Chapter 10

Religion is a Search for Meditation1 August 1970 pm in CCI Chambers, Bombay, India

Question 1

BEFORE DISCUSSING THE PROCESS OF ENTERING DEATH CONSCIOUSLY, I WOULD LIKE TO ASK YOU: WHAT IS THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN THE STATE OF UNCONSCIOUSNESS AND THE STATE OF AWARENESS? WHAT STATE OF MIND IS CALLED THE UNCONSCIOUS STATE? IN OTHER WORDS, WHAT IS THE INDIVIDUAL SOULS CONSCIOUSNESS LIKE IN ITS CONSCIOUS AND UNCONSCIOUS STATES?

In order to understand the states of consciousness and unconsciousness, the first thing that needs to be understood 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 division between 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 commit a fundamental mistake.

Any thought that follows this mistake is bound to be wrong; it can never 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 deficiency of light.

Light which our eyes cannot catch, light which our eyes cannot detect, looks like darkness.

Similarly, we should call light a shortage of darkness -- darkness which our eyes can 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 unconscious and the conscious states.

You may consider unconsciousness as darkness, and consciousness as light.

In fact, even the most unconscious of all objects is not completely unconscious.

A rock is not all unconscious -- it exists in a state of consciousness too, but the consciousness 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 floating between 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 ninety-nine people stay asleep.

Had this man been really asleep, he could not have heard anyone calling him; he could not have recognized that his name was Rama.

His sleep was actually one of the lesser states of wakefulness, or his state of wakefulness had become a little hazy, a little fuzzy.

You see a man running on the street.

He has heard that his house is on fire.

You greet him.

He sees you and yet he does not see you.

He hears you and yet he does not hear you.

You ask him the next day why he didnt return your greeting and he replies, "My house was on fire.

At that time I couldnt see anything except my house, I couldnt hear anything except the noise, the 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, and yet, as far as the man who met him on the street was concerned, he was almost asleep.

He was more asleep than the other 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 fact, no 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 constitute 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 completely lost.

And the answer to every question lies in this wholeness, in this totality.

The mind is unable to find the answer to any question.

In fact, it raises a number of questions from each answer it finds.

No matter how significant the answer is, the mind will immediately raise dozens of questions -- but it can never find an answer to anything.

There is a reason for this: the answer lies in the wholeness.

But the mind is helpless.

It cant function without making divisions.

For example, I am sitting here talking 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 concerned, 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 can never 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 consciousness and unconsciousness than 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 consciousness itself is unconsciousness.

When I say darkness and light are one, I dont mean you can walk in the dark as you do when there is light.

When I say darkness and light are one, I mean existence is made of varying degrees of the same manifesting reality.

The difference consists 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 consciousness when it is present in a greater degree and becomes unconsciousness 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 consciousness.

Unconsciousness and consciousness are but different densities of attention.

The more profound the state of attention, the same will be the consciousness.

The more tenuous the attention, the same will be the state of unconsciousness.

In fact, the difference between a rock and a human is that the rock does not have density of attention at any level of consciousness.

At whatever level the attention becomes condensed, consciousness takes place, and at whatever level the density of attention decreases, unconsciousness occurs.

If you let the suns rays pass through a lens, fire is immediately produced.

A condensed light creates fire.

When it loses its density, when it becomes tenuous, light remains.

There is fire in an ember because it contains highly condensed light.

Whenever light is condensed, fire is produced.

When the light becomes tenuous -- that is, when its density is reduced -- then even fire remains just light.

As density decreases darkness increases.

With an increase in density, 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 unconsciousness and consciousness.

The basic principle is attention.

Its fluidity, density, tenuity, solidity, determine whether to call one awake or asleep, whether to call one unconscious or conscious.

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 inside the room than there is outside.

There is light in this room because it is dark outside.

Were there bright sunshine outside, this room would look darker.

So when we say somebody is awake or asleep, we simply mean, in comparison to someone else.

Language has its own difficulty; it would be a problem to continually express things in such comparative terms.

Thats why we use words in the absolute sense -- which is not right.

The right way is always to express in relative terms.

For instance, we are all sitting here and in a way we are all awake.

But thats not really true.

Each one present here is awake to a respective degree.

Not every one sitting here is awake uniformly.

Hence it is possible that, compared to you.

the person to your left is less awake, or the person to your right is more awake.

