TAKE WHAT IS IN MINE HAND, DRINK!!

THE TRUTH IS ONE, THE PATHS ARE MANY

The Energy Enhancement Symbol

The Energy Enhancement Symbol of the Twelve Petalled Lotus of the Heart Center with One of the Symbols of the Worlds Major Religions in Each One of the Petals. Inside the symbol is the Hexagram - The Seal of Solomon, with the Seven Chakras describing the Three Initiations on the Path of Enlightenment - Initiation 1. The Opening of the Heart. Solar Plexus to Heart Chakra. Initiation 2. The Mastery of Relationships, Abdomen to Throat Chakra. Initiation 3. Enlightenment, Base to all the Head Chakras which is taught on the Energy Enhancement Course plus many other Initiations. At the Very Center is the Heart Chakra radiating Peace and Light outwards.. like the Sun...

"The day is short and the work is Great and the workers are Lazy. But the reward is Large and our Master urges us to make Haste."

Writings of the Abbod of Halmyrach

Baul Mystics

VOL. 1, THE BELOVED

Chapter-3

What is there, is there

   Baul Mystics           The Beloved

NOTHING HAS HAPPENED

AND NOTHING WILL HAPPEN.

WHAT IS THERE, IS THERE.

I BECAME A KING

IN MY DREAM

AND MY SUBJECTS

OCCUPIED THE ENTIRE EARTH.

I SAT ON THE THRONE RULING LIKE A LION,

LIVING A HAPPY LIFE.

THE WORLD OBEYED ME.

AS I TURNED IN MY BED

ALL WAS CLEAR:

I WAS NOT A LION

BUT A LION'S UNCLE,

A JACKASS,

THE VILLAGE IDIOT....

NOTHING HAS HAPPENED

AND NOTHING WILL HAPPEN.

WHAT IS THERE, IS THERE.

THIS IS ONE OF THE MOST SIGNIFICANT ASSERTIONS EVER MADE. It is so: the reality remains in its suchness. Nothing changes, nothing can change. But we see many changes happening all around. For us, everything is changing. Life is a flux.

Then something is wrong with us. Then the change appears not because it is there, but because we cannot see the eternal. Our inability to see the real, the eternal, creates a flux-like phenomenon all around us. It is our flickering consciousness.

Have you watched sometimes in a dark room? -- a small candle burns, and it goes on flickering. Because of its flickering the whole room seems to be moving, waving, changing. If the flame is constant, the room stops changing -- it becomes constant. Our consciousness creates the mirage, the illusion, the dream-like world that surrounds us. This has to be understood very deeply, because this is the very base of all essential religions.

It is true as far as ordinary understanding goes: everything seems to be changing, nothing seems to be permanent. Nothing seems to be the same even for two moments, two consecutive moments. Nothing seems to be the same, everything goes on like a river. To think of anything permanent is almost impossible. To think of anything that has remained the same forever and ever is incomprehensible to the mind. The mind knows only the world of change. The mind knows only the dream, the illusion. A life lived through the mind is a life of dreams. That is the meaning of the concept of MAYA. It does not say anything about the reality, remember: it does not say that the reality is not real, it does not say that the existence is dream. It simply says that the way you look at it is so unconscious, the way you look at it is so wavering, unstable, that your inner wavering gives you a world of flux, dreams. Attain to inner integrity, attain to inner crystallization, and suddenly all flux-like phenomena disappear -- and suddenly you are face to face with the real, the substantial, the permanent; call it God. The world and God are not two things but the same reality looked at in two ways. One is through the mind, the other is through no-mind -- because if mind is there, there is going to remain, more or less, the flickering.

The mind cannot be constant. Have you watched? Even for a few seconds the mind cannot be constant. Just look at your watch someday, and just remember that you are looking at the watch, and you will not be able to retain this remembrance that you are looking at the watch even for a few seconds. Your mind will slip somewhere else: some memory, some imagination, some work that is incomplete, some worry, some plan; you must go somewhere. Again you will realize and you will see that for a few seconds you have not been here. Try again; again the mind will go away.

Mind cannot be stable, so all efforts to make mind stable are impossible. That is not in the nature of the mind. The only way to be stable is to drop the whole mind as such. To look into reality without any thinking, to look so directly that the medium of the mind is not there; look immediately, then suddenly God is revealed. Then in all the forms the formless is revealed. Then you see that which the Bauls say: Nothing has happened, and nothing will happen. What is there, is there; and what is not there, is not there. But the mind goes on seeing that which is not there, and because of that which is not there, we cannot see that which is there. Because of the false, because of the projected, because of the dreamed, we cannot see the real, we cannot see the true. When the false is dropped, reality is revealed. There is no other way to seek reality. One has to drop the very mechanism that creates falseness.

