Let me tell you an incredible experience I had.
He is only a seed.
My problem was that I knew I was quite well, but I wondered and worried what would happen to me now.
The master prepares to leave and the house becomes depressed, desolate.
And so by evening the entire city had gone mad.
Their lifespan was short: they neither had good food to eat nor proper clothes to wear.
As a problem, life and death do not both exist simultaneously.
When we dont even know the wall from the inside, how will we come to know the master seated within?
In her old age his mother fell ill.
As long as life itself remains unfamiliar, as long as it remains an enigma, there is no way one can be familiar with death, no way one can ever know what death is.
And because he enters death himself, he comes to know the truth that he is separate from his body.
We are familiar only with the outer layer of the body; we never come to know its inner layers.
Today, half the world is already within its fold, and the remaining half will join it in the next fifty years.
Up to now there never has been an organization of atheists.
I dont know what happened! I put in so much effort, and the whole garden has withered away!"
I agreed to speak on this subject only because I felt that in case some courageous man came forward, I would invite him, "Come on! If you are ready to go on an inward journey, I am willing to take you.
The king asked in horror, "You want me to drink water from that well? You want me to go mad?"
It becomes difficult to live once the connection between the two bodies breaks abruptly.
Hence, the real issue in life is experiencing that which is within, but we believe life to be that which pervades outside.
Marx is the first atheist in the world who created an organized church.
They placed their hands on my head, and in a moment, as if by a powerful force of attraction, I came back into the body and my eyes opened.
And actually, whatsoever is, is within.
That the soul is immortal is not a theory; it is not an ideology.
The fear itself shows we are unfamiliar with death.
" And this should not be just a verbal declaration, it should be reflected through their entire way of living.
Ignorance of Life is Death
This story is similar to the tale of darkness and light.
What happens when a union between a man and a woman takes place? Together, they dont create a soul in the mothers womb, they just create a situation where the soul can enter.
Never worry about the flowers and the leaves.
Some clown with bandages over their mouths, some perform acrobatics with a staff in their hands, others present yet another type of circus! Such a crowd of people know the soul and this country is in such a decline! Its hard to believe.
One experiences life when the seed sprouts.
There is no reason for it; it has no meaning.
In the past, around the world, the moral character was high because of a few self-realized individuals.
In the last three thousand years man has fought fifteen thousand wars.
With the breaking of dawn, two women from the nearby village passed, carrying milk pots on their heads.
We cant find them because we are looking at the body from outside.
But the existence of the soul will not be disproved by it, it will only weaken the will of man to turn within himself.
They thanked God for restoring the kings mental state, because now the king was also dancing in the crowd and shouting abuse.
There wasnt any grown-up around, but Mao told his mother not to worry about the plants and flowers.
The truth is, yogis have always been ill, and have died at early ages.
So obviously, to know the body from within is to know a totally different kind of world altogether, a world we know absolutely nothing about.
4 November 1969 pm in Bhulabhai Auditorium, Bombay, India
I was still in the tree, but the body had fallen below.
They are afraid they may die some day, any moment.
the day ones vital energy contracts within -- leaving the house, the body behind, and the consciousness moves inside, away from the outer wall -- people looking on from outside feel the man is dead.
You can only think about that which is known to you.
How did these two things happen together?
What also occurred to me was that the reason for Shankaracharya dying at the age of thirty-three and Vivekananda dying at the age of thirty-six was something else.
" He tries to muster up his belief, his courage by doing so, and tells himself, "Dont be afraid.
What on earth is there to think about?
This body of ours does not really represent our authentic being.
These three additional months in that asylum, he told me later, were worse than hell for him.
Only a single silver cord connected me with the navel of my body -- a very shiny silver cord.
There is an internal arrangement of the body which has resulted from the contact between this body and the inner body.
And in those six months I felt I had lost at least ten years off my life.
And were we to dim it even further, the light would be lodged in seed form and darkness would surround you.
We have died many times before, an infinite number of times, but we have never known what death is.
Its easy to pull this energy inside.
Even though she was crying, his mother couldnt hold back her laughter.
The bulb that emanates electricity is one thing, and the electricity that is emanated from it is another.
How long could they hold out? They were helpless.
I was fast asleep and two men jumped on me; I was going my way and someone started pushing me.
But we are all afraid of death.
Not too many, just a hundred people.
Darkness is merely the absence of light.
If a hundred individuals in a country reach a point of knowing what the soul is, the life of that entire country will be automatically uplifted.
We never search in the direction of life; we dont even take one step towards it.
So I used to meditate every night sitting in a tree.
Thats a subtle physiology.
Only when experience is what you want can experience alone solve the riddle, "What is life? What is death?" And as soon as you have the experience you will come to know that life is, that death is not -- that only life is, that there is no death at all.
I was drunk, I was unconscious, I wasnt there.
At that point I experienced something else too.
He suffered from continuous vomiting and diarrhea.
About something which is unknown nothing can be thought.
Every day, death seems to be happening all around us.
It is a totally false word.
