And Now, And Here 作者：奥修 （印度）

Only in that moment a person becomes fully aware does he really flower as a being.

The reason is nothing more than the fact that her unfamiliarity excites his attention.

As we look backward we find darkness increasing, becoming more and more dense.

Because there is this separation, it is meaningless to call it death -- it is merely a loosening, a breaking of a connection.

The basic principle is attention.

When I say darkness and light are one, I mean existence is made of varying degrees of the same manifesting reality.

A Zen master was dying.

As I pointed out earlier, when someones house is on fire, he becomes oblivious to everything but the fire.

So, attention means awareness.

Thats why Mahavira and Buddha were not men of knowledge in this sense.

This way, we are turning darkness into an object.

We lose consciousness, and in that unconscious state death occurs.

So when we say somebody is awake or asleep, we simply mean, in comparison to someone else.

Hence, when I say death is an illusion I do not mean it is an illusion that happens either to the body or to the soul.

For example, special kinds of aromas can help a person stay conscious, just as certain kinds of aromas, odors, can make a person unconscious.

Secondly, it means one has also come to know that, in what we call life, nothing is attained.

The way I look at it, we should be able to create minds that are both scientific and religious at the same time.

"Whatsoever you do, do it properly.

His friends and relatives around him begin to cast a hypnotic spell on the man that he is just about to die.

So the event of death is but a part of the chain of events belonging to the same phenomenon.

If you were to sit close to me and smell my body, you would have divided me into three.

This is a fact and as yet no way has been found to go beyond them.

You see a man running on the street.

But how do we know God is the creator? If this question arises even once, it means the matter has remained right where it is -- it has neither begun nor ended.

These are all intense moments.

The ultimate passivity of attention is matter, the ultimate dynamism of attention is God.

This is how, as soon as the person dies, his spirit becomes restless and begins wandering in search of another body immediately -- because it has always identified life with having a physical body.

One of the most amazing experiences was that seeds from one packet were divided equally and sown in two separate flower pots.

Someone else recites the Bhagavadgita or whispers the namokar mantra in his ear.

From India, Bodhidharma went to China, and in Japanese the name Bodhidharma became Daruma, and thats how the doll came to be known as the Daruma doll.

If you have even had a little experience of meditation: if you have even had a glimpse of the truth that you are separate from your body; if the feeling of disidentification with the body should even for a moment ever go deep within you, you wont be unconscious at the time of death.

There are other important reasons behind it.

How can there be an answer if it is really beyond comprehension? So one must keep quiet; there is no need to answer.

Language has its own difficulty; it would be a problem to continually express things in such comparative terms.

Even after so many years the incident is still fresh in your mind, and you will never forget it for the rest of your life.

He sees people around him and wonders why they are weeping.

So, one who dies with awareness never really dies, hence the question of death never arises for him.

Obviously, how could one who has never seen light have ever seen darkness? If light were visible one could understand, but how can darkness be seen?

As soon as we take darkness and light to be two different things we commit a fundamental mistake.

He had eaten food, made friends, created enmity, built homes, earned money, risen to high position -- all these were things seen in the light of life.

When you go out in the sun, the pupil contracts because there is no need for so much light to go in.

If one needs to ask a question at all, then one should only ask before he comes to the question, "What is whole?" As such, the very meaning of whole is something about which all questions are meaningless.

So what really did occur in your body? Even without the pin that part of your body was there, but you were not aware of it, not cognizant of it; you didnt even know such a part existed.

The questions are perfectly consistent, yet totally meaningless.

Religion is a search for meditation, and so is gambling.

As I mentioned earlier, if a pin is thrust into your body, your entire attention will go to the point where the pin is hurting.

So stones have their own individuality, as do plants.

There is another phenomenon connected with this, and that is that one who sees life with full awareness will find that what everyone calls life is not life either -- just as death is a social illusion, that is a social illusion too.

Before he used to walk, now he walks no more.

Awareness means attention which is not centered on any particular point.

He will not choose anything; he will not save anything, he will transcend all.

You come across music which can put you to sleep -- there can be music which can keep you awake as well! Certain words, certain mantras can be uttered which can help the person stay awake and not go to sleep.

Thats why Kabir says, "O swan, take off on the flight alone.

Up to now, experiments in remembering past lives have not gone beyond the level of animal life.

Then it could never have become the tree.

They are different aspects, different stages of the same thing.

Entering these memories is very easy; one can do so without much difficulty.

One who needs to know how to fix a puncture in a bicycle tire will have to keep himself from knowing about many other things.

It is not that every moment, twenty-four hours a day, one is equally awake -- it is never like that either.

He is also a sprout in between.

He appears to have fully understood that everything is maya, that everything is beyond comprehension.

A tree knows something too.

Whatever seeds grew in the second pot took the normal time; their growth was slower.

This is a fact.

Why not show the same attitude towards a religious man? There are certain things a scientist is never asked to explain.

So even while dying he couldnt refrain from playing a trick!" The ninety-year-old woman grabbed her staff and came.

If you slept with a prayer on your lips, then you will wake up in the morning with the same prayer in your thoughts.

"

It will be misleading.

Eventually darkness disappears into infinity, and one never knows where it began, where its point of initiation was.

Nirvana means, firstly, that one has realized totally there is no death at all.

This is the reason man can never forget the moments of insult, the moments of pain, the moments of happiness.

It may change with a new discovery in the future.

Some time before his death Einstein was asked, "How do you differentiate between a scientist and a philosopher?" Einstein replied, "I call that man a scientist who, when asked one hundred questions, answers one and shows his ignorance about the remaining ninety-nine.

There is a chase going on -- to have a new house instead of the old, new clothes instead of the old, new positions instead of the old.

Striking her staff hard on the ground, she exclaimed, "Now stop this naughtiness! If you have to die, die properly.

There are stones which have a history of hundreds of years, and some of thousands of years, showing that whosoever possessed them was besieged by trouble.

The natural trick would have worked and he would have lost consciousness.

Remember, however, there is nothing like unbearable pain: you only feel pain as long as it is bearable.

Darkness simply means, now nothing is visible.

"

A rock is not all unconscious -- it exists in a state of consciousness too, but the consciousness is so small it is hard to grasp.

The master quickly came down and laughed.

In concentration, ones consciousness is centered on one object, unconscious of the rest.

The very idea of death kills us.

If I ask what you did on January 1, 1950, you will be at a loss to answer.

So there cant be any object, any center of awareness as far as God is concerned.

So this is not the kind of knowledge that is acquired by a scientist, it is knowledge in the sense a poet is known to have it.

There can be different answers to each question, because each answer reflects an individuals perception.

It means reflection of something in the consciousness.

In between, it is divided at many levels.

If it has a beginning then it cannot be whole.

And even prior to our animal lives, we have lived through many lives as trees as well.

No matter how significant the answer is, the mind will immediately raise dozens of questions -- but it can never find an answer to anything.

" But then it can be asked, "There must have been a first life without any other life preceding it.

When the entire consciousness converges on one point and rests there, obviously all other points become negated, disappear into darkness.

The suggestions are simply anti-hypnotic.

But what would he be aware of? And should there be a point of which he is aware, then he would obviously have to be unconscious of all the rest.

If the street is totally unfamiliar, one you have never crossed before, you will cross it with awareness.

The day you come to know the other half of the truth, the day you come to know the truth in its entirety -- that life is not life, that death is not death -- that day you will have reached the point of no return.

When the pain is too much, falling unconscious is a mental trick -- you dont want to suffer the pain any longer.

At that time I couldnt see anything except my house, I couldnt hear anything except the noise, the sound around the house, people shouting The house is on fire! I am sure you must have seen me, greeted me, but I couldnt see you, I couldnt hear you.

By answering such questions -- questions which cannot be answered in the first place -- they get themselves into trouble.

In other words, to what extent the attention is active or inactive determines the individuality of a particular thing.

