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A True Mystic – Lucy Cornelssen

A True Mystic

There are a few individuals who come into this world, live a remote, almost obscure life, yet radiate a special presence. They are like a little lantern on a worn path that, if one stumbles across, lights one’s way. Lucy Cornelssen was one such lantern. She was a true mystic, born with an intense inner calling, the gift of compassion, and a smile that melted one’s heart.

We met her when she was in her mid-eighties and knew her well into her nineties. Lucy spent her last decade living in a small, one-room, thatched-roofed cottage at the foot of the sacred hill, Arunachala, in the South Indian town of Tiruvannamalai. She possessed the rare quality of grace and resignation and permeated the space around her with the magic of inner silence.

Her outer life was nondescript. In her later years she rarely left the cottage, yet she was always an inspiration to be with. At least once a week over a period of several years, my husband and I would visit her modest cottage. Often we would simply sit quietly together, with the silence broken by stories from Indian lore or pieces from the colorful quilt of her life. The most memorable scenes were of her young days as a German mother taking refuge from World War II in the depths of the Black Forest of Southern Germany. It was during these years, living like Thoreau, that awakened her sense of “living in the moment,” of becoming truly quiet. It was here that she listened to the sounds of nature and the rain tapping on the roof—she simply became one with nature. In the forest, Lucy learned the art of waiting without expectation and living one day at a time.

Through her mother, she came to learn of Indian art and philosophy. One day when entering a room in her Mother’s house, her eyes fell upon a bronze figure of Nataraja, the Hindu diety Shiva, in its dancing aspect. Immediately she felt a previous or karmic connection and became unconscious to the outer world. From that time on, she lived as one who felt the presence of Shiva in her heart.

As a trained journalist, Lucy Ma (as she was affectionately called) translated the Talks with Ramana Maharshi into German. Her translation became widely read by those interested in the teachings of this great sage. This attraction to Ramana grew into a deep mystical relationship with the Arunachala Hill, for this sacred hill is considered to be the physical manifestation of Shiva himself. To Lucy Ma, Arunachala was not merely a hill of red boulder and stone but the living presence of Shiva, a place that radiates silence and peace, turning one’s mind toward the Self.

While her philosophical outlook was resolutely non-dualistic, her devotion to Shiva was deeply interwoven into her nature, revealing a beautiful balance of head and heart. Lucy Ma loved stories, especially allegorical ones, and would always see the teachings within them rather than the theory. Often she would entertain us from her endless source of stories, and each story seemed to be appropriate for us at that moment. When she sensed we were taking events around us too seriously, she would often tell us a story to put us back on track. One of her favorites was about a King who asked the spiritual teachers of his land to give him something which would make him happy when he was sad and sad when he was happy. After much deliberation they presented him with a ring on which was inscribed the saying: “This too shall pass.”

The last time we saw her we knew it would be our last. She was eating very little then, and we knew she would effortlessly slip away in a silent, graceful manner like a butterfly whose purpose has been fulfilled through metamorphosis. She stood at the entrance to her small cottage waving and smiling radiantly. I turned to look just before entering the main road and saw her gazing at the peak of her beloved Arunachala.

For a number of years, while living in the United States, we had a regular correspondence. Even though she became frailer and found writing difficult, she continued. Lucy Ma’s last letter to us was written a few weeks before her passing, in 1990, and contained a very pointed and strong admonition to be at peace with whatever life brings, that the secret of true peace lies in acceptance and letting go. For Lucy Ma these were not mere words but a living testimony of her life.

Excerpts from Hunting the “I”

Lucy’s understanding of Truth was always deep and original. She translated, into German, a number of books on Ramana Maharshi, learning the Tamil language to better facilitate the translation. But there was one book that she wrote directly in English, and it remains her special contribution: Hunting the ‘I’. Excerpts below are from the chapter entitled “Obstacles on the Path.” It is both personal and practical, offering excellent tips for the spiritual seeker.

Hunting the ‘I’ means trying to overcome obstacles before Awakening to the Truth . . . but how many faces it has! The one which soon betrays itself as a great deposit of obstacles is the so-called mind, with its main qualities of restlessness and dullness. The cardinal remedy that has been mentioned is to develop an attitude of unconcerned witnessing—watch the restless thoughts, and the rushing torrent of the mind will slow down.

——-

Looking for other obstacles, we meet another one which may trouble us a lot, our changing moods. We are aware that they change; much to our annoyance. Sometimes we are restless or inclined to flare up, at other times we feel dull or even depressed, and sometimes we seem to be the very embodiment of harmony, peace and happiness itself. Of course, there always seems to be some reason for it. And this idea is wrong. For in respect to changing moods, we are merely a biological phenomenon, an organism, simply reacting to some cosmic influence. Sattva, corresponding to light, peace, and harmony; rajas, communicating heat, movement, passion, and wrath; and tamas, relating to dullness, ignorance, stagnation, and depression are three gunas (qualities), of nature itself, which are in perfect balance among each other during the unmanifested period of the dormant universe. Their manifestation into activity is prompted by a disturbance in the balance and is kept in motion by them. They cause the rhythm in which the universe is swinging, and there is absolutely nothing which can withdraw from their influence. Beyond the gunas is Absolute Consciousness, because It is beyond nature.

——-

The understanding of the true nature of our moods unfolds great insight in our spiritual practice, insofar as it effectively undermines our long cherished feeling of individuality. Aren’t joy and sorrow, happiness and misery, suffering and high elation the very ‘stuff’ of our souls? Where is our individuality, if all this is superimposed on some quite impersonal changes, caused regularly by the rhythmic change in the balance of nature? How can we get control over the amazing mystery, which reveals itself as a cosmic power far beyond the reach of our personal ‘I’? . . . We can renounce the desire to seek and find and even invent reasons for changes in our conditions- bodily, mentality and spiritually. We can simply watch the coming and going of our moods and each time make the best of them.

——-

There is another rather harmless mistake which happens regularly to beginners. Many are blessed with various glimpses- spiritual experiences. These experiences carry the stamp of a genuine change of consciousness, and of course the seeker is happy and convinced that he has made real progress. There is no harm in it, but soon he faces the reality that these ‘experiences’ fade away. When this happens again and again, he learns to understand these sparks for what they are, glimpses that propel him forward in his spiritual endeavor. They only become a pitfall when he, by vanity of impatience, gets stuck in one of them, taking it for final Realization. Then further progress is blocked.

——-

The duty of the seeker is to watch himself ceaselessly; he has to know what is going on within himself. When he looks at others, his personal ‘I’ at once makes comparisons, and the result will be: ‘I am holier than thou.’ With this idea he gives his ‘personal I’ a strong chance to develop into a ‘spiritual I’, which is much worse than his original, quite ordinary ‘I’. The result is a spiritual pride, made worse the more advanced the seeker has become, because his attainments serve only to confirm his ‘right’ to be proud of his success. But even if he perceives the gentle voice from within, warning him against this trend going on and reminding him of the secret of real ‘attainment’, silent humility, and even if he is quite prepared to accept the warning, there is still the risk of the cunning ego concealing itself in the pride of his humility!

——-

Luckily the sadhaka (seeker) is not left alone in his secret struggle against himself on his lonesome inner journey. How could he ever reach it, were it not already within himself? And It never fails to send signals of warning when the traveler is nearing a pitfall or has ever been caught by one due to inadvertence.

As seen on Inner Directions.

Here you can see more posts from Lucy Cornelssen.

www.sriramanamaharshi.org

Only Knowing Remains – Osho

The first stage, to which contentment and bliss impart sweetness, springs from the innermost recesses of the seeker’s heart, as if nectar has issued forth from the heart of the Earth. At the inception of this stage the innermost recess becomes a field for the coming of the other stages. Afterwards the seeker attains the second and third stages. Of the three, the third is the highest, because on its attainment all the modifications of will come to an end.

One who practices the three stages finds his ignorance dead, and on entering the fourth stage he sees everything, everywhere, equally. At that moment he is so strongly embedded in the experience of nonduality – advaita – that the experience itself disappears.

Thus, on attaining the fourth stage the seeker finds the world as illusory as a dream. So while the first three stages are called waking ones, the fourth is dreaming.

-Akshi Upanishad

The fourth stage. The first is that of the oceanic feeling that Brahman exists everywhere – oneness. The one alone exists; the many are just its forms. They are not really divided; they only appear divided; deep down they are one.

The second stage is that of vichar – thought, contemplation and meditation – where mind has to be disciplined to become one-pointed, because it can disappear only when it has become one-pointed, when the flux has stopped; that is, when you can remain with one thought as long as you wish. You have become the master then, and unless you are the master of the mind, the mind cannot disappear, it cannot cease to be; you cannot order it out of existence.

If you cannot order thoughts to stop, how can you order the whole mind to go out of existence? So in the second stage one has to drop thoughts by and by and retain only one thought. When you have become capable of dropping thoughts, one day you can drop the mind itself, the whole thought process. When the thought process is dropped, you cannot exist as an ego. You exist as consciousness but not as mind; you are there but not as an I. We say “I am.” When mind drops, the I drops; you remain a pure amness. Existence is there, rather, more abundant, more rich, more beautiful, but without the ego. There is no one who can say I, only amness exists.

In the third stage, vairagya, non-attachment, you have to become alert – first of the objects of desire, the body, the world – and continuously practice and discipline yourself to become a witness. You are not the doer. Your karmas may be the doers, God may be the doer, fate, or anything, but you are not the doer. You have to remain a witness, just a seer, an onlooker. And then this has also to be dropped. The idea that “I am the witness” is also a sort of doing. Then non-attachment becomes complete, perfect. The third stage, this Upanishad says, is the highest of the three. Now we will discuss the fourth.

The fourth is the state of advaita, nonduality. This word advaita has to be understood before we enter the sutra. This word is very meaningful. Advaita means literally nonduality, not two. They could have said one, but the Upanishads never use the word one; they say nonduality, not two. And this is very significant, because if you say one the two is implied, it becomes a positive statement. If you say there is only one you are asserting something positive.

How can the one exist without the other? One cannot exist without the other. You cannot conceive of the figure one without other figures – two, three, four, five. Many mathematicians have worked it out, particularly Leibniz in the West. He has tried to drop the nine digits, figures. Instead of nine he uses only two: one and two. In his calculations, three, four, five, six, seven, eight and nine are dropped, because he said it is just superstition to continue using ten figures. Why continue using ten figures?

You may not have observed: ten figures exist in mathematics not by any planning, but just because we have ten fingers. The primitives used to count on the fingers, so ten became the basic figure and it has been taken all over the world. These ten figures, this basis of all arithmetic, was produced in India. That’s why even today in all languages the words that denote these ten figures are basically Sanskrit: two is dwi, three is tri, four is chaturth, five is panch, six is shashta, seven is sapta, eight is ashta, nine is nava. These are basic roots.

These ten counting figures, these ten digits, Leibniz says are useless. And science must try to work with the minimum, so he tried to minimize the digits. But he could not minimize more than two, he had to stop at two. […] The moment you say one the two is implied, because one can exist only by the side of two. So the Upanishads never say that the Brahman is one, the truth is one; rather they use a negative term, they say he is not two. So one is implied but not directly asserted.

Secondly, about the total we cannot assert anything positive, we cannot say what it is. At the most we can say what it is not, we can negate. We cannot say directly, because once we say anything directly it becomes defining, it becomes a limitation. If you say one, then you have limited; then a boundary has been drawn, then it cannot be infinite. When you simply say it is not two there is no boundary – the implication is infinite.

The Upanishads say that the divine can be defined only by negatives, so they go on negating. They say, “This is not Brahman, that is not Brahman.” And they never say directly, they never assert directly. You cannot point to the Brahman with a finger because your finger will become a limitation. Then Brahman will be where your finger is pointing and nowhere else. You can point to the Brahman only with a closed fist so you are not pointing anywhere – or, everywhere.

This negativity created many confusions, particularly in the West, because when for the first time the West came upon the Upanishads in the last century and they were translated – first in German, then in English, and then French and other languages – it was a very baffling thought, because the Bible defines God positively. Jews, Christians, Mohammedans define God very positively, they say what he is. Hinduism defines God totally negatively; they say what he is not.

In the West this looked not very religious, because you cannot worship a negativity. You can worship only something positive; you can love only something positive, you can devote yourself only to something positive. How can you devote yourself to something which is simply a denial, a negativity, a neti neti, neither this nor that? You cannot make an idol of a negative Brahman. How can you make an idol of a negative Brahman?

That’s why Hindus conceived their highest conception of Brahman as Shivalinga. And people go on thinking that Shivalinga is just a phallic symbol. It is not just a phallic symbol, that is just one of its implications. Shivalinga is a symbol of zero, shunya, the negative. Shivalinga doesn’t define any image. There is no image on it – no face, no eyes, nothing; just a zero, not even one. And the zero can be infinite. Zero has no boundaries; it begins nowhere, it ends nowhere.

How can you worship a zero? How can you pray to a zero? But Hindus have totally a different conception. They say prayer is not really an address to God, because you cannot address anything to him. Where will you address him? – he is nowhere or everywhere. So prayer is not really some address; rather, on the contrary, prayer is your inner mutation. Hindus say you cannot pray, but you can be in a prayerful mood. So prayer is not something you can do, prayer is something you can only be.

And prayer is not for God, prayer is for you. You pray and through prayer you change. Nobody is listening to your prayer and nobody is going to help you, nobody is going to follow your prayer but just by praying your heart changes. Through prayer, if authentic, you become different – your assertion changes you.

In the south there is one old temple. If you go in the temple there is no deity; the place for the deity is vacant, empty. If you ask the priest, “Where is the deity? Whom to worship? And this is a temple – to whom does this temple belong? Who is the deity of this temple?” the priest will tell you, “This is the tradition of this temple – that we don’t have any deity. The whole temple is the deity. You cannot look for the deity in a particular direction. He is everywhere – that’s why the place is vacant.”

The whole universe is Brahman. And this is such a vast phenomenon that positive terms will only make it finite; hence negativity – it is one of the highest conceptions possible. And this negativity reached its most logical extreme in Buddha. He would not even negate. He said, “Even if you negate, indirectly you assert, and every assertion is blasphemy.”

Jews could have understood this. They have no name for God. Yahweh is not a name, it is just a symbol; or it means “the nameless.” And in the old Jewish world before Jesus, the name was not to be asserted by everybody. Only the chief priest in the temple of Solomon was allowed once a year to assert the name. So once a year all the Jews would gather together at the great temple of Solomon, and the highest priest would assert the name, Yahweh. And it is not a name, the very word means the nameless.

Nobody was allowed to assert the name, because how can the finite assert the infinite? And whatsoever you say will be wrong because you are wrong. Whatsoever you say belongs to you, it comes through you, you are present in it. So unless you had become so empty that you were no more, you were not allowed to assert the name. The highest priest was the man who had become just an emptiness, and to assert the name, for the whole year he would remain silent. He would prepare, he would become totally empty, no thought was allowed in the mind. For one year he would wait, prepare, become empty, become a nonentity, a nobody. When the right moment came he would stand just like an emptiness. The man was not there, there was nobody. The mind was not there. And then he would assert, Yahweh.

