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The first question: "IN WHICH WAY
CAN THE PRACTICE OF SELF-REMEMBERING TRANSFORM THE HUMAN MIND?"
Man is not centered
in himself. He is born centered, but the society, the family, the education, the culture,
they push him off-center, and they put him off-center in a very cunning way, knowingly or
unknowingly. So everyone becomes, in a sense, "eccentric" -- off the center.
There are reasons, survival reasons for it.
When a child is
born he has to be forced into a certain discipline. He cannot be allowed freedom. If he is
allowed total freedom, he will remain with the center -- spontaneous, living with himself,
living himself. He will be original as he is. He will be authentic, and then there will be
no need to practice any self-remembering. There will be no need to practice any meditation
because he will never go off the center. He will remain with himself -- centered, rooted,
grounded in his own being. But this has not yet been possible. Meditation is, therefore,
medicinal. The society creates the disease, and then the disease has to be treated.
Religion is
medicinal. If really a human society based in freedom can be evolved, there would be no
need of religion. Because we are ill medicine is needed, and because we are off-center
methods of centering are needed. If someday it becomes possible on earth to create a
healthy society, healthy in the inner sense, there will be no religion. But it seems
difficult to create such a society.
The child has to be
disciplined. What are you doing when you are disciplining a child? You are forcing
something which is not natural to him. You are asking and demanding something which he
will never do spontaneously. You will punish him, you will appreciate, you will bribe him,
you will do everything to make him social -- to take him away from his natural being. You
will create a new center in his mind which was never there, and this center will grow and
the natural center will go into oblivion, into the unconscious.
Your natural center
has moved into the unconscious, into the dark, and your unnatural center has become your
conscious. There is really no division between unconscious and conscious; the division is
created. You are one consciousness. This division comes because your own center has been
forced to some dark corner. Even you are not in contact with it; you are not allowed to be
in contact with it. You yourself have become unconscious that you have a center. You live
what the society, the culture, the family have taught you to live.
You live a false
life. For this false life a false center is needed. That center is your ego, your
conscious mind. That is why, no matter what you do, you will never be blissful -- because
only the real center can happen, only the real center can explode, can come to the climax,
the optimum, of the possibility of bliss. The false center is a shadow game. You can play
with it, you can hope with it, but ultimately nothing but frustration comes out of it.
With a false anxiety that is bound to be so.
In a way everything
is forcing you not to be yourself, and this cannot be changed just by saying that this is
wrong, because society has its own needs. A child, when born, is just like an animal --
spontaneous, centered, grounded, but so independent. He cannot become part of an
organization. He is disturbing. He has to be forced, cultivated and changed. In this
cultivation he has to be pushed off-center.
We live on the
periphery and we live only to the extent that the society allows us. Our freedom is false
because the rules of the game, of the social game, are so deeply fixed that you may feel
that you are choosing this and that, but you are not choosing. The choice comes from your
cultivated mind, and this goes on in a mechanical way.
I am reminded of a
man who married eight women in his life. He married one woman, then divorced her, then
married another -- very cautiously, very carefully, very carefully, in order not to fall
into the old trap again. In every way he calculated, and he was thinking that this new
woman was going to be totally different than the first one. But within a few days, with
the honeymoon not yet even over, the new woman started to prove herself to be just the
same as the old one, the first one. Within six months the marriage was shattered again. He
married a third woman and now he was still more cautious, but again the same thing
happened.
He married eight
women, and every time the woman turned out to be the same as the old one. What was
happening? And he was choosing very cautiously now, very carefully. What was happening?
The chooser was unconscious. He couldn't change the chooser, and the chooser was always
the same so the choice was going to be the same. And the chooser works unconsciously.
You go on doing
this and that, and you go on changing outward things, but you remain the same. You remain
off-center. Whatsoever you do, howsoever it is apparently different, it ultimately proves
to be the same. The results are always the same; the outcome is always the same; the
consequence is always the same.
Whenever you feel
you are choosing and you are free, then too you are not free and you are not choosing. The
choice is also a mechanical thing. Scientists say, biologists particularly, that the mind
becomes imprinted, and that happens very early. The first two or three years are the years
for imprinting, and things become fixed in the mind. Then you go on doing the same; you go
on repeating in a mechanical way. You are moving in a vicious circle.
