Chapter 12
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The Distance Makes the Difference3 August 1970 pm in Bombay, India
Question 1
IN ORDER FOR OO STAY AWAKE AT THE TIME OF DEATH, OR IN ORDER FOR OO SUCCESSFULLY EXPERIENCE A SCIOUS DEATH IATI<u>?</u>ON, PLEASE EXPLAIN IAIL HOW A SEEKER SHOULD WORK ON THE FOLLOWING: THE BODY SYSTEM, THE BREATHING SYSTEM, THE STATE OF BREATHING, THE STATE OF ONES BEING, CELIBACY, THE STATE OF ONES MIND.
Before one remain scious in the moment of death, first one o prepare to stay scious in pain and suffering.
Ordinarily, it is not possible for one who bees unscious even in misery to stay awake at the time of death.
One o uand what it means to bee unscious when in misery.
That will make one uand what it means to be scious in misery too.
Being unscious when one is in misery means one has identified oneself with the misery.
When you have a headache, you dont feel any distaween the headache and yourself; you dont remain just a distant watcher.
Rather, you feel as if you are in pain.
When you have a fever, it doesnt feel as though the body is hot, somewhere at a distance from you, instead you feel as if you have bee hot.
This is identification.
When your foot is hurt and wounded, you dont feel just the affected foot; rather, you feel as if you are hurt and wounded.
Basically, we dont feel any distaween ourselves and our bodies.
We live identified with the body.
When hunger arises, one doesnt say his body is hungry and he is aware if it, instead he says, "I am hungry.
" But this is not the truth.
The truth is, the body is hungry and he is aware of it.
He is simply the ter of awareness -- tinuously aware of whatsoever is happening.
If there is a thorn hurting the foot, he knows it; if there is a headache, he knows it; if the stomaeeds food, he knows it.
Man is sciousness, sciousness which is tinuously aware.
He is not the experiencer, he is simply the knower.
This is the reality.
But our state of mind is not that of the knower, it is that of the experiencer.
When the kurns into being the experiencer; when he knows not, but rather bees identified with the act itself; when he does not remain a witness watg from a distance, but rather bees the partit i, that is when the identification takes place.
Then he bees oh the act.
This identificatios him from waking up, because in order to be awake, in order to be aware, a certain distance is required, a space is needed.
I am able to see you only because there is a distaween you and me.
If the whole distaween you and me were to be removed, I wouldnt be able to see you.
I am able to see you because there is a space between us.
If this entire space were somehow eliminated, it wouldnt be possible for me to see you.
My eyes see you, because there is a spa between but my very eyes are uo see themselves.
Even if I o see my figure, I have to bee the other in a mirror; I have to be at a distance from myself -- only then I see my refle.
Seeing the refle in a mirror means my image is at a distance, and now it is visible to me.
All that a mirror does is present your image at a distance from you.
The intervening space thus created enables you to see.
In order to see, a distance is needed.
For one who lives identified with the body, or thinks he is the very body, there exists no distaween him and his body.
Ohere was a Mohammedan mystic called Farid.
A man came to see him one m and raised the same question you have asked me.
He said to Farid, "We have heard that when Jesus was crucified he did not cry out, scream, row miserable.
We have also heard that when Mansoors limbs were cut off, he was laughing.
How this be? This is impossible.
"
Farid didnt say a word.
He laughed, and from the uts offered to him by his devotees, he picked up ohat was lying nearby and gave it to the man.
Farid told him, "Take this ut.
It is not ripe yet.
Break it open, but make sure you keep the kernel from breaking.
Break the outer shell and brihe unbroken kernel.
"
The man said, "This is impossible.
Because the ut is uhere is no space between the kernel and the outer shell.
If I break open the shell the kernel will break too.
"
Farid said, "Fet this ut.
Here is another.
Take this o is dry.
There is a space between its kernel and the outer shell.
you assure me you break only the shell and leave the kernel intact?"
The man said, "Whats so difficult about this? I will break the shell and the kernel will be saved without any problem.
"
Farid said, "Tell me why the kernel will be saved.
"
The man replied, "Because the ut is dry, there exists a distaween the shell and the kernel.
"
Farid said, "Now dont bother about breaking open the ut; set it aside too.
Did you get your answer or not?"
The man said, "I was asking you something else, and you have gotteo talking about a ut.
My question is, why didnt Jesus cry out when he was crucified? Why didnt he weep? Why didnt Mansoor writhe in pain when his limbs were cut off? Why did he laugh? Why did he smile?"
Farid answered, "Because they were dry uts, while we are wet uts -- there is no other reason than this.
"
The reason why Jesus didnt weep when crucified, and Mansoor didnt suffer pain, but rather laughed and smiled, is because they had totally disidentified themselves with their bodies.
There was no other reason than this.
It was not really Jesus who was being crucified.
Jesus was watg his body being crucified from within, and this he did from the same distance as the people standing around him -- outside, away from his body.
No one from the crowd screamed, none of them cried, "Dont kill me!" Why? -- because there was a distaween them and Jesus body.
Within Jesus too, there was a distaween the element that watches and his body.
Hence Jesus also didnt cry out, "Dont kill me!"
Mansoors limbs were amputated and he kept laughing.
When someone asked him, "What makes you laugh when your limbs are being cut off7" Mansoor said, "I would have cried had you dismembered me, but it is not me you are chopping off; the one you are doing it to, you fools, is not me.
I laugh at you because you are taking this body to be Mansoors, just as you take the bodies you are in to be your authentic selves.
You will obviously suffer painful deaths.
What you are doing to me is nothing but a repetition of the mistakes you have itted iing your own selves.
Had you been aware you are separate from your bodies, you wouldnt have tried to cut my body.
You would have known that you and your body are two different things.
Then you would have realized that by cutting up the body, Mansoor is not cut.
"
The greatest preparation for enterih in a scious state is to first enter pain sciously, because death does not occur often, it does not e every day.
Death will e only once, whether you are prepared for it or not; there ot be a rehearsal for death.
But pain and misery e every day.
repare ourselves while going through pain and suffering -- and remember, if we do so while fag them, it will prove useful at the time of death.
Hence, seekers have always weled suffering.
There is no other reason for it.
It is not that suffering is a good thing.
The reason is simply that suffering provides the seeker with an opportunity for self-preparation, self-attai.
A seeker has always thanked God for the suffering he undergoes, for the simple reason that, in moments of misery, he gets a ce to disidentify himself from his body.
Remember, sadhana, spiritual discipline, is a little difficult to follow when you are happy.
It is easier when you are miserable, because in moments of happiness one doesnt want to have even the slightest feeling of separation from ones body.
When you are happy the body feels very dear to you; you dont feel like beiached from it for even an inch.
In moments of happiness we move closer to the body; he is not surprising that a seeker of happiness bees a materialist.
It is also not surprising if a person who is tinuously seeking happiness believes himself to be nothing more than his body, because in happy times he begins to exist like a green ut instead of a dry one -- the distaween him and his body tio narrow down.
In moments of pain one wishes he were not the body.
Ordinarily, a man who takes himself to be nothing but the body also wishes he were not the body when his head hurts or when his foot is injured or when his body aches.