" Marpa gave a big laugh and said, "If you want to know about life you are most welcome, because I know what life is.
This is only because man has come to believe there is nothing within, and so, for him, the question of turning in doesnt arise.
It occurred to me, however, that the connection between this body and that body had ruptured, had been interrupted, that the adjustment, the harmony that had existed between the two, had broken down.
Every village has a cremation ground.
And this ignorance makes us believe in the certainty of death.
Only when I came out of my madness did I realize that all those people were mad.
There is no more death for those who know the soul is immortal.
I have often felt the body has a greater influence over you if you meditate sitting on the ground.
The reason we give for crucifying Jesus is "
" This is all rubbish, it is nothing more than self-deception.
The truth is, death seems to occur because we have no idea of what life is.
From birth to death it is one long story of anxiety, misery, pain and death.
"
And then, perhaps, scientists may fall under the illusion they have created life.
It can only mean that the whole vital energy of man is not conscious, not awake.
He said, "I did the best I could.
Dont ever try to waken a sleeping man, he will be at your throat.
In this state a man thinks nice things.
I have no idea what I said.
"
Once you experience that the body is separate from you, you are finished with death.
The truth is within, the energy is within, all potentialities are within -- they manifest from there.
The biggest meeting point is the navel.
The responsibility for the present low state of human character lies with these sadhus, with the so-called holy men, with the hypocrites and charlatans who talk about religion.
Well say, "We know very well what life is.
I am exhausted.
The mothers womb is a mechanical system too; its a test tube.
There have always been people in the world who have denied the soul, but up to now a religion was never born of these people.
"We thought we were fortunate that we had our own well.
" Afraid of death, such people will also talk a great deal about non-violence -- not because they wouldnt want to kill anyone, but because, very deep down, they dont want anyone to kill them.
During intensive experiences of samadhi, mans luminous body, his subtle body, cannot return without a womans help if it has come out of the physical body.
Even the trees had become sad.
We dont tolerate him for long.
How can the seed have such an experience? How can a seed ever know the blissful state of the tree? How can a seed ever know that green leaves will appear someday, and that the suns rays will dance on them? How can a seed ever know the winds will pass through the leaves and the branches, and a resounding music will emerge from their beings? How can a seed ever know that flowers will bloom, eclipsing the beauty of the stars? How can the seed ever know that, sitting on top, birds will sing and that travelers will rest in the shade? How can a seed ever know the experience a tree has? The seed has no idea.
The nerves, veins and centers of the body known through that inner physiology are all totally different.
Although, in fact, they dont really cry and feel troubled over anyones death -- each death reminds them of their own, and the closer the dying person, the stronger the reminder.
But even so, it would not be the soul taking birth, it would be the body -- the soul would still just be arriving.
If you want to know death, go and ask those who are as good as dead, or those who are already dead.
In sleep a man doesnt know he is asleep.
The end of death and the experience of life take place at the same point, simultaneously.
It will be a state in which the body will lie separate from you.
One who has recently become a king will certainly find his separate well proves costly tomorrow.
It is totally opposite, reverse to the body.
The king and his queens were happy that they didnt have to drink the water from that well and become mad.
Statues in the city square of those holding swords are statues of cowards.
If even one hundred, two hundred individuals could experience the inner flame, we will be out of danger.
" But deep down they are saying, "Lest we are killed by someone.
And the fact is, life is flowing within us every moment.
When it sprouts, man ceases to be a seed and grows into a tree.
You should also keep another thing in mind: neither can anyone kill them, nor can they be now under the illusion that they can kill anyone -- because now, for them, the very phenomenon of death is finished forever.
What she saw was awful.
The matter is still pending in Gods files; he has still not been able to bring darkness before the sun.
But why? Their answer will be, "It is bad to kill anyone.
Being is within, becoming takes place outside.
The question is of living life.
The fear of death has disappeared for them; now no one can kill them.
I have heard: A magician once entered a city.
Once it is known that "I am separate from the body," death is finished.
People asserting it have already come forward.
Its difficult to say how long this experience lasted.
As soon as death appears, the navel will be disrupted in relation to the bodys center.
They dont both exist together -- they cant.
Mao also burst into tears.
We have all been here many times in the past and will be here many more times again.
His prime minister asked.
It is said that God called the sun and said, "Why are you after darkness? What wrong has he done you? Why the enmity? What grievance do you have against him?"
With the use of will power, simply with will power, the energy can be drawn inside -- just the thought, the feeling, "I want to turn in, I want to go back in, I want to return within, I want to come back in.
In the last fifty years, the ground has already been prepared for it.
" One can live this experience, one can enter into it.
So the vital energy of our life shrinks, returns to its own center.
As the male and female bodies connect, an electrical circuit is completed and the consciousness that has gone out returns swiftly to the body.
Man is the seed of God.
He threw some powder into a well and declared that whosoever would drink water from that well would go mad.
The nervous feeling that he is dying -- the worried and melancholy state, the anguish and anxiety of dying, the feeling that his end is approaching -- brings such terrible suffering to a mans mind that he fails to be aware of the very experience of death.
