We take things absolutely mechanically.
No, no one ever dies of illness.
For us, death is an inference; it is not an event that occurs right before us.
Just recently, it seems the birthday of Ishwarchandra Vidyasagar was celebrated.
Once I was traveling in a train.
If homeopathic sugar pills succeed, then he is cured by the pills.
And an incredible thing happens.
There are no vows of celibacy.
We have seen sick people, we have seen the suffering of a dying man -- the cramping of his limbs, his eyes rolling up, his face deforming, his jaws clenching; we have seen that perhaps the man wants to say something but cannot -- we have seen all this.
How can there be any life in moving round and round like an ox at a wheel? The ox simply moves mechanically.
Now even at the age of seventy you have no courage left to take a vow of celibacy.
Some of the most dangerous prisoners were kept in a large prison.
Those who believe the soul is immortal, that it can never die, what fear can they have of becoming slaves? What fear can they have of fighting the enemy? What fear can they have of facing death by hanging? How can guns and cannons frighten them? But no, something else is involved here.
He has proposed incredible cures; he could not have suggested them had they not been effective.
Death is the most certain thing; no one can doubt its existence.
For example, there is a man and he is an alcoholic.
One day he finds his legs refuse to walk, another day his vision fails, sometimes his ears lose their hearing power.
If you can become a witness even for a few moments in twenty-fourhours, you will find all of a sudden what a big madhouse this world is, and how, by becoming a witness, you step out of it.
If a person such as Vidyasagar took a play to be real, how can ordinary people like us comprehend what it means to take as play what we hold to be real? But with a few experiments of being a witness, we will be able to understand what it means: reality will begin to look like a drama.
He becomes insane every six months, and for the other six months he remains sane.
He is into forgetting misery.
Just watch without doing anything -- simply be a witness.
The emperor asked, "Are you an atheist?"
The man said, "This is impossible.
If the human body were to be dissected in every way, at the end you would find nothing except electrons.
"
We have no idea of roots, we merely go on playing with leaves.
As soon as the clock strikes eleven or twelve or one in the afternoon, whatever, you feel hungry.
A great deal of research is being done in America to find the psychological causes for car accidents -- in a large number we seem to be responsible.
There can be a thousand and one strategies -- they can be religious, non-religious, or secular.
In other words, life is a vast expanse, while death is the total, cumulative, condensation of this whole expanse -- the abridgment of it.
At that moment everything in my life will stand before me cumulatively.
So let your awareness of misery become intense, sharp.
IN ORDER FOR ONE TO STAY AWAKE AT THE TIME OF DEATH, OR IN ORDER FOR ONE TO SUCCESSFULLY EXPERIENCE A CONSCIOUS DEATH IN MEDITATION, PLEASE EXPLAIN IN DETAIL HOW A SEEKER SHOULD WORK ON THE FOLLOWING: THE BODY SYSTEM, THE BREATHING SYSTEM, THE STATE OF BREATHING, THE STATE OF ONES BEING, CELIBACY, THE STATE OF ONES MIND.
He lost his control.
It is just a matter of interpretation.
So the revolutionaries forcibly cut the chains and released the prisoners.
If you force people to give up their existing chains, they will put on new ones.
Once there was a Mohammedan mystic called Farid.
" Thats how it is going on really.
Man becomes so tied to the familiar that he feels hurt even breaking his chains.
Some were imprisoned for twenty years, some for thirty, and some were in there for fifty years.
But you do find someone around.
Then he no longer remains just hungry, he goes crazy.
For example, you are hungry and there is no food around.
Living a wrong life may be forgiven, but dying wrongly can never be forgiven, because it is the ultimate point, it is the very quintessence, the finale of life.
Dont run away from pain, dont escape from misery.
When this awareness reaches the depths of his being like an arrow, all of a sudden a man finds himself rising to celibacy.
Really, ideally a cemetery should be created in the middle of the town, because there is nothing in life more certain than death itself: everything else is uncertain.
For instance, you ask, "If a seeker practices celibacy, will it help in death? Will he attain awareness?" In fact, he alone can attain celibacy who becomes a witness, not otherwise.
He did this everywhere he traveled.
He was ultimately executed, beheaded in front of the Jama Masjid in Delhi.
The danger is obvious.
We have seen a consciousness move away from the shores of life, and then after a certain point we have lost sight of it.
And sometimes it shrinks.
We can prepare ourselves while going through pain and suffering -- and remember, if we can do so while facing them, it will prove useful at the time of death.
Man exaggerates his suffering.
Ordinarily, during times of suffering, we try to forget pain.
They were sentenced to life imprisonment.
At the moment of death I will be the sum of my whole life.
It is beside the point that a man dies following an illness, but one need not be mistaken and think that illness causes death.
But pain and misery come every day.
Neither does he know nor do other people know when he is sane and when he is insane.
No matter what we look at, a distance immediately begins to take place.
Just be there and watch the person swearing at you.
That sutra is, "Other than the one God, there is no God.
Whenever love flows in his life, he eats less.
Did you say you are a thief? Forget it, no one is a thief.
The woman was annoyed.
We only knew the device for coming here, we dont know the key that will take us back.
Someone may ask, "What can the reason be? Why does he go on inhaling and exhaling smoke like that? There must be a secret behind this taking in and letting out smoke, because it is hard to imagine people all over the world smoking for nothing.
There is a wonderful story.
Once this preparation is complete, then it is easy to enter death with awareness.
They remain insane half a dozen times and are sane half a dozen times during the day, hence they are not able to figure it out.
That which is so certain we have put outside the town.
A witnessing consciousness will go on attaining to celibacy because it cannot be consumed by sexual desire.
How strange! One wonders how a nation which declares the soul is immortal and which is inhabited by eight hundred million souls, can live in slavery under the domination of three million.
We must bring him food.
What the old man said was fine, but the amazing thing was that my friend became very impressed by him.
As the witnessing consciousness grows deeper, new planes of bliss come to light.
And we are afraid to part with what we call life.
Just remain a witness to the holding of hands, and you will feel a total transformation in your consciousness.
The monk said, "I am not laughing at you, I am laughing at myself.
The fruit of celibacy comes from the awareness of sex.
My question is, why didnt Jesus cry out when he was crucified? Why didnt he weep? Why didnt Mansoor writhe in pain when his limbs were cut off? Why did he laugh? Why did he smile?"
If he watches closely, a smoker can find out what makes him smoke a cigarette.
We have suffered exaggerated pains.
Why arent young people and children interested in going to these places? It will be a while before they get the news of death.
And yet, everything comes off on the screen, and we dont remain a witness even to the screen; we become a part of it.
When you see the four leaves, you panic and prune all four of them.
Not only easy, but it will happen most certainly.
" Since these were Krishnas words, the women believed him.
I am not sure whether I will be happy or unhappy outside the house.
If a three-dimensional man can move around on the screen, his stepping just ten feet off the screen and walking around the hall is simply a matter of a little advancement in technology.
As death approaches, he begins to catch illnesses.
Taking the vow three times obviously means he broke it each time.
He smokes, he plays cards.
They are preoccupied with the thought of food all the time, as if that is the only subject left in the world to worry about, as if brooding about food from dawn to dusk is the only object in life.
Rather, one becomes vulnerable to illnesses because of approaching death.
Millions of people watched him executed.
He is waiting on the other side, which is covered with thick forest.
