1967-1972 – Bangalore, Saanen, Chikmagalur, Paris, Rome, Gstaad, Sanary and Marseilles

This state of not knowing is not my particular state. This, I call it a natural state of your being. This is as much your natural state as it is mine. It is not the state of a God-realized man. It is not the state of a self-realized man. It is not the state of a holy man. It is the natural state of every one of you here. But since you are looking to somebody else and you are reaching out for some kind of a state of liberation, freedom, or moksha - I don't know what words you want to use - you are lost.

But how can one understand the limitations of thought? Naturally, the only instrument we have is the instrument of thought. But what is thought? I can give you a lot of definitions, and you know a lot of definitions about thought. I can say that thought is just matter, thought is vibration, and we are all functioning in this sphere of thought. And we pick up these thoughts because this human organism is an electromagnetic field. And this electromagnetic field is the product of culture.

It may sound very inappropriate on this occasion to say that in order to be in your natural state, all that man has thought and felt before you must be swept aside and must be brushed aside. And that means the culture in which you are brought up must go down the drain or out of the window. Is it possible? It is possible. But at the same time it is so difficult because you are the product of that culture and you are that. You are not different from that. You cannot separate yourself from that culture. And yet this culture is the stumbling block for us to be in our natural state.

Can this natural state be captured, contained and expressed through words? It cannot. It is not a conscious state of your existence. It can never become part of your conscious thinking. And then why do I talk of this state of not knowing? For all practical purposes it does not exist at all. It can never become part of your conscious thinking.

Here I have to explain what I mean by the word consciousness. You and I mean two different things probably, I don't know. When do you become conscious of a thing? Only when the thought comes in between what is there in front of you and what is supposed to be there inside of you. That is consciousness. So you have to necessarily use thought to become conscious of the things around you or the persons around you. Otherwise, you are not conscious of the things at all and at the same time you are not unconscious, but there is an area where you are neither conscious nor unconscious. But that consciousness, if I may use that word, expresses itself in its own way and what prevents that consciousness to express itself in its own way is the movement of thought.

What can anyone do about this thought? It has a tremendous momentum of millions and millions of years. Can I do anything about that thought? Can I stop it? Can I mold it? Can I shape it? Can I do anything about it? But yet our culture, our civilization, our education - all these have forced us to use that instrument to get something for us. So can that instrument be used to understand its own nature? It is not possible. And yet when you see the tremendous nature of this movement of thought and that there isn't anything that you can do about it, it naturally slows down and falls in its natural pattern.

When I say that, I do not, of course, mean what these people in India talk about - that thought must be used in order to get into a thoughtless state or into a meditative state. But there is no such thing as a thoughtless state at all. Thoughts are there; they will be there all the time. Thoughts will disappear only when you become a dead corpse - let me use these two words - dead corpse. Otherwise, thoughts are there and they are going to be there. If all the religious teachers tell us that you are going into a thoughtless state, they are taking us all for a ride. They can promise you that in that thoughtless state - in that state of silence, in that state of quietness or in that state of a quiet mind or whatever phrase you want to use - there will be this real bliss, beatitude, love, religious joy, and ecstatic state of being - all that is balderdash. Because, that state, if there is any state like the state of bliss, it can never become part of your consciousness. It can never become part of your conscious existence. So you might as well throw the whole thing - the whole crap of these ideas, concepts and abstractions about the blissful states - into a cocked hat, if I may use that American slang.

So what is one to do? Can anybody help you? No outside agency can help you. That means a complete and total rejection, as I said in the beginning, of all that man has thought and felt before you. As long as there is any trace of knowledge, in any shape, in any form, in your consciousness, you are living in a divided state of consciousness.

What happened? I don't know. Suddenly thought has fallen into its natural state. The continuity has come to an end. So what I am saying is not the product of thinking. It is not manufactured by my thought structure inside. Nor is it a logically ascertained premise. But what is happening here is only the expression of that state of being where you do not know what is happening. You do not know how this organism is functioning. This is a pure and simple physical and physiological state of being. It has no religious undertones or overtones. It has no mystical content whatsoever and at the same time this extraordinary thing, the extraordinary intelligence that is there, which is a product of centuries of human evolution, is able to express itself and deal with any problem and any situation without creating problems for us.

There is no entity here. There is no center here. There is no self here. There is no atman here, there is no soul here at all. You may not agree. You may not accept it but that unfortunately happens to be a fact. The totality of thoughts and feelings is not there. But there is an illusion that there is a totality of your feelings and thoughts. This human organism is responding to the challenges from outside. You are functioning in the sphere - so thousands and thousands, perhaps millions and millions of sensations are bombarding this body. Since there is no center here, since there is no mind here, since there is nothing here, what is it that is happening? What is happening here this human organism is responding to the challenges, or to the stimuli, if I may put it that way.

So there is nobody here who is translating these sensations in terms of past experiences but there is a living contact with the things around, that is all that is there. One sensation after another is hitting this organism and at the same time there is no coordinator here. This state of not knowing is not in relationship to your brahman, or your nirguna brahman or saguna brahman or any such thing. This state of not knowing is in its relationship to the things that are there around you.

You may be looking at a flower. You may think that it is a crazy state. Perhaps it is, I don't know. You do not know what you are looking at. But when there is a demand for that - and that demand always comes from outside. "What is that?" And then the knowledge, the information that is there locked up in this organism comes and says that it is a rose, that this is a microphone, that's a man, that's a woman and so on and so forth. This is not because there is a drive from inside but the outside challenge brings out this answer. So I say that this action is always taking place outside of this organism, not inside.