He tends to agree with monks all over the world who go about saying that, "It would have beeer if I were not the body.
" Feeling the pain in his body, he bees eager to somehow find out he is not the body too.
Thats why I say to you, the moments of pain beoments of spiritual disciplihey be turned into moments of sadhana.
But ordinarily, what do we do?
Ordinarily, during times of suffering, we try tet pain.
If a man is in trouble, he will drink alcohol.
Someone is in pain and he will go and sit in a movie theater.
Somebody is miserable and he will try tet his misery with prayers aional songs.
These are all different ways and means tet pain.
Someone drinks; we say this is oactieone goes and watches a movie, this is another.
A persoo a cert; this is a third way of fetting pain.
Somebody goes to the temple and drowns himself in prayers and hymns; this is a fourth strategy.
There be a thousand and orategies -- they be religious, nious, or secular.
Thats not a big question.
Underh all this, the basic thing is that man wants tet his misery.
He is intetting misery.
A person who is out tet misery ever wake up to misery.
How we bee aware of somethiend tet? Only with an attitude of remembering we bee aware of something.
Hence, only by remembering pain we bee aware of it.
So whenever you are in misery, take it as an opportunity.
Be totally aware of it, and you will have a wonderful experience.
When you bee fully aware of your suffering, when you look at it face to faot esg the pain, you will have a glimpse of your separateness from it.
For example, you fell, were injured, hurt your foot.
Now try to locate the pain iry to pinpoint the exact spot where it hurts, and you will be astoo discover how you have mao spread the pain over a much wider area, away from the inal spot where its iy is not so much.
Man exaggerates his suffering.
He magnifies his misery, which is never actually that much.
The reason behind this is the same -- identification with the body.
Misery is like the flame of a lamp, but we experie as the dispersed light of the lamp.
Misery is like the flame, limited to a very small se of the body.
But we feel it like the very extended light of the lamp, c a much larger area.
Close your eyes and try to locate the pain from inside.
Remember too, we have always known the body from the outside, never from within.
Even if you know your body, it is known as others see it.
If you have seen your hand, it is always from the outside, but you feel your hand from within too.
It is as if oo remain tented with seeing his house only from the outside.
But there is an inner side to the house as well.
Pain occurs at the inner parts of the body.
The point where it hurts is located somewhere ierior of the body, but the pain spreads to the outer parts of the body.
It is like this: the flame of pain is located inside, while the light radiates outward.
Since we are used to seeing the body from outside, the pain appears to be very spread out.
It is a wonderful experierying to see the body from inside.
Close your eyes and try to feel and experience what the body is like from within.
The human body has an inner wall too; it has an inner c as well.
This body has an inner limit too.
That inner frontier certainly be experienced with closed eyes.
You have seen your hand lifting.
Now, close your eyes sometime and lift your hand, and you will experiehe hand rising from within.
From the outside you have known what it is to be hungry.
Close your eyes and experience hunger from within, and for the first time you will be able to feel it from inside.
As soon as you get hold of the pain from within, two things happen.
One is, the pain does not remain as widely spread as it inally seemed to be; it immediately ters on a small point.
And the more intensely you trate on this point, the more you will find it being smaller and smaller.
And an incredible thing happens.
When the point bees very small, you find to your amazement it appears and disappears, goes off and on.
Gaps begin to appear iween.
And finally, when it disappears, you wonder what happeo it.
Many times you miss it.
The point bees so small, that oftehe sciousries to locate it, it is not there.
Just as pain expands in a state of unsciousness, iate of awareness it narrows down and bees small.
In such a state of scioushe feeling will be that although you have gohrough so many painful experiences, although you have lived through so much suffering, yet, in fact, the miseries were not really that many.
We have suffered exaggerated pains.
The same is true with regard to happiness.
The happinesses we have been through were not as many as they seemed to be; we have ehem in an exaggerated form too.
If oo enjoy ones happiness with awareness, we would find that happiness bees very small too.
If we were to live through misery with the same kind of awareness, we would find it bees very narrow as well.
The greater the awareness, the narrower and smaller the pains and miseries.
They bee so small that, in a deeper sehey turn out to be meaningless.
In fact, their meaning lies in their expansion.
They seem to be enpassing oire life.
However, whehrough great awareness, they go on narrowing down, ultimately being so meanihey dont have anything to do with life as such.
The sed thing that will happen is, when you look at your misery very closely, a distance will be created between you and the misery.
In fact, whenever you look at a thing, immediately a distance is created between you and the thing itself.
Seeing causes the distance.
No matter what we look at, a distance immediately begins to take place.
If you look closely at your misery, you will find a separatioween the misery and you, because only that which is separate from you be seen.
Obviously, that which is inseparably oh you ot be seen.
One who is aware of his misery, one who is filled with sciousness, one who is full of remembrance, experiehe misery as somewhere else, and he is somewhere at a distance.
The day a man es to realize the differeween himself and the misery, as soon as he es to know his pain is happening somewhere at a distahe unsciousness caused by misery ceases to exist.
And once a person es to uand that the sufferings as well as the happinesses of the body occur elsewhere, that one is merely a knower of them, his identity with the body is severed.
Then he knows he is not the body.
This is the initial preparation.
Ohis preparation is plete, then it is easy to enter death with awareness.
Not only easy, but it will happen most certainly.
As such, we are not afraid of death really.
After all, even to be afraid of death, one o be familiar with death.
How we feel afraid of something we know not.hing about?
So, we have no fear of death really; rather, in our minds death exists in the form of a disease.
Thats the idea we have of it.
When even minor illnesses leave us in so much trouble -- the foot hurts and we suffer so much, the head hurts and we suffer so much -- what a torture it will be wheire body will hurt and fall apart!
The fear of death is the sum total of all our illnesses.
Death in itself, however, is not an illness.
Death has nothing to do with illness -- it is not eveely ected with it.
It is a different matter if illnesses precede death, but there is no cause-and-effect relationship betweewo.
It is beside the point that a man dies following an illness, but one need not be mistaken and think that illness causes death.
Perhaps the reverse is the case.
Because a man es close to death, he grabs on to illness.
No one ever dies of illness.
As death approaches, he begins to catch illnesses.
As death draws near, his body bees weak, his receptivity towards siess increases.
He bees vulnerable, he begins to look for illnesses.
The same illness would not be able to affect him were the man closer to life.
Perhaps it would not have been able to catch hold of him.
Do you know there are some moments when you are more receptive to illnesses, while there are some when you are not? In moments of disappoi and sadness a person bees vulnerable to illness, while a man full of hope and optimism bees uive to it.
Even illness does er you without your willio accept it -- your inner acceptance is needed.
Heno matter how many medies are given to them, those who are of a suicidal mind ever be cured.
Their minds remain uive to medications.
Their minds go on seeking illnesses, inviting diseases with open arms, but keeping their doors very tightly closed as far as medications are ed.
No, no one ever dies of illness.
Rather, one bees vulnerable to illnesses because of approag death.
Thats why illness occurs first, theh follows.
We normally think what happens first is the cause, and that which follows it is the effect.
Thats erroneous thinking.
Illness is not the cause.
Invariably the cause is death.
The illness is merely the effect.