Mind is a projector. You sit in a movie house and you see a thousand and one things passing on the screen, and the screen is empty; nothing is really passing except shadows. You go on looking at the screen and there is every possibility that you may not even think of the projector behind you which is projecting all those shadows, pictures. You can start fighting with those shadows but that is not the way to stop them. The way is to look back, to turn a one hundred-eighty-degree turn and go and stop the projector. Once the projector is stopped, the screen is empty. Suddenly there is nothing, or, only the whiteness of the screen is left. Only the eternal is there and the changing has disappeared. But one has to stop the projector.

There are many people who become interested in meditation, but in a wrong way. They start fighting with the mind, they start struggling and wrestling with the mind. Then they are not ever going to be victorious. Then they are fighting a losing battle. It is not possible because they have forgotten the projector. Where is the projector?. -- one has to find the projector hidden behind your back. Hidden deep in the unconscious is the projector, hidden in the unconscious: becoming, desiring. It is what Buddhists call TRISHNA. The constant desire to be somebody, to be someone, to be somewhere else, is the cause of the mind; then the mind continues.

How to stop the projector? BE HERENOW. Don't try in any way to become somebody else; accept that which you are. Drop all ideas of improvement. Drop all ideas of bettering yourself. Drop all ideas of achieving something; there is nothing to be achieved. Empty-handed we come, empty-handed we go, and in the meanwhile, empty-handed we remain. And if you think your hands are full then you are befooling yourself. Then you are taking dreams as real. Your hands may be full of dreams.

You must have heard about the Japanese discipline of KARATE. The word 'karate' is very meaningful. It comes from a root which means empty hand. It says: a man can become a great warrior if he understands totally the meaning of being empty. If somebody understands that, "Empty-handed I have come, empty-handed I will go, and empty-handed I am here," then there is nothing to lose. Who can conquer a person who has nothing to lose? Who can defeat a person who has nothing to lose? Who can frighten a person who has nothing to lose? By understanding this emptiness he becomes a great warrior. It is impossible to defeat him, it is impossible to rob him; it is impossible to kill him -- because he is already empty. He holds nothing in his hands. By not holding anything, he goes beyond life and death.

That is the meaning when Jesus says again and again, "Lose yourself." Those who are not going to lose themselves, they will lose; and those who are ready to lose, they will gain. The losers will become winners, and the winners will become losers. Those who are empty will be fulfilled, and those who are trying to fulfill themselves will remain empty. This is the paradox.

Understand the very motivation of all ideas, thoughts, desires. It is a seed-like thing. Watch inside -- why can't you be herenow? Why is it always that you are thinking of somewhere else? Why can't you be happy as you are? Why are you thinking that tomorrow you will be happy? How can you be happy tomorrow if you are not happy today?. -- because tomorrow is going to be born out of the moment. Out of this moment the next moment is going to be born. Today is going to become the parent of tomorrow. If you are unhappy today, you will be more unhappy tomorrow. You will have learned, by that time, many more tricks to be unhappy. You are practicing it, and you hope tomorrow to be happy? Then you are in a hopeless rut. You desire for tomorrow? -- then you are continuously missing all that is here, and that is the only reality there is. If you can even for a single moment put aside desiring, then the projector stops, and the dreaming stops, and you are able to face reality.

Nothing has happened. The reality is as it has always been from the very beginning. Nothing has happened and nothing will happen, so all your desiring is futile, because you are trying for something to happen. Your whole effort is to make something happen: riches, wealth, power, prestige. Your whole effort is for something to happen, but,

NOTHING HAS HAPPENED

AND NOTHING WILL HAPPEN.

WHAT IS THERE, IS THERE.

This is a tremendously significant sutra. All the scriptures can be condensed in such a sutra. If you can understand only these three lines, there is no need to understand anything else. Look at your life from your childhood up to now. What has happened? Many things appear to happen, but what has really happened? You remain the same, the consciousness remains the same, and all that happens is just superficial, like a dream. If it has not happened up to now, how is it going to happen in the future? Only the present is; past and future are dreams. Even for a single moment, if you can penetrate into reality and you can see what is, face to face, you will laugh at the whole absurdity of your efforts. What are you trying? -- you are trying something impossible: you are fighting against reality. The reality is; it knows no becoming, it is being. It knows no future; it is already here. It has always been already here. You have just to see it -- and once you can see it, all worry, all anxiety disappears. Then you stop trying, pulling yourself up by your shoestrings. Then you simply relax. Then there is no tension. Then rather, you start delighting, you start being blissful as you are.

Before we can understand it, a few things will be helpful.

One: ordinarily the Eastern psychology divides the human mind into three divisions. The first is deep sleep, very deep sleep when there are no more dreams: SUSHUPTI, dreamless sleep. In this state, ninety-nine percent unconsciousness and only one percent consciousness exists. A very small fragment of consciousness exists -- the whole continent is dark, just one ray. Because of that ray, in the morning you can say, "I had a very good sleep. It was absolutely silent and peaceful. There was not any dream." Because of that one ray of consciousness, you can say this in the morning. If there were no consciousness at all, then who would remember? Then who would say that the sleep was beautiful, nourishing? Just a small ray, a very small ray exists in dreams.