It is named after an Indian mystic, Bodhidharma.

He only knows his house is on fire; everything else is dead as far as he is concerned.

Actually, the eyes of husbands and wives dont change focus when they look at each other.

If you only know there is no such thing as death, then you will continue to take new births.

Watch it a little.

THEN WHAT IS THE CAUSE, THE BASIS OF THIS DELUSION?

And there is yet another state which comes before this.

In answer to the question, "Who created man?" someone can say, "God created man.

So according to the degree of darkness and light it is exposed to, the pupil of the eye keeps changing its focus -- the same way we keep adjusting the focus of the camera lens while shooting pictures.

He will immediately set out on the journey.

The poor fellow has not even had a chance to say whether he is indeed dead or not.

Once you have accepted a lie -- the first lie -- all the following lies will appear as truths.

The arrangements for taking his body for cremation, or the arrangements to bury him, are significant only to remind him he is no longer alive, that he is no longer the same person.

So the right thing to say about darkness is, "I cannot see anything.

You will depart relaxed and fully conscious.

The holy man who was asked to pray was a Christian and he wore a cross around his neck.

THE QUESTION IS, WHERE DO WE REACH AFTER ATTAINING THE STATE OF ABSOLUTE AWARENESS? ALSO, FROM WHICH POINT DOES THE COMPLETE UNCONSCIOUSNESS BEGIN, AND WHERE DOES IT COME FROM?

He leaves behind the treasure as well as the temple.

One whose stomach hurts, his whole attention centers only on the stomach.

He was not a specialist.

the situation is just ideal -- the doctor at his side, the oxygen ready, the whole atmosphere of the house changed, people in tears.

It will wait overnight on the doorstep of your consciousness in order to begin work as soon as you get up in the morning.

Now, for example, a scientist is quite a knowledgeable person, but if he is a chemist he will know nothing about physics, if he is a mathematician he will know nothing about chemistry.

Rather, you should call it a built-in program of your life, applicable in the future.

An object shines in the light, but light itself is never seen.

He came up to him and said.

Certain stones are more awake; certain others, more asleep.

Exactly opposite to this is the state of darkness or of dreamless sleep.

Thats why theres a kind of honesty in science.

Saying "I cant see anything" means the source that made everything shine has become dull.

" And if you ask, "Why does the tree contain chlorophyll?" the scientist will disregard the question -- it is a fact; thats the way it is.

So the questions are absolutely pertinent but the answers will have no meaning, will solve nothing.

Religion is a Search for Meditation1 August 1970 pm in CCI Chambers, Bombay, India

All we have known is that until a given moment a person was alive, and then he was no longer alive.

He lets go of the program.

So our illusion of death is a social illusion.

If I were to stick a pin in your body what would happen inside? All your attention would at once begin to rush to the point where the pin had stuck you.

Light eventually disappears into infinity too, and one never knows the point of its disappearance.

The other form of attention is awareness -- not concentration.

Even in that state it was preparing for the final event as well.

In between these infinite points of attention we oscillate.

The falling of the fruit from the tree is not an external event; rather it is the culmination of the yellowing, of the ripening it has already gone through.

He gathered other monks around him and said, "I want to ask you something.

We swing towards God.

He will consider each answer absolute, as if no change can ever occur.

Question 4

Indeed, it is asleep.

When we are awake we come closer to the divine, just a little closer.

He becomes hypnotized.

I can tell you only this much: darkness, unconsciousness extends to the rear, while there is an expanse of light, of consciousness ahead of us.

We are saying the phenomenon of death has also occurred.

It may not have occurred to you, but your last thought as you fall asleep at night becomes the first thought when you wake up in the morning.

This doll is modeled after him.

He becomes unconscious towards the rest of the world.

All its seeds sprouted, while all the seeds of the other pot did not.

A man gambles, for example.

The deeper and sharper the attention, the same is the state of consciousness.

But the same is not true with regard to an ordinary man, for his spirit can keep wandering a long time.

Question 1

Concentration is bound to end up like this.

The matter is over, the whole thing is finished.

Even the most farsighted man has not seen farther than this.

He will simply state that what we called life up to yesterday was merely an association.

The difference consists in being a little more or a little less, in being present or not present.

If you want to be an expert in a particular field, you will have to have the courage to remain ignorant about many other things.

Once a person believes that God is the creator, the matter ends right there.

At the farthest distance from the sun there will be nothing but darkness, because of the reduced density of light.

Seeing the dagger pointed at you will create such an emergency, such a critical situation, that at that moment you cant afford to be asleep.

It was recorded and left unused.

For example, if you ask a scientist, "Why is a tree green?" he will answer, "Because the tree contains chlorophyll.

In the state of total awareness neither the subject nor the object remains.

His sister walked away.

When I say darkness and light are one, I dont mean you can walk in the dark as you do when there is light.

Kabir says, "I wore my cloak with great care and then put it aside as I found it, without impairing it in any way.

And it knows nothing, because now there is nothing left which needs to be known.

So ordinarily, except for the moments of danger, we are never aware, we are always asleep.

They were just acts, visible in the light of life.

We have never seen darkness either.

People also came to know that certain stones are awake in a particular direction and can therefore be used only for particular reasons.

Obviously, he had forgotten it.

What is it that rushed towards that point? What happened inside you? How are things different now? What is it that was not present at that point a moment ago, but now is? It is the consciousness, the awareness, that was absent from this point a moment ago.

Now this may intrigue you, but in my view a gambler is also in search of meditation.

Sleep and wakefulness, light and darkness, devil and divine, good and bad, are not opposite things.

When we ask what existed before the absolute, the whole, and what exists beyond, the question becomes meaningless.

In ones dying moments the significant will be saved, the nonsignificant will be thrown away.

You are listening to me and you are also looking at me.

If you let the suns rays pass through a lens, fire is immediately produced.

If we believe God is, then he must indeed be an awakened God, fully aware.

For example, a tree is hidden in a seed, but potentially.

Now, at the moment of death, he finds them slipping away.

Now I shall lie down and die in the conventional way.

Sleep and wakefulness are not two different things.

A villager knows about a good many things; he is not a specialist.

A person who has, all along, taken his life to be nothing but eating, drinking, sleeping, moving about, quarreling, loving, making friends, creating enmity, all of a sudden, at the moment of death, even he finds life slipping away through his fingers.

Actually, the problem is that once things are accepted for a long time, we stop thinking them over.

" He stood on his head and died.

He clears himself of the debts he owes to others as well as the debts others owe to him.

Now, since things are not visible, it is therefore dark.

Since you are not dead you have no right to think this way.

A condensed light creates fire.

And the questions remain, right where they always were.

One relationship, one order, is replaced by another relationship, another order.

You had no knowledge of it; it made little difference whether it was there or not.

No part of it should remain potent within you, in seed form.

Perhaps no one else has made so many discoveries.

Someone might say, "It is all maya; it is beyond comprehension.

Whatsoever answer there may be can only give rise to more questions of this nature.

That moment of betting is certain to crystallize his attention.

Memories of these lie at even lower levels.

There is darkness at one end and light at the other.

Awareness is centered on one point only.

The only thing he remains aware of is that his house is on fire.

So he will eventually enter into one or another house, another body.

Dead, no one dared bring him down and lay him on a bier.

We may call it the state of total awareness.

Death proving to be a delusion does not mean, however, that death remains in some form as a delusion.

Now its existential awareness becomes apparent to you.

Not all rocks are absolutely rocks, and not all rocks are equally asleep.

" In such a situation there cannot be any built-in program for the future, because the person leaves everything in its virgin state.

The crowd determines the mans death without even asking him, without even letting him vouch for it! It is like a one-party decision in court; the other side is absent.

How else could it grow leaves and branches, and why would they all be of a banyan tree? The seed must have been programmed.

We say there is light in this room because the wall is visible, because you are visible.