So the fear of death in our minds is really the fear of illness.
First of all, we create the fear of death by adding up all our illnesses.
The sed thing worth remembering is that all the people we have seen dying, we have not really seen them dying, we have only seen them falling ill.
How we ever see anyone dying? Death is su utterly inner phenomenon, no one be a wito it.
Think twice before you ever testify to seeing sud such a person die, because it is a very difficult thing to see someone dying.
To this day it has never happened on this earth.
No one has ever seen anyone dying.
Only this much has been seen: a man fell ill, grew more ill, and more and more ill, and one day it became known that the man is no longer alive.
But basically, no one has ever seen when a person died.
No one has ever been able to pinpoint at whient a person died, and what exactly happened in the process of dying.
The only thing we have seen is a man bei free from life.
We have not seen a boat toug the other shore; we have only seen it leaving this shore.
We have seen a sciousness move away from the shores of life, and then after a certain point we have lost sight of it.
The body that remains with us is no longer alive, as it was until yesterday, and so we think the man is dead.
For us, death is an infere is not ahat occurs right before us.
We have seen sick people, we have seen the suffering of a dying man -- the cramping of his limbs, his eyes rolling up, his face def, his jaws g; we have seen that perhaps the man wants to say something but ot -- we have seen all this.
We have with us the sum of all this; it has bee part of our collective mind.
Whatsoever has been happening at the time of death over millions of years, we have collected it all.
We are afraid of that.
We are alshtened of fag the same difficulties at the time of our death.
Hence, man has devised very clever means.
He has dismissed the fact of death from the whole idea of life.
We create cemeteries outside the town so that we are not reminded of death more often.
Really, ideally a cemetery should be created in the middle of the town, because there is nothing in life more certain thah itself: everything else is uain.
Other things may or may not be.
The only thing whie believe in definitively is death.
Death is the most certain thing; no one doubt its existence.
We doubt the existence of God; we doubt the existence of the soul; we doubt life itself, but there is no way to doubt death.
Death is.
That which is so certain ut outside the town.
If a funeral passes by, the mother calls her children to e ihe house, because somebody is dead.
Actually, if someone is dead everyone should be asked to e out so they watch the greatest fact of life passing by.
Everyone is bound to pass through death.
There is o deny it.
But we are so scared of death we dont even want to mention it.
I have heard
An old woman came to see a monk and said.
"The soul is indeed immortal.
" Old people often talk about the immortality of the soul for no other reason than the fear of death.
Thats the only reason why we find such a large number of old folks in temples, mosques, churches.
Why arent young people and children ied in going to these places? It will be a while before they get the news of death.
It will take a little time.
They afford to deh for now; they fet it for a while.
How an old man fet death? He gets reminders every day.
One day he finds his legs refuse to walk, another day his vision fails, sometimes his ears lose their hearing power.
He receives hints from all around that, one by one, parts of his body seem to be giving in to death.
Now he begins to rush towards the church, the temple, the mosque.
He is not ed with God; he goes there simply to make sure that, even though what he has uood life to be is ing to an end, will he perish too?
It is strahat societies which believe in the immortality of the soul are more frightened of death than ones which do not believe in the souls existence.
Take our try, for example.
Fes we have been firm believers in the immortality of the soul.
A, no ra earth is more cowardly than ours, no people are more dead than we are.
A nation which proclaims the soul is immortal suffers in slavery for a thousand years.
How strange! One wonders how a nation which declares the soul is immortal and which is inhabited by eight hundred million souls, live in slavery uhe domination of three million.
Those who believe the soul is immortal, that it ever die, what fear they have of being slaves? What fear they have of fighting the enemy? What fear they have of fag death by hanging? How guns and ons frighten them? But no, something else is involved here.
Believing in the immortality of the soul is not the same as knowing the immortality of the soul.
Believing in it is just a strategy for erasing the fear of death, for falsifying it -- the same as creating a cemetery outside the town.
Every day people open their scriptures ahe teags on the immortality of the soul so that they be absolutely sure there is h, so that they carry the hope that they will survive -- so there is o worry.
They assert, "The body will die, but we will still survive!"
Who are you asserting as your existeher than the body? You have no knowledge of it.
You announce, "The body may die, I will tio live," and the fact is you have absolutely no idea who you are other than the body! You dont know what it is that will survive when the body is no more.
If you should ever really think, "Who am l?" you will e to know that you know nothing about yourself except that you are the body.
So the old woman said to the monk, "I believe the soul is immortal.
The soul is indeed imperishable.
What do you say?"
About the immortality of the soul, the monk answered nothing.
He merely looked at the woman, took her hand in his and said, "What do you think about death? Not much time is left.
"
The woman was annoyed.
She said, "What kind of ominous talk is this? Please dont say such things.
Being a monk, a good man, you should not talk about suinous things.
"
The monk said, "If the soul is immortal, then how death be ominous? Death be inauspicious only if the soul is mortal.
"
But the woman tinued, "Drop this and talk about something else.
Talk about God, talk about moksha.
I havent e to hear you speak about death.
"
Actually, people go to monks precisely to hear things which somehow fort them and alleviate their fears.
They want someone who tell them, "You are not going to die.
" They want to be told, "You are not a sihe soul is eternally pure, uncorrupted.
Did you say you are a thief? Fet it, no one is a thief.
Did you say you are a black-marketeer? Thats all nonsense.
the soul ever engage in black-marketing?"
The result is, all the black-marketeers gather around monks who keep saying, "The soul is pure, without blemish.
It has always been incorruptible, it ever be defiled.
" And the man sitting in front, an old thief, nods his head in agreement and says, "You are absolutely right, your holiness! How true, your holiness!" He wants to believe, he wants someoo assure him that the soul is absolutely pure, so he be free from the bother of being pure, so he wont have to be worried about being impure -- so there will be no more fear.
We o have a good uanding of the reality on which this mental dition is fually based.
We are not afraid of death, we are afraid of illness.
And we are afraid to part with what we call life.
For example, you push me out of this house.
I have no idea what lies outside this house -- whether there is a big palace, a forest, a desolate place, a desert -- I havent the fai idea.
I am not sure whether I will be happy or unhappy outside the house.
I dont know at all.
Although outside the door lies the unknowhe fear of leaving the house makes me miserable.
The house was dependable, known, familiar.
It is frightening to leave the familiar and go into the unfamiliar.
The fear is not really of the unknown, because I have absolutely no knowledge of the unknown.
The fear is having to leave the known.
You will be surprised, but the mind is so possessed by the known that we find it difficult even to let go of our known illnesses.
It is even difficult to give up our known miseries.
Most physis hardly ever cure your illness, they merely persuade you to drop the illness.
Most medies do nothing to your illness, they simply give you ce to get rid of it.
Retly, a well-known stist ducted many experiments in this area.
He took twenty patients suffering from the same illness.
Ten of them he treated with medie, while he kept the other ten only on water.
The iing thing was that the patients in both categories recovered together.
Now what does this mean? What it means is simply that it is her a question of medie nor of water.
The big question is that of persuading a man to drop his illness.
If water does this work, theient be cured by water.
If homeopathic sugar pills succeed, then he is cured by the pills.
If a charm proves effective, then it cure too.