Those who are afraid to kill or to be killed become impotent in the eyes of life.
A sword is proof that the man is a coward.
"Why do you laugh, my lord?"
We set out, leaving one house for another.
And in that silent state he finds that the life energy and the body are two separate things.
"
There was one more, but that was inside the kings palace.
But while the man was hurling stones and abuse at the emperor, the emperor himself was laughing.
The future may turn out to be terribly bleak and dangerous.
These centers are the contact fields between this body and the inner soul, the meeting points for both.
I went through some strange experiences in six months -- even the hair on my chest turned white.
He has written, "To George Gurdjieff, the disturber of my sleep.
Know life, death is gone; know death, there is life.
" Nothing is ever destroyed in this world; hence, there is no place for the fear of dying or of killing.
We walk and talk and love and hate, wage war -- all in sleep.
Seeing you awake, we who are asleep feel very insulted.
It is flowing in every breath, in every particle, all around, within and without -- and yet it is unknown to us? This can mean only one thing, that man is in a deep sleep.
Medical science knows nothing about it, and wont for some time.
By the time it was evening everyone in that city became thirsty, so even at the cost of turning mad, people drank the water.
He becomes aware of his sleep only after waking up; only then he comes to know that he has been asleep.
If, because of increased longevity and the creation of test tube babies, man should come to believe there is no soul, even then the existence of the soul will not be disproved, only the continuing inner search of man will come to an end.
His soldiers were puzzled.
.
The tree replied, "In the roots, which are not visible.
You will see the entire body from within as you see this building.
Someone once came to him and said, "I have come to ask you about life and death.
The very presence of a person who has known the immortality of the soul can bring about the purification of the spirit of an entire village.
Except for what yoga has said about life and death, everything else that has been said is only playing with words.
In samadhi, the seeker brings it about with effort by knowingly drawing his entire life energy within.
"Dont you know trees never have their life-energy in their flowers and leaves? It lies in their roots, which are not visible.
Thats why it is difficult to find a nation more afraid of death than the one which talks about the immortality of the soul.
This explained why Ramakrishna was besieged with illnesses and Ramana died of cancer.
This shows the human race is not awake.
"There is no other way you can save yourself except by becoming mad," replied the prime minister.
None of these people know anything about the soul.
There have always been poor, wretched, miserable, sick people in the world.
This secret needs to be understood.
Dont think those who wield swords are brave people.
"
A man, wandering around outside, sees this house from the outside; he cant see it from within as we do.
First you will see from within that inside, you are standing separate -- radiating, like a flame.
No doctor was ready to believe me.
The palace guards and the soldiers of the kings army had gone mad as well.
That is when wars will disappear -- not before.
But that does not prove the drunkard is in his right senses or that the madman is conscious.
Questions relating to life and death are not matters of philosophical or metaphysical thought.
For the first time I saw my body from outside, and from that very day on the body ceased to exist.
It would only demonstrate that because the mechanism of the body used to wear out, the soul had to change it.
Those who believe the soul is immortal are people afraid of death.
That misfortune has occurred in this very country.
If a man takes the sheath for the seed, he wont be able to know the sprout hidden within it.
Where are the seven chakras, the centers within the body that yoga talks about? They are nowhere in the body.
But from the point of view of the soul, the number of poor has never been so great as it is today.
What I am saying is that the doctrine of the immortality of the soul is a doctrine of those who fear death.
" Marx says, "There is no life, only death is.
Subsequently, I had many more experiences of this kind.
We are alive, but we dont know what life is.
We treat the awakened ones in the same manner the inmates of a madhouse would treat someone who is not mad.
The darkness of millions of people can be dispelled with the inner flame of the few.
When he was not asleep he knew he was about to sleep.
" Sooner or later, all kings have to pay dearly for owning an exclusive well.
In sleep one doesnt know whether one really is or not.
A friend of mine once went mad.
I certainly talk about both things, for only one who knows how to die is able to know what life is.
People outside think the man is dead, and in this moment of death, in this moment of change, the person also feels, "I am dying! Dying! Dying! I am gone!"
Well kill you.
If science would have it so, it would be possible to keep the human body alive for one hundred, two hundred, three hundred years.
" The life of the tree springs from those invisible roots; the tree which is visible draws life from the roots that are invisible.
He was put in a lunatic asylum.
The common man always remained the same; he has remained unchanged.
Assured, the mother rested.
This kind of understanding is similar to a man mistaking the outer wall of a palace for the palace itself, or a man walking on the parapet and thinking he is in the palace, or a man sleeping, leaning on the outer wall, thinking he is resting in the palace.
And those very people who are frightened of death, weep and are troubled over someone elses death.
At some point the light will be reduced to the point where it comes close to the lamp itself.
Those who think about these things never accomplish anything.
Its difficult to say how I felt at that time.
With the presence in a village of a single man who has known the immortality of the soul, the whole atmosphere, the whole vibe, the entire life of the village will change.