The same thing is true regarding the unconscious and the conscious states.

If I suddenly point a dagger at your chest, you will become alert at once.

Then you will put these three parts together and create an image of me.

It must have contained a blueprint.

Perhaps it is a new connection, a new journey.

The last thought of the previous night will become your first thought next morning -- seven hours later.

Thats why, when we define God as sat-chit-anand, the word chit means this state of being.

For example, when we say there is light in this room, it only means there is more light inside the room than there is outside.

All one ought to say is, "Up to yesterday the man was talking, now he no longer talks.

Then you begin to remain aware even in your sleep.

The crowd around the master became very scared.

"

In security everything is known, familiar.

That means you cant be sleepy in such a moment.

The ultimate question means that no matter how many questions are raised, after you are through answering them, you will find the same question awaiting you, the question mark still staring you in the face.

The same will become your potential for the next life.

ONE TRAVELS FROM COMPLETE UNCONSCIOUSNESS TO ABSOLUTE AWARENESS.

Prior to having lived as trees, we have gone through many lives as rocks and minerals.

This is social hypnotism.

In order to understand the states of consciousness and unconsciousness, the first thing that needs to be understood is that they are not opposite states, although normally they are seen as opposites.

Nevertheless, the pot which had been prayed over looked very distinguished.

So what do I intend to tell you?

There can be two kinds of attention.

What appears with the sunrise is light, but when the night is past and the sun is yet to rise, what then appears is luminosity.

All of a sudden that point in the body would become significant.

The essential and the nonessential will be sorted.

Its absence made you so oblivious to that part of the body that whether it existed or not was all the same.

Finally one might say, "Well, this is the way he does it!"

As the amount of knowledge grows, the area of knowledge becomes more and more narrow.

I believe there should be a wide application of Bardo in this country as well.

You can never create the whole by adding up the parts, because the whole is that which was before the parts were made.

This much of a negative statement is fine, that what we knew as his life -- his fighting, his loving, his eating, his drinking -- is no more, but to say the man is dead is making a very positive assertion.

It neither has a beginning before nor an end afterwards.

He sees you and yet he does not see you.

It leaves everything to the facts.

It was just a social belief created by those who did not know how to die, who were not dead, who had no knowledge of death.

Not just any stone is taken to be a precious stone.

Any thought that follows this mistake is bound to be wrong; it can never be right.

This is how we are situated -- in the middle.

We love to take risks.

I am not saying consciousness itself is unconsciousness.

Through scientific means they have brought certain astonishing experiences to our attention.

For example, five hundred people are asleep in a room and you call the name "Rama" aloud.

She said, "He has always been mischievous like that.

In fact, a sick person remains aware only of those parts of his body which are not well.

" However, just because I am unable to see anything does not mean there is darkness.

If we could give an explanation as to why such-and-such a thing happens, then I would like to say that, in this world, there is unconsciousness and there is awareness.

Certain parts of a dying mans body can be tapped in order to stop him from falling asleep and keep his consciousness alive.

All these people

This means that, except for a tiny little corner, his entire mind was asleep, and hence could not register his actions in its memory.

I can tell you this also: as darkness decreases, bliss increases.

But the dishonesty is hidden very deep.

It cant function without making divisions.

He has not yet become a tree, but he is no longer like a rock either.

In my view, no philosophy has ever provided any answer to the ultimate questions.

Each one present here is awake to a respective degree.

If everything is indeed beyond comprehension, then he needs to shut up; then he need not say all is maya.

All you ought to say is, "I am not able to determine whether he is the same person in the way I knew him before.

.

I call it a social illusion -- one which we cultivate in every child.

You will become unaware of the rest of the body.

Then who goes through the delusion? It is of course, neither the soul nor the body.

Similarly, both disappear in the state of ultimate consciousness as well, but they disappear in infinite light.

When objects do not shine we say there is darkness.

Actually the departing person finds it hard to believe he is dead.

Then you sleep and also remain aware of the fact that you are asleep.

If you understand what I am saying, then, in brief, it means that the journey of attention extends from total sleep to total awareness.

"There is a way of doing things," she said.

Man is a seed on its way to becoming a tree.

HOW DO YOU SEE DEATH IN RELATION TO NIRVANA?

It is like a tree that bears fruit.

A scientist knows a great deal, but he has no knowledge of the knower, of the knowing element within himself.

Then death turns out to be merely a separation; it amounts to the breaking of a connection.

In fact, a husband hardly ever looks at his wife; he avoids her.

The mind is unable to find the answer to any question.

First we create a division between darkness and light and then think they are two separate things.

The wakeful state in which we go about our daily routine is not very different from the state of somnambulism.

We indoctrinate every child with the idea, "You are going to die, and this is how death occurs.

What seems to be the matter? At the moment you were slapped, your attention must have been very sharp.

It is not an event that occurs outside of life.

Certain things shine in it, and because of that we say there is light.

You may have seen a Japanese doll.

Incense and benzoin were discovered mainly because they help to keep one awake.

Then someone suggested calling his elder sister, a nun living in a monastery nearby.

If he felt at the moment of dying that his body was being destroyed -- that he is dying, that he is losing his body -- then his spirit will frantically run all over looking for a passage for an instant birth.

What shall I do?" Overcome with fear he will shut his eyes, and in that state of fear he will become unconscious.

In a blink, a hundred thousand dollars can go this way or that.

No matter how far we look, this is all we see.

In fact, the difference between a rock and a human is that the rock does not have density of attention at any level of consciousness.

He keeps watching this separation and ultimately finds that his body is lying away from him, at a distance.

All of them thoroughly convince the man he is about to die -- that whatsoever has been done before with a dying man, they are now doing the same with him.

There is an interesting episode in the life of Edison, who made a thousand discoveries.

"All right then," said the master, "thats the way it will be.

So whatever is your last desire at the dying moment -- the very last desire, remember -- that will be the essence of your entire life.

So, God is just luminosity -- or, luminosity is the state of ultimate awakening.

And the same process was going on when it had not even blossomed on the branch as yet, when it was still hidden inside the branch.

If one could draw a horoscope of that seed, one could forecast how many leaves it would grow, how much fruit it would bear, how many seeds it would contain, how tall and wide it would be, how long its branches would be, how many bullock carts could find rest and shelter under it.

If you wish to choose bliss, you can move ahead towards light, towards the ultimate light.

In other words, if a man can manage to remain conscious at the time of death, he finds he never died at all: death appears just a delusion to him.

Then, as the days go by and she becomes more and more familiar, he becomes less and less attentive towards her.

As we move farther and farther away from the sun, the light will go on decreasing.

BEFORE DISCUSSING THE PROCESS OF ENTERING DEATH CONSCIOUSLY, I WOULD LIKE TO ASK YOU: WHAT IS THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN THE STATE OF UNCONSCIOUSNESS AND THE STATE OF AWARENESS? WHAT STATE OF MIND IS CALLED THE UNCONSCIOUS STATE? IN OTHER WORDS, WHAT IS THE INDIVIDUAL SOULS CONSCIOUSNESS LIKE IN ITS CONSCIOUS AND UNCONSCIOUS STATES?

The thought will wait for you to wake up.

He hears you and yet he does not hear you.

Some unprecedented events will start taking place in your life if you carry certain kinds of stones, make a charm of them, wear them in a necklace or mount one in your ring -- because such stones have their own lives too.

But that wont be my image, it will be your addition of the parts.

When it loses its density, when it becomes tenuous, light remains.

The sister was approached and made aware of the whole situation.

" He says he wore it with such care that no accounts were left pending.

Why are they asked of a religious man? A scientist refuses to answer such questions, while the silly religious man makes the mistake of answering them.

Just as every moment ones eye is flexible, so is ones attention.

The more one lives in insecurity, the more aware he will be.

If you have learned how to live consciously.

The moment mind thinks, it divides into two.

