Spiritual Insights (part 2)

Spiritual Insights

                      (A Collection of Spiritual Teachings)

                                                  part  2

1.Just being empty, you will understand -- there is no other way of understanding. Whatsoever you want to understand, be that, because that is the only way. Try being an ordinary man, nobody, with no name, no identity, with nothing to claim, with no power to enforce on others, with no effort to dominate, with no desire to possess, just being a nonentity. Try it -- and see how powerful you become, how filled with energy and overflowing, so powerful that you can share your power, so blissful that you can give it to many, to millions. And the more you give, the more you are enriched. The more you share, the more it grows. You become a flood.

2. Go to the sea, and watch the sea. Millions of waves are there, but deep in its depth the sea remains calm and quiet, deep in meditation; the turmoil is just on the surface, just on the surface where the sea meets the outside world, the winds. Otherwise, in itself, it always remains the same, not even a ripple; nothing changes.

It is the same with you. Just on the surface where you meet others there is turmoil, anxiety, anger, attachment, greed, lust -- just on the surface where winds come and touch you. And if you remain on the surface you cannot change this changing phenomenon; it will remain there.

3. All the moralists try to change man on the periphery. Your character is the periphery: you don't bring any character into the world, you come absolutely characterless, a blank sheet, and all that you call your character is written by others. Your parents, society, teachers, teachings -- all are conditioning. You come as a blank sheet, and whatsoever is written on you comes from others; so unless you become a blank sheet again you will not know what nature is, you will not know what Brahma is, you will not know what tao is. So the problem is not how to have a strong character, the problem is not how to attain no anger, how not to be disturbed -- no, that is not the problem. The problem is how to change your consciousness from the periphery to the center. Then suddenly you see that you have always been calm. Then you can look at the periphery from a distance, and the distance is so vast, infinite, that you can watch as if it is not happening to you. In fact, it never happens to you. Even when you are completely lost in it, it never happens to you: something in you remains undisturbed, something in you remains beyond, and something in you remains a witness. So the whole problem for the seeker is how to shift his attention from the periphery to the center; how to be merged with that which is unchanging, and not to be identified with that which is just a boundary. On the boundary others are very influential, because on the boundary change is natural. The periphery will go on changing -- even a buddha's periphery changes.

The difference between a buddha and you is not a difference of character – remember this; it is not a difference of morality, it is not a difference in virtue or non virtue, it is a difference in where you are grounded.

You are grounded on the periphery, a buddha is grounded in the center. He can look at his own periphery from a distance; when you hit him he can see it as if you have hit somebody else, because the center is SO distant. It's as if he is a watcher on the hills and something is happening in the valleys and he can see it. This is the first thing to be understood.

Second thing: it is very easy to control, it is very difficult to transform. It is VERY easy to control. You can control your anger, but what will you do? -- you will suppress it. And what happens when you suppress a certain thing? The direction of its movement changes: it was going out, and if you suppress it, it starts going in -- just its direction changes.

And for anger to go out was good, because the poison needs to be thrown out. It is bad for the anger to move within, because that means your whole body mind structure will be poisoned by it. And then if you go on doing this for a long time... as everybody has been doing, because the society teaches control, not transformation. The society says, 'Control yourself,' and through controlling all the negative things have been thrown deeper and deeper into the unconscious, and then they become a constant thing within you. Then it is not a question of your being angry sometimes and sometimes not -- you are simply angry. Sometimes you explode, and sometimes you don't explode because there is no excuse, or you have to find an excuse. And remember, you can find an excuse anywhere!

4. Because true nature is always there. It never arises and never sets, it is always there. Anger arises, goes; hate arises, goes; your so-called love arises, goes. Your nature is always there. So don't be too bothered and concerned with all that comes and goes; otherwise you can remain concerned with it for years and years, and lives and lives, and you will never come to the point.