How do I know that these sensations are bombarding or hitting this organism all the time? It is only because there is a consciousness which is conscious of itself and there is nobody who is conscious of the things that are happening. This is a living organism and that living state is functioning in its own way, in its natural way.

What do you want me to say? (Laughter) If they have understood what there is they wouldn't be here. They wouldn't go to anybody. They wouldn't ask these questions at all. If they translate what I am saying in terms of their particular fancy or their particular background, that's their tragedy, it would be their misery. It hasn't helped them. This is my question, "Has it helped you?" Why are you hung up on these phrases? They are after all phrases.

When once you realize, when once this is understood - how this mechanism is operating, how automatic it is, how mechanical it is - you will realize that all these phrases have no meaning at all. You may very well ask me why I am using these phrases. Because you and I have created this unfortunate situation where you have put me here on the dais and asked me to talk and naturally, as I said in the beginning, I have to use words. So the moment I stop talking the whole thing has come to a stop inside. Is that so? It is so here in my case because there is no continuity of thought.

Here there is a table. I don't know what it is. And at the same time, if you ask me, "What is that?" I would immediately say, "It's a chair." It is there in the background. It comes automatically, like an arrow. But otherwise, this is just a reflection of this. I don't translate this as bimbavatu at all. But I have to use that word - this is reflecting the thing exactly the way it is. I don't want to use these metaphysical phrases because you will immediately translate them in terms of your particular parallel.

There is no subject here independent of the object at all. So there is nothing here. What is there is all that is there and you do not know what it is. So now you turn there and this object has just disappeared, there is something else. This has completely and totally disappeared from here and then what is there is a thing that is there in front of me and it is just like this object, exactly the way it is. But you do not know what it is. That is why I say it is a state of not knowing. Probably you will find parallels to these things. What I am trying to point out is the absence of what you are all doing at this moment is the state that I am describing and it is not my state, that is the way you are functioning.

May I give an example of what is happening in the field of spectroscopy? I don't read books but sometimes I read magazines. I get interested in these things. They have developed very powerful lenses to take photos of objects. They have developed micro-seconds, nanoseconds and picoseconds. It doesn't mean anything to you and me, it's all technical language. Now they are able to take pictures of objects, say for instance, of this table, every pico second. Every picture is different. In exactly the same way, the reflection of that object is once now; another time, you turn this side, you are back again - it's again you. But don't translate this in terms of newness and oldness. It cannot be communicated to you at all. This can never become part of your experiencing structure.

I am throwing a lot of conclusions at you but even a thing like this cannot be experienced by you at all. I don't know if you understand this. You have necessarily to abstract this in order to experience a thing. So what I am trying to say is that you can never experience your own natural state. This can never become part of your experiencing structure. And what you are all trying to do all the time is to make that - whatever you want to realize or discover - part of this experiencing structure. So your experiencing structure and your natural state cannot co-exist at the same time.

This I must stress, that the need for the operation of thought or the movements of thought to come into being is decided by factors outside of this organism. When and why and how this translation is to come into being is decided by an action outside. The actions are always taking place outside. When there is a demand, the movement of thought probably separates itself for a while to meet the demands of the situation and then it is back again in the movement of life. So thought is only functional in value and it has no other value at all.

What is more is that the continuity of thought is destroying the sensitivity of your senses. When the movement of thought is not continuous, the senses begin to function in an extraordinarily sensitive way. When I use the word sensitivity, I mean the sensitivity of the senses and not the sensitivity of the mind. The sensitivity of the mind is a trick of your mind and you can create a state of mind where you feel sensitive to the feelings of everybody, to the things around you, and wallow in that sickly state of mind and think you are getting somewhere. This is a thing that is there all the time.

There is nothing to achieve, there is nothing to accomplish, nothing to attain and no destination to arrive at. And what prevents what is there, this living state, from expressing itself in its own way is the movement of thought, which is there only for the purposes of functioning in this world. When the movement of thought is not there... I have to use the clauses in terms of time, but time is thought. When thought is there, time is there. When thought is there, sex is there. When thought is there, God is there. When thought is not there, there is no God, there is no sex, nothing is there. It may sound objectionable to you to accept my statement... but the drug of virtues you practice, the practice of virtues, is not a foundation for it at all. And the practice of abstinence, continence and celibacy is not the path to it. But if you want to indulge in them and feel greatly superior it's your own business.

I am not here to reform you. I am not here to lead you anywhere. But this is a fact. You have to understand a fact as a fact. It is not a logically ascertained thing, it is not a rational thing to understand it rationally. A fact is a movement. Truth is movement. Reality is movement. But I don't want to use these words because they are all loaded words. You know all about them. The unfortunate thing about the whole business is that you know a lot about these things and that is the misery of you all. This is a thing which you do not know at all. I am not claiming that I know it. I myself don't know. That is why I say I don't know. It's a state of not knowing.

Let alone God, let alone reality, ultimate or otherwise, I don't know what I am looking at - the very person who has been with me all the time, day and night. That is my situation. If I tell this to a psychiatrist, he will probably put me on a couch and say something is radically wrong with me. Probably, I am functioning like any other human being. He doesn't understand that. That's his problem, it is not my problem anymore. So all your search - for truth, God, reality - you use any phrase you like, is a false thing. You are all on a merry-go-round, and you want to go round and round and round.

How can you ask for a thing which you do not know? How can you search for a thing which you do not know? You all seem to know. You have an image of this state from the description of this state probably you have already created. What state? Somebody asked me: "What is the state you are in?" "What State? Mysore State or Tamil Nadu State? What state are you talking about?" This is my response. What is the state you are talking about? This is your natural state. You don't want to understand that. You don't want to be in your natural state. It requires an extraordinary intelligence to be in your natural state, to be yourself.