This tradition stopped because it became more and more difficult to find persons who could become nonentities, who could become nothingness, who could become anatta, nonbeing – who could destroy themselves so completely that God could assert through them, who could become just like a passage, just like a flute, empty, so that God could sing through it. […]

The Upanishads are negative about the Brahman. That’s why they say “the nondual,” that which is not two. Now we will enter the sutra:

The first stage, to which contentment and bliss impart sweetness, springs from the innermost recesses of the seeker’s heart.

As I said to you, the first is the feeling, the first is the heart. The first stage belongs to the heart and only the heart can know contentment and bliss. If you are in contact with your heart you will know contentment and bliss, just like sweet springs flowing towards you, filling you, overflooding you. But we don’t have the contact with the heart. The heart is beating, but we don’t have the contact.

You will have to understand it, because just by having a heart, don’t go on thinking that you are in contact with it. You are not in contact with many things in your body, you are just carrying your body. Contact means a deep sensitivity. You may not even feel your body. It happens that only when you are ill do you feel your body. There is a headache, then you feel the head; without the headache there is no contact with the head. There is pain in the leg, you become aware of the leg. You become aware only when something goes wrong.

If everything is okay you remain completely unaware, and really, that is the moment when contact can be made – when everything is okay – because when something goes wrong then that contact is made with illness, with something that has gone wrong, and the well-being is no more there. You have the head right now, then the headache comes, and you make the contact. The contact is made not with the head but with the headache. With the head contact is possible only when there is no headache, and the head is filled with a well-being. But we have almost lost the capacity. We don’t have any contact when we are okay. So our contact is just an emergency measure. There is a headache: some repair is needed, some medicine is needed, something has to be done, so you make the contact and do something.

Try to make contact with your body when everything is good. Just lie down on the grass, close the eyes, and feel the sensation that is going on within, the well-being that is bubbling. Lie down in a river. The water is touching the body and every cell is being cooled. Feel inside how that coolness enters cell by cell, goes deep into the body. The body is a great phenomenon, one of the miracles of nature.

Sit in the sun. Let the sunrays penetrate the body. Feel the warmth as it moves within, as it goes deeper, as it touches your blood cells and reaches to the very bones. And sun is life, the very source. So with closed eyes just feel what is happening. Remain alert, watch and enjoy. By and by you will become aware of a very subtle harmony, a very beautiful music continuously going on inside. Then you have the contact with the body; otherwise you carry a dead body.

It is just like this: a person who loves his car has a different type of contact and relationship with the car than a person who doesn’t. A person who doesn’t love his car goes on driving it and he treats it as a mechanism, but a person who loves his car will become aware of even the smallest change in the mood of the car, the finest change of sound. Something is changing in the car and suddenly he will become aware of it. No one else has heard it; the passengers are sitting there; they have not heard it. But a slight change in the sound of the engine, any clicking, any change, and the person who loves his car will become aware of it. He has a deep contact. He is not only driving, the car is not just a mechanism; rather he has spread himself into the car and he has allowed the car to enter him.

Your body can be used as a mechanism, then you need not be very sensitive about it. And the body goes on saying many things you never hear because you don’t have any contact […] You cannot detect it, and you are there living in the body. There is no contact. […]

So first try to be more and more sensitive about your body. Listen to it; it goes on saying many things, and you are so head-oriented you never listen to it. Whenever there is a conflict between your mind and body, your body is almost always going to be right more than your mind, because the body is natural, your mind is societal; the body belongs to this vast nature, and your mind belongs to your society, your particular society, age, time. Body has deep roots in existence, mind is just wavering on the surface. But you always listen to the mind, you never listen to the body. Because of this long habit contact is lost.

You have the heart, and heart is the root, but you don’t have any contact. First start having contact with the body. Soon you will become aware that the whole body vibrates around the center of the heart just as the whole solar system moves around the sun. Hindus have called the heart the sun of the body. The whole body is a solar system and moves around the heart. You became alive when the heart started beating, you will die when the heart stops beating. The heart remains the solar center of your body. Become alert to it. But you can become alert, by and by, only if you become alert to the whole body.

While hungry, why not meditate a little? – there is no hurry. While hungry just close your eyes and meditate on the hunger, on how the body is feeling. You may have lost contact, because our hunger is less bodily, more mental. You eat every day at one o’clock. You look at the watch; it is one – so then you feel hunger. And the clock may not be right. If somebody says, “That clock has stopped at midnight. It is not functioning. It is only eleven o’clock,” the hunger disappears. This hunger is false, this hunger is just habitual, because the mind creates it, not the body. Mind says, “One o’clock – you are hungry.” You have to be hungry. You have always been hungry at one o’clock, so you are hungry.

Our hunger is almost ninety-nine percent habitual. Go on a fast for a few days to feel real hunger, and you will be surprised. For the first three or four days you will feel very hungry. On the fourth or fifth day you will not feel so hungry. This is illogical, because as the fast grows you should feel more and more hungry. But after the third day you will feel less hungry, and after the seventh day you may completely forget hunger. After the eleventh day almost everybody forgets hunger completely and the body feels absolutely okay. Why? And if you continue the fast . . . Those who have done much work on fasting say that only after the twenty-first day will real hunger happen again.

So it means that for three days your mind was insisting that you were hungry because you had not taken food, but it was not hunger. Within three days the mind gets fed up with telling you; you are not listening; you are so indifferent. On the fourth day the mind doesn’t say anything, the body doesn’t feel hunger. For three weeks you will not feel hunger, because you have accumulated so much fat – that fat will do. You will feel hunger only after the third week. And this is for normal bodies. If you have too much fat accumulated you may not feel hungry even after the third week. And there is a possibility to accumulate enough fat to live on for three months, ninety days. When the body is finished with the accumulated fat, then for the first time real hunger will be felt. But it will be difficult. You can try with thirst, that will be easy. For one day don’t take water, and wait. Don’t drink out of habit, just wait and see what thirst means, what thirst would mean if you were in a desert.

Lawrence of Arabia has written in his memoirs: “For the first time in my life, when I was once lost in the desert, I became aware of what thirst is – because before that there was no need. Whenever my mind said, ‘Now you are thirsty,’ I took water. In the desert, lost, no water with me and no way to find an oasis, for the first time I became thirsty. And that thirst was something wonderful – the whole of the body, every cell, asking for water. It became a phenomenon.” If you take water in that type of thirst, it will give you a contentment that you cannot know just by drinking through habit. […]

First one has to become deeply aware of this phenomenon of the body. A revival of the body, a resurrection, is needed – you are carrying a dead body. Then only will you feel, by and by, that the whole body with all its desires, thirsts and hungers, is revolving around the heart. Then the beating heart is not only a mechanism, it is the beating life, it is the very pulsation of life. That pulsation gives contentment and bliss.

Contentment and bliss impart sweetness.

Your whole being becomes sweet, a sweetness surrounds you, it becomes your aura. Whenever a person is in contact with his heart you will immediately fall in love with him. Immediately, the moment you see him, you will fall in love with him. you don’t know why. He has a sweetness around him. That sweetness your mind may not be able to detect, but your heart detects it immediately. He has an aura. The moment you come into his aura you are intoxicated. You feel a longing for him, you feel an attraction, a magnetic force working. You may not be consciously aware of what is happening; you may simply say, “I don’t know why I am attracted,” but this is the reason. A person who lives in his heart has a milieu around him of sweetness – sweetness flows around him. You are flooded with it whenever you are in contact with that person.

Buddha, Jesus, attracted millions of people, and the reason is that they lived in the heart; otherwise it was impossible. What Buddha demanded was impossible. Thousands of people left their homes, became beggars with him, moved with him in all types of sufferings, austerities, and enjoyed it. This is a miracle. And those who left their homes were rich, affluent people, because India knew the golden age in the time of Buddha. It was at its highest peak of richness. Just as America is today, India was at that moment. At that moment the West was just wild; no civilization existed really. The West was totally uncivilized at the time of Buddha, and India was at its golden peak.

Buddha attracted millions of people who were rich, living in comfort, and they moved and became beggars. What filled them, what attracted them, what was the cause? Even they couldn’t explain what the cause was. This is the cause: whenever a person of heart is there, a person who lives in his heart, he imparts around him vibrations of sweetness. Just being in his presence, being near him, you feel a sudden joy for no visible cause. He is not giving you anything, he is not giving you any physical comfort. On the contrary, he may lead you into physical discomfort; through him you may have to pass through many sufferings – but you will enjoy those sufferings.

Buddha was dying, and Ananda, his disciple, was weeping. So Buddha said, “Why are you weeping?”

Ananda said, “With you I can move on this earth, millions of times I can be reborn and it will not be a suffering. I can suffer everything. Just if you are there, then this sansar, which you call dukkha, suffering, is no more suffering – but without you even nirvana will not be blissful.”

Such a sweetness surrounded Buddha, such a sweetness surrounded Jesus, such a sweetness surrounded Saint Francis, such a sweetness surrounds all those who have lived through the heart. Their charisma is that they live in their heart.

Jesus was not a very learned man; he was just a villager; he remained a carpenter’s son. He was talking in people’s ways, ordinary parables. If someone gives you Jesus’ parables, his statements, without saying that these belong to Jesus, you will throw the book, you will never read it again. But he influenced people, impressed so much, that Christianity became the greatest religion of the world. Half the earth belongs now to Christianity, to a carpenter’s son who was not educated, not cultured. What is this mystery? How did it happen? […]

The first stage, to which contentment and bliss impart sweetness, springs from the innermost recesses of the seeker’s heart, as if nectar has issued forth from the heart of the Earth. At the inception of this stage the innermost recess becomes a field for the coming of the other stages. Afterwards the seeker attains the second and third stages. Of the three, the third is the highest, because on its attainment all the modifications of will come to an end.

All the modifications of will come to an end. The third is the highest. And the reason? Let it penetrate deep in your heart. The third is the highest. Why? – because all the modifications of will come to an end. Your will is the cause of your ego. You think you can do something; you think you will do something; you think you have got willpower, you think that there is a possibility for you to struggle with existence and win. Will means the attitude to fight, the attitude to conquer, the attitude to struggle. Will is the force of violence in you. […]

Will is your impotence. Because of will you are defeated, because you are doing something absolutely absurd, something which cannot happen. When you leave will, only then will you be powerful. When there is no will you have become potent. Omnipotent also you can become when there is no will, because then you are one with the universe, then the whole universe is your power.

With the will you are a fragment fighting with the whole existence, with such a small quantity of energy. And that energy is also given by the universe. The universe is so playful that it even allows you to fight with it, it gives you the energy. The universe gives you the breath, the universe gives you the life, and enjoys your fighting. It is just as a father enjoys fighting with a child and challenges the child to fight. The child starts fighting and the father falls down and helps the child to win. This is a game for the father. The child may be serious, may get mad; he will think, “I have conquered.”

In the West this childishness has become the source of many miseries: Hiroshima, Nagasaki, the two world wars, were because of this will. Science should not be any more the conquest of nature. Science must now become the way towards nature – surrender to nature, not conquest of nature. And unless science becomes Taoist – surrender to nature – science is going to eliminate the whole of humanity from this earth. This planet will be destroyed by science. And science can destroy only because science has become associated with this absurd notion of conquest.

Man has willpower. Every will is against nature, your will is against nature. When you can say totally, “Not mine, but your will should be done” – “your” means the divine, the totality, the wholeness – for the first time you become powerful. But this power doesn’t belong to you, you are just a passage. This power belongs to the cosmos.

The third is the highest, because all the modifications of will come to an end. Not only the will but the modifications – because will can get modified. We saw that the Upanishad divides desirelessness, non-attachment, in two parts. First, when you make effort to be nonattached – that too is a modification of the will. You struggle, you control, you detach yourself, you make all the efforts to remain a witness. Those efforts to remain a witness belong to your will, so really that is not real non-attachment, just a rehearsal; not real, just a training ground.

Non-attachment will become real only in the second stage, when even this struggle to be a witness has dropped; when even the idea that “I am a witness” has dropped, when there is no more conflict between you and existence. No more any conflict, you simply flow with it.

Lao Tzu is reported to have said, “I struggled hard but I was defeated again and again, fortunately.” He says, “Fortunately I was defeated again and again. No effort succeeded, and then I realized – against whom am I fighting? Against myself I am fighting, against the greater part of my own being I am fighting. It is as if my hand is fighting against my body, and the hand belongs to the body. It can fight, but the hand has the energy through the body.” Lao Tzu says, “When I realized that I am part of this cosmos, that I am not separate – the cosmos breathes in me, lives in me, and I am fighting it – then the fight dropped. Then I became like a dead leaf.”

Why like a dead leaf? – because the dead leaf has no will of her own. The wind comes, takes the dead leaf; the dead leaf goes with the wind. The wind is going north, the dead leaf doesn’t say, “I want to go to the south.” The dead leaf goes to the north. Then the wind changes its course, starts flowing towards the south. The dead leaf doesn’t say, “You are contradictory. First you were going to the north, now you are going to the south. Now I want to go to the north.” No, that leaf doesn’t say anything. She moves to south, she moves to north, and if the wind stops she falls down on the ground and rests. She doesn’t say, “This was not the right time for me to rest.” When the wind raises her into the sky the dead leaf doesn’t say, “I am the peak of existence.” When she falls to the ground she is not frustrated. A dead leaf simply has no will of her own. “Thy will be done.” She moves with the wind, wheresoever it leads. She has got no goal, she has no purpose of her own.

Lao Tzu says, “When I became like a dead leaf, then everything was achieved. Then there was nothing to be achieved any more. Then all bliss became mine.”

All the modifications of will come to an end. One who practices the three stages finds his ignorance dead, and on entering the fourth stage he sees everything, everywhere, equally.

Two things: One who practices these three stages finds his ignorance dead. Your ignorance cannot become dead by accumulating knowledge. You can accumulate all the knowledge available in the world, you can become an Encyclopedia Britannica, but that won’t help. You can become a walking encyclopedia, but your ignorance will not be dead through that. Rather, on the contrary, your ignorance will become hidden, secret; it will move to the deep recesses of the heart. So on the surface you will be knowledgeable and deep down you will remain ignorant. This is what has happened, and all the universities go on helping this.

Your ignorance is never dead; it is alive, working. And just on the surface you are decorated, you are a painted being. Your knowledge is painted just on the surface and deep down you remain ignorant. The knowledge, real knowledge, can happen only when the ignorance is dead. Before that, knowledge will remain information – borrowed, not yours, not authentic – it has not happened to you. It is not a lived experience, but only words, verbal, scriptural.