It boils down to the fact that man is deeply unconscious.
I beg you, please make him understand.
But we see people dying every day.
I used to dust each and every flower, I used to dust each and every leaf.
And in this country the number of cowards afraid of death is the greatest as well.
When this experience slips away from ones hands
Of course death is there, but the sages, the wise men say the soul is immortal.
I have been asked to speak on life and death, but this is impossible.
If you resolve that for half an hour you want to turn within, you want to die, you want to drown within yourself, you want to withdraw all your energy, then within days you will come close to experiencing the contraction of energy.
A deep three-month long experiment will make you see your body lying separate from you; you can see your own body lying distant from you.
We live outside the body.
It is difficult for darkness to penetrate the radius of light around a lamp; it is difficult for darkness to have an encounter with a lamp.
What are we to think? Thats why I say that whatsoever the philosophers have said about life and death is totally worthless.
You come to know there is no death.
Mao was very young then.
And the man feels, "Here I go!" At the moment of death he comes to feel, "I am going.
Instead, a man becomes so restless he never knows what death is.
I was watching all this from above.
The palace was filled with music and celebration, but by evening they realized they were wrong.
Up to now, whosoever has tried to shake man out of his spiritual sleep, we have been at his throat as well.
"
On the contrary, the truth is that when the seed is born the sheath has to efface itself, has to burst, has to diffuse itself, has to dissolve in the earth.
Nevertheless, bring him before me tomorrow morning.
And what this simply means is that we leave the house, the body we were living in, and a journey towards a new home begins.
The future looks very dangerous and dark as far as the soul is concerned, because with each new discovery science will convince man there is no soul.
That which we know from without is only the sheath, it is only the outer covering.
I am familiar with life, I can talk about life.
But once in a while a courageous person breaks through the inner walls.
The body is made of earth, and the forces of the body work very powerfully if one meditates sitting on the ground.
" So we give poison to Socrates, we execute Mansoor.
What will happen after that is hard to say.
Some call this authenticity the soul, some call it God.
" To kill is evil indeed, but if these people know there is no death at all, then there is neither room for the fear of dying nor of killing.
We immediately kill the one who is awakened because he appears very troublesome, very disturbing to us.
Just escape by the back door, drink the water of the well outside and hurry back; otherwise this palace is in grave danger.
If, God willing, we could come to know the life that is within, a single ray of that knowing would destroy forever this ignorance that one can die, or that one has died at some time in the past, or that one will die at some time in the future.
The fear of death has only one meaning, unfamiliarity with life.
In samadhi, the seeker himself meets death.
You may not be aware of it, but what Marx has said is gaining ground.
But that would also be wrong.
We know our bodies externally; we have never gone inside and seen the body from within.
This energy is simply an expanse of the will.
Owning an exclusive well is dangerous.
What I am talking about is an existential approach.
But man has understood life in terms of the outer expanse of the flower and has neglected the roots completely.
Since then I am finished with death, because I came to see another body different from this one -- I came to experience the subtle body.
He asked his prime minister what he should do.
It wouldnt prove anything.
Then such matters become irrelevant.
One night
This country is full of sadhus, monks and other people who make themselves hoarse shouting "The soul is immortal" -- there is a whole line of them, a huge crowd.
But when I recovered, I couldnt figure out where I was.
We too exist as if we are not.
The common man has always been the same.
"What will happen now?" he worriedly asked.
Actually he was to stay in the asylum for six months, but his stay was extended for three more months even after he became well.
He will just cling to the sheath and the sprout will never come out.
As long as man is a seed, he is only a potentiality, and when the tree of life is born in him, he becomes authentic.
No event like death occurs anywhere.
He will know it only when his inner tree of life has manifested itself totally.
So he turned to the prime minister for advice.
It is merely a matter of will.
The wording of his dedication is tremendous, wonderful.
The people expressed their joy, singing and dancing the whole night.
So the question is not one of life and death, the question is only of life.
The king asked, "Why did you shout abuse at me? Why did you swear at me yesterday? What was the reason?"
Regardless of how much Gandhi may teach non-violence, or Buddha and Mahavira may teach it; no matter how many lessons of non-violence are given in the world, as long as man does not experience from within that whatsoever is, is eternal, war cannot cease.
Has it ever occurred to youthat you cant think what you dont know? How can you think, how can you conceive that which you know nothing about? We dont know what life is; we dont know what death is.
Once in a while, when an awakened one takes birth, we who are asleep become so angry at this awakened person that we immediately kill him.
Misery, pain, anxiety, sadness and insanity make up our lives, but we never notice it because people around us are also as asleep as we are.
Obviously, there is no need for him to feel restless, because he is experimenting with pulling, drawing the consciousness in.
"
Since our state of sleep is so common, so universal, and because we have been asleep since birth, we remain unaware.
Whatsoever is written about life and death in the philosophy books is worth nothing, because those people have written it after a lot of thinking.
The word death is one of them.
When a man is asleep he doesnt know who he is, what he is, where he is from -- everything is lost in the darkness of sleep.