If a patient has faith in a pinch of ash given by a fakir, then it cure him too.
Faith ier of the Ganges also does the trick.
Everything works.
Even a highly intelligent man such as Aristotle has proposed remedies which make us laugh.
He was, one should say, the father of logic.
He has proposed incredible cures; he could not have suggested them had they not been effective.
The cures did work.
For example, he has written that when a woman is in labor, apply horse dung oomad the pain will stop pletely -- a wise and intelligent man like Aristotle says this.
it ever be possible that a woman get over the pain of labor by applying horse dung oomach? But apparently it did work.
The reason why a woman recovered from her labor pains is that basically a pregnant woman never has a pain iomach, she simply creates it while giving birth to a child.
The more frightened a woman is of giving birth the more her pain grows.
And as she bees fearful of the pain, she tracts the entire reproductive system.
The child pushes its way out of her body, while the woman goes on trag the whole system.
This creates a flict betweewo, and the flict causes pain.
Thats why most babies are born at night -- seventy pert of the babies -- because the mother wont allow the birth to happen in the daytime.
She remains alert during the day and hihe birth from happening.
Hehe baby is forced to take birth at night wheher is asleep, when she is unaware.
Therefore, seventy pert of the poor babies are uo take birth in the daylight; they have to be born in the darkness of night.
There is a man called Levin.
He teaches women to cooperate with their labor.
He asks them to cooperate during childbirth, and has succeeded in having thousands of women deliver babies without any pain.
He her applies horse dung, nives an iion, nor ties a charm about a woman, ns any from a guru -- he does nothing of the sort.
He merely persuades the woman to cooperate.
He advises women, "Allow the child to take birth without creating any hindrance; cooperate with the child.
Be filled with the feeling of giving birth to the child.
That will be enough, you wont have any pain.
"
There are hundreds of tribes where women do not gh any labor pains.
They go on w in the fields, and wheime es they give birth to the child.
The mother places the infant in a basket and resumes her work in the field.
Man does not even give up those illnesses he has been suffering for so long, he holds tightly to them.
People even insist on keeping their s.
This fact came to light during the French revolution.
Some of the most dangerous prisoners were kept in a large prison.
They were senteo life impriso.
Their s were o be taken off; they were to remain in them forever.
Only when they died would the shackles be removed.
The revolutionaries broke down the prison walls and brought the prisoners out of their cells.
The prisoners had given up all hope of ever ing out.
Some were imprisoned for twenty years, some for thirty, and some were in there for fifty years.
They had bee almost blind.
Their s had almost bee parts of their bodies; one could not say they were separate from their bodies.
There was no longer any separatio between their bodies and the s.
Do you think s tied around ones hands for fifty years would remain separate? They are bound to bee part of ones hands.
The man fets the s are not part of his body.
He takes care of them in the same way he does his hands.
He s and shihe s every m as he does his body -- after all, the s are to stay with him his whole life.
If this is the case, then the whole matter is over.
So when the revolutionaries began cutting the s off these prisoners, many of them objected.
They told the revolutiohat without s they will feel very unfortable outside.
But revolutionaries are always very pigheaded.
They havent learned yet that you t be stubborn with people.
If you force people to give up their existing s, they will put on new ones.
So the revolutionaries forcibly cut the s and released the prisoners.
What followed was incredible.
By nightfall, more than half the prisoners returned, saying they didnt like it outside, they felt they were naked without their s on them.
Obviously, if you remove the many golden ors worn by a woman, she will feel naked, weightless.
She will feel as if she has lost something, as if she has lost weight.
So the prisoners said, "Give us our s back.
We couldnt take a nap iernoon without the s on us, how could we?" Even the sound of those s became part of their psychological state.
The added weight of s had bee so much a part of their psyche, their subscious, that even while ging sides ihey felt it.
Man bees so tied to the familiar that he feels hurt even breaking his s.
We are caught in the familiar, which we take as life.
It is because of the grip of the familiar that we are so scared of death.
In the first place, we have no knowledge of death.
And the first principle for awakening is awareness of misery, so that one know one is separate from the body.
The sed thing is the ability to witness.
It has never occurred to us that
Sometimes, walking in the middle of the marketplace, suddenly give a little jolt to yourself, and for two minutes just stand still.
Just watch without doing anything -- simply be a witness.
The moment you stand as a watcher in the middle of the street, suddenly you will be severed from your surroundings and out of them.
The moment you bee a wito something, you transd it, you jump out of it.
But it is very difficult to stand on a street and be a witness.
It is not easy to be a witness even while watg a movie.
The darkness in the movie theater bees quite ve for people watg the movie.
One cry in that darkness without any feeling of embarrassment.
If we examihe handkerchiefs of people as they leave the theater, we find out what went on inside, hoeople cried.
We know very well nothing really takes pla the s, it is just a s.
We also know perfectly well that what we see on the s is merely an appearahat nothing is happening there.
It is simply a play of light and shadow, just a work of rays projected from the rear of the theater.
The s shows nothing except pictures.
A, everything es off on the s, and we dont remain a witness even to the s; we bee a part of it.
Dont be uhe illusion that while watg the film you really remain a watcher.
Dont be mistaken.
You bee a partit too; vou dont remain outside the film.
Once you are ihe theater, for a short while you enter into the film as well.
You begin to like someone in the film, and you dislike someone else.
You feel sorry for somebody, while you feel happy about someone else.
After a little while you bee identified, you bee a partit in the film.
It will be indeed difficult to remain a witness in life if we ao do so while watg a film.
As such, life is nothing more than a film.
If you look a little deeper, life is not very different from a movie.
If you look even more deeply, you will find that just as the work of rays appears on the movie s, the work of electricity appears on the s of life.
Life is made up of a profouwork of electricity.
It is a great interplay of eles.
If the human body were to be dissected in every way, at the end you would find nothing except eles.
If we were to break down the wall of this room and look for the element it is made of, we would find that what is ultimately left is nothing but electricity.
Then what is the big difference?
Really, what is the differeween a movie s and the s of life? We find the interplay of eles on the movie s too.
The only difference is, on the movie s the pictures are two-dimensional whereas on the s of life they are three-dimensional.
But thats not much of a problem.
It wooo long before other dimensions, now lag in films, will be met.
Just as I see you now, someday one will be able to see people on the s exactly like that.
Without any difficulty, it will soon bee possible for an actor to step out of the s and walk around in the movie theater.
It wooo long.
Its just a matter of developing the teique, which is not too difficult.
If a three-dimensional man move around on the s, his stepping just te off the s and walking around the hall is simply a matter of a little adva in teology.
Its not too difficult to foresee a film actress stepping from the s, shaking hands with you, or caressing you.
Now, the reverse is happening: the heroine does not step out of the s; rather, you ehe s and pat her.
You be saved this trouble! Its not good to cause you so much bother: you need not gh the invenience.
It will bee possible for you to remaied in your chair and the heroine will e and caress you!
What goes on in life anyway? What transpires when I take your hand in my hand? When I hold your hand in my hand, you see it either as an expression of love or of enmity.
It is just a matter of interpretation.
In both cases the hand is held; the difference arises only ierpretation.
