Upanishads : Seers of the Upanishads

Don't just listen, do it

INVOCATION

OM, MAY THE SUN GOD GRANT US HIS BLESSING.

MAY VARUNA, THE GOD OF WATER, GRANT US HIS BLESSING.

MAY ARYAMA, INDRA, BRAHASPATI AND VISHNU GIVE US THEIR BLESSINGS.

MY REGARDS TO BRAHMA, THE ABSOLUTE REALITY.

O VAYU, GOD OF THE AIR, SALUTATIONS ESPECIALLY TO YOU, FOR YOU ARE BRAHMA MANIFESTED.

YOU ALONE I WILL CALL YOU BRAHMA MANIFEST.

I WILL ALSO CALL YOU THE TRUTH, I WILL CALL YOU RIT - THE LAW.

TO PROTECT ME TO PROTECT THE SPEAKER.

PROTECT ME. PROTECT THE SPEAKER.

OM, PEACE, PEACE, PEACE, PEACE.

I will only say what I know. I will only say what you can also know. By knowing I mean living it. One can know even without living it, but such knowledge is a burden; one can sink by it, but one cannot be saved by it. To know can also be to live. That knowledge makes us weightless, light, so that we can fly in the sky. Only when living becomes knowing, wings grow, chains break and the gates of infinity open wide.

But knowing is difficult; accumulating knowledge is easy. The mind chooses the easy and avoids the difficult. But he who avoids the difficult will also miss religion. He who wants to avoid not only the difficult, but also the impossible, will never approach religion.

Religion is only for those who are willing to enter the impossible. Religion is for gamblers, not for traders. Religion is not a business or a commitment. Religion is a gamble.

A gambler stakes his wealth; the religious person stakes himself because that is the ultimate wealth.

Whoever is not willing to put his life on the line will never be able to know the hidden mysteries of life. Those secrets are not cheap. Knowledge is very cheap; knowledge is available in books, in scriptures, in education, with teachers. Knowledge is available almost for free; you don't have to pay anything for it. In religion you have to pay a lot. It is not even correct to say a lot, because it is only when someone bets everything that the doors of that life open. The gates of that life only open for those who stake their lives. Gambling this life is the only key to the door of that life. But knowledge is very cheap, so the mind chooses the easiest and cheapest way. We learn things - words, doctrines - and think we know. Such knowledge only increases ignorance.

The ignorant person knows at least that he does not know; at least that he has much truth. But no people can be found more false than those whom we call knowledgeable. They do not even know that they do not know. Something they have heard, something they have memorised, induces them to think that they also know.

I will tell you only what I know, because only in saying that lies some value; because only what I know can, if you are willing, make the strings of your heart vibrate also with its living impact.

What I do not know myself, and what is only superficial in me, cannot be much deeper in you either.

Only what has entered the depths of my own heart has a chance; if you cooperate, it can reach your heart. Even then your cooperation is imperative, because if your heart is closed there is no way to force truth into it. And it is good that it is so, because if truth can be forcibly inculcated it cannot become your freedom, it can only become your bondage. All compulsions become bondage.

So in this world, everything can be given to you by force; only truth cannot be, because truth can never become slavery. The very nature of truth is freedom. So truth is the only thing in this world that no one can give you by force, that no one can impose on you, that cannot be put on you from outside like clothes; for which your willingness, your openness, your receptivity, your invitation, your heart full of gratitude are the prerequisites. If your heart becomes like the earth before the rainy season, when it is thirsty for water and develops wide cracks due to the scorching heat of summer - as if it has opened its lips here and there in anticipation of the rains - then the truth enters you. Otherwise, truth retreats even from your very door. Many times it has retreated, in many, many lifetimes.

You are not new, nothing is new on this earth; you are all very old. You have sat at the feet of Buddha and listened to him, you have seen Krishna, you have also been close to Jesus, but still you have failed, because your heart was never ready. The rivers of Buddha and Mahavira have flowed by you, but you have remained thirsty.

On the day when Buddha was about to leave his body, Ananda was crying and beating his chest in despair. Buddha asked him, "Why are you crying? I have been near you long enough....

Forty years! And if it hasn't even happened for forty years, what's the point of crying now, and why do you feel so worried about my death?

Ananda replied, "I am very grieved that I did not manage to disappear while you were here.