" Were you to have such an intense longing, such a powerful emotion; if your whole being were to fill with a passionate, intense desire to return to your center; if your entire body were to pulsate with this feeling, someday it can happen -- you will instantly return to your core and, for the first time, see your body from within.
A mans limbs start losing their strength, he begins to become short of breath, his eyesight becomes poorer, his ears become hard of hearing.
The consciousness begins to move within, away from the plane where he knew life to be.
All her life his mother had tended the garden with great love and care.
It is even difficult to bring darkness before a little lamp, let alone the sun, which is so vast.
For those who know life, death is an impossible word.
I believe he is drunk.
That which is authentic is within.
Mans inner roots are lying there, totally neglected.
This experiencing of life from outside becomes the experience of death.
I am not saying the soul is not immortal.
Our physical body is the sheath containing the seed, and inside there is a sprout consisting of life, of consciousness, of being.
The old woman must have felt the same way anyone with eyes would feel looking at the garden of humanity today.
All this talk of the yogis moving up to the higher elevations -- to the mountains, to the Himalayas -- is not without reason; its very scientific.
It has a very hard shell which protects the tender, delicate seedling of life hidden inside it.
This needs to be understood.
What would happen next was beyond my comprehension.
Obviously, one cannot say man is living in awareness.
Life passes and he has not a single glimpse of joy.
The navel will become disordered at once, because here the contact field between the body and the soul is the deepest of all.
He knows.
Man is not even able to see his own body, his own house from within -- he knows it only from the outside.
One whose understanding revolves around the body is like this fool who imagines himself to be the palaces guest while standing outside its walls.
"
Meanwhile, they fail to know life and invent a new trick, a new deception that the soul is immortal.
"
And this gives rise to the idea of death.
It is a natural system.
And if we understand rightly, we will come to realize that wherever we may be standing on the earth, the dead bodies of countless people have been cremated on that very spot.
We dont know the light that we are, and we become scared of the darkness that we are not.
Once I asked a tree, "Where is your life source?"
How would I return to my body?
Where is he? Please bring him before me so that I may ask his forgiveness, come to know him, and stay out of his way.
It is generally believed that yogis are healthy people, but the truth is completely the opposite.
How can the absence of the sun be brought into the presence of the sun? No, darkness can never be brought before the sun.
The chakras are their contact fields.
There was a mystic in Tibet by the name of Marpa.
The greater the distance between the body and the earth, the lesser the pull of the earthly element on the body.
In his insanity, one day, he accidentally drank a bucket of phenyl that had been left for cleaning toilets.
For fifteen days he was violently sick.
Millions upon millions of people have died, and are dying every day.
The body is nothing more than an electric bulb.
If you want to change the world, stop talking nonsense about improving the moral conduct of each and every person, about teaching moral education to everyone.
This house has a limited capability.
The master of the house is within, and we never get to meet him.
He does not even know whether he exists or not.
The matter is over.
I am not familiar with death.
It may be that soon scientists may create a similar situation in a test tube, but that is not the same as creating a soul.
If you wish to know what life is, what death is, you will have to learn the art of withdrawing energy from your body voluntarily.
The brave man needs no sword in his hand because he knows it is childish to kill and to be killed.
Even a tiny lamp cuts through a long darkness.
No, death cant be known at the moment of dying, but one can certainly have a planned death.
The ignorance of life itself becomes the phenomenon of death.
Surrounding the palace, they shouted, "It seems our king has gone mad.
But as soon as he falls asleep he doesnt know he is asleep, because if he were to notice that he is asleep then that would mean he is still awake, not asleep.
But then it is not needed.
Charvaka, Brihaspati, Epicurus and many other such remarkable people in the world denied the existence of the soul, but they never formed any church, any organization.
" Now if the soul is not and only the body is, then obviously there is no life, only death is.
But we wont accept this.
What death does anyway, he does himself.
Because of this very contraction, this very shrinkage of the essential energy, one feels, "I am dying! I am dying!" What one had taken to be life until then begins to slip away; everything begins to drop.
Their very presence has always worked as a catalytic agent and has always elevated human life.
But the possibility of such a phenomenon happening again is decreasing every day.
If you want to change the world, a few individuals will have to be willing to go through very intense inner experiments.
The common man bears no responsibility for it whatsoever.
But, until then, the king had not realized the consequences of having his own separate well.
There have been very few people in the world who have tried to break mans sleep.
And this unfortunate circumstance is sure to occur in the next fifty years.
And yet, such a low moral character! Such a downfall of the country! This degradation proves they are all involved in a double-dealing business.
Man doesnt find a single moment of bliss, a single spot of joy in his life.
The emperor replied, "As far as I can see, the man doesnt know what he is doing.
They explained why the tantrikas of India, who experimented extensively with samadhi and death, had linked themselves with women too.
.
A single flower blooms and its fragrance spreads to faraway places.
I never noticed these things before because I was mad too.
It was, after all, a royal pageant, so the man was immediately arrested and thrown into prison.