When a hand is being held, in a moment both things happen without much difficulty: initially the holding of hands take place with the feeling of love, while in the end, the feeling of enmity may set them apart.
This is not difficult to ceive.
So much ge es about in a sed.
When I hold your hand, you take it as my expression of love.
But what is actually happening? Really, what is transpiring? If both our hands were to be examined, what seems to be going on? Some eles are pressing against some other eles.
And the iing thing is, my hand ouches yours.
A spaevitably remaiweewo.
And sometimes it shrinks.
When there is a distahe space bees visible.
As the distance shrinks, the space bees less and less visible.
If the distance bees too narrow, the space disappears.
So when one hand is holding the other, there is always a space betweewo.
The pressure works on that very spaot on your hand.
And in effect, the pressure of that empty space works on your hand.
We interpret this pressure of the empty space as either love or enmity.
It is all a matter of interpretation.
However, if one could bee a witness and watch this holding of hands, an incredible thing happens.
When someone holds your hand, dont be in a hurry to see it as either love or enmity.
Just remain a wito the holding of hands, and you will feel a total transformation in your sciousness.
When someones lips are pressed on yours, fet about love etcetera, simply bee a witness for a moment.
You will have such a strange experien your sciousness, one you may have never had before.
Then it is possible you may laugh at yourself.
As long as you laugh at others, you are not a witness.
The day you laugh at yourself, you bee a witness.
From that day on you begin witnessing.
People all over the world laugh at others, only a sannyasin laughs at himself.
And one who laugh at himself has begun to see something.
Ahing is, be a witness in life -- anywhere, any moment.
For example, while eating, suddenly bee a watcher for a moment: watch your hand pig up the food; watouth chewing the food; watch the food reag your stomach.
Stand at a distand simply watch.
You will suddenly find the taste has disappeared.
All of a sudden, the act of eating will take on a different meaning.
You will find that you are ing -- food is being taken and you are merely watg.
There is a wonderful story.
The story is
Once a monk arrived oskirts of the town where Krishna lived.
It was the rainy season and the river was flooded.
The monk was oher shore.
The women of the village were anxious to feed the monk, but the river stood in the way.
On their way they stopped by to see Krishna.
They asked Krishna, "How are we to cross the river? The current is very strong, boats ot cross.
The monk has been without food for the last few days.
Occasionally we receive some news about him.
He is waiting oher side, which is covered with thick forest.
We must bring him food.
Please show us a way to cross the river.
"
Krishna said, "Go to the river and tell her if the monk has never had any food in his entire life, if he has always been on a fast, she should make way for you.
" Sihese were Krishnas words, the women believed him.
The wome ahead.
Addressing the river they said, "O river! If the monk has been on a fast for all of his life, then please give way so we bring him food.
"
The stoes that the river gave way.
The women crossed the river ahe monk.
The food they had brought was more than enough, but the monk ate it all.
When it was time to return, they realized all of a sudden they had not asked Krishna the key to finding their way back.
Now they found themselves i difficulty.
Earlier they had said to the river that the monk had been fasting his whole life, how could they say the same thing now? The monk was not an ordinary eater; saying he was on a fast was far from the truth -- he had ed all the food the women had brought.
The monk didnt even wait for the women to offer him sed or third helpings.
There were overs.
The women became very ed.
The monk asked, "Why do you look so troubled? What is the matter?"
The women said, "We are i difficulty.
We only khe device for ing here, we dont know the key that will take us back.
" The monk asked what the device was that had brought them to him.
The women said, "Krishna told us if we wao cross the river, we should tell the river that if the monk is on a fast, it should make a way for us.
"
The monk said, "So what is the problem? The same device will wain.
The key which lock also unlock, and the one which unlock also lock.
Use the same key again.
"
The women said, "How we use it now? You have already eaten the food.
"
The monk burst into laughter, a striking sound on the bank of that river.
The women were very puzzled.
They said, "Here we are in trouble, and you are laughing!"
The monk said, "I am not laughing at you, I am laughing at myself.
Go ahead ahe river the same thing you said before.
The river must have uood my laughter.
Go and tell her once again.
"
With great fear, great hesitation and uainty, they approached the river and said, "O river, please give way if this monk has not had any food his whole life.
" They knew inside what they were saying was not at all true, but the river did make way for them.
The women were very puzzled.
The miracle they had seen ing to this shore was nothing pared to what they saw on their way back.
They went straight to Krishna and said, "This is too much! We thought you performed the miracle when we crossed the river the first time.
But it is really the monk who performed the miracle.
It was all right what we said on our way to see the monk, and it worked.
But we said the same thing on our way bad the river gave way!"
Krishna said, "Of course, the river was bound to give way, because only he is a monk who never eats.
"
"But we saw him with our own eyes dev all the food we carried with us.
"
Krishna said, "Just as you were watg him eat, the monk was watg himself eat as well -- he was not the doer of his a of eating.
"
This is only a story.
Dont ever try to cross a river like this, you might put some monk in trouble unnecessarily! No river will give way.
Ahe fact remains, if we could also see ourselves in all our as not as a doer but as a watcher, in all our as, then dying is an act too -- the final act.
If you succeed in keeping yourself removed from your as, you will be able to stay removed at the moment of death too.
Then you will see.
The one who was eating until yesterday; the one who was attending to his business, walking dowreet; the one who quarreled, fought, loved, it is he who is dying.
Then you will be able to wate additional act, the act of dying.
Exactly as other acts involved loving, running ones business, being in the marketplace, dying will also be an act.
You will be able to see the same person who did all these other things dying.
There was a Mohammedan fakir by the name of Sarmad.
A very sweet but strange iook pla his life.
As has always happehe maulvis, the priests, filed a suit against him.
The priest has always been against the mystic.
Sarmad was summoo appear in the emperors court.
Mohammedans express their belief through a sutra, a maxim, and that is, "There is only one God; other than him there is no God.
There is only one messenger of God and he is Mohammed.
" But the Sufi mystics drop the latter half of the sutra.
They repeat, "There is no od than the one God," but they drop the other half, "There is only one messenger of God and he is Mohammed," because they believe there are many messengers of God.
Thats why the Mohammedan theology has always been against the Sufis.
Sarmad was even more dangerous.
He would not eve the Sufi sutra fully.
He had even dropped half of that too.
That sutra is, "Other than the one God, there is no God.
" Sarmad used to repeat only the latter half "
.
there is no God.
" Now this was too much.
It was okay to drop Mohammeds hat would not have made him an atheist, it would have simply amouo his not being a Mohammedan.
However, just because one is not a Mohammedan does not mean one ceases to be a religious person.
But what you do with a man like Sarmad? He said, "There is no God!"
Sarmad was brought to the court.
The emperor asked, "You say there is no God.
Is it true?"
Sarmad answered, "I do say so.
" And he proclaimed in a loud voice, "There is no God!"
The emperor asked, "Are you an atheist?"
Sarmad said, "No, I am not an atheist.
But I have not known any God as yet, so how I say God is? I say only as much as I know.
In this sutra, so far I have e to know only one half of it, that there is no God.
I dont know anything of the other half.
The day I e to know it, I will let everyone know.
How I lie about it if I dont know? A religious man ot lie.