He was right.
You have seen your hand lifting.
It has never occurred to us that
There was no other reason than this.
If you could keep a daily record of your life for a few months, you would immediately find yourself to be one of those who are periodically mad.
He would wonder, "What is happening? What am I doing to my life?"
"
The very first experience of love for a child is that of receiving food.
And finally, when it disappears, you wonder what happened to it.
It is not ripe yet.
This game is no different from the game of cards I mentioned earlier.
Although we are not aware of it, food in itself is not the cause of our overeating.
He took off his shoe, jumped on the stage, and began pounding the villain.
The women crossed the river and fed the monk.
You announce, "The body may die, I will continue to live," and the fact is you have absolutely no idea who you are other than the body! You dont know what it is that will survive when the body is no more.
If you look closely at your misery, you will find a separation between the misery and you, because only that which is separate from you can be seen.
Dont be mistaken.
A space inevitably remains between the two.
Now he is not even aware of why he overeats.
So he started filling in absurd details.
You will obviously suffer painful deaths.
"
The second thing worth remembering is that all the people we have seen dying, we have not really seen them dying, we have only seen them falling ill.
The fear of death is the sum total of all our illnesses.
"
He turns into a maniac.
Dont ever try to cross a river like this, you might put some monk in trouble unnecessarily! No river will give way.
If nothing else, he bangs his fountain pen, swearing at it.
One can cry in that darkness without any feeling of embarrassment.
Use the same key again.
It causes no problems.
The river must have understood my laughter.
He is simply the center of awareness -- continuously aware of whatsoever is happening.
It is all a matter of interpretation.
Everything would look so childish that he might come to feel, "Whats going on? Whats happening? Whats all this anyway? How have I managed to do this up to now? Why has all of this such a hold over me?" But since we dont become a witness, we keep on repeating it.
So the prisoners said, "Give us our chains back.
He cleans and shines the chains every morning as he does his body -- after all, the chains are to stay with him his whole life.
The darkness in the movie theater becomes quite convenient for people watching the movie.
For example, a man is holding colored stones.
The play was in progress and there was a scene in which the villain is after the heroine to harass her.
These two things, the dropping of the nonessential and the acquiring of the essential, will always apply in following the points you have raised in your question.
In fact, whatsoever I was during my lifetime, I shall depart as the sum total of that at the final moment of death.
Who knows how long he may have to remain hungry?
If we were to live through misery with the same kind of awareness, we would find it becomes very narrow as well.
They are maniacs, they are mad.
He would not even repeat the Sufi sutra fully.
If this entire space were somehow eliminated, it wouldnt be possible for me to see you.
So the man decided to perform an experiment.
Thats erroneous thinking.
If we examine the handkerchiefs of people as they leave the theater, we can find out what went on inside, how many people cried.
The second thing I said, while moving around and performing your day-to-day activities, sud-denly stop and become a witness for a moment.
The interesting thing was that the patients in both categories recovered together.
Someone asks, "How are you?" You answer, "I am okay.
Hence, a life lived wrongly may be excused, but a wrong death cannot be.
But ordinarily, what do we do?
And in all your day-to-day activities and operations, be a witness, not an experiencer.
And as she becomes fearful of the pain, she contracts the entire reproductive system.
We can doubt the existence of God; we can doubt the existence of the soul; we can doubt life itself, but there is no way to doubt death.
He goes to a temple and vows before a muni, a monk, to eat once a day.
In order to be angry, one has to become identified, one has to become unconscious.
Breaking the vow three times, the loss of his self-confidence was sure to intensify.
A nation which proclaims the soul is immortal suffers in slavery for a thousand years.
Hence, seekers have always welcomed suffering.
But it is really the monk who performed the miracle.
The body that remains with us is no longer alive, as it was until yesterday, and so we think the man is dead.
A man came to see him one morning and raised the same question you have asked me.
This man has traveled all over the world.
When the knower turns into being the experiencer; when he knows not, but rather becomes identified with the act itself; when he does not remain a witness watching from a distance, but rather becomes the participant in the act, that is when the identification takes place.
For the first time, he is able to grab hold of the entire meaning of life, of the whole purpose of life, of the heights and depths of life, precisely and consciously.
Underneath all this, the basic thing is that man wants to forget his misery.
Who reads these forms? Who bothers? Who is interested? Nobody cares.
No, it has occurred many times before, but it occurs only once in one lifetime.
Now they found themselves in great difficulty.
He had even dropped half of that too.
In a sense, its an innocent occupation; you are not causing any harm to anyone.
"
He wants to indulge in sex.
Life goes on absolutely off guard, mechanically.
Farid told him, "Take this coconut.
The one who was eating until yesterday; the one who was attending to his business, walking down the street; the one who quarreled, fought, loved, it is he who is dying.
"
The same man, when he comes across a diamond mine, sees diamonds all over.
When you become fully aware of your suffering, when you look at it face to face, not escaping the pain, you will have a glimpse of your separateness from it.
There is a space between its kernel and the outer shell.
There was no longer any separation left between their bodies and the chains.
He tends to agree with monks all over the world who go about saying that, "It would have been better if I were not the body.
So keep in mind, one who dies a conscious death takes a conscious birth in the next life -- that becomes the other part of his dying.
Perhaps it would not have been able to catch hold of him.
One who indulges is sure to remain sexual.
That gives rise to sixteen new leaves!
All of a sudden, the act of eating will take on a different meaning.
How can an old man forget death? He gets reminders every day.
Misery is like the flame of a lamp, but we experience it as the dispersed light of the lamp.
Break the outer shell and bring me the unbroken kernel.
Illness is not the cause.
Make any moment the moment to become alert.
Most medicines do nothing to your illness, they simply give you courage to get rid of it.
The second thing is the ability to witness.
So far, we have not been able to create a built-in system, such that the car will refuse to move if the driver is angry.
Let me put it this way: life is a spread out phenomenon; death is a condensed one.
You begin to like someone in the film, and you dislike someone else.
She remains alert during the day and hinders the birth from happening.
People who take vows are never religious; they can never be.
Even the person swearing is taken aback to see how you received more than he swore.
As he was beheaded at the front door of the masjid, the mosque, and as the head started rolling down the steps of the mosque, a voice came out of the rolling head, "There is only one God.
Since we are used to seeing the body from outside, the pain appears to be very spread out.
It is not that suffering is a good thing.
And yet man is lonely.
If a mother loves her child a lot, he drinks less milk, because he is always assured that he will have milk anytime, that he need not worry about the future.
In order to see, a distance is needed.
The monk didnt even wait for the women to offer him second or third helpings.
In the same manner, you feel angry, sexual, loving, at a set time.
This does not mean, however, that you have not died before.
"
Once a monk arrived on the outskirts of the town where Krishna lived.
Let me tell you a short story to explain to you what I mean.
Our host was a seventy-year-old man, one of the most honest people I have known.
I said, "You are able to know the difference because the duration of your sane and insane states is clearly defined.
Then it is possible you may laugh at yourself.
Actually, dont ever be a witness if you wish to continue repeating your mistakes.
But thats not much of a problem.
What do you say?"
The man presses the accelerator, and the car takes it to mean he wants to raise the speed.
Their minds go on seeking illnesses, inviting diseases with open arms, but keeping their doors very tightly closed as far as medications are concerned.
We live identified with the body.