You always want to be somebody else, you want to imitate the life of somebody else - you want to imitate the life of Jesus, you want to imitate the life of Buddha, you want to imitate the life of Shankara. You can't do it because you don't know what is there behind. You will end up changing your robes from rose to saffron, saffron to yellow or from yellow to rose, depending upon your particular fancy. How can you ask for a thing which you do not know? How can you search for a thing which you do not know? That is my question. So search has no meaning at all. Only when the search comes to an end what there is will express itself in its own way. You cannot tamper with that. You cannot manipulate that. You cannot manipulate the action of the thing which is there, which has an extraordinary intelligence.

To be yourself is the easiest thing. And you don't want to be in your state. You'd rather be somebody else, imitate the life of somebody else. That's your problem. To be yourself doesn't need any time at all. But you talk of timelessness, which is a mockery. To be yourself, do you need time? To be a good man, to be a marvelously religious man, to be in a state of peace, to be in a state bliss, naturally you need time. That will always be tomorrow. When tomorrow arrives, you say, "All right, day after tomorrow." That is time, not this metaphysical or philosophical thing, I am not talking about metaphysical time and timeless. There is no such thing as the timeless.

I am making assertions, statements and conclusions - you will object to them. Take it or leave it. I don't expect you to accept anything that I am saying. You are not in a position to accept or reject it. You can reject it because it does not fit into the particular framework of your philosophy - Shankara, Gaudapada, Ramanuja, Madhvacharya, God-knows-what - we have too many of them here. So how can you understand this? The only thing to do is to throw in the towel. Turn your back on the whole business. That is why it takes extraordinary courage, not the courage or the bravado of these people who climb Mount Everest or try to swim across the English Channel, or cross the Pacific or Atlantic, whatever their fancy, on a raft - that is not what I mean. What I mean is the courage...

You quote your Bhagavad Gita or your Brahma Sutras, kaschid dhirah. All these phrases, what do they mean? Abhayam brahma - why do you all repeat these phrases? It has no meaning. It's a mechanical thing. "How are you?" "I am all right, I am fine. Just fine. I couldn't be better." In America, you know... "How are you this morning?" "I am just fine. I couldn't be better." In exactly the same way, you throw these phrases at everybody. If you understand the way this mechanical structure is functioning inside of you, you see the absurdity of the whole business of discussing these matters everlastingly. Can you throw the whole business out of the window and walk out?

First of all, there is no hunger at all in the sense in which we use the word. It's pure and simple chemistry. And then there is what you call hunger which is like any other sensation, you understand. The consciousness or life, or whatever you want to call it, becomes conscious of that thing and it is gone, it is not there. It does not push you to reach out for food. And so the next sensation is coming. It's a continuous movement. You are looking at something and this is finished. Probably your body will become weaker and weaker if you don't eat food.

People give me food, so I eat food. Otherwise, there is no such thing as hunger at all. And the pain, there is physical pain - since there is no continuity of thought, as I pointed out, there is no continuity of pain. It comes in impulses like that, just the way you are throwing out words. There is no continuity of the pain. I don't want to use the word psychological pain because it gets us involved in... because we will begin to tie things in knots. There is only physical pain and there is no other pain but even that physical pain is not continuous and so it is not much of a pain in the sense in which we use the word.

When the movement in the direction of wanting to be into your own natural state or in the state of God-knows-whom you want to be - your idol or your hero or your master - it is there, this movement in any direction is taking you away from yourself. That is all that I am pointing out. When the movement is not there you are your natural state. So the sadhana, the method or system or the technique is taking you away from yourself in the direction of the state you want to be in and that is the state of somebody else. As I pointed out, you have the knowledge about this state. Unfortunately, so many people have talked about it. I am already doing mischief, perhaps. Kick them all out on their backs.

Yes, throw stones at me and walk out. My interest is to send you packing, as the expression has it. If you can do that you will never go to listen to anybody. I will not take you to jail. That's a problem with the society in which you are caught. I can't help you. I will not be the first one to complain about it.

I haven't said anything. What all you think I have said is a bag; you think it makes sense. How can it make sense? If you think that it makes sense, you haven't understood a thing. If you think that it doesn't make any sense, you haven't understood it either. It's just words, listening to this noise - words, words, words - mechanically coming out of this organism. I don't know how they are coming. I wish I knew. I wish I knew how I got into... What state? It always irritates me when people ask me, "You tell us something..." About what state? What state are you talking about? I know Mysore. I am in the Mysore State. How do I know that I am in the Mysore State? Because people tell me that I am in Mysore. So what state you want to get into? That is your natural state, I am saying.

What takes you away from your state is this movement in the direction of wanting to be in some state other than yourself. To be yourself doesn't need time. If I am a village idiot, I remain a village idiot. Finish. I don't want to be an intelligent man. Even if my neighbor takes advantage of his extraordinary intelligence and exploits, good luck. What can I do? To accept the reality, this is the reality of the world. There is no other world. There is no other reality, ultimate reality. This is the only reality. You have to function in this world. You can't run away from this world. How can you run away from this world, because you are that world? Where can you go? Hide yourself in a cave?

Yes, you are taking your thoughts wherever you go. You cannot run away from your shadow. It's there all the time. So you can't do a thing about thought, that's all that I am saying. When you realize the absurdity of all your effort to do something about the thought, it's creating the problem, it's misery for you, you can't do anything. When you can't do anything, when you realize that you can't do a thing about it, it's not there. You are not using it as a means to get something for you.