The element that moves between consciousness and unconsciousness is attention.

So if we understand what attention, dhyana is, well understand what consciousness and unconsciousness means.

Attention means: awareness of something.

It means reflection of something in the consciousness.

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 contracts because there is no need for so much light to go in.

Less light is enough for you to see; hence the pupil contracts and the focus is narrowed.

When you come out of bright light into a dark place, the pupils dilate and the focus is enlarged, because in order to see in the dark, more light needs to go within.

So according to the degree of darkness and light it is exposed to, the pupil of the eye keeps changing 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 ones attention.

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 unconscious 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.

Hence, the more a man lives in security, the more unconscious 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 become alert at once.

You will become conscious, awake, quite different from what you are now.

Seeing the dagger pointed at you will create such an emergency, such a critical situation, that at that moment you cant afford to be asleep.

That means you cant 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 come to the point of crystallization, your whole attention will become condensed.

Your whole attention will remain fixed on the dagger and you will become fully aware of it.

It is possible this situation may last only for a second; nevertheless, the fact is, your attention ordinarily becomes dense only in critical moments.

Once the danger is over, you go back to your previous state, you go to sleep once again.

That seems to be the reason danger attracts.

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 danger that draws him to gambling.

At the moment of placing his bet, he is more aware than ever.

A gambler has placed a hundred thousand dollars on a bet and is about to throw the dice.

Its a very critical moment.

In a blink, a hundred thousand dollars can go this way or that.

At this moment he cannot 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 search of meditation.

Whether he knows it or not is another matter.

A man brings a wife home.

Then, as the days go by and she becomes more and more familiar, he becomes less and less attentive towards her.

She becomes as well known to him as the street he crosses every day -- and suddenly the woman next 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 become condensed; the focus of his eye changes immediately.

Actually, the eyes of husbands and wives dont change 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 attraction for another woman or another man is really the attraction of attention.

In that one moment, in that moment of thrill, the mind becomes 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 cannot attain joy by staying asleep.

Religion is a search for meditation, and so is gambling.

One who goes to battle, sword in hand, is in search of meditation too.

One who goes hunting a tiger in the forest is also searching for meditation.

And the one who is sitting in the cave with his eyes closed, working hard on his agya chakra, his third eye center, is searching for meditation as well.

The search can 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 searching is one and the same.

Meditation means: the power of knowing that lies within you becomes manifest in its entirety.

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 become actual.

Only in that moment a person becomes 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 can die without materializing into the tree.

It is not necessary that the tree has to come 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 another state of its being, the manifest state.

It would not be wrong to say that the seed is the unmanifest state of the tree, because what appears 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 unconsciousness is the potential state of awareness, or that awareness is the manifest state of unconsciousness.

What is it that moves between these states? What was present in the seed and also exists in the tree? There must be a connecting link between 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 can there be a connection between the seed and the tree? What was hidden in the seed and has manifested in the tree? It can neither be the seed nor can it be the tree.

This needs to be understood.

The third power that was hidden in the seed and which became manifest in the tree could not have been the seed alone.

Then it could never have become 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 unconsciousness are two states.

The element that travels between the two 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 become a tree, but he is no longer like a rock either.

He is on a journey somewhere in between.

Man is on a journey -- or it would be even better to say that man is in transit, at a halting place on a journey.

Man is a seed on its way to becoming a tree.

He is also a sprout in between.

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 man gets up, goes to the kitchen 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 morning, he did it all in the dream.

His eyes were open, he followed the right path, opened the door without difficulty, wrote the letter, but still he was asleep.

This means that, except for a tiny little corner, his entire mind was asleep, and hence could not register his actions in its memory.

So the man is at a loss in the morning to explain what happened at 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 account of that very day.

What occurred on that day was recorded in some corner of your mind, a corner of which even you are not fully aware.

It was recorded and left unused.

Similarly, the memories of our past lives are also lying there undisturbed.

We are not fully cognizant of them.

In the previous life some part of our being was awake, and that part had done the recording.

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 accomplished 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 such an attempt was already made once before.

As a matter of fact, infinite attempts have been made before.

Should you ever enter into the memories of your past lives, you will be in for a great surprise.

The memories of past lives are not restricted to human lives alone.

Entering these memories is very easy; one can do so without much difficulty.