The reason why Jesus didnt weep when crucified, and Mansoor didnt suffer pain, but rather laughed and smiled, is because they had totally disidentified themselves with their bodies.
The greater the awareness, the narrower and smaller the pains and miseries.
He asks them to cooperate during childbirth, and has succeeded in having thousands of women deliver babies without any pain.
"
One who is aware of his misery, one who is filled with consciousness, one who is full of remembrance, experiences the misery as somewhere else, and he is somewhere at a distance.
Man is consciousness, consciousness which is continuously aware.
The tree feels maybe you want four leaves, thats why you are pruning one, so it produces four leaves.
Everyone is bound to pass through death.
You can sit alone and start working on it anytime.
The women said, "We are in great difficulty.
Ordinarily, it is not possible for one who becomes unconscious even in misery to stay awake at the time of death.
Believing in it is just a strategy for erasing the fear of death, for falsifying it -- the same as creating a cemetery outside the town.
Although they are colored stones, he sees them as colored diamonds.
Go and tell her once again.
But the woman continued, "Drop this and talk about something else.
The reason lies much deeper.
There was a Mohammedan fakir by the name of Sarmad.
This identification prevents him from waking up, because in order to be awake, in order to be aware, a certain distance is required, a space is needed.
I dont know at all.
In moments of happiness we move closer to the body; hence it is not surprising that a seeker of happiness becomes a materialist.
Becoming unconscious when one is in misery means one has identified oneself with the misery.
He was a nice man.
This is the initial preparation.
Once you are inside the theater, for a short while you enter into the film as well.
You pluck one leaf, and three more come out.
And if you have lived this life remaining asleep, then death also takes place in the state of sleep.
I was reading a book about a marvelous man who has done a wonderful experiment.
The result is, all the black-marketeers gather around monks who keep saying, "The soul is pure, without blemish.
If this is the case, then the whole matter is over.
Death in itself, however, is not an illness.
It is simply a play of light and shadow, just a network of rays projected from the rear of the theater.
In fact, you receive it even before the words leave his lips.
This body has an inner limit too.
Break it open, but make sure you keep the kernel from breaking.
Then he becomes one with the act.
And the interesting thing is, you can repent for the mistakes committed in life -- they can be rectified -- but there is no way one can rectify his mistake, repent and ask forgiveness for it after death.
Man does not even give up those illnesses he has been suffering for so long, he holds tightly to them.
Each day, you not only feel hungry at a fixed time, you get angry at a fixed time too.
Rather, you feel as if you are in pain.
We are afraid of that.
The tree believes you are interested in grafting, it is not at fault.
Hence, no matter how many medicines are given to them, those who are of a suicidal mind can never be cured.
The same illness would not be able to affect him were the man closer to life.
Even if I need to see my figure, I have to become the other in a mirror; I have to be at a distance from myself -- only then can I see my reflection.
Life is a positive ascent, it is not a negative descent.
Addressing the river they said, "O river! If the monk has been on a fast for all of his life, then please give way so we can bring him food.
It is frightening to leave the familiar and go into the unfamiliar.
From the outside you have known what it is to be hungry.
In the first place, we have no knowledge of death.
Did you get your answer or not?"
You can put it in your pocket, carry it wherever you like.
I am able to see you because there is a space between us.
This is not a story.
Such calm will surround you in that moment: you will become so very aware, because at that moment you will be filled with meditation.
For example, he has written that when a woman is in labor, apply horse dung on her stomach and the pain will stop completely -- a wise and intelligent man like Aristotle says this.
The revolutionaries broke down the prison walls and brought the prisoners out of their cells.
There is something in life he would like to draw the curtain on.
One is, the pain does not remain as widely spread as it originally seemed to be; it immediately centers on a small point.
A mother who does not love her child, who feeds him milk unwillingly, indifferently, who is always pushing the child away -- that child drinks more milk, because he is not sure.
If a man is in trouble, he will drink alcohol.
It will take a little time.
Be filled with the feeling of giving birth to the child.
No one from the crowd screamed, none of them cried, "Dont kill me!" Why? -- because there was a distance between them and Jesus body.
The day a man comes to realize the difference between himself and the misery, as soon as he comes to know his pain is happening somewhere at a distance, the unconsciousness caused by misery ceases to exist.
I had completely forgotten about them.
Its an occupation.
People are after him: they want him to give up drinking.
That will be enough, you wont have any pain.
The women became very concerned.
He would be totally at a loss.
A person who is out to forget misery can never wake up to misery.
The illness is merely the effect.
The soul is indeed imperishable.
How can this be? This is impossible.
He was the honored guest and was seated in the first row.
When you have a fever, it doesnt feel as though the body is hot, somewhere at a distance from you, instead you feel as if you have become hot.
If one could be a witness, lust and sex would slowly and gradually disappear from ones life.
After a little while you become identified, you become a participant in the film.
We are also frightened of facing the same difficulties at the time of our death.
Therefore, seventy percent of the poor babies are unable to take birth in the daylight; they have to be born in the darkness of night.
Next time when someone swears at you, become a watcher, dont be a receiver.
It was all right what we said on our way to see the monk, and it worked.
So, we have no fear of death really; rather, in our minds death exists in the form of a disease.
Whenever he feels lonely, whenever he is without company, he immediately goes for a cigarette.
This whole game of sex is nothing but laying down playing cards.
Death has nothing to do with illness -- it is not even remotely connected with it.
The screen shows nothing except pictures.
You can find even the most intelligent man doing this.
Obviously, how can he let them go? The man says, "We consider those people who gave them up, as gods.
Then resume your activity.
Within a period of twenty-four hours, the moments of anger, the moments of sex, keep recurring.
When you are happy the body feels very dear to you; you dont feel like being detached from it for even an inch.
It has always been incorruptible, it can never be defiled.
Then again, every mistake has its own season, just goes on recurring.
Obviously, that which is inseparably one with you cannot be seen.
"
The moment you become a witness to something, you transcend it, you jump out of it.
It seems even the so-called most intelligent man is not really intelligent.
All answers are mechanical.
The man wants to give up drinking too, but he never cares to figure out why he goes on drinking anyway.
And the interesting thing is, my hand never touches yours.
When someones lips are pressed on yours, forget about love etcetera, simply become a witness for a moment.
There is no need to deny it.
Life is a positive achievement, not a negative renunciation.
"
This creates a conflict between the two, and the conflict causes pain.
Actually, people go to monks precisely to hear things which can somehow comfort them and alleviate their fears.
The reason is simply that suffering provides the seeker with an opportunity for self-preparation, self-attainment.
He said, "What in the world are you doing? I have read the same newspaper ten times, opened and shut this window several times, and here you are sleeping blissfully.
When hunger arises, one doesnt say his body is hungry and he is aware if it, instead he says, "I am hungry.
When someone asked him, "What makes you laugh when your limbs are being cut off7" Mansoor said, "I would have cried had you dismembered me, but it is not me you are chopping off; the one you are doing it to, you fools, is not me.
Remember, sadhana, spiritual discipline, is a little difficult to follow when you are happy.
First of all, we create the fear of death by adding up all our illnesses.
"
It will cause you to laugh at yourself, and the laughter will be liberating.
The contrast is very clear.
In fact, he is riding on his anger, but no one knows what he is doing.
When he was in America, Vivekananda had said, "My country would not have been ruined had our religion not become a religion of the kitchen.