That's why Freudian psychoanalysis never serves much purpose. The patient lies down on the couch for years together -- three years, four years, five years, he goes on talking, talking about things that come and go. Remember, the whole Freudian analysis is concerned with things that come and go: what happened in your childhood, what happened in your youth, what happened in your sex life, what happened in your relations with others -- it goes on and on! It is concerned with what happened, not to whom it happened -- and that is the difference between Bankei and Freud.

If you are concerned with what happened then... so much has happened. Even in twenty four hours so much happens that if you relate it, it will take years -- and you go on relating. It is just like talking about the weather for your whole life, how it has been: sometimes very hot, sometimes very cloudy, sometimes rainy, sometimes this and that. But what is the point of it all?

And what happens? How does the psychoanalysis help a patient? It helps a little.  It simply gives time, that's all. For two years you are continuously talking about things that happened. These two years, or one year, or even more, just give you time; the wound heals automatically, you become readjusted again. Of course, a certain understanding also arises, the understanding that arises when you go backwards, and come forwards, move like a shuttle in your memory. A certain understanding arises because you have to watch your memories. Because of this watching... but that is not the main thing.

Freud is not concerned with your witnessing. He thinks that just by relating, telling your past, bringing it out through words, verbalization, something deep is changing. Nothing deep is changing. A little garbage is thrown out. Nobody listened to you, and Freud and his psychoanalysts are listening to you so attentively. Of course, you have to pay for it.

They are professional listeners. They help in a way, because you would like to talk to someone intimately -- even that helps. That's why people talk about their miseries; they feel a little relaxed, somebody has heard patiently, with compassion. But now nobody listens, nobody has that much time. But the Eastern methods of meditation have a different attitude: they are not concerned with what happened to you, they are concerned with to whom it happened. Find out: to whom?

Lying down on a Freudian couch you are concerned with the objects of the mind. Sitting in a zen monastery you are concerned with to whom it happened -- not the objects but the subject.

5. My approach about all problems is that if anything is there, go deeply into it, so either you find the treasure, if it has any treasure, or you find that it is empty. In both cases you are enriched. If you find the treasure, of course you are enriched. If you find it is empty, you are finished with it.

6. With a man and a woman there are problems -- problems of misunderstanding. They live in totally different worlds; they are two different poles of consciousness. The woman thinks intuitively, the man thinks intellectually, hence there is no meeting. The woman simply jumps to conclusions without going into any process of thought. And the man goes step by step, comes to a conclusion. The man tries hard to come to a conclusion and the woman simply jumps to the conclusion. She has an intuitive feeling. Hence you cannot deceive a woman, particularly not your wife. That IS impossible; nobody has ever been able to do it. She will immediately see through you -- through and through, because her way of seeing is not your way of seeing. She comes from the back door, and you don't know that you have a back door too. You arrange everything at the front door and she comes from the back door and knows all the ins and outs.

The husband comes home prepared. What he is going to say, how he is going to answer -- he rehearses everything. And the moment he looks at the woman all rehearsing goes to the winds and he is almost like a small child, stuttering. Even a very great person like Napoleon was very much afraid of women. His own wife he was very much afraid of, because she would see through and through him.

7. Personality is good when you are communicating with others, but personality is a barrier when you start communing with yourself. Personality is good when you are relating with human beings; personality is a barrier when you start relating with existence itself, with God.

8. I am not saying that a critical attitude is always harmful. If you are working on a scientific project it is not harmful; it is the only way to work. A critical mind is an absolute necessity if you are working on a scientific project. But the critical mind is an absolute barrier if you are trying to reach your own interiority, subjectivity. With the objective world it is perfectly okay. Without it there is no science; with it there is no religion. This has to be understood: when one is working objectively one has to be capable of using it, and when one is working subjectively one has to be capable of putting it aside.

It should be used as a means. It should not become an idee fixe; you should be able to use it or not, you should be free. There is no possibility of going into the inner world with a critical mind. Doubt is a barrier, just as trust is a barrier in science. A man of trust will not go very far in science, cannot go at all. That’s why in the days when religion was predominant in the world it remained unscientific. It is in only three hundred years that science progressed. For near about five thousand years there was no science.