The child is forced
to be off-center. He has to be disciplined; he has to learn obedience. That is why we give
so much value to obedience. And obedience destroys everyone, because obedience means now
you are not the center: the other is the center; you are just to follow him.
Education is a
necessity in order to survive, but we make this necessity to survive an excuse for
submitting. We force everyone to be obedient. What does it mean? Obedient to whom? Always
someone else -- the father, the mother, someone else is there, and you have to be obedient
to him. Why so much insistence for obedience? Because your father was forced to be
obedient when he was a child; your mother was forced to be obedient when she was a child.
They were forced off their centers; now they are doing the same. They are doing the same
with their children, and these children will do the same again. This is how the vicious
circle moves on.
Freedom is killed,
and with freedom you lose your center. Not that the center is destroyed; it cannot be
destroyed while you are alive. It would be good if it was destroyed; you would be more at
ease with yourself. If you were totally false and there was no real center hidden within
you, you would be at ease. There would be no conflict, no anxiety, no struggle.
The conflict comes
into existence because the real remains there. It remains in the center, and just on the
periphery an unreal center is created. Between these two centers a constant struggle, a
constant anxiety, tension, is created. This must be transformed, and there is only one
way: the false must disappear and the real must be given its place. You must be regrounded
into your center, into your being; otherwise you will be in anguish.
The false can
disappear. The real cannot disappear unless you die. While you are alive the real will be
there. The society can do only one thing: it can push it deep down and it can create a
barrier so that even you become unconscious of it. Can you remember any moment in your
life when you were spontaneous, when you just lived in the moment -- when you were living
yourself and you were not following someone else?
I was reading one
memoir of a poet. His father had died, and the dead body was put in a coffin. The poet,
the son, was weeping, crying, and then suddenly he kissed the forehead of his father's
dead body and said, "There, now that you are dead, I can do this. I always wanted to
kiss you on your forehead, but while you were alive it was impossible. I was so afraid of
you."
You can kiss only a
dead father -- and even if the alive father allows you to kiss, the kiss is going to be
false; it cannot be spontaneous. A young boy cannot even kiss his mother spontaneously
because always the fear of sex is there; the bodies must not come too closely in contact,
even with the mother. Everything becomes false. There is fear and falsity -- no freedom,
no spontaneousness, and the real center can function only when you are spontaneous and
free.
Now you will be
able to understand what is my attitude towards this question: "IN WHICH WAY CAN THE
PRACTICE OF SELF-REMEMBERING TRANSFORM THE HUMAN MIND?" It will reground you; it will
give you again roots into your own center. By self-remembering, you are forgetting
everything other than yourself: the society, the mad world around you, the family, the
relationships, everything, you are forgetting. You are simply remembering that you are.
This remembrance is
not given by the society to you. This self-remembrance will detach you from all that is
peripheral. And if you can remember, you will fall back to your own being, to your own
center. The ego will be there just on the periphery, but you will be able to see it now.
Like any other object, you will be able to observe it. And once you become capable of
observing your ego, your false center, you will never be false again.
You may need your
false center because you have to live in a society which is false. You will be able to use
it now, but you will never be identified with it. It will be instrumental now. You will
live on your center, in your center. You will be able to use the false as a social
convenience, a convention, but you will not be identified with it. Now you know you can be
spontaneous, free. Self-remembering transforms you because it gives you the opportunity to
be yourself again -- and to be oneself is the ultimate and to be oneself is the absolute.
The peak of all the
possibilities, of all the potentialities, is the divine -- or whatsoever you want to call
it. God is not somewhere in the past; he is your future. You have heard it said again and
again that God is the father. More significantly, he is going to be your son, not the
father, because he is going to evolve out of you. So I say, "God the son,"
because the father is in the past and the son is in the future.
You can become
divine, God can be born out of you; if you are authentically yourself, you have taken the
basic step. You are going towards divinity, towards total freedom. As a slave you cannot
move to that. As a slave, as a false person, there is no path leading towards the divine,
to the ultimate possibility, the ultimate flowering of your being. First you must be
centered in yourself. Self-remembering helps and only self-remembering helps; nothing else
can transform you. With the false center there is no growth -- only accumulation -- and
remember the distinction between accumulation and growth. With the false center you can
accumulate: you can accumulate wealth, you can accumulate knowledge, you can accumulate
anything, without any growth. Growth happens only to the real center. Growth is not an
accumulation; you are not burdened by growth. Accumulation is a burden.