I laugh at you because you are taking this body to be Mansoors, just as you take the bodies you are in to be your authentic selves.
Sarmad was even more dangerous.
If one were to ask him later on what he did with the stones he was holding in his hands, he might say, "I am glad you reminded me.
Finally, a day arrives when it becomes difficult for the man even to figure out why he had wanted to forget things in the first place.
His lovers standing in the crowd said, "You crazy Sarmad, if you had to say it, why didnt you say such a simple thing before?"
So the old woman said to the monk, "I believe the soul is immortal.
The truth of death is one of these.
And the more intensely you concentrate on this point, the more you will find it becoming smaller and smaller.
If you find food when you are hungry, you will never know what hunger is.
Give yourself a jolt just for one moment and watch whats happening with awareness.
The monk has been without food for the last few days.
However, he now consumes twice or three times more food during his once-a-day meal.
Close your eyes and experience hunger from within, and for the first time you will be able to feel it from inside.
"
If a charm proves effective, then it can cure too.
And yet the fact remains, if we could also see ourselves in all our actions not as a doer but as a watcher, in all our actions, then dying is an act too -- the final act.
Take our country, for example.
In this sutra, so far I have come to know only one half of it, that there is no God.
Has this ever occurred to you?
Life is made up of a profound network of electricity.
Do you know there are some moments when you are more receptive to illnesses, while there are some when you are not? In moments of disappointment and sadness a person becomes vulnerable to illness, while a man full of hope and optimism becomes unreceptive to it.
You feel sorry for somebody, while you feel happy about someone else.
"
In moments of pain one wishes he were not the body.
But we feel it like the very extended light of the lamp, covering a much larger area.
"
The point becomes so small, that often when the consciousness tries to locate it, it is not there.
"
He himself will have no idea when and why he started drinking.
The miracle they had seen coming to this shore was nothing compared to what they saw on their way back.
The fear is not really of the unknown, because I have absolutely no knowledge of the unknown.
The women of the village were anxious to feed the monk, but the river stood in the way.
Ishwarchandra was a very well-known figure of his time, a very intelligent man.
He often used to ask me why this happens to him.
The house was dependable, known, familiar.
When it was time to return, they realized all of a sudden they had not asked Krishna the key to finding their way back.
There is only one messenger of God and he is Mohammed.
Let your consciousness not become one with your body.
So the fear of death in our minds is really the fear of illness.
For a child, the first experience of food and love is one and the same.
The monk said, "If the soul is immortal, then how can death be ominous? Death can be inauspicious only if the soul is mortal.
It doesnt realize the man is in a dangerous situation, that the man is unable to see anything at that moment.
The hunger disappears in moments of love.
You completely fail to see what is happening.
brahmacharya, celibacy, is not some kind of a vow.
Farid said, "Now dont bother about breaking open the coconut; set it aside too.
The more he goes on watching life, the more he sees certain things constantly changing.
Misery is like the flame, limited to a very small section of the body.
" Can a religion remain worth its name if it turns out to be a religion confined to the kitchen? The reason why this happens is because we dont wake up and see our inner conditioning -- what we do, and when.
Hence, only by remembering pain can we become aware of it.
Someone drinks; we can say this is one tactic: someone goes and watches a movie,this is another.
If you can succeed in keeping yourself removed from your actions, you will be able to stay removed at the moment of death too.
Thats why most babies are born at night -- seventy percent of the babies -- because the mother wont allow the birth to happen in the daytime.
Why? One will have to become aware of this state, one will have to witness it.
But what can you do with a man like Sarmad? He said, "There is no God!"
Remember, you will be in trouble if you begin pruning the leaves of a tree, because once a leaf is pruned it is replaced by four new leaves.
For one who lives identified with the body, or thinks he is the very body, there exists no distance between him and his body.
This is not so with other people.
As such, we are not afraid of death really.
It was not really Jesus who was being crucified.
When I hold your hand, you take it as my expression of love.
For example, you fell, were injured, hurt your foot.
Ten of them he treated with medicine, while he kept the other ten only on water.
It is a great interplay of electrons.
He said, "No, the third time I lost my nerve.
I have no idea what lies outside this house -- whether there is a big palace, a forest, a desolate place, a desert -- I havent the faintest idea.
Once he went to see a play.
But when love is absent, he begins to eat voraciously.
You took him for a friend.
Krishna said, "Go to the river and tell her if the monk has never had any food in his entire life, if he has always been on a fast, she should make way for you.
Mohammedans express their belief through a sutra, a maxim, and that is, "There is only one God; other than him there is no God.
We have not seen a boat touching the other shore; we have only seen it leaving this shore.
When traveling by train, it is my habit to sleep quietly as much as I can.
But our state of mind is not that of the knower, it is that of the experiencer.
Sarmad was summoned to appear in the emperors court.
He merely looked at the woman, took her hand in his and said, "What do you think about death? Not much time is left.
In fact, their meaning lies in their expansion.
Confiding in me one day, he said, "Please tell me, what shall I do? I have taken a vow of celibacy three times in my life.
"
Then what is the big difference?
So I told the man, "The monk who made you take the vow was, in fact, your enemy.
The reason behind this is the same -- identification with the body.
The day I come to know it, I will let everyone know.
But we said the same thing on our way back and the river gave way!"
As the distance shrinks, the space becomes less and less visible.
Even a highly intelligent man such as Aristotle has proposed remedies which make us laugh.
We create cemeteries outside the town so that we are not reminded of death more often.
Recently, a well-known scientist conducted many experiments in this area.
The human body has an inner wall too; it has an inner covering as well.
He magnifies his misery, which is never actually that much.
The moment you stand as a watcher in the middle of the street, suddenly you will be severed from your surroundings and out of them.
If you have seen your hand, it is always from the outside, but you can feel your hand from within too.
Talk about God, talk about moksha.
" Old people often talk about the immortality of the soul for no other reason than the fear of death.
Mansoors limbs were amputated and he kept laughing.
The story is
"
He broke your will completely.
"
He must be wanting to ask something else.
For example, you push me out of this house.
There is a man called Levin.
3 August 1970 pm in Bombay, India
"The soul is indeed immortal.
When your foot is hurt and wounded, you dont feel just the affected foot; rather, you feel as if you are hurt and wounded.
It is because of the grip of the familiar that we are so scared of death.
The pressure works on that very space, not on your hand.
What you are doing to me is nothing but a repetition of the mistakes you have committed in treating your own selves.
This is the reality.
They told the revolutionaries that without chains they will feel very uncomfortable outside.
This is identification.
That will make one understand what it means to be conscious in misery too.
Only then do you come to know you are hungry.
If you look a little deeper, life is not very different from a movie.
They seem to be encompassing ones entire life.
You would have known that you and your body are two different things.
But there is an inner side to the house as well.
" He was an honest man indeed.
Earlier they had said to the river that the monk had been fasting his whole life, how could they say the same thing now? The monk was not an ordinary eater; saying he was on a fast was far from the truth -- he had consumed all the food the women had brought.
If a man could become a witness during intercourse, perhaps he would never enter into it again, because everything would seem so meaningless, so worthless.
He laughed, and from the coconuts offered to him by his devotees, he picked up one that was lying nearby and gave it to the man.
One needs to understand what it means to become unconscious when in misery.