That is the second stage -- dreaming -- a little more consciousness comes into existence. You remember in a general way that you slept well. You can even remember dreams, details of the dreams. You can remember even the colors, the story, the pattern, the motif of the dream. You can relate the whole dream. You were a little more conscious.

Then you are awake in the morning; that is the third stage: wakefulness, a little more consciousness. But the greater continent of your soul remains dark. Even while you are awake, you are not totally awake. Just deep down in your wakefulness, dreams are floating. You can watch that.

Any moment close your eyes, rest for a single minute, and you will see that dreams are floating there. So just underneath your consciousness, a great world of dreams continues, and that goes on affecting your consciousness. Dreams are powerful things. They are projections; they go on shadowing your consciousness. And deep down in your dreams you will find again a sort of sleep. That's what happens when you fall asleep in the night. When you have fallen asleep, first dreams start. That is the second stage. Then only rarely do you go deep. Then, dreams stop and you are in deep sleep. Again you start floating towards the surface, and this goes on continuously, the whole night -- up and down, up and down you move. In the whole night if you can touch the deep layer of sleep for only fifteen minutes, that will be enough rest. That's why people who meditate don't need much sleep, because in deep meditation they can easily move into the depth of their beings. The rest of the night is wasted in dreaming. These three states are the ordinary states.

The East says, "Unless you attain to a greater awareness, your life will never know what the reality is, what God is." That greater awareness means becoming totally aware, not leaving a single corner of your consciousness dark, dropping all unconsciousness. What the Freudians call the unconscious disappears by and by. By methods of meditation, prayer, love, it disappears; more and more, you become conscious. One moment comes when your whole being becomes conscious, full of light, luminous. Then there is no dreaming and no sleep. Just awareness is the stuff you are made of. In that moment you will become able to know what this Baul is singing:

NOTHING HAS HAPPENED AND

NOTHING WILL HAPPEN.

WHAT IS THERE, IS THERE.

And if you understand this, even a glimpse of it, then how can you remain in an agonized existence, how can you worry, and how can you remain tense and feeding illnesses?

Henry Thoreau used to say that what man thinks is wealth -- when man thinks that he is becoming by and by wealthy -- is more like 'illth' than wealth. We become more and more ill. Well-being does not happen through it, so why call it wealth? Man thinks he is becoming more and more powerful, and deep down, more and more impotence happens. On the outside you think you are achieving many things, but deep down you remain empty, hollow. The sooner you realize this hollowness the better because then you will not waste your time and energy. Then your whole life will be of a totally different quality: the search will begin. Then you will not be chasing dreams.

And dreams look very real. They are not, but they look very real. To an unconscious mind, dreams look as if they are the only reality. Have you not watched that deep in sleep, dreaming, every night again you become a victim? You again start thinking that this is real. In the morning you realize it was false, just a dream, but in the night, again and again you are a victim and you start thinking it is real.

Gurdjieff used to say to his disciples, "Unless you realize in your dreams that they are dreams, you will not be able to awake." So he used to give them techniques of how to realize while dreaming that it is a dream, how to recognize that it is a dream. But the moment you recognize a dream as a dream, it stops. It immediately stops. It cannot be there then. With your recognition of the dream as dream, the dream dies. It exists only through your cooperation and recognition; you give it reality. Pull your hands away and it drops flat, and it has nothing in it. The dream has power only because you impart power to it.

Watch people on the street, in the marketplace. Just stand by the side and just look at people -- you will be surprised. It is so obvious that they are sleepwalkers. They are walking like somnambulists. Somehow, they are managing, but they are walking fast asleep. You can watch their lips moving as if they are talking with somebody, and there is nobody. They can even be found making gestures to somebody who is not present. Watch their faces; their faces have not the aura of awareness -- a dullness, a dark shadow, as if somehow they are forcing themselves to be aware, ready to fall any moment into dreaming, into sleep. Drunk with their dreams, people go on moving.

First watch others, because it will be easy for you to watch others. Then start watching yourself. Then start catching yourself red-handed. Then sometimes, just walking on the road, suddenly stop and see whether you are here or you are moving somewhere in a dream.

The more you become alert about your dreams, the more you will see gaps arising in your consciousness when dreams are not there and reality can be approached. But we have great investments in our dreams. We may be afraid of nightmares, but we are not yet fed-up with dreaming. We still go on cherishing sweet dreams.

I have heard....

A man was talking to one of his friends. "I had a dream the other night," said Casey to his pal McGinn, "and it taught me a great lesson."

"What was it?" asked McGinn.