You can know many
things without knowing anything. You can know much about love without knowing love. Then
it is an accumulation. If you know love, then it is growth. You can know much about love
with the false center; you can love only with the real center. Real centers can mature.
The false can only get bigger and bigger without any growth, without any maturity. The
false is just a cancerous growth, an accumulation, burdening you like a disease.
But you can do one
thing: you can change your focus totally. From the false, you can move your eyes to the
real. This is what is meant by self-remembering: whatsoever you are doing, remember
yourself -- that you are. Don't forget it. The very remembering will give an authentic
reality to whatsoever you are doing. If you are loving, first remember that you are;
otherwise you will be loving from the false center. And from the false center you can only
pretend; you cannot love. If you are praying, first remember that you are; otherwise the
prayer is going to be just nonsense, just a deception. And you are not deceiving anyone
else; you are deceiving yourself.
First remember that
you are, and this remembering that "I am" must become so basic that it follows
you like a shadow. Then even while asleep it will enter, and you will remember. If you can
remember the whole day, by and by it enters even in your dreams, even in your sleep, and
you will know that "I am."
The day you can
know even in your sleep that you are, you are grounded in your center. Now the false is no
more; it is not a burden to you. You can use it now, it is instrumental. You are not a
slave to it, you have become the master.
Krishna says in the
Gita that while everyone is asleep, the yogi is not: he is awake. It is not meant that the
yogi lives without sleep, because sleep is a biological, bodily necessity. What is meant
is that he remembers even in his sleep that he is -- that "I am." Sleep is just
on the periphery. In the center the remembrance is there.
The yogi remembers
even while he is asleep, and you are not remembering yourself while you are even awake.
You are walking on the street, but you are not remembering that you are. Try, and you will
feel a change of quality. Try to remember that you are. Suddenly a new lightness comes to
you, the heaviness disappears; you become weightless. You are thrown off the false center
to the real one again, but it is difficult and arduous because we are so much grounded in
the false. It will take time, but no transformation is possible without self-remembering
becoming effortless for you. You simply start remembering yourself; otherwise no
transformation is possible.
The second
question:
"LAST NIGHT YOU SAID THAT ONE SHOULD ALWAYS SEE LIFE IN ITS POSITIVE
DIMENSIONS AND ONE SHOULD NOT GIVE EMPHASIS TO THE NEGATIVE. IS THIS NOT A CHOICE? AND IS
THIS NOT AGAINST ENCOUNTERING THE TOTAL REALITY -- THAT WHICH IS?"
It is a choice, but
one who is negative cannot take a jump towards choicelessness. If he can take it, it is
good, but it is impossible. From the negative, it is impossible to take a jump towards
choicelessness because the negative mind means that you can see only the ugly, you can see
only death, you can see only misery. You cannot see any positive elements in life. And,
remember, it is difficult to lose misery.
It may look very
strange when I say this, but it is difficult to take a jump from misery; it is easier to
take a jump from happiness. It is easier to take a jump when you are happy because with
happiness courage comes, with happiness the possibility of a higher bliss opens, with
happiness the whole world looks like a home. With misery the world is like a hell, and
there is no hope; everything is just hopeless. Then you cannot take any jump. In misery
one becomes a coward, and one clings to misery because at least this misery is known.
You cannot be
adventurous when you are unhappy. Adventure needs a subtle happiness in you. Then you can
leave the known. You are so happy that you are not afraid of the unknown. And the
happiness has become such a deep phenomenon to you that you know that wherever you will be
you will be happy. With the positive mind you know there is no hell, and wherever you are
the heaven will be. You can move into the unknown because now you know that heaven moves
with you.
You have heard that
you enter heaven or hell. This is nonsense. No one enters heaven, no one enters hell. You
carry your own hell and heaven with you, and wherever you enter, you enter with your hell
or heaven. Heaven and hell are not doors. They are burdens; you carry them with you.
Only with a dancing
heart -- happy, blissful, positive -- can you take a jump into the uncharted. That is why
I say that from the negative you cannot be choiceless. You cling to your misery. It is
known. You are acquainted with it, you are related to it, and it is better to remain with
the known misery than with the unknown. At least you have become accustomed to it, and you
know its ways. You have created certain defense mechanisms, an armor around you to be safe
from this misery. An unknown misery will create new defense mechanisms. It is always
better to be with the known misery than with an unknown misery.