If I had disappeared, you could have entered me. For forty years the river has flowed beside me and I have remained thirsty. Now I weep because I don't know when or in what life I will be able to meet this river again".

You are not new. You have cremated Buddhas, you have cremated Mahaviras, Jesus, Krishna and all; you live after you have cremated them all. They lost the battle against you. You are very old. You have been here as long as life has existed. It has been an infinite journey. What are we missing? You are not open, you are closed.

I will only tell you what I have known. If you can make your way, you'll know that too. And it's not that there's any great difficulty in it. There is only one difficulty, and that is you.

Some people move just out of curiosity, like little children who ask while walking: What is the name of this tree? And if you don't answer them, they immediately forget that they asked something and start asking something else: Why is this rock lying here? They ask just to ask and not to know. They don't ask in order to know, they ask because they can't stop asking.

Those who live out of curiosity remain childish. If you ask: What is God? with the same indifference that a child would ask when seeing a toy shop on the road: What is this toy?, you are still a child. And the child can be forgiven, but not you.

Curiosity is no good. Religion is not child's play. Even if they give you an answer, it is of no use.

The child's fun is in asking questions. He can ask, that's his fun. Even if you give him an answer, he's not very interested. What's going on?

Psychologists say that when children first learn to speak they only practice their speech by asking questions; just as when a child first learns to walk, he tries from time to time to get up and walk. So children repeat the same sentence over and over again just because they have acquired a new experience, a new dimension through speech. So in that new dimension they are floating and rehearsing; that's why they ask anything, say anything.

In the world of religion, if you too ask anything, say anything, think anything without any deep desire to know - just out of curiosity - then you will keep on incinerating a few more buddhas; then who knows how many more buddhas will have to keep on toiling with you!

Truth has nothing to do with curiosity.

Some people get a little ahead of curiosity and become inquisitive. Curiosity is a little deeper, but only a little deeper. Curiosity is not very deep either, it is also superficial, because it is only intellectual. Intellect is like scabies: if you scratch a little, you feel good.

So the intellect is still itching: Is there God, is there the soul, is there salvation, what is meditation? - Not that you want to. What is God? - not that you want to know it, but just to discuss it, just to talk about it.... It is a mental exercise, an intellectual entertainment. So people just talk big, they never play anything. Whether God is or isn't is really none of their business; and they remain untransformed whether God exists or not.

It's very interesting: one person believes there is a God, another believes there is no God, and the lives of both are identical. If someone is mistreated, the one who believes there is a God gets angry, and the one who believes there is no God also gets angry. Sometimes it happens that the one who believes there is a God gets even angrier. The one who believes that there is no God, what can he do to you? At most he can mistreat you in return, beat you or kill you. But he who believes there is a God can send you to rot in the agonies of hell. He has more ways of getting angry.

If believing in God or not believing in God does not bring about any change in one's life, it only means that he has no relationship with God, it is only intellectual palaver. Such curiosity turns man into a philosopher. He keeps contemplating and deliberating, he learns the scriptures, he accumulates too many doctrines, he is able to think of all the pros and cons, he holds debates, but he never lives.

If you too are only full of curiosity, there will be no journey at all. People full of curiosity are the ones who sit near the landmark and ask, What is the destination? How far is the destination?

They keep asking this but never get up and start walking.

You know a lot! What is missing in your knowledge? You know almost everything: whatever Buddha, Mahavira or Krishna knew, you also know. Reading the Gita, don't you feel that you know everything?

Yes, you know it too, but all this is only in your head. Its seed has not reached your heart. And the ideas that are only in the mind are like the seed that lies on a stone. The seed is there, on the stone, but it cannot sprout. To sprout, the seed will have to fall from the stone and seek the earth. And the surface of the soil is not suitable either, because it needs more moisture. So it has to move below the surface to where there is some water, where some juice flows.

The seeds remain in the mind like those that lie in the stone. Until they fall into the heart, the moist soil is not available. In the heart there flows some juice, some love; there is some water there. If a seed falls there, it sprouts.

Inquisitive people have a lot inside them; everything is there, but it is like seeds lying in stone. The earth is not far away, but even this little journey is difficult for them. They have an aversion to moving, so the seed remains sitting on the rock. This little journey will have to be undertaken: let the seed fall from the rock to the ground, find a place on the ground, find some moisture and hide a little inside the ground.