If this man could become aware of the thing he is trying to forget, perhaps some solution might be found.
He will skip your answer and start talking about something else.
Everything works.
Death is very atomic.
This is only a story.
Do you think chains tied around ones hands for fifty years would remain separate? They are bound to become part of ones hands.
Obviously, if you remove the many golden ornaments worn by a woman, she will feel naked, weightless.
With great fear, great hesitation and uncertainty, they approached the river and said, "O river, please give way if this monk has not had any food his whole life.
Basically, we dont feel any distance between ourselves and our bodies.
The other fellow said, "Thats good! How is your wife?" Hearing this, the man found out that no one really listens to what you say.
She said, "What kind of ominous talk is this? Please dont say such things.
We couldnt take a nap in the afternoon without the chains on us, how could we?" Even the sound of those chains became part of their psychological state.
A religious man is one in whose life vows blossom like fruits -- as a consequence.
That caused its disaster.
Here is another.
There are people who take a vow of celibacy.
Man is lonely even in a crowd.
"
Because a man comes close to death, he grabs on to illness.
It is also not surprising if a person who is continuously seeking happiness believes himself to be nothing more than his body, because in happy times he begins to exist like a green coconut instead of a dry one -- the distance between him and his body continues to narrow down.
As has always happened, the maulvis, the priests, filed a suit against him.
He teaches women to cooperate with their labor.
But in order that one may know death, one needs to prepare while one is still alive.
The women said, "How can we use it now? You have already eaten the food.
And once a person comes to understand that the sufferings as well as the happinesses of the body occur elsewhere, that one is merely a knower of them, his identity with the body is severed.
Close your eyes and try to locate the pain from inside.
You receive the whole of it before the swearer has even managed to complete it.
There were no leftovers.
Thats why the Mohammedan theology has always been against the Sufis.
When a hand is being held, in a moment both things can happen without much difficulty: initially the holding of hands can take place with the feeling of love, while in the end, the feeling of enmity may set them apart.
Somebody is miserable and he will try to forget his misery with prayers and devotional songs.
So much change comes about in a second.
We move in a set pattern like a machine.
If we were to break down the wall of this room and look for the element it is made of, we would find that what is ultimately left is nothing but electricity.
Can you assure me you can break only the shell and leave the kernel intact?"
I have always loved this story.
However, when seen through great awareness, they go on narrowing down, ultimately becoming so meaningless they dont have anything to do with life as such.
You keep throwing pebbles away, and diamonds begin to appear in your hands.
We have with us the sum of all this; it has become part of our collective mind.
Every mistake will then repeat itself.
If you should ever really think, "Who am l?" you will come to know that you know nothing about yourself except that you are the body.
Can the soul ever engage in black-marketing?"
The greatest preparation for entering death in a conscious state is to first enter pain consciously, because death does not occur often, it does not come every day.
She will feel as if she has lost something, as if she has lost weight.
He got so enraged that he completely forgot it was just a play.
So far we have not been able to eliminate mans loneliness, so he goes on doing something or other to escape his loneliness.
The same is true with regard to happiness.
If one could carry on these two experiments, then the rest of the things you have asked will follow.
" Ordinarily, a person goes mad ten times a day and behaves normally the other ten.
The women went ahead.
because a witnessing consciousness can never be angry.
So food and love are not two separate things in the childs initial experience; food and love are synonymous for him.
The big question is that of persuading a man to drop his illness.
" They knew inside what they were saying was not at all true, but the river did make way for them.
If water does this work, then the patient can be cured by water.
How can we feel afraid of something we know nothing about?
He exclaimed, "Three times?"
If you wake up and see, you may ask, "Am I really living, or am I just moving in a circle like an ox at a wheel?" Living, obviously, cannot be similar to being an ox at a wheel.
That inner frontier can certainly be experienced with closed eyes.
Sometimes it happens that you are hungry and there is no food around, but it is very rare that you may not find anyone on whom you can air your anger.
If a man grasps the root causes and goes on becoming deeply aware of them, he reaches the point from where the causes can be rooted out without any difficulty.
However, just because one is not a Mohammedan does not mean one ceases to be a religious person.
This fact came to light during the French revolution.
But we are so scared of death we dont even want to mention it.
The added weight of chains had become so much a part of their psyche, their subconscious, that even while changing sides in sleep they felt it.
The question is not of taking a vow to eat less when you are overeating, the question is that something like love has not happened in your life.
The man replied, "Because the coconut is dry, there exists a distance between the shell and the kernel.
When even minor illnesses leave us in so much trouble -- the foot hurts and we suffer so much, the head hurts and we suffer so much -- what a torture it will be when the entire body will hurt and fall apart!
Then he knows he is not the body.
The car doesnt know it needs to go slow at that moment.
It was the rainy season and the river was flooded.
They asked Krishna, "How are we to cross the river? The current is very strong, boats cannot cross.
Their chains were never to be taken off; they were to remain in them forever.
They said, "Here we are in trouble, and you are laughing!"
But basically, no one has ever seen when a person died.
I told my friend, "Do you understand what taking a vow three times means?" Then I asked the old man, "Why didnt you take it a fourth time? Did your vow succeed the third time?"
Seeing causes the distance.
A person goes to a concert; this is a third way of forgetting pain.
Once a friend of mine and I were guests in Calcutta.
He suffers from hunger the whole day and contemplates food the whole time.
The women were very puzzled.
Exactly as other acts involved loving, running ones business, being in the marketplace, dying will also be an act.
In a period of twenty-four hours, whatsoever may happen -- in anger, in hate, in love, in friendship, in enmity, while walking, resting, whatever -- watch it sometimes for a moment, just for a moment.
We have also heard that when Mansoors limbs were cut off, he was laughing.
Everything is quiet; there is not a soul around.
The preparation for death has to be done while one is still alive.
We also know perfectly well that what we see on the screen is merely an appearance, that nothing is happening there.
We are caught in the familiar, which we take as life.
" When diamonds are in sight, one needs to empty his hands immediately.
If this man, who plays both hands, could be filled with awareness for a moment and see the whole thing as a witness, would he not laugh at himself as you just did? Indeed he would laugh.
Perhaps, mentally, he may be pressing his wifes head, or his sons throat, but in that particular moment his foot is on the accelerator.
Thats not a big question.
One only needs to have an understanding of what sexual desire is.
It is indeed a tribute to an actors skills that an intelligent man such as Ishwarchandra should take the play to be real.
You will have such a strange experience in your consciousness, one you may have never had before.
The food they had brought was more than enough, but the monk ate it all.
So whenever you are in misery, take it as an opportunity.
This is my greatest reward.
The body tells you it is hungry.
"
As soon as you get hold of the pain from within, two things happen.
We interpret this pressure of the empty space as either love or enmity.
But I have not known any God as yet, so how can I say God is? I say only as much as I know.
Krishna said, "Of course, the river was bound to give way, because only he is a monk who never eats.
Be totally aware of it, and you will have a wonderful experience.
He neither applies horse dung, nor gives an injection, nor ties a charm about a woman, nor brings any offering from a guru -- he does nothing of the sort.
How can we become aware of something we tend to forget? Only with an attitude of remembering can we become aware of something.
There was no way he could have shown any more courage to take the vow a fourth time.
It would be good if you stayed up.
An indulgent person means one who is lustful.
The man said, "I was asking you something else, and you have gotten me into talking about a coconut.
