answers, he will make clear that it is all that is known at this point.
It may ge with a new discovery iure.
It is not the final statement.
"
Sever makes any final statement.
Thats why theres a kind of hoy in sce.
So Einstein said, "If you ask a philosopher a hundred questions, he will give one hundred and fifty answers.
He will sider easwer absolute, as if no ge ever occur.
" Whatsoever a philosopher says is to be taken as clusive; anyone doubting it suffer the fires of hell.
For a philosopher, his theory is irrefutable.
The way I look at it, we should be able to create minds that are both stifid religious at the same time.
This is my approach.
Although I talk all along ion, my outlook is always stific.
Therefore, I have no ao the ultimate questions; there ot be any.
If an answer does e, then know well the question is no lohe ultimate question -- it must be a question somewhere iween, a question for which the answer has been found.
The matter will be argued, carried further.
The ultimate question is one which remains in spite of all answers.
The ultimate question means that no matter how many questions are raised, after you are through answering them, you will find the same question awaiting you, the question mark still staring you in the face.
You may just succeed in pushing the question a little further back -- thats all.
You may have seen a Japanese doll.
No matter how you toss it, it always stands upright.
The doll is called Daruma.
It is named after an Indian mystic, Bodhidharma.
From India, Bodhidharma went to a, and in Japahe name Bodhidharma became Daruma, and thats how the doll came to be known as the Daruma doll.
No matter what anyone did to Bodhidharma, he remained as he was.
This doll is modeled after him.
Regardless of how you throw it, toss it, it sta, in place.
The ultimate questions are like the Daruma doll.
like Bodhidharma.
Do what you will, they stay right where they are.
At the most, depending on how and where you throw them, their positions may ge.
You may keep tossing the doll for the rest of your life: you will be tired, not the doll.
It will keep standing upright, in place.
These are ultimate questions.
When we ask what existed before the absolute, the whole, and what exists beyond, the question bees meaningless.
I tell you only this much: darkness, unsciousness extends to the rear, while there is an expanse of light, of sciousness ahead of us.
I tell you this also: as darkness decreases, bliss increases.
And I mention this as well: with the increase in darkness, misery grows.
These are facts.
If you wish to isery you go back towards darkness and unsciousness.
If you wish to choose bliss, you move ahead towards light, towards the ultimate light.
And if you wish for her, you stand iween and indulge in thinking about what was before and what is ahead.
Question 3
AT THE DWARKA MEDITATION CAMP YOU SAID MEDITATION AND SAMADHI STITUTE A VOLUNTARY, SCIOUS ENTERING INTO DEATH, AND IN DOING SO THE DELUSION OF DEATH DISAPPEARS.
NOW THE QUESTION IS, WHO IS DELUDED? IS IT THE BODY OR IS IT THE SCIOUSNESS? SIHE BODY IS MERELY A MEICAL DEVICE, IT OT EXPERIENCE SUCH DELUSION.
AND THERE IS NO QUESTION OF SCIOUSNESS BEING DELUDED.
THEN WHAT IS THE CAUSE, THE BASIS OF THIS DELUSION?
The awareness of death
If a man die iate of sciousness, for him death exists no more.
In other words, if a man mao remain scious at the time of death, he finds he never died at all: death appears just a delusion to him.
Death proving to be a delusion does not mean, however, that death remains in some form as a delusion.
Rather, when a person dies fully scious, he finds there is h at all.
Theh bees a falsehood.
But it is natural for you to ask, "Who is deluded?" You are right in saying it ot be the body, because how the body feel delusion? It ot be the soul either, because the soul never dies.
Then who goes through the delusion? It is of course, her the soul nor the body.
As a matter of fact, the individual never feels the delusion of death, the illusion of death is a social phenomenon.
This o be uood in a little detail.
You see a man dying, and then you think he is dead.
Since you are not dead you have nht to think this way.
It is very foolish on your part to clude that the man is dead.
All you ought to say is, "I am not able to determine whether he is the same person in the way I knew him before.
" To say anything more than this is dangerous, is crossing the limits of propriety.
All one ought to say is, "Up to yesterday the man was talking, now he no loalks.
Before he used to walk, now he walks no more.
Up to yesterday, what I had uood as his life exists no more.