"
It was a difficult situation.
He was ultimately executed, beheaded in front of the Jama Masjid in Delhi.
This is not a story.
Millions of people watched him executed.
As he was beheaded at the front door of the masjid, the mosque, and as the head started rolling doweps of the mosque, a voice came out of the rolling head, "There is only one God.
There is no God other than the one God.
"
His lovers standing in the crowd said, "You crazy Sarmad, if you had to say it, why didnt you say such a simple thing before?"
Sarmad said, "How one know him until one has lost his head? Now that I know, I say there is God, that no God exists other than him.
But how could I have said this without knowing?"
There are truths we e to know only by passing through them.
The truth of death is one of these.
But in order that one may know death, one o prepare while one is still alive.
The preparation for death has to be done while one is still alive.
One who fails to do so, dies a wroh.
Living a wrong life may be fiven, but dying wrongly ever be fiven, because it is the ultimate point, it is the very quintessehe finale of life.
Some mistakes itted here and there in life may be overlooked, but a mistake at the last moment of life will bee firmly and permaly established forever.
And the iing thing is, you repent for the mistakes itted in life -- they be rectified -- but there is no way one rectify his mistake, repent and ask fiveness for it after death.
Death bees the final seal.
Hence, a life lived wrongly may be excused, but a wroh ot be.
Remember, how one who has lived wrongly in the first place die rightly? After all, life is bound to e to an end; it is life which will ultimately reach a point from where it departs.
In fact, whatsoever I was during my lifetime, I shall depart as the sum total of that at the final moment of death.
At that moment everything in my life will stand before me cumulatively.
At the moment of death I will be the sum of my whole life.
Let me put it this way: life is a spread out phenomenoh is a densed one.
In other words, life is a vast expanse, while death is the total, cumulative, densation of this whole expanse -- the abridgment of it.
Death is very atomic.
Everything has e together iom; thats why there is no other phenomenoer thah.
But it occurs only once.
This does not mean, however, that you have not died before.
No, it has occurred many times before, but it occurs only on one lifetime.
And if you have lived this life remaining asleep, theh also takes pla the state of sleep.
It es anew in the life, and again occurs only once.
So keep in mind, one who dies a scious death takes a scious birth in the life -- that bees the other part of his dying.
And the life of one who dies and takes birth sciously funs on a totally different plane.
For the first time, he is able to grab hold of the entire meaning of life, of the whole purpose of life, of the heights ahs of life, precisely and sciously.
He is able to grasp the whole truth of life.
So, I have mentiowo things.
First, in order that you may have a scious death, bee alert to the suffering, be aware of<dfn>９９ｌｉｂ?</dfn> it.
Dont run away from pain, dont escape from misery.
The sed thing I said, while moving around and perf your day-to-day activities, sud-denly stop and bee a witness for a moment.
Then resume your activity.
If you bee a witness even for a few moments iy-four hours, you will find all of a sudden what a big madhouse this world is, and how, by being a witness, you step out of it.
When someone swears at you, immediately you bee such a recipient you lose sight of the person swearing at you.
As soon as he swears at you, you receive it.
In fact, you receive it even before the words leave his lips.
You receive the whole of it before the swearer has even mao plete it.
Actually, you receive twice as much as is sworn at you.
Even the person swearing is taken aback to see how you received more than he swore.
You pletely fail to see what is happening.
If you could really see
ime when someone swears at you, bee a watcher, dont be a receiver.
Just be there and watch the person swearing at you.
It will cause you to laugh at yourself, and the laughter will be liberating.
You will laugh at your being the stant recipient of profanities all through your life.
Perhaps you may even thank him and go your way.
Doing so, you may leave the poor man guessing, because su act would be beyond his prehension.
He would be totally at a loss.
In a period of twenty-four hours, whatsoever may happen -- in anger, in hate, in love, in friendship, iy, while walking, resting, wha<bdi></bdi>tever -- watch it sometimes for a moment, just for a moment.
Give yourself a jolt just for one moment and watch whats happening with awareness.
At that moment dont be a recipient, simply be a watcher of whatever is happening.
Such calm will surround you in that moment: you will bee so very aware, because at that moment you will be filled with meditation.
That very moment of awareness is the moment of meditation.
If one could carry owo experiments, then the rest of the things you have asked will follow.
For instance, you ask, "If a seeker practices celibacy, will it help ih? Will he attain awareness?" In fact, he alone attain celibacy who bees a witness, not otherwise.
One who indulges is sure to remain sexual.
An indulgent person means one who is lustful.
He wants to indulge in sex.
If one could be a witness, lust and sex would slowly and gradually disappear from ones life.
If a man could bee a witness during intercourse, perhaps he would never enter into it again, because everything would seem so meaningless, so worthless.
Everything would look so childish that he might e to feel, "Whats going on? Whats happening? Whats all this anyway? How have I mao do this up to now? Why has all of this such a hold over me?" But since we dont bee a witness, we keep oing it.
Actually, dont ever be a witness if you wish to tinue repeating your mistakes.
Every mistake will the itself.
Then again, every mistake has its own season, just goes on recurring.
If you could keep a daily record of your life for a few months, you would immediately find yourself to be one of those eriodically mad.
Just this afternoon I received a letter from a friend.
He bees insane every six months, and for the other six months he remains sane.
He ofteo ask me why this happens to him.
I said, "You are able to know the difference because the duration of your sane and iates is clearly defined.
This is not so with other people.
They remain insane half a dozen times and are sane half a dozen times during the day, hehey are not able to figure it out.
You stay insane for a solid period of six months and remain sane for another whole six months.
The trast is very clear.
" Ordinarily, a person goes mad ten times a day and behaves normally the other ten.
her does he know nor do other people know when he is sane and when he is insane.
If, for a few months, you could keep a plete record of what goes on in your life, it will immediately bee clear to you that all things repeat themselves.
For example, anger recurs at almost the same time each day.
Each day, you not only feel hungry at a fixed time, you get angry at a fixed time too.
You feel hungry exactly at eleven oclock.
As soon as the clock strikes eleven or twelve or one iernoon, whatever, you feel hungry.
At whichever time you take your meals, you feel hungry at that particular time.
The body tells you it is hungry.
In the same manner, you feel angry, sexual, loving, at a set time.
These are all huoo, and they arise at a fixed time.
You go oing the same mistakes, because you have ried to realize the fact that whatsoever you do is all meical routine.
And occasionally, this creates a problem.
For example, you are hungry and there is no food around.
Only then do you e to know you are hungry.
If you find food when you are hungry, you will never know what hunger is.
The matter is taken care of.
Similarly, when you are angry and there is no one around to vent yer upon, only then you know what anger is.
But you do find someone around.
Sometimes it happens that you are hungry and there is no food around, but it is very rare that you may not find anyone on whom you air yer.
And when there is no o hand, a person takes his anger out on inanimate objects.
If nothing else, he bangs his fountain pen, swearing at it.
If this man ever bees aware of what he has done, what will he think of himself? What will this man think, really?
A great deal of research is being done in America to find the psychological causes for car acts -- in a large number we seem to be responsible.
In a state of anger, a man presses the accelerator harder without being aware of it.