However, prior to many human lives, we have passed through animal lives as well.

It is difficult to penetrate 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.

Penetrating them is even more difficult because they are buried even further, at deeper levels.

Prior to having lived as trees, we have gone through 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 recording, however, must have taken place in a state of somnolence, otherwise ones entire mind would be aware of it.

It may not have occurred to you, but there are certain things we never forget.

Why is it so? For example, lets assume someone slapped you when you were five years old.

Even after so many years the incident is still fresh in your mind, and you will never forget 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 incident made such a deep impression on you.

It is only natural that at the moment one is slapped, ones attention would be at its highest point.

This is the reason man can never forget 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 awareness that their memory pervades his entire consciousness, while the ordinary run-of-the-mill happenings are forgotten by him.

How are we to understand what attention is, what meditation is? Because it is an experience, to understand 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 become significant.

One should say, rather, your whole being would converge 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 cognizant of it; you didnt even know such a part existed.

And then, suddenly, the pain caused by the pin created 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 consciousness, 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 becomes apparent to you.

So, attention means awareness.

There can be two kinds of attention.

This also needs to be understood, because it will be useful in following your question.

There are two kinds of attention.

One, we may call concentration.

In order to understand what concentration is, it is necessary to know that when your attention is centered on one point, you become oblivious to all other points.

As I mentioned earlier, if a pin is thrust into your body, your entire attention will go to the point where the pin is hurting.

You will become 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 not exist for him any more.

One who suffers from a headache becomes identified with the head alone; the rest of his body ceases to be.

One whose stomach hurts, his whole attention centers only on the stomach.

If a thorn pricks your foot, the foot becomes everything.

This is concentration of attention.

This is how you bring all your consciousness to one point.

When the entire consciousness converges on one point and rests there, obviously all other points become negated, disappear into darkness.

As I pointed out earlier, when someones house is on fire, he becomes oblivious to everything but the fire.

He only knows his house is on fire; everything else is dead as far as he is concerned.

The only thing he remains aware of is that his house is on fire.

He becomes unconscious towards the rest of the world.

So, concentration is one form of attention.

In concentration you become centered on one point while remaining unconscious of the infinite number of other areas.

Hence, although concentration is the density of attention, at the same time it is the expansion of unconsciousness too.

Both things happen simultaneously.

The other form of attention is awareness -- not concentration.

Awareness means attention which is not centered on any particular point.

This is a little difficult to understand, because we only know the pointed attention.

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 concentration is.

But there is one other 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 unconscious 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 unconscious of all the rest.

So there cant be any object, any center of awareness as far as God is concerned.

Its an awareness without a center.

In such a case, awareness becomes 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 mean chetana, consciousness, which is not really its meaning, because consciousness is always about something.

If you say, "I am conscious," then it can be asked, "Conscious about what?" Chit means objectless consciousness.

It is not consciousness aimed at something, it is just a pure state of being conscious.

Consciousness will always be object-centered, while the state of being conscious is centrifugal, 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 unconsciousness can 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 needs to be understood too.

In concentration, ones consciousness is centered on one object, unconscious of the rest.

Awareness is centered on one point only.

In the state 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.

In the state of total awareness the 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 anything left to know.

There is always a price for whatsoever knowledge one wishes to attain.

If you want to know about something, you will have to be ignorant of something else.

Remember, it is with ignorance that one always pays the price of knowing.

As man goes on becoming knowledgeable of many things, he has to remain equally ignorant of many others.

Now, for example, a scientist is quite a knowledgeable person, but if he is a chemist he will know nothing about physics, if he is a mathematician he will know nothing about chemistry.

If he wants to know a great deal about mathematics, he will have to be content 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 courage 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 omniscient, but the fact is he didnt even know how to fix a puncture in a bicycle tire.

He was not a specialist.

One who needs to know how to fix a puncture in a bicycle tire will have to keep himself from knowing about many other things.

His consciousness will have to become object-centered and allow many things to be left in the dark.

The very meaning of science is knowing more and more about less and less.

As the amount of knowledge grows, the area of knowledge becomes 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 scientist who may be able to produce a hydrogen bomb can 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 one thing he has had to give up knowing about many other things.

Concentration is bound to end up like this.

One particular object will gain importance while all remaining objects will fall into neglect.