And ignorance can become dead only when you practice these first three stages, because ignorance is a mode of life, not a question of information. It is a way of life, a wrong way of life, that creates ignorance. It is not just a question of memory, of how much you know, or how much you don’t know – that is not the point. […] Jesus became enlightened and Pontius Pilate remained ignorant. He was more cultured than Jesus, more educated; he had all the education that was possible. He was the governor general, the viceroy, he knew whatsoever could be known through books. And in the last moment before Jesus was sent to the cross, he asked him a very philosophical question.

Nietzsche wrote about Pontius Pilate, because Nietzsche was always against Jesus. When he became mad in the end – and he was bound to become mad because his whole way of life, the whole style was madness – he started signing his signature as “Anti-Christ, Friedrich Nietzsche.” He would never sign his signature without writing before it “Anti-Christ.” He was absolutely against Jesus. He says that only Pontius Pilate was the man who knew, and Jesus was simply an ignorant carpenter’s son. And the reason that he proposes is that in the last moment before Jesus went to the cross, Pontius Pilate asked him, “What is truth?” This is one of the most significant philosophical questions which has always been asked, and philosophers enjoy answering it – but nobody has answered yet. To Nietzsche Jesus looks foolish. He writes that when Pontius Pilate asked Jesus, “What is truth?” he was asking precisely the peak question, the sole question, the ultimate question, the base of all philosophy, the base of all inquiry – and Jesus remained silent.

Nietzsche says that was because in the first place Jesus would not have understood what Pontius Pilate meant, and secondly, he could not answer because he didn’t know what truth is. He was ignorant, that’s why he remained silent. And I say to you, he remained silent because he knew, and he knew well that this question can never be answered verbally.

Pontius Pilate was foolish – educated, well-educated, but foolish – because this question cannot be asked in such a way, and it cannot be answered when a person is going to be hanged. For the answer to this question Pontius Pilate would have had to live with Jesus for years, because the whole life has to be transformed, only then can the answer be given. Or the transformed life itself becomes the answer, there is no need to give it.

Jesus remained silent, that shows he was a wise man. Had he given any answer, to me he would have proved that he was ignorant. Even Jesus’ followers became a little uncomfortable, because they thought that had he answered Pontius Pilate, and had Pilate been convinced that his answer was true, there would have been no crucifixion. But crucifixion is better than answering a foolish question with a foolish answer. Crucifixion is always better than that. And Jesus chose crucifixion rather than answering this foolish question . . . because such questions need a mutation in life; you have to work upon yourself.

Truth is not something which can be handed over to you. You will have to raise your consciousness; you will have to come to the climax of your being. Only from there the glimpse becomes possible. And when you die completely to your ego, truth is revealed, never before. It is not a philosophical inquiry, it is a religious transformation.

This is a very subtle and delicate point. Let it go deep in your heart. He is so embedded in the fourth stage . . . After the three stages the fourth follows automatically. The three have to be practiced, the three have to be deeply rooted in your being through your effort – the fourth happens. Suddenly you become aware that there is nonduality, only one exists – one being, one existence.

He is so strongly embedded in the experience of advaita – nonduality – that the experience itself disappears.

. . . Because for experience to exist, duality is needed. So the Upanishads say you cannot experience God. If you experience God, then the God remains separate and you remain separate, because only the other can be experienced. Experience divides. This is the deepest message of all the Upanishads: experience divides . . . because whenever you say experience it means there are three things: the experiencer, the experienced, and the relationship between the two, the experience.

The Upanishads say that God cannot be known, because knowledge divides the knower, the known and the knowledge. If really you have become one, how can you experience? So even the experience disappears. The Upanishads say a person who claims he has experienced the divine is false, his claim proves that he is false. A knower cannot claim, one who has really experienced the divine cannot claim, because the very experience disappears. Buddha says again and again, “Don’t ask me what I have experienced. If I say anything then I am not true. Rather come near me, and you also go through the experience.” […]

Buddha says, “Experience – and you cannot even claim that you have experienced.” . . . Because who will experience? There is no other. Who will experience whom? Even the experience itself disappears. There is nothing like God-experience; it is only in the minds of the ignorant. The knowers know that God disappears and the I disappears, the duality disappears. Knowing is there, but the knower is not and the known is not.

Because of this Mahavira has used a beautiful word. He calls it kaivalya gyan; he calls it, “Only knowing remains” – only knowing, neither the known nor the knower. You disappear, the God you were seeking disappears, because really the God you were seeking was created by you. It was your ignorance that was seeking. Your God was part of your ignorance. It is bound to be. How can you seek the real God? You don’t know it.

You project your God through your ignorance, you seek it. All your heavens are part of your ignorance. All your truths are part of your ignorance. You seek them and then your ignorance disappears. When your ignorance disappears where will those gods remain who were created by your ignorance? They will also disappear.

It happened: when Rinzai became enlightened, he asked for a cup of tea. His disciples said, “This seems to be profane.”

And he said, “The whole thing was foolishness: the seeking, the seeker, the sought. The whole thing was foolishness. You just give me a cup of tea! None existed. The seeker was false, the sought was false, so of course the seeking was false. It was a cosmic joke.”

That’s why I say there is no purpose – God is joking with you. The moment you can understand the joke you are enlightened. Then the whole thing becomes a play, even the experience disappears.

Thus, on attaining the fourth stage the seeker finds the world as illusory as a dream. So while the first three stages are called waking ones, the fourth is dreaming.

When the fourth stage is attained, when even God disappears, when the God-seeker, the worshipper disappears, this whole world becomes like a dream. Not that it is not there – it is there, but like a dream; it has no substantiality in it. It is a mental phenomenon; it is a thought process. You enjoy it, you live in it, but you know that this is all a dream.

This is the Hindu concept of the world; they say it is a dream in the mind of God. It is just as when you dream in the night; when you dream you can create a reality in the dream, and you never suspect that this is a dream and you are the creator. The beauty is this – that you are the creator, you are the projector, and you cannot suspect that it is just a dream. Hindus say that as there are private dreams, individual dreams, this is the collective dream – God dreaming the world. You are a dream object in the God’s dream. We take dreams to be real, and Hindus say the reality is a dream.

I will tell you one anecdote.

Once it happened, Mulla Nasruddin was fast asleep with his wife in bed. The wife started dreaming; she had a very beautiful dream. One charming young man was making love to her, and she was enjoying it very much. She was old, ugly, and he was a very charming young prince, and she was enjoying it.

Suddenly in the dream, when she was enjoying the lovemaking, Mulla Nasruddin entered from the roof – in the dream. She became afraid. She became so afraid and disturbed that she said loudly, “My God, my husband!” She said it so loudly that Mulla heard it and jumped out of the window. He thought he was sleeping with some other woman.

Our dreams are realities for us. For the Upanishads, our reality is just a dream.

-Osho

From Vedanta: Seven Steps to Samadhi, Discourse #12

An MP3 audio file of this discourse can be downloaded from Osho.com or you can read the entire book online at the Osho Library.

Many of Osho’s books are available in the U.S. online from Amazon.com and Viha Osho Book Distributors. In India they are available from Amazon.in and Oshoworld.com.

You have to Work for the Fulfillment of Your Destiny – Dada Gavand

I first met Dadaji in Pune in the fall of 1993, shortly after my return from Germany where, for a few weeks, I had tried in vain to become a “normal” citizen again. I had been feeling stuck and disillusioned with my spirituality for some time. My search had neither direction nor drive. I felt I needed a teacher who could understand my predicament, provide a fresh impulse for continuing the journey, and offer support, encouragement, and guidance.

In these circumstances, I met an old friend of mine in the Osho commune who had been a disciple of Osho for many years. With a joyous twinkle in her eyes, she invited me to meet a new teacher at her home on the premises of the ashram. I gladly accepted the invitation – surprised and excited that such a meeting could actually take place within the commune, which did not welcome other teachers to hold meetings on the grounds.

Before she introduced me to Dadaji, she told me that, in contrast to Osho’s emphasis on living together with the teacher in his commune as a device for generating growth and higher consciousness, Dadaji taught, “The best practice is to be alone.” Such a teaching seemed quite in line with my natural inclination toward sitting practices; the sadhana of Buddhist vipassana and Zazen meditation had proved very beneficial for me. Although they hadn’t led to final enlightenment, they definitely were quieting the chatter of my mind and making me deeply aware of the impermanence of everything that arises and exists – including my thoughts, my feelings, my body, and the world around me.

I followed my friend into Dadaji’s room, and instantly my whole being was permeated with such an exquisite and peaceful vibration that my mind went into a complete standstill. Heavenly silence soaked with stark presence melted away any sense of unfamiliarity and separation. Though I continued walking my feet seemed not to touch the marble floor; I felt as if I were levitating.

And then I saw him! He was sitting cross-legged and motionless on a bed with a white cover. He had a long white beard and his thin, shoulder-length hair was white as well. From underneath the white shawl that covered his torso, his folded hands greeted me in namaste while is eyes emanated radiant love. His being brimmed with presence.

As I moved slowly toward the bed, my heart began to fill with love and devotion, and I witnessed my body kneeling down in front of him as if moved by a divine power. My own namaste met his silence while our eyes gazed into and through each other into the beyond.

Then, light as a feather, my head – face down – began to sink onto the bed until it could find rest. At the same time, my hands stretched – unintended – finding, touching and holding on to Dadaji’s feet. From his feet, heat and energy flowed into my hands, arms and body. Soon I felt his warm and benevolent hands touching my head and resting there. A deep sense of timelessness, peace, and presence filled the space. No one moved, and not a word was spoken.

After what seemed like an eternity, our “divine embrace” loosened. I, still kneeling, straightened up slowly and bowed in namaste again. With the sweetest and most loving smile, Dadaji beckoned me with a gesture to sit down on one of the cushions on the floor near his bed. I sat, crossed my legs, closed my eyes, and rested my hands gently in my lap. By now only the two of us were in the room.

After an hour or so, I heard my friend quietly announce that Dadaji’s dinner was ready. I opened my eyes and saw Dadaji smiling at me. “Come tomorrow!” he said – the only words spoken in this first encounter.

Prior to his return to Thane, near Mumbai, I went to Dadaji’s house to visit him several times. Sometimes I was alone with him; at other times, a few other seekers were present.

The following account of our second meeting is reconstructed from memory. I began our conversation by relating the main stages of my spiritual odyssey up to that point and expressing my disenchantment with my life as a seeker.

Madhukar: I find myself in a state of disillusionment. I wish I could let go of this whole madness of searching for enlightenment. If only I could drop the search! I don’t want to be a seeker anymore. I want to just be normal. I want to live ordinarily and in peace.

Dadaji: I understand. You have come to a point when it is best for you to be on your own, to be alone. There is no need for you to visit any guru anymore. You don’t need to listen to them any longer. It is time for you to start to go within.

Madhukar: Are you suggesting practice and formal meditation?

Dadaji: You need to be alone! In aloneness, you begin to watch every incoming thought. You will come to understand that the past is nothing but the “I.” With the preservation of the “I,” the past continues. When you discover the deceptions of the “I” — which is the mind – your journey toward the spirit begins.

In this innerness, in this inner attentiveness, you will watch every thought, idea, and desire that comes into the mind. If you continue to stay in that inner space of observation, the activity of the mind will quiet down. Through constant, unmotivated looking within, you can step out of the field of thought.

Madhukar: Can I do what you suggest in the company of my lady friend? Can sitting and meditating in her company also be beneficial? Or are you saying that physical seclusion is the only way to support meditation?

Dadaji: You have to decide once and for all to make all your energy available for the meeting with what I call the spirit. Once you have decided, you need to concentrate all your energies towards this watchfulness. Then proceed slowly and quietly and discover what meditation is. Attention without thought is meditation. Slowly through watchful attention, you step out of the field of mind. You will be able to act without the prompting of thought and desire. And that freedom from desire is being in the present. That freedom is in the now.

You should work with all your understanding, senses, and energy and less with the thought and desire for activity. Do not choose to be motivated by desire! Choose not to discriminate between good and bad. It is the mind that gives labels. The best practice is being alone.

Madhukar: As I said earlier, I just want to be finished with the spirituality trip. But somehow I am not able to walk out of it. The search seems to continue in spite of my desire to drop it.

Dadaji: There are two things. One: you have come to the point at which it is made clear to you that you have to leave all gurus behind. You have to understand that nothing can be gained from outside or from other people. You alone have the means within yourself to discover and experience that quality we call the spirit.

Two: The search will keep hold of you until you have experienced the Divinity. How can we experience the quality that is the spirit, the soul, the Divinity? We never ask this question quietly in the depth of our being . We always hope to find the spirit outside, via someone else or something else. Gather all your energies! Go directly to the core, to that center in which the whole secret and mystery of life lies. To be with the inner spirit, you have to be really alone and anonymous.

Madhukar: But being alone and meditating doesn’t stop the mind either. That is my experience so far.

Dadaji: Only through watchfulness will you be able to see and know the mind completely. The whole secret of spiritual life is to understand the inadequacy of the mind and its thoughts, and to be free of them. This imaginative and desirous mind can be eliminated only through watchfulness and understanding. Thought activity and the thought process are blocking the incoming spirit. Not seeing this clearly as a fact is the main hindrance to realization of the spirit.

The more you stay in that inner attentiveness, the more you will become free from all the reactions of the known, the past – which is the mind. Then one faces the unknown, and the energy becomes pure and sensitive. This energy is then free from all ideas and desires, which are born out of the past.

Madhukar: How can I get out of my own way?

Dadaji: On the one hand, the “I” is the mind that seeks the spirit. On the other hand, the “I” is the cumulative effect of the whole past. The elimination of the past is freedom from the mind, which is the seeker. And as the seeker himself is dissolved, all seeking comes to an end. At that point, living becomes the experiencing of the total moment, and times merges into the timeless. To discover this eternal moment and live in it anonymously is the beginning and the end of all human searches.

Madhukar: Right now I can feel this timeless and eternal moment here with you. I wish this feeling would remain for all time, everywhere, and for everybody [a long beautiful moment of silence and peace ensued].

Dadaji: We are living in a very crucial period of human history. Nature expects beings to change a great deal. This dimensional change, which is the discovery of the beyond, is the challenge of our time.

I gave Dadaji’s teachings a lot of reflection. I knew from my own experience how important single-pointed focus on practice is. His tenet, “To be in the present is freedom from desire” was quite often my own experience, but when this state occurred, it was short-lived. According to Dadaji, this situation would change for the better if only I would leave my partner and be alone. But I had strong reservations about this suggestion. True, the time spent with my partner I could instead be spending it in meditation. However, I felt I did meditate enough and, as far as I could see, my relationship was not blocking my spiritual growth. My partner and I meditated together regularly and thus were supporting each other. Furthermore, during my practices I was alone anyway – with or without a partner. I was convinced that enlightenment did not require complete solitude.