For people like us who are asleep, you become a symbol of disgrace.
And remember, only they can know the immortality of the soul who experiment with death while being alive -- there is no other way of knowing it.
And what looks like God to you is nothing but a byproduct of matter.
It would only prove that the soul wont need to change homes anymore, that science had now worked out a way to fix the old house.
The day man comes to believe he is nothing more than a body, that there is nothing within him, perhaps all doors leading inwards will be shut.
Soon, with full discovery and knowledge of those chemical elements which make up the male sperm and the female egg, a scientist in his laboratory may succeed in producing the same chemical organization in a test tube.
Similarly, a womans luminous, subtle body, cannot be brought back without a mans assistance.
But those who only think, who say, "Well think about what death is, what life is," may think about it a million times, may think about it life after life, but they wont know anything.
Once humanity believes there is nothing within, the whole idea of reaching inside is finished.
He sees his body growing weaker inside -- youth has passed, old age is approaching.
For example, we are all seated in this room; we can see this room from within.
Man doesnt know what life is because he has believed his fulfillment is in being a seed alone.
Before all the doors and avenues close down, those who have even a little bit of ability and courage should experiment on themselves and make an effort to turn within so they can have the experience.
Once, while a royal procession was passing, a man stood in the main square and began throwing stones and shouting abuse at the emperor.
I can show you what life is.
We breathe, we walk, we rise, we sit, we sleep.
How can you bring darkness before the sun? Darkness has no positive existence of its own at all.
There, it can be shown what life is and what death is.
And once the energy begins to recede, the body, which was essentially lifeless, becomes lifeless once again.
With a little more courage you can even bring this inner living flame outside, and from outside you can see the body lying there, removed from you.
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There are certain words which are absolutely false; they contain not even an iota of truth.
You may have noticed, if you suddenly get into an accident driving a car, the navel will be the first to feel the impact.
We can only think about something which is known to us.
This brought about such a drastic change in his body that he became well -- as if all the excess heat were expelled from his body.
I felt that a woman can create a chemical change in a mans body, and so can a man in a womans body.
If the invisible roots begin to gain strength, the flowers and leaves come on their own -- you dont have to worry about them.
This is true all over the world.
But this doesnt even remotely prove there is no soul in the body.
How exciting the world will be when, as a whole, it will come to know from within that the soul is immortal! That day the whole fear of death will disappear.
About seventeen or eighteen years ago I used to meditate until late at night sitting in the top of a tree.
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We dont even know the inner sides of the palace walls, let alone the palace itself.
When one knows what life is, only then does life exist, but when life remains unknown there is only death.
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If I were to live up to seventy, now I can only live up to sixty.
I dont know who darkness is.
I used to kiss each flower and spray water on each flower.
To know death one needs to be peaceful.
What yoga is concerned with has to do with an existential, living experience.
What happens in death really? The entire vital energy that is diffused, spread all around, it contracts, returns to its center.
We have no access inside the body.
And if we cant know what life is, then there is no possibility of our knowing death either.
A Mahavira, a Buddha, a Christ, a Lao Tzu breaks through the wall and enters within.
It can only realize them by being a tree.
But if you attempt to break anybodys sleep, he will take revenge on you.
You wont find them anywhere in this physical body.
Once darkness went to see God and implored, "Lord, this sun of yours is out to get me.
They are merely repeating, "The soul is immortal.
The king was terrified.
"I have been wandering the universe since time immemorial, but I have never come across darkness.
The old woman cried out, "What have you done? What were you doing from dawn till dusk?" she wailed.
Again it becomes a seed, an atom, ready for a new journey.
" The ground is ready for it.
He said he would take good care of them.
As they approached the tree they saw my body lying there.
The question is only of life, there is nothing like death at all.
With a cool mind he contracts the consciousness within.
This can only mean one thing, that some deep spiritual hypnotic sleep is surrounding him.
But, taking this sheath for the seed, we ruin ourselves and the sprout is never born, the seed never sprouts.
The very piece of land on which we may have built our houses has been a cemetery at some time or other.
Then we will be in a position to say that death just happens.
Obviously, man has no idea whether he is or not, or who he is.
" What he is saying in effect is, "No, I wont have to die, the soul is immortal.
This energy is diffused at will and withdrawn at will.
I was still sitting in the tree and the body was below.
Only in sleep is it possible a man could remain unfamiliar with who he is.
After all, what is Marx saying? According to Marx, "Matter is, God is not.
When the sheath is dissolved, the seed inside manifests itself.
Wars cannot disappear from the world as long as it appears to man that he can be killed, that he can die.
There was never so hard-hearted a person who, passing by the garden, would not stop for a moment or two and admire such appealing flowers.
They live as if almost dead.
With the presence of a hundred shining lamps the whole country can be uplifted.
Neither did he before, nor does he now.
Deep down he is fraught with fear, deep down he knows he will have to die -- people are dying every day.
One who can neither die nor kill has absolutely no idea that that-which-is can neither be killed by anyone nor can it ever die.
