第4章 Chapter 4

Returning to the Source 30 October 1969 am in Meditation Camp at Dwarka, Gurujat, India Question 1 A FRIEND HAS ASKED: ACCORDING TO WHAT YOU HAVE SAID, ONE CAN TRIUMPH OVER DEATH THROUGH MEDITATION OR SADHANA. BUT THEN, DOESNT THE SAME STATE EXIST WHEN WE ARE IN SLEEP? AND IF IT DOES, THEN WHY CANT DEATH BE CONQUERED THROUGH SLEEP?

The first thing that needs to be understood is that triumph over death does not mean there is something like death to conquer. To triumph over death simply means you will come to know there is no death. To know that death is not is to conquer it. There is nothing like death to be conquered.

As soon as one knows there is no death, our ongoing and losing battle with death ceases. Some enemies exist, and there are others that in reality do not exist but only seem to exist. Death is one of those enemies with no real existence; it only seems to exist. And so, do not take the triumph to mean that somewhere death exists and that we shall conquer it.

This would be like a man going crazy fighting with his shadow, until someone points out to him, "Look closely, the shadow has no substance. It is merely an appearance. " If the man looked at the shadow and realized what he was doing, he would laugh at himself; only then could he know he has conquered the shadow.

Conquering the shadow simply means there was not even the tiniest shadow to be fought with; anyone attempting to do so would go crazy. One who fights with death will lose; one who knows death will triumph over it. This also means that if death is not, then in reality we never ever die -- whether we are aware of it or not.

The world does not consist of those people who die and those who do not die -- no, its not like that. In this world no one ever dies. There are two kinds of people, however: those who know this as a fact, and those who dont -- this is the only difference. In sleep we reach the same place we do in meditation.

The only difference is that in sleep we are unconscious, while in meditation we are fully conscious. If someone were to become fully aware, even in his sleep, he would have the same experience as in meditation. For example, if we were to put a person under anesthetic, and in his unconscious state bring him on a stretcher to a garden where flowers are in full bloom, where fragrance is in the air, where the sun is shining and the birds are singing, the man would be completely unaware of all this.

After we brought him back and he was out of the anesthesia, if we asked him how he liked the garden, he would not be able to tell us anything. Then, if you were to take him to the same garden when he was fully conscious, he would experience everything present there when he had been brought in before.

In both cases, although the man was brought to the same place, he was unaware of the beautiful surroundings in the first instance, while in the second instance he would be fully aware of the flowers, the fragrance, the song of the birds, the rising sun. So although you will undoubtedly reach as far in an unconscious state as you will reach in a conscious state, to reach some place in an unconscious state is as good as not reaching there at all.

In sleep we reach the same paradise we reach in meditation, but we are unaware of it. Each night we travel to this paradise, and then we come back -- unaware. Although the fresh breeze and the lovely fragrance of the place touch us, and the songs of the birds ring in our ears, we are never aware of it.

And yet, in spite of returning from this paradise totally unaware of it, one might say, "I feel very good this morning. I feel very peaceful. I slept well last night. " What do you feel so good about? Having slept well, what good happened? It cannot be only because you slept -- surely you must have been somewhere; something must have happened to you. But in the morning you have no knowledge of it, except for a vague idea of feeling good. One who has had a deep sleep at night gets up refreshed in the morning. This shows the person has reached a rejuvenating source in sleep -- but in an unconscious state. One who is unable to sleep well at night finds himself more tired in the morning than he was the previous evening. And if a person does not sleep well for a few days it becomes difficult for him to survive, because his connection with the source of life is broken. He is unable to reach the place it is essential he should. The worst punishment in the world is not death -- as a punishment death is easy; it occurs in a few moments. The worst punishment ever devised on earth is not letting a person go to sleep. Even to this day, there are countries like China and Russia where prisoners are made to go without sleep. The torture a prisoner goes through, if he is not allowed to sleep for fifteen days, is beyond our imagination -- he almost goes mad. He begins to divulge all the information he otherwise would not have let the enemy know. He begins to blabber, totally unaware of its implications. In China, systematic methods have been devised. For six months prisoners are not allowed to sleep. Consequently, they become totally insane. They completely forget who they are, what their names are, what their religion is, which town or city they come from, what their country is -- they forget everything. Lack of sleep throws their consciousness into complete disorder, into chaos. In that condition they can be made to learn anything. When the American soldiers captured in Korea returned from the prison camps of Russia and China, denial of sleep had left them in such terrible shape that when they came out they were openly antagonistic to America and in favor of communism. First these soldiers were not allowed to sleep, and when their consciousnesses became disordered, they were indoctrinated into communism. Once their identities were thrown into chaos, through repeated suggestions they were told they were communists. So before their release they were completely brainwashed. Looking at these soldiers, American psychologists were dumbfounded. If a person is denied sleep, he becomes cut off from the very source of life. Atheism will continue to grow in the world in the same ratio as sleep continues to get lighter. In countries where people have lighter sleep, atheism will be more on the increase there. And in countries where people have deeper sleep, the more theism will be on the increase. But this theism and atheism are a totally strange thing for man, because they grow out of an unconscious state. A person who has a deep sleep spends the next day in peace, while the one who does not have a