Introduction To Tantra 4 Turning Inward Toward The Real

BE AWARE YOU ARE AND DISCOVER THE EVER-LIVING.

WHEREVER SATISFACTION IS FOUND, IN WHATEVER ACT, ACTUALIZE THIS.

AT THE POINT OF SLEEP,

WHEN THE SLEEP HAS NOT YET COME AND THE EXTERNAL WAKEFULNESS VANISHES,

AT THIS POINT BEING IS REVEALED.

ILLUSIONS DECEIVE, COLORS CIRc.u.mSCRIBE, EVEN DIVISIBLES ARE INDIVISIBLE.

Civilization is a training in how to become unreal. Tantra is the reverse process - how to prevent yourself from becoming unreal, and if you have already become unreal, how to touch the reality which is hidden within you, how to contact it again, how to be again real. The first thing to be understood is how we go on becoming unreal, and once this process is understood many things change immediately. The very understanding becomes mutation.

Man is born undivided. He is neither a body nor a mind. He is born undivided, as one individual.

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He is both body and mind. Even to say that he is both is wrong. He is body-mind. Body and mind are two aspects of his being, not two divisions - two polarities of something which we may call life, energy or anything - X,Y,Z - but body and mind are not two things.

The very process of civilization, education, culture, conditioning, starts with the division. Everyone is taught that he is two, not one, and then, of course, one begins to be identified with the mind and not with the body. The very thinking process becomes your center and the thinking process is just a periphery. It is not the center because you can exist without thinking. Once you existed without thinking: thinking is not a necessity to exist. If you go deep in meditation YOU will be, and there will be no thinking. If you become unconscious YOU will be, but there will be no thinking. Moving into deep sleep YOU will be, but there will be no thinking. Thinking is just on the periphery; your being is somewhere else - deeper than thinking. But you are being taught continuously that you are two, body and mind, and that, really, you are the mind and you possess the body. The mind becomes the master and body becomes the slave, and you go on struggling against the body. This creates a rift, a gap, and that gap is the problem. All neurosis is born out of that gap; all anxiety is born out of that gap.

Your being is rooted in your body, and your body is not just something separate from existence. It is part of it. Your body is the whole universe. It is not something limited, finite. You may not have observed it, but try to observe where your body really ends - where! Do you think that your body ends where your skin ends?

If the sun which is so far away just goes dead, instantly you will be dead here. If the sun rays stop coming, you will be no more here. Your body cannot exist without the sun being there so far away.

The sun and you are somehow deeply related. The sun must be included in your body; otherwise you cannot exist. You are part of its rays.

In the morning you see flowers open: their opening is really the rising of the sun. In the night they will close: their closing is the setting of the sun. They are just rays that are spread out. You exist here because there, so far away, the sun exists. Your skin is not really your skin. Your skin goes on spreading; even the sun is included. You are breathing: you can breathe because the air is there, the atmosphere is there. Each moment you exhale and inhale the atmosphere in and out.

If for a single moment there were no air, you would be dead. Your breath is your life. If your breath is your life, then the whole atmosphere is part of you. You cannot exist without it. So where does your body really end? Where is the limit? There is no limit! If you observe, if you go deep, you will find there is no limit. Or, the limit of the universe is your body limit. The whole universe is involved in you, so your body is not just your body; it is your universe and you are grounded in it. Your mind too cannot exist without the body. It is part of it, a process of it.

Division is destructive, and with the division you are bound to become identified with the mind. You think, and without thinking there is no division. You think, and you become identified with your thinking. Then you feel as if you possess the body. This is a complete reversal of the truth. You do not possess the body; neither is the body possessing you. They are not two things. Your existence is one, a deep harmony of opposite poles. But opposite poles are not divided, they are joined together.

Only then can they become opposite poles. And the opposition is good. It gives challenge, it gives stamina, it creates energy. It is dialectical.

If you were really one, without opposite poles within, you would be dull and dead. These two opposite poles, body and mind, give you life. They are opposite and at the same time complementary - and basically and ultimately one. One current of energy runs in both. But once we get identified with the thinking process, we think that we are centered in the head. If your legs are cut, you will not feel that YOU are cut. You will say, "My legs are cut." But if your head is cut, YOU are cut. You are murdered.

If you close your eyes to feel where you are, immediately you will feel you are in your head. You are not there - because when for the first moment you entered life in your mother's womb, when the male and female atoms met, there was no head. But life was started. You were there, and there was no head. In that first meeting of two alive cells, you were created. The head came later on, but your being was there. Where is that being? It is not in your head. Really, it is nowhere - or everywhere in your body. It is nowhere; you cannot pinpoint where it is. And the moment you pinpoint it you miss the whole thing. It is everywhere. Your life is everywhere, it is spread out all over you. And not only all over you; if you follow it, you will have to go to the very ends of the universe. It is everywhere!

With the identification that "I am my mind," everything becomes false. You become unreal because this ident.i.ty is false. This has to be broken. Tantra techniques are to break down this ident.i.ty.