I want to say this again. You desire. If you do not want anything, there is no thought at all. You understand? Wanting is thinking, it doesn't matter what you want - want self-realization, want God-realization - you want anything, that means you have to use this instrument. These are not your thoughts, these are not your feelings. You may not like it. They belong to somebody else. You want to make them your own. You have unfortunately made them your own. That's why you ask all these questions. Why do you ask all these questions?

These questions have been put before to so many people - all the sages, saints and saviors of mankind, the holy men dead and alive. They are all ready to answer. They have composed a lot of lullabies. You go and listen to them and go to sleep, if you want to. That's what you are interested in. You want somebody else to pat on your back and say, "Oh, fine, just fine, you are doing very well. Do more and more of the same and you will reach the destination you want to arrive at." What is the destination you want to arrive at? To be gentle, meek, to be soft, to talk and whisper. You know if you go to some of these monasteries in the West, the Trappist, they talk and whisper. They don't even understand what the other man is saying. That's the secret to the spiritual path.

You want to reassure your partner that you are in love with that person. It isn't worth a tinker's damn, that love. That's not love at all. You can call it love. I don't want to go into that. It's a forbidden subject. They ask me, "Do you have anything to say about...?" It's a four letter word. It's like any other word - dog, pig, love. In love, can there be any relationship at all? Can you have any relationship?

This is your problem. You are all the time trying to have relationship with people. You cannot have any relationship with people at all. "Love is relationship. Life is relationship." All that guff, trite crap. You memorize and repeat them. They all become fancy phrases these days. "Freedom," "first and last freedom" and the freedoms that come in between - what is this nonsense? This is like any other trite... any other crap that these people are repeating. You have memorized a new set of phrases, that's all you are doing.

You sit and discuss everlastingly all this awareness. What is that awareness you are talking about? How can you be aware of this? Can you at any time be aware of it? If you are aware of this once in your lifetime, the whole structure has collapsed, it has fallen in its proper place. You don't have to do a thing about it. So it doesn't mean a thing at all. You can talk of awareness, choiceless or otherwise, or conditioning.

Conditioning, what can you do about it? Conditioning is intelligence. You can't do a damn thing about it. You can't free yourself. If you want to free yourself from your conditioning or uncondition yourself and all that nonsense that is going on... How are you going to uncondition yourself? You create another conditioning, instead of repeating Upanishads you will repeat some other thing, the fancy books.

There is no mind. Where is the mind? Is the mind separate from the body? Distinguished from the body? Apart from the body? These questions have no meaning at all. You have no way of separating yourself from what is going on. The moment you separate yourself means you have a knowledge about it - the knowledge given by either the biologists, the physiologists, the psychologists or the religious people. So through that you are looking at it. You cannot experience anything without knowledge. You cannot experience this at all, let alone Brahman or reality.

You cannot experience this at all. Only through an abstraction. And what is that abstraction? The knowledge you have about it. This has been put there. Your mother told you, or your neighbor or friend told you that this is a table. What the hell is that, you don't know, apart from what you have been told. Every time you look at this, you have to repeat to yourself that it is a table. What are you doing that for? This is my question. This is the continuity I am talking about. You want to reassure yourself that you are there. The "I" is nothing but this word. There is no "I" independent of this word. Maybe you find some parallel in Shankara or God-knows-what.

The consciousness I am talking about is a state where there is no division which says that you are asleep, that you are awake, that you are dreaming... There is no division at all. I don't even know if I am alive or dead. This is my state. I have no way of knowing for myself. The doctor can come and say that I want to examine your lung, your lung is functioning alright, there is heartbeat, there is this, that and the other. You are alive. That's alright. I am delighted. You reassure me that I am a living being but...

What I mean by action is the action is taking place always outside. The senses are working at their peak capacity all the time. It's not because you want to look at a particular thing. There is no time even for the eyelids to blink for a second. They have to stay open all the time. And when they are tired, it has its own naturally built-in mechanism which cuts off the sensation. And then it's back again.

Supposing somebody gives you an answer. So where are you? Can you separate yourself from that mechanism? This is what I am saying. You can separate yourself from the mechanism and look at it only through the knowledge, whether the knowledge is provided by a physician or by a saint or by a sage. And that is worthless because you are projecting this knowledge on what you are looking at, and that knowledge is creating or producing these experiences. That can never become part of that experiencing structure. That's the trouble.

You want to experience this. You can't experience this at all, whether it is the consciousness that I am talking of or the living state or the state of not knowing or the things that are there around. How is it expressing itself? It is expressing itself as energy, it is expressing itself as action, in its own way. If I use some words, "It is aware of itself, it is aware of its own incredible death, it is conscious of itself" - all these phrases may sound very mystical to you - but you cannot. The brain physiologists, if I may quote somebody - they are trying to understand the brain and they have to find some means to define... They have defined the brain as an instrument with which we think. They are not so sure.

You cannot separate yourself from the brain and its activity and look at the brain. Can you look at your back and tell me something about your back? Somebody else must come and tell you. And he has his own ideas, fancy ideas. "You have a straight back." The doctor always observes people and from his point of view he would say that that man is sick, this man's back is not correct and so forth. Or if I see a painter, his description is something else. So this is a thing which you cannot communicate to somebody else. Can you communicate your sex experience to somebody else?

I don't bother. Do I exist in this world? Does the world exist for me? Where is the world? I am not trying to be clever with all these phrases. I don't know a thing about it. Am I talking, am I saying anything? This is like the howling of a jackal, barking of a dog or the braying of an ass. If you can put this on that level and just listen to this vibration, you are out, you will walk out, and you will never listen to anybody in your lifetime. Finish. It doesn't have to be the talk of a self-realized man. You will realize that there is no self to realize. That's all. There is no center there. It is working in an extraordinary way.

