#non doing

In the pursuit of learning, every day something is acquired. In the pursuit of Tao, every day something is dropped.

If you know your own worth, what need you care about the acceptance or rejection of others? Worship Him as if you could see Him with your physical eyes; though you don’t see Him, He sees you. Whilst in this land of fruitless pursuits, you are always unbalanced, always either all back or all front; but once the seeking soul has progressed just a few paces beyond this state, love seizes the reins. While this world remains, that one cannot be; whilst you exist, God cannot be yours. The coming of death is the key which unlocks the unknown domain; but for death, the door of true faith would remain unopened. If you yourself are upside down in reality, then your wisdom and faith are bound to be topsy-turvy. Stop weaving a net about yourself: burst like a lion from the cage. Melt yourself down in this search: venture your life and your soul in the path of sincerity; strive to pass from nothingness to being, and make yourself drunk with the wine of God. — Hakim Sanai Mind is the original fall—the fall from the state of being. Mind is the original sin. To be in the mind is to be in the world: not to be in the mind is to be godly. This much is the difference—but a difference that makes a difference. The fall has to be understood. Meditate over three words: being, doing, having. From being to having is the fall, and doing is the process of coming from being to having. Being is godliness, having is the world, doing is the process of falling from being to having. Hence, the mind is a doer. The mind constantly wants to be occupied. A great hankering to remain busy; that is the mind. One cannot sit alone; one cannot sit in a passive receptivity, not even for a few moments. It is such a torture for the mind, because the moment you stop doing, the mind starts disappearing. If you go to a Zen master and ask, ‘What do you do here? What are these people, your followers, doing?’ he will say, ‘They just sit. They don’t do a thing.’ It happened: A king came to visit the monastery of a Zen master. The master took him around; he was very interested in knowing everything about the monastery. He took the king to every place except one—the central temple. And that was the most imposing building, and yet whenever the king asked, ‘Why don’t you take me to the temple?’ the master would behave as if he had not heard. Finally, the king was very angry, because he was even taken to bathrooms and toilets. He said, ‘Are you mad or something? Why don’t you take me to the temple?’ And the master said, ‘For a certain reason—because you are constantly asking, ‘What do you do here?’ In the library we read: I can take you to the library. In the bathrooms we take baths: I can take you to the bathrooms. In the kitchen we prepare food. But to that temple I cannot take you because we don’t do a thing there! That is the place where we move into non-doing, into non-action. And it will be impossible to explain that to you—that’s why. You are a great king, you are a great doer, and you are so much engrossed with having more and more. You understand the ways of the mind, but you will not understand the ways which are not of the mind.’ The mind is a doer. Watch your own mind and you will understand. What I am saying is not a philosophical statement, it is just a fact. I am not proposing any theory for you to believe or to disbelieve, but something that you can watch in your own being. And you will see it—whenever you are alone, you immediately start looking: something has to be done, you have to go somewhere, you have to see somebody. You can’t be alone. You can’t be a non-doer. Doing is the process by which the mind is created; it is condensed doing. Hence, meditation means a state of non-doing. If you can sit silently doing nothing, suddenly you are back home. Suddenly you see your original face, suddenly you see the source. And that source is SAT CHIT ANAND, it is truth, it is consciousness, it is bliss—call it God, or nirvana, or what you will. From being to doing to having—this is how Adam-consciousness arrives in the world. Move backwards, from having to doing, from doing to being—this is what Christ-consciousness means. But Sufis have a very tremendously significant message for the world. They say the perfect man is one who is capable of moving from being to doing to having to doing to being, and so on, so forth. When the circle is perfect then the man is perfect. One should be capable of doing. I am not saying that you should become incapable of doing; that will not be of any value, that will be simply impotence. You should be capable of doing, but you should not be engrossed in it. You should not become involved in it, you should not become possessed by it, you should remain the master. And I am not saying that all that you have has to be dropped, I am not saying to renounce all that you have. Use it, but don’t be used by it, that’s all. Then the perfect man is born. I call that perfect man a SANNYASIN: he will be both Adam plus Christ. The worldly man is Adam, and up to now the otherworldly man has been involved with Christ-consciousness. But both are half-half. Man needs to become a totality, a wholeness. And my definition of being holy is nothing but to be whole—a capacity to come into the world and yet remaining above it, beyond it; a capacity to use the mind but yet remaining centered in your being. Then the mind is a mechanism of immense value; then it is not a sin to have a beautiful mind. You have a beautiful instrument of immense complexity, and it is a joy to use it, just as it is a joy to drive a beautiful car which is a perfect mechanism. There is nothing like the mind, if you can use it; then the mind is divine too. But if you are used by it, and your sky gets lost in the clouds of the mind, then you’ll remain in misery, in ignorance. The arrival of the mind happens through getting identified with the contents of consciousness. Just a small change, a single step is needed, and that step bridges this to that. That single step bridges the world to godliness, the outer to the inner, the mundane to the sacred. What is that single step? Non-identification. Remain a witness. Always remember to remain a witness: whatsoever passes in the mind, know perfectly well you are not it. You are not the stuff called mind. Once you become identified with any stuff of the mind, you are trapped in a prison. Then you can go on changing and re-arranging the stuff again and again, but nothing will happen. That’s what people go on doing—improving upon themselves, creating a beautiful character, becoming saintly, religious, but the basic thing has not yet been done. They are simply rearranging the stuff of the mind. You can go on rearranging the