Remember that everything that is to be born into this world needs deep silence, solitude and darkness.

Things that are kept in the mind are kept in the open light. There it is not possible to sprout.

The heart is the damp earth hidden inside you. There something can sprout there.

Therefore, those who live only in inquisition become scholars and experts; connoisseurs, but nothing sprouts within them: no new birth, no new life, no new flowers, nothing at all.

There is a further dimension to the quest, we call it mumuksha, a deep longing for liberation. Here there is no concern to know, the concern is to live. Here there is no concern to know, the concern is to be. The question is not whether God exists or not, the question is whether I can be God. There may be a God, but if I cannot become God, then everything is meaningless. The question is not whether there is liberation, the question is whether I can also be liberated. If there is no possibility for me to liberate myself, then even if there is liberation somewhere, it is meaningless to me. The question is not whether there is a soul within or not - there may be, there may not be - the real question is whether I can become a soul.

Mumuksha, the longing for liberation, is a quest for being. And when you want to be, you have to gamble. That's why I say that religion is a gambler's game.

I will only say what I know, what I have experienced. If you agree to put it all on the line, whatever is my experience can also become yours. Experiences don't belong to anyone; whoever is willing to receive them, they come to him. No one has a right to the truth, whoever is willing to disappear inherits it. Truth belongs to the one who is willing to ask for it, to the one who opens the doors of his heart and asks for it.

That is why I have chosen this Upanishad. This Upanishad is a direct encounter with spirituality.

In it there are no siddhants, doctrines; in it there are only the experiences of siddhas, the realised ones. In it there is no talk of that which is born of curiosity or inquisitiveness, no, in it there are suggestions to those who are filled with longing for liberation by those who have already attained liberation.

There are some people who have not reached the goal, but are unable to give up the pleasure of guiding others. Guidance is a very pleasant thing. All over the world, what is most given is guidance, and what is least accepted is also guidance. Everyone gives, no one receives.

Whenever you have the opportunity to give advice to someone, don't waste it. You don't have to be able to give that advice; you don't have to know what you are saying at all, but when it comes to giving advice, the temptation or the joy of being a teacher is very difficult to overcome.

What is the joy of being a teacher? Suddenly, free of charge, you are on the high side and the other is on the low side. If someone comes to ask you for a donation, how difficult it is for you to give even a penny! The difficulty is that you have to give some of what you have. But in giving guidance, you have no difficulty. Because what difficulty can there be in giving what you don't have? You are not losing anything. On the contrary, you are gaining something: you are gaining joy, you are gaining ego-boosting; today you are in a position to lead, and the other is at the receiving end. You are on top, the other is on the bottom.

That is why I say that, in this Upanishad, there is no pleasure in giving any advice or guidance, rather there is great pain, because what the seer of this Upanishad is giving, he is giving after knowing it.

He is sharing something very intimate, very inner.

The innuendos are brief but profound. The blows are very few, but deadly. And, if you are willing, the arrow will pierce straight through your heart and will not leave you alive. It will kill you. So be aware and be vigilant, because this is a very dangerous business. You will have to lose what you think you are. In it, there is no way to achieve without losing yourself. Here only the losers are the winners.

That is also why I have chosen this Upanishad. As it is, I can tell you directly that there is no reason to bring the Upanishad, but I will use it as an excuse, as a refuge. If you shoot an arrow directly, the person may escape; but if he hides behind the Upanishad, there is less chance of his escaping you.

I have selected the Upanishad so that you do not know that I am aiming directly at you. In this way, the chances of escape are reduced to a minimum. Every hunter knows that hunting is best done from a hiding place. This Upanishad is nothing but a hiding place.

I will only say what I have known, but then there is no difference between that and the Upanishad.

For whatever the seer of this Upanishad has said, he has also known.

This Upanishad is the manifestation of the subtlest mysteries of spirituality. But if I go on talking only about the Upanishad, there is the fear that the talk will remain mere verbiage. So the talks will be only a background, and along with them there will be experiments. Whatever is said, whatever the seer has seen, or whatever I say, and I have seen, there will be attempts to turn your face, to raise your eyes towards that. The attempt to raise your eyes towards that will be the main thing, the talk about the Upanishad will be just to create an environment. Such vibrations can be created around you so that you forget the twentieth century and come to the world of the seer of this Upanishad, so that this world that has become so ugly and dull will disappear and the memories of those days when this seer lived will arise.