With happiness,
quite the reverse is the case. With happiness, one wants to move into the unknown
happiness because the known gets boring. You never get bored with the known misery; you
enjoy it. Look at people talking about their misery: they enjoy it, they magnify their
misery; they have a subtle happiness.
With happiness you
get bored. You can move into the unknown. The unknown is alluring, and the choiceless is
the door for the unknown. This is how one has to move: from the negative to the positive
and from the positive to the choiceless. First make your mind positive. From hell move to
heaven, and from heaven you can move to moksha -- to the ultimate which is neither. From
misery move to bliss, and only then you can move to the beyond which is beyond both. That
is why the sutra said first to transform your mind from negative to positive, and this
change is just a change of focusing.
Life is both or
neither. It IS both or neither; it depends on you, on how you see it. You can look at it
with a negative mind, and then it looks like hell. It is not hell; this is only your
interpretation.
You change your
outlook: look positively. And this is what is meant by the attitude of the atheist. I
don't call a man an atheist or theist because he believes in God or not. I call a man a
theist if he has a positive attitude and an atheist if he has a negative attitude. It is
not a question of saying no to God; it is a question of saying no to life. The theist is
one who says yes and looks always from a yea-saying mind. Then everything changes totally.
If a negative mind
comes to a rose, to a garden, many roses may be there, but he will count only the thorns.
The first thing for the negative mind is the thorns; that is significant. Flowers are just
illusory; only thorns are real. He will count, and, of course, for each flower a thousand
thorns exist. And once he has counted a thousand thorns he cannot believe in one flower.
He will say this one flower is just illusory. How can such a beautiful flower exist with
such ugly thorns, violent thorns? It is impossible, it is unbelievable. And even if it
exists, it means nothing now. One thousand thorns have been counted, and the flower
disappears.
A positive mind
will start with the rose, with the flower. And once you are in a communion with the rose,
once you know the beauty, the life, the unearthly flowering, thorns disappear. And one who
has known the rose in its beauty, in its highest possibility, one who has looked deep into
it, for him now even thorns will not look like thorns. The eyes filled with the rose are
different now. Now the thorns will look just like a protection for this flower. They will
not be enemies; they will look just like part of the happening of flowers.
Now this mind will
know that this flower happens and these thorns are needed, they protect. Because of these
thorns this flower could happen. This positive mind will feel grateful even to thorns. And
if this approach deepens, a moment comes when thorns become flowers. With the first
approach the flower disappears -- or the flower even becomes a thorn. Only with a positive
mind can you get the state of a non-tense mind. With a negative mind you will remain
tense, with so many miseries all around. Such a negative, inventive mind goes on revealing
miseries and miseries and hells and hells.
In Buddha's time,
there was one really famous teacher. His name was Sanjaya Vilethiputta. He was an
absolutely negative thinker. Buddha thought of seven hells, so someone came to Sanjaya
Vilethiputta and told him that Buddha said there are seven hells. Sanjaya Vilethiputta
said, "Go and tell your Buddha he doesn't know anything. There are seven hundred
hells. He doesn't know anything! Only seven? There are seven hundred hells, and I have
counted all of them."
If you have a
negative mind, even seven hundred are not much. You will find more; there is no end to it.
The positive mind can be non-tense. Really, if you are positive how can you be tense and
if you are negative how you can be non-tense? With a negative mind there can be no
association with meditation. The negative mind is anti-meditative; it cannot meditate. A
single mosquito is enough to destroy all meditation. With a negative mind, the door is
closed for tranquility, for stillness, for silence. The negative mind is self-perpetuating
for misery. How can it take a jump toward choicelessness?
Krishnamurti goes
on talking about choicelessness, and the audience is negative. They listen, but they never
understand. And when they are not understanding, Krishnamurti gets disturbed because they
are not understanding him. Only a positive mind can understand what he is saying, but a
positive mind need not go anywhere -- neither to any Krishnamurti nor to any Rajneesh,
nowhere. Only a negative mind is in search of a teacher, of a master.