Remember too, we have always known the body from the outside, never from within.
Within Jesus too, there was a distance between the element that watches and his body.
And one who can laugh at himself has begun to see something.
What followed was incredible.
About the immortality of the soul, the monk answered nothing.
Hence, the baby is forced to take birth at night when the mother is asleep, when she is unaware.
A man of witnessing consciousness can never overeat, hence he doesnt need to take a vow to diet.
At that moment dont be a recipient, simply be a watcher of whatever is happening.
In that state, stop identifying with your body.
Occasionally we receive some news about him.
Believing in the immortality of the soul is not the same as knowing the immortality of the soul.
I was reading someones biography.
This becomes part of his psychological conditioning.
So when one hand is holding the other, there is always a space between the two.
I am able to see you only because there is a distance between you and me.
We have not been able to develop any such mechanism.
There are so many people around -- the wife, the sons, the daughters, the father, the mother, the whole family, such a mob, and everything else
You will suddenly find the taste has disappeared.
There are hundreds of tribes where women do not go through any labor pains.
You feel hungry exactly at eleven oclock.
Thats why I say to you, the moments of pain can become moments of spiritual discipline, they can be turned into moments of sadhana.
No one has ever been able to pinpoint at which moment a person died, and what exactly happened in the process of dying.
They can afford to deny death for now; they can forget it for a while.
The man said, "Whats so difficult about this? I will break the shell and the kernel will be saved without any problem.
A seeker has always thanked God for the suffering he undergoes, for the simple reason that, in moments of misery, he gets a chance to disidentify himself from his body.
Really, what is the difference between a movie screen and the screen of life? We find the interplay of electrons on the movie screen too.
If you look even more deeply, you will find that just as the network of rays appears on the movie screen, the network of electricity appears on the screen of life.
Then you will see.
Remember, how can one who has lived wrongly in the first place die rightly? After all, life is bound to come to an end; it is life which will ultimately reach a point from where it departs.
You become a participant too; vou dont remain outside the film.
Other things may or may not be.
" But this is not the truth.
He would write his age as five thousand years, and no one objected.
For example, anger recurs at almost the same time each day.
The mother may give him milk after a while, or may not.
And breaking the vow each time, the disappointment and frustration was bound to become profound.
As death draws near, his body becomes weak, his receptivity towards sickness increases.
They had become almost blind.
Although outside the door lies the unknown, yet the fear of leaving the house makes me miserable.
He develops a craze for food.
A man traveling with me in the same compartment was bothered very much by my sleeping.
But revolutionaries are always very pigheaded.
Because the coconut is unripe, there is no space between the kernel and the outer shell.
Now in this country there are thousands of monks who live, brooding twenty-four hours a day about food.
But how could I have said this without knowing?"
They go on working in the fields, and when the time comes they give birth to the child.
Hence, he doesnt find any necessity to overfill his stomach.
For ages we have been firm believers in the immortality of the soul.
Actually, if someone is dead everyone should be asked to come out so they can watch the greatest fact of life passing by.
" Feeling the pain in his body, he becomes eager to somehow find out he is not the body too.
No government questioned him.
Can it ever be possible that a woman can get over the pain of labor by applying horse dung on her stomach? But apparently it did work.
Is it true?"
Who are you asserting as your existence other than the body? You have no knowledge of it.
Actually, you receive twice as much as is sworn at you.
My eyes can see you, because there is a space in between but my very eyes are unable to see themselves.
Hence Jesus also didnt cry out, "Dont kill me!"
"
Even illness does not enter you without your willingness to accept it -- your inner acceptance is needed.
The monk said, "So what is the problem? The same device will work again.
By nightfall, more than half the prisoners returned, saying they didnt like it outside, they felt they were naked without their chains on them.
He was, one should say, the father of logic.
In whichever country he went, he had to fill in all kinds of forms.
If you could really see
Now he begins to rush towards the church, the temple, the mosque.
There are truths we come to know only by passing through them.
Just as I see you now, someday one will be able to see people on the screen exactly like that.
" But the Sufi mystics drop the latter half of the sutra.
The actor showed more understanding than Ishwarchandra.
He plays cards not only with others, but even with himself.
"
He couldnt take the villains behavior any more.
Most physicians hardly ever cure your illness, they merely persuade you to drop the illness.
So a child whose mother loves him a great deal will take less milk.
No, things are to be rooted out -- simply pruning the leaves wont help.
We are ordinary people, we cant cast them away.
But it occurs only once.
An old woman came to see a monk and said.
If a funeral passes by, the mother calls her children to come inside the house, because somebody is dead.
When someone holds your hand, dont be in a hurry to see it as either love or enmity.
Then one doesnt have to renounce anything; things which are worthless drop by themselves.
If I break open the shell the kernel will break too.
Doing so, you may leave the poor man guessing, because such an act would be beyond his comprehension.
The monk burst into laughter, a striking sound on the bank of that river.
The mother places the infant in a basket and resumes her work in the field.
In a state of anger, a man presses the accelerator harder without being aware of it.
We need to have a good understanding of the reality on which this mental condition is fundamentally based.
Whatsoever has been happening at the time of death over millions of years, we have collected it all.
After all, even to be afraid of death, one needs to be familiar with death.
It is strange that societies which believe in the immortality of the soul are more frightened of death than ones which do not believe in the souls existence.
The Distance Makes the Difference
" And he proclaimed in a loud voice, "There is no God!"
I dont know anything of the other half.
Farid answered, "Because they were dry coconuts, while we are wet coconuts -- there is no other reason than this.
But if you become aware of it, you will be greatly amazed.
You will find that you are not eating -- food is being taken and you are merely watching.
" You may not have realized that the man neither cared to listen to your reply, nor had he asked the question with the intent of hearing your answer.
Only this much has been seen: a man fell ill, grew more ill, and more and more ill, and one day it became known that the man is no longer alive.
It will be indeed difficult to remain a witness in life if we cannot manage to do so while watching a film.
Sarmad was brought to the court.
Take this one, it is dry.
" And the man sitting in front, an old thief, nods his head in agreement and says, "You are absolutely right, your holiness! How true, your holiness!" He wants to believe, he wants someone to assure him that the soul is absolutely pure, so he can be free from the bother of becoming pure, so he wont have to be worried about becoming impure -- so there will be no more fear.
If there is a thorn hurting the foot, he knows it; if there is a headache, he knows it; if the stomach needs food, he knows it.
"
Death is.
If this should become apparent, then one doesnt have to take a vow or an oath.
Farid didnt say a word.
Faith in the water of the Ganges also does the trick.
Ordinarily, a man who takes himself to be nothing but the body also wishes he were not the body when his head hurts or when his foot is injured or when his body aches.
Just this afternoon I received a letter from a friend.
There is no God other than the one God.
Its just a matter of developing the technique, which is not too difficult.
You need to become aware of sex.
These are all different ways and means to forget pain.
Death becomes the final seal.
If this man ever becomes aware of what he has done, what will he think of himself? What will this man think, really?
I dont know what happened to them.
It is not easy to be a witness even while watching a movie.
Pain occurs at the inner parts of the body.
Their minds remain unreceptive to medications.
He merely persuades the woman to cooperate.
The reason why a woman recovered from her labor pains is that basically a pregnant woman never has a pain in the stomach, she simply creates it while giving birth to a child.