The effort of tantra is to make you headless, uncentered, everywhere or nowhere. And why does humanity, why do human beings become false and unreal with the mind? Because mind is an epiphenomenon - a process which is necessary, useful, but secondary; a process which consists of words, not of realities. The word 'love' is not love, the word 'G.o.d' is not G.o.d. But mind consists of words, of a verbal process, and then love itself becomes less significant than the word 'love'. For the mind, the word is more significant. G.o.d becomes less significant than the word 'G.o.d'. For the mind it is so. Words become more meaningful, significant. They become primary, and we start living in words. And the more you live in words the more shallow you become, and you will go on missing the reality which is not words. Reality is existence.

Living in the mind is as if someone is living in a mirror. In the night, if you go to a lake and the lake is silent and there are no ripples, the lake becomes a mirror. You can look at the moon in the lake, but that moon is false - just a reflection. The reflection comes from the real, but the reflection is not real. Mind is just a reflecting phenomenon. The reality is reflected in it, but reflections are not real.

And if you get caught in reflections, you will miss reality completely. That is why, with the mind, with mind reflections, everything wavers. A slight wave, a slight wind, will disturb your mind. Reality is not disturbed, but the mind is disturbed by anything. Mind is a reflecting phenomenon, and we are living in mind.

Tantra says come down. Descend from your thrones, come down from your heads. Forget the reflections and move towards the reality. All the techniques which we are discussing are concerned with this: how to be away from the mind so that you can move into reality. Now we will discuss the techniques.

The first technique:

"OH LOTUS-EYED ONE, SWEET OF TOUCH, WHEN SINGING, SEEING, TASTING, BE AWARE YOU ARE AND DISCOVER THE EVERLIVING."

We are living, but we are not aware that we are or that we are living. There is no self-remembering.

You are eating or you are taking a bath or you are taking a walk: you are not aware that you are while walking. Everything is, only you are not. The trees, the houses, the traffic, everything is. You are aware of everything around you, but you are not aware of your own being - that you are. You may be aware of the whole world, but if you are not aware of yourself that awareness is false. Why?

Because your mind can reflect everything, but your mind cannot reflect you. If you are aware of yourself, then you have transcended the mind.

Your self-remembering cannot be reflected in your mind because you are behind the mind. It can reflect only things which are in front of it. You can just see others, but you cannot see yourself. Your eyes can see everyone, but your eyes cannot see themselves. If you want to see yourself you will need a mirror. Only in the mirror can you see yourself, but then you will have to stand in front of the mirror. If your mind is a mirror, it can reflect the whole world. It cannot reflect you because you cannot stand before it. You are always behind, hidden behind the mirror.

This technique says while doing anything - singing, seeing, tasting - be aware that you are and discover the ever-living, and discover within yourself the current, the energy, the life, the ever-living.

But we are not aware of ourselves.

Gurdjieff used self-remembering as a basic technique in the West. The self-remembering is derived from this sutra. The whole Gurdjieffian system is based on this one sutra. Remember yourself, whatsoever you are doing. It is very difficult. It looks very easy, but you will go on forgetting.

Even for three or four seconds you cannot remember yourself. You will have a feeling that you are remembering, and suddenly you will have moved to some other thought. Even with this thought that "Okay, I am remembering myself," you will have missed, because this thought is not self- remembering. In self-remembering there will be no thought; you will be completely empty. And self-remembering is not a mental process. It is not that you say, "Yes, I am." Saying "Yes, I am," you have missed. This is a mind thing, this is a mental process: "I am."

Feel "I am," not the words "I am." Don't verbalize, just feel that you are. Don't think, FEEL! Try it. It is difficult, but if you go on insisting it happens. While walking, remember you are, and have the feeling of your being, not of any thought, not of any idea. Just feel. I touch your hand or I put my hand on your head: don't verbalize. Just feel the touch, and in that feeling feel not only the touch, but feel also the touched one. Then your consciousness becomes double-arrowed.

You are walking under trees: the trees are there, the breeze is there, the sun is rising. This is the world all around you; you are aware of it. Stand for a moment and suddenly remember that you are, but don't verbalize. Just feel that you are. This nonverbal feeling, even if for only a single moment, will give you a glimpse - a glimpse which no LSD can give you, a glimpse which is of the real. For a single moment you are thrown back to the center of your being. You are behind the mirror; you have transcended the world of reflections; you are existential. And you can do it at any time. It doesn't need any special place or any special time. And you cannot say, "I have no time." When eating you can do it, when taking a bath you can do it, when moving or sitting you can do it - anytime. No matter what you are doing, you can suddenly remember yourself, and then try to continue that glimpse of your being.

It will be difficult. One moment you will feel it is there, the next moment you will have moved away.

Some thought will have entered, some reflection will have come to you, and you will have become involved in the reflection. But don't be sad and don't be disappointed. This is so because for lives together we have been concerned with the reflections. This has become a robot-like mechanism.

Instantly, automatically, we are thrown to the reflection. But if even for a single moment you have the glimpse, it is enough for the beginning. And why is it enough? Because you will never get two moments together. Only one moment is with you always. And if you can have the glimpse for a single moment, you can remain in it. Only effort is needed - a continuous effort is needed.