The life he lived up to yesterday is no more.
If there is any life beyond that, then so be it; if there isnt, thehat as it may.
" But to say "The man is dead" is going a little too far; it is going beyond limits.
One ought to simply say, "The man is no longer alive.
" As one knew someoo have life, he no longer has it.
This much of a ive statement is fihat what we knew as his life -- his fighting, his loving, his eating, his drinking -- is no more, but to say the man is dead is making a very positive assertion.
We are not just saying whatsoever resent in the mas no more, we are saying something has happened over and above this -- the man is dead.
We are saying the phenomenon of death has also occurred.
It might be fine if we said that the things that were happening around this man before are no longer happening.
We are not only saying that, but also that a new phenomenon has been added: the man is dead too.
We who are not dead, we who have no knowledge of death, crowd around the person and pronounce him dead.
The crowd determihe mah without even asking him, without eveing him vouch for it! It is like a one-party decision in court; the other side is absent.
The poor fellow has not even had a ce to say whether he is indeed dead or not.
Do you follow what I meah is a social illusion.
It is not that mans illusion; his illusion is altogether different.
His illusion is not of dying.
His illusion is how he expeain awake at the moment of death when he has lived all his life iate of sleep? It is obvious.
How one who is used to spending his whole day in a state of sleep, stay awake when he is actually asleep? This means that one who is already asleep even when he is awake, will most certainly be fast asleep in his sleep.
How one who ot see in the bright daylight see in the darkness of night?
Do you suppose one who failed to see what life is like even in his wakeful state, will be able to see what death is? In fact, as soon as life slips through his hands, at that moment he will be lost in deep sleep.
The fact of the matter is that, outwardly, we feel he is dead, but this is a social determination, which is wrong.
Here the phenomenon of death is beiermined by those who are not qualified.
No one in the crowd is a right witness because no one really saw the person dying.
No one has ever seen a person dying! Never has an act of dying been witnessed by anyone.
></a>All we have known is that until a given moment a person was alive, and then he was no longer alive.
Thats it; beyond this there is a wall.
So far, no one has ever seen the phenomenon of death.
Actually, the problem is that ohings are accepted for a long time, we stop thinking them over.
For example, you will immediately take exception if I say that no man has ever seen light.
But I maintain that no one has ever seen light.
We have, of course, seen lighted objects, but never light itself.
We say there is light in this room because the wall is visible, because you are visible.
An object shines in the light, but light itself is never seen.
Light is always an unknown source.
Certain things shine in it, and because of that we say there is light.
When objects do not shine we say there is darkness.
We have never seen darkness either.
Obviously, how could one who has never seen light have ever seen darkness? If light were visible one could uand, but how darkness be seen?
Darkness simply means, now nothing is visible.
The deeper meaning of darkness is, now nothing is visible to us.
It would be better to say.
"We ot see anything.
" This would be a statement of fact.
But to say "There is darkness" is absolutely wrong.
This way, we are turning darkness into an object.
So the right thing to say about darkness is, "I ot see anything.
" However, just because I am uo see anything does not mean there is darkness.
Saying "I t see anything" means the source that made everything shine has bee dull.
Now, sihings are not visible, it is therefore dark.
A person who has, all along, taken his life to be nothing but eating, drinking, sleeping, moving about, quarreling, loving, making friends, creatiy, all of a sudden, at the moment of death, even he finds life slipping away through his fingers.
What he had uood as life was not life at all.
They were just acts, visible in the light of life.
Just as objects are seen in the presence of light, the person, in the same way, had seeain things when the light within him resent.
He had eaten food, made friends, created enmity, built homes, earned money, risen to high position -- all these were things seen in the light of life.
Now, at the moment of death, he finds them slipping away.
So now the person thinks he is gone, he is dying, that life is lost forever.
He has seen other people dying before and the social illusion that man dies is stu his mind as well.
So he feels he is dying.
His clusion is also part of that social illusion.
He es to feel he is dying just as others before him have died.
He sees himself surrounded by his loved ones, his family aives g bitterly.
Now his illusion begins to bee firmed.
All this creates a hypnotic effe him.
All these people
.
the situation is just ideal -- the doctor at his side, the oxygen ready, the whole atmosphere of the house ged, people in tears.