In fifteen days the mother recovered from her illness and came out in the garden.
We fail to become acquainted with the light that is our vital energy, our life, our existence, and we are frightened of the darkness that we are not.
And then a chill goes up ones spine, fear grips one, one begins to tremble.
In that case the old house would do -- it is now repaired.
The sole reason for this is that the necessary adjustment between the two bodies becomes interrupted.
The king and his queens rushed to the city well and drank its water.
People used to come from faraway just to see the large, beautiful and lovely flowers of that garden.
Look at a seed.
He pretends he knows things he is ignorant about -- all because of fear.
Samadhi means only one thing: bringing about the event that, otherwise, occurs by itself in death.
A British scholar, Kenneth Walker, has dedicated a book of his to a mystic, Gurdjieff.
You might say, however, that I have often said religion is the art of living.
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Next morning the man was brought before the emperor.
The whole of life is immortal, but we never look at the immortality.
How would I get out of there? My screaming I am not mad, was of no avail because all madmen scream they are not mad.
We cannot tolerate a mad king sitting on the throne.
The soul exists, of course, but all the avenues through which it can be known, recognized, are closing down one by one.
I would like to say they are wrong.
Manifestation is all outside.
The people had surrounded the palace; they had all gone mad.
He thinks, "The soul is immortal, we are part of the divine, we are the form of Brahman.
There have been a few beings, of course, who always raised, always uplifted human consciousness.
Knowing the immortality of the soul is a totally different thing.
This essential energy that is reaching out to every nook and corner of our bodies, withdraws, comes back to its core.
I have run out of patience.
Religion is the art of living and dying.
Again I have to run for my life, again I have to escape -- this has been going on since eternity.
A planned death is meditation, yoga, samadhi.
Those who are ready to undergo the experiment deep within themselves
How can darkness be where there is light? How can death be where there is life? Either there is no life at all, or else there is no death.
What wrong have I done? What kind of enmity is this? Why is this sun following me and harassing me? I barely manage to rest after a hectic day when once again I find him standing at my door at dawn.
I dont know how long this state lasted, but it was an exceptional experience.
His ministers were happy to be saved from madness as well.
He never can, and this matter is never going to be resolved.
All the flowers had fallen off, all the leaves had dropped, all the trees were sad.
He sees the body is on its way out, but inside he keeps reiterating, "The soul is immortal.
Life is there, but all the possibilities of connecting with it are fading away.
Once the subtle body comes out of the physical body it never reenters fully and the adjustment is never completely restored.
It can be known that "I am life;" it can be known that "I am not going to die.
In this state of sleep what do we understand about life? We understand only that the body itself is life and that one is unable to penetrate the body.
Those who take the outer manifestation as life, their entire life is threatened with the fear of death.
That night a great celebration took place in the city.
It has just occurred to me; I have never told it before.
Perhaps you may have heard it.
Mentally, the king had become normal.
It seems the women took the body to be dead.
The prime minister said, "Now there is nothing left for which to seek advice.
The man also feels he is dying.
When the electricity contracts totally, the bulb lies there, lifeless.
These have been known from within; hence, when one looks today one wonders where these arteries and veins are.
They came and sat next to the body.
There is one other way to observe the body -- from within, through the inner physiology.
Its the tree that will have the experience of the wholeness of life.
We consider the outside of the wall to be the palace, we remain ignorant of the inside of the wall.
On its way to the new, unknown journey, his soul starts screaming in agony, "I am dying! I am gone! Everything is sinking!" -- because what he had considered as life up to now begins to sink, to drop away.
From the tower of his palace the king saw there was no way to escape, that he was completely surrounded by the mad crowd.
I also wondered how the touch of that woman caused my return to the body.
And once the separation between the body and the being is known, the experience of life has begun.
Following this event, I consistently had the same kind of experience about six times in six months.
Only then can you know, not otherwise.
Life is the electricity, the energy, the vital force that keeps the body alive, warm, excited.
Man doesnt even know what life is.
Inside lies the very delicate sprout, and a tough wall, an enclosure, a sheath covers the seed in order to protect it.
Only then may we succeed in saving humanity -- otherwise, the whole of scientific development will turn man into a machine, an automaton.
It is something which has never occurred, never occurs, can never occur.
Hence, I say religion is the art of dying.
We dont notice it because we are all sleeping too.
The seed cant even dream of the possibilities awaiting when it grows into a tree.
When I was mad I never could recognize that everyone around me was mad as well.
" Although his being shakes with fear, yet outwardly he says that the soul is immortal.
Being is within.
And then you can actually come out of the body and look at it yourself from outside.
The entire garden had withered away.
He starts chasing me at dawn and only after much trouble leaves me alone in the evening.
For example, if we go on dimming a diffused light, it will begin to shrink and darkness will gather.
Day and night, from dawn till dark, Mao would toil in the garden.
He doesnt even remember that he is something inner as well.
I dont know when I became immersed in deep meditation, and I dont know at what point my body fell from the tree, but when it did, I looked with a start to see what had happened.