A single moment is given to you. You cannot have two moments together, so don't worry about two moments. You will always get only one moment. And if you can be aware in one moment, you can be aware for your whole life. Now only effort is needed, and this can be done the whole day.

Whenever you remember, remember yourself.

"OH LOTUS-EYED ONE, SWEET OF TOUCH, WHEN SINGING, SEEING, TASTING, BE AWARE YOU ARE, AND DISCOVER THE EVER-LIVING:" When the sutra says "Be aware you are", what will you do? Will you remember that, "My name is Ram" or "Jesus" or something else? Will you remember that you belong to such and such a family, to such and such a religion and tradition? To such and such a country and caste and creed? Will you remember that you are a communist or a Hindu or a Christian? What will you remember?

The sutra says be aware you are; it simply says "You are". No name is needed, no country is needed.

Let there be simple existence: you are! So don't say to yourself who you are. Don't answer that, "I am this and that." Let there be simple existence, that you are.

But it becomes difficult because we never remember simple existence. We always remember something which is just a label, not existence itself. Whenever you think about yourself, you think about your name, religion, country, many things, but never the simple existence that you are.

You can practice this: relaxing in a chair or just sitting under a tree, forget everything and feel this "you-areness." No Christian, no Hindu, no Buddhist, no Indian, no Englishman, no German - simply, you are. Have the feeling of it, and then it will be easy for you to remember what this sutra says:

"BE AWARE YOU ARE, AND DISCOVER THE EVER-LIVING." And the moment you are aware that you are, you are thrown into the current of the ever-living. The false is going to die; only the real will remain.

That is why we are so much afraid of death: because the unreal is going to die. The unreal cannot be forever, and we are attached to the unreal, identified with the unreal. You as a Hindu will have to die; you as Ram or Krishna will have to die; you as a communist, as an atheist, as a theist, will have to die; you as a name and form will have to die. And if you are attached to name and form, obviously the fear of death will come to you, but the real, the existential, the basic in you, is deathless. Once the forms and names are forgotten, once you have a look within to the nameless and the formless, you have moved into the eternal.

"BE AWARE YOU ARE AND DISCOVER THE EVER-LIVING": This technique is one of the most helpful, and it has been used for millennia by many teachers, masters. Buddha used it, Mahavira used it, Jesus used it, and in modern times Gurdjieff used it. Among all the techniques, this is one of the most potential. Try it. It will take time; months will pa.s.s.

When Ouspensky was learning with Gurdjieff, for three months he had to make much effort, arduous effort, in order to have a glimpse of what self-remembering is. So continuously, for three months, Ouspensky lived in a secluded house just doing only one thing - self-remembering. Thirty persons started that experiment, and by the end of the first week twenty-seven had escaped; only three remained. The whole day they were trying to remember - not doing anything else, just remembering that "I am." Twenty-seven felt they were going crazy. They felt that now madness was just near, so they escaped. They never turned back; they never met Gurdjieff again.

Why? As we are, really, we are mad. Not remembering who we are, what we are, we are mad, but this madness is taken as sanity. Once you try to go back, once you try to contact the real, it will look like craziness, it will look like madness. Compared to what we are, it is just the reverse, the opposite.

If you feel that this is sanity, that will look like madness.

But three persisted. One of the three was P. D. Ouspensky. For three months they persisted. Only after the first month did they start having glimpses of simply being - of "I am." After the second month, even the "I" dropped, and they started having the glimpses of "am-ness" - of just being, not even of "I", because "I" is also a label. The pure being is not "I" and "thou"; it just is.

And by the third month even the feeling of "am-ness" dissolved because that feeling of am-ness is still a word. Even that word dissolves. Then you are, and then you know what you are. Before that point comes you cannot ask, "Who am I?" Or you can go on asking continuously, "Who am I?", just continuously inquiring, "Who am I ? Who am I?", and all the answers that will be provided by the mind will be found false, irrelevant. You go on asking, "Who am I? Who am I? Who am I?" and a point comes where you can no more ask the question. All the answers fall down, and then the question itself falls down and disappears. And when even the question, "Who am I?" disappears, you know who you are.

Gurdjieff tried from one corner: just try to remember you are. Raman Maharshi tried from another corner. He made it a meditation to ask, to inquire, "Who am I?" And don't believe in any answers that the mind can supply. The mind will say, "What nonsense are you asking? You are this, you are that, you are a man, you are a woman, you are educated or uneducated, rich or poor." The mind will supply answers, but go on asking. Don't accept any answer because all the answers given by the mind are false. They are from the unreal part of you. They are coming from words, they are coming from scriptures, they are coming from conditioning, they are coming from society, they are coming from others. Go on asking. Let this arrow of "Who am I?" penetrate deeper and deeper. A moment will come when no answer will come.

That is the right moment. Now you are nearing the answer. When no answer comes, you are near the answer because mind is becoming silent - or you have gone far away from the mind. When there will be no answer and a vacuum will be created all around you, your questioning will look absurd.

Whom are you questioning? There is no one to answer you. Suddenly, even your questioning will stop. With the questioning, the last part of the mind has dissolved because this question was also of the mind. Those answers were of the mind and this question was also of the mind. Both have dissolved, so now YOU ARE.