Secondly, I really enjoyed investigating my true nature in the presence of teachers as well as by myself. In short, I was not willing to let go of the opportunity to deepen my understanding through communion with the teachers that I was meeting. I wanted to keep my ongoing inquiry as open as possible.

Therefore, it didn’t surprise me that it was almost three years before I met Dadaji again.

In April 1996, I took Sunderam, Sri Annamalai Swami’s personal assistant and interpreter, to meet Dadaji in Thane. Another friend of mine, Mr. Gurudayal, accompanied us. The following conversation was video-recorded at Dadaji’s residence.

Madhukar: I heard that you met Ramana Maharshi while he was alive, could you say something about your meeting with him?

Dadaji: Yes, I have been to Arunachala. I visited Bhagavan when he was still in his body. I stayed with him for three days at a time when I was wandering all over India. I asked him a few questions. I also took food with him. I don’t remember exactly the year of my visit.

Madhukar: So in the early years of your search, you were also visiting various teachers, just as I do today. Is that correct?

Dadaji: There is always a time in one’s life when one has to wander and see and understand the wise people. In my time of wandering, I went to Bhagavan. I came to realize, however, that we cannot really learn much from others. What we look for is not to be found outside of ourselves but within ourselves. But as long as the mind is wandering and curious about outside things, you will never get satisfied. And even when that thirst for realization is there, you have to wait for it to become strong. Only when it is strong can you enter into yourself.

Madhukar: I feel I have that thirst for realization you are talking about, but . . .

Dadaji: All that you want is inside you. But we never generate enough power within ourselves. We go out all the time; our energy goes out. But you must realize that nobody can give you anything on a platter. Let me repeat: You will get nothing from outside. This is the real secret of life.

There are people who have realized their reality, found their own Self. But they have discovered it within themselves, by their own effort. They didn’t get if from outside. Such people are rare. They are beautiful.

Madhukar: People like Ramana Maharshi . . .

Dadaji: When Ramana lived at Arunachala, he stayed most of the time in the mandir [hall]. He didn’t go much here and there. He didn’t go to get something from others. This is what is called tapasya [intense practice] – the inward search, the inward questioning. That inwardness is very rare in life.

As long as you don’t see the futility of that kind of search, your search will not come to an end. But let me tell you, realization will take time.

Madhukar: What is the real hindrance to realization?

Dadaji: At all times, the mind is eager to look outward. It is always trying, searching, moving. All this activity of the mind is the real hindrance to realization. As long as the mind is active in looking outside itself and is focused outward, there is no chance for realization.

You must realize that all that is important in spirituality is within you. But you never come to that “inner.” You never come to that inner with your total energy of life, with your totality. You are halfway here, halfway there; halfway in, halfway out. When all that outer focus comes to the inner, we realize that the key to realization lies hidden within ourselves. And that innerness is all we really want from life.

Gurudayal: Is it destined that some people become seekers? And is it destined whether we will become enlightened or not? In my opinion, it must be destined because not everybody can achieve the inwardness you talk about. Perhaps a few souls like you were destined to realize the Self.

Dadaji: What is destiny?

Gurudayal: All our efforts are futile – that’s destiny.

Dadaji: Who says effort is futile? First you adopt the idea of destiny and then you expect everything from it – too much, too soon. What is destiny? What created destiny? Who created destiny? Who has created your destiny? The concept that realization happens through destiny is just a convenient idea.

You must create the situation in which realization can happen. Somehow you are here at this place in this life to make a beginning for realization to happen – somewhere, sometime. Some people have done this; they have come to that realized state by practicing.

Gurudayal: But some teachers say that realization happened in their case because it was destined.

Dadaji: Such a teaching makes their students think that realization can be obtained without doing anything for it. But let me tell you again: There is no such thing as destiny! Realization happened to some individuals because they have worked hard for that goal for some time, somewhere. It happened for them because of their own effort.

Gurudayal: There is something in a person that makes them an artist or a musician. What is that “something”?

Dadaji: In order to become an artist or a musician, one has to work. Practice – not destiny – makes people masters in their field. They had to do all kinds of practices for a long time for that to happen. If someone attains mastership in a short time, it means that he or she has had some experience with it in an earlier life or lives. They were not simply born into this present life without any responsibility to work to develop the talents that were seeded in another life.

Madhukar: But wasn’t their birth also predestined?

Dadaji: Birth doesn’t alone create your destiny. Unless you really work for it, your destiny will not be created. You have to work for the fulfillment of your destiny.

Gurudayal: Fulfillment because of destiny or because of personal free will and effort? This is the only point that is not clear to me.

Dadaji: Where are we? What do we really want? Let us ask, “Are we really working for realization? Are we really hungry for spiritual fulfillment?” No! Many of us have only a lukewarm interest in that: many of us have only a superficial curiosity, and the mind takes over and plays with it. But those who are really hungry, passionately hungry for realization, will approach that hunger in a different way than those who are only interested, curious, and excited about enlightenment. The latter want realization without having to work for it. On the other hand, the ones who “arrive” worked very differently – they worked hard for their realization to occur. They are of a different breed. So, don’t wait for destiny to make realization happen to you! You have to create the situation in which this transformation can take place.

Sunderam: Yesterday and this morning, I went to see Ramesh Balsekar. He is a guru who is teaching Advaita Vedanta in Bombay. He was mostly talking about destiny. I told him that I took care of my guru, Annamalai Swami, for twenty years, but enlightenment I still do not have, it hasn’t happened to me yet. Balsekar replied, “Unless . . . ”

Dadaji: . . . it is destined . . . No! No!

Sunderam: “. . . it is will not happen.” He said to me, “Just live your normal life. If enlightenment is predestined for you, it will happen. You do not need to worry about it.”

Dadaji: Some people talk that way.

Sunderam: If the guru only stresses destiny, the seekers will not make an effort and they become lazy. I think people will not be helped by this approach.

Dadaji: Listening to such talk, people will become fatalists. They will only wish for the fate that enlightenment is going to happen to them. They will not work for it. Destiny is just a word, a concept There is no such thing as a destiny that falls on us from somewhere.

Sunderam: Balsekar kept repeating, “Unless it is God’s will, enlightenment will not happen. No practice and effort will help it to occur.”

Dadaji: Who will give enlightenment? Does this mean that unless it is given, it will not happen? Are there some preferences by means of divine will? Is there a God with His preferences? Does He give enlightenment to some people and not to others? If so, God must be a partial person then – no? Do you think that God is such a partial person?

Madhukar: You indicate very clearly that the occurrence of enlightenment mainly depends on the seeker’s practice.

Dadaji: Absolutely. If you work with your whole intensity and with your whole life energy for something to happen, it has to happen, and it will happen. In that case, nobody is going to be refused by anybody. Nobody can halt such an effort. But you must be ready to pay the full price for what you want.

It is like scaling Mt. Everest. To reach the top, you really have to work hard for it. Those people who reach the summit have to pay a price. They don’t reach it by sitting at home. They don’t reach it because it is destined that somebody else will take them there. No way! If you wait for that, you might just keep sitting where you are without ever reaching even the bottom of Mt. Everest.

Gurudayal: Don’t you think the body-mind organism called Sunderam was destined to visit you? Sunderam wasn’t aware of your existence until yesterday.

Dadaji: No, he wasn’t. But his appearance in front of me is not caused by destiny. His visit to me was not predestined. Why do you call it destined?

Gurudayal: Well, destiny many be just a word . . .

Dadaji: [To Sunderam] How did you come here? How did you hear about me? Don’t think so much of destiny! The fact is that you have come. And that happened because you were moving with Mr. Gurudayal from his house to my house. It happened because you were interested in meeting me.

[To Gurudayal] And you had the interest to bring Sunderam to me. That’s how our meeting happened.

[To Sunderam] Don’t you have an interest in visiting wise men?

Sunderam: Yes, I am interested to see enlightened beings.

Dadaji: That’s what it is! Unless you have that interest, you will not come to visit me.

Gurudayal: Swamiji, I agree that the eagerness and desire to meet you arises only if such an interest exits in him, but I believe that that interest is not his choice. Didn’t the interest just come to him one fine day? Isn’t that what destiny is?

Dadaji: Why does he have this interest? If he had been interested in music, he would have become a musician. [To Sunderam] And if you were interested in music, you would have visited musicians in Bombay, wouldn’t you? You would not be visiting wise men.

Gurudayal: But is it really in our power to choose which interest we have or are going to have? My real question is, “Is it up to us and is it in our power to have the interest in spirituality?”

Dadaji: What gives power to your quest, sir? Isn’t it your interest? What will satisfy your interest, your longing? Your hunger for spirituality. You give all these mysterious names to this simple fact of life. We make so much fuss about it. If you have a real interest and a real desire to meet a wise man, you will. If you have no interest and you refuse to visit a person, nobody will take you to him or her against your own wish. And there will be no meeting. It has nothing to do with destiny.

Sunderam: I remember, Osho said in a discourse . . .

Dadaji: Ah! Oh, God! Don’t tell me what he has said! Don’t listen to all these people! So many people say so many things! And you go to all of them. This is how you are deceived – because Osho said this, because that man said that, because that saint said this and that . . .

Sunderam: The scary fact is . . .

Dadaji: What about you? Find out about your “inner”! Of what use is it to listen to all these people and what they say? Enough of all these things now! You are caught up in the opinions of all these people. Osho is quoted. Ramana Maharshi has said . . . Krishnamurti proclaimed . . . These people may have realized something in their own way, yes. Now your challenge is to discover that realization in your own personal way. That’s important. But you never come to that.

Sunderam: I simply want to learn from these teachers That’s why I visit them.

Dadaji: You are always carried away by the images and ideas of other people. And you are hooked to their opinions. That is the problem. As long as you live with the opinions of others, you will never have the realization of your own inner understanding. But you have to work for that. You have to wait for that. Then realization can happen within yourself. And it will be your experience. Then you will not quote what other people have said.

These people carried out their mission. On the other hand, you keep yourself busy playing with their opinions and their findings. By doing so, you become only a second-hand individual. You don’t need to do that. Be what you are. If you have the interest to know what you really are, pursue that interest. Do something! Find! Go and pay the price for it! But you don’t!

Madhukar: Are you urging us to go beyond word, beyond the mind and concepts?

Dadaji: Mind is so clever. It is just making words after words. By doing so, it is fragmenting and dividing itself. It keeps asking: “Why this? Why that? Doesn’t this guru say so and so? Doesn’t that wise man say that?”

You don’t see this factor. You don’t see how you are caught up in the opinions of other people. To have an opinion about something does not mean you have an understanding about it. You can collect the opinions of all the wise men in the world, and you will remain ignorant.

Madhukar: More important that any intellectual understanding is experience – and more so the lasting experience of peace.

Dadaji: Yes, experiencing is something different. Only that inner experiencing is the real understanding. Opinions are merely concepts in the mind. Realization is not an idea.

You are already fragmented human beings. And by playing with other people’s ideas and philosophies, you get yourself even more divided.

Madhukar: But there are different stages on the spiritual journey and . . .

Dadaji: Yes, yes, I understand. At the beginning of the search, there is a little curiosity and an interest in finding out what spirituality is all about. Finding out what, and where – in books? From other people? Finally, the searching has to lead to yourself. There is a place, a seat, within yourself where you can find and realize what you were looking for. Your own realization will be your own wisdom about life. Then you will not be bothered by the opinions of other people. But you don’t want to do what is necessary for that to occur; you don’t want to pay the price, nor do you have the necessary patience.

Gurudayal: Guruji, what actually is realization?

Dadaji: Realization means to realize the truth. It means to actually experience the truth within ourselves.

Gurudayal: And what is the truth?

Dadaji: What do you want? An explanation of the word? Truth is what is real.

Gurudayal: What are we? What is real in us? What is the truth in us?

Dadaji: We are whatever is real. What is it that is real? The answer is: experiencing the real – the realization of That, of the “inner.”

To have concepts and ideas about this is not enough. Concepts and ideas are part of the thought process. It is the mind that has concepts and ideas. But it is life itself that realizes, knows, and understands the truth.

That is all.

It was already my experience that the activity of the mind did quiet down when I stayed in the inner space of observation and witnessing. Only through witnessing or self-inquiry was I able to see and know the mind more clearly and understand its inadequacy. But to be free of the thoughts it kept generating necessitated more practice on my part. Therefore, I felt deeply met and supported by Dadaji’s insistence on rigorous practice.

“Freedom from desire is to be in the present,” Dadaji taught, and I knew that that freedom was only available in the now. How could I aways be in the present moment? I couldn’t! But in my meditation sadhana and in my self-inquiry practice, presence remained each time the thought process came to a stop through awareness. More freedom from the mind meant more presence. I felt grateful for Dadaji’s simple equation, which is congruent with my own experience.

This time, Dadaji’s persistent suggestion to leave all teachers behind and be on my own struck a chord in me. Even before meeting Dadaji, I knew that the day was not far off when I would be alone on my odyssey. But did Dadaji want me to remain without any other teacher except him? Is that why he invited me to stay as long as I wanted and to live and meditate in the gazebo next to his house? Did he want to instruct and guide me in my practices? If so, what about aloneness? Yes, I wanted to – and did – practice, but I didn’t want to do so exclusively with him as my teacher.

On my last visit to him, I didn’t have the chance to ask Dadaji these questions. In any case, I was not inclined to take up his offer.

Dadaji had kindly offered me what he owned: his house and his wisdom. And from his compassionate heart, he suggested devices to me that he knew and taught from his personal experience: aloneness and practice. They were part of Dadaji’s own path that helped him reach the state he was in. Like Ramana Maharshi, he has remained a bachelor all his life.

At this point, I didn’t care much anymore about the issue of predestination versus free will. If everything was predestined, I thought, then my practicing was predestined too. Within that system of belief, if I thought that doing spiritual practice was a function of free will and an act of person doership, having that belief and doing those practices – which Ramesh Balsekar felt were unnecessary for enlightenment – was itself destined. By the same token, I could even get enlightened against my own will, if it were so destined. So why bother about predestination at all?

I was deeply touched by Dadaji’s personal example and attainment. His pointing out again and again the importance of practice strengthened the roots of meditation even more deeply in me. I am profoundly grateful to him for that.

Spurred on my Dadaji’s loving presence, deep peace, gentleness, and fatherly goodwill, I was now happy to continue my odyssey.

-Berthold Madhukar Thompson

From The Odyssey of Enlightenment: Rare Interviews with Enlightened Teachers of Our Time, chapter 8

See the post from chapter 5: Practice Until Stillness Becomes Permanent.

Amido and I spent some time with Dadaji, which you can read about on A Visitor From Beyond the Mind.

Practice Until Stillness is Permanent – Annamalai Swami

I first met Annamalai Swami in June 1993, during my initial visit to Arunachala and the Sri Ramanashramam. As I explained earlier, I was eager to meet with disciples of Papaji’s guru, Sri Ramana Maharshi, in the hope that they would be able to assist me in my predicament as a seeker and guide me further in my spiritual endeavor.