Perhaps, mentally, he may be pressing his wifes head, or his sons throat, but in that particular moment his foot is on the accelerator.
In this case the accelerator is a substitute for his wife or son.
He goes on pressing and fets he is driving a car.
In fact, he is riding on his anger, but no one knows what he is doing.
The danger is obvious.
The car has nothing to do with this mans ahe car has no knowledge of his anger.
So far, we have not been able to create a built-in system, such that the car will refuse to move if the driver is angry.
We have not been able to develop any such meism.
The man presses the accelerator, and the car takes it to mean he wants to raise the speed.
The car doesnt know it o go slow at that moment.
It doesnt realize the man is in a dangerous situation, that the man is uo see anything at that moment.
Within a period of twenty-four hours, the moments of ahe moments of sex, keep recurring.
We move in a set pattern like a mae.
If you wake up and see, you may ask, "Am I really living, or am I just moving in a circle like an ox at a wheel?" Living, obviously, ot be similar to being an ox at a wheel.
How there be any life in moving round and round like an ox at a wheel? The ox simply moves meically.
Has this ever occurred to you?
I was reading a book about a marvelous man who has done a wonderful experiment.
He observed that you e across a man oreet and he says, "Hello, how are you?" and you answer, "I am fihank you.
" You may not have realized that the maher cared to listen to your reply, nor had he asked the question with the i of hearing your answer.
He must be wanting to ask something else.
Si would have looked a little odd to start off abruptly, he began by asking, "How are you?"
Even on the phohe man asks, "How is your health?" -- although he couldnt care less about your health; he has never been ed about your health, nor will he ever be.
Heno matter what reply you give, he is never going to listen to it.
He will skip your answer and start talking about something else.
So the man decided to perform an experiment.
One m, someone called him on the phone and asked, "Hello, how are you?" And the man answered, "My cow gives a lot of milk.
"
The other fellow said, "Thats good! How is your wife?" Hearing this, the man found out that no one really listens to what you say.
We take things absolutely meically.
I was reading someones biography.
This man has traveled all over the world.
In whichever try he went, he had to fill in all kinds of forms.
He couldnt uand why he had to undergo the torture of filling out all these forms.
So he started filling in absurd details.
He did this everywhere he traveled.
No gover questioned him.
He would write his age as five thousand years, and no one objected.
Who reads these forms? Who bothers? Who is ied? Nobody cares.
Life goes on absolutely off guard, meically.
All answers are meical.
Someone asks, "How are you?" You answer, "I am okay.
" Even puters do this job.
One puter asking, "How are you?" Another puter answering, "I am okay.
" Thats how it is going on really.
There is no sciousness, no alertness, no awareness -- nothing.
One o bee a little aware of all this.
One o be a witness.
Just stop for a moment.
Make any moment the moment to bee alert.
Give yourself a sudden jerk and look around in amazement.
Just remain a watcher.
If you prepare yourself iwo areas, you will bee less and less angry.
because a witnessing sciousness ever be angry.
In order to be angry, one has to bee identified, one has to bee unscious.
A witnessing sciousness will go on attaining to celibacy because it ot be ed by sexual desire.
A man of witnessing sciousness ever overeat, hence he doeso take a vow to diet.
Although we are not aware of it, food in itself is not the cause of our overeating.
The reason lies much deeper.
For example, there is a man who overeats.
Now he is not even aware of why he overeats.
Has it ever occurred to you that when you are angry you eat too much? Have you ever kept at of it? Have you ever noticed sciously that you eat more when you feel the lack of love? Have you ever kept any record of it? Have you ever discovered sciously that when ones life is filled with love, one does much? When a mas his beloved, he loses his appetite.
The hunger disappears in moments of love.
But when love is absent, he begins to eat voraciously.
Why? There is a meical system, a long lasting psychological ditioning at work behind it.
A child receives both love and food from his mother.
The very first experience of love for a child is that of receiving food.
If the child does not receive food from the mother, he feels a lack of love; when she offers him food he feels love.
So food and love are not two separate things in the childs initial experience; food and love are synonymous for him.
For a child, the first experience of food and love is one and the same.
If a mother loves her child a lot, he drinks less milk, because he is always assured that he will have milk anytime, that he need not worry about the future.
Hence, he doesnt find any y to overfill his stomach.
So a child whose mother loves him a great deal will take less milk.
A mother who does not love her child, who feeds him milk unwillingly, indifferently, who is alushing the child away -- that child drinks more milk, because he is not sure.
The mother may give him milk after a while, or may not.
Who knows how long he may have to remain hungry?
Lack of love prompts the child to take in more food, while the abundance of love makes him take in less.
This bees part of his psychological ditioning.
Whenever love flows in his life, he eats less.
He begins to overeat when love stops ing to him, although now the e is not so apparent, now it is just a meical routine.
Hence, people who feel a lack of love start overeating.
But if you bee aware of it, you will be greatly amazed.
The question is not of taking a vow to eat less when you are overeating, the question is that something like love has not happened in your life.
If you realize this, then you are able to catch hold of the root causes of the fual problem.
Where does the trouble lie? What is really the matter?
One man suffers from overeating.
He goes to a temple and vows before a muni, a monk, to eat once a day.
However, he now es twice or three times more food during his once-a-day meal.
He suffers from huhe whole day and plates food the whole time.
He turns into a maniac.
Then he no longer remains just hungry, he goes crazy.
He develops a craze for food.
Then for twenty-four hours food bees his sole .
Now in this try there are thousands of monks who live, brooding twenty-four hours a day about food.
They are maniacs, they are mad.
They dont realize what they have doo themselves, what kind of madhey are into.
They are preoccupied with the thought of food all the time, as if that is the only subject left in the world to worry about, as if brooding about food from dawn to dusk is the only obje life.
They think the problem will be taken care of if they work out the eating arra exactly as they want it to be.
When he was in America, Vivekananda had said, "My try would not have been ruined had ion not bee a religion of the kit.
That caused its disaster.
" a religion remain worth its name if it turns out to be a religion fio the kit? The reason why this happens is because we dont wake up and see our inner ditioning -- what we do, and when.
For example, there is a man and he is an alcoholic.
People are after him: they want him to give up drinking.
The man wants to give up drinking too, but he never cares to figure out why he goes on drinking anyway.
Why does he wish to bee unscious? There must be something in his life he wants tet all about, something which he would rather not remember.
There is something in life he would like to draw the curtain on.
If this man could bee aware of the thing he is trying tet, perhaps some solution might be found.
But instead he puts a cover on it.
He goes on putting cover after cover, because there is something hidden behind it which he does not want to be exposed.
Then his life bees a tinuous running about to cover things, and everything turns out a lie.
Finally, a day arrives when it bees difficult for the mao figure out why he had waet things in the first place.
He himself will have fotten all about it.
He himself will have no idea when and why he started drinking.
A man goes on puffing, dragging on a cigarette the whole day.
Someone may ask, "What the reason be? Why does he go on inhaling and exhaling smoke like that? There must be a secret behind this taking in aing out smoke, because it is hard to imagine people all over the world smoking for nothing.
"
If he watches closely, a smoker find out what makes him smoke a cigarette.
Whenever he feels lonely, whenever he is without pany, he immediately goes for a cigarette.