There is no death. You are never born. You are not born at all. (Laughter) I am not trying to mystify. Because life has no beginning, it has no end. Has it a beginning, has it an end? What creates the beginning is your thought. Why are you concerned about death? There is no such as death at all. Your birth and your death can never become part of that experiencing structure. If you want to experience death, you are not going to be there. (Laughter) Somebody else will be there. It will be somebody else's misery.

_______

You are individually responsible for the exploitation. As long as you are seeking security for yourself, there can't be security in the world. And as long as you allow yourself to be exploited by somebody for some reason or the other, the structure will continue to be the same.

You use somebody and that is exploitation, no matter for what reason. If the other person allows this, he is also interested in using you. That is the relationship in this world. You call it mutual gratification. You gratify me and I gratify you. Or you exploit for self-fulfilment, self-expression. That is what I mean by exploitation, not necessarily in the field of labor and money and other things.

What can you do? Join a party, start an organization. And it is always tomorrow. People are hungry today and you are promising food tomorrow. My idea, my system, my party and I'll give food and security. The other man also says the same thing and you fight all the time to win over the other, meanwhile the poor man suffers and you let him die of starvation.

You are accumulating wealth, and as long as you hold on to what you have how would the world change? You don't want to let go anything. And that is so with your neighbor and his neighbor and every other person. You think this is marvelous progress, giving charity here and there. Tell me, do you mind if things are taken away from you? You try to take away a simple thing like a fountain pen from somebody, and see what happens. He'll kill you.

(Peals of laughter…)

Sorry, I don't believe anybody who says he is not attached to things or people or anything else. Even if you go and listen to somebody it is only to get something. You want to profit by that and that is your acquisitive nature. You want to benefit yourself, improve yourself, become somebody other than what you are. You want to be a religious man, a holy man, a good man. All that is the acquisitive structure in you. 

The man who acquires knowledge is not very different from the man who acquires wealth. Both are acquisitive. Seeking happiness is acquisitiveness. Facing this fact may contribute something in the direction of solving the human problem. Not otherwise.

There is no collective action involved here. This is a very simple and effective way to bring about a change in the structure of your consciousness, but instead you want to start organizations to change, when basically you are not different from what you want to change out there. 

At no time you are free from it and that is your burden, your problem, your life. Conflict is the ego. Don't deal with ego in terms of religious or spiritual valuation. Ego is the conflict, the division in your consciousness, that's all. Everything is divided up. That division is the separateness from this mechanism.

You have created a separate entity here. It is not real; it is illusory and does not exist at all. It is good for you to say this is atman, this is the Higher Self, this is Brahman and all that. It is all invention of the mind. The moment you accept the mind the division is there. And you want to understand this division in terms of religious concepts, abstractions. This is the basic conflict.

The society, the culture has created this conflict, this division, and you are not different from the society or culture. The society has put the structure inside of you and you are perpetuating that structure because it is in your interest to give continuity to it. But does it exist? Is there an ‘I’, the center? If you ask this question, the question is that one (the self, the ego). It is an illusion, I say; but it is a solid thing for you.

So, how do you understand this basic thing, not according to psychologists or some holy man or guru? You can throw them all out of the window if you have the courage. Are you ready to understand for yourself what this is all about? Have you looked at it? Look at it and find out.

The society is interested in continuity and it does not want to change unless it is pushed by circumstances. So you move like crabs, dig a hole and stay there until you are pushed out by circumstances. Basically, you don't want to change. There is nothing there but ideas, dead things, passed on from generation to generation, that is the momentum of thought, the continuity. 

It is simple but you are making it difficult by your refusal to change. What I am describing is your state and not my state alone. The absence of that movement of thought seeking continuity there is this state.

We have not become human, we are still like animals. And since we do not accept the fact that we are like animals, we are moving away from that state all the time, because we want to be angels, divine – but angels don't exist except as an idea, a myth. In spite of all your struggles, all this centuries-old civilization and culture, you haven't gone one step further. Despite the whole lot and all your so-called achievements, the culture is perpetuating the animal, trying to change a bit here, a bit there.

Yes, all that is exploitation. Actually what is there is not an animal; you have become a human being. You have gone far ahead in the evolutionary process. But the problem is all your energy is spent towards achieving a goal that does not exist. Your moral absolutes and high ideals don't exist; they are only inventions of the mind. And it is that movement that makes it impossible to be what actually you are.

That is what is producing conflict there. That is the structure and that is how you have come into what you are today. But you are not happy, not at peace with what you are today and so you try this, that and the other to do something about it. They teach you yoga, meditation and they produce some results sometime. But it is like a rubber you stretch and then it comes back to its original state. It has to, that's its nature.

You are trying to control a thing over which you have no control. It's like trying to hold your breath and you choke. So there is nothing you can do about it and that is the first thing you have to understand and accept. You don't and then some holy man comes along and says you can control it, you can do something about it, you can become a good man, a holy man, Brahman, Jesus, Allah. And you are back again playing the same old game.

When you see a woman and recognize her as a woman and what she can give you, what is that but the continuity of your self. There is always something building up inside of you and you are constantly reaching out for something, whether it is sex or pleasure, relationship or security, some new idea or experience – that is continuity. This is not something mystical; you can see this for yourself. There are only sensations hitting you one after another all the time and you are translating it as good, bad, pleasant, disgusting and so on and that is continuity. This is your everyday existence, is it not?