At the time of my visit, I was Papaji’s ardent disciple and one of his right-hand men. I was deeply grateful for the fact that through his presence and guidance, he had helped to recognize my true nature. He facilitated many dips into the Self during the time I was with him, but I was still not satisfied with my own awakening. In addition, I had doubts about several aspects of Papaji’s teachings. Annamalai Swami was the first of Papaji’s gurubhais that I sought out, hoping he could clarify these issues for me.

I wanted to hear more about the qualifications of the true guru, the necessity of practice, the initial recognition of the Self, and how the latter related to final enlightenment. I also wanted to determine if and how far Papaji had departed from his own guru’s teaching. I hoped that such an exploration would help me better understand my own teacher and myself. I was determined to ask my questions in a humble search for truth, and I was clear that I did not want to shed a bad light on my own guru, Papaji.

Let me be more specific about my dissatisfaction: Since I’d had my enlightenment experience with Papaji, my life hadn’t changed significantly. I still got angry and judgmental. At times I also found myself fearful, or immersed in desire or aversion. Obviously, I was not permanently happy and in peace. Foremost was the fact that I still had the desire for true enlightenment.

My meeting with the swami shortly after my arrival in Tiruvannamalai was preceded by an unexpected encounter that surprised and encouraged me. I was heading back to my lodgings in the Ramanashramam after an evening walk on the slopes of Arunachala, when I happened to pass a white bungalow in which fast, rhythmic music was playing. The familiar sounds stopped me in my tracks. I could hardly believe my ears—it was the music for Osho’s Dynamic Meditation! Somebody in Tiruvannamalai was practicing one of Osho’s meditations! Who could it be? I was overcome with curiosity and resolved to try and find out.

The entrance to the bungalow’s compound lay a few yards ahead of me along the path. It was marked by an iron gate set in an archway with an inscription identifying the place as the Sri Annamalai Swami Ashram. I passed quietly through the gate and followed the sound of the music. It led me to a wooded door at the side of the bungalow. It wasn’t locked. I opened it as quietly as possible, just enough to be able to take a peek inside. A lean, bearded man, clad only in a lunghi, had reached the third phase of the meditation. He was alone and oblivious to my presence. Smiling to myself, I closed the door softly and withdrew, walking back home through the gathering dusk. The next morning, when I took my seat in Annamalai Swami’s presence, I was surprised to find that his personal attendant and interpreter was the many I had seen doing Dynamic Meditation the evening before. Swamiji spoke only Tamil, the language of Tamil Nadu, his native state. His interpreter’s name, I learned was Sunderam.

I met with Annamalai Swami almost every day during my two-week stay at the Sri Ramanashramam, and Sunderam was always present as interpreter. Our exchanges were not recorded, but the conversation that follows represents a digest of our various encounters during that two-week period. I reconstructed it from memory shorty after our last meeting.

In daily life, Annamalai Swami was simply called Swamiji, and that’s how I addressed him in our conversations. In order to keep the interview in the same intimate climate that occurred in his presence, I will call him the swami, or Swamiji, in what follows.

Madhukar: Poonjaji told me that I have done whole work, that I have realized the Self. However, I still find myself confronted with questions and doubts about it.

Swamiji: Who has questions? Who has doubts?

Madhukar: Me . . . Now I suppose your next question will be: “To whom do doubts appear?” Right? [laughter] And I will answer, “To me,” and then I will need to continue to inquire, “Who am I?”—Sri Ramana’s self-inquiry.

Swamiji: That’s the right way to practice.

Madhukar: In my case, I have doubts about my realization in spite of Poonjaji’s assurance that it has really happened. My awareness of the Self is not without a break.

Swamiji: If there are breaks in your Self-awareness, it means that you are not a jnani [enlightened sage] yet. Before one becomes established in the Self without any breaks, without any changes, one has to contact and enjoy the Self many times. By steady meditation and the continued practice of self-inquiry, one will finally become permanently established in the Self, without any breaks.

Madhukar: How can I repeat the experience of peace and stillness that I often feel in Poonjaji’s presence?

Swamiji: Your experience of stillness is due to the influence of the milieu in which you find yourself when you are with your guru. However, your experience is momentary. Therefore, you need to practice until the experience of stillness is permanent.

Madhukar: Is the blissful and ecstatic state that I experience in Poonjaji’s presence samadhi [experience of the Self]?

Swamiji: Samadhi is perfect peace. But it is only momentary. Ecstasy arises when the mind comes back at the end of samadhi. It arises with the remembrance of the peace of samadhi. When the ego has finally died, the symptoms of bliss and ecstasy cease.

Madhukar: Poonjaji holds that no practice is necessary in order to realize the Self. You and Bhagavan Sri Ramana, however, contradict this stand quite clearly. To demonstrate this, I would like to read a quote from Sri Ramana. Is that okay?

Swamiji: Please, go ahead.

Madhukar: “In the proximity of a great master, the vasanas [latent tendencies of the mind] cease to be active, the mind becomes still, and samadhi [blissful experience of the Self] results. Thus the disciple gains true knowledge and right experience in the presence of the master. To remain unshaken in it, further efforts are necessary. Eventually the disciple will know it to his real being and will thus be liberated even while alive.”

Swamiji: I agree fully with Bhagavan. Bhagavan’s teaching is my own experience. I don’t know what Poonjaji is teaching.

Madhukar: As far as I have understood him, he teaches that self-inquiry needs to be done only once in the presence of the guru. In the first or perhaps second or third encounters with Poonjaji, the Self is realized. Papaji says that after the initial recognition of the Self, no further practice is necessary. However, he stresses that the guru’s presence and the association with him in satsang are usually required before that recognition can occur.

Swamiji: Only the serenity that is void of the ego is the highest knowledge. Until you attain the state in which you are the egoless reality, you must continue to seek the annihilation of the “I”-notion. This happens by associating with the teacher and by diligently practicing self-inquiry.

Madhukar: How long should one stay with one’s guru?

Swamiji: The association with the guru is necessary until the seeker has realized the Self. Only in the company of a teacher who has realized the Self can one become aware of one’s Self. Until you have realized the Self, you should study and practice the teachings of the guru.

Madhukar: What are the characteristics of a proper guru?

Swamiji: In the guru’s association or presence, you should find peace whenever your mind is attuned with him. He should have virtues like patience, quietness, forgiveness, and compassion. The one I whom you have faith is your guru. The one you feel a deep sense of respect for is your guru.

Madhukar: Although Poonjaji is my guru, I have met quite a few other gurus during my present stay at Arunachal. Is that okay? Is it okay to be in contact with more than one spiritual master?

Swamiji: Dattattreya had twenty-four masters. In fact, gurus can even be inanimate. Bhagwan’s master was Arunachala. The master is the Self. Through the grace of the guru, the seeker will come to know that Self which is true reality. Thus he recognizes that the Self is really his master.

Madhukar: While staying at the holy mountain, it becomes clearer to me with every passing day that I will have to leave my guru’s physical presence. However, the thought of leaving him makes me uncomfortable.

Swamiji: As I said, the Self is the reality, and the Self is the real master. So where could you go? You are not going anywhere. Even supposing you are the body, let me ask you, “Has your body come from Lucknow to Tiruvannamalai?” You simply sat in an airplane and in a car, and finally you say that you have come here. But you are not the body. The Self does not move at all. The world moves in the Self. You are only what you are. There is no change in you—the Self. Even if you depart from Poonjaji, you are here and there and everywhere. Only the surroundings change.

Madhukar: I am afraid perhaps to be missing out on Poonjaji’s grace.

Swamiji: Grace is within you. If grace is outside you, it is useless. Grace is the Self. You are never outside its operation. It is always there.

Madhukar – I have already told you something about my first teacher, Osho. I would like to share the most disturbing incident I had with him.

Swamiji: Please, don’t hesitate to speak. However, your doubts must naturally relate to the level of the body and mind and manifestation. They can only relate to what is unreal. Perhaps one day all your doubts will be removed once and for all—when you realize who you really are.

Madhukar – About six weeks before his own death, Osho’s lover and companion, Nirvano, took her own life in his ashram in Pune. She had lived intimately in Osho’s presence for almost twenty years. Her suicide shocked me more deeply than my guru’s death. It wasn’t just that she did not attain enlightenment; she must also have lived in a state of terrible misery and depression. My hopes of ever getting enlightened crashed with her death. I thought that if she, who had had such intimate contact with the master for such a long time, could not achieve enlightenment, then what chance was there for the rest of us? Her death quite disillusioned me.

Does her example demonstrate how difficult it is to become enlightened? And what about meditation? In her case, two decades of meditation practice failed to lead to enlightenment, and indeed it couldn’t even save her from committing suicide.

Swamiji: I can understand your feelings about the lady’s death and the conclusions you have drawn from it. Each person’s life evolves according to his or her destiny and karma [the law of retributive action] from the previous life. Everything that happens, happens according to the Supreme Power. An event in a devotee’s life does not occur because of the influence of his or her guru. It happens because it is so destined. Such an event has nothing to do with the ability or inability or power or powerlessness of the guru to govern events.

Take the example of Sri Ramana. In the 1920s, Bhagavan had a personal attendant who had served him for many years. He was called Annamalai Swami, like me. That devotee had the privilege of being in his master’s presence around the clock. At some point, he left Bhagavan and lived alone in the forests some thirty kilometers from here, because he thought he was not worthy to be near his master. Several times Bhagavan tried to bring him back to the ashram. He sent several people to fetch him. But Annamalai Swami refused to return. Instead, he committed suicide by hanging himself from a tree.

The swami’s narration shocked me. I felt deep compassion for these two devotees who couldn’t even be saved by the proximity of their teachers’ presence. I knew that further questioning about this topic wouldn’t help dissolve my pain. If anything could, it was nothing less than the presence of the Self. When Annamalai Swami finished narrating this story, we sat together for a long time in silence.

I returned to Arunachala six months later, in December 1993. My earlier conversations with Annamalai Swami convinced me that I had come to a spiritual impasse with Papaji. Consequently, I had decided to leave my teacher and return to the womb of his guru’s holy mountain.

Since Papaji had offered no further guidance, Annamalai Swami’s words during my earlier visit were a big help to me: “If there are breaks in your Self-awareness, it means that you are not a jnani yet. Before one becomes established in the Self without any breaks, without any changes, one has to contact and enjoy the Self many times. By steady meditation and continued practice of self-inquiry, one will finally become permanently established in the Self, without any breaks.” After researching Sri Ramana’s works, I came to the conclusion that Annamalai Swami taught what his teacher did. And that teaching was now being confirmed by my own experience. On the other hand, Papaji had established his own, unique teaching in this respect, which wasn’t congruent with my experience. I was now beginning to face this reality.

On my previous visit to Tiruvannamalai, I had considered myself still associated with Papaji as a student. However, on this visit, I felt I could ask other teachers questions without inhibitions. I wasn’t yet sure if I was looking for a new teacher. I stayed for six weeks, and during this time I had a further series of conversations with Annamalai Swami. The following talk was recorded on December 24, 1993 at the Sri Annamalai Swami Ashram. In addition to the swami, Sunderam, and myself, four other seekers were also present.

Madhukar: You lived with Sri Ramana Maharshi in the Ramanashramam from 1928 to 1938. After ten years of ashram life, you moved out and lived on your own. You chose to distance yourself physically from the Maharshi. I would like to know what made you stay away from Bhagavan while he was still in his body?

Swamiji: When Bhagavan entered my being, my life became natural, and so there was no need to stay with him. Bhagavan acknowledged this, and therefore I went on my own. When a flower becomes a fruit, there is no need for it to stick to the tree any longer.

Madhukar: From 1938 to 1993, for fifty-five years, Swamiji has been living in his own ashram. Is that right?

Swamiji: In the years 1938 through 1942, I was living on my own, but I was going for Bhagavan’s darshan on a daily basis. I was meditating with him every day.

On one occasion in 1942, Bhagavan covered his face with a cloth when I came for his darshan. I became very worried and I asked him, “Why have you covered your face as soon as you saw me? Does it mean that I should not come anymore, or what?” Bhagavan remained silent. He was not saying anything. After a while he said, “When I am just relaxed in my own Self, why do you come and disturb me? That is what I want to say.” I understood that Bhagavan did not want me to come to him any longer.

After I had left the hall and walked away for some distance, Bhagavan called me back and said, “If human beings don’t think of God or meditate on God or truth, they will live in misery and suffering. Similarly, if one has reached the state of maturity and if one—in spite of one’s maturity—keeps thinking that one is different from the guru or from God, such an attitude will produce the same suffering.”

These words made me understand that Bhagavan didn’t want me to come to the ashram anymore. He didn’t want me to come to see him any longer. He wanted me to stay by myself. That’s why I stayed by myself in Palakottu from that time onwards.

Madhukar: Was Bhagavan happy with your decision? Did he comment on it?

Swamiji: Not directly. He had his own way of communicating with me— like in another incident in which Bhagavan made it clear to me that I should stop seeing him. Bhagavan used to go for a walk on the hill almost every day. He was using the path which led past my hut in Palakottu. I used to go to the hillside to meet Bhagavan on his walk. True, Bhagavan had indicated that I shouldn’t meet him in the ashram anymore. But he had not told me not to come to the hill and have his darshan during his daily walk. I had thought that Bhagavan didn’t mind my habit. But when I met Bhagavan on this specific occasion on the hill, he asked me three times, “Why have you come? Why have you come? Why have you come?” Then he said to me, “Staying by yourself, you will be happier than me.”

Madhukar: Could you finally let go of his physical presence?

Swamiji: Yes. I did.

Oh! Now I remember another incident which happened before the one on the hill. One day, Bhagavan came to Palakottu. I saw him standing outside my hut. When I went outside to greet him and prostrate to him, Bhagavan said, “I have come for your darshan.” His words shocked me. I said to him, “Why is Bhagavan saying something like that to an ordinary man like me? Why is Bhagavan using big words like this? It is not correct to say things like this!” Bhagavan said, “You are living by my words. Is it not great?!”

Bhagavan told me that I did not need to go anywhere. He told me to just stay at my place in Palakottu. He told me just to be by myself. He told me just to be my Self. And he told me that whatever I will be needing will happen by itself. He said there is no need to ask anybody for money. “Money will come to you whenever it is needed,” he said.

Madhukar: Did his words come true?

Swamiji: Yes, in every respect. Bhagavan’s words all became true. And I did stop seeing him. Even on his mahasamadhi, I remained by myself— with my own Self.

Madhukar: I heard that Swamiji has never left Tiruvannamalai during the past fifty-five years. Is there a reason for this or did it just happen?

Swamiji: Bhagavan told me to stay at this place. I followed my guru’s words. I found that there is no happiness outside. So I stayed “at home.” There isn’t anything outside. Whatever you are seeking is your Self. Whatever you are seeking is the atman. That’s why there is no need to go outside. Bhagavan told me, “Don’t even go to your neighbor’s room.” So I didn’t.