Yet another result of concentration is that the more an object grows in importance, the more the one who knows about it becomes secondary.

A scientist knows a great deal, but he has no knowledge of the knower, of the knowing element within himself.

He becomes object-centered.

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 interesting 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 to bring his ration card to the shop and stand in the queue as well.

When his name, Thomas Edison, was called out, he looked around with indifference, as if someone elses name was being called.

Somebody in the queue happened to recognize him.

He came up to him and said.

"Pardon me, I have seen your photograph in the newspapers.

You yourself seem to be Edison.

"

Edison gave a start.

He thanked the 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 such an important figure that in thirty years no one had ever called him by his given name.

Obviously, he had forgotten it.

Concentration happens when the arrow of consciousness strikes an object with great intensity.

With that, however, the entire world, including ones own self, falls into darkness.

In the ultimate 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 distinction between the two.

What appears 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, uncentered, 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.

In the state of total awareness neither the subject nor 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 sense, it 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 nothing left which needs to be known.

If one attempts 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 scientist, it is knowledge in the sense a poet is known to have it.

The second common state of awareness is that of concentration, where you know about one thing and forget about all the rest, including yourself.

And there is yet another state which comes before this.

It is the primary state in which you know neither the object nor yourself.

It is the state of total darkness.

Neither do you know about anything -- it is not even concentration; 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 unmanifest, hidden in the roots.

So there is sushupti, the state of dreamless sleep, and there is the state of total awareness.

In between 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 come nearer to matter.

When we are awake we come closer to the divine, just a little closer.

We swing towards God.

Should we continue to lean towards awareness like this, should this journey continue, then a moment comes when even in sleep you are not really completely asleep.

Then you begin to remain aware even in your sleep.

Then sleep becomes 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 coma or becomes unconscious or gets 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 in the state of ultimate consciousness as well, but they disappear in infinite light.

If you understand what I am saying, then, in brief, it means that the journey of attention extends from total sleep to total awareness.

In between, 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 fiction; what they said sounded like a story from the Puranas.

But now, even scientists 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 nevertheless, trees have the ability to see, to listen, to experience.

Recently, I was reading about some experiments conducted at the de la Warr Laboratory of Oxford University.

Through scientific means they have brought certain astonishing experiences to 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 second pot.

To everyones great surprise the seeds in the other pot sprouted very late in spite of the fact that all arrangements for both pots were the same; there was not the slightest difference.

The gardeners were neither informed of the difference nor given any instructions to treat them differently.

Nevertheless, 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 second pot took the normal time; their growth was slower.

And there was a marked difference in the quality of flowers and fruit.

This experiment and many others were conducted 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 was photographed.

And the photograph turned out to be spectacular, far beyond anyones comprehension.

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 atomic energy.

The seed is accepting, the seed is receiving something too.

The seed has a consciousness too.

Indeed, it is asleep.

Compared to man it looks even more asleep.

And yet, there is a certain awareness in its state of sleep.

A rock looks even more asleep, but even its state of sleep contains 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 under the wrong impression, normally created by applying the law of economics, that certain things become 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 on earth and come across these two men, how would he differentiate between them? He neither knows our language nor our culture nor our manners.

He will only judge by appearances.

If the Martian were to spend an hour or so watching these two men, would he ever observe any distinction between the two? Returning to his planet, 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 understanding 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 in depth, able to go deep in their research, to connect with them, found out that.

even with stones, there 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 direction and can therefore be used only for particular reasons.

Some unprecedented events will start taking place in your life if you carry certain kinds of stones, make a charm of them, wear them in a necklace or mount one in your ring -- because such stones have their own lives too.

With the ownership of a stone of that kind incidents will inevitably occur, because now you are in a symbiotic relationship with the stone.

Without it such incidents 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 whenever the 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 stones that have brought good fortune to those who owned them, 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 determines the individuality of a particular thing.

You can look at it this way too: a dynamic attention means awareness, while a passive attention means sleep, unconsciousness.

The ultimate passivity of attention is matter, the ultimate dynamism of attention is God.

Question 2

YOU HAVE DESCRIBED TWO STATES, ONE OF COMPLETE UNCONSCIOUSNESS AND THE OTHER OF ABSOLUTE AWARENESS.

ONE TRAVELS FROM COMPLETE UNCONSCIOUSNESS TO ABSOLUTE AWARENESS.