Now the man seems certain of his death.
The social illusion that he is dying grips his mind.
His friends aives around him begin to cast a hypnotic spell on the man that he is just about to die.
Someone feels his pulse.
Someone else recites the Bhagavadgita or whispers the namokar mantra in his ear.
All of them thhly vihe man he is about to die -- that whatsoever has been done before with a dying man, they are now doing the same with him.
This is social hypnotism.
The man is now fully vinced he is about to die, that he is dying, that he is gone.
This hypnosis of death will cause him to bee unscious, frightened, horrified; it will make him shrink, feeling "I am about to die, I am about to die.
What shall I do?" Overe with fear he will shut his eyes, and in that state of fear he will bee unscious.
In fact, falling unscious is a device we use against things we are afraid of.
You have a stomach ache, for example, and if the pain bees unbearable you will fall unscious.
That is just a tri your part to switch off your mind, tet the pain.
When the pain is too much, falling unscious is a mental trick -- you dont want to suffer the pain any longer.
When the pai go away, the only other alternative is to switch off ones mind.
Ourns off so one remains unaware of the pain.
So, falling <q></q>unscious is our unique way of dealing with unbearable pain.
Remember, however, there is nothing like unbearable pain: you only feel pain as long as it is bearable.
As soon as the pain reaches the point of being unbearable, yone; hence you never feel unbearable pain.
Never believe a word of it if someone says he is suffering from unbearable pain, because the person talking to you is still scious.
Had the pain been unbearable he would have been unscious.
The natural trick would have worked and he would have lost sciousness.
As soon as a person crosses the limit of endurance he falls unscious.
Even minor illnesses frighten us and we bee unscious -- what to say about the terrifying thought of death.
The very idea of death kills us.
We lose sciousness, and in that unscious state death occurs.
Hence, when I say death is an illusion I do not mean it is an illusion that happeher to the body or to the soul.
I call it a social illusion -- one which we cultivate in every child.
We indoate every child with the idea, "Yoing to die, and this is how death occurs.
" So by the time a child grows up he has learned all the symptoms of death, and when these symptoms apply to him he just closes his eyes and bees unscious.
He bees hypnotized.
trary to this is the teique of active meditation -- a teique of how to enter death sciously.
In Tibet this teique is known as bardo.
Just as people hynotize a man in his dying moment, similarly, people involved in Bardo give anti-hypnotic suggestions to a dying man.
In Bardo, people gather around a man in his dying moments and tell him, "You are not dying, because no one has ever died.
" They give him anti-hypnotic suggestions.
There will be no weeping, no wailing; nothing else will be done.
People will gather around him and a village priest or monk will e and say, "You are not dying, because no one has ever died.
You will depart relaxed and fully scious.
You will not die, because no one ever dies.
"
The person closes his eyes and the entire process is narrated to him: now his life-energy has left his legs, now it has left his hands, now he ot speak, and so on -- ahe man is told, he still is, he will still remain.
And all around him these suggestions are given.
The suggestions are simply anti-hypnotic.
That means, they are meant to make sure the person does not grab on to the social illusion that he is on the verge of dying.
In order to prevent him from doing that, people use Bardo as an antidote.
The day this world has a healthier attitude towards death, there will be no need for Bardo.
But we are a very uhy people; we live in a great illusion, and because of this illusioidote bees essential.
I believe there should be a wide application of Bardo in this try as well.
Whenever anyone dies, all his loved ones should make an attempt to shatter his illusion that he is dying.
If they could keep the person awake, if they could remind him at ead every point
Then the sciousness withdraws from the body, it does not leave all at once; all of the body does not die at the same time.
The sciousness shrinks inside and, bit by bit, leaves each part of the body.
Through various stages it withdraws, and all stages of this tra be reted to the dying man as a means of keeping him scious.
There be many ways of keeping a dying person awake.
For example, special kinds of aromas help a person stay scious, just as certain kinds of aromas, odors, make a person unscious.
Inse and benzoin were discovered mainly because they help to keep one awake.
A kind of musi be created around a person to make him stay scious.
And there be music which make a person fall asleep.
You e ausic which put you to sleep -- there be music which keep you awake as well! Certain words, certain mantras be uttered which help the person stay awake and not go to sleep.