What I am saying is that all beliefs and practices give continuity to that structure. If you knock off this structure, what happens? You think you'll become a moron, abnormal or insane and you are afraid. You don't have that courage, you only talk of courage. If you have the courage and bring this movement to an end, the structure collapses and then you become what you actually are. That is the natural state and the life there will express itself in its own way and that will be your way, something unique, unparalleled.

_______

There is no such thing as sleep for me. The division between sleep, wakefulness and dreaming is not there. It is all one state of consciousness; pure consciousness. Others say that I sleep for three or four hours and the body is in perfect repose. And you do not dream because you experience everything totally and completely.

Why there is no need for me to dream? It is because I am not selective in what I am looking at and listening to. I leave the sensations alone completely and don't manipulate the sensations to get something out of them. I am completely occupied with what is there around me and that is the only world that exists for me at that particular given time.

Whereas in your case you want to look at and listen to something good and beautiful and so you are cutting out ninety-eight percent of what is there. But the camera and the tape recorder inside of you is recording everything and when the body is at ease, resting, the mind becomes active and brings out all those things and that is the dream. You do not experience anything completely.

Psychiatrists tell you that you have to sleep in order to dream. But that is not true as far as this state of being is concerned. So I don't sleep and I don't dream. In this state, since you are open you don't shut out any sensation and do not translate them as good, bad or as anything. All these sensations are bombarding you and you have no choice. When the body becomes tired or it becomes impossible to be active, it goes into a state of repose in its own way – there is a change in the metabolism of your body and you go into a state like you go into when you are given anesthesia. There is a sort of curtain that falls before you and you don't know what you are looking at, you stay that way for some time. That is repose.

You function in two ways: activity, which is part of life, and repose; and this goes on continuously all the time. This repose and activity is an automatic thing. Perhaps that is why the yogis call it a state of samadhi. You are completely, totally cut out, it is like death, physical death, even your breathing slows down, and then what happens nobody knows. And then you come back, the field is ready and you are ready to take in anything.

That is the Vedantic idea that they have put into our heads, the idea that in deep sleep you are not there. All right, let's see if it is so. After the so-called deep sleep you come awake and you ask if I was there or not. You were certainly there before and after sleep. Why do you ask this question? It is a speculation on your part that you were not there during deep sleep. When you are not there after the deep sleep, only then you can say you were not there in the deep sleep. If you were really not there during the sleep, you cannot be there now.

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Affection is not something that moves from here and flows in the direction of some individual, but you are affected by everything that is there. This is affection. You are affected by everything because there are no frontiers here, nothing to protect you against. 

The other day this friend was saying that I turned blue because he was very angry. That is how you are affected by everything around you. 

There is what is called thymus gland here (to the right side of the chest). This is where you experience the feelings, not emotions as you understand, this is a physical thing. This happened in India. One evening I heard a wild wailing of a child coming from the backyard and was drawn to the spot. I saw the mother beating her child. She was mad, hopping mad, and she hit the child so hard, the child almost turned blue. I simply could not move. You are the child and you are the mother, which one you are and for which one the heart is beating, you do not know. There is one continuous movement here. I was also part of that and then I found all those things (marks) on my back. That is possible because consciousness cannot be divided. Anything that is happening there is affecting you – this is affection, you understand? There is no question of your sitting in judgment on anybody; the situation happens to be that, so you are affected by that. You are affected by everything that is happening there. 

This is affection, compassion. To bear and suffer; sorrow and pity excited by the misfortunes of another. It is not a question of practicing sympathy or kindness.

_______

What do I get out of that individual is the relationship – friendship, togetherness, sharing of common ideas, feelings, food, sex – at every level. You establish some kind of (unwritten) contract that you have to live together. Is that a living relationship? 

Yes, life is basically related. That is an expression of life. But we are creating another kind of relationship through our desires and that is the movement of thought, of the self, which is parallel to the movement of life. There is no duality, no division in consciousness. It is all one. But you have isolated yourself from this unitary movement of life and that is the problem and that is why you ask all these questions. And from this isolated position you are trying to establish relationships and that is bound to run you into all kinds of conflict situations. Being isolated you feel lonely and you want to be free from loneliness and you create a relationship and seek gratification. You call this relationship mutual gratification.

Man is also an animal and on that you have superimposed the idea of a perfect man. The idea of a perfect man doesn't exist. This is the conflict. The society has created this conflict in you by imposing the idea of a perfect human being on you. There is no such thing as a perfect human being, but you can become a human being and once you become a human being the animal qualities are not there anymore.

You are three-fourths animal and one-fourth all these ideas and fantasies. So the animal remains an animal and you don't want to accept this fact. The only difference between you and the animal is that you are more complex. They have instincts and because of which they are very intelligent in certain things; but man has lost the animal instinct and in its place he has not developed the human instinct.

If there is any purpose to human evolution it is to surpass the animal in you and become fully human. Such a human being is unique and unparalleled. Once you become a human flower you are free of sex and all the other things that culture has imposed on you. The continuity of all kinds has come to an end. The evolution has come to an end. It is finished, complete. It is just a flower giving out its own fragrance. But the society is interested in creating human beings in a common mold and that is the barrier that prevents you from blossoming into a unique human flower.

From time to time it (nature) is throwing up a few individuals, pointing out that that (society, culture) is not the way, this is it. Why and how it happens only to a few individuals nobody knows. It just happens. You can use the words luck, chance or grace or any other word, but there is no explanation. But it can happen now, to you or anybody; you don't have to wait. 

This is nature's law. When evolution slows down, revolution takes place. Suddenly it throws up something like this. This is the way it has gone on through centuries.