THE QUESTION IS, WHERE DO WE REACH AFTER ATTAINING THE STATE OF ABSOLUTE AWARENESS? ALSO, FROM WHICH POINT DOES THE COMPLETE UNCONSCIOUSNESS BEGIN, AND WHERE DOES IT COME FROM?

Actually, as soon as we use the words absolute or whole we need to take a few conditions that go with it into account.

For instance, it is wrong to ask "Where does wholeness end?" because wholeness means that which can never come to an end.

Should it ever end somewhere it will not be whole.

It will remain confined at 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 cannot be whole.

The whole, the absolute is beginningless and endless.

It neither has a beginning before nor an end afterwards.

If there were ends on any side it would not be the whole.

Therefore, we cant ask any questions about the beginning or the end of the absolute.

If one needs to ask a question at all, then one should only ask before he comes 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 unconsciousness come from? Why did it come? When did it come? Where will it end? Why will it end? When will it end? Where in existence is this state of consciousness located? And where in existence could the state of complete unconsciousness be?" It is natural that questions such as these should arise.

The questions are perfectly consistent, yet totally meaningless.

One should not be under the illusion that just because a thing is consistent it is also meaningful.

A thing can be consistent and yet meaningless.

So the questions are absolutely pertinent but the answers will have no meaning, will solve nothing.

Whatsoever answer there may be can only give rise to more questions of this nature.

So what do I intend to tell you?

There are certain questions you never ask a scientist.

Why not show the same attitude towards a religious man? There are certain things a scientist is never asked to explain.

Why are they asked of a religious man? A scientist 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 cannot be answered in the first place -- they get themselves into trouble.

For example, if you ask a scientist, "Why is a tree green?" he will answer, "Because the tree contains chlorophyll.

" And if you ask, "Why does the tree contain chlorophyll?" the scientist will disregard the question -- it is a fact; thats the way it is.

He will point out, "The tree is green because it contains chlorophyll!" If you continue to ask, "Why cant the tree be without chlorophyll?" the scientist will state frankly, "I am not the creator, and there is no answer to this question!"

In this way, science escapes falling into stupidities.

It leaves everything to the facts.

"This is how it is; these are the facts.

" The scientist 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 question doesnt 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, fiction begins.

"

If we could give an explanation as to why such-and-such a thing happens, then I would like to say that, in this world, there is unconsciousness and there is awareness.

This is a fact and as yet no way has been found to go beyond them.

And I dont think a way can 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 can only see a short distance in either direction.

As we look backward we find darkness increasing, becoming more and more dense.

As we look forward we find darkness decreasing and light growing, becoming 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 answer it.

Once a question is formulated, someone or other is bound to come up with an answer for it.

This is how philosophy has come about.

Philosophy is made of foolish answers to foolish questions.

And the questions remain, right where they always were.

There can be different answers to each question, because each answer reflects an individuals perception.

In answer to the question, "Who created man?" someone can say, "God created man.

" But so what? We can 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 comprehension.

" On the one hand this man is saying that everything is beyond comprehension, that it is all an illusion, maya; however, when he is talking about everything being an illusion, he is saying something which is actually coming out of his understanding.

He appears to have fully understood that everything is maya, that everything is beyond comprehension.

If everything is indeed beyond comprehension, then he needs to shut up; then he need not say all is maya.

How can there be an answer if it is really beyond comprehension? So one must keep quiet; there is no need to answer.

Some people say God created man so man can 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 need to go through all this trouble? Someone else declares, "This whole thing goes on to fulfill the unfinished karmas of previous lives.

" But then it can be asked, "There must have been a first life without any other life preceding 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 answer to the ultimate questions.

All philosophies are fundamentally dishonest.

But the dishonesty is hidden very deep.

And once this basic dishonesty escapes your notice, the remaining structure will look very convincing; 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 once, it means the matter has remained right where it is -- it has neither begun nor ended.

In my view, religion should also be perceived as a science.

Some time before his death Einstein was asked, "How do you differentiate between a scientist and a philosopher?" Einstein replied, "I call that man a scientist who, when asked one hundred questions, answers one and shows his ignorance about the remaining ninety-nine.

And about the one he answers, he will make clear that it is all that is known at this point.

It may change with a new discovery in the future.

It is not the final statement.

"

Science never makes any final statement.