Sarmad said, "No, I am not an atheist.
There is no other reason for it.
They think the problem will be taken care of if they work out the eating arrangement exactly as they want it to be.
As soon as he swears at you, you receive it.
Its not too difficult to foresee a film actress stepping from the screen, shaking hands with you, or caressing you.
The scene reaches its climax when, finally, on a dark night in a thick forest, the villain catches hold of the woman.
The truth is, the body is hungry and he is aware of it.
They went straight to Krishna and said, "This is too much! We thought you performed the miracle when we crossed the river the first time.
" The monk asked what the device was that had brought them to him.
When a person becomes aware of his sexual desire, probes into it, understands it, lives it, recognizes it, he suddenly realizes the game in which he is engaged.
The more frightened a woman is of giving birth the more her pain grows.
You can be saved this trouble! Its not good to cause you so much bother: you need not go through the inconvenience.
It is easier when you are miserable, because in moments of happiness one doesnt want to have even the slightest feeling of separation from ones body.
The monk was on the other shore.
If a patient has faith in a pinch of ash given by a fakir, then it can curehim too.
He tries to give her a hard time in every possible way.
As such, life is nothing more than a film.
The man forgets the chains are not part of his body.
If the child does not receive food from the mother, he feels a lack of love; when she offers him food he feels love.
It is a different matter if illnesses precede death, but there is no cause-and-effect relationship between the two.
The child pushes its way out of her body, while the woman goes on contracting the whole system.
But what is actually happening? Really, what is transpiring? If both our hands were to be examined, what seems to be going on? Some electrons are pressing against some other electrons.
So when the revolutionaries began cutting the chains off these prisoners, many of them objected.
You stay insane for a solid period of six months and remain sane for another whole six months.
Thats why illness occurs first, then death follows.
The women were very puzzled.
You will laugh at your being the constant recipient of profanities all through your life.
Go ahead and tell the river the same thing you said before.
The villain grabs the woman.
.
When you have a headache, you dont feel any distance between the headache and yourself; you dont remain just a distant watcher.
Their chains had almost become parts of their bodies; one could not say they were separate from their bodies.
Why does he wish to become unconscious? There must be something in his life he wants to forget all about, something which he would rather not remember.
He uses the cigarette as a companion, a rather inexpensive companion.
Invariably the cause is death.
He goes on putting cover after cover, because there is something hidden behind it which he does not want to be exposed.
They repeat, "There is no other God than the one God," but they drop the other half, "There is only one messenger of God and he is Mohammed," because they believe there are many messengers of God.
Many times you miss it.
It is even difficult to give up our known miseries.
"
He is able to grasp the whole truth of life.
Being a monk, a good man, you should not talk about such ominous things.
When there is a distance the space becomes visible.
If the distance becomes too narrow, the space disappears.
Stand at a distance and simply watch.
This is not difficult to conceive.
Dont be under the illusion that while watching the film you really remain a watcher.
Since it would have looked a little odd to start off abruptly, he began by asking, "How are you?"
The only thing we have seen is a man being set free from life.
Sometimes, walking in the middle of the marketplace, suddenly give a little jolt to yourself, and for two minutes just stand still.
Give yourself a sudden jerk and look around in amazement.
For example, there is a man who overeats.
Can there be any vows of celibacy?
"
He has dismissed the fact of death from the whole idea of life.
He said to Farid, "We have heard that when Jesus was crucified he did not cry out, scream, or grow miserable.
There is no consciousness, no alertness, no awareness -- nothing.
The emperor asked, "You say there is no God.
People even insist on keeping their chains.
Then you would have realized that by cutting up the body, Mansoor is not cut.
Addressing the audience, he said, "Never before have I received a greater award than this.
I have heard
I havent come to hear you speak about death.
All that a mirror does is present your image at a distance from you.
He becomes vulnerable, he begins to look for illnesses.
Ishwarchandra was watching the scene.
It wont be too long.
For example, while eating, suddenly become a watcher for a moment: watch your hand picking up the food; watch your mouth chewing the food; watch the food reaching your stomach.
It is like this: the flame of pain is located inside, while the light radiates outward.
Just stop for a moment.
I dont know when they were dropped.
How can I lie about it if I dont know? A religious man cannot lie.
As long as you laugh at others, you are not a witness.
In both cases the hand is held; the difference arises only in the interpretation.
But it is very difficult to stand on a street and be a witness.
The intervening space thus created enables you to see.
And yet, no race on earth is more cowardly than ours, no people are more dead than we are.
Now try to locate the pain inside, try to pinpoint the exact spot where it hurts, and you will be astonished to discover how you have managed to spread the pain over a much wider area, away from the original spot where its intensity is not so much.
You will be able to see the same person who did all these other things dying.
He is not concerned with God; he goes there simply to make sure that, even though what he has understood life to be is coming to an end, will he perish too?
He took twenty patients suffering from the same illness.
Lack of love prompts the child to take in more food, while the abundance of love makes him take in less.
Please show us a way to cross the river.
Farid said, "Forget this coconut.
Every day people open their scriptures and read the teachings on the immortality of the soul so that they can be absolutely sure there is no death, so that they can carry the hope that they will survive -- so there is no need to worry.
He couldnt understand why he had to undergo the torture of filling out all these forms.
One man suffers from overeating.
It is a very dark night.
The woman screams, but her cry simply echoes in the stillness of the forest.
Similarly, when you are angry and there is no one around to vent your anger upon, only then can you know what anger is.
Perhaps the reverse is the case.
You are just throwing the smoke out; you are just being occupied -- thats all.
The layers of misery go on falling away; much garbage is thrown out.
In fact, whenever you look at a thing, immediately a distance is created between you and the thing itself.
If you realize this, then you are able to catch hold of the root causes of the fundamental problem.
No one ever dies of illness.
Did you say you are a black-marketeer? Thats all nonsense.
Before one can remain conscious in the moment of death, first one needs to prepare to stay conscious in pain and suffering.
If this happens, then it is possible to enter death with awareness.
Even on the phone, the man asks, "How is your health?" -- although he couldnt care less about your health; he has never been concerned about your health, nor will he ever be.
" Whats the reason? The leaves.
One who fails to do so, dies a wrong death.
The second thing that will happen is, when you look at your misery very closely, a distance will be created between you and the misery.
One needs to be a witness.
"
Somebody goes to the temple and drowns himself in prayers and hymns; this is a fourth strategy.
Had you been aware you are separate from your bodies, you wouldnt have tried to cut my body.
Then you will be able to watch one additional act, the act of dying.
These are all hungers too, and they arise at a fixed time.
The only difference is, on the movie screen the pictures are two-dimensional whereas on the screen of life they are three-dimensional.
Hence, people who feel a lack of love start overeating.
Think twice before you ever testify to seeing such and such a person die, because it is a very difficult thing to see someone dying.
Even if you know your body, it is known as others see it.
Thats the only reason why we find such a large number of old folks in temples, mosques, churches.
Only when they died would the shackles be removed.
The cures did work.
Thats the idea we have of it.
We know very well nothing really takes place on the screen, it is just a screen.
You may cry in vain and tell him to throw the stones away, but he wont listen.
A man goes on puffing, dragging on a cigarette the whole day.
Without any difficulty, it will soon become possible for an actor to step out of the screen and walk around in the movie theater.
And the life of one who dies and takes birth consciously functions on a totally different plane.