"I dreamed I was in Rome and I had an audience with the Pope. Would I have a drink, he asked me. Thinks I, 'Would a duck swim?' And seein' the whisky and lemons and sugar on the sideboard, I told him that I wouldn't mind a drop of punch.'Cold or hot?' he asked me. 'Hot, your Holiness,' said I, an' that's where I made me mistake!"

"I don't see anything wrong," said the friend.

"His Holiness stepped toward the kitchen to boil the water, and before he got back I woke up."

"What lesson did you learn?" asked McGinn.

"Next time," swore Casey, "I will say, 'I will take it cold, your Holiness, while the water is getting hot.'"

We have investments in our dreams. They don't exist without our help; we make them exist. Sweet dreams, golden dreams; we have a romance with them, a very long romance of many lives. We go on courting dreams, and of course when we court them they are there, and they bring nothing but frustration. Because they are against reality, they can never bring fulfillment. There is no way to make two plus two equal five; there is no way. Whatsoever you do, two plus two will always be four, and you go on hoping that someday it is going to be five. Then you are simply in a mathematical error. Dreams can never be real; your thoughts can never be real; your hopes can never be realized; your desires can never be fulfilled. The only outcome can be more and more frustration.

That's why children look so beautiful: because they are yet full of hope, full of dreams, and they have not yet known frustration. Old people start looking very very dead. Hopes have leaked out, by and by, and only frustration -- a very bad taste on the tongue. Experience makes people bitter. Experience makes people lose their innocence, lose their hope, lose their trust. But it is not experience really -- because they wanted to make their dreams real, that's why. Otherwise you could remain as innocent to the very end of your life as in the beginning -- in fact, even more -- because the innocence that happens in childhood is just natural. It has not been tested against fire; it is very fragile. It has no crystallization in it. It is just a gift; it has not been earned. But when an old man is childlike, innocent, then nothing can destroy it. Then it has a solidity to it, then it is substantial; he has earned it.

But how does one earn innocence? -- by learning from frustration, by going deep into frustrations and realizing the fact that each frustration is an outcome of a certain dream. If you don't want frustrations, drop dreaming. Life is not frustrating, dreaming is frustrating.

I have heard Mulla Nasrudin say to his son, "It is none of your business to know or enquire how I first met your mother, but I can tell you one thing: it sure cured me of whistling."

If your life can cure you of whistling and dreaming, it will be enough, more than enough, more than life can give to you. It will be a great realization.

But what happens? The moment one dream is frustrated, we immediately replace it, substitute it with another dream, maybe an even bigger dream. We never look into the reality. We go on saying that man proposes and God disposes. God has never disposed anything. It is you, in your very dream, who both proposes and disposes. It is your own proposal that carries the seeds of disposal, because it is not in tune with reality. It is your expectation that carries the seeds of frustration.

God, or call it reality, has never frustrated anybody. It is always showering on you; it is always ready to fulfill you to the deepest core of your being. But you won't listen to reality. You are too much with dreams.

This is what I call religious conversion: listening to reality and dropping the dreams is religious conversion. It will be difficult, hard, arduous in the beginning, because the dreams persuade you so easily, and they show you such wonderful visions, fantasies. Dreams are great poets: they paint, they poetize, they fantasize; they create such beautiful hopes in you, paradises, heavens. They are all dreams. But you can live hoping, and today's misery can be tolerated because of tomorrow's dream.

It is very difficult to drop tomorrow's dream because then suddenly you become aware of the misery that is here today. But remember, that misery is created by yesterday's dream. It has nothing to do with today. Yesterday's dream has created misery today; tomorrow's dream will create misery again. So when you drop tomorrow's dream, you will not suddenly become happy, because yesterday's dream will still linger on. You have sown the seeds -- who is going to reap the crop? But half is done when you drop tomorrow's dream. Yesterday's dream, its frustration, has to be passed through. That's what in India we call TAPAS, austerity. "Yesterday's dream was my dream. I have sown it, so I have to go through the suffering. I have to pass through the frustration. I accept it; it is my own doing. Nobody else is responsible, but now I am not going to sow any more seeds."

First, drop tomorrow's dream, then by and by yesterday's dream and its hang-ups and hangovers disappear. Then a man becomes aware. When your eyes are not full of dreams, your eyes are full of awareness.

It happened: MacGonigal was staggering up the street from telephone pole to lamp-post and back again. Father Daly stopped him and said, "Drunk again?"

"Are you?" said MacGonigal. "So am I, Father."

"This is no time for levity," admonished the priest. "After taking the pledge and promising me two weeks ago that you would never drink again! It is a sin against God and the church, and I am sorry to be saying so."

"You are sorry to see me so?"

"Indeed I am!"

"Are you sure you are sorry?"

"Yes, very, very sorry."

"Then if you are so sorry," said the drunkard, "I will forgive you Father."