deep sleep remains restless and troubled the following day. How in the world can a restless and troubled mind be receptive to God? A mind which is disturbed, dissatisfied, tense and angry, refuses to accept God, denies his existence. Science is not at the bottom of the increasing atheism in the West; the disorderly, chaotic condition of sleep is at the root of it. In New York, at least thirty percent of the people cannot sleep without tranquilizers. Psychologists believe that if this condition prevails for the next hundred years, not a single person will be able to sleep without medication. People have completely lost sleep. If a man who has lost sleep were to ask you how you go to sleep, and your answer were, "All I do is put my head on the pillow and fall asleep," he will not believe you. He will find this impossible and suspect there must be some trick he doesnt know to it -- because he lays his head on the pillow too, and nothing happens. God forbid, but a time may come, after a thousand or two thousand years, when everyone will have lost natural sleep, and people will refuse to believe that a thousand or two thousand years before their time, people simply rested their heads on their pillows and fell asleep. They will take this as fiction, a mythical story from the Puranas. They will not believe it to be true. They will say, "This is not possible, because if that isnt true about us, how can it be true about anyone else?" I am drawing your attention to all of this because three or four thousand years ago people would close their eyes and go into meditation as easily as you go to sleep today. Two thousand years from now it will be difficult to sleep in New York -- it is difficult even today. It is becoming difficult to sleep in Bombay, and soon it will become difficult in Dwarka as well -- it is just a matter of time. Today it is hard to believe there was a time when a man could close his eyes and go into meditation -- because now, when you sit with your eyes closed, you reach nowhere; inside, thoughts keep hovering around and you remain where you are. In the past, meditation was as easy for those who were close to nature as sleep is for those who live close to nature. First meditation disappeared; now sleep is on its way out. Those things are first lost which are conscious; after that, those things are lost which are unconscious. With the disappearance of meditation the world has almost become irreligious, and when sleep disappears the world will become totally irreligious. There is no hope for religion in a sleepless world. You will not believe how closely, how deeply, we are connected to sleep. How a person will live his life depends totally on how he sleeps. If he does not sleep well, his entire life will be a chaos: all his relationships will become entangled, everything will become poisonous, filled with rage. If, on the contrary, a person sleeps deeply, there will be freshness in his life -- peace and joy will continuously flow in his life. Underlying his relationships, his love, everything else, there will be serenity. But if he loses sleep, all his relationships will go haywire. He will have a messed-up life with his family, his wife, his son, his mother, his father, his teacher, his students -- all of them. Sleep brings us to a point in our unconscious where we are immersed in God -- although not for too long. Even the healthiest person only reaches to his deeper level for ten minutes of his nightly eight hours sleep. For these ten minutes he is so completely lost, drowned in sleep, that not even a dream exists. Sleep is not total as long as one is dreaming -- one keeps moving between the states of sleep and wakefulness. Dreaming is a state in which one is half-asleep and half-awake. To be in a dream means that even though your eyes are closed, you are not asleep; external influences are still affecting you. The people you met during the day, you are still with them at night in your dreams. Dreams occupy the middle state between sleep and wakefulness. And there are many people who have lost sleep -- they merely remain in the dreaming state, without ever reaching the state of sleep. And that you dont remember in the morning that you dreamt all night is beside the point. Much research on sleep is being carried out in America. Some ten big laboratories have been experimenting on thousands of people for about eight to ten years. Americans are showing interest in meditation because they have lost sleep. They think that perhaps meditation may bring their sleep back, that it may bring some peace into their lives. Thats why they look upon meditation as nothing more than a tranquilizer. When Vivekananda first introduced meditation in America, a physician came to him and said, "I enjoyed your meditation immensely. It is absolutely a non-medicinal tranquilizer. Its not a medicine and yet it puts one to sleep -- its great. " Yogis are not the reason their influence is growing so much in America -- the lack of sleep is the real cause. Their sleep is in a mess, and consequently life in America is filled with heaviness, depression, tension. So in America we see the growing need for tranquilizers -- somehow, to bring sleep to people. Every year, millions of dollars are being spent on tranquilizers in America. Ten big laboratories are conducting research on thousands of people who are being paid to undergo nights of rather uncomfortable, painful sleep. All kinds of electrodes and thousands of wires are attached to peoples bodies, and they are examined from all angles to find out what is happening inside them. One incredible discovery these experiments have revealed is that man dreams almost the whole night. Waking up, some people said they didnt dream, while some said they did. But in fact, all of them dreamt. The only difference was that those with better memories remembered dreaming, while those with weaker memories could not recall dreaming. It was found, however, that a completely healthy person was able to slip into a deep, dreamless sleep for ten minutes. Dreams can be scanned through machines. Nerves in the brain remain active during our dreaming state, but as the dream stops, the nerves cease to be active as well, and the machine indicates a gap has occurred. The gap shows that at that time the man was neither dreaming nor thinking -- he was lost somewhere. It is interesting that the machines keep recording movement inside the man while he is in the dreaming state, but as soon as he falls into dreamless sleep, the machine shows a gap. They dont know where the man disappeared in that gap. So dreamless sleep means