What is love? It is said, at least according to the dictionary, that love is warm affection, paternal feeling, liking someone, something, fondness and so on. And that love is always in relationship with something, whether it is a person or a thing. Then we speak of another kind of love, divine love, which is supposed to be qualitatively different from what you feel towards others.

All right, we have feelings towards persons and things and it changes all the time. But you want some kind of a permanent relationship, a beautiful relationship, full of harmony and never ending. That's the reason why you are searching for what is called love. 

Actually, if you are in a state of love, which is not any of these definitions, there is no relationship whatsoever. 

There is no attachment to persons or things. You cannot acquire anything. Acquisitiveness is out, whether it is acquisitiveness of knowledge or things or persons.

The absence of attachment, of acquisitiveness is love. It does not mean you are in a state of detachment, there is no such thing. Detachment gives continuity to attachment and you are obviously tired of attachment and you want to change the nature of attachment into something else. 

Love is not different from life. Life, love, truth, reality, God or whatever word you use, they are all the same. But that's a thing you cannot capture, contain, much less give expression to it.

_______

We seem to have some difficulty about this word consciousness. When do you become conscious of an object? This microphone, that person, black hair, fountain pen and shoes there – you become conscious of these things only when thought interferes, otherwise you are not conscious of the object and at the same time you are not unconscious.

You are asking the question because obviously you have not lived through that state of awareness. So I have no way of communicating to you that state of awareness where you are not conscious of the objects. You really don't know what you are looking at, that is all. If you are aware of anything as it is, just once, this whole structure would collapse once and for all. Just one second by the clock, this whole thought structure will be finished.

You may say that you have become aware of things, of feelings, your anger, your jealousy. It is all just one thought becoming aware of another one. The moment you say this is anger, you cannot be aware. Anger is just like any other feeling like say sex feeling, but you are dividing the feeling as anger, jealousy, sex and so on. You are classifying them, otherwise they are all one and the same.

_______

There is already enough junk, enough garbage there. You can't do a thing about it and can't get rid of it. But what is the point in adding more and more to this garbage and that's what you are doing. 

What is there is enough for you to last for the entire evolution. There isn't anything you can do about the garbage and it is not garbage; that is the intelligence. What you call conditioning, what you call mechanical, is the intelligence. Why do you call that garbage? 

It is not getting in the way; you are getting in the way. You are all the time interfering with what you call garbage…which is not garbage.

How do you get this know-how? You come here or you go to someone else, some authority or wise old man and he tells you something when actually he may or may not know a thing of what he is saying. So where are you? 

Why do you ask such questions? That's my problem. I don't have any questions.

All right, if there is any such thing as learning, you look out there; you see something sitting there, of purple color; what is that extraordinary thing that is standing there on the balcony? This is all I am concerned about learning. Not about garbage, conditioning, mutation and all that. What is there? I am wondering what it is that is moving there. This is the state of learning and you have learnt and it is finished. Then you look at something else and you are back again with the same question. This is the state of not knowing. What you mean by inquiry is a simple, innocent question: what is it that is there on the balcony? All this is learning, not about the nature of reality, ultimate reality, conditioning and all that, which is nothing but dialectical thinking, thinking about thinking itself. This is what the philosophers do and write books about.

You see, I look at my foot here and I don't know to whom it belongs and what it is actually. 

There is nobody here. A beautiful woman comes and that beautiful woman is nothing but me. There is no separation here at all. When there is a question, when there is a demand, it gets clutched and the word is thrown out. It's a chair and it is finished. It's a woman, it is finished.

It is not a question of coming out of non-dual state into a state of duality or going back into the state of non-duality. There is no movement in any direction either outward or inward. There is only one movement of life, and that is acting. You cannot stop that, but you want to look at it and understand that and that is not possible.

So you want to look at the garbage there. The one who is trying to look at the garbage and wanting to do something about it is the garbage. Why is he interested in finding out the nature of the garbage? It is because through that you are seeking the continuity of the garbage, otherwise there is no garbage. 

You have memorized these phrases very well, like the Vedantins sitting on the banks of the river indulging in hair-splitting discussions. They discuss everlastingly these abstractions: the observer and the observed, the thinker and the thought – we have been through all this for too long.

So what is the good of you people sitting here and discussing the same things again and again? There is no such thing as experiencing without the experiencer and the experienced. Even if it is there, it cannot become part of your conscious structure. So what are you going to do about it? You just throw in the towel. That's it. Then there'll be tremendous energy for you to deal with this reality. This is the only reality and there is no other reality and you cannot run away from it.

Then you'll find out that it is utter nonsense to talk about the religious mind. You have imposed all these abstractions, your profound ideas of religious mind, stillness of mind, self-realized state, atman, Brahman and all that and that is the unnatural movement of life. It is moving out in the direction of something else outside of you and that is what is creating that division in you.

How long can you go on this way, chewing the cud like the cows do? You can't help yourself and that is the situation. You must just let go. But as long as you accept any mystery, any miracle, any agency outside of you, you are going to be caught up in this mischief. 

There is no power outside of you. If there is God, you are that God, not the abstractions, absolutes and all that nonsense. There is no intelligence outside of you and you have to just let that intelligence come into operation.

_______

Concentration is a part of your education, right? But why do you want to meditate? If there is a mind here – I don't know if there is – its nature is to move in all directions. That is your natural state. But somebody tells you that you should meditate. So you sit there and meditate. What happens? Thoughts begin to move in all directions, so you bring it back to this point, and this is what you call concentration. And then it begins to move again, you bring it back, it moves again because that is its nature.