Drunk, in our dreams, we go on interpreting in our own ways. We go on seeing things which are not. We go on listening to things which have not been said. We go on pretending what we are not, and we go on holding a dream-world around ourselves.

The befuddled group was hanging around a bar, when the door opened and a voice shouted, "McGuire, your house is on fire!"

One fellow rushed out, and after running a block at breakneck speed, suddenly skidded to a halt.

"Hell," he said to nobody in particular, "my name isn't McGuire."

This is what is happening to everybody: you don't know your name, you don't know your essence, you don't know who you are, you don't know why you are here, you don't know why you are running so fast. Where are you going? Why are you in such a hurry? Reality is here. Where are you going? But some conditioning -- what Hindus call SAMSKAR, from many lives of dreaming, desiring: that has become your only reality. You go on after it, not knowing why. It has become a habit. You cannot resist it; you are always on the move. The reality is here and you are always on the move, hence there happens no meeting. Unless that meeting happens, you will never be happy.

Happiness is when you are in tune with reality. Happiness is a harmony between you and the real. So if you are unhappy, remember, you must be going away from reality. Be aware that you must be somehow not falling in line with reality. There must be a conflict between you and the real, and of course you cannot win against the real; there is no way. You have tried all the ways. The whole humanity has tried all the ways possible, but there is no way to win over reality and against reality.

You have to follow reality, you have to come into a deep accordance with reality, in tune with it. You have to become a note in the great orchestra that reality is -- not fighting but surrendering, submitting to it, ready to dissolve into it. That is what Bauls call love: the readiness to dissolve into reality, the readiness to merge, melt, the readiness to be one with reality. You will be losing something -- your dreams, your individuality, your ego; you will be losing that separation. You will disappear as a drop of water, but it is nothing to be worried about, because you will become the ocean. You will not be what you have been up to now: your ego, confined in a form, in a name. Your fences will disappear. You will not be an island, you will become part of the continent but you will become the continent.

Nothing is lost by losing yourself; everything is lost by resisting. But we go on misunderstanding reality. If reality tries to absorb us, it looks like death.

So many times, almost every day, somebody or other comes to me. Meditating deeply, when reality starts absorbing you, you become frightened because it looks like death. It is like death, but it is not death. It is the door to life more abundant, to life infinite and eternal. But yes, in a way it is death -- death to the past, death to you as you are. But then, what are you? Why are you so afraid of dying? You have nothing to lose -- only a miserable self, only an imprisonment will be burned down, only the structure of misery and agony will be burned down. You have nothing to lose. Why do you go on clinging to it? But you have become very familiar with it, and you become afraid. Whenever in deep meditation sometimes, by chance, coincidence, you come close to reality and the reality starts spreading in you, you become afraid and you escape.

Your interpretation has to be dropped. You have to learn how to listen to the real -- so when reality approaches you, welcome it. If God comes towards you, if you cannot move towards Him, at least don't run away. And He IS coming towards you in millions of ways. He wants to overpower you, to reclaim you. It is not only that you are seeking Him; He is also seeking you. In fact, your seeking is just pseudo. You talk about seeking God but you don't really mean it. You would like to find Him by the way. You don't want to stake anything. You don't want to pay for it. You don't want to earn Him. You would like to get Him free; that is not the way.

You will have to lose yourself; you will have to lose all. People don't mean it, and when God approaches them -- and He approaches you; I have seen His hands many times coming close to you -- I have seen you running away. And again, when you are far away you start seeking Him and you say, "How to find God?" Now this game has continued for too long, and it has become almost a habit that when He is far away you seek, when He comes close you escape. This pattern has to be broken.

I have heard....

It was a Sunday morning when the clarinet player who had recently moved next to the small church started practicing some hot licks that brought the minister over on a run.

"See here," said the minister, "did you ever hear 'keep holy thy sabbath'?"

"No," said the cat, "but if you whistle a few notes, I will do my best."

Our understanding is our understanding; our interpretation is our interpretation. Beware -- when reality approaches you, don't try to interpret. Just wait, be patient; the reality that is coming closer to you will reveal itself to you. But before it reveals, if you take some interpretation to your heart, then you are again closed. You close your doors and then there is no way to know what was really going to happen.

Just the other night a SANNYASIN was crying, weeping: she had become so afraid of Dynamic Meditation, because she saw one SANNYASIN almost going mad in it. So she became very afraid. The fear arose in her that if this could happen to one person, this could happen to her also. The very words 'dynamic meditation', she could not utter, because the moment she would say 'dynamic meditation', she would start shaking and crying. She could not relate it accurately, what had happened, because the very words 'dynamic meditation'...She became so much afraid of the very word that she was not able to relate the whole thing, what had happened. Only in fragments could she say that somebody was becoming almost mad, and not only that, but the one who was becoming mad just by her side started pulling her hand also. That became very symbolic. This madman was going mad himself, and trying to pull her in also. But a deep fear of madness is in everybody.