Without harboring a single desire for anything, he will let go of whatsoever he has earned in life.

If you ask him about an object he will explain it to you, but if you ask him to say something about himself, you will often times find him at a loss.

The right way is always to express in relative terms.

It is nothing more than changing clothes.

Precious stones are a great discovery of man.

The day this world has a healthier attitude towards death, there will be no need for Bardo.

In fact, by then your state of unconsciousness would already be broken.

Suddenly you became aware that part also exists in your body.

The one you are looking at and the one you are listening to are not two different individuals.

What we ordinarily know as being awake is also just a sprouting.

When his name, Thomas Edison, was called out, he looked around with indifference, as if someone elses name was being called.

"I was curious to see what these people were going to do.

So there is sushupti, the state of dreamless sleep, and there is the state of total awareness.

When you are aware in the day, the pendulum of your attention swings a little towards awareness.

"There was a first of January indeed, and I must have done something on that day, but I have no idea what exactly.

The same man is floating between sleep and wakefulness.

In order to understand what concentration is, it is necessary to know that when your attention is centered on one point, you become oblivious to all other points.

Light and luminosity are not synonymous; there is a slight distinction between the two.

For example, you will immediately take exception if I say that no man has ever seen light.

What is true of darkness and light is true of all other dualities of life.

And this belief has prevailed since eternity, and will continue to exist in the future, because those who are not dead will forever pass judgment on those who are.

You have a stomach ache, for example, and if the pain becomes unbearable you will fall unconscious.

We save whatsoever we consider significant, and whatsoever we find useless we drop.

Concentration happens when the arrow of consciousness strikes an object with great intensity.

Attention means: awareness of something.

Saving the body meant creating a little impediment for its new journey.

The modern man has had to make a choice.

For a philosopher, his theory is irrefutable.

Do you now follow what I mean when I say death proves to be an illusion for one who dies with awareness? Illusion means death never was.

So there is no difficulty in preserving the body of a realized sannyasin.

The reverse happens too.

Whatsoever capability of knowing you have should not remain just a potential, it should become actual.

like Bodhidharma.

The third power that was hidden in the seed and which became manifest in the tree could not have been the seed alone.

Finally, only one point remains to be known and the rest of the areas are filled with ignorance.

This is concentration of attention.

" As one knew someone to have life, he no longer has it.

The sole reason for this was that, if the dead body were to be saved, the spirit might hover around it for several months under the false idea that the body was not dead, and try to find ways to reenter it.

It will be a new voyage, a new body.

It might be fine if we said that the things that were happening around this man before are no longer happening.

Question 2

We are not fully cognizant of them.

So nirvana means one who has known that neither was life indeed life, nor was death really death.

There is a state exactly opposite to this which we call sushupti, the state of total, dreamless sleep.

So darkness and light are not two separate things, they are varying degrees of the same phenomenon.

"

His sleep was actually one of the lesser states of wakefulness, or his state of wakefulness had become a little hazy, a little fuzzy.

There must be something that makes the journey from the seed to the tree, that exists in both.

You would be able to die knowingly.

What we call being awake is still a very sleepy state.

To everyones great surprise the seeds in the other pot sprouted very late in spite of the fact that all arrangements for both pots were the same; there was not the slightest difference.

Just as objects are seen in the presence of light, the person, in the same way, had seen certain things when the light within him was present.

He lets go of both the essential and the unessential.

This needs to be understood.

In the state of total awareness, however, there is no particular point to be aware of -- the awareness is all-permeating.

" So he promptly lay down and died.

The separation of the body and the consciousness is death.

Here the phenomenon of death is being determined by those who are not qualified.

There will be no weeping, no wailing; nothing else will be done.

It is as if I were to step out of this house, and the members of this household, unaware of the world outside these walls, were to come to the door and bid me a tearful goodbye, feeling that the man they had come to say goodbye to had died.

As man goes on becoming knowledgeable of many things, he has to remain equally ignorant of many others.

Hence it is possible that, compared to you.

Thats why we could build a tomb over his body.

These are ultimate questions.

you will certainly be able to die consciously -- because dying is a phenomenon of life; it takes place fn life.

If a person were to note his last thought before going to sleep at night -- the very last thought -- he would be able to write a wonderful autobiography, incomparable.

We must remember, however, that all these words are used in a relative sense.

" But so what? We can ask, "Why did God create man? Why did he create him the way he did? Why did God create man in the first place?" This would leave the matter right where it is.

Unconsciousness and consciousness are but different densities of attention.

And what about when the tree had not been manifested yet, when it was still within the seed? The same preparation was going on then as well.

He will have to make this choice.

That will be your asset to carry into the next birth.

As he prayed for a particular seed with his eyes closed and his arms raised, the seed was photographed.

If they could keep the person awake, if they could remind him at each and every point

No one in the crowd is a right witness because no one really saw the person dying.

This recording, however, must have taken place in a state of somnolence, otherwise ones entire mind would be aware of it.

It will be an unfocused light.

No one has ever seen a person dying! Never has an act of dying been witnessed by anyone.

It does not rest on anything; it does not stop at anything, it pervades all over.

This is how you bring all your consciousness to one point.

We are not just saying whatsoever was present in the man exists no more, we are saying something has happened over and above this -- the man is dead.

Nirvana means the total realization of both realities.

The ultimate questions are like the Daruma doll.

If the street is familiar your attention will be tenuous; if the street is unfamiliar your attention will be dense.

The very meaning of science is knowing more and more about less and less.

Once a question is formulated, someone or other is bound to come up with an answer for it.

A man who has earned one hundred thousand rupees and donated a thousand rupees to the building of a temple, will not remember the temple in his dying moments -- but the safe containing ninety-nine thousand rupees, that he will undoubtedly remember.

The knowing is still in the embryo state.

"

The whole, the absolute is beginningless and endless.

Actually, we are used to seeing life in terms of duality.

He comes to feel he is dying just as others before him have died.

No one can ever die knowingly, consciously, because he remains aware all the time that he is not dying, that something is dying in him but he is not.

Then the consciousness withdraws from the body, it does not leave all at once; all of the body does not die at the same time.

That third power is the vital energy.

What does this mean? There are very wide implications.

A man is asleep, a man is awake.

With that, however, the entire world, including ones own self, falls into darkness.

All religions make this error.

Thinking is a process of division -- you immediately divide into two.

Thats why we use words in the absolute sense -- which is not right.

He took it off so totally that he did not have to review, to reevaluate his understanding of the real and the unreal, of the essential and the unessential.

"This is how it is; these are the facts.

Also, dont be under the wrong impression, normally created by applying the law of economics, that certain things become valuable because of their rarity.

A gambler has placed a hundred thousand dollars on a bet and is about to throw the dice.

A rock looks even more asleep, but even its state of sleep contains a kind of awareness.

" To say anything more than this is dangerous, is crossing the limits of propriety.

In it, that little seed must have had the entire plan.

Now it will be easier for you to follow me.

Do what you will, they stay right where they are.

The last thought in your dying moments is the quintessence of your entire life of seventy, eighty years.

It would not be wrong to say that the seed is the unmanifest state of the tree, because what appears in the form of a tree is the same as was hidden within the seed.

He has seen other people dying before and the social illusion that man dies is stuck in his mind as well.

The element that travels between the two is meditation.

The more tenuous the attention, the same will be the state of unconsciousness.

The master said, "All right, forget it! Let me ask you this: have you seen any mystic dying while standing on his head?"

The man is now fully convinced he is about to die, that he is dying, that he is gone.

Less light is enough for you to see; hence the pupil contracts and the focus is narrowed.

The bark of some trees also has eyes -- not like ours of course, but nevertheless, trees have the ability to see, to listen, to experience.

" So by the time a child grows up he has learned all the symptoms of death, and when these symptoms apply to him he just closes his eyes and becomes unconscious.