Religion was so predominant that people were accustomed to trusting. And the conflict that arose between the church and science was not accidental; it was very fundamental. It was not really a conflict between science and religion; it was a conflict between two different dimensions of being: the objective and the subjective. Their workings are different.

9. We have become accustomed to things never going so well.

We are well acquainted with the misery, the pain, the darkness, the meaninglessness, the whole tragedy of human existence. It has gone to our very bones, blood and marrow; weaccept it as if it is our nature.

If things are going wrong, it seems natural.If things are not going wrong, then something must be wrong -- how come things are going so well? We have forgotten the language of well-being, we have forgotten the taste

of blissfulness. We have forgotten our own nature.

The natural thing is that things should go well; for their going well, no reason is needed.

You are healthy -- you don't go to the doctor to ask him, "What is the matter with me? I am healthy." You go to the doctor when you are not healthy, when you are sick.When people are young, they don't ask, "What is the meaning of life?" Their youth, their overflowing energy, is enough meaning, is enough significance. They are still capable of love. They are still capable of a dance, a song, a celebration. Death has not over shadowed their lives yet.

The moment a person starts asking, "What is the meaning of life?" it means he has become old -- it does not matter at what age. His question emphatically shows that he has lost touch with life, lost touch with love, lost touch with vitality, and wherever he looks it is all emptiness. The question has become significant to him -- why is he living? In fact,he has died; his life is posthumous.The moment a person asks, "What is the meaning of life?" it is the question of a dead man -- who still breathes, whose heart still beats, but it is all like a robot. All poetry, all rainbows have disappeared ... no sunrises at all. It seems the night is eternal. It seems that he must have dreamt about the days when he had seen the light; they were not real.

Old age, when death is just standing close to you, creates the question, "What is the

meaning of life?"

10. Death is an illusion.

It is always somebody else who dies; you never die. It means death has always been seen from the outside, it is the outsider's view.Those who have seen their inner world are unanimous in saying that there is no death.

Because you don't know what constitutes your consciousness; it is not constituted of breathing, it is not constituted of heartbeats, it is not constituted of blood circulation. So when the doctor says that a man is dead, it is an outsider's conclusion; all that he is saying is, "This man is no longer breathing, his pulse has stopped, his heart is not beating." Are these three things equivalent to death? They are not.Consciousness is not your body, nor your mind, nor your heart.So when a person dies, he dies for you, not for himself. For himself he simply changes the house, perhaps moves into a better apartment. But because the old apartment is left, and you are searching for him in the old apartment and you don't find him there, you

think the poor guy is dead. All that you should say is, "The poor guy escaped. Now where he has gone, we don't know."

In fact, medical science is going beyond its limits when it says that some person is dead. Medical science has no right yet, because it has no definition yet of what constitutes death. It can simply say that "This man is no longer breathing. His heart has stopped. His pulse is no longer functioning." To conclude that he is dead is going beyond what you are seeing. But because science does not have any idea of consciousness, the death of the

body becomes the death of the being.

11. Those who have known the being ... and it is not necessary for it that you should die and then you know; you can just go inside. That's what I call meditation -- just go inside and find out what is your center, and at your center there is no breathing, there is no heartbeat, there is no thought, no mind, no heart, no body, and still you are.

Once a person has experienced himself -- that he is not the body, not the mind, not the heart, but pure awareness -- he knows there is no death for him, because he does not depend on the body.

Awareness has no dependence on blood circulation. It does not depend on whether the heart beats or not, it does not depend on whether the mind functions or not. It is a totallydifferent world; it is not constituted of any material thing, it is immaterial.

So the first thing to understand is that there is no death -- it has never been found. And if there is no death, what insecurity can there be?

For an immortal life there can be no insecurity. Your immortality is not dependent on your bank balance; the beggar is as immortal as the emperor.