the man has reached a place beyond the machines range. It is in this gap that man enters the divine. The machine is unable to detect this space in between, this gap. The machine records the internal activity as long as the man is dreaming -- then comes the gap and the man disappears somewhere. And then, after ten minutes, the machine starts recording again. It is difficult to say where the man was during that ten-minute interval. American psychologists are very intrigued by this gap; hence they consider sleep the biggest mystery. The fact is that next to God, sleep is the only mystery. There is no other mystery. You sleep every day, yet you have no idea what sleep is. A man sleeps all through his life, and yet nothing changes -- he knows nothing about sleep. The reason you dont know anything about sleep is that when sleep is there, you are not. Remember, you are only as long as sleep is not. And so, you come to know only as much as the machine knows. Just as in the face of the gap the machine stops and is unable to reach where the man has been transported, you cannot reach there either -- because you are no more than a machine as well. Since you do not come across that gap either, sleep remains a mystery; it remains beyond your reach. This is so because a man falls into wakeless sleep only when he ceases to exist in his "I-am-ness. " And therefore, as the ego keeps growing, sleep becomes less and less. An egoistic person loses his capacity to sleep because his ego, the I, keeps asserting itself twenty-four hours a day. It is the I that wakes up, the same I that walks on the street. The I remains so present the entire twenty-four hours that at the moment of falling asleep, when the time approaches to drop the I, one is unable to get rid of it. Obviously, it becomes difficult to fall asleep. As long as the I exists, sleep is impossible. And, as I told you yesterday, as long as the I exists, entering into God is impossible. Entering into sleep and entering into God are exactly one and the same thing; the only difference is that through sleep one enters into God in an unconscious state, while through meditation one enters into God in a conscious state. But this is a very big difference. You may enter God through sleep for thousands of lives, yet you will never come to know God. But if, even for a moment, you enter meditation you will have reached the same place you have reached in deep sleep for thousands and millions of lives -- although always in an unconscious state -- and it will transform your life totally. The interesting thing is that once a person enters meditation, enters that emptiness where deep sleep takes him, he never remains unconscious -- even when he is asleep. When Krishna says in the Gita that the yogi stays awake when everyone else is asleep, he does not mean the yogi never sleeps at all. In fact, no one sleeps as beautifully as a yogi does. But even in his deepest sleep, that element in him which has entered into meditation remains awake. And every night the yogi enters sleep in this awakened state. Then for him meditation and sleep become one and the same thing -- no difference between the two remains. Then he always enters sleep in full consciousness. Once a person moves within himself through meditation, he can never be in an unconscious state in his sleep. Ananda lived with Buddha for many years. For years he slept near Buddha. One morning he asked Buddha, "For years I have been watching you sleep. Not once do you ever change sides; you sleep the whole night in the same position. Your limbs stay where they were when you lay down at night; there is not the slightest movement. Many times I have got up at night to check whether you have moved. I have stayed up nights watching you -- your hands, your feet, rest in the same position; you never ever change sides. Do you keep some kind of a record of your sleep the whole night?" "I dont need to keep any record," Buddha replied. "I sleep in a conscious state, so I find no need to change sides. I can if I want to. Turning from one side to another is not a requirement of sleep, its a requirement of your restless mind. " A restless mind cannot even rest in one place for a single night, let alone during the day. Even sleeping at night, the whole time the body shows its restlessness. If you watch a person asleep at night, you will see he is continuously restless the whole time. You will find him moving his hands in much the same way he does when he is awake during the day. In his dream at night, you will find him running and panting in much the same way it happens with someone during the day -- he feels out of breath, tired. At night, in dreams, he fights in much the same way he fights during the day. He is as angry at night as he is during the day. He is filled with passion during the day; at night as well. There is no fundamental difference between the day and the night of such a person, except that at night he lies down exhausted, unconscious; everything else continues to function as usual. So Buddha said, "I can change sides if I want to, but there is no need. " But we dont realize A man sitting in a chair keeps jiggling his legs. Ask him: "Why are your legs jiggling like that? Its understandable if they move when you walk, but why are they moving when you are sitting in a chair?" No sooner do you say this than the man will stop immediately. Then he wont even move for a second, but he will have no explanation as to why he was doing it. It shows how the restlessness within causes agitation in the entire body. Inside is the restless mind; it cannot be still, in one position, even for a moment. It will keep the whole body fidgeting -- the legs will move, the head will shake; even sitting, the body will change sides. Thats why, even for ten minutes, you find it so difficult to sit still in meditation. And from a thousand different spots the body urges you to twitch and turn. We do not notice this until we sit with awareness in meditation. We realize then what sort of a body this is; it doesnt want to remain still in one position even for a second. The confusion, the tension, and the excitement of the mind stir up the entire body. For about ten minutes everything disappears in wakeless sleep -- although these ten minutes are available only to one who is completely healthy and peaceful, not to everyone. Others get this kind of sleep anywhere from one to five minutes; most people get only two, or one minute of deep sleep. The little juice we receive in that one minute of reaching to the source of life, we apply to making our next twenty-four hours work. Whatever