To talk to the
negative mind about choicelessness, about going beyond duality, about living both negative
and positive, is meaningless. Not that this is untrue -- it is true, but meaningless. The
one who is listening must be taken into account. He is more important than the one who is
talking. As I see it, you are negative. First you need a transformation towards
positivity. From your "no-saying" you must become a yea-sayer. You must look at
life with a "yes" attitude, and with a "yes" attitude this very earth
is totally transformed. Only then, when you have attained a positive attitude, can you
take a jump towards choicelessness -- and that will be easy, very easy!
Misery cannot be
renounced. It is difficult; you cling to it. Only happiness can be renounced because then
you know that when you renounce the negative you gain the positive and a positive
happiness. You renounce the negative and you gain happiness: just by renouncing the
negative you attain to happiness. If you now renounce this happiness, this positive mind
also, you open the doors for the infinite. But you must first have a feel of the positive.
Only then, only then, can you take a jump.
The third question:
"IN THE LAST TECHNIQUE YESTERDAY, YOU
EXPLAINED THAT IN THIS WORLD OF MAYA, THE INNER CONSCIOUSNESS OF THE SEEKER IS THE ONLY
REAL CENTER FOR HIM. IN THIS REFERENCE, PLEASE EXPLAIN THE SIGNIFICANCE AND ROLE OF THE
GURU IN THIS WORLD OF MAYA."
This world of MAYA
is not a world of MAYA for you; it is very real, and the role of the guru is to show you
that it is not real. It is real for you, so how can you think that it is unreal? You can
think about unreality only if you have a glimpse of the real; only then can you compare.
This world is not MAYA illusory, for you. You have heard, you have read that this world is
MAYA, and you may have memorized it just like a parrot, so you also call this world
illusory.
Everyday someone
comes to me who calls this world illusory and then he says, "My mind is very much
bothered. I am very tense, so tell me how to attain peace?" And this world is
"illusory"! If this world is illusory, how can your mind be tense? If you have
known that this world is illusory, the world will have disappeared, and with the world all
its misery. But the mind still is. You don't "know" that this world is illusory.
In the morning when
the sleep has disappeared, and with it the dream, are you worried about the dream? Are you
worried that in the dream you felt ill or that you were even dead? While the dream was
there, you were worried, you were ill, you were asking for a doctor, for some medicine.
But in the morning, the moment you are not asleep and the dream has disappeared, you are
not worried. Now you know it was a dream, and you are not ill.
If someone comes to
me and says, "I know that it was a dream that I was ill, but now tell me something:
where am I to get the medicine to get over that illness?" what will it show? It will
show he is still asleep; it will show that he is still dreaming. The dream is still there.
In India, this
parrot-like speech that "the whole world is illusory" has gone deep into the
mind, but in the false center. It is not a growth. We have heard, the Upanishads, the
Vedas and the RISHIS have been saying for centuries, that the world is illusory. They have
propagated the idea so strongly that those who are asleep and dreaming, they think they
are awake. The whole world is asleep, but their misery shows that the world is real, their
anguish shows that the world is real.
The role of the
guru is to give you a glimpse of the real -- not a teaching, but an awakening. The guru is
not a teacher: the guru is an awakener. He has not to give you doctrines. If he gives you
doctrines, he is a philosopher. If he talks about the world as illusory and argues and
proves that the world is illusory, if he discusses, debates, if he intellectually gives
you a doctrine, he is not a guru, he is not a master. He may be a teacher, a teacher of a
particular doctrine, but he is not a master, not a guru.
A guru is not a
giver of doctrines. He is a giver of methods -- of methods which can help you to come out
of your sleep. That is why a guru is always a disturber of your dreams, and it is
difficult to live with a guru. It is very easy to live with a teacher because he never
disturbs you. Rather, he goes on increasing your accumulation of knowledge. He helps you
to be more egoist; he makes you more knowledgeable. Your ego is more fulfilled. Now you
know more, you can argue more. You can teach yourself, but a guru is always a disturber.
He will disturb your dream and your sleep, and you may have been dreaming a very beautiful
dream. You may have been on a trip, a beautiful trip. He will disturb it, and you will get
angry.