As far as people's consciousnesses are concerned, that is the only world where true communism exists: they all have equal qualities, and they don't have anything that can be lost or taken away. They don't have anything that can be destroyed, burned.

There is no insecurity.

All insecurity is a shadow of death.If you look deeply, and then every insecure feeling is rooted in the fear of death. But I am saying to you that there is no death; hence there cannot be any insecurity. You are immortal beings, amritasya  putrah.

That's what the seers in the ancient East have said: You are the sons of immortality.

12. There is no insecurity.

There is no need for any other path -- and anyway, there is no other path.

Life is the path which passes through the illusory gate of death.

You can pass the gate consciously. If you are meditative enough, then you can go through death knowing perfectly that you are changing the house; you can enter another womb knowing perfectly that you are entering the new apartment -- and it is always better, because life is always evolving. And if you can die consciously, then certainly your new life will be on a very high level, from the very beginning.

And I don't see any insecurity.

You come into the world without anything, so one thing is certain: nothing belongs to you. You come absolutely naked, but with illusions. That's why every child is born with closed hands, fists, believing that he is bringing treasures -- and those fists are just empty.

And everybody dies with open hands. Try to die with fists -- nobody has been successful up to now. Or try to be born with open hands -- nobody has been successful in that either. The child is born with fists, with illusions that he is bringing treasures into the world, but there is nothing in the fist. Nothing belongs to you, so what insecurity? Nothing can be stolen, nothing can be taken away from you.

Everything that you are using belongs to the world.

And one day, you have to leave everything here.

You will not be able to take anything with you.

13. You are afraid of missing the train.

Whether you are afraid or not, everybody is missing the train. It is good that you are afraid, because that may help you to understand why you are missing.

You are not in the moment. You are either in the past or in the future -- both are nonexistent.

Neither can you do anything with the past, nor can you do anything with the

Future. All that you can do is with the present, and the present is such a small, split second that if you are engaged somewhere else, it simply slips by and you have missed the train.

Learn to be in the present.

Withdraw your energy from the past. Don't waste your time in memories; what is gone is gone -- say goodbye to it and close the chapter.

What has not come yet has not come yet; don't unnecessarily waste your time and energy in imagination, because no imagination is ever fulfilled. It is because of this that the proverb exists in every language: "Man proposes, and God disposes" -- because you imagine a certain thing in the future, and it is never so.

Withdrawing yourself from past and future, you will become a tremendously intense energy, focused in the present, concentrated in the present like an arrow. No train could manage to leave the platform without you.

Each moment being aware, alert, watchful, in the here now, is the way not to miss the train. Every experience needs your presence here, this moment.

And this is a simple secret, but it opens the doors of existence, of all the mysteries, of all that is worth knowing, worth tasting, worth feeling, worth being.

14. So you have to remember one very basic thing: that any question that is not concerned with your individual growth has no meaning, no substance for you. Only then can you sort out those few questions which can be of help.

And then ask them, then expose yourself. Then don't wait a single moment -- and don't hesitate, don't feel embarrassed. It is your right to ask the question. It is nature demanding that you ask the question, because once the question is solved -- or better, dissolved --

you will feel light, your heaviness will be gone.

The day you don't have any question will be a day of great celebration, because you will be as light as you can conceive.

And then existence becomes just a pure dance -- no more questions.

Existence becomes a trust -- no more questions.

There are no more tensions in the mind -- life becomes a let-go, a tremendous relaxation. You become part of the trees and the mountains and the ocean and the river and the stars; you are no longer separate -- your questions keep you separate. Your unquestionable trust in existence allows you to merge into it.

15. Anything that comes and goes is a dream.

Let that be the definition. Anything that comes and never goes is reality.

Don't be bothered about the word `enlightenment.' What you call it does not matter; you can call it illumination, you can call it blissfulness, you can call it self-realization, you can call it actualization of all your potentials -- whatever you want to call it.

But remember one quality: that it knows only a beginning, it knows no end. Anything that comes and goes, beware -- that is simply illusory, it is only a gap, because one gets tired.