If you are too afraid of madness you cannot be in love, you cannot meditate, you cannot pray, because all of these dimensions are, in a way, mad dimensions -- you wi]l be going beyond the normal boundary of humanity. The normal, routine, workaday world, the normal logic, reason, the so-called normal humanity -- you will be going beyond it, you will be transcending it. It will look like madness.

Bauls say,

Mad, mad, we are all mad!

Why is this word

so derogatory then?

Diving deep

into the heart's stream,

you will find that no one is better

than, the one who is mad.

Madness is possible in two ways: either you fall below the normal, or you go above the normal. In both ways you become mad. If you fall below the normal you are ill; you need psychiatric treatment to be pulled back to normality. If you go beyond the normal you are not ill. For the first time you are becoming really healthy, because for the first time you are filled with wholeness. Then don't be afraid. If your madness brings you more sanity in life, then don't be afraid. And remember, the madness that is below the normal is always involuntary; that is the symptom: it is involuntary. You cannot do it, it happens; you are pulled into it. And the madness that is above the normal is voluntary -- you can do it -- and because you can do it, you remain the master of it. You can stop it at any moment. If you don't want to go further, you can stop it; if you want to go further, you can go on -- but you remain always in control.

In these meditations here, our whole effort is to give you a taste of the madness that is beyond the normal, but you remain the master. Any moment you want to come back, you can come back. This is the indication that you don't need any psychiatric help. This is totally different from ordinary madness: you are going on your own. And remember, if you go on your own, you will never be neurotic because you will release all possibilities of madness. You will not go on accumulating them. Ordinarily, we go on repressing.

The SANNYASIN who was so afraid had repressed much madness in herself. Now she was afraid to do meditation. That can create trouble someday. One day, the cup can be too full and overflowing; then she will not be able to control it. Right now is the moment to allow it, to move into catharsis, to throw it out, to act it out, so you are cleaned of it and your system is cleaned of it. But then you interpret, and fear arises.

Whenever God approaches you, you will see that you are going mad. You will vibrate into a new rhythm; your whole body will be full of shivering, shaking; you will feel a new energy pouring into you, and the energy is so tremendous that your capacity is not that much. By and by, your capacity will grow. By and by, you will be able to absorb it. By and by, the shaking and trembling will disappear. By and by, you will become perfectly silent -- but it takes time.

The Bauls say,

That enchanting river

reflects the very form

of the formless one.

Sense the essence

of matter....

You see only a little bit of life and remain involved in it in drunken stupor. You are satisfied with very, very little, with a very small fragment. While you could have been a king, you are content with being a beggar. You are born to be a king, but you have become habituated to being a beggar -- and you think this is your vocation, to be a beggar. In sleep, we are dreaming something which we are not.

Today's poem says,

NOTHING HAS HAPPENED

AND NOTHING WILL HAPPEN.

WHAT IS THERE, IS THERE.

I BECAME A KING

IN MY DREAM

AND MY SUBJECTS

OCCUPIED THE ENTIRE EARTH.

I SAT ON A THRONE

RULING LIKE A LION,

LIVING A HAPPY LIFE.

THE WORLD OBEYED ME.

AS I TURNED IN MY BED

ALL WAS CLEAR:

I WAS NOT A LION,

BUT A LION'S UNCLE,

A JACKASS,

THE VILLAGE IDIOT....

Turn in your sleep and you will see; immediately the dream changes. That is what I call SANNYAS -- turning in your sleep. Take a turn, and you will see the dream changes. Just a small turn from this side to that, and you can never catch hold of the same dream again -- because dreams are not real. You cannot re-continue a broken dream. Once broken, it is broken forever. It is...there is no way to catch hold of it. You cannot re-connect yourself with the dream. And in dreams we are many things.

Chuang Tzu says, "In dream, I saw myself becoming a butterfly. In the morning I was very worried because a great problem arose: if I can become a butterfly in the dream, if Chuang Tzu can become a butterfly in the dream, then the reverse is also possible. Now the butterfly may be dreaming, and dreaming that she has become a Chuang Tzu. If Chuang Tzu can become a butterfly, why can't a butterfly become a Chuang Tzu?"

So Chuang Tzu gathered together his disciples and asked, "Please tell me, who am I -- the butterfly dreaming?"

In fact, he was giving a koan to his disciples. I know that he had never dreamt. Men like Chuang Tzu don't dream. When dreaming stops, then a man becomes like Chuang Tzu. He was giving a koan, and a very beautiful koan, a great puzzle to be solved and meditated over. Those who meditate over it will find: you are neither Chuang Tzu, nor a butterfly; both are dreams. You are neither the lion nor the lion's uncle; both are dreams. You are the one who recognizes the dream; you are the witness.

Only the witness is the real.