little amount of oil the lamp receives in that short period, we utilize it to carry on our lives for a full twenty-four hours. The lamp of ones life burns on whatsoever amount of oil it receives then. This is the reason the lamp burns so slow: not enough oil is collected to make the lamp of life burn brightly so it can become a flaming torch. Meditation brings you slowly to the source of life. Then it is not that you keep taking a handful of nourishment out of it, you are simply in the source itself. Then it is not that you refill your lamp with more oil -- then the entire ocean of oil becomes available to you. Then you begin to live in that very ocean. With that kind of living, sleep disappears -- not in the sense that one doesnt sleep any more, but in the sense that even when one is asleep, someone within remains wide awake. Then dreams exist no more. A yogi stays awake; he sleeps, but he never dreams -- his dreams disappear totally. And when dreams disappear, thoughts disappear. What we know as thoughts in the wakeful state are called dreams in the sleeping state. There is only a slight difference between thoughts and dreams: thoughts are slightly more civilized dreams, while dreams are a little primitive in nature. Of the two, one is the original thought. In fact, children, or the aboriginal tribes, can think only in pictures, not in words. Mans first thoughts are always in pictures. For example, when a child is hungry he does not think in words, "I am hungry. " A child can visualize the mothers breast; he can imagine himself sucking the breast. He can be filled with the desire to go to the breast, but he cannot form the words. The word formation starts much later; pictures appear first. When we dont know a particular language, we use pictures to express ourselves as well. If you happen to go to a foreign country and you dont know the language, and you want to drink water, you can cup your palms to your mouth and the stranger will understand that you are thirsty -- because when words are not at hand, the need for pictures arises. And the interesting thing is that languages of words are different in different places, but the language of pictures is universal -- because every mans picture language is the same. We have invented different words, but pictures are not our invention. Pictures are the universal language of the human mind. A painting, therefore, is understood anywhere in the world. There is no need to change your language to understand a sculpture at Khajuraho or a painting by Leonardo. A sculpture at Khajuraho will be as understood by a Chinese, a Frenchman and a German, as it is by you. And if you visit the museum of the Louvre in France, you will have no difficulty in following the paintings either. You may not understand the titles, because they are in French, but you will have no problem following the painting. The language of pictures is everyones language. The language of words is useful during the day, but it is not useful at night. We again become primitive at night. We disappear in sleep as we are. We lose our degrees, our university educations, everything. We are transported to a point where the original man once stood. Thats why pictures emerge at night in sleep, and words appear during the day. If we want to make love during the day, we can think in terms of words, but at night there is no way to express love except through images. Thoughts do not seem as alive as dreams. In dreams the whole image appears before you. Thats why we enjoy watching a movie based on a novel more than reading the novel itself. The only reason for this is that the novel is in the language of words while the movie is in the language of images. In the same manner, you feel greater joy being here and listening to me live. You would not feel the same joy listening to this talk on a tape, because here the image is present, on tape there are only words. The language of images is nearer to us, more natural. At night words turn into pictures; thats all the difference there is. The day dreams disappear, thoughts disappear too; the day thoughts disappear, dreams disappear as well. If the day is empty of thoughts, the night will be empty of dreams. And remember, dreams dont allow you to sleep, and thoughts dont allow you to awaken. Make sure you understand both things: dreams do not let you sleep, and thoughts do not let you awaken. If dreams disappear, sleep will be total; if thoughts disappear, awakening will be total. If the awakening is total and the sleep is total, then not much difference exists between the two. The only difference is in keeping the eyes open or closed, and in the body being at work or at rest. One who is totally awakened sleeps totally, but in both states his consciousness remains exactly the same. Consciousness is one, unchangeable; only the body changes. Awake, the body is at work; asleep, the body is at rest. To the friend who has asked why God is not attained in sleep, my answer is: he can be attained if you can remain awake even in your sleep. So my method of meditation is a sleeping method -- sleeping in awareness, entering into sleep with awareness. Thats why I ask you to relax your body, to relax your breathing, to calm down your thoughts. All this is a preparation for sleep. Therefore, it often happens that some friends go to sleep during meditation -- obviously; this is a preparation for sleep. And, while preparing for it, they dont know when they go to sleep. Thats why I repeat the third suggestion: stay awake inside, remain conscious within; let the body be totally relaxed, let the breathing be totally relaxed, more relaxed than it normally is while sleeping. But stay awake within. Within, let your awareness burn like a lamp so you dont fall asleep. The initial conditions of meditation and sleep are the same, but there is a difference in the final condition. The first condition is that the body should be relaxed. If you suffer from insomnia, the first thing a doctor will teach you is relaxation. He will ask you to do the same thing I am asking: relax your body, dont let any tension remain in your body; let your body be totally loose, just like a fluff of cotton. Have you ever noticed how a dog or a cat sleeps? They sleep as if they are not. Have you ever noticed a baby sleeping? There is no tension anywhere -- its arms and legs remain unbelievably loose. Watch a youth and an old man -- you will find everything tense in them. So the doctor would ask you to relax totally. The same condition applies to sleep: the breathing should be relaxed, deep and slow. You must have noticed that jogging, the