An atmosphere, an environment: the Upanishad is only good for that. But that is not enough, it is necessary, but not sufficient.

So whatever I say, if you stop to hear it, I will know that you have not heard it at all. Whoever does not set out on the way after hearing this, I do not think he has heard it. If you think you have understood it just by hearing it..... don't be in such a hurry! If it were possible to understand something just by hearing it, we would have understood it long ago. If it were possible to understand something just by hearing it, there would be no lack of understanding people in the world and it would be difficult to find an ignorant person. But as it is, the world is full of ignorant people.

Nothing is understood by listening alone. By listening we only clench our fists over the words. You don't understand by listening, but by doing. So listen to find the way to do, not to understand. Listen to do, do to understand. Don't conclude that just by listening you have understood. That intermediate link of doing is necessary. There is no other way. But our mind says, "I have understood; where is the need to do now?

Destinations are reached by moving towards them. You may have understood everything, you may have memorised the entire itinerary of your journey, you may have a detailed map in your pocket, but even so, no one ever reaches their destination without moving. But it is possible to dream of having arrived. A person can be asleep right here and dream that they have arrived anywhere. The mind is an expert at dreaming.

Don't think that you alone see those dreams; even those whom you call very intelligent also continue to have those dreams. Your saints, your monks and sannyasins - those who have been searching for years - have not come an inch closer to anywhere. They have not even started their journey, and they have been searching for years!

His whole search has been circular. In the mind a circle has been created, a kind of whirlpool. And in that whirlpool they go round and round, and in the end everything is lost: all the Vedas, the Upanishads, the Korans, the Bibles, everything is lost, but there is not a millimetre of movement.

We shall speak of the Upanishad, not that you may understand the Upanishad, but that you may become the Upanishad. If by listening you memorise something and start repeating it, it means that I have wronged you; I have not proved to be your friend. That you repeat what you have heard is of no value.

When I can see that it happens to you as it does to me, that your eyes are also opened, only then will you have become the Upanishad.

Understand it like this: a poet sings a song about some flower. There may be great sweetness, rhythm and music in this song - songs have their own beauty - but however much the song sings about the flower, nevertheless the song is only a song, it is not the flower, it is not the fragrance of the flower.

And if you are only satisfied with that song, then you have gone astray.

This Upanishad is the song of a flower you have not yet seen. The song is wonderful: the singer has seen the flower. But don't be satisfied with the song, the song is not the flower.

It also happens that sometimes you also come close to the flower - only sometimes. Sometimes you also catch a glimpse of the flower - accidentally, suddenly - because the flower is not alien to you, it is your own nature. It is very close to you, right next to you. Sometimes it touches you, in spite of you. Sometimes the flower gives you a vision, a vision like lightning. At some point it enters abruptly into your experience: you feel that there is something else in this world, that this world you know is not all that it is. In this rocky world there is something else that is not a stone, but a flower, alive and blooming. And if you've seen it in some dream, or a flash of lightning in the dark of night.... You see something and it disappears again, that's how it happens sometimes in your life.

It often happens in the life of poets. It often happens in the life of painters that a glimpse of the flower approaches.

Yet no matter how close you are to the flower, no matter how great a vision you may have had, this closeness is still a distance. No matter how close the flower comes to you, the distance still exists. And even if I can touch the flower with my hands, it is not certain that the experience I am having is that of the flower, because the message comes through my hand. The hand can give the wrong message. There is no certainty that my hand will give the right message: there is no reason to trust my hand implicitly. Again, the message the hand will give will be less about the flower and more about itself.

If the flower feels cold, it is not necessary that the flower is cold; perhaps my hand has a fever and therefore feels that the flower is cold. The message has more to do with the hand, because whenever a message comes through a medium it is relative. You can't be absolutely sure about it.