Thats why theres a kind of honesty in science.

So Einstein said, "If you ask a philosopher a hundred questions, he will give one hundred and fifty answers.

He will consider each answer absolute, as if no change can ever occur.

" Whatsoever a philosopher says is to be taken as conclusive; anyone doubting it can 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 scientific and religious at the same time.

This is my approach.

Although I talk all along on religion, my outlook is always scientific.

Therefore, I have no answers to the ultimate questions; there cannot be any.

If an answer does come, then know well the question is no longer the ultimate question -- it must be a question somewhere in between, 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 China, and in Japanese the 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 stands erect, 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 change.

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 becomes meaningless.

I can tell you only this much: darkness, unconsciousness extends to the rear, while there is an expanse of light, of consciousness ahead of us.

I can tell you this also: as darkness decreases, bliss increases.

And I can mention this as well: with the increase in darkness, misery grows.

These are facts.

If you wish to choose misery you can go back towards darkness and unconsciousness.

If you wish to choose bliss, you can move ahead towards light, towards the ultimate light.

And if you wish for neither, you can stand in between and indulge in thinking about what was before and what is ahead.

Question 3

AT THE DWARKA MEDITATION CAMP YOU SAID MEDITATION AND SAMADHI CONSTITUTE A VOLUNTARY, CONSCIOUS 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 CONSCIOUSNESS? SINCE THE BODY IS MERELY A MECHANICAL DEVICE, IT CANNOT EXPERIENCE SUCH DELUSION.

AND THERE IS NO QUESTION OF CONSCIOUSNESS BEING DELUDED.

THEN WHAT IS THE CAUSE, THE BASIS OF THIS DELUSION?

The awareness of death

If a man can die in the state of consciousness, for him death exists no more.

In other words, if a man can manage to remain conscious 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 conscious, he finds there is no death at all.

Then death becomes a falsehood.

But it is natural for you to ask, "Who is deluded?" You are right in saying it cannot be the body, because how can the body feel delusion? It cannot be the soul either, because the soul never dies.

Then who goes through the delusion? It is of course, neither 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 needs to be understood in a little detail.

You see a man dying, and then you think he is dead.

Since you are not dead you have no right to think this way.

It is very foolish on your part to conclude 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 longer talks.

Before he used to walk, now he walks no more.

Up to yesterday, what I had understood 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, then be that 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 someone to have life, he no longer has it.

This much of a negative statement is fine, that 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 was present in the man exists 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 determines the mans death without even asking him, without even letting 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 chance to say whether he is indeed dead or not.

Do you follow what I mean? Death 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 can expect to remain awake at the moment of death when he has lived all his life in the state of sleep? It is obvious.

How can 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 can one who cannot 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 being determined 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.

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 once things 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 understand, but how can 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 cannot 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 cannot see anything.

" However, just because I am unable to see anything does not mean there is darkness.

Saying "I cant see anything" means the source that made everything shine has become dull.

Now, since things 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, creating enmity, all of a sudden, at the moment of death, even he finds life slipping away through his fingers.

What he had understood 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 seen certain things when the light within him was present.

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 stuck in his mind as well.

So he feels he is dying.

His conclusion is also part of that social illusion.

He comes to feel he is dying just as others before him have died.

He sees himself surrounded by his loved ones, his family and relatives crying bitterly.

Now his illusion begins to become confirmed.

All this creates a hypnotic effect on him.

All these people

.

the situation is just ideal -- the doctor at his side, the oxygen ready, the whole atmosphere of the house changed, people in tears.

Now the man seems certain of his death.

The social illusion that he is dying grips his mind.

His friends and relatives 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 thoroughly convince the 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 convinced he is about to die, that he is dying, that he is gone.

This hypnosis of death will cause him to become unconscious, frightened, horrified; it will make him shrink, feeling "I am about to die, I am about to die.

What shall I do?" Overcome with fear he will shut his eyes, and in that state of fear he will become unconscious.

In fact, falling unconscious is a device we use against things we are afraid of.

You have a stomach ache, for example, and if the pain becomes unbearable you will fall unconscious.

That is just a trick on your part to switch off your mind, to forget the pain.

When the pain is too much, falling unconscious is a mental trick -- you dont want to suffer the pain any longer.

When the pain doesnt go away, the only other alternative is to switch off ones mind.