breathing becomes faster. Similarly, when the body exerts itself at work, the breathing becomes faster and the blood circulation increases. For sleeping, the blood circulation should slow down -- the situation should be just the opposite to jogging -- and then the breathing will relax. So the second condition is: relax your breathing. When thoughts run faster, the blood has to circulate rapidly in the brain -- and when this happens, sleep becomes impossible. The condition of sleep requires a slower flow of blood to the brain. Thats why we use pillows -- to reduce the flow of blood to the brain. Without a pillow, the head lies at the same level as the body, and consequently, the blood flows at the same rate from head to toe. When the head is raised, the blood has difficulty moving upwards; its flow is reduced in the brain and moves throughout the rest of the body. So the greater the difficulty one has in falling asleep, the more pillows he will need to put under his head to raise it. As the flow of blood is reduced, the brain relaxes and one finds it easy to fall asleep. With fast-moving thoughts, the blood has to run faster too -- because for its movement a thought has to rely on blood as the vehicle. The veins in the brain begin to work faster. You must have noticed that when a person is angry his veins swell. This is so because the veins have to make more space to let extra blood run through them. When the head cools down, the blood pressure also decreases. In anger, the face and the eyes turn red. This is due to the extra blood that runs through the veins. In that state, thoughts move so fast that the blood has to flow faster. And breathing also becomes faster. When sex takes hold of the mind, the breathing becomes very heavy and the blood flows faster -- because thoughts move so rapidly, the mind begins to function so fast, that all the veins in the brain start rushing with blood at great speed. So the conditions for meditation are primarily the same as those applicable to sleep: relax your body, relax your breathing, let go of thoughts. And so, for sleep as well as for meditation, the initial conditions are equally true. The difference is in the final condition. In the former you remain deep in sleep; in meditation you remain fully awake, thats all. So this friend is right in asking the question. There is a deep relationship between sleep and meditation, between samadhi and sushupti, deep sleep. However, there is one very significant difference between the two: the difference between a conscious and an unconscious state. Sleep is unawareness, meditation is awakening. Question 2 ANOTHER FRIEND HAS ASKED: WHAT IS THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN WHAT YOU CALL MEDITATION, AND AUTOHYPNOSIS? The difference is the same as that which exists between sleep and meditation. This also needs to be understood. Sleep is that which comes naturally, while the sleep induced through effort is self-hypnosis This is the only difference. The word hypnos also means sleep. Hypnosis means tandra, sleepiness. One is the kind of sleep which comes on its own, the other kind is cultivated, induced. If someone has difficulty sleeping, then he will have to do something about it. If a man lies down and begins to think continuously that he is falling asleep, and should this thought enter his being and take hold of his mind, the body will begin to respond accordingly too. The body will begin to relax, the breathing will begin to slow down, the mind will begin to quiet down. If an environment for sleep is created within the body, the body will start functioning accordingly. The body is not concerned with facts, the body is very obedient. If you feel hungry every day at eleven oclock, and if your clock stopped at eleven oclock the previous night, one look at the clock and your stomach would say, "Time to eat" -- even though it might be only eight oclock in the morning. It is not eleven oclock yet -- there are still three more hours before eleven -- but if the clock shows eleven oclock the stomach will complain of hunger because the stomach works mechanically. If you are used to going to bed at midnight, and if by chance your clock is two hours ahead, you will begin to feel drowsy as soon as the clock strikes twelve, even though it may be only ten oclock. The body will immediately say, "It is twelve oclock. Time to go to bed!" The body is very obedient. The healthier the body, the more obedient it is. A healthy body means an obedient body. A sick body is one which has stopped obeying: you feel sleepy and the body refuses to sleep; you feel hungry and the body doesnt want to eat. A body which stops obeying is an ill body, and the body which is obedient is a healthy body -- because the body follows us like a shadow. Difficulty arises when the body stops being obedient. So hypnosis simply means that the body has to be ordered, that it has to be made to follow commands. Most of our illnesses are just pseudo. Almost fifty percent of our ailments are false. The reason behind the growing illness in the world is not that there is an increase in disease, it is because mans pretense is on the increase. Make sure you understand this well. With increased knowledge and better economic conditions there should be a decline in the number of diseases. But that has not happened, because mans capacity to lie has kept on growing. Man not only lies to others, he lies to himself too. He creates new diseases as well. For example, if a man has suffered heavily in business and is on the verge of bankruptcy, he may not want to accept that he is bankrupt and so he is afraid to go into the marketplace; he knows he will have to face his creditors. All of a sudden he finds he has been overpowered by an illness that has made him bedridden. This is an illness created by his mind. It has a double advantage. Now he can tell others his illness prevents him from attending to his business -- he has already convinced himself about this and now he can convince others as well -- and now this illness is incurable. In the first place, it is not an illness at all, and the more treatment he is given, the sicker he will become. If medicine fails to cure you, know well your illness is not curable through medication -- the cause of the illness lies somewhere else; it has nothing to do with medication. You may curse the medicine and call the doctors stupid for not finding the right treatment for you; you may try ayurvedic medicine or naturopathic treatment; you may turn to allopathy or homeopathy -- nothing will work. No doctor can be of any use to you, simply because