Madhukar: But you used to do the thirteen-kilometer-long pradakshina [the practice of circumambulating a holy object] around Arunachala once a day, didn’t you?

Swamiji: Yes, I used to do that.

Madhukar: Are you still doing that practice?

Swamiji: No, nowadays I am not doing pradakshina anymore.

Madhukar: Let me tell you what I understand as discernment by means of inquiry:

A thought arises.

Now the “I” or the ego asks, “To whom does this thought arise?”

The answer is, “To me.”

The “I” then asks, “Who am I?” There is an “answer” that has no words.

Somehow, nothingness or silence is present. Nothingness or silence is there as an answer to the question “Who am I?”

Swamiji: Correct.

Madhukar – Is it necessary to keep asking, “To whom does this nothingness and silence appear?” When nothingness and silence “appear,” do I need to ask further?

Swamiji: As soon as you realize that there is only a rope and not a snake, you don’t need to keep questioning whether what you see is a snake or not. But you should not forget that there is only a rope.

Madhukar – Do you mean to say that there is no need to ask again, “To whom does nothingness appear?”

Swamiji: That’s right. There is no need for any further questioning, because there is no duality in that silence and nothingness. Silence and nothingness are not things you experience—they are what you are.

Madhukar – I am asking this question because it seems to me that there is duality. Isn’t it the “I” or the “I”-thought that is perceiving nothingness or silence? There is nothingness. But this nothingness or silence is still perceived by something that I think is the ego.

Swamiji: In that nothingness or silence there is no “I”-thought. That is real life. That is reality.

Madhukar – I am still not clear. Let me ask again: Is the perceived nothingness, or silence, perceived by the “I”?

Swamiji: Let us take an example. First you misunderstand yourself to be somebody else—not a human being. Some day you come to know that you are a human being. This understanding will always stay with you. After you have this understanding, what more do you need? So it is with the Self. Knowing the Self is being the Self.

Say you are Madhukar, but you think you are somebody else. Now you come to know that you had mistaken yourself to be somebody else; you have come to know that you are Madhukar. You realized that you were Madhukar before, but you just didn’t know it. Having come to know your true identity, there is no need to do anything further. Now you know you are Madhukar. There is only one Madhukar. Whatever exists is in a state of oneness. And in oneness there is no duality.

Madhukar – Swamiji, please clarify one more time for me: After asking “Who am I?” and “To whom does this thought appear?” there is simultaneously beingness or nothingness and the awareness of perceiving the object “nothingness.” If inquiry is done correctly, should there be only nothingness without the sense that an object called beingness or nothingness is perceived?

Swamiji: For whom does this duality exist?

Madhukar – For me. In Sri Ramana’s inquiry, the next question would be “Who am I?” In my case the “answer” is a nothingness and silence without words. The sequence is, “To whom does this nothingness, this silence, appear?”

“To me.”

“Who am I?”

“Nothingness, silence.”

So you can see, my situation is like a dog biting its own tail. There seems to be no way out of the circle. How should I proceed with my inquiry practice?

Swamiji: You are Madhukar, you know that. After you have come to know that, why do you repeat that you are Madhukar or why do you forget that you are Madhukar? Be Madhukar! You are Madhukar. Knowing that you are Madhukar, you are Madhukar. At the moment of recognizing that silence and nothingness as your Self, you are the Self. In that instant, you will also recognize and know that you were never anything else than the Self, and you will never be anything else than the Self.

Madhukar – In each attempt of self-inquiry “Who am I?”, the “me”—the “I,” the ego, the “I”-thought—dissolves, and that nothingness and silence remain as my true nature. And each time, I recognize that the “I” or “me” or the “I”-thought actually never really existed. Inquiry leads back to nothingness and silence and being what I truly am. But at times I forget this and I am back where I started.

Swamiji: Who forgets it?

Madhukar – Me! Well, here we go again! [laughter]

May I ask you another question: Somebody who sits in a cave has more time to do sadhana [spiritual practice] than somebody who has a family and a job. Has the meditator a better chance to reach enlightenment?

Swamiji: One doesn’t realize one’s true Self. The true Self is already there. One person may do a job while another person is playing. Whatever one does, it is of no use. While working, abide in your Self as if you are living in a cave. There is no outside and no inside.

Madhukar – I would like to go back to what we discussed before. Is it advisable to focus on this nothingness and wait for the next thought to arise, or is it advisable to keep inquiring as to whom this nothingness appears?

Please excuse me if I keep repeating this question; I do so intentionally. Because self-inquiry is the most important and fundamental practice for me, I need absolute clarity about its correct, practical application.

Swamiji: If you stay constantly in that nothingness, then no thoughts will arise. Only if you give up the hold on that state will something come up and take you away from it. So in that case, you have got to inquire again. If you live always with the understanding that there is only a rope, then how can a snake arise from it?

Or let us take another example. If you fill your pots full of water and you pour more and more water into them, they will not contain it. Like that, if one knows oneself, there is nothing else to know. The one who knows his own Self becomes content within himself, like a pot full of water.

Madhukar – In the waking state, the “I”-thought, the “I” notion, seems to be always present as an underlying silent sense of “I.” It is a kind of “I”- consciousness.

When I wake up in the morning, the “I”-thought slides in without being noticed because I am so used to believing that I am the body and the mind, and therefore I call them “I.” I believe that is why the “I”-thought seems to be always there. It is an ever-present feeling, although it is not always noticed.

Swamiji: To whom does this “I”-thought arise? Who is sleeping? We are all asleep. Only the sage is not asleep.

Madhukar – Okay. Let me formulate my question in a different way. It is difficult to ask the precise question. I’ll try.

What I am pointing to is how I perceive this “I”-thought or this “me.” What I am describing is how this “I”-feeling happens to Madhukar. It seems as if the “I”-feeling appears in the moment of waking up from sleep. Then the thought arises, “I want to have a cup of coffee.” It seems as if the “I”- thought and the thought of wanting a cup of coffee exist together. They become “my” thought. Is this correct?

Swamiji: To whom does all this happen? Whatever thoughts may arise, you are not that. For example, so many people in the world are thinking so many thoughts. Their thoughts are just arising by themselves. We can see all these thoughts as “just thoughts.” We can have the same kind of view regarding our own thoughts: “Whatever thoughts may arise, I am not these thoughts.” Because for the real I there is no thought. The real I is not connected with any thought. It is free from all thought. As in sleep, there is no thought.

Madhukar – Do I hear you say that thoughts are not “my” thoughts? Are thoughts just thoughts arising or appearing?

Swamiji: Thoughts appear by themselves only in waking or in dreaming. Otherwise they would need to appear in deep sleep too. Do they appear in deep sleep too?

Madhukar – No, they don’t.

Swamiji: Sleep is a miracle. In sleep there is no thought, no mind, no world, only samadhi. After waking up—as soon as the mind begins to function—the body appears and the entire manifestation begins to function.

When you have come to know who you really are, nothing affects you because you know that all is your own Self. Mind is Me. Everything is Me. All is Me. I am searching for my own Self. Take an example: There is only one gold but many different kinds of ornaments. Different kinds of ornaments are made of the same gold.

The one who does not realize his true Self thinks that the body is the true Self. The one who realizes his true Self finds that everything is his true Self. For him there is no samsara [cycle of birth and death], no nirvana [liberation from samsara] no maya [manifestation mistakenly believed to be real], no ego. All is Self. That is why this state is called the wakeful sleep. All and everything are the Self.

As Swamiji explained these things, I was overcome with tears of gratitude and bliss as a further recognition of the Self occurred. All at once my heart energy expanded and expanded until it finally burst out of all confines and fountained upward as intense light and heat that consumed my body awareness. Everything stood still. When I became aware of my body-mind self again, I found myself prostrated headlong in front of Annamalai Swami, gently touching his feet in reverence and devotion. I was unable to speak, and a deep silence permeated the room. After a long time, I sat up and resumed questioning Swamiji.

Madhukar – Listening to you, my questions don’t make sense anymore.

Swamiji: For each lock there is a key. I remember the incident when four famous pundits came to Bhagavan with a list of sixty-three questions in hand. It was a very long list. They gave the list to Bhagavan. He looked at the list. After seeing all those questions, Bhagavan asked them from whom or from where all these questions came. They just looked at each other. They looked at me, then at Bhagavan. Then they asked, “What is the answer to this question?”

Bhagavan said, “All questions have the same answer. Find out to whom the questions and the answers come. Who is the questioner? Who wants moksha [spiritual liberation]? When you know it, all questions will be answered once and for all times.” Hearing Bhagavan’s words, the pundits became silent.

Madhukar – Bhagavan seemed to have used his final weapon on the pundits. Wasn’t atma vichara, self-inquiry, called the supreme weapon by Bhagavan?

Swamiji: Yes, he called it brahmastra, the ultimate weapon. This weapon is able to defeat all other weapons. If you put armor around your body, nothing can harm your body. This is brahmakosam, the ultimate armor. Therefore if you wear the armor of your Self or if you remain in your Self, no misery, no thought—nothing—can disturb you. You get only shanti [peace] and that’s it. Shanti.

Bhagavan often used to repeat a particular teaching: He used to say about himself, “Others should not be jealous of me, because there is nobody in the world who is smaller than me. I am the smallest. I am nothing. I am less than nothing.” What he wanted to say was that one should not have an ego at all. Only a person who has that kind of humbleness can realize the Self. The one who has no ego is greater than all others. When we are nobody and no one, the Self remains. By being the Self, one is All.

On one occasion, I returned to Bhagavan when I had completed all the ashram building works he had asked me to do. Bhagavan said to me, “Don’t look back on what you have done!” From that moment onward, I have lived my life and done all my work with this selfless attitude.

A few days later, on New Year’s Eve 1993, another interview took place at the Sri Annamalai Ashram. On this occasion, only Annamalai Swami, Sunderam, and I were present.

Madhukar – On the occasion of my previous visit, I asked you for guidance regarding my self-inquiry practice. Today I would like to ask you for further guidance.

Swamiji: Don’t hesitate to ask.

Madhukar – I think I am going to repeat myself. Is that okay?

Swamiji: Ask your questions!

Madhukar – When I arrived at Arunachala, my practice of self-inquiry proceeded in the following manner:

When a thought appeared I would ask myself, “To whom does this thought appear?”

Answer: To me.

Question: Who am I?

Answer: Emptiness, nothingness. This answer expresses itself not as a word but rather as something like a feeling within myself.

Question: To whom does this emptiness appear?

Answer: To me.

Question: Who am I?

Answer: Emptiness, nothingness.

Then the next futile circle of inquiry would start again. There seemed to be no way out. As I told you, the situation was similar to a dog chasing its own tail.

Now, after having been four weeks at Arunachala, the content of the answer to the inquiry “Who am I?” seems to have changed. The same “I” that is present in the inquiry “Who am I?” stays present as the all-pervading and silent “I”—as an unspoken answer. The “I” is everywhere and in everything. Would you comment, please?

Swamiji: That is the real I.

Madhukar – At times, the perception of the I pervading everything is stronger than at other occasions. Why is that?

Swamiji: The perception is less to whom? [laughter] In fact, in the Self there is no “more” and no “less.”

Madhukar – In this I, there is neither good nor bad. In this I, is nothing but I.

Swamiji: In the days with Bhagavan, there was no such thing as good or bad. There was nothing to judge. We didn’t judge what was good and what was bad. Whatever was, was accepted.

Madhukar – I heard you say, “Hold on to the I!” You said that the all-pervading I that I have described to you is the real I. How can I know it is the real I?

Swamiji: If you don’t hold on to the real I, there will be the idea, “I am the body and the mind.” They look real. That is why it is suggested to hold on to the real I until you have become firmly established in the real I. The conclusion of meditation is to remain in your real state. But the truth is that nobody is doing meditation. All is the Self.

Madhukar – That state is not really a state, and therefore it cannot be “my state.” That state is “nobody’s state.”

Swamiji: In this state, you are not remembering and you are not forgetting anything. You are not thinking and not remembering “I am Madhukar” or “I am not Madhukar.” When you have the feeling “I am Madhukar,” you are self conscious. As long as we are referring to the body and mind, we have to meditate on the Self. Remember, all thoughts and methods regarding karma yoga [path of action], bhakti yoga [path of devotion], dhyana yoga [path of meditation], and jnana yoga [path of wisdom] are not the truth. We should not meditate on the body and on the mind but only on the Self. When we become established in the Self, there is no need to think about the Self.

Take the example of the snake and the rope.

As long as the illusion of the snake is there, the truth is not revealed. When you are fully convinced that there is only a rope, then there is not even the need to remove it.

Madhukar – When a rope is a rope there is no need for inquiry. When the rope appears to be a snake, there is a need for inquiry. Is that what you are saying?

Swamiji: To reinforce what I taught you in your first visit, I will quote a song from Bhagavan: “I am a man. And once I know that I am a man, what is the need to think that I am a man? But if I think I am somebody else or something else, then I must first come to know and to recognize that I am a man. And I then must give up that illusion to be something else.”

The vasanas—the latent tendencies, conditionings, and habits of the mind carried over from many past lives—hinder the realization of the realized state. These tendencies appear and cover the truth. That is why you must inquire, “Who am I?” and “To whom does this happen?” Such practice will irradicate the vasanas.

Madhukar – Are you saying that inquiry is essential in every moment and in every situation?

Swamiji: As long as light is lit in the house, darkness cannot enter. Likewise, as long as meditation and self-inquiry are practiced, vasanas cannot stay on. Continuous meditation is like a river. The flow of the river is always uninterrupted. When a constant flow of awareness is going on, vasanas cannot enter. This is constant meditation.

Madhukar – In a state of bliss, is it also necessary to keep inquiring, “To whom does bliss happen? Who am I?” and so on?

Swamiji: Try to inquire into happiness and you will find the same peace and quiet of the Self that is underlying both happiness and misery.

Madhukar – For many years, my understanding was that the experience of permanent bliss is the experience of the Self. Bliss or misery is experienced by the “me.” Both are experienced on the same level. How can I go beyond happiness and unhappiness?

Swamiji: Only on the level of the mind do opposites exist, like pain and pleasure, unhappiness and happiness. But in the Self there is no such thing.

Let me give you an example. Because of the eyes, you are able to see everything around you. But you cannot see your eyes with your own eyes. Even though you can’t see your own eyes, you cannot deny the existence of your eyes. You know with absolute certainty that they exist. The Self is like that. You cannot see the Self as an object, but you are the Self. Being one’s Self is jnana [wisdom]. Being the Self is knowing the Self. In that state, there is no duality. You are always That. You think that you are different from the Self, and that is the mistake. Giving up the difference is sadhana.

In the deep-sleep state, there is no difference between you and the Self. At this moment—here-now—there is also no difference between the Self and you and everything else. All is One. All is the One. All is one Self.