15. Death is a little longer sleep, a little deeper. The daily sleep rejuvenates you, makes you again capable of functioning better, efficiently. All tiredness is gone, you are again young. Death does the same on a deeper level. It changes the body, because now the body cannot be rejuvenated only by ordinary sleep; it has become too old. It needs a more drastic change, it needs a new body. Your life energy wants a new form. Death is simply

a sleep so that you can easily move into a new form.

Once you accept life in its totality, life includes death. Then death is not against it but is just a servant, just as sleep is. Your life is eternal; it is going to be there forever and forever. But the body is not eternal; it has to be changed. It becomes old, and then it is better to have a new body, a new form, rather than dragging the old.

To me, a man of understanding will not have any problems. He will have only clarity to see -- and the problems evaporate. And tremendous silence is left behind, a silence of great beauty and great benediction.

16. Seen from the universal, you are no longer individual either. Even that much demarcation disappears. You are the whole. The winds, the trees, the moon are not separated anywhere; neither are you. You are breathing every moment. Existence is not separate from you, even when you think you are separate.

And when you know that you are not separate, it is a tremendous realization. Then all fear of losing your face, all fear of losing your personality -- which is always slipping -- disappears. You have come to the origins. You have come to the eternal, to the universal.

This is what I call enlightenment.

You have become full of light and clarity.

Now you live the whole mystery of existence.

Seeing a rose flower, you become it. You don't see it from outside; you feel it from its innermost being. Its petals are yours, its perfume is yours. You are not an observer – you are it.

17. One basic thing about suicide is that it arises only in people who are clinging very much to life. And when they fail in their clinging, the mind moves to the opposite pole. The function of the mind is of either/or: either it wants the whole, or none of it. The lust for life cannot be fulfilled totally, because life as such is a temporal thing; it is bound to end at a point, just as it began one day at a point. You cannot have a line with only the beginning; somewhere or other there is bound to be an end.

So the people who commit suicide are not against life; it only appears so. They want life in its totality, they want to grab it whole, and when they fail -- and they are bound to fail -- then out of frustration, out of failure, they start thinking of death. Then suicide is the only alternative. They will not be satisfied with whatsoever life gives them; they want more and more and more.

18. Life is short, and the series of the desire for more and more is infinite, so the failure is certain. Somewhere or other there is bound to come a moment when they will feel they have been cheated by life. Nobody is cheating them -- they have cheated themselves.

They have been asking too much, and they have only been asking, they have not been   giving anything, not even gratefulness. In anger, in rage, in revenge the pendulum of the mind moves to the other end -- still they do not know with whom they are taking the revenge. They are killing themselves: it does not destroy life, it does not destroy existence.

18. You can have everything, all, but if you don't have yourself... you can know everything around you, but if you don't know what is within you, all your knowledge, all your wealth, all your power is futile -- and sooner or later you will be drowned in your own wealth, in your own power. It will destroy you because it will go on increasing, becoming bigger and bigger, and you will be shrinking, becoming smaller and smaller.

19. Meditation will make you ultimately rich by giving you the world of your innermost being and also relatively rich, because it will release your powers of mind into certain talents that you have. My own experience is that everybody is born with a certain talent, and unless he lives that talent to its fullest, something in him will remain missing. He will go on feeling that somehow something is not there that should be.

Give mind a rest -- it needs it! And it is so simple: just become witnesses to it. And it will give you both things.

Slowly, slowly mind starts learning to be silent. And once it knows that by being silent it becomes powerful, then its words are not just words; they have a validity and a richness and a quality that they never had before -- so much so that they go directly, like arrows.

They bypass the logical barriers and reach to the very heart.

Then mind is a good servant of immense power in the hands of silence.

Then the being is the master, and the master can use the mind whenever it is needed and can switch it off whenever it is not needed.