What foolishness! If this were really true then why didnt he create man as a god in the first place? Where was the need to go through all this trouble? Someone else declares, "This whole thing goes on to fulfill the unfinished karmas of previous lives.

In the ultimate state that I am speaking to you about the particular object will have vanished; instead, everything will be illuminated, including yourself, including that which you are.

His consciousness will have to become object-centered and allow many things to be left in the dark.

In all these cases the man is unaware of what is going on outside or inside himself.

Its an awareness without a center.

The seed is accepting, the seed is receiving something too.

Thats why an old-fashioned man knows about many things while a modern man does not.

Both events occur simultaneously.

Now the same part is inactive, asleep; the other part is awake, active.

At the most, depending on how and where you throw them, their positions may change.

The doll is called Daruma.

What occurred last night will be the starting point of the next morning.

So if we understand what attention, dhyana is, well understand what consciousness and unconsciousness means.

Should we continue to lean towards awareness like this, should this journey continue, then a moment comes when even in sleep you are not really completely asleep.

You may keep tossing the doll for the rest of your life: you will be tired, not the doll.

You can look at it this way too: a dynamic attention means awareness, while a passive attention means sleep, unconsciousness.

How can he? He sees himself the same as before, without the slightest difference.

" She didnt look back.

Similarly, the memories of our past lives are also lying there undisturbed.

Thats why the incident made such a deep impression on you.

If someone from Mars were to land on earth and come across these two men, how would he differentiate between them? He neither knows our language nor our culture nor our manners.

He sees himself surrounded by his loved ones, his family and relatives crying bitterly.

So Einstein said, "If you ask a philosopher a hundred questions, he will give one hundred and fifty answers.

If you say, "I am conscious," then it can be asked, "Conscious about what?" Chit means objectless consciousness.

But we are a very unhealthy people; we live in a great illusion, and because of this illusion the antidote becomes essential.

Its no fun.

"I was just having fun," he said.

How are we to understand what attention is, what meditation is? Because it is an experience, to understand it is a bit difficult.

If he wants to know a great deal about mathematics, he will have to be content with not knowing about many other things.

He begins to live only in and around the afflicted parts of his body; the rest of the body does not exist for him any more.

Nirvana means awareness of the reality that what we understand as death is no death at all, and that what we mean by life is not really life.

His conclusion is also part of that social illusion.

In a dream, a man gets up, goes to the kitchen and drinks a glass of water, or sits at his table and writes a letter, and then goes back to sleep.

"We cannot see anything.

In fact, it raises a number of questions from each answer it finds.

In such a case, awareness becomes infinite, all pervading.

The dead never return with news.

"We know this much, that by mixing both, water is created; by not mixing them, water is not created.

You cannot attain joy by staying asleep.

"The question doesnt arise," he will say.

If you have had a fight with somebody the previous night, then the very first thought the next morning will be about that fight.

Then there will be no question of returning.

A man knows about the thorn hurting his foot, the headache, the house on fire, the taking of an examination and so on, so we know attention directed towards a particular point; we know what concentration is.

For a long time we had no knowledge of this fact.

In the photograph of that seed the holy mans cross and raised arms were clearly visible.

There are two kinds of attention.

What is it that moves between these states? What was present in the seed and also exists in the tree? There must be a connecting link between the seed and the tree.

What we call being awake is a state similar to somnambulism.

It would be better to say.

Actually, even the last thought before going to sleep is the abstract of your whole days happenings, the sum total of the entire day, the digest of it.

He wont even say who dies and who does not die.

In my view, they are one.

This all-pervading awareness is the ultimate state, the highest possible.

Its like the blueprint of a building; it contains all that it will be someday.

His eyes were open, he followed the right path, opened the door without difficulty, wrote the letter, but still he was asleep.

Even minor illnesses frighten us and we become unconscious -- what to say about the terrifying thought of death.

There is a technique to remove it; there is a systematic way to get rid of it.

Nor do we see any beginning of darkness, nor any termination of light.

Up to yesterday, what I had understood as his life exists no more.

And once this basic dishonesty escapes your notice, the remaining structure will look very convincing; you wont find any difficulty.

She was known to have set him right whenever he was mischievous as a young boy.

He had seen them both breathing, walking, talking, resting -- and all alike.

Remember, it is with ignorance that one always pays the price of knowing.

If we travel towards the sun, the light will keep on increasing, because the rays are very dense on the sun.

Penetrating them is even more difficult because they are buried even further, at deeper levels.

The sight of an unknown corpse is frightening enough, but to bring down a corpse standing on its head was even more scary.

For instance, we are all sitting here and in a way we are all awake.

Following the same analogy, it would not be incorrect to say that unconsciousness is the potential state of awareness, or that awareness is the manifest state of unconsciousness.

All these things can be looked into in detail, because all of it is hidden in that tiny seed.

He is on a journey somewhere in between.

At the moment of placing his bet, he is more aware than ever.

Hence.

Then the current of awareness keeps flowing within.

As long as he was in the body the man believed it to be his final abode as well.

If an answer does come, then know well the question is no longer the ultimate question -- it must be a question somewhere in between, a question for which the answer has been found.

You may simply say.

This was possible because the sannyasin had already realized he and his body were separate.

One who goes to battle, sword in hand, is in search of meditation too.

For instance, it is wrong to ask "Where does wholeness end?" because wholeness means that which can never come to an end.

As long as a mans attention is narrowed down to a particular point, he will be unconscious of the remaining areas.

Although I talk all along on religion, my outlook is always scientific.

Just as people hynotize a man in his dying moment, similarly, people involved in Bardo give anti-hypnotic suggestions to a dying man.

It is only natural that at the moment one is slapped, ones attention would be at its highest point.

Only the knower remains; that which is to be known remains no more.

This is the ultimate state.

He can be made to sit in a certain posture to prevent him from falling asleep, to let him stay conscious.

He was more asleep than the other man, the one who heard "Rama" being called in his sleep.

One should not be under the illusion that just because a thing is consistent it is also meaningful.

And the photograph turned out to be spectacular, far beyond anyones comprehension.

No matter how you toss it, it always stands upright.

Neither do you know about anything -- it is not even concentration; nor do you know about everything -- it is not even awareness.

So keep in mind that the system of burning the body is not just a way of vacating the house.

If the steps of this house are broken, if there is no remaining link, then he will knock on the door of another house, of another body -- because life can only be experienced by being in the body.

He foregoes good deeds as well as bad deeds.

The seed has a consciousness too.

Thats all man is -- a sprout, a sprouted seed.

It is the state of total darkness.

The fact of the matter is that, outwardly, we feel he is dead, but this is a social determination, which is wrong.

My question is: have you ever seen anyone die walking?"

AT THE DWARKA MEDITATION CAMP YOU SAID MEDITATION AND SAMADHI CONSTITUTE A VOLUNTARY, CONSCIOUS ENTERING INTO DEATH, AND IN DOING SO THE DELUSION OF DEATH DISAPPEARS.

It will keep standing upright, in place.

So, falling unconscious is our unique way of dealing with unbearable pain.

The moment you think, you divide.

As soon as the pain reaches the point of becoming unbearable, you are gone; hence you never feel unbearable pain.

Both pots were given equal care and attention.

What he had understood as life was not life at all.

At that moment you would only remain aware of that part of the body where the pin was hurting.

Its fluidity, density, tenuity, solidity, determine whether to call one awake or asleep, whether to call one unconscious or conscious.

In a manner of speaking, this luminosity is a state of knowing all, but in another sense, it is a state of knowing nothing at all.

Somebody in the queue happened to recognize him.

He goes all alone, leaving everything behind.

"Dispose of him.

And yet, there is a certain awareness in its state of sleep.

At this moment he cannot afford to be asleep; he will have to be aware.

It is like saying farewell to a person who has died.

This is a little difficult to understand, because we only know the pointed attention.

That will become the basis of your journey; it will instantly become your built-in program.