Try this. There is every possibility, if you persist, that this technique can give you a glimpse of the real - and the real is ever-living.

The second technique:

"WHEREVER SATISFACTION IS FOUND, IN WHATEVER ACT, ACTUALIZE THIS."

You feel thirsty, so you drink water. A subtle satisfaction is attained. Forget the water, forget the thirst. Remain with the subtle satisfaction that you are feeling. Be filled with it; simply feel satisfied.

But the human mind is mischievous. It only feels dissatisfactions, discontent. It never feels satisfaction; it never feels content. If you are dissatisfied, you will feel it and you will be filled by it. When you are thirsty, you feel it: you are filled with thirst; you feel it in the throat. If it grows you feel it all over your body, and a moment will come when it is not that YOU are thirsty, you will feel that you have become the thirst. If you are in a desert and there is no hope of getting water, you will not feel that YOU are thirsty; you will feel that you have become the thirst.

Dissatisfactions are felt, miseries are felt, pains are felt. Whenever you suffer, you become the suffering. That is why the whole life becomes a h.e.l.l. You have never felt the positive; you have always felt the negative. Life is not such a misery as we have made it; misery is just our interpretation. A Buddha is happy here and now, in this very life. A Krishna is dancing and playing on a flute. In this very life here and now, where we are in misery, Krishna is dancing. Life is neither misery, nor is life bliss. Bliss and misery are our interpretations, our att.i.tudes, our approaches, how we look at it. It is your mind - how it takes it.*************** Remember, and a.n.a.lyze your own life. Have you ever taken account of happy moments, of contents, of satisfactions, of blissful glimpses? You have not taken any account, but you have taken every account of your pain, suffering, misery, and you go on acc.u.mulating. You are an acc.u.mulated h.e.l.l, and this is your own choice. No one else is forcing you into this h.e.l.l; this is your own choice.

The mind takes the negative, acc.u.mulates it and becomes negative itself. And then this is a self- perpetuating misery. The more negatives you have within the mind, the more negative you become, the more negatives are acc.u.mulated. The similar attracts the similar, and this has been for lives and lives. You miss everything because of your negative approach.

This technique gives you a positive approach, a total reversal to the ordinary mind and its process.

Wherever satisfaction is found, in whatever act, actualize this, feel it, become one with it. Don't take it just as a pa.s.sing phase. The satisfaction can become a glimpse of a greater positive existence.

Everything is just a window. If you become identified with a pain, you are looking from a window, and the window of pain, of suffering, opens only towards h.e.l.l. If you are one with a satisfactory moment, a blissful moment, an ecstatic moment, you are opening another window. The existence is the same, but your windows are different.

Wherever satisfaction is found, in whatsoever act, actualize it - wherever! No conditions: wherever!

You see a friend and you feel happy; you meet your lover or beloved and you feel happy: actualize this. Be happiness in that moment, and make that happiness a door. Then you are changing the mind, and you will start acc.u.mulating happiness. Your mind will turn positive, and the same world will look different.

One Zen monk, Bokuju, is reported to have said, "The world is the same, but nothing is the same because the mind changes. Everything remains the same, but nothing is the same because I am not the same."

You go on trying to change the world, and no matter what you do the world will remain the same because you remain the same. You can get a bigger house, you can get a bigger car, you can get a more beautiful wife or a husband, but nothing will change. The bigger house will not be bigger.

The beautiful wife or husband will not be more beautiful. The bigger car will remain the smaller one because you are the same. Your mind, your approach, your ways of seeing are the same. You go on changing things without changing yourself. So only a miserable person leaves a hut and moves to a palace, but the miserable person remains the same. He was miserable in a hut; now he will be miserable in a palace. This misery may be palatial, but he will be miserable.

You go on carrying your misery with you, and wherever you move you will be with yourself. So no outer change is basically a change; it is just an appearance. You simply feel that there has been a change, but there is no change. Only one change, only one revolution, only one mutation can be there, and that is if your mind changes from negative to the positive. If your outlook is focused on misery, you live in h.e.l.l; if your outlook is focused on happiness, the very h.e.l.l becomes the heaven.

Try this! This will change your very quality of life.

But you are interested in quant.i.ty. You are interested in how to get more rich - in quant.i.ty, not in quality. You can have two houses and two cars, a bigger bank account, many things. Quant.i.ty changes: it becomes more and more. But your quality remains the same, and richness is not of things. Richness is of the quality of your mind, of your life. Even a poor man can be a rich man as far as quality is concerned, and even a rich man can be a poor man. Almost always this is the case, because a person concerned with things and quant.i.ty is totally unaware that a different dimension is there within him - the dimension of quality. And that dimension changes only when your mind is positive.

From tomorrow morning, for the whole day, remember this: whenever you feel something beautiful, satisfactory, something blissful - and there are many moments in a twenty-four-hour day - be aware of it. There are many moments when heaven is just near you, but you are so attached and involved with the h.e.l.l that you go on missing it. The sun rises, the flowers open, the birds sing and the breeze blows through the trees. It is happening! A small child looks at you with innocent eyes, and a subtle feeling of bliss enters into you.; or someone smiles and you feel blissful.