a doctor can only treat an authentic illness -- he has no control over something pseudo. And the interesting thing is that you keep busy creating illnesses like that, and you want them to remain. More than fifty percent of female sicknesses are false. Women have learned a formula from childhood: they get love only when they are sick, otherwise not. Whenever the wife is ill, the husband takes time off work, pulls up a chair and sits by her bedside. He may curse himself for doing so, but he does it. So whenever a woman wants attention from her man, she promptly falls ill. Thats why we find women sick almost all the time. They know that by being ill they can hold sway over the entire household. An ill person becomes a dictator, a tyrant. If the person says, "Turn off the radio!" it is immediately turned off. If the person says, "Put off the lights and go to sleep," or "Everyone stays home; no one is to go out," the members of the household do as he says. The more there is a dictatorial tendency in a person, the more he will get sick -- because who wants to hurt the feelings of someone ill? But this is dangerous. This way, we actually contribute to his sickness. It is good if a husband sits beside his wife when she is well; it is understandable. But absolutely he should not stop going to the office when she is sick and thus contribute to her sickness. It is too costly a bargain. A mother should not pay too much attention when her child gets sick; otherwise, whenever the child wants attention, he will fall ill. When a child gets ill, be less worried about him so that no association between illness and love becomes established in his mind. The child should not get the impression that whenever he is ill the mother will pat his head and tell him stories. Instead, the mother should pamper the child when he is happy, so that love becomes associated with joy and happiness. We have associated love with misery, and that is very dangerous because it means that whenever one needs love, he will invite misery so love can follow. And so whosoever longs for love will fall sick, because he knows sickness brings love. But love is never to be found through sickness. Remember, illness brings pity, not love, and to be an object of pity is insulting, very degrading. Love is a totally different thing. But we have no awareness of love. What I am saying is that the body follows our suggestions -- if we want to be ill, the poor body gets ill. Hypnosis is useful in curing such illnesses. What this means is that for a fake illness, fake medicine will work -- not real medicine. If we can make ourselves believe we are ill, we can also make ourselves believe we are not ill and rid ourselves of the illness. To this end, hypnosis is of great value. Today, there is hardly a hospital in a developed country without a hypnotist on its staff. In the West, the physician is accompanied by the hypnotist, because there are a number of illnesses for which a doctor is totally useless, for which only a hypnotist is of use. He puts the patient under hypnosis and then gives suggestions that he is feeling well. Do you know that only three percent of all snakes are poisonous? But generally, a man dies even from the bite of a non-poisonous snake if he believes a snake bite can kill a man. This is the reason why mantras and exorcism are also able to work on a snake bite. Mantra chanting and exorcism are in other words pseudo-techniques. A man is bitten by a poisonous snake. All that is needed now is to convince him that the poison of the snake has been nullified. This will be enough: the poison will not now have any effect. It is as though the poison was never there. And if he were to be fully convinced that a snake had actually bitten him, he would die. He would die not because of the snake bite, but because of the belief that a snake had bitten him. I have heard Once it happened that a man stayed overnight in an inn. He ate dinner at night and left early the next morning. A year later he returned to the same inn. The innkeeper was shocked to see him. "Are you all right?" he asked the traveler. "I am all right. Why, whats the matter?" "We were quite frightened," said the innkeeper. "You see, the last night you stayed here, a snake fell into the pot and was cooked with the food served to you. Four other people who ate the food died soon after. We couldnt figure out what happened to you because you left quite early. We were so worried about you. " When the traveler heard this, he said, "What? A snake in my food?" and dropped dead. A year later! He died of fear. For such ailments, hypnosis is very useful. Hypnosis only means that the falsehood we have created around ourselves can be neutralized by another falsehood. Remember, if an imaginary thorn has pricked your foot, dont try to remove it with the help of a real thorn; it would be dangerous. First of all, the imaginary one will never be removed, and furthermore, the real one will hurt your foot. A false thorn has to be pulled out with the help of a false thorn. So, what is the relation between meditation and hypnosis? Only this: hypnosis is required to pull out the false thorns stuck in your body. An example of hypnosis is when I tell you to feel that the body is relaxing. This is hypnosis. Actually you yourself have assumed that the body cannot relax. In order to nullify this assumption, hypnosis is necessary -- otherwise not. Were it not for your false assumption, feeling just once that the body is relaxed, it will relax. The suggestions I give you are not really to relax your bodies, but to take away your belief that the body can never relax. This cannot be done without creating a counter-belief in you that the body is relaxing. Your false concept will be neutralized by this false concept, and when your body relaxes, you will know it is relaxed. Relaxation is a very natural quality of the body, but you have filled yourselves with so much tension that now you have to do something to get rid of it. This is as far as hypnosis goes. When you begin to feel the body is relaxing, the breathing is relaxing, the mind is calming down -- this is hypnosis. But only up to this point. What follows afterwards is meditation -- up to this point there is no meditation. Meditation begins after this, when you are in the state of awareness. When you become aware within, when you begin to witness that the body is relaxed, that the breathing is relaxed, that thoughts have either ceased or are still moving -- when you begin to watch, just watch -- this watching, this state of witnessing is meditation. Whatever is before that is only