20. The mind has the capacity to go far away. So once in a while when it is not far away, when something very striking brings it back to here now -- a beautiful sunset, a beautiful painting, a great dance... anything can pull it back. If something so enchanting is happening here, it cannot wander out, here and there; it has to rush home. That's why, at the moment of seeing a sunset or listening to music, you feel a certain oneness. And it is

so fulfilling, so satisfying that you would like it to persist every moment, forever. And the joke is that it persists every moment, eternally. You just go on, here and there, again and again forgetting about it.

You have to be brought back.

Once you have understood the basic situation, then there is no need for anything. Just close your eyes and feel now and here, and suddenly existence opens its doors.

You have always been part of it.

You are part of it.

You cannot be otherwise.

21. You are not to transcend anything. Remember my words. Transcendence will come by itself, and when it comes by itself it is such a release and such a freedom.

If you try to transcend, you are going to repress, and repression is the sole reason why people cannot transcend; so you are getting into a vicious circle. You want to transcend, so you repress, and because you repress you cannot transcend, so you repress more. As you repress more, you become more incapable of transcendence.

Live it out fully, without any condemnation, without any religion interfering with your life. Live it out naturally, intensely, totally -- and transcendence comes. It is not your doing, it is a happening. And when it comes by itself, there is no repression, there is no antagonism.

22. To me transcendence comes out of your experience. You see the futility of something and the addiction drops. Then once in a while, just for a change, if you want to smoke I don't see any harm; if you want to make love I don't see any harm. The harm is in the addiction -- the harm is not in the act. And transcendence is not concerned with the act; transcendence is concerned with the addiction.

And to be completely unaddicted gives an immense freedom.

23. Man is full if he is in tune with the universe; if he is not in tune with the universe then he is empty, utterly empty. And out of that emptiness comes greed. Greed is to fill it: by money, by houses, by furniture, by friends, by lovers -- by anything, because one cannot live as emptiness. It is horrifying, it is a ghost life. If you are empty and there is nothing inside you, it is impossible to live.

To have the feeling that you have much inside you, there are only two ways: either you get in tune with the universe... Then you are filled with the whole, with all the flowers and with all the stars. They are within you just as they are without you. That is real fulfillment. But if you don't do that, and millions of people are not doing that, then the easiest way is to fill it with any junk.

24. To me, greed is not a desire at all. So you need not do anything about greed. You have to understand the emptiness that you are trying to fill, and ask the question, "Why am I empty? The whole existence is so full, why am I empty? Perhaps I have lost track -- I am no longer moving in the same direction, I am no longer existential. That is the cause of my emptiness."

So be existential.

Let go, and move closer to existence in silence and peace, in meditation.

And one day you will see you are so full -- overfull, overflowing -- of joy, of blissfulness, of benediction. You have so much of it that you can give it to the whole world and yet it will not be exhausted.

That day, for the first time you will not feel any greed -- for money, for food, for things, for anything. You will live naturally, and whatever is needed you will find it. And you will live, not with a constant greed that cannot be fulfilled, a wound that cannot be healed.

25. If you understand me, my whole effort is to reverse the whole process. Man does not need man-made religions; man simply needs to be natural. Nature should be the only religion, and then there will not be divisions of Hindus and Mohammedans and Christians and Buddhists.

Nature does not make any divisions; it is undivided and it is one.

26. The world goes on... the old routine, the old rut. Do you see anything that has changed because J. Krishnamurti was born, and lived for ninety years? Has it made even a scratch? Naturally he died in the same state.

And this has been the case with thousands of masters; humanity remains unevolving because they are so serious in wanting man to evolve. And naturally they fail.

But I cannot fail, because I am not concerned at all whether humanity evolves or not, whether the new man is born or not. I enjoy these ideas and I enjoy communicating them to people, and there I am perfectly victorious. I don't need to wait to be victorious until you have changed; that will be your victory. My victory is that I have been able to communicate what I wanted to communicate. Now what you do with it is your freedom.

I will not call it betrayal, and I will not call it opposition, and I will not call your things lies. If you are enjoying doing these things it is perfectly good -- enjoyment is good. If somebody is creating lies about me and is feeling perfectly happy about it, why should he be stopped? He has all my blessings.