Look all around, and try to find the blissful; be filled with it. In that moment forget everything. Be filled with it, taste it, and allow it to happen to your whole being. Be one with it. The fragrance of it will follow you. It will go on resounding within you the whole day, and the resounding, the echoing feeling, will help you to be more positive.

This is acc.u.mulative. If you start in the morning, in the evening you will be more open to the stars, to the moon, to the night, to the darkness. Do it for twenty-four hours experimentally, just to have a feeling of what it is. Once you can feel that the positive leads you to a different world because you become different, you are not going to leave it. The whole emphasis will have changed from negative to positive. Then you look at the world in a different, a new way.

I am reminded of one anecdote. One of Buddha's disciples was taking leave from his master. The disciple's name was Purnakashyapa. He asked Buddha, "Where am I to go? Where am I to go to preach your message?"

Buddha said, "You yourself can choose where "

So he said, "I will go to a far corner of Bihar" - It was known as Sukha - "I will move to Sukha province."

Buddha said, "It is better if you change your choice because the people of that province are very cruel, violent, mischievous, and no one has yet dared to go there to teach them non-violence, love, compa.s.sion. So please change your choice."

But Purnakashyapa said, "Allow me to go there BECAUSE no one has gone there, and someone has to be there."

Buddha said, "Then I will ask you three questions before I allow you to go. If the people of that province insult you, humiliate you, how will you feel it?"

Purnakashyapa said, "I will feel they are very good if they simply insult me. Then they are not beating me. They are good people; they could have beaten me."

Buddha said, "Then the second question: if they start beating you, how will you feel?"

Purnakashyapa said, "I will feel they are very good people. They could have killed me, but they are simply beating me."

Then Buddha said, "Now the third question: if they really kill you and murder you, then at the moment when you are dying how will you feel?"

Purnakashyapa said, "I will thank you and them. If they kill me, they will have freed me of a life where many errors were possible. They will have freed me so I will feel thankful."

So Buddha said, "Now you can go anywhere. The whole world is heaven for you. Now there is no problem. The world is a heaven, so you can go anywhere."

With this mind, nothing is wrong with the world. With your mind, nothing can be right. With a negative mind, everything is wrong - not that it is wrong; it is wrong because a negative mind can see only what is wrong.

"WHEREVER THE SATISFACTION IS FOUND, IN WHATEVER ACT, ACTUALIZE THIS:" This is a very delicate process, but very sweet also, and the more you proceed in it, the sweeter it becomes.

You will be filled with a new sweetness and fragrance. Just look for the beautiful; forget the ugly.

Then a moment comes when the ugly also becomes the beautiful. Just look to the happy moment, and a moment comes when there is nothing which you can call unhappy. There is no unhappy moment then. Be concerned with the blissful, and sooner or later there will be no misery. Everything is beautified by a positive mind.

The third technique:

"AT THE POINT OF SLEEP, WHEN THE SLEEP HAS NOT YET COME AND EXTERNAL WAKEFULNESS VANISHES, AT THIS POINT BEING IS REVEALED."

There are some turning points in your consciousness. At these turning points you are nearer to your center than at other times. You change gears, and whenever you change a gear you pa.s.s through the neutral gear. That neutral gear is nearer. In the morning, when sleep is going, vanishing, and you are feeling awake but not yet awake, just at the midpoint, you are in a neutral gear. There is a point when you are not asleep and not awake, just in the middle. There you are in a neutral gear. From sleep to waking, your consciousness changes the whole mechanism. It jumps from one mechanism to another. Between the two mechanisms, there is no mechanism; there is a gap. Through that gap you can have a glimpse of your being. The same happens in the night when you are again jumping from your waking mechanism to your sleeping mechanism, from your consciousness to the unconscious. For a single moment there is no mechanism, no grip of the mechanism on you, because you have to take a jump from one to another. Between the two if you can be awake, between the two if you can become aware, between the two if you can remember yourself, you will have a glimpse of your real being.

How to do it? While going to sleep, relax. Close your eyes, make the room dark. Just close your eyes and start waiting. The sleep is coming; just wait, don't do anything, just wait! Your body is relaxing, the body is becoming heavy: feel it. Have the feeling of it. Sleep has its own mechanism, it starts working. Your waking consciousness is vanishing. Remember, because the moment will be very subtle and the moment will be atomic. If you miss, you miss. It is not a very long period - a single moment, a very small gap, and you will change from waking to sleep. Just wait, fully aware.

Go on waiting. This will take time. It takes at least three months. Only then can you have the glimpse one day of the moment which is just in the middle. So don't be in a hurry. You cannot do it just now; you cannot do it tonight. But you have to start and you may have to wait for months.

Ordinarily, within three months, one day it happens. It is happening every day, but your awareness and the meeting of the gap cannot be planned. It is a happening. You just go on waiting, and someday it happens. Someday, suddenly you become aware that you are neither awake nor asleep - a very weird phenomenon. You may even become afraid because you have known only the two:

you know when you are asleep, you know when you are awake. But you don't know a third point in your being when you are neither. At the first impact of it you may become afraid and scared. Don't get scared and don't be afraid. Anything which is so new, unknown previously, is bound to give a certain fear because this moment, when you will have experienced it again and again, will give you another feeling also: that you are neither alive nor dead, neither this nor that. This is an abyss.