hypnosis. So hypnosis means a cultivated sleep. When we are not sleepy, we induce sleep; we make an effort, we invite sleep. Sleep can also be invited if we prepare for it and move into a state of let-go. But meditation and hypnosis are not one and the same thing. Please understand this. As long as you are feeling according to my suggestions, that is hypnosis. Once you feel my suggestions stopping and awareness beginning, that is the start of meditation. Meditation begins with the advent of the state of witnessing. Hypnosis is needed because you have got yourselves into a reverse kind of hypnosis. In scientific terms, this is not hypnosis, it is dehypnosis. We are already hypnotized, although we are not aware how we became hypnotized and what kind of tricks we have used to create this hypnosis. We have lived the major part of our lives under the influence of hypnosis. And when we want to be hypnotized, we dont realize what we are doing. We live throughout our lives like this. If this becomes clear, the hypnotic spell will break -- and once this hypnosis breaks, entering within will become possible, because hypnosis, basically, is a world of non-reality. For example, a man is learning to ride a bicycle. To practice, he starts out on a wide road. The road is sixty feet wide, and there is a milestone on the edge. Even if the man decided to ride blindfolded on that wide road, there is very little chance of his hitting the milestone. But the man doesnt yet know how to ride a bicycle. He never looks at the road; his eyes spot the milestone first and the fear that he might hit the milestone grips him. Thats it. As soon as this fear of hitting the stone grips him, he is hypnotized. To say he becomes hypnotized means he no longer sees the road, he begins to see the stone alone. He becomes afraid, and the handle of his bicycle starts turning toward the stone. The more the handle turns, the more afraid he gets. The handle, of course, will turn where his attention is, and his attention is on the stone because he is afraid to hit it. So the road disappears from his vision and only the stone remains. Hypnotized by the stone, he is pulled towards it. The more pulled he is, the more he is scared; the more he is scared, the more he is pulled. Finally he hits the milestone. Watching this, any intelligent person might wonder how, on such a wide road, the man hit the milestone. How come he couldnt keep himself away from it? Obviously, he was hypnotized. He concentrated on the stone in order to save himself from landing on top of it, and this made him see nothing but the stone. When his mind became fixed on the stone, his hands automatically turned the bicycle in that direction, because the body follows your attention. The more scared he grew, the more he had to concentrate on the stone. He became hypnotized by the stone; his fear drew him toward the stone, and he finally crashed into it. In life, we often make those very mistakes we would rather avoid. We become hypnotized by them. For example, a man is afraid he may lose his peace of mind and get angry. In this situation, he will find himself getting angry twenty-four times in twenty-four hours. The more afraid he is of getting angry, the more he will be hypnotized by anger. Then he will look for excuses to be angry the whole twenty-four hours. Another man who is afraid to look at beautiful women because they might excite him sexually, will see beautiful women the whole twenty-four hours. By and by, even ugly women will appear beautiful to him; even men will begin to look like women to him. If from behind he sees a sadhu with long hair, he will make sure which it is, a man or a woman. Eventually women in pictures and on posters will begin to attract him, to hypnotize him. He will hide pictures of nude women in the Gita and the Koran, and will look at them without even wondering how he can be so hypnotized by mere lines and colors. He has always wanted to save himself from women and now he is afraid of them; now he sees women everywhere. Whether he goes to a temple or to a mosque, or anywhere else, he sees nothing but women. This is hypnosis too. A society which is against sex eventually becomes sexual. A society which is anti-sex, which denounces sex -- its whole mind will become sexual, because it will be hypnotized by the very thing it criticizes; all its attention will be concentrated on it. The more a society talks of celibacy, the more dirty-minded and lecherous the people will be who are born into it. The reason is that too much talk of celibacy focuses the mind on sexuality. All this is hypnosis -- created by us -- and we are living in it. The whole world is entangled in this hypnosis. And it is difficult to break, because the hypnosis grows right along with whatsoever attempts we make to break it. In this fashion, God knows how many kinds of hypnoses we have already created, and are still continuing to create for ourselves. And then we live with them. They need to be broken so we can wake up. But to cut through this false web, we need to discover false means. In a way, all sadhana, all spiritual practice, is meant to remove the falsehood from around us. And so, all sadhana is false. Methods devised all over the world to help us reach God are false, because we have never been away from him. Only in thought have we been away from him. It is just as if a man were to sleep in Dwarka and dream that he is in Calcutta. Now, in his dream he begins to worry: his wife is ill and here he is in Calcutta; he must get back to Dwarka. He goes around asking people, checking the railway timetable, inquiring about plane flights, to get back to Dwarka as soon as he can. But any suggestion he might take on how to reach Dwarka will be wrong, will get him into trouble, because he is not in Calcutta in the first place. He never went to Calcutta -- it was only a dream, a hypnosis. Whatever way someone might show him for returning to Dwarka will only put him into trouble. No path has any meaning; all paths are false. Even if the man returns to Dwarka, the route he would take would be false. He cannot find the right way back because there can never be one: he never went to Calcutta in the first place. What does it mean for him to find a way back? The train he will ride to Dwarka will be as false as Calcutta was. If he goes to Howrah Station, buys a ticket and catches a train to Dwarka -- all of this will be false. All the stations he will pass on his way back will be false. Then he would arrive in Dwarka and wake up happy. But he would be surprised to find that he had never gone anywhere, that he had been in