In the first world war, when rationing was introduced in America, Edison had to bring his ration card to the shop and stand in the queue as well.

To be able to die knowingly is a contradiction in terms.

This is not how these stones are valued.

Only the person named Rama opens his eyes to find out who is disturbing his sleep, who has called him.

Recently, I was reading about some experiments conducted at the de la Warr Laboratory of Oxford University.

What we call being asleep is also not really being asleep.

It is possible to die in a state of awareness only if you have lived with awareness.

What causes the difficulty? When we form a question, some fool turns up to answer it.

So he feels he is dying.

It is just a potentiality: the seed can die without materializing into the tree.

If no one else removes it, then anyone who has practiced even a little meditation can come out of it himself at the time of death.

Had the pain been unbearable he would have been unconscious.

In this world everything has individuality, and this individuality depends on the degree to which a thing is awake or asleep.

If a man can die in the state of consciousness, for him death exists no more.

And I can mention this as well: with the increase in darkness, misery grows.

Why is it so? For example, lets assume someone slapped you when you were five years old.

With the ownership of a stone of that kind incidents will inevitably occur, because now you are in a symbiotic relationship with the stone.

We see the body as his final resting place.

Your whole attention will remain fixed on the dagger and you will become fully aware of it.

The truth is that a meditative person, one who may have made a little headway in meditation, does not realize for a long time that he is dead.

It is still in seed form; it is still unmanifest, hidden in the roots.

And all around him these suggestions are given.

I believe these experiments will prove much more useful to mankind than the discovery of atomic energy.

That is just a trick on your part to switch off your mind, to forget the pain.

Rocks have their respective individuality too.

No, in fact, it is the final occurrence in the series of events which take place in life.

They did not have any specialized knowledge; they were not experts in any field.

Were there bright sunshine outside, this room would look darker.

You turn in your sleep and know that you are doing so.

Because of the unfamiliarity of the street, great attention will be needed.

So when we see two pieces of stone, our understanding is similar because we are unaware of their individualities.

Many have died like that before.

It can still try to figure out a way to reenter the body.

It is all-knowing, because now nothing remains that falls outside the radius of its light.

The search can be both good or bad, desirable or undesirable, but the search is one and the same.

the person to your left is less awake, or the person to your right is more awake.

Life, in a sense, will go on.

It has to -- because only then is it possible to see somebody.

Thats the third force, the vital energy.

If this is the answer we are going to get ultimately

So, from the outside, he will knock on the door to find entry.

There are stones which have a long history of misfortune.

In Tibet this technique is known as bardo.

And I dont think a way can ever be found.

The fact is, in sleep we come nearer to matter.

How can one who is used to spending his whole day in a state of sleep, stay awake when he is actually asleep? This means that one who is already asleep even when he is awake, will most certainly be fast asleep in his sleep.

Now the man seems certain of his death.

Should it ever end somewhere it will not be whole.

And the one who is sitting in the cave with his eyes closed, working hard on his agya chakra, his third eye center, is searching for meditation as well.

For example, I am sitting here talking to you.

Philosophy is made of foolish answers to foolish questions.

The knower, as well as that which is to be known, are both lost, lost in darkness.

The part which is awake in this life has no knowledge of the immense amount of work already accomplished by another part in a previous life.

And about the one he answers, he will make clear that it is all that is known at this point.

Now a new life has begun which, in the former sense, is not an association.

It is amazing, but when you sow a particular little seed, why does it only give rise to the banyan tree? The seed must have had a built-in program, otherwise this would not be possible.

It is not necessary that the tree has to come out of the seed, it is simply a possibility.

It is unfocused, uncentered, just luminosity.

Similarly, we should call light a shortage of darkness -- darkness which our eyes can catch.

But thats not really true.

And there can be music which can make a person fall asleep.

This is how philosophy has come about.

One should say, rather, your whole being would converge upon it.

The last thought, the last wish, the last desire of a dying man will become his first desire after death.

Actually, as soon as we use the words absolute or whole we need to take a few conditions that go with it into account.

Darkness and light are variations of the same thing.

And this happens as scientifically as anything else.

He thanked the man for reminding him who he was.

"

And then, suddenly, the pain caused by the pin created a crisis and your whole attention rushed to where the pin was hurting.

Deep down, all this chasing indicates a profound desire to experience a crystallized attention -- meditation.

When you come out of bright light into a dark place, the pupils dilate and the focus is enlarged, because in order to see in the dark, more light needs to go within.

Questions occur in our minds: "Where did this unconsciousness come from? Why did it come? When did it come? Where will it end? Why will it end? When will it end? Where in existence is this state of consciousness located? And where in existence could the state of complete unconsciousness be?" It is natural that questions such as these should arise.

The final event is not the end, it is just a separation.

But I maintain that no one has ever seen light.

But to say "There is darkness" is absolutely wrong.

Regardless of how you throw it, toss it, it stands erect, in place.

As soon as a person crosses the limit of endurance he falls unconscious.

It will be a whole new set-up.

As we look forward we find darkness decreasing and light growing, becoming increasingly dense.

Then a holy man, a monk, was asked to pray before one of the two pots so its seeds should sprout early, so they should bear flowers and fruit and attain to their ultimate potential.

It may not have occurred to you, but there are certain things we never forget.

Man is not a tree, he is a broken seed with a tiny sprout.

These are facts.

And there was a marked difference in the quality of flowers and fruit.

We are not only saying that, but also that a new phenomenon has been added: the man is dead too.

And when we know all that is not, we begin to see that which is.

" No one goes on asking him, "Why is it so? Why is water created by mixing hydrogen and oxygen?" He will simply make it clear.

If a thorn pricks your foot, the foot becomes everything.

In the state of total awareness the object disappears, only the subject remains.

He was such an important figure that in thirty years no one had ever called him by his given name.

One particular object will gain importance while all remaining objects will fall into neglect.

This is my approach.

What occurred on that day was recorded in some corner of your mind, a corner of which even you are not fully aware.

The life he lived up to yesterday is no more.

If you want to know about something, you will have to be ignorant of something else.

His illusion is not of dying.

The memory of being a tree is yet to be revived.

Hence, on the one hand we say Mahavira was omniscient, but the fact is he didnt even know how to fix a puncture in a bicycle tire.

You will become conscious, awake, quite different from what you are now.

It is as if a buddha is standing somewhere and an ordinary man stands near him.

AND THERE IS NO QUESTION OF CONSCIOUSNESS BEING DELUDED.

" Now, was this man awake or asleep? In every sense he was awake, of course, and yet, as far as the man who met him on the street was concerned, he was almost asleep.

" For thirty years this man had been so busy in his laboratory that he had no time for himself.

But the mind is helpless.

In fact, he foregoes everything.

The way he lives and moves around her doesnt require him to pay any attention to her.

No matter what anyone did to Bodhidharma, he remained as he was.

But when I say they are one, I do not mean they are one and the same.

Beyond this, fiction begins.

Once he has come to the realization of both, there is no longer any built-in program left.

Now he is ready to go all by himself, like the lonely flight of a bird.

The spirit realizes it no longer has any link with the body, that the bridge is broken.

Whenever anyone dies, all his loved ones should make an attempt to shatter his illusion that he is dying.

This hypnosis of death will cause him to become unconscious, frightened, horrified; it will make him shrink, feeling "I am about to die, I am about to die.

Looking at her, his attention has to become condensed; the focus of his eye changes immediately.

Matter and God are not two opposite things.

The desire to live again, to have another body, to take a new birth will remain.

You need not be alert if it is a street you cross every day, because in an unconscious state you are sure to make it.

"Pardon me, I have seen your photograph in the newspapers.

In order to prevent him from doing that, people use Bardo as an antidote.

We who are not dead, we who have no knowledge of death, crowd around the person and pronounce him dead.

One ought to simply say, "The man is no longer alive.

He becomes object-centered.