A guru is always in
danger from his disciples. Any moment they can kill him because he is going to disturb;
that is what his work is. He cannot help you to be yourself as you are because you are
false. He has to destroy your false identity. It is painful. That is why, unless there is
a very deep love, the work is impossible. A very deep intimacy is needed; otherwise hate
will be there. So a guru cannot allow you to be near him unless you have surrendered;
otherwise you are going to be an enemy. Only with your total surrender can a guru work,
because it is a spiritual surgery.
Of necessity, much
suffering will be there for the disciple, and if he is not in deep intimacy with the guru
it is impossible. He will not be ready to suffer so much. He has come in search of bliss
and the guru gives him suffering. He has come to feel euphoria, and the guru creates a
hell for him. In the beginning hell will be there because your image will be shattered,
your expectations will be shattered. Whatsoever you have known, you will have to throw it.
Whatsoever you are, he will undo it. Really, you are passing through a death.
In India, in the
old days, we said, "ACHARYA MRITYUH." It means that the master, the guru, is a
death. He is! And unless you trust him so totally, this surgical operation is impossible
because in the beginning there will be suffering. Your anguish will come up; all your
suppressed hells will be revealed. And only if you believe, if you have deep faith and
trust in him, can you remain with him; otherwise you will escape, because this man is
disturbing you completely.
So, remember, the
guru's work is, his role is, to make you aware of your falsity, and because of your false
center your world is false. The world is not really illusory, it is not MAYA. It is maya
because your eyes are illusory. They are dream-filled. You project your dreams all around,
and the reality is falsified. The same world will become real when your eyes are real.
When the false center is broken and you are again rooted in your real center, in your
being, this world will become the NIRVANA.
Zen Masters have
been continuously saying that this world is NIRVANA, this very world is MOKSHA,
liberation. It is only a question of eyes. With false eyes everything is falsified; with
real eyes everything is real. Your false entity creates a false world around you. And
don't think that you all live in one world. You cannot! Each one lives in his own world,
and there are as many worlds as there are minds because each mind creates its own world,
its own milieu. Even if you are living in a family, the husband lives in his own world and
the wife in her own world, and there are collisions every day between these two worlds.
They never meet; they collide. Meeting is impossible.
With mind there can
be no meeting -- only collision, conflict. When mind is not, there can be a meeting. The
wife lives in her own world, in her own expectations. The husband for her is not the real
husband that is there in the world, he is just her own image. The husband lives in his own
world, and the real wife is not his wife. He has an image of a wife, and whenever this
wife falls short of his image there is struggle, conflict, anger, hatred. He loves his own
image of a wife and the wife loves her own image of a husband, and these both are
illusory; they exist nowhere. This real wife is there and this real husband is there, but
they cannot meet because between these two real things are the unreal wife and the unreal
husband. They are always there; they won't allow a meeting of the real ones.
Everyone is living
in his own world, in his own dreams, expectations, projections. There are as many worlds
as there are minds. Those worlds are illusory, MAYA. When your false center disappears,
the whole world changes. Then it is a real world. Then for the first time you see things
as they are. Then there is no misery because with illusion expectation disappears, and
with reality there can be no misery. Then one comes to feel, "It is so! Fact is
fact!" Only with fictions are there problems, and fictions never allow you to know
fact. These fictions of the mind are MAYA.
The role of the
guru is to shatter the fictions so that the fact becomes available to you and you become
available to the fact. That "facticity" is truth. Once you know that facticity,
even the guru will be different. If you come to a guru now, you come with your own image
of him. Someone comes to me: he comes with his own image of me. And then, if I am not
following his image, he is in difficulty. But how am I to follow his image? And if I try
to follow everyone's image, I will be in a mess. And every disciple thinks I should be
like this or that; he has his own concept of a guru. If I am not fulfilling his concepts
he becomes frustrated, but this is how it is going to be. A disciple comes with a mind,
and this is the problem. I have to change his mind, to destroy it. He comes with a mind
and he looks at me also with his mind.
I was staying in a home with a family. The family was Jaina, so they wouldn't eat in the night. The old man of
the family, the grandfather, he was a lover of my books. He had never seen me, and it is
easy to love a book: a book is a dead thing. He came to meet me. He was very old, and even
to come from his room was difficult for him. He was ninety-two, and he came to meet me. I
told him I would come to his room, but he said, "No! I respect you so much, I will
come." So he came, and he was praising me very much.