In the day, you are awake, doing a thousand and one things. In the night, you fall asleep and you forget all about the day: your wife, your husband, your children -- so close to you -- even they are no more there. You forget all about the world. You enter into a totally different dimension. You forget your degrees, your riches, your bank balance; you forget everything, even your name. Another world opens. You take another name, another identity, another wife, other children, another profession. In the morning again you are back in the old dream, and this goes on. If a person lives ninety years, he will dream for thirty years. It is not a small time. One-third of the time you are dreaming, in sleep. Thirty years out of ninety years is as big as your so-called world. The world is also a dream, maybe a common dream -- we dream together; and in the night the dream is private -- you dream alone, but it makes no difference: private or common, a dream is a dream.

But what is the definition of a dream then? How to define dream, how to make it distinct, and how to distinguish it from reality? The Eastern definition is: if in your mind there is any thought, then it is dream. If the mind is thoughtless, then whatsoever is, is real -- because the thought process creates the flux-like life. It gives an appearance to the permanent, as if it is momentary.

The Bauls say,

A man unknown to me, and I,

we both live together,

but with a gap

of millions of miles

between us.

That is what they call the essential man.

You are two: one is the essential man at the center, and one is the acquired man at the periphery. And these two exist far apart, and you have become too identified with the periphery. How to fall back to the center, to the essential man, the ADHAR MANUSH? Witnessing is the way. Do whatsoever you are doing but remain a witness. Watch it, observe it, continue to remember yourself. Walking on the road, remember that there is a point inside you which is not walking, which has never walked, which cannot walk with you. It has no legs to walk. That point is your center. Through that center you will come to know the reality, the reality that Bauls sing of:

NOTHING HAS HAPPENED,

AND NOTHING WILL HAPPEN.

WHAT IS THERE, IS THERE.

Once you touch your source of permanence, your eternity, you have touched the eternity of life also. Parallel to you, things happen. If you are at the center, you are capable of looking into the very center of life. If you are on the periphery, you are capable of only looking at the periphery of life. The periphery goes on changing.

Have you seen a bullock-cart moving? The wheel moves, goes on moving, but at the center of the wheel something remains permanent. On that permanent hub the wheel moves. On that unmoving hub the wheel's movement exists. Exactly like that, you have a hub -- that hub is unmoving; and you have a wheel-like personality that goes on moving. You have travelled far, thousands of miles and thousands of lives, and the wheel knows many roads and many paths, but the hub has remained where it is. Now you can look at reality in two ways: either from the wheel -- then everything is changing every moment; or from the hub -- then nothing is changing.

"Nothing has happened and nothing will happen. What is there, is there."

How to find this hub of life? -- by becoming a witness, one finds it. Eating, eat -- but remember that there is a point inside you which has never eaten. Food goes into the body; your consciousness remains watching. Somebody insults you, anger arises; you remain a witness. The insult comes from outside, the anger arises on the periphery, and you remain at the center, watching. Yes, somebody has done something, provoked your periphery, and there is anger on the periphery, and the anger is surrounding you like a smoke cloud, but you are at the hub, watching. You are not identified with the periphery. Then the insult is outside, and the anger is also outside of you. Both are separate and far away. Both are different from you.

When this awareness grows, dreaming stops, by and by. When this awareness grows, the wheel moves slower and slower, because there is no point. You never move, so what is the point of travelling the whole earth? You remain the same; then desires slow down. One day it happens: the wheel is as silent, as unmoving as the hub. That is the point when enlightenment happens.

The Bauls say,

Scanning the cosmos

you waste your hours.

He is present

in this little vessel.

In this little body

He has made His abode.

He is here

in this little vessel;

in you.

He is there,

the God of Gods,

the King of Kings,

the Beloved.

Scanning the cosmos you waste your hours. Moving from this point to that you are unnecessarily troubling yourself, creating misery. Look, see into your being; penetrate into the hub. And the Bauls say this is possible only if you become very humble.

That's why they say,

I BECAME A KING

IN MY DREAM,

AND MY SUBJECTS

OCCUPIED THE ENTIRE EARTH.

The dream is always egoistic; the ego is the dream.

I BECAME A KING

IN MY DREAM

AND MY SUBJECTS

OCCUPIED THE ENTIRE EARTH.

I SAT ON THE THRONE

RULING LIKE A LION,

LIVING A HAPPY LIFE.

THE WORLD OBEYED ME.

This is what ego is....

AS I TURNED IN MY BED

ALL WAS CLEAR:

I WAS NOT A LION

BUT A LION'S UNCLE,

A JACKASS,

THE VILLAGE IDIOT....

When one understands, one becomes humble. Then one says, "I am just an idiot, a jackass.'' One laughs at one's own ridiculousness.

The Bauls sing,

The act of finding

is not for the highest.

By being humble

you can reach life's goal.

Clouds pour down

on the hollow of the earth,

but the lowest of the wells

guards the water

as a blessing.