Hence, in my view, the attraction for another woman or another man is really the attraction of attention.

Do you follow me?

Ultimately, he will end up with fragments and the whole will be completely lost.

At night, when you are asleep, it swings towards sushupti.

The energy to know spreads into infinity and no longer is there anything left to know.

Never believe a word of it if someone says he is suffering from unbearable pain, because the person talking to you is still conscious.

If the Martian were to spend an hour or so watching these two men, would he ever observe any distinction between the two? Returning to his planet, he would not be wrong if he told his fellow Martians he had seen two people who looked very much alike.

You ask him the next day why he didnt return your greeting and he replies, "My house was on fire.

In fact, no sooner does the mind raise a question than it divides the thing into two.

One turns off so one remains unaware of the pain.

There is fire in an ember because it contains highly condensed light.

Only a sannyasins body was never cremated because a sannyasin already knows he is not the body.

Whenever light is condensed, fire is produced.

" But to say "The man is dead" is going a little too far; it is going beyond limits.

The monks replied, "We havent seen anyone do it, but we have heard of a certain mystic who died walking.

Light which our eyes cannot catch, light which our eyes cannot detect, looks like darkness.

The master was a dangerous man.

Once the danger is over, you go back to your previous state, you go to sleep once again.

It is ignorant of the fact that a seed had already sprouted in the previous life and subsequently died.

You may just succeed in pushing the question a little further back -- thats all.

One, we may call concentration.

Access to them is even more difficult.

NOW THE QUESTION IS, WHO IS DELUDED? IS IT THE BODY OR IS IT THE CONSCIOUSNESS? SINCE THE BODY IS MERELY A MECHANICAL DEVICE, IT CANNOT EXPERIENCE SUCH DELUSION.

Nor do you know yourself.

The seeds in it grew early, bore flowers and fruit early.

And if you wish for neither, you can stand in between and indulge in thinking about what was before and what is ahead.

For example, a man falls into a coma or becomes unconscious or gets drunk.

It is the primary state in which you know neither the object nor yourself.

In that one moment, in that moment of thrill, the mind becomes fully aware.

Do you suppose one who failed to see what life is like even in his wakeful state, will be able to see what death is? In fact, as soon as life slips through his hands, at that moment he will be lost in deep sleep.

When the light becomes tenuous -- that is, when its density is reduced -- then even fire remains just light.

Consciousness will always be object-centered, while the state of being conscious is centrifugal, radiating into infinity.

If there were ends on any side it would not be the whole.

Whether he knows it or not is another matter.

That would be the short, abstract story of your life.

No sooner do we ask about consciousness and unconsciousness than we have begun to divide.

Even the experiments carried on by Buddha and Mahavira did not go beyond the level of animal life.

As for the memory of being rocks and minerals, it is still further down the road.

Suddenly it makes a lot of difference whether it exists or not.

In the previous life some part of our being was awake, and that part had done the recording.

This also needs to be understood, because it will be useful in following your question.

" You will be surprised to know, however, that if you were hypnotized and asked the same question you could easily give a detailed account of that very day.

In these moments he is so filled with awareness that their memory pervades his entire consciousness, while the ordinary run-of-the-mill happenings are forgotten by him.

We have, of course, seen lighted objects, but never light itself.

It is only a potentiality, not yet an actuality.

The way he had positioned himself

In my view, religion should also be perceived as a science.

" Now the swan, his soul, is leaving all alone, accompanied by no one -- neither friend nor foe, neither good deeds nor bad deeds, neither scriptures nor doctrines -- nothing.

In this state, which extends to infinity, there is no single point where unconsciousness can gain a foothold.

In that threatening moment your whole being will come to the point of crystallization, your whole attention will become condensed.

even with stones, there are some which are awake.

It is possible this situation may last only for a second; nevertheless, the fact is, your attention ordinarily becomes dense only in critical moments.

Now you will set out on a new journey, and your future birth will take place according to this future program.

And the answer to every question lies in this wholeness, in this totality.

The awareness of death

Through various stages it withdraws, and all stages of this contraction can be recounted to the dying man as a means of keeping him conscious.

So far, no one has ever seen the phenomenon of death.

" They give him anti-hypnotic suggestions.

The later turning of the seed into a tree is yet another state of its being, the manifest state.

You greet him.

An even more surprising experiment took place, one which caused great excitement.

Without it such incidents would not happen.

In order to know a lot about one thing he has had to give up knowing about many other things.

It would be appropriate to call darkness a deficiency of light.

Lets put it this way.

But the memories of all these past lives are clearly recorded.

It is the element of danger that draws him to gambling.

The more a man is used to thinking, the more he will keep on dividing.

There is light in this room because it is dark outside.

A kind of music can be created around a person to make him stay conscious.

Then there are other stones that have brought good fortune to those who owned them, and became more and more costly.

That means, they are meant to make sure the person does not grab on to the social illusion that he is on the verge of dying.

And we are always in the middle; we can only see a short distance in either direction.

It will remain confined at that very point; right there it will cease to be whole.

Thats it; beyond this there is a wall.

The illusion can be removed.

Ordinarily, we look upon death as something which happens outside of life, or as some kind of phenomenon opposite to life.

His illusion is how he can expect to remain awake at the moment of death when he has lived all his life in the state of sleep? It is obvious.

She became very annoyed.

It has no idea at all that such an attempt was already made once before.

As an example, it would be good to know a few things about the pupil of the eye.

If you stay sleepy in such a dangerous situation you will be near death.

Not every one sitting here is awake uniformly.

There are certain questions you never ask a scientist.

What we call being awake is also a very blurry state.

Contrary to this is the technique of active meditation -- a technique of how to enter death consciously.

All this creates a hypnotic effect on him.

In fact, falling unconscious is a device we use against things we are afraid of.

First the fruit is green, then it starts turning yellow.

For example, a man runs a shop all day long, and at night he makes a summary of his days accounts and then goes to sleep.

But it is natural for you to ask, "Who is deluded?" You are right in saying it cannot be the body, because how can the body feel delusion? It cannot be the soul either, because the soul never dies.

All philosophies are fundamentally dishonest.

Rather, when a person dies fully conscious, he finds there is no death at all.

And what was going on when the fruit was green? It was getting ready to face the same final event.

It is not the final statement.

It is difficult to penetrate them because they are hidden under even deeper layers.

You may have hardly given a thought as to what makes him gamble.

The consciousness shrinks inside and, bit by bit, leaves each part of the body.

As a matter of fact, infinite attempts have been made before.

Instead of calling it light, we should rather call it luminosity.

So what is being asleep and being awake? The first thing I would like to say is: they are not two opposite things.

Its a very critical moment.

At the time of departure all that is worthless will drop, and that which is meaningful will be packed up, carried over by you.

The spirit would have to hang around unnecessarily; hence the custom of immediate cremation -- so, at the cremation ground, the spirit could see that the affair is all over, that what it had taken to be its body no longer exists.

" The scientist says, "When we mix hydrogen with oxygen, water is created.

What remains is just infinite luminosity.

The same prayer was not made before the second pot.

He remembers nothing of this in the morning, he did it all in the dream.

Hence, the more a man lives in security, the more unconscious he will be.

Then sleep becomes merely a physical relaxation, not a state of spiritual darkness.

But now, even scientists are providing proof that a tree knows as well, that a tree listens too.

Whosoever possessed such a stone found himself in difficulty, found it hard to get out of it.

You walk along a street.

Had this man been really asleep, he could not have heard anyone calling him; he could not have recognized that his name was Rama.

Question 3

Now his illusion begins to become confirmed.

There is always a price for whatsoever knowledge one wishes to attain.

It is very foolish on your part to conclude that the man is dead.

There is a reason for this: the answer lies in the wholeness.

As density decreases darkness increases.

He will only judge by appearances.

About the rest he is as dull as a villager, even worse.