It was a difficult situation.
Now, will we need to convince him he should get rid of his colored stones? Before he realizes what has happened, he will have already dropped the stones, run and filled his hands with diamonds.
there is no God.
First, in order that you may have a conscious death, become alert to the suffering, be aware of it.
The fear is having to leave the known.
It will become possible for you to remain seated in your chair and the heroine will come and caress you!
Sarmad said, "How can one know him until one has lost his head? Now that I know, I say there is God, that no God exists other than him.
They become so small that, in a deeper sense, they turn out to be meaningless.
The point where it hurts is located somewhere in the interior of the body, but the pain spreads to the outer parts of the body.
It is as if one were to remain contented with seeing his house only from the outside.
They havent learned yet that you cant be stubborn with people.
Hence, no matter what reply you give, he is never going to listen to it.
That very moment of awareness is the moment of meditation.
You will be surprised, but the mind is so possessed by the known that we find it difficult even to let go of our known illnesses.
Someone is in pain and he will go and sit in a movie theater.
When someone swears at you, immediately you become such a recipient you lose sight of the person swearing at you.
Just as pain expands in a state of unconsciousness, in the state of awareness it narrows down and becomes small.
One morning, someone called him on the phone and asked, "Hello, how are you?" And the man answered, "My cow gives a lot of milk.
"
And occasionally, this creates a problem.
He takes care of them in the same way he does his hands.
How can we ever see anyone dying? Death is such an utterly inner phenomenon, no one can be a witness to it.
Has it ever occurred to you that when you are angry you eat too much? Have you ever kept account of it? Have you ever noticed consciously that you eat more when you feel the lack of love? Have you ever kept any record of it? Have you ever discovered consciously that when ones life is filled with love, one doesnt eat much? When a man meets his beloved, he loses his appetite.
Now, close your eyes sometime and lift your hand, and you will experience the hand rising from within.
Krishna said, "Just as you were watching him eat, the monk was watching himself eat as well -- he was not the doer of his action of eating.
It is a wonderful experience, trying to see the body from inside.
Seeing the reflection in a mirror means my image is at a distance, and now it is visible to me.
Question 1
He observed that you come across a man on the street and he says, "Hello, how are you?" and you answer, "I am fine, thank you.
It comes anew in the next life, and again occurs only once.
If one were to enjoy ones happiness with awareness, we would find that happiness becomes very small too.
Sarmad answered, "I do say so.
"
A child receives both love and food from his mother.
You are harming yourself, more or less.
The priest has always been against the mystic.
The key which can lock can also unlock, and the one which can unlock can also lock.
You go on repeating the same mistakes, because you have never tried to realize the fact that whatsoever you do is all mechanical routine.
Then for twenty-four hours food becomes his sole concern.
When the point becomes very small, you find to your amazement it appears and disappears, goes off and on.
They dont realize what they have done to themselves, what kind of madness they are into.
They want someone who can tell them, "You are not going to die.
"
And in effect, the pressure of that empty space works on your hand.
It was okay to drop Mohammeds name; that would not have made him an atheist, it would have simply amounted to his not being a Mohammedan.
Death will come only once, whether you are prepared for it or not; there cannot be a rehearsal for death.
Just remain a watcher.
If the whole distance between you and me were to be removed, I wouldnt be able to see you.
He begins to overeat when love stops coming to him, although now the connection is not so apparent, now it is just a mechanical routine.
"But we saw him with our own eyes devouring all the food we carried with us.
Looking at their shine and luster, he thinks they are diamonds.
One needs to become a little aware of all this.
Hence, man has devised very clever means.
" Even computers can do this job.
He is not the experiencer, he is simply the knower.
Remember, religion has nothing to do with taking vows.
The car has nothing to do with this mans anger; the car has no knowledge of his anger.
But instead he puts a cover on it.
"
Where does the trouble lie? What is really the matter?
What goes on in life anyway? What transpires when I take your hand in my hand? When I hold your hand in my hand, you see it either as an expression of love or of enmity.
Close your eyes and try to feel and experience what the body is like from within.
The matter is taken care of.
"
The monk asked, "Why do you look so troubled? What is the matter?"
At whichever time you take your meals, you feel hungry at that particular time.
And when there is no one at hand, a person takes his anger out on inanimate objects.
We normally think what happens first is the cause, and that which follows it is the effect.
In this case the accelerator is a substitute for his wife or son.
" Sarmad used to repeat only the latter half "
The story goes that the river gave way.
Why? There is a mechanical system, a long lasting psychological conditioning at work behind it.
In such a state of consciousness the feeling will be that although you have gone through so many painful experiences, although you have lived through so much suffering, yet, in fact, the miseries were not really that many.
To this day it has never happened on this earth.
A very sweet but strange incident took place in his life.
He receives hints from all around that, one by one, parts of his body seem to be giving in to death.
People all over the world laugh at others, only a sannyasin laughs at himself.
The only thing which one can believe in definitively is death.
He tried to wake me up several times.
The happinesses we have been through were not as many as they seemed to be; we have enjoyed them in an exaggerated form too.
" Now this was too much.
He himself will have forgotten all about it.
He advises women, "Allow the child to take birth without creating any hindrance; cooperate with the child.
The day you laugh at yourself, you become a witness.
We are not afraid of death, we are afraid of illness.
Perhaps you may even thank him and go your way.
If, for a few months, you could keep a complete record of what goes on in your life, it will immediately become clear to you that all things repeat themselves.
One computer asking, "How are you?" Another computer answering, "I am okay.
Everything has come together in one atom; thats why there is no other phenomenon greater than death.
Some mistakes committed here and there in life may be overlooked, but a mistake at the last moment of life will become firmly and permanently established forever.
The women said, "Krishna told us if we wanted to cross the river, we should tell the river that if the monk is on a fast, it should make a way for us.
On their way they stopped by to see Krishna.
So, I have mentioned two things.
It wont be too long before other dimensions, now lacking in films, will be met.
I have never smoked as many cigarettes.
And the first principle for awakening is awareness of misery, so that one can know one is separate from the body.
Jesus was watching his body being crucified from within, and this he did from the same distance as the people standing around him -- outside, away from his body.
If you can prepare yourself in these two areas, you will become less and less angry.
The prisoners had given up all hope of ever coming out.
Gaps begin to appear in between.
They assert, "The body will die, but we will still survive!"
The craziness reaches its limit when a man plays both hands.
He goes on pressing and forgets he is driving a car.
Addressing Vidyasagar, the actor said, "Sir, I shall treasure this shoe; I wont return it to you.
Now what does this mean? What it means is simply that it is neither a question of medicine nor of water.
When I got up after six hours, took a bath, and got ready to go back to sleep again, the man could contain himself no longer.
However, if one could become a witness and watch this holding of hands, an incredible thing happens.
Now, the reverse is happening: the heroine does not step out of the screen; rather, you enter the screen and pat her.
Another thing is, be a witness in life -- anywhere, any moment.
From that day on you begin witnessing.
No one has ever seen anyone dying.
Then his life becomes a continuous running about to cover things, and everything turns out a lie.
He started beating the actor! The actor took Ishwarchandras shoe and placed it on his forehead to show his gratitude.
Farid said, "Tell me why the kernel will be saved.
" They want to be told, "You are not a sinner; the soul is eternally pure, uncorrupted.