his bed all along. Then how did he come back? His going was false and so was his return. No one has ever gone outside God. One cannot, because, all over, only he is -- there is no way one can step out of him. And so, all going is false, all returning is false. However, since we have already left on an imaginary journey, we will have to return; there is no other way. We will have to find the means to return. But once you have returned, you will find that all methods were false, all sadhana was false. The sadhana was necessary to bring us back from the dream. Once we have understood this, perhaps nothing will have to be done then, and you will suddenly find that you have returned. But this is difficult to understand because you are already in Calcutta. You may say, "What you are saying is right but I am already in Calcutta. Show me the way back!" Question 3 ANOTHER FRIEND HAS ASKED: HAVE YOU FOUND GOD? This is just the kind of question the traveler to Calcutta would ask. I would like to ask this friend, "Did you ever lose God?" -- because, if I say I have found God, it means I had assumed him lost. He is already found. Even when we feel we have lost him, he is still with us. It is simply that we are under hypnosis and therefore feel we have lost him. So, if a man says, "Yes, I have found God", he is mistaken. He still doesnt understand that he had never lost him in the first place. Therefore, those who come to know God will never say they have found God. They will say, "He was never lost. " The day Buddha became enlightened, people gathered around him and asked, "What have you attained?" Buddha replied, "I have attained nothing. I have simply come to see that which I had never lost. I have found what I already had. " So, in sympathy, the people of the village said, "Too bad. You labored in vain. " "Yes," said Buddha, "in that sense it is true I labored in vain. But now there is no need for me to labor any more -- this much advantage I have gained. Now I wont go out seeking, now I wont wander to attain anything, now I wont set out on any journey -- that is my gain. Now I know that I am where I already was. " We only go away in our dreams. We never actually reach the places we feel we have. Hence, in a sense, all religions are false; all sadhanas, all yogas are false. They are false in the sense that they are all methods of returning. And yet, they are very useful. A village shaman who shakes off snake poison with the help of mantras is very useful for those who are bitten by a snake -- even if they are bitten by a false snake. Otherwise, without him people would die of the bite from a snake which was not there. Such a man once lived in my neighborhood. He is now dead. People came to him from far and wide to draw snake venom out. He was a very clever man; he had tamed a few snakes. When a person bitten by a snake came to him he would use his shaman skills and ask what kind of snake it was, where it had bitten, whether the snake was dead or alive. After obtaining all the information, he would apply his trick and call the snake. He had everything worked out -- which snake was to be set loose, on which signal, etcetera. Within an hour or so, a snake that matched the description would come through the door, hissing. The whole thing would create a sensation; the bitten man would feel dumbfounded. Someone bitten by a snake can rarely see or figure anything out right: What bit him? What did it look like? Where was it? -- he is so overwhelmed by being bitten that the snake disappears in the meantime. If the snake had been killed, the shaman would call its soul to accompany his snake. Then he would scold and rebuke the snake for biting this man. The snake would then hit its head on the ground and beg forgiveness. In the meantime the poison in the man would start wearing off. Then the snake would be told to draw out the poison. The snake would promptly go up to the man who had been bitten and put its mouth to the wound, and the man would recover. Unfortunately, it once happened a snake bit this mans son. He got into trouble because none of his treatments worked. He came running to me and said, "Please help. I am in trouble. Please tell me what I should do. A snake has bitten my son and he knows about my pet snakes. I am so unfortunate, please tell me what shall I do? I am helpless. My son wont survive!" I was surprised. I asked, "But what about your treatment? People come to you from afar for this cure!" "Thats all fine," he said, "but even I would be in trouble if a snake were to bite me; I wouldnt even be able to save myself. I know the tricks of the trade; I wouldnt trust anybody to treat me the way I do. " The boy died. He could not save his son. False means are needed to remove the falsehood. And they have their own meaningfulness. They are meaningful because we have gone into falsehoods. So never bother to ask; in the beginning it is indeed hypnosis. The initial stages are of hypnosis, of sleep; only the final stage is of meditation -- and that is the precious one. Before you can attain to that stage, this background is quite necessary -- necessary so you can come out of the falsehood you have strayed into. Never ask, "Have you or have you not found God?" This is all wrong. Who is going to find? What is going to be found? That which is, is. The day you come to know this, you will see that you have never lost anything, nor have you ever gone anywhere; nothing has ever been destroyed, nothing has ever died. What is, is. That day, all journeys, all going anywhere, will stop. Question 4 AND NOW THIS QUESTION: WHAT IS THE MEANING OF LIBERATION FROM THE CYCLE OF BIRTH AND DEATH? Liberation from the cycle of birth and death does not mean that you will not be born here again. It means that now there is neither coming nor going -- nowhere, not on any plane. Then you remain rooted where you are. The day this happens, the springs of joy burst forth on all sides. We cannot experience joy being in an imaginary place, we can only find joy being where we really are. We can only be happy being what we are, we can never be happy being what we are not. So moving through the cycle of birth and death means we are wandering through illusory places -- we are lost somewhere we have never ever been. We are wandering through some place where we are never ever supposed to be, while the place where we actually are, we have lost sight of it. So freedom from birth and death means coming back to where we are, coming back home. Moving into God means being exactly what we actually are. It is not as if someday you will come across God standing somewhere an