These two mechanisms are like two hills; you jump from one peak to another. If you remain in the middle you fall into an abyss, and the abyss is bottomless: you go on falling, you go on falling. Sufis have used this technique, and before they give this technique to a seeker, they give another practice also just to safeguard. Whenever this technique is given in Sufi systems, before it another practice is given, and that is to imagine with closed eyes that you are falling into a deep well - dark, deep and bottomless. Just imagine falling into a deep well - falling and falling and falling, eternally falling.

There is no bottom, you cannot reach to the bottom. Now this fall cannot stop anywhere. You can stop; you can open your eyes and say no more, but this fall in itself cannot stop. If you continue, the well is bottomless, and it gets more and more dark.

In Sufi systems, this well exercise - this bottomless, dark well exercise - is to be practiced first. It is good, helpful. If you have practiced it and you have realized the beauty of it, the silence, then the deeper you go into the well, the more silent you become. The world is left far away, and you feel that you have gone far away, far away, far away. Silence grows with darkness, and deep down there is no bottom. Fear comes to your mind, but you know that this is just imagination so you can continue.

Through this exercise, you become capable of this technique, and then, when you fall into the well between waking and sleeping, it is not imagination; it is a real fact. And it is bottomless, the abyss is bottomless. That is why Buddha has called this nothingness emptiness - SHUNYA. There is no end to it. Once you know it, you also have become endless. It is difficult to have this glimpse while awake. Then it is impossible, of course, while you are asleep because then the mechanism is functioning, and it is difficult to detach yourself from the mechanism. But there is a moment in the night and in the morning another moment - in twenty-four hours there are these two moments - when it is very easy, but one has to wait.

"AT THE POINT OF SLEEP, WHEN SLEEP HAS NOT YET COME AND EXTERNAL WAKEFULNESS VANISHES, AT THIS POINT BEING IS REVEALED:" Then you know who you are, what is your real being, what is your authentic existence. We are false while we are awake, and you know it well. You are false while you are awake. You smile when tears would have been more real. Your tears are also not believable. They may be just a facade, ceremonial, a duty. Your smile is false, and those who study faces can say that your smile is just a painted smile. There are no roots within; the smile is just on your face, just on your lips. It is nowhere else in your being. There are no roots, there are no limbs. It is imposed. The smile is not coming from within to without; the smile has been forced from without.

Whatsoever you say and whatsoever you act is false, and it is not necessarily the case that you are doing this false business of life knowingly - not necessarily! You may be totally unaware - and you are! Otherwise it will be very difficult to carry such false nonsense continuously. It is automatic. This falseness continues while you are awake, and it continues even while you are asleep - in a different way, of course. Your dreams are symbolic, not real. It is surprising that even in your dreams you are not real, even in your dreams you are afraid, and you create symbols.

Now psychoa.n.a.lysis goes on doing this business of a.n.a.lyzing your dreams. They have a big business because you cannot a.n.a.lyze your own dreams. They are symbolic, they are not real.

They say something only in metaphors. If you want to kill your mother and get rid of her, you are not going to kill her even in your dream. You will kill someone else who looks like your mother. You will kill your aunt or someone else, but not your mother. Even in dreams you cannot be real. Then psychoa.n.a.lysis is needed; a professional is needed to interpret - but you may describe the whole thing in such a way that even psychoa.n.a.lysis is deceived.

Your dreams are also totally false. If you are real while you are awake, your dreams will be real.

They will not be symbolic. If you want to kill your mother you will see a dream in which you kill your mother, and no interpreter will be needed to show you what your dream means. But we are so false.

In dream you are alone, still afraid of the world and the society.

To kill a mother is the greatest sin, and I wonder whether you have ever thought about why to kill a mother is the greatest sin. It is the greatest sin because everyone feels a deep enmity toward his mother. It is the greatest sin, and it is taught, your mind is conditioned, that even to think of harming your mother is a sin. She has given birth to you. All over the world, in all societies, the same is taught. There is not a single society on the earth which will not agree to this, that to kill a mother is the greatest sin. She has given you birth and you are killing her?

But why this teaching? Deep down there is the possibility that everyone goes against his mother of necessity - because the mother has not only given birth to you, she has been the instrument of falsifying you; she has been the instrument of forcing you to be unreal. She has made you whatsoever you are. If you are a h.e.l.l, she has a part in it, the greatest part. If you are miserable, your mother is there somewhere, hidden in you because the mother has given you birth, she has brought you up - or, really, she has brought you "down" from your reality. She has falsified you. The first untruth happened between you and your mother; the first lie happened between you and your mother - the first lie!

Even when there is no language and the child cannot speak, he can lie. The child sooner or later becomes aware that many of his feelings are not approved by his mother. Her face, her eyes, her behavior, her mood, everything shows that something in him is not accepted, appreciated. Then he starts suppressing. Something is wrong. There is no language yet; his mind is not functioning. But his whole body starts suppressing. Then be begins to feel that sometimes something is appreciated by the mother. He depends on the mother, his life depends on the mother. If the mother leaves him, he will be no more. His whole existence is centered on the mother.