Certain parts of a dying mans body be tapped in order to stop him from falling asleep and keep his sciousness alive.
He be made to sit in a certain posture to prevent him from falling asleep, to let him stay scious.
A Zen master was dying.
He gathered other monks around him and said, "I want to ask you something.
My time has e, but I feel there is no use dying the way everyone dies.
Many have died like that before.
Its no fun.
My question is: have you ever seen anyone die walking?"
The monks replied, "We havent seen anyone do it, but we have heard of a certain mystic who died walking.
"
The master said, "All right, fet it! Let me ask you this: have you seen any mystic dying while standing on his head?"
The people around him said, "We never ceived or dreamed of such a thing, let alone saw someone dying like that.
"
"All right then," said the master, "thats the way it will be.
" He stood on his head and died.
The crowd around the master became very scared.
The sight of an unknown corpse is frightening enough, but t down a corpse standing on its head was even more scary.
The master was a dangerous man.
The way he had positioned himself
Dead, no one dared bring him down and lay him on a bier.
Then someone suggested calling his elder sister, a nun living in a monastery nearby.
She was known to have set him right whenever he was mischievous as a young boy.
The sister roached and made aware of the whole situation.
She became very annoyed.
She said, "He has always been mischievous like that.
He hasnt given up his habits even in his old age.
So even while dying he couldnt refrain from playing a trick!" The y-year-old woman grabbed her staff and came.
Strikiaff hard on the ground, she exclaimed, "Now stop this naughtiness! If you have to die, die properly.
"
The master quickly came down and laughed.
"I was just having fun," he said.
"I was curious to see what these people were going to do.
Now I shall lie down and die in the ventional way.
" So he promptly lay down and died.
His sister walked away.
"Now, thats more like it," she said.
"Dispose of him.
" She didnt look back.
"There is a way of doing things," she said.
"Whatsoever you do, do it properly.
"
So our illusion of death is a social illusion.
The illusion be removed.
There is a teique to remove it; there is a systematic way to get rid of it.
If no one else removes it, then anyone who has practiced even a little meditation e out of it himself at the time of death.
If you have even had a little experieneditation: if you have even had a glimpse of the truth that you are separate from your body; if the feeling of disidentification with the body should even for a moment ever go deep within you, you wont be unscious at the time of death.
In fact, by then your state of unsciousness would already be broken.
You would be able to die knowingly.
To be able to die knowingly is a tradi in terms.
No one ever die knowingly, sciously, because he remains aware all the time that he is not dying, that something is dying in him but he is not.
He keeps watg this separation and ultimately finds that his body is lying away from him, at a distance.
Theh turns out to be merely a separation; it amounts to the breaking of a e.
It is as if I were to step out of this house, and the members of this household, unaware of the world outside these walls, were to e to the door and bid me a tearful goodbye, feeling that the man they had e to say goodbye to had died.
The separation of the body and the sciousness is death.
Because there is this separation, it is meanio call it death -- it is merely a loosening, a breaking of a e.
It is nothing more than ging clothes.
So, one who dies with awareness never really dies, hehe question of death never arises for him.
He wont even call death an illusion.
He wont even say who dies and who does not die.
He will simply state that what we called life up to yesterday was merely an association.
That association has broken.
Now a new life has begun which, in the former sense, is not an association.
Perhaps it is a new e, a new journey.
Do you now follow what I mean when I say death proves to be an illusion for one who dies with awareness? Illusion meah never was.
It was just a social belief created by those who did not know how to die, who were not dead, who had no knowledge of death.
And this belief has prevailed siernity, and will tio exist iure, because those who are not dead will forever pass judgment on those who are.
The dead never return with news.
The truth is that a meditative person, one who may have made a little headway iation, does not realize for a long time that he is dead.
He sees people around him and wonders why they are weeping.
The arras for taking his body for cremation, or the arras to bury him, are signifit only to remind him he is no longer alive, that he is no lohe same person.
This is the reason why in this try we burn all bodies except those of sannyasins.
The sole reason for this was that, if the dead body were to be saved, the spirit might hover around it for several months uhe false idea that the body was not dead, and try to find ways to ree.
Saving the body meant creating a little impediment for its new journey.