Madhukar – Bliss and misery don’t touch the Self. Seen from the viewpoint of the Self, they happen like a dream. In the realized state, bliss and misery are happening within awareness but without personal identification. Is that correct?

Swamiji: Ultimately you cannot divide anything. All is Self. Take the body as an example. The whole body is yours: The two legs are yours; the two hands are yours; the two eyes are yours. In bodily life, happiness and misery always coexist. It is important to meet both with equanimity. In a small baby, you can see vividly that happiness and misery merge into one.

I had one last interaction with Swamiji. I wanted to hear one more time what he had to say about the issue of gurus declaring their students enlightened, and in particular, about Papaji’s declaration of my enlightenment. I expected him to have at least some reservations about Papaji’s distinctive custom. I decided to seek from Annamalai Swami a more private answer in the intimate context of a personal letter. Thus, the following questions and answers were conveyed by mail in summer of 1994. They are set out below, along with his answers (translated by Sunderam).

Madhukar – Did Bhagavan ever declare any of his disciples enlightened?

Swamiji: As far as I know, Sri Bhagavan did not declare anybody enlightened except his mother and the cow, Lakshmi. Nevertheless, many seekers reached very high states and attained peace and maturity in his presence.

Madhukar – Do you believe that my guru, your gurubhai, Poonjaji, is enlightened?

Swamiji: Although I never met Poonjaji in person, I consider him as an enlightened being.

Madhukar – Poonjaji declared me enlightened several times. But I didn’t consider myself to be enlightened. Was Poonjaji fooling me as well as others?

Swamiji: You said in your letter that Poonjaji declared you enlightened.

Poonjaji is correct. But you did not trust and stay by his words. You moved away from the state of enlightenment and got yourself caught in the trap of the mind and its doubts. So it is not Poonjaji’s mistake. It is your mistake. Realize the tricks of the mind and be free from it.

Madhukar – I wish I could meet my real, final, and last guru in this life. How can I find him? What can I do to find him?

Swamiji: If you have the intense desire to live with a guru in whom you have total trust, that intensity will take you to a master. If you are fully ready to receive a master, the master will come to you.

At the end of 1995, I received a letter from Sunderam that contained the sad news and some of the details of Sri Annamalai Swami’s mahasamadhi. He wrote that Swamiji had not been feeling well and his body had become increasingly weak during the preceding months. Early one morning after Annamalai Swami awakened, he had asked Sunderam and a French devotee to help him sit in his armchair. As he sat there, the swami closed his eyes and seemed to go into samadhi. However, his breath soon became weaker.

Sunderam sat on the floor in front of Swamiji, and the French devotee sat in a chair behind Swamiji, holding and steadying him in a gentle embrace. There was no talk. Both devotees knew that Swamiji was leaving his body; both devotees sat in silence and with full awareness. They knew that nothing could or should be done other than what they were already doing— just being there. A short while later, Swamiji’s breathing ceased. His mahasamadhi had occurred in the early morning hours of November 9, 1995.

When I met Sunderam in Bombay in spring 1996 I asked him what he had felt or experienced just before Swami’s death, at the moment of his death, and right after his death. Sunderam said that he did not experience anything special during his guru’s passing away. There was no special transmission or energy phenomenon, he said. Swamiji died exactly in the same way he lived—ordinarily and simply. Sunderam told me that after the traditional rituals had been performed, his master’s enbalmed body was lowered in the lotus posture into the samadhi shrine that Swamiji had prepared a few years prior to his death. Sunderam said that it didn’t seem to matter to Swamiji where he sat—in a chair or in his samadhi. Death, in the sense of the ending of his attachment to the body, had happened way back in 1938 when Sri Ramana’s words, “Ananda [bliss], ananda, ananda!” had confirmed his enlightenment.

I was deeply touched by the simplicity of Annamalai Swami’s teaching and lifestyle. In fact, I was in love with him. During my conversations with him, I became immersed several times in the peaceful and blissful experience of the Self. It happened without effort. It was so easy!

Questioning Annamalai Swami repeatedly about the technique of the self-inquiry process, and my experiences of practice in his presence and under his guidance, opened up a new spiritual vista for me. Swamiji’s clarifications enabled me to directly and easily experience the Self. This ability inspired me to sing with joy and relief. A deep relaxation and tremendous satisfaction occurred in me when the understanding arose that my own Self is available anytime. In fact, I am the Self! I knew with certainty that it could perhaps be forgotten momentarily but never again would it be lost. Until my meeting with the swami, I wasn’t aware that the Self revealed itself so often during my self-inquiry practice. Like the manner in which a windshield wiper provides a clear view after pushing off rain with each swing, my thoughts now dissolved anew during each attempt of self-inquiry, revealing my true nature. My meditations now became an opportunity to directly and frequently experience—on my own! —the peace and quiet of the Self.

From my experience with Papaji, I knew first hand that the initial “pointing out” by the guru and the subsequent recognition of the Self by the seeker through self-inquiry were crucial to the awakening process. But contrary to Papaji’s teaching—and congruent with my own experience—I now was convinced that the first conscious experience of my true nature was not enough for me to be permanently established in enlightenment. I had learned from Annamalai Swami that one needs many dips into the Self through ongoing practice, perhaps over lifetimes, until one can remain constantly in and as the Self.

At one point, I had asked Annamalai Swami how many of his own disciples had become enlightened and whether he proclaimed the event of their moksha. He replied that it was up to them to discern if enlightenment had occurred and to declare so if they wanted to. He added that he didn’t know who or how many of his devotees had found freedom so far. Shouting his own enlightenment or that of others from the rooftop was not his business, he said.

What I heard from the swami made me ponder Papaji’s custom of declaring seekers enlightened. I contemplated particularly the fact that about one hundred seekers—including myself—supposedly had become enlightened in his presence!

But could this be true? I began anew to question Papaji’s claims. Why didn’t Sri Ramana declare his disciples enlightened? Why didn’t I hear about similar enlightenment success rates of other teachers of Advaita Vedanta or of other traditions in India, or in other schools such as Tibetan Buddhism and Zen?

Perhaps I would not have needed to struggle so much, had Papaji only told me that what I had experienced was a recognition of the Self and not the final experience of enlightenment. Then my odyssey would probably have unfolded in a rather different fashion. It is quite possible that I would have relaxed and kept practicing with Papaji until his last day on Earth.

My meetings with Annamalai Swami convinced me that final enlightenment in my case simply required more practice. I was ready to do just that. By the same token, I was still not ready to let go of the concept that enlightenment is a Big Bang event that in its culminating moment is complete once and for all. I still believed in a sudden transformation after which every one of my perceptions would be different from then on, rather than a continuous vigilance and expanded awareness grounded in my essential nature. In spite of my own experience, part of me still hoped that Papaji was somehow right in his assessment of my enlightenment and that it merely remained mysteriously veiled. And I still believed that the spiritual power of a guru could be synchronized with my consciousness and act with the aid of practice as a catalyst for awakening. By my simply lifting the veil, enlightenment would remain. Driven by such hope and possibility, my odyssey continued.

-Berthold Madhukar Thompson

Excerpt from The Odyssey of Enlightenment: Rare Interviews with Enlightened Teachers of Our Time, Chapter 5

See the post from chapter 8: You have to Work for the Fulfillment of Your Destiny.

Let the Mind Go Wherever it Wants to Go – Annamalai Swami

Questioner: I think that I am now beginning to grasp what the ‘I am’ is. It seems that this is something behind the body, behind the mind, and behind the awareness of the body. I think that we don’t automatically make a relationship with this ‘I am’ because we feel that we lack a conscious acquaintance with it. We are accustomed to direct our attention outwards rather than inwards. We think about people and things because we are attached to them and for no other reason. I am beginning to realize just how hard it is to give up this habit.

Annamalai Swami: Let the mind go wherever it wants to go. You don’t have to pay any attention to all its wanderings. Just be the Self and don’t concern yourself with the activities of the mind. If you take this attitude, the activities and wanderings of the mind will become less and less.

The mind only wanders around all day because you identify with it and pay attention to all its activities. If you could establish yourself as consciousness alone, thoughts would no longer have any power to distract you.

When you have no interest in thoughts they fade away as soon as they appear. Instead of attaching themselves to other thoughts, which then spin off countless other thoughts and ideas, they just appear for a second or two and then vanish.

One’s vasanas make thoughts arise. Once they have arisen, they will repeat themselves in regular chains and patterns again and again. If you have any desires or attachments, thoughts about will be constantly appearing in the mind. You cannot fight them because they thrive on the attention you give them. If you try to suppress them, you can only do it by giving them attention. And that means you are identifying with the mind. This method never works. You can only stop the flow of thoughts by refusing to have any interest in it.

-Annamalai Swami

You can see more from Annamalai Swami here.

From Living by the Words of Bhagavan, page 348

Continuous Attentiveness Will Come with Long Practice – Annamalai Swami

You can only stop the flow of thoughts by refusing to have any interest in it. If you remain in the source, the Self, you can easily catch each thought as it rises. If you don’t catch the thoughts as they rise, they sprout, become plants and, if you still neglect them, they grow into great trees. Usually, the inattentive sadhaka only catches his thoughts at the tree stage.

If you can be continuously aware of each thought as it rises, and if you can be so indifferent to it that it doesn’t sprout or flourish, you are well on the way to escaping from the entanglements of the mind.

Questioner: It is relatively easy to do this for some time. But then inattentiveness takes over and the trees flourish again.

Annamalai Swami: Continuous attentiveness will only come with long practice. If you are truly watchful, each thought will dissolve at the moment that it appears. But to reach this level of disassociation you must have no attachments at all.

If you have the slightest interest in any particular thought, it will evade your attentiveness, connect with other thoughts, and take over your mind for a few seconds. This will happen more easily if you are accustomed to reacting emotionally to a particular thought.

If a particular thought causes emotions like worry, anger, love, hate, or jealousy to appear in you, these reactions will attach themselves to the rising thoughts and make them stronger. These reactions often cause you to lose your attention for a second or two. That kind of lapse gives the thought more than enough time to grow and flourish.

You must be completely impassive and detached when thoughts of this kind appear. Your desires and your attachments are simply reactions to thoughts that appear in consciousness. You can conquer them both by not reacting to new thoughts that arise.

You can transcend the mind completely by not paying any attention to its contents. And once you have gone beyond the mind you never need be troubled by it again.

After his realization, King Janaka said, ‘Now I have found the thief who has been stealing my happiness. I will not allow him to do this anymore.’ The thief who had been stealing his happiness was his mind.

If you are always watching with open eyes thieves cannot enter. They can only break-in while you are asleep and snoring. Similarly, if you are continuously alert, the mind cannot delude you. It will only take over if you fail to keep your attention on rising thoughts.

-Annamalai Swami

You can see more from Annamalai Swami here.

Here you can read Osho describing the very process that Annamalai Swami is talking about. Osho calls it “thought birth control.”

From Living by the Words of Bhagavan, David Godman, page 348

Yoga Means the Growth of Consciousness – Osho

The evolution of life is to become more and more conscious, but the consciousness is always other oriented: you are conscious of some thing, some object. Yoga means to be evolving in the dimension where there is no object and only consciousness remains. Yoga is the method of evolving toward pure consciousness; not being conscious of something, but being consciousness itself.

When you are conscious of something, you are not conscious of being conscious. Your consciousness has become focused on something; your attention is not at the source of consciousness itself. In yoga the effort is to become conscious of both the object and the source. The consciousness becomes double arrowed. You must be aware of the object, and you must be simultaneously aware of the subject. Consciousness must become a double arrowed bridge. The subject must not be lost, it must not become forgotten when you are focused on the object.

This is the first step in yoga. The second step is to drop both the subject and the object and just be conscious. This pure consciousness is the aim of yoga.

Even without yoga man grows toward becoming more and more conscious, but yoga adds something, contributes something, to this evolution of consciousness. It changes many things and transforms many things. The first transformation is a double-arrowed awareness, remembering yourself at the very moment that there is something else to be conscious of.

The dilemma is this: either you are conscious of some object or you are unconscious. If there are no outside objects, you fall into a sleep; objects are needed in order for you to be conscious. When you are totally unoccupied you feel sleepy – you need some object to be conscious of – but when you have too many objects to be conscious of, you may feel a certain sleeplessness. That is why a person who is too obsessed with thoughts cannot go into sleep. Objects continue to be there; thoughts continue to be there. He cannot become unconscious; thoughts go on demanding his attention. And this is how we exist.

With new objects you become more conscious. That is why there is a lust for the new, a longing for the new. The old becomes boring. The moment you have lived with some object for a while, you become unconscious of it. You have accepted it, now your attention is not needed; you become bored. For example, you may not have been conscious of your wife for years because you have taken her for granted. You no longer see her face; you can’t remember the color of her eyes; for years you have not really been attentive. Only when she dies will you again become aware that she was there. That is why wives and husbands become bored. Any object that is not calling your attention continuously creates boredom.

In the same way, a mantra, a repeated sound vibration, causes deep sleep. When a particular mantra is being repeated continuously, you are bored. There is nothing mysterious about it. Constantly repeating a particular word bores you, you cannot live with it anymore. Now you will begin to feel sleepy, you will go into a sort of sleep; you will become unconscious. The whole method of hypnosis, in fact, depends upon boredom. If your mind can be bored with something then you go into a sleep, sleep can be induced.

Our whole consciousness depends on new objects. That is why there is so much longing for the new – for new sensations, a new dress, a new house – for anything that is new, even if it is not better. With something different, you feel a sudden upsurge of consciousness.

Because life is an evolution of consciousness – this is good. As far as life is concerned, it is good. If a society is longing for new sensations, life progresses, but if it settles down with the old, not asking for the new, it becomes dead; consciousness cannot evolve.

For example, in the East we try to be content with things as they are. This creates a boredom because nothing is ever new. Then for centuries everything goes on continuously as it is. You are just bored. Of course, you can sleep better – the West cannot sleep; insomnia is bound to exist when you are constantly asking for the new – but there is no evolution. And these are the two things that seem to happen: either the whole society becomes sleepy and dead, as has happened in the East, or else the society becomes sleepless, as has happened in the West.

Neither is good. You need a mind that can be aware even when there are no new objects. Really, you need a consciousness that is not bound with the new, not bound with the object. If it is bound with the object, it is going to be bound with the new. You need a consciousness that is not bound with the object at all, which is beyond object. Then you have freedom: you can go to sleep when you like, and you can be awake when you like; no object is needed to help you. You become free, really free, from the objective world.

The moment you are beyond object you go beyond subject also, because they both exist co-jointly. Really, subjectivity and objectivity are two poles of one thing. When there is an object, you are a subject, but if you can be aware without the object, there is no subject, no self.

This is to be understood very deeply: when the object is lost and you can be conscious without objects – just conscious – then the subject is also lost. It cannot remain there. It cannot! Both are lost, and there is simply consciousness, unbounded consciousness. Now there are no boundaries. Neither the object is the boundary nor the subject.