Everything the mother shows, does, speaks, behaves, is significant. If the child smiles, and the mother loves him and gives him warmth and milk and hugs him, he is learning politics. He will smile while there is no smile in him because now he knows he can persuade the mother. He will smile a false smile. Then the liar is born; the politician has come into existence. Now he knows how to falsify, and this he learns in his relationship with his mother. This is the first relationship with the world. When he will become aware of his misery, of his h.e.l.l, of his confusions, he will find that his mother is hidden somewhere.

There is every possibility that you may feel inimical towards your mother. That is why every culture insists that it is the greatest sin to kill your mother. Even in thought, even in dream, you cannot kill your mother. I am not saying that you SHOULD kill her, I am simply saying that your dreams are also false - symbolic, not real. You are so false that you cannot even dream a real dream.

These are our two false faces: one is there while you are awake, one is there while you are asleep.

Between these two false faces there is a very small door, an interval. In that interval you can have a glimpse of your original face when you were not related to your mother, and through the mother to the society; when you were alone with yourself; when YOU WERE - not this and that, there was no division. Only the real was; there was no unreal. You can have a glimpse of that face, that innocent face between these two mechanisms.

Ordinarily we are not concerned with dreams, we are concerned with our waking hours. But psychoa.n.a.lysis is more concerned with your dreams, not with your waking hours, because it feels that in waking hours you are a greater liar. In dreams something can be caught. You are less aware when you are asleep, and you are not forcing things, you are not manipulating. Then something real can be caught. You may be a celibate, a monk in your waking hours, but you have suppressed the s.e.x urge. Then it will force itself into your dreams; your dreams are going to be s.e.xual. It is very difficult to find a monk who is without s.e.xual dreams - rather, impossible. You can find a criminal without s.e.xual dreams, but you cannot find a religious man without s.e.xual dreams. A debauchee may be without s.e.xual dreams, but not so-called saints, because whatsoever you force down while you are awake will erupt in your dreams and will color your dreams.

Psychoa.n.a.lysts are not concerned with your waking life because they know it is totally false. If something of the real can be glimpsed, it can be glimpsed only through your dreams. But tantra says that even dreams are not so real. They are more real - and this will look paradoxical because we think that dreams are unreal - they are more real than your waking hours because then you are less on guard. The censor is asleep, and things can come up, and the suppressed can express itself - of course symbolically, but symbols can be a.n.a.lyzed.

And all over the world human symbols are the same. You may speak a different language while awake, but while dreaming you speak the same language. All over the world the dream language is one. If s.e.x is repressed, then the same symbols will come up. If the urge for food, the urge to eat, hunger, is repressed, then the same symbols will come - or similar ones. The dream language is one, but in dreams there are still problems because they are symbolic. And a Freud may interpret them in a different way, a Jung in a different way and an Adler still in a different way. And if you are a.n.a.lyzed by a hundred psychoa.n.a.lysts, there will be a hundred interpretations. You will be still more confused than you were before, more confused with a hundred interpretations of one thing.

Tantra says in neither waking nor sleeping are you real. You are real only in between. So don't be concerned with the waking, and don't be concerned with dreaming and sleep. Be concerned with the gap; be aware of the gap. While pa.s.sing from one state to another have a glimpse. And once you know when the gap comes, you become the master of it. You have the key; you can open that gap anytime and enter into it. A different dimension of being, the real dimension, opens.

The fourth technique, and the last:

"ILLUSIONS DECEIVE, COLORS CIRc.u.mSCRIBE, EVEN DIVISIBLES ARE INDIVISIBLE."

This is a rare technique, one not much used, but one of the greatest teachers in India, Shankara, has used it, and Shankara has based his whole philosophy on this technique. You know his philosophy of MAYA - illusion. Shankara says everything is illusory. Whatsoever you are seeing, hearing, feeling, all is illusion. It is not real because the real cannot be contacted by senses. You are hearing me and I am seeing you hearing me: it may be just a dream, and there is no way how to judge whether it is a dream or not. I may be just dreaming that you are here listening to me. How am I to know that this is real and not a dream? There is no way.

Chuang Tzu is reported to have said that one night he dreamt that he had become a b.u.t.terfly. In the morning he was very sad - and he was not a man to have sadness, he was never known to be sad.

His disciples gathered and said, "Chuang Tzu, Master, why are you so sad?"

Chuang Tzu said, "Because of a dream."

The disciples laughed and said, "Because of a dream you are sad - you who have been always teaching us not to be sad even if the whole world causes you sadness? And just a dream has caused you sadness? What are you talking about?"

Chuang Tzu said, "It is such a dream that it causes me very, very deep confusion, sadness, misery.

I dreamt in my dream that I had become a b.u.t.terfly."

The disciples said, "What is so puzzling in it?"