furniture of your house; you can arrange it in better ways, far more aesthetically, but it remains the same stuff. The sinner and the so-called saint are not very different; both are different arrangements of the same mind. The real sage is one who has become aware that he is not the mind at all. The idea of sin arises in him, and he remains aloof; and the idea of being a saint arises in him, and he remains aloof. He gets identified with nothing—anger or compassion, hate or love, good or bad. He remains non-judgmental, he does not condemn anything in the mind. If you are just a witness, what is the point of condemning anything? And he does not praise anything of the mind—if you are just a witness, again, praise is just futile. He remains cool and collected and centered. The mind goes on raving around him, just out of the past momentum. For thousands of lives you have remained identified with the mind, you have poured so much energy into it. It goes on revolving and revolving for a few months, even for a few years. But if you can remain a silent watcher, a watcher on the hills, then slowly, slowly the energy, the momentum, is lost and the mind comes to a stop. The day the mind stops, you have arrived. The first vision of what godliness is and what you are happens immediately—because once the mind stops, your whole energy that has remained involved with it is released. And that energy is tremendous, it is infinite: it starts falling on you. It is a great benediction, it is grace. The so-called revolutionaries go on failing because they go on re-arranging the same stuff of the mind. Somebody believes in God, and then comes a revolutionary who says, ‘There is no God and I don’t believe in any God.’ But he is as much a fanatic about his idea as the people who believe in God. Believers and disbelievers, both are fanatics. One has become attached to the yes, the other has become attached to the no, but yes or no both are part of the mind. You have chosen one part, somebody else has chosen another part. One is a Christian, another is a Hindu, but both are minds. One has chosen the Bible, the other has chosen the Vedas, but both are part of the mind. Then who is really religious? One who has not chosen out of the mind at all. You cannot call him Christian, you cannot call him Hindu, you cannot call him communist, you cannot call him theist or atheist. He simply is: indefinable he is. You cannot label him. Being is so vast that it cannot be labeled, no word is adequate enough to describe it. In that vastness is freedom, in that vastness is bliss. This is real revolution: jumping from the mind to the being. And the process will remain the same. If doing is the process of falling from being to having, then non-doing will be the process of coming back home. Meditation is not something that you do: meditation is something that happens when you are not doing anything at all. You can sit apparently unmoving, apparently not doing anything, but deep down the mind can continue. That’s how it happens in the monasteries, how it happens in the caves. You may not have much to do, but you can go on doing just a few things again and again. You can go on repeating a mantra: that will do, it is enough for the mind. It will go on doing the same act again and again, playing the same tape again and again, for years, and it will not die. Three yogis are sitting in a cave meditating. A horse comes by, looks in, and goes. A few years pass and one of the yogis says, ‘A horse came in.’ A few more years pass and another says, ‘No, it was a mare.’ After a few more years the third says, ‘If there is going to be an argument, I am leaving.’ Now, nothing has happened for so many years, a horse just came and looked in, but that is enough to keep you occupied for years. It is enough, the mind can live even on this much stuff. One has to be very aware that it is not a question of whether you are involved in many, many works or you are just doing a few things; it is not a question of quantity. The question is of quality. You may be very rich, you may be a king and have many possessions and have to remain involved in a thousand and one things, and then you may renounce the kingdom and all your possessions and become a beggar and live in a hut—this will not make any difference at all. To outsiders, to spectators, it will look like a great revolution has happened: the emperor has become a beggar, he has renounced so much. But nothing has happened inside. First you were involved with the affairs of the kingdom, now you will be involved with the affairs of the small hut. Just the quantity has been reduced, but by reducing the quantity, the quality of your consciousness never changes. The poor man is worried about his bullock-cart, and the rich man is worried about his golden chariot. But the worry is the same; worrying is the same quality. The poor man is worried about tomorrow’s food, and the king is worried about the neighboring country; the object of worry is different, but the process of worrying is the same. The question is, how to change your focus from the mind to the being. Doing has brought you into the world, doing is the ladder that has brought you into the world; non-doing will be the ladder. And non-doing is not inactivity. That point has to be understood well, then you will be able to understand Hakim Sanai’s sutras of today. Non-doing is not inactivity, it is not inaction. Action is there, because action is life. If action completely disappears, you will be dead. Even to breathe is an action; to eat, to digest, to sleep—all are activities. To live is to be active. Then what is non-doing if it is not inactivity? If you understand non-doing as inactivity, you will have missed the whole point of it. Now inactivity will become your occupation. You will be constantly occupied with not doing this and not doing that. Your process will become negative, but it is still doing: ‘I can’t do this, I can’t do that.’ Now you are worried. The same tensions will still be there: ‘I can’t eat this, I can’t eat that, I can’t wear this, I can’t wear that.’ Now you are becoming negative—but the process, the ego, is still there; the mind is still there. It is standing upside down, it is doing a headstand, but it is the same mind. Non-doing is something which has nothing to do with action, but has much to do with the ego, with the idea of the ego. The doer is the ego: one has to become a non-doer. Then existence is the doer. Then you are in a let-go. Then you don’t push the river, then you don’t create agony for yourself by pushing. Let me remind you of what I was telling you just the other day: agony comes from a root AG—ag means pushing. The more you push the river, the more agony is created. And while you are pushing the river, certainly you are trying to swim upstream. You are going against nature, against Tao, against godliness. The non-doer is one who has relaxed with the river, who is floating with the river, flowing with the river, one who has become part of the river, who does not think himself separate at all, one who has no individual destiny. That is the meaning of non-doing. Now the destiny of the total is his destiny. ‘Wherever the whole is going, I am also going—wherever, to whatsoever destination or no-destination. Wherever this beautiful existence is moving, I am part of it. I am a ripple in this great lake, just a small ripple. I need not have an individual destiny.’ Out of individual destiny arises fear, anguish, agony. Out of individual destiny—that ‘I have to do something, I have to be somebody, I have to reach somewhere’—the mind is created. Doing means: ‘I have some idea how I should be, what I should be.’ Non-doing means: ‘I drop all ideas of my being separate from existence.’ Non-separation is non-doing. Then action continues, but it is no more your action. Now it is natural. If a snake passes by on the footpath, you have gone for a morning walk and a snake passes by, you simply jump out of the way of the snake. It is not that you have done it—action has happened, but it is natural. You did not think about it, you didn’t ponder over it. You were not ready for it; you may not have come across a snake ever before in your life. You had not practiced it, it is not a program in your mind. You responded. In the form of the snake, there was death. You responded—immediately, instantly. The mind never came in, because the mind needs time to ponder, to think, to contemplate, and there is no time, death is so close by. You simply jumped. Sitting underneath a tree when the snake has passed, you may think about it; now you have enough time to think. But in that moment, in that momentous moment when the snake was facing you, you simply acted—not out of the mind but out of your totality. It was God’s act. The man who really wants to become a non-doer starts acting as a vehicle of the divine, of the whole. Action continues, but the actor disappears. That is the meaning of non-doing. You live the same life, but now you have a totally different quality, a different flavor to it. The sutras: IF YOU KNOW YOUR OWN WORTH, WHAT NEED YOU CARE ABOUT THE ACCEPTANCE OR REJECTION OF OTHERS? A very fundamental thing. Sanai says: IF YOU KNOW YOUR OWN WORTH you need not be worried about what others think about you, whether they accept you or reject you. If you are worried about others’ rejection and acceptance, that simply shows one thing—that you don’t know your own worth, that you don’t know your own being, that you don’t know godliness resides in you, that you are an abode of the divine. Hence you are worried what people are thinking about you—because on their thinking, on their opinion, will depend much. Your ego depends on others’ opinions. Your being depends on nobody. That’s why the man of being is always a rebel, and the man who lives in the ego has to be very very compromising with the society. The egoist has to compromise, because if he does not compromise, nobody is going to fulfill his ego. The ego needs others’ support, it needs props from others. The more people like you, the better and more polished and refined an ego you can have. That’s why people read books like Dale Carnegie’s HOW TO WIN FRIENDS AND INFLUENCE PEOPLE, or Napoleon Hill, and others. There are thousands of these so-called philosophers who go on teaching people how to polish your ego in a better way, how to decorate it. The modern mind is very much concerned about how you look to others. Why? Because we have lost all sense of our own being. Now all that we have is the ego, and the ego needs others’ support. If you don’t fulfill their expectations about you, they will withdraw their support. And the more you fulfill their expectations, the more of a slave you become. So whatsoever they want you to do, you do—you are just obedient, constantly compromising. Whether you like it or not does not matter to you; the whole question is whether others like it. If they want you to smile, you smile. The smile may be phony, but that is not the point—because people like it. And when they like your smile, they will love you. And when they love you, they will give attention to you, they will respect you. They will fulfill your need to be needed. This is the whole process that we call our life. And if this life remains a constant frustration, it is not a wonder. IF YOU KNOW YOUR OWN WORTH, WHAT NEED YOU CARE ABOUT THE ACCEPTANCE OR REJECTION OF OTHERS? The man who knows himself is COMPLETELY unworried about what others say. When Jesus was carrying his cross, was he worried about what others were saying? They were all making him, or trying to make him, a laughing-stock. They were abusing him, they were cutting jokes about him, they were throwing banana skins at him. They were ridiculing him in every possible way, in a very inhuman way. But was Jesus worried? Not at all, because they cannot take anything of his being. And what they can take, he has already renounced; he has dropped all that can be taken by others. Now he exists as a naked being, his own self, which not even death can take away. Fire cannot burn it, no sword can cut it. All that can be taken by others has already been dropped by him. Now people can laugh: he can watch. He can watch unperturbed undisturbed. When Mansoor was killed, he looked at the sky and laughed loudly. Thousands of people had gathered to ridicule him, to abuse him, to condemn him. They could not understand why he was laughing. The situation was such that if he had been crying it would have been okay, but why was he laughing? And somebody from the crowd asked, ‘Mansoor, why are you laughing?’ He said, ‘I am laughing because you think you are killing me! You cannot kill me. And the one you are killing, I am not that. I am laughing at your foolishness. You are killing my body—it is like burning my garments—and I am standing there and laughing at the foolishness of it all. The one you can kill, I have renounced myself. Only that which is indestructible, only that which is immortal, I have saved. Now there is no fear: no thief can steal it and no murderer can kill it. Hence, I am laughing. You people who have gathered here are all stupid—that’s why I am laughing.’ But the society, from the very beginning, starts taking your self-worth from you. The child—every child around the earth, in all the societies—is forced to renounce his being, is forced to accept others’ opinions about himself. Every child is born absolutely accepting himself as he is. He has no dislike for himself, he is utterly in love with himself. Each child is born with great love for himself; he has self-love, self-respect—because he is not yet a mind. But the parents are afraid, the society is afraid if he remains being-oriented he will never be a slave. And the society needs slaves, the society needs obedient people. The society does not need individuals, it needs phony personalities. It needs people who are efficient, but not intelligent. It allows intelligence only to the extent that you remain efficient, but it does not allow your intelligence to grow to its maximum—because at the maximum, intelligence will be so rebellious, so revolutionary, it will be fire. And the society is so rotten, it cannot allow that much fire to people, that much freedom to people. It needs dead people, dull people, unintelligent people, so they can go on and on working for others’ interests—for the priest, for the politician, they go on working. It needs millions of slaves. It’s really a miracle that, once in a while, a Buddha, a Jesus, a Sanai, escapes from the clutches of the society and becomes independent. The society, from the very beginning, teaches you, ‘Listen to what others say about you, because that is what you are.’ Now, this is so stupid, the whole idea: The others don’t know themselves, and they decide who I am. I don’t know about myself, who I am, and I decide about others, who they are. This is a mutual deception. I don’t know who I am, you don’t know who you are: you decide about me, I decide about you. Blind people deciding about each other. Blind people telling each other, ‘You are beautiful; your face is so beautiful’—or ‘so ugly.’ Blind people deciding who is a sinner and who is a saint. And such great fear is created from the very beginning in every child that your whole life you are tortured by it. If somebody does not think well of you, you lose your whole night—you cannot sleep: somebody doesn’t think well of you. How does it matter? Who is he to decide about you? But the reason is that you have forgotten yourself; you don’t know who you are. You depend on him—if he doesn’t think well of you, then something is wrong with you. You start losing self-respect. When nobody respects you, how can you respect yourself? Your self-respect is just a cumulative effect of many people pouring their respect towards you. And these are the ignorant people, as ignorant as you are. They know nothing, but this is the way of manipulating each other. ‘I respect you, because I want you to be manipulated by me. By respecting you I am paying you, I am bribing you, to be manipulated by me. You respect me because you want to manipulate me.’ This is how it goes on. The man who knows his self-worth, the man who knows who he is, will remain absolutely unconcerned. And just see the point: when you are absolutely unconcerned with what people say about you, you have a freedom, a psychological freedom, you are out of the psychological slavery of the society. Your soul is born. ‘I am afraid I have developed a terrible habit,’ the patient told his psychiatrist. ‘Wherever I am, I can’t help talking to myself. Is there anything you can do for me?’ ‘I suppose there is,’ the psychiatrist replied. ‘But I should warn you it will be a long, slow, painful treatment, and very expensive as well. But suppose you do talk to yourself—is that so bad?’ ‘No, I guess it isn’t,’ the patient agreed. ‘But I am such a bore!’ Nobody can live with himself, hence you need others. They cannot live alone themselves, hence they need you. They are boring, you are boring—and both are thinking that by being together the boredom will disappear. It will not only be doubled, it will be multiplied. Have you ever seen more bored people than couples? You can see—if a couple is passing by on the road, you can know immediately whether they are husband and wife or not. If they are husband and wife, they both look so bored, utterly bored. If the man looks happy and the woman looks happy, then they are not husband and wife. She must be a wife to somebody else, and he must be a husband to somebody else. Once I was traveling in a train; a woman was traveling with me, and her husband or friend was in another compartment. At every station, wherever the train stopped, he would come again. Sometimes he would bring ice cream, sometimes sweets, sometimes this and that. I asked the woman, ‘Who is this man?’ She said, ‘He is my husband.’ I said, ‘Don’t lie!’ She said, ‘How did you come to know?’ ‘Husbands are not known to do such things—at every stop! Once the husband has escaped from the wife, then only at the last stop—even if at the last stop he turns up you are fortunate! So. At each stop he comes bringing this and that?’ She said, ‘You are right. He is not my husband, he is just my boyfriend.’ I asked her, ‘How long have you been together?’ She said, ‘Nearabout seven years.’ I said, ‘Again wrong!’ She said, ‘How did you come to know about this?’ ‘Seven years is too long a time! Honeymoons are finished within fifteen days—and this whole thing seems to be like a honeymoon.’ She said, ‘You surprise me—we really are going on a honeymoon! I have known him only for seven or eight days.’ Everybody is bored with himself. That’s why when Buddha says, ‘Sitting silently, I have arrived, and bliss has happened to me,’ we listen to him but we don’t believe him. Or, maybe he is just an exception—because when you sit silently, only boredom happens and nothing else. Everybody has tried sometimes to sit silently like a buddha, but within minutes you are so fed up with yourself, because the mind goes on churning and churning. The inner talk continues, and it is boring. You know these things. You have been boring others, now you are boring yourself. You have heard these things said by your mind so many times, and it goes on and on with no stop. All that happens when you are alone is you become aware of your mind. When you are with others you forget yourself, you become interested in the other, the other becomes interested in you. That is a kind of self-deception. All meditation techniques say that unless you are capable of being alone, you will never be able to know your being. It will take a certain time for the mind to slow down. But if you can sit silently for a few hours every day, unoccupied, doing nothing—the mind will go mad in the beginning, will go very crazy, round and round it will run, but if you can go on patiently waiting and waiting and waiting—you will see that slowly, slowly the momentum of the mind is disappearing. Thoughts are moving but not so fast—not running but limping, puzzled, looking at you: ‘What has happened to you?’ Not so powerful, as if their life has disappeared; not so self-confident, but shaky, looking at you, puzzled, wondering, ‘What are you doing?’ If you go on watching your thoughts for a certain time, one day the miracle happens: even for a few moments if it happens, you have looked into your being. In those few moments you have been with your being; the mind disappeared, there was not a single thought moving by. And once you have contacted your being, you will never be worried what others say. They can condemn you, they can think of you as a sinner or they can worship you, they can think of you as a saint—it is all the same. Success and failure are the same, fame or defame are the same. Whether anybody knows about you, or nobody knows about you, is the same. And just contemplate on that quality when nothing affects you For the first time you are rooted, for the first time you are centered, integrated. For the first time the mind is not and you are. WORSHIP HIM AS IF YOU COULD SEE HIM WITH YOUR PHYSICAL EYES; THOUGH YOU DON’T SEE HIM, HE SEES YOU. And only when you have become completely indifferent to what people say about you will you be able to face the ultimate. Otherwise you remain facing people. When you have become utterly indifferent to what people say about you, you are capable of turning toward godliness. Otherwise your eyes and your ears and your senses are all focused on others; they are outgoing, they are not ingoing. Once you have become capable of dropping people and what they say about you, your energy is available to move toward godliness. WORSHIP HIM. Now let your energy become worship. And by WORSHIP is meant wonder, awe, love. By worship is not meant any formal worship: going to a temple and worshipping a statue—that is not meant. Worship is a new vision, a new insight into reality. When the child looks at the sun rising, look into his eyes. That is worship—he is so mystified, in such awe. When the child looks at the starry night, look into his eyes. Those stars reflected in his eyes—that is worship. The child knows what worship is. We have forgotten, because we have forgotten the language of wonder. We have become too knowledgeable. When the sun rises, we know what it is. Nobody really knows, but we have been to school, to college, to university, so we have become knowledgeable. When a flower blooms, we know what the name of the flower is, what species it belongs to, and from what country it comes. But all these things are meaningless, irrelevant. Something wonderful is happening, the flower has opened, the fragrance is released. The flower is utterly beautiful, alive, and you simply label it. You say, ‘This is a rose’—and you think you have known it just by giving it a name? You have missed. You have de-mystified the flower, and hence you have missed the wonder of it. Otherwise, each flower will give a thrill to your heart, each star will give you a new beat and each bird will start singing within you. Life is so psychedelic, it is such a splendor. To feel the wonder of it, to feel the awe, is worship. And then in some unknown moment you may bow down to existence. You may kneel down on the earth, or you may fall on the sand, in great prayer, in great love, as if the earth is your mother—it is, the existence is your mother—and great love will have an upsurge in you. That upsurging love is worship. WORSHIP HIM AS IF YOU COULD SEE HIM WITH YOUR PHYSICAL EYES; THOUGH YOU DON’T SEE HIM, HE SEES YOU. Whenever you are in a worshipful moment, you will be surprised: the whole existence is watching you, the whole existence is seeing you, is caressing you, is caring about you. You will feel some invisible hands caressing you, some invisible eyes looking at you, some invisible energy embracing you. WHILST IN THIS LAND OF FRUITLESS PURSUITS, YOU ARE ALWAYS UNBALANCED, ALWAYS EITHER ALL BACK OR ALL FRONT; BUT ONCE THE SEEKING SOUL HAS PROGRESSED JUST A FEW PACES BEYOND THIS STATE, LOVE SEIZES THE REINS. If you allow worship to happen, love soon arrives—and a love that you have not even dreamt about. The love that you know is not real love, because there is no feeling of mystery in it, no awe, no worship, no prayer, in it. If you really love a woman, you will love her as a goddess. If you really love a man, you will love him as a god. There is no other way of love. Love transforms everything into the divine; that is love’s chemistry. If love does not do that, then it must be something else. It may be lust, it may be sexual desire. It may be just a need—physical, psychological. Love is not a need! Love is an overflowing of joy. It happens only to worshippers, to prayerful people. Otherwise, you remain in this futile world—THIS LAND OF FRUITLESS PURSUITS. From your childhood to your old age, what do you go on doing? Playing with toys. The little boy was sitting on the curb, crying, and an old man who was passing by came over to him. ‘What’s the matter, little boy?’ he asked. ‘Why are you crying?’ The little boy said, ‘I’m crying because I can’t do what big boys do.’ The old man sat down on the curb and cried too. There is not much difference: children are childish, but your so-called old people are just as childish as children, sometimes even more so. Maturity is very rare; people remain immature. If you are interested only in toys—possessing this, possessing that, becoming famous, reaching some political power, prestige, having money, becoming very famous in the world—if you are interested in these things, you remain part of this stupid world of futile fruitless pursuits. But those pursuits keep you engaged, they keep you occupied. They are intoxicants. And the most surprising thing is that from this fruitless futile world, the world of fruitfulness is not far away. It is very close by, just around the corner. Jim and Joe were two friends who shared an apartment together in Chicago. One day, Jim came home to find Joe weeping into his hands. ‘I am so unlucky! So unlucky!’ he moaned. ‘You are always saying that, and it is not so,’ Jim said. ‘It is! It is!’ Joe said. ‘I’m the most unlucky fellow you know!’ ‘What happened now?’ ‘Well, I met this beautiful woman on Madison Street. We got to talking and we stopped off at a small bar and had a few drinks. Wow! We got really mellow. When she suggested that I should go to her place, I thought my luck had changed.’ ‘It sounds like it did,’ Jim said. ‘Minutes after we entered her apartment I was in bed with her. I was just starting to climax when we heard the door bang open.’ ‘It’s my husband!’ she said. ‘I didn’t even have time to grab a towel. I bounded for the window and just managed to climb out, hanging on the ledge by my hands, when he barged in. He sized up the scene immediately, and then he saw my hands hanging on for dear life. He came to the window and started pounding my knuckles with a hammer. Then he pissed all over me. Then he slammed the window on my bloody fingers. Then, as if I did not have enough trouble, two old ladies on the street saw me hanging there stark naked and they started screaming for the police. The cops came and I was arrested. Now do you see what I mean when I say I am unlucky?’ ‘Nonsense,’ Jim said, ‘You are upset, but an experience like that could happen to anyone.’ ‘You don’t understand,’ Joe said. ‘When the cops came to arrest me, I looked down and my feet were only four inches from the ground. Now do you see what I mean when I say I’m unlucky?’ The other world is not far away! It is just around the corner—not even a distance of four inches. Just a little change of your focus, of your consciousness, of your awareness, and you move from this to that. And it can happen any moment. All that is needed is the understanding that whatsoever you have been doing up to now, and you are doing now, is futile. Let this sink into your heart as deeply as possible, that whatsoever you are doing is futile. Money is not going to help, fame is not going to help, power is not going to help. Death will come and all will be snatched away from you. And what does it matter how much money you have got? The only real thing in the world is how much BEING you have got. Having is the fallen state. Being is Christ risen, resurrected. WHILE THIS WORLD REMAINS, THAT ONE CANNOT BE; WHILST YOU EXIST, GOD CANNOT BE YOURS. You can have only one world, this or that. Either you can have the world of dreams, then you cannot have the world with open eyes, the world of waking. If you have the world of waking, you cannot have the world of dreams. And people have chosen the world of dreams. Why have people chosen the world of dreams? For one reason only: they have been forced to forget their reality. And when you are not knowing your reality, you have to create something to cling to, you have to create a substitute. Nothing is not acceptable: then anything is better than nothing, then even a dream is better than nothing. Then even remaining occupied in futile things is okay—at least one is occupied, one is not wasting one’s time; at least one is doing something, at least one is searching, at least one need not sit and cry for one’s fallen state. At least it keeps you intoxicated: it keeps you hoping—‘It has not happened today, but tomorrow it is going to happen.’ It goes on creating tomorrows. And you know it has not happened yesterday, and it has not happened today. Yesterday you were thinking it would happen tomorrow; today also you are thinking it will happen tomorrow, and tomorrow also you will go on thinking and postponing. It keeps you, in a certain way, sane. Otherwise nothing is happening—and that will drive you insane. Zen masters, Sufi masters, Hassid masters, all the great masters of the world say one thing, that a disciple should not try sitting silently without a master. Why? Because if a disciple tries sitting silently without a master, soon he will start going crazy. The world of dreams will start disappearing. That was his only world, the only world he had ever known—that will start disappearing into far faraway distances like clouds dispersing. And the other world has not come yet; it will come only when the world of dreams has completely gone away, totally gone away. Even if a slight thin layer of dreams is there, it is not possible to see the real. You can have either the dreams or the reality; when all the dreams are gone, the reality will happen. But that will take time. When ninety percent of the dreams are gone, still you have not known the reality. When ninety-nine percent of the dreams are gone, still you have not known the reality. And now you will start becoming very shaky: all that you had is disappearing down the drain, and nothing else has happened. The mind will say, ‘Rush and catch hold of the disappearing dreams.’ Nothingness frightens, nothingness looks like death. You will need somebody to give you the feeling that ‘Don’t be worried, it is perfectly right, this is how it happens. This is how it happened to me too. Just a little more—wait a little more, have a little more patience: that one percent of dreams will also disappear.’ And it is very scary. The space is maddening. The master is needed to keep you patient, the master is needed to help you not to become too frightened. The fear is natural; you are falling into an abyss, you are disappearing—because with your possessions your ego will disappear, with your doings your ego will disappear. And slowly, slowly, you will find a nothingness is arising in you. And you were not looking for nothingness, you were looking for God, you were looking for truth, you were looking for something immortal, deathless. Instead of deathlessness happening, death is happening. There is every possibility that if you are alone, you will rush away. A master is needed. And all great masters have created buddhafields. If a field can be created, it is even more helpful. When there are millions of people meditating, a great field is created. You are not alone; there are people ahead of you, there are people behind you. The people who are ahead are telling you, ‘Yes, this happens, but this disappears.’ And you can tell people who are behind you, ‘Yes, this happens, what is happening to you, but it disappears.’ You are in a chain. That’s why communes have been created, down the ages. Around each great master a commune arises—it HAS to arise. It creates a certain energy-field: in that energy-field, people can grow more easily. It becomes the Garden. Hakim Sanai has called this book THE WALLED GARDEN OF TRUTH, the HADIQA. When there are thousands of trees blooming, new seeds can take courage and jump into the soil and die, because they know it happens. So many trees are saying, so many flowers are declaring, ‘Don’t be worried. Disappear into the soil and you will resurrect. This has happened to us.’ WHILE THIS WORLD REMAINS, THAT ONE CANNOT BE; WHILST YOU EXIST, GOD CANNOT BE YOURS. You have to disappear like a seed in the soil. That disappearance looks like death—it is not. Only apparently do you die. In fact you are born for the first time. It is resurrection, it is rebirth, you become twice-born. And for the first time you know something of the immortal. You are carrying it in a seed form, and you can know it only when it becomes a flower, when it becomes a fragrance. The seed is gross; the seed is only the potential. Unless it becomes actual, you will not be able to see it; it will remain hidden. And if you cut open a seed, you will not find it either. So if somebody goes to the surgeon and asks him, ‘Is there God in me?’ the surgeon can cut him open and look inside, but he will not find any God anywhere. No X-ray machine is going to give you a picture of your soul. That’s why science goes on saying there is no God, no soul—they are simply dissecting the seed. The seed has not to be dissected; the seed has to fall into the soil and disappear there in the darkness of the soil, in the womb of the earth. It has to disappear