One turns off so one remains unaware of the pain.

So, falling unconscious 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 becoming unbearable, you are gone; 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 conscious.

Had the pain been unbearable he would have been unconscious.

The natural trick would have worked and he would have lost consciousness.

As soon as a person crosses the limit of endurance he falls unconscious.

Even minor illnesses frighten us and we become unconscious -- what to say about the terrifying thought of death.

The very idea of death kills us.

We lose consciousness, and in that unconscious state death occurs.

Hence, when I say death is an illusion I do not mean it is an illusion that happens either to the body or to the soul.

I call it a social illusion -- one which we cultivate in every child.

We indoctrinate every child with the idea, "You are going 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 becomes unconscious.

He becomes hypnotized.

Contrary to this is the technique of active meditation -- a technique of how to enter death consciously.

In Tibet this technique 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 come and say, "You are not dying, because no one has ever died.

You will depart relaxed and fully conscious.

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 cannot speak, and so on -- and yet, the 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 unhealthy people; we live in a great illusion, and because of this illusion the antidote becomes essential.

I believe there should be a wide application of Bardo in this country 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 each and every point

Then the consciousness withdraws from the body, it does not leave all at once; all of the body does not die at the same time.

The consciousness shrinks inside and, bit by bit, leaves each part of the body.

Through various stages it withdraws, and all stages of this contraction can be recounted to the dying man as a means of keeping him conscious.

There can be many ways of keeping a dying person awake.

For example, special kinds of aromas can help a person stay conscious, just as certain kinds of aromas, odors, can make a person unconscious.

Incense and benzoin were discovered mainly because they help to keep one awake.

A kind of music can be created around a person to make him stay conscious.

And there can be music which can make a person fall asleep.

You come across music which can put you to sleep -- there can be music which can keep you awake as well! Certain words, certain mantras can be uttered which can help the person stay awake and not go to sleep.

Certain parts of a dying mans body can be tapped in order to stop him from falling asleep and keep his consciousness alive.

He can be made to sit in a certain posture to prevent him from falling asleep, to let him stay conscious.

A Zen master was dying.

He gathered other monks around him and said, "I want to ask you something.

My time has come, 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, forget it! Let me ask you this: have you seen any mystic dying while standing on his head?"

The people around him said, "We never conceived 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 to bring 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 was approached 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 ninety-year-old woman grabbed her staff and came.

Striking her staff 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 conventional 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 can be removed.

There is a technique 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 can come out of it himself at the time of death.

If you have even had a little experience of meditation: 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 unconscious at the time of death.

In fact, by then your state of unconsciousness would already be broken.

You would be able to die knowingly.

To be able to die knowingly is a contradiction in terms.

No one can ever die knowingly, consciously, because he remains aware all the time that he is not dying, that something is dying in him but he is not.

He keeps watching this separation and ultimately finds that his body is lying away from him, at a distance.

Then death turns out to be merely a separation; it amounts to the breaking of a connection.

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 come to the door and bid me a tearful goodbye, feeling that the man they had come to say goodbye to had died.

The separation of the body and the consciousness is death.

Because there is this separation, it is meaningless to call it death -- it is merely a loosening, a breaking of a connection.

It is nothing more than changing clothes.

So, one who dies with awareness never really dies, hence the 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 connection, 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 means death 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 since eternity, and will continue to exist in the future, 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 in meditation, does not realize for a long time that he is dead.

He sees people around him and wonders why they are weeping.

The arrangements for taking his body for cremation, or the arrangements to bury him, are significant only to remind him he is no longer alive, that he is no longer the same person.

This is the reason why in this country 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 under the false idea that the body was not dead, and try to find ways to reenter it.

Saving the body meant creating a little impediment for its new journey.

The spirit would have to hang around unnecessarily; hence the custom 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 vacating the house.

There are other important reasons behind it.

Actually the departing person finds it hard to believe he is dead.

How can 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 was possible 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 can keep wandering a long time.

It can still try to figure out a way to reenter the 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 consciously.

you will certainly be able to die consciously -- because dying is a phenomenon of life; it takes place fn life.

In other words, death is the final happening of what you understand life to be.

It is not an event that occurs outside of life.

Ordinarily, we look upon death as something which happens outside of life, or as some kind of phenomenon opposite to life.