Chuang Tzu said, "Now this is the puzzle: if Chuang Tzu can dream that he can become a b.u.t.terfly, why not the reverse? The b.u.t.terfly may dream that it has become a Chuang Tzu. So now I am disturbed. What is right and what is wrong? What is real and what is unreal? Was it Chuang Tzu who was dreaming of becoming a b.u.t.terfly or has the b.u.t.terfly now gone to sleep and dreamt that it has become a Chuang Tzu? If one is possible, then the other is possible." And it is said that Chuang Tzu never could get over this puzzle. This remained for his whole life.

How to decide that I am not in a dream talking to you? How to decide that you are not dreaming I am talking? With senses no decision is possible, because while dreaming, dreams look real - as real as anything. When you dream, you always feel it is real. When dreams can be felt as real, why can reality not be felt as dream?

Shankara says with senses there is no possibility to know whether the thing confronting you is real or unreal. And if there is no possibility to know whether it is real or unreal, Shankara calls it MAYA:

it is illusion. Illusion doesn't mean unreal. Illusion means an impossibility to decide whether it is real or unreal - remember this.

In Western languages MAYA has been translated very wrongly, and it gives the feeling in Western terms that "illusion" means "unreal." It does not! "Illusion" means the inability to decide whether the thing is real or unreal. This confusion is MAYA.

This whole world is MAYA, a confusion. You cannot decide; you cannot be decisive about it. It is always escaping you, always changing, turning into something else. It is fantasy, a dreamlike thing.

This technique is concerned with this philosophy. "ILLUSIONS DECEIVE:" or, that which deceives is illusion - "COLORS CIRc.u.mSCRIBE, EVEN DIVISIBLES ARE INDIVISIBLE:" In this world of illusion nothing is certain. This whole world is like rainbows. They appear to be, but they are not.

If you are far away they are, but if you come nearer they dissolve. The nearer you come, the more they are not. If you reach to a point where you were seeing a rainbow, it is no more there.

The whole world is like rainbow colors, and it is so. When you are far away everything is hopeful; when you come nearer the hope disappears. And when you reach the goal, only ashes are there - just a dead rainbow. The colors have disappeared, and things as they appeared are not. As you feel them to be, they are not.

"EVEN DIVISIBLES ARE INDIVISIBLE:" Your whole mathematics, your whole calculating system, all your concepts, all your philosophy, just become futile. If you try to understand this illusion, your very effort confuses you more. Nothing is certain there; everything is uncertain - a flux, a flux of change, with no possibility for you to decide whether this or that is true or false. What will happen?

If you take this att.i.tude, what will happen? If you really go deep in this att.i.tude that everything which cannot be decided is illusory, you will automatically, spontaneously turn to yourself. Then the only point where you can have a center is in your own being. That is certain.

Try to understand this: I may dream in the night that I have become a b.u.t.terfly, and I cannot decide in that dream whether this is real or unreal. In the morning I may be puzzled like Chuang Tzu whether instead the b.u.t.terfly may have been dreaming. These are two dreams, and there is no way to compare which is real and which is unreal.

But Chuang Tzu is missing one thing - the dreamer. He is thinking only of dreams, comparing dreams and missing the dreamer - the one who dreams that Chuang Tzu has become a b.u.t.terfly, the one who is thinking that it may be quite the reverse: that the b.u.t.terfly is dreaming that she has become Chuang Tzu. Who is this observer? Who was asleep and is now awake? You may be unreal, you may be a dream to me, but "I" cannot be a dream to myself, because even for a dream to exist a real dreamer is needed. Even for a false dream a real dreamer is needed. Even a dream cannot exist without a real dreamer. So forget dream. This technique says forget dream. The whole world is illusion, you are not. So don't go after the world, there is no possibility to gain certainty there. And now this appears to be proven even by scientific research.

For the last three centuries science was certain, and Shankara looked to be just a philosophical mind, poetic. For three centuries science was certain, but now, during these two last decades, science has become uncertain. Now the greatest scientists say nothing is certain, and with matter we will never be certain. Everything has again become uncertain. Everything looks like a flux, changing. Only appearance looks certain. The deeper you go, the more everything becomes uncertain, indefinite. Shankara says, and tantra has always been saying, that the world is illusory.

Even before Shankara was born, tantra was preaching one technique - that the whole world is illusory, so think of it as a dream. If you can think of it as a dream - and if you think at all, you will come to realize it as a dream - then your whole focus of consciousness will turn inwards, because there is a deep urge to find the truth, the real.

If the whole world is unreal, then there is no shelter in it. Then you are moving after, following shadows, and wasting time and life and energy. Then move inward.s One thing is certain: "I am."

Even if the whole world is illusory, one thing is certain: there is someone who knows this is illusory.

The knowledge may be illusory, the known may be illusory, but the knower cannot be. This is the only certainty, the only rock on which you can stand.

This technique says look at the world: it is a dream, illusory, and nothing is as it appears. It is just a rainbow. Go deep in this feeling. You will be thrown to yourself. With that coming to one's own self, you come to a certain truth, to something which is indubitable, which is absolute.

Science can never be absolute. It is going to be relative. Only religion can be absolute because it searches not the dream, it searches for the dreamer; not for the observed, but for the observer, the seer, the one who is aware.