27. Two lighted candles will create only one light in the room. There can be two thousand, there can be two million -- it will not make any difference, the light will be one. So in a certain way they will all be individuals, and in a certain way they will all be part of an oceanic existence.

28. Truth brings freedom because it is your discovery. It makes you fully into man; otherwise you remain on the level of the animals: you are but you don't know who you are.

The search for truth is really the search for the reality of your being.

Once you have entered your being, you have entered into the being of the whole, because we are different on the periphery but at the center we meet -- we are one. You can draw many lines from the periphery of a circle towards the center; those lines on the periphery have a certain distance from each other. But as they come closer to the center the distance

goes on becoming less. And when they reach to the center the distance disappears.

At the center we are one.

At the periphery of existence we appear to be separate.

And to know the truth of your being is to know the truth of the whole.

There is just one quality, one courage: not to be afraid of being ignorant. On that point there can be no compromise, no cheap borrowed knowledge to decorate yourself with as a wise man. That's enough! Just be pure and natural, and out of that purity, naturalness, ignorance, innocence, the quest is bound to be born.

29. Lao Tzu is right. The truth that can be spoken is no longer true, because the mechanism of language distorts the experience -- which happens beyond mind, beyond words. To pull it down to the darker valleys of language is certainly distorting it.

On the one hand it is true that the truth cannot be spoken; on the other hand, because the truth cannot be spoken it has to be spoken in thousands of ways. The problem is not that the truth will reach to you through thousands of ways, but you may become infected with the search. If a man speaks about the truth he may not be able to say it... but you can get a glimpse from his eyes, you can get something from his gestures -- something not from the

words but the way the words are spoken, the emphasis, the gaps. The presence of such a man speaking may be just an excuse to allow you to be showered by his presence.

30. So Lao Tzu is both right and wrong: right because what he is saying is exactly so – the spoken truth is no longer true. But that is not all. If the truth is spoken by someone, and if it is out of experience -- and it can only be out of experience -- then that very person, his every act radiates something. It is contagious. Hence, whether truth is conveyed to you or not is not important. What is important is that if you become convinced that there is

something like truth, there is a certain transformation that brings the full flowering of the being, then the word, the language, has done more than can be expected!

So I say again, Lao Tzu is right and not right. And my emphasis on not right is more than on his being right; otherwise I would not have spoken millions of words, I would have remained silent.

31. Truth may not be expressed, but truth becomes a reality. Seeing the master, seeing one who is a realized one, you become certain: if you are groping in the dark, don't be worried, and don't feel hopeless. Go on groping! Every night has a morning to it, and sooner or later you will find the door, you will reach to the point. If one man has reached, the whole humanity can reach. He is enough proof.

So the question is not whether truth can be spoken or not, the question is whether a presence can create a conviction that there is something that you are missing -- and unless you find it your life will not be complete, will not be perfect.

32. Experience, even the highest  experience of enlightenment is still a duality: the experiencer and the experienced. And that duality has also to be dropped. But the moment you drop the experience, the experiencer also disappears -- they can exist only together.

And that is the state of nirvana.

All has disappeared, the whole drama -- the actors, the audience, everything has disappeared. Just an absolute silence prevails.

So don't be worried. Just try to live this moment as sincerely, as totally as possible, without being disturbed by the past or by the future. Undistracted, go deep into it, and that's enough. It is enlightenment.

33. It is so mysterious how you go on missing it; it is the one thing that should not be missed. But a centuries old wrong upbringing is destroying your small precious moment.

It is up to you to throw away all that upbringing and let this small moment be all – and you have attained everything. Then you need not worry. Existence takes care. Existence is very compassionate.

34. Learn one basic thing: Do whatever you want to do, love to do, and never ask for recognition. That is begging. Why should one ask for recognition? Why should one hanker for acceptance?