Kabir says, "I leave behind my cloak intact.

At the time of death we gather the essence of our entire life.

You will not die, because no one ever dies.

So now the person thinks he is gone, he is dying, that life is lost forever.

A rock is a sleeping God -- totally asleep, absolutely like a seed, no sprouting anywhere.

Both things happen simultaneously.

The ultimate question is one which remains in spite of all answers.

Meditation means: the power of knowing that lies within you becomes manifest in its entirety.

Therefore, I have no answers to the ultimate questions; there cannot be any.

It would contain everything that is essential, and all that is nonessential would drop away.

But we never see either the end of darkness or of light.

Should you ever enter into the memories of your past lives, you will be in for a great surprise.

What is this thing which appears as consciousness when it is present in a greater degree and becomes unconsciousness when it exists in a lesser degree? The name of this very element is attention.

In Bardo, people gather around a man in his dying moments and tell him, "You are not dying, because no one has ever died.

The person closes his eyes and the entire process is narrated to him: now his life-energy has left his legs, now it has left his hands, now he cannot speak, and so on -- and yet, the man is told, he still is, he will still remain.

" This would be a statement of fact.

This is the reason why in this country we burn all bodies except those of sannyasins.

When the pain doesnt go away, the only other alternative is to switch off ones mind.

Hence, although concentration is the density of attention, at the same time it is the expansion of unconsciousness too.

He wont even call death an illusion.

Those who were able to read the stones in depth, able to go deep in their research, to connect with them, found out that.

Yet another result of concentration is that the more an object grows in importance, the more the one who knows about it becomes secondary.

The memories of past lives are not restricted to human lives alone.

You yourself seem to be Edison.

With an increase in density, light increases.

It is not that mans illusion; his illusion is altogether different.

This experiment and many others were conducted in this laboratory, and to everyones surprise it was felt that plants are able to sense prayer too, that they are receptive to prayer too.

The more profound the state of attention, the same will be the consciousness.

You see a man dying, and then you think he is dead.

When some people brought this to our attention for the first time, it seemed as if they were talking fiction; what they said sounded like a story from the Puranas.

"

Do you follow what I mean? Death is a social illusion.

So, the more meditative you are, the more aware; the less meditative, the more asleep.

those who wish to attain joy must awaken.

When we ask, "From where does wholeness begin?" we are asking a wrong question, because the whole means that which has no beginning.

Then what fruits were we reaping in that initial birth?" Obviously it was without cause.

She becomes as well known to him as the street he crosses every day -- and suddenly the woman next door looks more attractive.

How else can there be a connection between the seed and the tree? What was hidden in the seed and has manifested in the tree? It can neither be the seed nor can it be the tree.

So nirvana means that a person has come to know that death is not really death, nor is life, life.

The second common state of awareness is that of concentration, where you know about one thing and forget about all the rest, including yourself.

In fact, even the most unconscious of all objects is not completely unconscious.

In other words, death is the final happening of what you understand life to be.

And this needs to be understood too.

"

The gardeners were neither informed of the difference nor given any instructions to treat them differently.

Compared to man it looks even more asleep.

A man brings a wife home.

If you wish to choose misery you can go back towards darkness and unconsciousness.

It turns more and more yellow until finally it becomes completely yellow and falls from the tree.

My time has come, but I feel there is no use dying the way everyone dies.

A search may be successful or unsuccessful, but the desire for searching is one and the same.

He said, "In the last thirty years I have had little free time or leisure to meet myself.

He hasnt given up his habits even in his old age.

And all the joys in ones life depend on how crystallized the meditation is.

In this way, science escapes falling into stupidities.

Man is on a journey -- or it would be even better to say that man is in transit, at a halting place on a journey.

Similarly, the last thought before falling asleep is the summary of your whole days account.

The remaining four hundred and ninety-nine people stay asleep.

One who suffers from a headache becomes identified with the head alone; the rest of his body ceases to be.

The social illusion that he is dying grips his mind.

You may call it karma, you may call it desire or whatsoever else you will; you may call it samskara, conditioning, it wont make any difference.

Awakening and unconsciousness are two states.

Science never makes any final statement.

I apply the same principle to the states of unconsciousness and consciousness.

Some people say God created man so man can attain God.

If you were to note the very first thought each morning, looking at fifteen thoughts collected over fifteen days would enable you to know everything about your life -- what you were, what you are, what you want to be.

It was the search for their respective singularity that led to the discovery of precious stones; otherwise they would not have been found.

Ordinarily, people take chit to mean chetana, consciousness, which is not really its meaning, because consciousness is always about something.

To think and to divide into two constitute one and the same thing.

And if it were the tree alone, how could it have been in the seed? It existed in both.

Thats the reason a scientist who may be able to produce a hydrogen bomb can be easily fooled by an ordinary shopkeeper -- because whatsoever he knows is in such a limited sphere that he knows nothing about the rest.

However, as far as you are concerned, you are looking with your eyes and hearing with your ears.

Do you follow what I am saying? One thing: nirvana means that when a person knows death he will find there is no death.

"Now, thats more like it," she said.

So the man is at a loss in the morning to explain what happened at night.

Light is always an unknown source.

There can be many ways of keeping a dying person awake.

That association has broken.

YOU HAVE DESCRIBED TWO STATES, ONE OF COMPLETE UNCONSCIOUSNESS AND THE OTHER OF ABSOLUTE AWARENESS.

It is not consciousness aimed at something, it is just a pure state of being conscious.

He has heard that his house is on fire.

So, concentration is one form of attention.

In concentration you become centered on one point while remaining unconscious of the infinite number of other areas.

And how about when this seed had not even been born and was still hidden in some other tree? The same process was going on.

In that case you will have known only half the truth.

The element that moves between consciousness and unconsciousness is attention.

Edison gave a start.

That seems to be the reason danger attracts.

At whatever level the attention becomes condensed, consciousness takes place, and at whatever level the density of attention decreases, unconsciousness occurs.

The people around him said, "We never conceived or dreamed of such a thing, let alone saw someone dying like that.

This needs to be understood in a little detail.

" On the one hand this man is saying that everything is beyond comprehension, that it is all an illusion, maya; however, when he is talking about everything being an illusion, he is saying something which is actually coming out of his understanding.

However, prior to many human lives, we have passed through animal lives as well.

Then death becomes a falsehood.

These stones are still very much alive, still doing their job; they will cause trouble to anyone who possesses them.

People will gather around him and a village priest or monk will come and say, "You are not dying, because no one has ever died.

The moments of bliss are the moments of crystallized meditation.

He will point out, "The tree is green because it contains chlorophyll!" If you continue to ask, "Why cant the tree be without chlorophyll?" the scientist will state frankly, "I am not the creator, and there is no answer to this question!"

As a matter of fact, the individual never feels the delusion of death, the illusion of death is a social phenomenon.

Someone feels his pulse.

A thing can be consistent and yet meaningless.

The knower alone remains.

If one attempts to know something in particular, many other things will obviously be left unknown.

That falling from the tree is not an event outside of the yellowing process of the fruit; rather, it is the eventual fulfillment of the yellowing itself.

The matter will be argued, carried further.

This is the ultimate fact.

One should say there is just awareness, not an awareness of a particular object.

One who goes hunting a tiger in the forest is also searching for meditation.

" Whatsoever a philosopher says is to be taken as conclusive; anyone doubting it can suffer the fires of hell.

The deeper meaning of darkness is, now nothing is visible to us.

Therefore, we cant ask any questions about the beginning or the end of the absolute.

You may consider unconsciousness as darkness, and consciousness as light.

But the human mind immediately divides things into two.

How can one who cannot see in the bright daylight see in the darkness of night?

You have divided me into two parts.

And whenever the stone passed to someone else, he got into trouble too.

If there is any life beyond that, then so be it; if there isnt, then be that as it may.

But there is one other kind of attention which is not focused on a given point.