He said, "You
are just like a TIRTHANKARA, like the highest in Jaina mythology, Mahavira." The
greatest teachers are known as TIRTHANKARAS, so he said, "You are just like a
TIRTHANKARA." He was praising and praising me, and then evening came and darkness
descended.
Someone from the
house came and said, "Now it is getting late. You come for your evening meal."
So I said,
"Wait a little because of this old man. Let him say whatsoever he wants to say; then
I will come."
The old man said,
"What are you saying? Are you going to eat in the night?"
I said, "It is
okay with me."
So he said, "I
take my words back. You are no TIRTHANKARA. A person who doesn't even know that to eat in
the night is the greatest sin, what else can he know?"
Now this man cannot
have any meeting with me. Impossible! If I was not eating in the night, I was a
TIRTHANKARA, a great master. I had not eaten yet. I had just said that I would eat in the
night, and suddenly I am no more a TIRTHANKARA. The old man said to me, "I have come
to learn something from you, but now that is impossible. Now I feel I must teach you
something."
When this world
becomes an illusion, your guru will also be part of it and will disappear. That is why,
when the disciple awakens, there is no guru. This will seem very paradoxical: when the
disciple REALLY awakens, there is no guru.
There are beautiful
songs of Saraha, a Buddhist mystic. With every song the last ending line is "and
Saraha disappeared." He teaches something; he gives some teachings. He says,
"Neither the world is nor the NIRVANA is, neither the good nor the bad. Go beyond,
and Saraha disappears." It has been a puzzle. Why does Saraha go on saying "and
Saraha disappears"?
If you really
attain to the song, to whatsoever he has said -- "There is neither good nor bad, nor
the world nor the NIRVANA" -- if the disciple really awakens to this, Saraha will
disappear. Where will be the guru? The guru was part of the disciple's world. Now there
will be no entities like the guru and the disciple; they will have become one. When the
disciple awakens, he becomes the guru, and Saraha disappears. Then the guru is no more
there. Even the guru is part of your dream, of your illusioned world. But because of this
many problems arise.
Krishnamurti goes
on saying there is no teacher -- and he is right. This is the ultimate truth. When you
have awakened, you are the teacher and there is no other teacher. But this is the ultimate
truth, and before this happens the teacher is because the disciple is. The disciple
creates the teacher; it is the disciple's need.
So remember this:
if you meet a wrong teacher, you deserve a wrong teacher; that is why you meet a wrong
teacher. A wrong disciple cannot meet a right teacher. You create your teacher, your
master. A small teacher or a great teacher depends on you; you will meet the person you
deserve. If you meet a wrong person it is because of you. You are responsible for it, not
the wrong person. The guru also is part of your mind, it is part of the dreamworld. But
unless you become awakened, you will need someone to disturb you, someone to help. This
someone is a guru if he gives you methods. He is simply a teacher if he gives you only
doctrines, principles, teachings, but you may need him right now.
Think of it in this
way: even in a dream there is something which can help you to come out of it. Even in a
dream something can help you to come out of it. You can try it just while falling asleep.
Go on repeating in the mind, "Whenever there is a dream, my eyes will open." For
three weeks go on continuously repeating it just when you are falling asleep:
"Whenever there is a dream, my eyes will open; suddenly I will be awakened." And
you will be awakened. Even from a dream you can be awakened by a certain method. Just when
falling asleep, say to yourself -- if your name is Ram, say -- "Ram, awaken me at
five o'clock in the morning." Repeat it twice, and then silently fall asleep. Sooner
or later you will get the trick. Exactly at 5:00 someone will awaken you. Even in dream,
even in sleep, methods can be used which will awaken you. The same is the case for the
spiritual sleep you are in.
A master can give
you methods which will be helpful for this. Then whenever you are falling into a dream,
the methods will not allow you to fall, or whenever you have fallen into a dream suddenly
you will be awakened. When this awakening becomes natural to you there is no need for the
guru. When you have awakened the guru disappears, but you will still feel gratitude for
the guru because he helped you.
Sariputta was one of the greatest disciples
of Buddha. He became enlightened in his own right; he became a buddha himself. Then Buddha
said to Sariputta, "Now you can go and move; now my presence is not needed for you.
You yourself have become a master in your own right, so you can go and help others to come
out of their sleep."
Sariputta, when
leaving Buddha, touched his feet. Someone asked Sariputta, "You yourself have become
enlightened, so why are you touching Buddha's feet?"