The purpose of your meditation is to be at peace with yourself or to be full of love, or I don't know for what else you seek. Anyway, you sit here, cross-legged, and then what happens? You think about things that happened yesterday or of things that are going to happen tomorrow; this is the movement of thought that is going on. You want to be at peace and you think this movement is disturbing your peace, so you try to control it. But this never stops. And it is this that is wearing you out.

So this constant attempt on your part to hold the thing that you cannot hold tires you and that tiredness gives you some kind of peace. It is an artificially created dumbness, dullness, stupidity. This wears out the sensitivity of your senses and that you think is what you have achieved. When that is gone you are back again.

It is like opium, you have to go back every time. If you are successful you become a chain-smoker. Like a chain-smoker you meditate for five or six hours and you get drunk. Actually you are completely tired and that you think is what you are achieving. Now you are able to achieve concentration for thirty minutes, next for forty-five minutes and you succeed in the effort and can do it for one hour and that is the feeling that makes you feel that you are getting somewhere.

It has a will of its own. So you are using another will, you understand. Now, there is a table here. Say I cannot push it but I must push it to the corner. So you develop this will; in other words, you are goading, pushing this body to move things it normally cannot. The will has given you the additional strength. So the will is a very important factor for you and that is your education, culture.

You see, I am stupid and I do not understand mathematics or languages and I have taken seven years to learn French. I use my will but I keep forgetting, but the society says you must learn and fit into this framework. Since you give stories of politicians, businessmen, artists and even religious leaders reaching great heights through sheer will power and hard work, I use will, my effort and the hope that tomorrow I too will succeed like the others. But you are not always successful, so you put in more and more will and effort into it.

And you apply the same logic to reach this state. You believe that through relentless effort, sadhana, through yoga, meditation, you will reach this state. But that is not how it works. In fact, it puts you on the wrong path and sends you in the opposite direction. What I am saying is that this natural state, this mechanical or automatic functioning of the organism or whatever you want to call it, operates when there is an absence of will and effort. So when I say the absence of will is the natural state, you are frightened. What would I be without the will? How can I live in this world without effort and hope? That's how you give continuity to the question and thereby yourself, your thought structure with all its will, effort and hope. To be that it doesn't need time, will and effort.

_______

In the natural state of a human being the sex has no place. Why? Because there is no continuity there in the natural state. The sex glands function normally like in any other individual. It has a definite rhythm and if you don't give expression to sex, you'll understand how rhythmic it is in the case of man as well as woman.

During spring the sex activity, as in the case of animals, becomes extraordinarily active. And you think about sex and thereby you invest what you call sex with tremendous life and give continuity to it all the time. What you call new sex experience is really not new but it is the same sex experience you experienced before and you are repeating that experience again and again. You want to release that tension building up inside of you.

But here there is no continuity. No accumulation of experience. I really don't know what a sex experience is like, that means the past experience is not impinging upon the activity of the sex glands and translating this feeling in terms of that past experience. It is like any other feeling, like any other sensation. There is no translation because the translator is not there.

Man is a positive electromagnetic field and woman a negative electromagnetic field. When there is a collision caused between these two different magnetic fields there is bound to be some kind of disturbance there. Immediately you translate that disturbance inside of you (both man and woman) in terms of your past (sex) experience.

Actually anything that happens in this organism (in this natural state) is exactly the same thing. Eating something, smelling, touching, even the movement of the bowels are all sensations, feelings, and there is no difference between them at all. 

But in your case the structure that gives continuity is making choices: this sensation I like and want to live with, this I don't like – this is how you give life to these sensations.

Here, in this state, since there is no continuity, no building up, the sensations are moving, they come and go one after another. You are always on the move. There is no such thing as sublimation. The sex activity (inside) goes on and on like in any other human being but with a difference. 

The difference is that when this kind of structural or chemical or biological change takes place, the hormones too undergo change. In the case of man the male hormone is predominant and in the case of woman female hormone; this is all the difference that is there. But when this kind of alchemy takes place there is a balance established between the two and then you are neither (completely) a man nor a woman.

It is not in the sense you use the word ‘eunuch’. One half of you is man and the other half woman – there is a harmonious blending of the two. That is how the sex, in the sense you feel about it, is absent in such an individual. 

There is no separateness in what you are looking at. What is there in front of you is not different from what is here. It is like a mirror reflecting the person – it does not matter whether it is a man, woman, a flower or a barking dog there. There is no space, therefore, no difference between the two. So there is nothing to make love to. If you have to make love to, you have to make love to yourself if there is any such thing.

(Laughter…)

In imitation of this state, the religious people try to practice celibacy, continence and they think that is the means to attain this state. That is the reason why monks deny themselves sex and through denial they feel very important and think that they are getting somewhere. But that is an illusion. You become an imitator and not a mutant. This is not the foundation to create a religious mind or religious life.

Denial of sex has no meaning. It is absurd. Through sex there is a possibility of breaking that structure. Anything – it doesn't matter what – even the falling of a leaf, the beautiful or ugly face of a woman or man – anything can snap the continuity and then the whole thing falls in its proper place and you begin to function naturally.

_______

If you blink your eyes it means you are not looking. You don't look at a person with unblinking eyes. The fact you are blinking your eyes all the time means that you are frightened to look at a person or anything for that matter. It is not a nervous action or reaction, or even a reflex action. Throw out all those doctors and psychologists who say that it is a nervous action. There is reflex action only when there is physical danger. But when you are blinking it is not due to physical danger.

You just don't want to or can't look at anything totally. You are frightened, that is why you blink or close your eyes now and then. In India, it is considered as one of the signs of spirituality. Not blinking eyes is supposed to be the quality of a divine man, so the yogis try to keep their eyes open for days together, and then nothing happens.

(The small crowd in the room dissolves into laughter.)