there. The master is a womb, the commune is a greater womb: the disciple comes and disappears into the womb. And then one day when the season is ripe, when the spring has come, something sprouts—something that you could never have imagined in the seed. Those two green leaves, and the tree has started growing. THE COMING OF DEATH IS THE KEY WHICH UNLOCKS THE UNKNOWN DOMAIN; BUT FOR DEATH, THE DOOR OF TRUE FAITH WOULD REMAIN UNOPENED. So don’t be afraid of this death that the seed has to face. Every disciple has to face it—THE COMING OF DEATH. So when death starts coming to you, don’t be afraid. It is the beginning of a new life, of life abundant. That is the meaning of the story that Jesus is crucified, and after three days he is resurrected. This is not a historical fact. If you try to make it history you destroy its beauty, you destroy its poetry, you destroy its grandeur. You bring it into the world of facts. It is not a fact, it is an eternal myth. It happened before Jesus; it has happened to every master, it has to happen to every disciple. It is an eternal truth. The story simply depicts it, describes it. But don’t reduce it to historical fact. Christians go on destroying the beautiful story of Jesus’ life; they try to make it historical. If this resurrection of Jesus is historical, you have brought it into time, into the ordinary world of facts where Adolf Hitlers and Mussolinis exists. You have brought it into the ugly world of history, of time, of events. It is not an event, it never happened—although it always happens. It is the essential truth of every seeker’s life. Every seeker has to die on the cross, and after three days—those three days are of waiting, symbolically of waiting—so the spring can come and the resurrection. THE COMING OF DEATH IS THE KEY WHICH UNLOCKS THE UNKNOWN DOMAIN. Only by dying, the seed unlocks the door and the tree starts growing. Only by dying as Adam, you unlock the door of Christ-consciousness in you. Only by dying as a mind, you unlock the door of being. THE COMING OF DEATH IS THE KEY WHICH UNLOCKS THE UNKNOWN DOMAIN; BUT FOR DEATH, THE DOOR OF TRUE FAITH WOULD REMAIN UNOPENED. So death is also beautiful. And remember, we are not talking of physical death at all, we are talking of psychological death. We are talking of the death of the ego, of egoing. IF YOU YOURSELF ARE UPSIDE DOWN IN REALITY, THEN YOUR WISDOM AND FAITH ARE BOUND TO BE TOPSY-TURVY. And this is how we are. Being has been forgotten—which we are. And we have become identified with the mind—which we are not. This is the topsy-turvy state: the real is forgotten, and the unreal is pretending to be the real. In this state you cannot know that which is. Godliness surrounds you, truth surrounds you, but you cannot know godliness, you cannot know truth, because you are standing upside down. First you have to become true. To know truth, you have to become truth. You have to reach back to the source, you have to search and grope. You are lost in the world of having. You have come into the world of having by the staircase of doing. Now move backwards. When you move backwards on the same ladder, it is non-doing, because doing is less and less and less and then it disappears. And the first taste of being is the beginning of a totally new life—the life of eternity. There were these two blacks from a southern town, and they wanted women desperately but couldn’t find any. They were driving along the country road when they spotted a pig. One of them jumped out, scooped up the pig and stuck it on the seat between them. They continued to chug along in their 1969 Ford when a police siren suddenly sounded behind them. A glance at the rear-view mirror showed them that a police car was in hot pursuit. They pulled over to the side. Not wanting to be caught with a stolen pig, they tossed a blanket over it. The officer came up to the side of their car. ‘What are you up to?’ he asked. ‘We were just out looking for women,’ one of the lads replied truthfully. Suddenly the pig stuck its face through the folds of the blanket. The cop stared, shook his head sadly, and said, ‘Lady, can you tell me what a nice southern girl like you is doing with these two blacks?’ Man is in such an unconscious state. Man is almost drunk. He cannot see what is; he goes on believing what others say. He does not respect his own eyes, his own ears; he does not respect his own sensibilities. He has become very insensitive. You go on believing what others say. Somebody says, ‘This is the house of God. This is the temple, or the synagogue, or the church,’ and you start believing them, and you go and start worshipping a stone. And this foolishness, this utter stupidity, is thought to be religious. Religion belongs only to intelligence; religion is the flowering of intelligence. Just think over it again. What have you been doing in the name of religion? Repeating, imitating—what others have said, you have believed it. When you are going to look for yourself? When are you going to THINK for yourself? Only by thinking for yourself, only by looking into things for your own self, will you be able, slowly, slowly, to awaken. Otherwise this dream is going to continue. It has continued for long, it can continue for eternity—unless you take hold of your own being, unless you start working on your intelligence, unless you start sharpening your own intelligence. Nobody will help it, remember. And if you can find somebody to help it, then that is your master. People will help you to remain mediocre, because that is how they can go on exploiting you. If you can find somebody who is ready to help you to sharpen your intelligence, then be with that person, you have found a friend. It is very difficult to find a friend in this world, this world is very unfriendly. Everybody is interested in his own exploiting. And the people who want to exploit, cannot want you to become intelligent. My effort here is to sharpen your intelligence as much as possible. The whole process of this commune is that of sharpening your intelligence, so that you can stand on your own feet. Don’t go on repeating things like parrots, otherwise you will never become a man. Mrs. Keller had a very talented parrot. At her dinner parties he was the center of attention, for she had trained him to repeat what the butler said when he announced the guests as they arrived. The parrot had only one failing: he loved to make love to chickens. Every chance he got, he would fly over the fence into the yard of the farmer next door and make love to his chickens. The farmer complained to Mrs. Keller, and finally she laid the law down to the parrot. ‘Bertram,’ she said, ‘you better listen to me! The next time you go into Farmer Whalen’s yard I’m going to punish you plenty!’ The parrot hung his head to show he understood. But two days later, he couldn’t resist temptation and over the fence he went. He was deep into lovemaking with the third hen when Farmer Whalen spotted him and chased him. Whalen complained again to Mrs. Keller. ‘Now you’re going to get it,’ she said. She got a pair of barber’s shears and clipped all the feathers from the top of the parrot’s head. That night, Mrs. Keller threw one of her gala parties. She put the parrot on top of the piano. ‘Bertram,’ she said, ‘you’ve been a rotten old thing. Tonight you’re to sit here all night. No wandering around and no playing the way you usually do!’ And so, feeling rather disconsolate, the parrot sat on the piano. As the butler announced the guests, Bertram performed as usual, repeating the names. The butler said, ‘Mr. Arnold Levy and Lady Stella,’ and the parrot said, ‘Mr. Arnold Levy and Lady Stella.’ The butler said, ‘Mr. and Mrs. Robert Solomon,’ and the parrot said, ‘Mr. and Mrs. Robert Solomon.’ Then two bald-headed men entered the room. Without waiting for the butler to announce them, the parrot shouted, ‘All right, so you’ve also been caught making love to the chickens? Ha, ha! Up here on the piano with me!’ Remember, you are not a parrot, you are a man. Respect your manhood, respect the intelligence that has been given to you. Respect the gift of existence and sharpen it, grow into it, let it come to an optimum. People use only five percent of their potential—that’s what psychologists have come to know. Even the people who are thought to be very talented don’t use more than ten percent, and the people who are known as geniuses use only fifteen percent of their intelligence. Can you imagine what we have been missing? Can you imagine? If people use a hundred percent of their intelligence, this earth will become unique, this earth will be a paradise. There will be no need to think of a paradise after death, the paradise will be herenow. It is possible—existence has given you the potential. But the politicians and the priests have not allowed you to use it, and your so-called priests are all against it. If you can find a man who helps you to sharpen your intelligence, who respects your intelligence, who wants you to grow it to the maximum so you can become aflame with intelligence, then you have found the master. That is the only requirement that has to be fulfilled by a real master. And that is the only criterion by which you can understand whether you have come to a real master or not. And it is so simple, it is so obvious, when you come across a person who helps you to sharpen your consciousness, who helps you to go beyond the mediocrity that society has imposed upon you. Drop your mediocre selves. Inside you is a source of great intelligence, of divine intelligence. STOP WEAVING A NET ABOUT YOURSELF: BURST LIKE A LION FROM THE CAGE. This is how a real master gives his message. Sanai says: STOP WEAVING A NET ABOUT YOURSELF. Stop weaving the nets of thoughts, desires, ambitions, imaginations. STOP WEAVING A NET ABOUT YOURSELF: BURST LIKE A LION FROM THE CAGE. The cage in which you have been put by the society. Burst forth. Give a lion’s roar! And come out of the dreams into which you have fallen, in which you are trapped. Become rebellious, be revolutionaries. MELT YOURSELF DOWN IN THIS SEARCH: VENTURE YOUR LIFE AND YOUR SOUL IN THE PATH OF SINCERITY. Only one thing has to be remembered: be authentic, be sincere to yourself. Declare your truth, whatsoever the cost. Even if life is risked, risk it, because truth is far more valuable than anything, because truth is true life. Risk all—be authentic! Whatsoever you are, stick to it! Don’t allow anybody to manipulate you, don’t allow anybody to enslave you. And melt yourself down in this search—let the ego melt. You have become frozen ice cubes: let these ice cubes melt. And once they have melted, they start flowing, they become alive and dynamic. MELT YOURSELF DOWN IN THIS SEARCH: VENTURE YOUR LIFE AND YOUR SOUL IN THE PATH OF SINCERITY; STRIVE TO PASS FROM NOTHINGNESS TO BEING, AND MAKE YOURSELF DRUNK WITH THE WINE OF GOD. You have been drinking many kinds of wines of this world—of money, power, fame—they are all poisons. But there is a wine—the wine of godliness, the wine of love, the wine of meditativeness, the wine that pours from the beyond into your heart. Become available to it. And how does one become available to it? Be open. And only an authentic person can be an open person. The person who is not authentic, who is not true to himself, who is pretending to be somebody he is not, CANNOT be open. He is a lie: he has to hide the lie in many ways. Only a truthful person can be open—he has nothing to hide, he has nothing to protect. His whole periphery, his whole circumference is open to existence; three hundred and sixty degrees of circumference are open to existence. He contacts existence from every direction, from all directions. He is available to reality, totally available. People who live as lies cannot be totally available; they are always afraid they may be caught lying. They have to protect themselves, they have to create an armor around themselves. They are open only in small ways—maybe just a keyhole from where they look into the world, and from where the world enters into them. But it can’t be much of a world. Through a keyhole the sun cannot enter much, and the winds cannot come in, and the rains cannot come in. And behind the keyhole you are hiding yourself and looking through the keyhole—whatsoever you perceive is going to be very partial. And everybody claims his partial vision as the truth. Burst forth from this cage. That is possible only if you respect yourself, if you feel the dignity of being here, if you feel that existence has created you as a unique being. He has never created anybody like you, and he will never create anybody like you again. You are unique, you are incomparable. Feel this gift, this grace, and respect yourself. The man who respects himself is authentic. He cannot compromise. He would prefer to die but stick to his truth. And that is the price existence asks. Risk all that you have—because you don’t have anything, you only think you have. In reality, you are a nothingness. Sanai says: STRIVE TO PASS FROM NOTHINGNESS TO BEING, AND MAKE YOURSELF DRUNK WITH THE WINE OF GOD. Be open, and existence starts pouring into you like wine from every nook and corner of existence. Then wherever you look, you find godliness. Then whatsoever you touch, you find godliness. Then whatsoever you drink and eat, you find godliness. And when existence pours from everywhere, then life is a celebration.

Life does not make decisions. The universe is not planning itself. It just unfolds. Look at this plant. It is without concern. It doesn’t say, ‘I think maybe in a few days I will put a new leaf just here to my left.’