The spirit would have to hang around unnecessarily; hehe of immediate cremation -- so, at the cremation ground, the spirit could see that the affair is all over, that what it had taken to be its body no longer exists.
The spirit realizes it no longer has any link with the body, that the bridge is broken.
The matter is over, the whole thing is finished.
So keep in mind that the system of burning the body is not just a way of vag the house.
There are other important reasons behind it.
Actually the departing person finds it hard to believe he is dead.
How he? He sees himself the same as before, without the slightest difference.
Only a sannyasins body was never cremated because a sannyasin already knows he is not the body.
Thats why we could build a tomb over his body.
This ossible because the sannyasin had already realized he and his body were separate.
So there is no difficulty in preserving the body of a realized sannyasin.
But the same is not true with regard to an ordinary man, for his spirit keep wandering a long time.
It still try to figure out a way to reehe body.
It is possible to die in a state of awareness only if you have lived with awareness.
If you have learned how to live sciously.
you will certainly be able to die sciously -- because dying is a phenomenon of life; it takes pla life.
In other words, death is the final happening of what you uand life to be.
It is not ahat occurs outside of life.
Ordinarily, we look upoh as something which happens outside of life, or as some kind of phenomenon opposite to life.
No, in fact, it is the final occurren the series of events which take pla life.
It is like a tree that bears fruit.
First the fruit is green, then it starts turning yellow.
It turns more and more yellow until finally it bees pletely yellow and falls from the tree.
That falling from the tree is not a outside of the yellowing process of the fruit; rather, it is the eventual fulfillment of the yellowing itself.
The falling of the fruit from the tree is not aer; rather it is the culmination of the yellowing, of the ripening it has already gohrough.
And what was going ohe fruit was green? It was getting ready to face the same fi.
And the same process was going o had not even blossomed on the branch as yet, when it was still hidden ihe branch.
Even in that state it reparing for the fi as well.
And what about wheree had not been maed yet, when it was still within the seed? The same preparation was going on then as well.
And how about when this seed had not even been born and was still hidden in some other tree? The same process was going on.
So the event of death is but a part of the of events belonging to the same phenomenon.
The fi is not the end, it is just a separation.
Oionship, one order, is replaced by another relationship, another order.
Question 4
HOW DO YOU SEE DEATH IION TO NIRVANA?
Nirvana means, firstly, that one has realized totally there is h at all.
Sedly, it means one has also e to know that, in what we call life, nothing is attained.
Nirvana means awareness of the reality that what we uand as death is h at all, and that what we mean by life is not really life.
Do you follow what I am saying? Ohing: nirvana means that when a person knows death he will find there is h.
There is another phenomenon ected with this, and that is that one who sees life with full awareness will find that what everyone calls life is not life either -- just as death is a social illusion, that is a social illusion too.
Nirvana means the total realization of both realities.
If you only know there is no such thing as death, then you will tio take new births.
Life, in a sense, will go on.
In that case you will have known only half the truth.
The desire to live again, to have another body, to take a new birth will remain.
The day you e to know the other half of the truth, the day you e to know the truth in its ey -- that life is not life, that death is not death -- that day you will have reached the point of urn.
Then there will be no question of returning.
Do you follow me?
It is like saying farewell to a person who has died.
We see the body as his final resting place.
As long as he was in the body the man believed it to be his final abode as well.
So, from the outside, he will kno the door to firy.
If the steps of this house are broken, if there is no remaining link, then he will kno the door of another house, of another body -- because life only be experienced by being in the body.
So he will eventually enter into one or another house, another body.
This is how, as soon as the person dies, his spirit bees restless and begins wandering in search of another body immediately -- because it has always identified life with having a physical body.
It may not have occurred to you, but your last thought as you fall asleep at night bees the first thought when you wake up in the m.
Watch it a little.
The last thought of the previous night will bee your first thought m -- seven hours later.
The thought will wait for you to wake up.
It will wait ht on the doorstep of your sciousness in order to begin work as soon as you get up in the m.
If you have had a fight with somebody the previous night, then the very first thought the m will be about that fight.
If you slept with a prayer on your lips, then you will wake up in the m with the same prayer in your thoughts.
What occurred last night will be the starting point of the m.