Become humble. If you start becoming humble, dreams will start disappearing because dreams are possible only with the ego. The ego is the dreamer, the creator of the dreams, the projector. That's why all the religions insist on humbleness. Jesus goes on saying to his disciples, "Be poor in spirit...blessed are the poor, blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth." Nobody has ever seen the poor inheriting the earth. Nobody has ever seen the meek inheriting the earth. Then why does Jesus go on repeating it? He himself was crucified; even he was not able to inherit the earth. But he is talking about some other earth, about some other reality -- a separate reality. He is not talking about this earth. This earth is the battlefield of the egos, great competition of the egos: struggle, fight, war. But when he says, "Blessed are the meek, blessed are the poor, for they shall inherit the earth," he means, they shall inherit the real. People who are in their egos may inherit kingdoms in dreams, but their kingdoms are futile because they are just their own dreams, nothing else.

The act of finding

is not for the highest.

By being humble

you can reach life's goal.

Clouds pour down

on the hollow of the earth,

but the lowest of the wells

guards the water

as a blessing.

"DO NOT LOOK UPON MY FINGER"

I have heard a story: Willy Jones dreamed that he had died. After the funeral, he found himself in a gigantic room, lavishly furnished. He rested on an overstuffed couch for a while, but after an hour or so he began to get bored. "Is there anybody here?" he shouted. In a minute, a white robed attendant appeared.

"What do you want?" he asked.

"What can I have?" Willy asked.

The attendant shrugged, "Anything you want." Willy asked for something to eat.

"What do you want to eat?" the attendant asked. "You can have anything you want." And so they brought him just what he wanted, and he went on eating and sleeping and having a fine time.

He began to feel bored after a while, and finally he shouted for the attendant and insisted, "I want something to do!"

"I'm sorry," the attendant told him, "but that is the one thing that we can't provide."

Willy looked around him. "I am sick and tired of it," he said. "I would rather go to hell."

"Well," said the attendant, "where do you think you are?"

The hell is a place where you cannot do anything, because doing is possible only in reality. Dreaming is possible in hell, doing is not possible. If you are living in your dreaming, you are living in a hell. You may dream a thousand and one things, but you cannot DO anything.

Watch...you want to be happy, but why can't you be happy? Suddenly, you are impotent. You want to be happy, you dream about it, but who is preventing you? Be happy? -- then suddenly you feel impotent. You want peace, silence; you desire your dream. But who is preventing you? -- just be silent; then suddenly you feel powerless. Doing is possible only when you are in contact with reality. Dreaming is possible on your own; you can go on dreaming.

So let this be your criterion: if you really want to be happy, then find out a way to be in contact with reality, and you will be happy. Just go on dreaming and don't try to find a way to reality -- then you will be dreaming, and you will become more and more unhappy, because again and again you will find that happiness is not happening.

Doing is a function of the real; dreaming is the function of the unreal.

The Bauls say,

You must be single-minded

to visit the court

of my beloved.

If your mind is torn in two,

you will swim in a quandary

and never reach the shore.

The dreamer's mind is divided in two: in witnessing and dreaming. Then you are not one; you are split. While you are simply witnessing you are one. There is no duality in you. You are -- that's all. So try to become one, single-minded. Whatsoever you are doing, try to become one. To say that you are dual is not true -- you are many, you are a crowd. It is not only that you are two, you are many. Bring these fragments together. Any one thing, continuously followed, will help you to crystallize.

For example: meditators try to meditate continuously. They do a thousand and one things, other things, but one thing continues as a current, as a thread running underground. They eat, but they make a meditation out of eating. They walk, but they make a meditation out of walking. They talk, but they make a meditation out of talking. They listen, but they listen meditatively. They do many things, but they connect everything with meditation. That becomes their one-mindedness.

Lovers, the followers of the path of love, Bauls, make love their undercurrent. They eat, but they eat with love. The walk, but they walk with love -- because the earth is holy ground. They sit under a tree; they sit with love -- because the tree is divine. They look at somebody; they look with love -- because there also is divinity. Everywhere they see their beloved, in each movement they remember their beloved. It becomes their constant remembrance.

But whether on the path of meditation or on the path of love, one thing has to be done. Doing a thousand and one things, you have to connect them with one thing. That connection, that running thread will make you one-pointed, one-minded. It will give you integration. In that integration, dreams dissolve. It is the crowd within you which dreams, it is the split that dreams. When the split is bridged, dreams disappear -- because then you start enjoying being here and now so tremendously that who bothers to desire? Who has time to think about the tomorrow? Today is more than enough. A single moment of undivided being is so big, bigger than eternity.

Then nobody thinks about the past -- the gone is gone; and nobody thinks about the future -- that which has not come yet, has not come yet. One simply goes deeper and deeper into the present, and that is the door of God.

The present is the door, and your single-mindedness is the key.

OSHO