He uses the cigarette as a panion, a rather inexpensive panion.
It causes no problems.
You put it in your pocket, carry it wherever you like.
You sit alone and start w on it anytime.
Its an occupation.
In a ses an i occupation; you are not causing any harm to anyone.
You are harming yourself, more or less.
You are just throwing the smoke out; you are just being occupied -- thats all.
Once I was traveling in a train.
When traveling by train, it is my habit to sleep quietly as much as I .
A man traveling with me in the same partment was bothered very much by my sleeping.
He tried to wake me up several times.
When I got up after six hours, took a bath, and got ready to go back to sleep again, the man could tain himself no longer.
He said, "What in the world are you doing? I have read the same neer ten times, opened and shut this window several times, and here you are sleeping blissfully.
I have never smoked as many cigarettes.
It would be good if you stayed up.
"
He was right.
Man is lonely even in a crowd.
There are so many people around -- the wife, the sons, the daughters, the father, the mother, the whole family, such a mob, and everything else
A man is lonely.
So far we have not been able to eliminate mans loneliness, so he goes on doing something or other to escape his loneliness.
He smokes, he plays cards.
He plays cards not only with others, but even with himself.
The craziness reaches its limit when a man plays both hands.
You find even the most intelligent man doing this.
It seems even the so-called most intelligent man is not really intelligent.
Why? One will have to bee aware of this state, one will have to witness it.
If this man, who plays both hands, could be filled with awareness for a moment ahe whole thing as a witness, would he not laugh at himself as you just did? Indeed he would laugh.
He would wonder, "What is happening? What am I doing to my life?"
If this should bee apparent, then one doesnt have to take a vow or an oath.
Then one doesnt have to renounything; things which are worthless drop by themselves.
If a man grasps the root causes and goes on being deeply aware of them, he reaches the point from where the causes be rooted out without any difficulty.
Remember, you will be in trouble if you begin pruning the leaves of a tree, because once a leaf is pru is replaced by four new leaves.
The tree believes you are ied in grafting, it is not at fault.
The tree feels maybe you want four leaves, thats why you are pruning one, so it produces four leaves.
When you see the four leaves, you panid prune all four of them.
That gives rise to sixteen new leaves!
No, things are to be rooted out -- simply pruning the leaves wont help.
We have no idea of roots, we merely go on playing with leaves.
There are people who take a vow of celibacy.
Once a friend of mine and I were guests in Calcutta.
Our host was a seventy-year-old man, one of the most ho people I have known.
fiding in me one day, he said, "Please tell me, what shall I do? I have taken a vow of celibacy three times in my life.
"
What the old man said was fine, but the amazing thing was that my friend became very impressed by him.
He exclaimed, "Three times?"
I told m<s></s>y friend, "Do you uand what taking a vow three times means?" Then I asked the old man, "Why didnt you take it a fourth time? Did your vow succeed the third time?"
He said, "No, the third time I lost my nerve.
" He was an ho man indeed.
Taking the vow three times obviously means he broke it each time.
And breaking the vow each time, the disappoi and frustration was bound to bee profound.
Breaking the vow three times, the loss of his self-fidence was sure to intensify.
There was no way he could have shown any more ce to take the vow a fourth time.
So I told the man, "The monk who made you take the vow was, in fact, your enemy.
You took him for a friend.
He broke your will pletely.
Now even at the age of seventy you have no ce left to take a vow of celibacy.
" Whats the reason? The leaves.
You plue leaf, and three more e out.
there be any vows of celibacy?
There are no vows of celibacy.
One only o have an uanding of what sexual desire is.
You o bee aware of sex.
The fruit of celibaes from the awareness of sex.
When a person bees aware of his sexual desire, probes into it, uands it, lives it, reizes it, he suddenly realizes the game in which he is engaged.
This game is no different from the game of cards I mentioned earlier.
This whole game of sex is nothing but laying down playing cards.
When this awareness reaches the depths of his being like an arrow, all of a sudden a man finds himself rising to celibacy.
brahmacharya, celibacy, is not some kind of a vow.
Remember, religion has nothing to do with taking vows.
People who take vows are never religious; they ever be.
A religious man is one in whose life vows blossom like fruits -- as a sequence.
The more he goes on watg life, the more he sees certain things stantly ging.
For example, a man is holding colored stones.
You may cry in vain and tell him to throw the stones away, but he wont listen.
Although they are colored stones, he sees them as colored diamonds.
Looking at their shine and luster, he thinks they are diamonds.
Obviously, how he let them go? The man says, "We sider those people who gave them up, as gods.
We are ordinary people, we t cast them away.
"
The same man, when he es across a diamond mine, sees diamonds all over.
Now, will we o vince him he should get rid of his colored stones? Before he realizes what has happened, he will have already dropped the stones, run and filled his hands with diamonds.
If oo ask him later on what he did with the stones he was holding in his hands, he might say, "I am glad you reminded me.
I had pletely fotten about them.
I dont know what happeo them.
I dont know when they were dropped.
" When diamonds are in sight, one o empty his hands immediately.
Life is a positive ast, it is not a ive dest.
Life is a positive achievement, not a ive renunciation.
As the witnessing sciousness grows deeper, new planes of bliss e to light.
The layers of misery go on falling away; much garbage is thrown out.
You keep throwing pebbles away, and diamonds begin to appear in your hands.
These two things, the dropping of the noial and the acquiring of the essential, will always apply in following the points you have raised in your question.
So let your awareness of misery bee intense, sharp.
In that state, stop identifying with your body.
Let your sciousness not bee oh your body.
And in all your day-to-day activities and operations, be a witness, not an experiencer.
Let me tell you a short story to explain to you what I mean.
I have always loved this story.
Just retly, it seems the birthday of Ishwardra Vidyasagar was celebrated.
Once he went to see a play.
Ishwardra was a very well-known figure of his time, a very intelligent man.
He was the huest and was seated in the first row.
The play was in progress and there was a se in which the villain is after the heroio harass her.
He tries to give her a hard time in every possible way.
The se reaches its climax when, finally, on a dark night in a thick forest, the villain catches hold of the woman.
It is a very dark night.
Everything is quiet; there is not a soul around.
The villain grabs the woman.
The woman screams, but her cry simply echoes iillness of the forest.
Ishwardra was watg the se.
He was a nice man.
He couldnt take the villains behavior any more.
He lost his trol.
He got sed that he pletely fot it was just a play.
He took off his shoe, jumped oage, and began pounding the villain.
He started beating the actor! The actor took Ishwardras shoe and placed it on his forehead to show his gratitude.
The actor showed more uanding than Ishwardra.
Addressing the audience, he said, "Never before have I received a greater award than this.
It is indeed a tribute to an actors skills that an intelligent man such as Ishwardra should take the play to be real.
"
Addressing Vidyasagar, the actor said, "Sir, I shall treasure this shoe; I wourn it to you.
This is my greatest reward.
"
If a person such as Vidyasagar took a play to be real, how ordinary people like us prehend what it means to take as play what we hold to be real? But with a few experiments of being a witness, we will be able to uand what it means: reality will begin to look like a drama.
If this happens, then it is possible to enter death with awareness.
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