Sariputta said,
"Now there is no need to touch his feet, but this situation could happen only because
of him. Now there is no need, but this could happen only because of him."
Sariputta moved
away, but wherever he was, in the morning he would prostrate himself in the direction
where Buddha was; in the evening he would prostrate himself and everyone would ask,
"What are you doing? To whom you are prostrating yourself?" because Buddha was
far away, miles away.
He would say,
"To my teacher who has disappeared. I am myself now the guru, but it was not possible
before him. It became possible only because of him." So even when the teacher
disappears, when the guru disappears, the disciple will feel a deep gratitude, the
greatest gratitude that is possible.
There is a need
while you are asleep for someone to disturb you. And if you allow someone, that is what
surrender means. If you say, "Okay, I allow you to disturb me," that is what
surrender means -- a trust. Trust means that now even if this man leads you towards
misery, you will be ready to move. You will not question him anymore. Wherever he leads
you, you trust in him. He is not going to harm you.
If you don't trust,
then no progress is possible because you feel he is going to harm you. You feel, in your
terms, that he is going to harm you in many ways, and if you think, "I am to protect
myself," then no further work is possible. If you mistrust your surgeon, you will not
allow him to make you unconscious. You don't know what he is going to do, and you will
say, "Do the operation, but allow me to be conscious so I can go on seeing what you
are doing. I cannot trust you."
You trust your
surgeon. He makes you unconscious because things are such that in your conscious state
surgery would be impossible to do; your consciousness would interfere. That is why trust
is blind. It means you are ready even to become unconscious, even to become blind. You are
ready to follow him wherever he leads. Only then does a deeper, inner surgery become
possible. And it is not only a physical, physiological surgery; it is psychological. Much
pain will be felt, much anguish, because catharsis is needed and you have to be thrown
back to your own center which you have forgotten completely, pulled back to your roots
again which you have left behind miles away.
This is going to be
arduous and difficult; it even takes years. But if the disciple is ready to surrender, it
can even happen in seconds. It depends on the intensity of surrender. Unnecessary time is
wasted because the guru has to go slowly -- slowly so that you are prepared to trust more,
and he has to do many things unnecessarily just to create trust. Just to do the surgery he
has to create many things unnecessarily which can be discarded. No need to waste time and
energy on them, but they are needed just to create trust.
I quoted Saraha;
Saraha is one of the eighty-four SIDDHAS -- one of the eighty-four Buddhist mystics -- who
attained. Saraha says to those disciples who have become masters, "Behave in such a
way that others can trust you. I know now that you need no morality; I know now that you
need no rules. You have gone beyond, and you can do whatsoever you like and you can be
whatsoever you like. Now, no system, no morality exists for you. But behave in such a way
so that disciples can trust you." So great masters have behaved in such a way that
the society approves. It is not because they need to behave in that way; it is only an
unnecessary thing to create trust. So if Mahavira behaves in the pattern that Jainas have
set, it is not because there is any inner necessity. He behaves that way only so that
Jainas can follow and become disciples, so that they can trust.
That is why many
problems arise whenever a teacher starts behaving in a new way. Jesus behaved in a new way
which was not known to the Jewish community. There was nothing wrong in it, but this
became the problem. Jews couldn't trust him. Their masters of old had behaved differently
and this man was behaving differently. He was not following the rules of the game, so they
couldn't trust him. Thus, they had to crucify him.
And why did Jesus
behave in such a way? India was behind it. He was here for many years before he appeared
in Jerusalem. He was taught here in a Buddhist monastery, and he tried to follow Buddhist
rules there where no Buddhist society existed. In a Jewish community he was behaving as if
he was living in a Buddhist community, and that created the whole problem. He was killed,
misunderstood, murdered, and the reason was only this -- that Jews couldn't trust him.
A teacher, a guru,
has unnecessarily to create many things around him, to do many things, just to create
trust. But even then, problems arise because everyone comes with his own expectations:
"The guru must be like this or like that."
Surrender means you leave your expectations, you allow the
guru to be as he is and you allow him to do whatsoever he wants to do. Even if pain
results, you are ready for it. Even if he leads you towards death you are ready for it,
because ultimately he will lead you to a deep death. Only after it is rebirth possible.
Resurrection is possible only when your old identity has been crucified. |
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