" A drunkard also walks, breathes, moves, talks, and so does a madman.
Man is not mortal, he is immortal.
"
You are awake; your presence disturbs our sleep.
The phenomenon of birth is a double event -- the formation of the body and the arrival of the soul, the descending of the soul.
The man said, "Me? Swearing at you? No, your majesty, I must not have been myself; thats why I must have said such things.
It is also possible that in the near future science may succeed in creating a child in a test tube, in producing life.
And yet, you will be surprised if I say there is no other word in the entire human language more false than death.
Either we know we are life, then there is no death -- or we do not know we are life, and in that case death alone is, there is no life.
Now, if the parts of the body could be replaced -- the heart, the eyes, the limbs -- if they could be replaced, then the soul would have no reason to change bodies.
When a man is no longer asleep, only then does he know he was asleep before.
He is dying, because his consciousness begins to move within, away from what he had understood as life.
No, the sheath, the cover is not the seed.
On the battlefield, Krishna says to Arjuna, "Do not be afraid, because those you see standing in front of you have existed many times before.
They believe the world should become non-violent.
"As I ceased to be mad, I became the target of everyone there.
Now we have to pay very dearly for it.
He said, "As long as I was mad, there was no problem, because everyone else was the same as I was.
But man creates a strange deception.
That which expands and manifests is without.
But that would not prove there is no soul.
This was the only well in the city.
To boost his strength, one who is scared of death repeats, "The soul is immortal
It is the experience of certain individuals.
But it may be that in the next one hundred or two hundred years man might say, "Only death is, life is not.
These people who are scared of death continue to fear it.
Thats why he doesnt know life itself, what life is.
I couldnt comprehend what was happening.
But this is a far cry when, in the first place, we dont even realize there is something existing within that is different and separate from the body.
Of all the people in the world who believe in the immortality of the soul, most are in this country.
The fear of dying will vanish as well, and the threat of killing will be gone for good.
"You foolish child!" she said.
It is only the outer wall of a house, it is not the master of the house.
Deep inside we have a kind of being which is entirely different from the body.
"Darkness?" asked the sun.
" Around such wise men who talk about the immortality of the soul, people afraid of death gather in big crowds.
We are never able to remember, to realize there is something different and separate from the body as well.
The cause was not physical; rather, the breaking of the adjustment between their physical and subtle bodies was responsible for it.
Therefore, experiments must be carried out in all corners of the world so that a few individuals may stand up and assert -- not merely an assertion of words and doctrines, not just a reiteration of the Geeta, the Koran, The Bible, but a living affirmation, "I know I am not the body.
It is not a question of thinking and then writing about it.
In fact, all these senses were alive, and the whole body too, because of the connection with some energy.
I am sinking, the end is near.
Ignorance is death.
It wears out, it gets tired, and we have to go beyond it.
Mao Zedong has written an anecdote from his childhood.
Let me say this too: such an achievement wont prove anything either.
Look at the crowd, at this queue, at this platoon of sadhus, at this whole great circus of sadhus all over the country.
Both cannot be true together.
Each time the moment of death has arrived, we have become so perturbed, so restless, so troubled -- how can we have known anything in that state? What knowledge can one have had? Each time death has come -- and yet we have remained unfamiliar with it.
because you are an awakened man, and that is your fault.
And since we remain unfamiliar with life, we seem frightened of death.
If anyone from a distant planet were to watch us, he would think the entire human race is behaving as one behaves in sleep, in a state of unconsciousness.
Nevertheless, scientists should not remain under the illusion that by increasing the longevity of man to five hundred years, to a thousand years, they would have proved there is no soul in man.
Yogis have nothing to do with physiology.
But the sheath, the enclosure itself, is not the seed.
They are two pointers in the same direction.
Your watering the flowers and leaves, your kissing them, your pouring love on them was all meaningless.
And as long as he was awake he knew he was still awake and not asleep.
There are people who blame the common man for causing the moral decline in the world.
If a man knows the soul is immortal, he doesnt have to repeat it even once.
As far as death is concerned, I have not had any meeting with death, I am not acquainted with it.
I cant take it any more.
He tells that there was a little garden close to the hut he and his mother lived in.
This house is a machine.
Seeing death, this center will be the first to become disturbed.
When the two elements of man and woman meet, an opportunity is created for the soul to enter the womb.
Not only were the flowers long gone but the leaves were dead too.
This energy can be withdrawn; it is not difficult.
In that case, souls, which before had entered the mothers womb, would now enter test tubes.
I say: Only life is, death is not.
Infinite time has passed since this incident took place.
You have certainly existed before, and I have too.
He remains completely ignorant of what joy is.
Even to this day, the inner doors of the majority of people have remained shut.
We are surrounded by people who are asleep, hence we dont realize we are asleep too.
One just needs a determined resolve to go within.
When yoga talks about thousands of arteries and veins, it is not from the point of view of physiology.
If understood correctly, these are just two ways of expressing the same thing.