Buddha used to say that when you are in meditation there is no self, no atman, because the very awareness of one’s self isolates you from everything else. If you are still there, objects are still there. “I am,” but “I” cannot exist in total loneliness; “I” exists in relationship with the outside world. “I” is a relata. Then the self, the “I am,” is just something inside you that exists in relationship to something outside. But if the outside is not there this inside dissolves; then there is simple, spontaneous consciousness.

This is what yoga is for, this is what yoga means. Yoga is the science of freeing yourself from subject and object boundaries, and unless you are free from these boundaries, you will fall into either the unbalance of the East or the unbalance of the West.

If you want contentment, peace of mind, silence, sleep, then it is good to remain with the same objects continuously. For centuries and centuries there should be no visible change. Then you are at ease, you can sleep better, but this is nothing spiritual; you lose much. The very urge to grow is lost, the very urge for adventure is lost, the very urge to inquire and to find is lost. Really, you begin to vegetate, you become stagnant.

If you change this, then you become dynamic but also diseased: you become dynamic but tense, dynamic but mad. You begin to find the new, to inquire for the new, but you are in a whirlwind. The new begins to happen, but you are lost.

If you lose your objectivity, you become too subjective and dreamy, but if you become too obsessed with objects, you lose the subjective. Both situations are unbalanced. The East has tried one; the West has tried the other.

And now the East is turning Western and the West is turning Eastern. In the East the attraction is for Western technology, Western science, Western rationalism. Einstein, Aristotle, and Russell have taken hold of the Eastern mind, while in the West quite the opposite is happening: Buddha, Zen and yoga have become more significant. This is a miracle. The East is turning communist, Marxist, materialist, and the West is beginning to think in terms of expanding consciousness – meditation, spirituality, ecstasy. The wheel can turn and we can change our burdens. It will be illuminating for a moment, but then the whole nonsense will begin again.

The East has failed in one way and the West has failed in another way, because they both tried denying one part of the mind. You have to transcend both parts and not be concerned with one while denying the other. Mind is a totality; you can either transcend it totally or you cannot transcend it. If you go on denying one part, the denied part will take its revenge. And, really, the denied part in the East is taking its revenge in the East, and the denied part in the West is taking its revenge in the West.

You can never go beyond the denied; it is there, and it goes on gathering more and more strength. The very moment when the part you have accepted succeeds is the moment of failure. Nothing fails like success. With any partial success – with the success of one part of you – you are bound to go into deeper failure. That which you have gained becomes unconscious and that which you have lost comes into awareness.

Absence is felt more. If you lose a tooth, your tongue becomes aware of the absence and goes to the absent tooth. It has never gone there before – never – but now you can’t stop it; it continually moves to the vacant place to feel the tooth that is not there.

In the same way, when one part of the mind succeeds, you become aware of the failure of the other part – the part that could have been and is not. Now the East has become conscious of the foolishness of not being scientific: it is the reason why we are poor, it is the reason why we are “no one.” This absence is being felt now and the East has begun to turn Western, while the West is feeling its own foolishness, its lack of integration.

Yoga means a total science of man. It is not simply religion. It is the total science of man, the total transcendence of all the parts. And when you transcend parts, you become whole. The whole is not just an accumulation of the parts; it is not a mechanical thing in which all the parts are put in alignment and then there is a whole. No, it is more than a mechanical thing; it is like something artistic.

You can divide a poem into words but then the words mean nothing, and when the whole is there, it is more than words; it has its own identity. It has gaps as well as words, and sometimes gaps are more meaningful than words. A poem becomes poetry only when it says something that has not really been said, when something about it transcends all the parts. If you divide and analyze it, then you have only the parts, and the transcendental flower that was really the thing is lost.

So consciousness is a wholeness. By denying a part you lose something – something that was really significant. And you gain nothing; you gain only extremes. Every extreme becomes a disease, every extreme becomes an illness inside, then you go on and on in turmoil; there is an inner anarchy.

Yoga is the science of transcending anarchy, the science of making your consciousness whole – and you become whole only when you transcend parts. So yoga is neither religion nor science. It is both. Or, it transcends both. You can say it is a scientific religion or a religious science. That is why yoga can be used by anyone belonging to any religion; it can be used by anyone with any type of mind.

In India, all the religions that have developed have very different – in fact, antagonistic – philosophies, concepts, perceptions. They have nothing in common. Between Hinduism and Jainism there is nothing in common; between Hinduism and Buddhism there is nothing in common. There is only one common thing that none of these religions can deny: yoga. […]

-Osho

From Meditation: The Art of Ecstasy, Chapter 1

For a related post see Consciousness, Witnessing and Awareness.

An MP3 audio file of this discourse can be downloaded from Osho.com or you can read the entire book online at the Osho Library.

Many of Osho’s books are available in the U.S. online from Amazon.com and Viha Osho Book Distributors. In India they are available from Amazon.in and Oshoworld.com.

We Only Meet Ourselves – Jean Klein

We all meet here together, but in reality, we only meet ourselves. In a meeting of people, there is only demand, a desire to overcome the feeling of loneliness and insecurity where the ego is constantly present. What is called love and giving between people, between objects, still comes from insecurity and the need for security. True contact occurs when there is no one left to meet, in a place that cannot be placed in time and space.

We exchange ideas to test its value, to identify the best way to see things, but we never try to place ourselves in our relationship with an idea or concept. Basically, it’s a form of reasoning that contains its own elimination, so sooner or later, you’ll discover that there’s no place for a personal identity. So, everything that preceded this living knowledge is totally cleared. There is only deep peace, free of conflict and problems, where there is no need to add or subtract anything. In this unit, there is no difference between you and me. But in your present situation, you know your thoughts, emotions, feelings, without knowing the knower. That’s the only difference between us.

-Jean Klein

From Consciousness and the World, pp. 67-68

You can read more from Jean Klein here.

Make Haste to Become the Fourth – Osho

Gurdjieff used to say that there are seven types of men. Let me explain those seven types to you.

The first three types are very ordinary. You will find them everywhere, within and without.

The first, man number one, Gurdjieff calls ‘body-oriented’. He lives in the body. He is ninety-nine percent body. His whole life is body-oriented. He eats not to live; he lives to eat.

The second type of man, number two, is emotional – the feeling type, sentimental.

Number three is the intellectual.

These are the three common types. They are almost on the same level.

These three, in India, we have known long before. The body-oriented we have called the sudra. The feeling-oriented, the emotional we have called the kshatriya, the warrior. And the intellect oriented we have called the brahmin, the intellectual, the intelligentsia.

The fourth, the vaisya, the businessman, is in fact not a type – but an amalgamation of all the three. Something of the sudra exists in him, something of the intellectual also exists in him. He is not a pure type; he is a mixture. And, in fact, he is the majority, because to find a pure type is very difficult. To find a really perfect sudra is rare. To find a perfect brahmin is also rare. To find a pure warrior, a samurai, is also rare. The world consists of the fourth, which is a mixture, which is not really a type, just a crowd.

These are the three types. Unless you go beyond the three you will not be able to see. They are all blind.

One is blinded by the body. Another is blinded by feelings, emotions. Another is blinded by the intellect, thinking. But they are all blind.

Number four Gurdjieff calls: one who has become aware. Up to number three they are all unaware, unconscious, fast asleep. They don’t know where they are. They don’t know who they are. They don’t know from where they come. They don’t know where they are going. Number four is the one who has become a little alert, who can see. […]

Only number four can be called to the window. Only with number four can the Master share his experience.

With the first it is almost impossible to talk. To the first you can give prasad. The first one you can invite for a feast. Religion is nothing for him but a feast. Whenever a religious day comes, he eats better, he dresses well, he enjoys it.

To the second you can give emotional food: prayer, tears flowing down, sentimentality.

To the third you can talk much. He will appear to understand but will never understand. He is the intelligentsia, the intellectual.

Only with the fourth is a sharing possible – only with one who is a little alert, or is just on the brink of being alert. He is asleep, but turning in his sleep, and you know, now he is going to wake up; now any moment he is going to wake up. In this moment only, can a Master share his vision. When he sees that you are just on the brink of waking up, or are already awake and just lying down with closed eyes, or if just a little shaking is needed and you will open your eyes. […]

God is the possibility only for those who can see: the fourth, number four. With number four, religion enters into the world.

Up to number three the world is materialistic. Number three may be found in prayer houses, churches, temples, gurudwaras – but that makes no difference. With number four, religion becomes alive – throbs, beats, breathes. […]

I’m here only for those who belong to number four. Make haste to become number four, because if you are a little alert, I can lend my being. You can have a vision through it. I can bring you to my window and can ask you: ‘Do you see?’ But this is possible only with number four.

Then there is number five, whose awareness has become settled. Now for number five there is no need of lightning; he has his own inner light burning.

Then there is number six, all of whose discontent has disappeared, who is absolutely content. Nothing is there for him to achieve any more.

Then you will be surprised – then why does number seven exist? For number six everything is attained, fulfilled; there is nothing to attain. There is no higher than number six; number six is the highest. Then why number seven?

With number seven even contentment disappears. With the sixth, there is the feeling of fulfillment, a deep content, and arrival. With number seven, even that disappears. No content, no discontent; no emptiness, no fullness. Number seven has become God Himself. Number seven we have called the avatara: a Buddha, a Mahavir, a Krishna, a Christ. They are number seven.

-Osho

From The True Sage, Discourse #7

An MP3 audio file of this discourse can be downloaded from Osho.com or you can read the entire book online at the Osho Library.

Many of Osho’s books are available in the U.S. online from Amazon.com and Viha Osho Book Distributors. In India they are available from Amazon.in and Oshoworld.com.

Neo-Advaita Meets Dzogchen: The Unraveling of a Pseudo-Enlightenment

The following is an excerpt from Sam Harris’s book Waking Up. I must confess that I have not read Sam’s book, but I find the excerpt below to be an incredibly insightful exposé on the deficiencies of neo-advaita.

“Poonja-ji’s influence on me was profound, especially because it came as a corrective to all the strenuous and unsatisfying efforts, I had been making in meditation up to that point. But the dangers inherent in his approach soon became obvious. The all-or-nothing quality of Poonjaji’s teaching obliged him to acknowledge the full enlightenment of any person who was grandiose or manic enough to claim it. Thus, I repeatedly witnessed fellow students declare their complete and undying freedom, all the while appearing quite ordinary—or worse. In certain cases, these people had clearly had some sort of breakthrough, but Poonja-ji’s insistence upon the finality of every legitimate insight led many of them to delude themselves about their spiritual attainments. Some left India and became gurus. From what I could tell, Poonja-ji gave everyone his blessing to spread his teachings in this way. He once suggested that I do it, and yet it was clear to me that I was not qualified to be anyone’s guru. Nearly twenty years have passed, and I’m still not. Of course, from Poonja-ji’s point of view, this is an illusion. And yet there simply is a difference between a person like myself, who is generally distracted by thought, and one who isn’t and cannot be. I don’t know where to place Poonja-ji on this continuum of wisdom, but he appeared to be a lot farther along than his students. Whether Poonja-ji was capable of seeing the difference between himself and other people, I do not know. But his insistence that no difference existed began to seem either dogmatic or delusional.

On one occasion, events conspired to perfectly illuminate the flaw in Poonja-ji’s teaching. A small group of experienced practitioners (among us several teachers of meditation) had organized a trip to India and Nepal to spend ten days with Poonja-ji in Lucknow, followed by ten days in Kathmandu, to receive teachings on the Tibetan Buddhist practice of Dzogchen. As it happened, during our time in Lucknow, a woman from Switzerland became “enlightened” in Poonja-ji’s presence. For the better part of a week, she was celebrated as something akin to the next Buddha. Poonja-ji repeatedly put her forward as evidence of how fully the truth could be realized without making any effort at all in meditation, and we had the pleasure of seeing this woman sit beside Poonja-ji on a raised platform expounding upon how blissful it now was in her corner of the universe. She was, in fact, radiantly happy, and it was by no means clear that Poonja-ji had made a mistake in recognizing her. She would say things like “There is nothing but consciousness, and there is no difference between it and reality itself.” Coming from such a nice, guileless person, there was little reason to doubt the profundity of her experience.

When it came time for our group to leave India for Nepal, this woman asked if she could join us. Because she was such good company, we encouraged her to come along. A few of us were also curious to see how her realization would appear in another context. And so it came to pass that a woman whose enlightenment had just been confirmed by one of the greatest living exponents of Advaita Vedanta was in the room when we received our first teachings from Tulku Urgyen Rinpoche, who was generally thought to be one of the greatest living Dzogchen masters. Of all the Buddhist teachings, those of Dzogchen most closely resemble the teachings of Advaita. The two traditions seek to provoke the same insight into the nonduality of consciousness, but, generally speaking, only Dzogchen makes it absolutely clear that one must practice this insight to the point of stability and that one can do so without succumbing to the dualistic striving that haunts most other paths.

At a certain point in our discussions with Tulku Urgyen, our Swiss prodigy declared her boundless freedom in terms similar to those she had used to such great effect with Poonja-ji. After a few highly amusing exchanges, during which we watched Tulku Urgyen struggle to understand what our translator was telling him, he gave a short laugh and looked the woman over with renewed interest.

“How long has it been since you were last lost in thought?” he asked.

“I haven’t had any thoughts for over a week,” the woman replied.

Tulku Urgyen smiled.

“A week?”

“Yes.”

“No thoughts?”

“No, my mind is completely still. It’s just pure consciousness.”

“That’s very interesting. Okay, so this is what is going to happen now: We are all going to wait for you to have your next thought. There’s no hurry. We are all very patient people. We are just going to sit here and wait. Please tell us when you notice a thought arise in your mind.”

It is difficult to convey what a brilliant and subtle intervention this was. It may have been the most inspired moment of teaching I have ever witnessed. After a few moments, a look of doubt appeared on our friend’s face.

“Okay . . . Wait a minute . . . Oh . . . That could have been a thought there . . . Okay . . .”

Over the next thirty seconds, we watched this woman’s enlightenment completely unravel. It became clear that she had been merely thinking about how expansive her experience of consciousness had become—how it was perfectly free of thought, immaculate, just like space—without noticing that she was thinking incessantly. She had been telling herself the story of her enlightenment—and she had been getting away with it because she happened to be an extraordinarily happy person for whom everything was going very well for the time being.

This was the danger of nondual teachings of the sort that Poonja-ji was handing out to all comers. It was easy to delude oneself into thinking that one had achieved a permanent breakthrough, especially because he insisted that all breakthroughs must be permanent. What the Dzogchen teachings make clear, however, is that thinking about what is beyond thought is still thinking, and a glimpse of selflessness is generally only the beginning of a process that must reach fruition. Being able to stand perfectly free of the feeling of self is the start of one’s spiritual journey, not its end.”

-Sam Harris

From Waking Up, Chapter 4

Category: Advaita

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