No, in fact, it is the final occurrence in the series of events which take place in 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 becomes completely yellow and falls from the tree.

That falling from the tree is not an event 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 an external event; rather it is the culmination of the yellowing, of the ripening it has already gone through.

And what was going on when the fruit was green? It was getting ready to face the same final event.

And the same process was going on when it had not even blossomed on the branch as yet, when it was still hidden inside the branch.

Even in that state it was preparing for the final event as well.

And what about when the tree had not been manifested 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 chain of events belonging to the same phenomenon.

The final event is not the end, it is just a separation.

One relationship, one order, is replaced by another relationship, another order.

Question 4

HOW DO YOU SEE DEATH IN RELATION TO NIRVANA?

Nirvana means, firstly, that one has realized totally there is no death at all.

Secondly, it means one has also come to know that, in what we call life, nothing is attained.

Nirvana means awareness of the reality that what we understand as death is no death at all, and that what we mean by life is not really life.

Do you follow what I am saying? One thing: nirvana means that when a person knows death he will find there is no death.

There is another phenomenon connected 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 continue to 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 come to know the other half of the truth, the day you come to know the truth in its entirety -- that life is not life, that death is not death -- that day you will have reached the point of no return.

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 knock on the door to find entry.

If the steps of this house are broken, if there is no remaining link, then he will knock on the door of another house, of another body -- because life can 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 becomes 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 becomes the first thought when you wake up in the morning.

Watch it a little.

The last thought of the previous night will become your first thought next morning -- seven hours later.

The thought will wait for you to wake up.

It will wait overnight on the doorstep of your consciousness in order to begin work as soon as you get up in the morning.

If you have had a fight with somebody the previous night, then the very first thought the next morning will be about that fight.

If you slept with a prayer on your lips, then you will wake up in the morning with the same prayer in your thoughts.

What occurred last night will be the starting point of the next morning.

The last thought, the last wish, the last desire of a dying man will become 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 being destroyed -- 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 before going 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 accounts and then goes to sleep.

Similarly, the last thought before falling asleep is the summary of your whole days account.

If a person were to note his last thought before going to sleep at night -- the very last thought -- he would be able to write a wonderful autobiography, incomparable.

That would be the short, abstract story of your life.

It would contain everything that is essential, and all that is nonessential would drop away.

If you were to note the very first thought each morning, 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 become your potential for the next life.

That will be your asset to carry into the next birth.

You may call it karma, you may call it desire or whatsoever else you will; you may call it samskara, conditioning, it wont make any difference.

Rather, you should call it a built-in program of your life, applicable in the future.

It is amazing, but when you sow a particular little seed, why does it only give rise to the banyan tree? The seed must have had a built-in program, otherwise this would not be possible.

It must have contained a blueprint.

How else could it grow leaves and branches, and why would they all be of a banyan tree? The 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 contain, how tall and wide it would be, how long its branches would be, how many bullock carts could find rest and shelter under it.

All these things can be looked into in detail, because all of it is hidden in that tiny seed.

Its like the blueprint of a building; it contains all that it will be someday.

At the time of death we gather the essence of our entire life.

We save whatsoever we consider significant, and whatsoever we find useless we drop.

A man who has earned one hundred thousand rupees and donated a thousand rupees to the building of a temple, will not remember the temple in his dying moments -- but the safe containing ninety-nine thousand rupees, that he will undoubtedly remember.

In ones dying moments the significant will be saved, the nonsignificant will be thrown away.

The essential and the nonessential 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 become the basis of your journey; it will instantly become your built-in program.

Now you will set out on a new journey, and your future birth will take place according 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 scientifically as anything else.

So nirvana means that a person has come to know that death is not really death, nor is life, life.

Once he has come 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 unessential.

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 foregoes good deeds as well as bad deeds.

In fact, he foregoes everything.

Kabir says, "I leave behind my cloak intact.

" He says he wore it with such care that no accounts were left pending.

He took it off so totally that he did not have to review, to reevaluate his understanding of the real and the unreal, of the essential and the unessential.

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 cannot 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 transcend all.

Without harboring 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, accompanied by no one -- neither friend nor foe, neither good deeds nor bad deeds, neither scriptures nor doctrines -- nothing.

So nirvana means one who has known that neither was life indeed life, nor was death really death.

And when we know all that is not, we begin to see that which is.