The last thought, the last wish, the last desire of a dying man will bee his first desire after death.
He will immediately set out on the journey.
If he felt at the moment of dying that his body was beiroyed -- that he is dying, that he is losing his body -- then his spirit will frantically run all over looking for a passage for an instant birth.
So whatever is your last desire at the dying moment -- the very last desire, remember -- that will be the essence of your entire life.
Actually, even the last thought befoing to sleep is the abstract of your whole days happenings, the sum total of the entire day, the digest of it.
For example, a man runs a shop all day long, and at night he makes a summary of his days ats and theo sleep.
Similarly, the last thought before falling asleep is the summary of your whole days at.
If a persoo note his last thought befoing to sleep at night -- the very last thought -- he would be able to write a wonderful autobiography, inparable.
That would be the short, abstract story of your life.
It would taihing that is essential, and all that is noial would drop away.
If you were to he very first thou<var>９9lib.</var>ght each m, looking at fifteen thoughts collected over fifteen days would enable you to know everything about your life -- what you were, what you are, what you want to be.
The last thought in your dying moments is the quintessence of your entire life of seventy, eighty years.
The same will bee your potential for the life.
That will be your asset to carry into the birth.
You may call it karma, you may call it desire or whatsoever else you will; you may call it samskara, ditioning, it wont make any difference.
Rather, you should call it a built-in program of your life, applicable iure.
It is amazing, but when you soarticular little seed, why does it only give rise to the banyahe seed must have had a built-in program, otherwise this would not be possible.
It must have tained a blueprint.
How else could it grow leaves and branches, and why would they all be of a banyahe seed must have been programmed.
In it, that little seed must have had the entire plan.
If one could draw a horoscope of that seed, one could forecast how many leaves it would grow, how much fruit it would bear, how many seeds it would tain, how tall and wide it would be, how long its branches would be, how many bullock carts could fi and shelter u.
All these things be looked into iail, because all of it is hidden in that tiny seed.
Its like the blueprint of a building; it tains all that it will be someday.
At the time of death we gather the essence of our entire life.
We save whatsoever we sider signifit, and whatsoever we find useless we drop.
A man who has earned one huhousand rupees and donated a thousand rupees to the building of a temple, will not remember the temple in his dying moments -- but the safe taining y-housand rupees, that he will undoubtedly remember.
In ones dying moments the signifit will be saved, the nonsignifit will be thrown away.
The essential and the noial will be sorted.
At the time of departure all that is worthless will drop, and that which is meaningful will be packed up, carried over by you.
That will bee the basis of your journey; it will instantly bee your built-in program.
Now you will set out on a new journey, and your future birth will take place acc to this future program.
It will be a new voyage, a new body.
It will be a whole new set-up.
And this happens as stifically as anything else.
So nirvana means that a person has e to know that death is not really death, nor is life, life.
Once he has e to the realization of both, there is no longer any built-in program left.
He lets go of the program.
He lets go of both the essential and the uial.
Now he is ready to go all by himself, like the lonely flight of a bird.
He goes all alone, leaving everything behind.
He leaves behind the treasure as well as the temple.
He clears himself of the debts he owes to others as well as the debts others owe to him.
He foes good deeds as well as bad deeds.
In fact, he foes everything.
Kabir says, "I leave behind my cloak intact.
" He says he wore it with such care that no ats were left pending.
He took it off so totally that he did not have to review, to reevaluate his uanding of the real and the unreal, of the essential and the uial.
Kabir says, "I wore my cloak with great care and then put it aside as I found it, without impairing it in any way.
" In such a situation there ot be any built-in program for the future, because the person leaves everything in its virgin state.
He will not choose anything; he will not save anything, he will transd all.
Without harb a single desire for anything, he will let go of whatsoever he has earned in life.
Thats why Kabir says, "O swan, take off on the flight alone.
" Now the swan, his soul, is leaving all alone, apanied by no one -- her friend nor foe, her good deeds nor bad deeds, her scriptures nor does -- nothing.
So nirvana means one who has known that her was life indeed life, nor was death really death.
And when we know all that is not, we begin to see that which is.
百度搜索 And Now, And Here 天涯 或 And Now, And Here 天涯在线书库 即可找到本书最新章节.