Deep down in yourself, look. Perhaps you don't like what you are doing, perhaps you are afraid that you are on the wrong track. Acceptance will help you feel that you are right.

Recognition will make you feel that you are going towards the right goal.

The question is of your own inner feelings; it has nothing to do with the outside world. And why depend on others? All these things depend on others -- you yourself are becoming dependent.

35. Any man who has any sense of his own individuality lives by his own love, by his own work, without caring at all what others think of it. The more valuable your work is, the less is the possibility of getting any respectability for it. And if your work is the work of a genius then you are not going to see any respect in your life. You will be condemned in

your life... then, after two or three centuries, statues of you will be made, your books will be respected -- because it takes almost two or three centuries for humanity to pick up that much intelligence that a genius has today. The gap is vast. Being respected by idiots you have to behave according to their manners, their expectations. To be respected by this sick humanity you have to be more  sick than they are. Then they will respect you. But what will you gain? You will lose your soul and you will gain nothing.

36. Trust is perhaps the most beautiful word in the human language. And trust is so close to truth that if it is total, then this very moment your trust becomes a revelation, a revolution.

37. But one thing is good about it -- there is always something good, even in the worst situation -- that nothing remains forever. You come out of it, and then you feel a tremendous freedom and joy and understanding.

38. Your psychological armor cannot be taken away from you. You will fight for it. Only you can do something to drop it, and that is to look at each and every part of it. If it is based in fear, then drop it. If it is based in reason, in experience, in understanding, then it is not something to be dropped, but something to be made part of your being. But you will not find a single thing in your armor which is based on experience. It is all fear, from A to Z.

We go on living out of fear -- that's why we go on poisoning every other experience. We love somebody, but out of fear: it spoils, it poisons. We seek truth, but if the search is out of fear then you are not going to find it.

Whatever you do, remember one thing:

Out of fear you are not going to grow. You will only shrink and die.

Fear is in the service of death.

39. A man living out of fear is always trembling inside. He is continuously on the point of going insane, because life is big, and if you are continuously in fear... And there is every

kind of fear. You can make a big list, and you will be surprised how many fears are there -- and still you are alive! There are infections all around, diseases, dangers, kidnapping, terrorists... and such a small life. And finally there is death, which you cannot avoid.

Your whole life will become dark.

Drop the fear! The fear was taken up by you in your childhood unconsciously; now consciously drop it and be mature. And then life can be a light which goes on deepening as you go on growing.

40. Truth is not an object that you will find somewhere when you are silent. Truth is your subjectivity.

Just try to understand. You are there, and the whole world is there. Whatever you see is an object, but who is seeing it is the subject.

In silence all objects disappear -- and the word `object, has to be remembered; it is the same word as `objection.' `Object' means that which prevents you.

So all preventions, all objects, all objections, disappear; you have the whole infinity, and just silence. It is full of consciousness, it is full of presence, of your being. But you will not find anything as the truth -- that will become an object. And truth is never an object.

Truth is subjectivity.

To discover your subjectivity -- unhindered, unobjected to by anything, in its total infinity and eternalness -- is the truth. "The truth" is only a way of speaking; there is not something labeled "Truth," that one day you will find and open the box and see the contents and say, "Great! I have found the truth." There is no such box.

Your existence is the truth, and when you are silent you are in truth. And if the silence is absolute then you are the ultimate truth. But don't think of the truth as an object -- it is not an object. It is not there, it is here.

41. My effort is to bring you back to yourself, and you will suddenly find all that discontent has disappeared. There is no need to be more -- you are enough. Everybody is enough.

42. Dream is a disease.

It is needed because man is sick. But if dreams can be completely dropped you will attain a new kind of health, a new vision, and part of your unconscious mind will become conscious. So you will have a stronger individuality. Whatever you do, you will never repent, because you will have done it with such consciousness that repentance has no relevance.

Watchfulness is the greatest magic that one can learn, because it can begin the transformation of your whole being. It is only through watchfulness that resurrection happens... you are reborn.