I was reading a memoir written by Popov. Popov was a seeker, and an ardent seeker. He practised spiritual disciplines with Pyotr Dimitrovich Ouspensky. Once I was sitting with Ouspensky and a gentleman came and asked him whether God existed or not. Ouspensky exclaimed: God? No, God does not exist. Ouspensky paused a little and said, But I cannot say that with any guarantee, because all I have known is through a medium. Sometimes I have seen through my eyes, but eyes cannot be trusted. Sometimes I have heard through my ears, but ears can hear wrong. Sometimes I have touched through my hands, but touch cannot be trusted either. So far I have not seen directly, I have never been face to face. Therefore, I cannot say with any guarantee. What I have known so far has not given me any experience of God. But that doesn't prove that there is no God, it just informs you what my experiences are. So I cannot give you any guarantee that God does not exist. But don't give up your search, and believe me, keep searching for yourself.

Whenever something happens through a medium, it is not trustworthy. Even if we get very close to a flower, it is still the eyes that see it, the hands that touch it and the nose that picks up its fragrance: all these are experiences through our senses. So it is that sometimes a poet comes so close to that supreme flower that its echo descends into his songs. But still he is not a Buddha, nor a Mahavira.

Who is Buddha? Who is Mahavira? Buddha is that consciousness which has become the flower itself; even that distance of seeing the flower does not exist: the consciousness has become the flower.

Only by becoming the flower can one fully know what it is.

These are statements of a seer of the Upanishad. It is like a song about a flower. Keep humming it: there is a lot of sweetness and exquisite taste in it, but it is not the flower, it is just a song. If you try hard, sometimes you will see the flower.

People come to me and say: "There was a great light during meditation, but I lost it again. There was infinite light, but it disappeared again. There was immense bliss. But where has it gone now?

Now they are looking for it again and they can't find it.

A glimpse means you have come close. But glimpses are destined to be lost. Meditation can, at best, give only a glimpse. But don't stop there. Don't get stuck looking for the same glimpse over and over again. The only purpose of meditation is for one to get a glimpse. Then you have to move on, towards samadhi, towards enlightenment, to become the flower itself.

In meditation it is glimpsed; samadhi is to be.

Don't dwell on the sparkles. They are very beautiful: the whole world begins to look stale: just a glimpse of that living flower, that blossom within, and the whole world becomes bland and meaningless. But then some people get hold of the glimpses and start repeating them and think that everything has happened. No, until you yourself are the divine, don't believe that God exists.

You can be, because you already are. You just have to open up a little, uncover yourself a little. You are present here and now, just hidden. There are only a few layers of clothes covering you - and they are also very thin - so if you wish you can shed them right now, free yourself from them and be the divine. But your clinging is very strong; though the clothes are thin, your clinging is very strong. Why is this clinging so strong? The clinging is strong because we think that these clothes are our being, that this is what we are. Apart from that, we don't know any other existence.

In this Upanishad there will be hints of that existence which is beyond these coverings. And next to this Upanishad we will meditate, to catch a glimpse of it. And we will wait for samadhi, for enlightenment, to become that without which there is no contentment, no peace, no truth.

The Upanishad begins with a prayer. The prayer is addressed to the whole universe.

MAY THE SUN GOD GRANT US HIS BLESSINGS. MAY VARUNA, ARYAMA, INDRA, BRAHASPATI AND VISHNU GIVE US THEIR BLESSINGS. SALUTATIONS TO THAT BRAHMA.

OH VAYU, SALUTATIONS ESPECIALLY TO YOU BECAUSE YOU ARE THE MANIFEST BRAHMA, I WILL CALL YOU ALONE THE MANIFEST BRAHMA; THE TRUTH, THE RIT - THE LAW. MAY THEY ALL PROTECT ME AND MY MASTER, THE SPEAKER.

The Upanishad begins with this prayer. The journey of religion has begun with a prayer. It has to be so. Prayer means trust and hope. Prayer signifies our feeling of being one with the whole universe.

Prayer means: "How could I manage on my own?

If it were possible for you alone to achieve it, it would have happened long ago. But by yourself even the trivial could not be achieved. You had wished for money, you could not achieve even that. You had wished for position, you couldn't get even that. You had all kinds of desires, big and small, but none of them were fulfilled. Alone you could not even manage the world: would this great journey of truth be possible by yourself alone? By yourself, you are even defeated in the world.

Everyone is defeated in this world. Even those who appear victorious are also defeated. They only look victorious before others, in themselves they are totally defeated. You also look defeated in front of yourself, but in front of others you look victorious. There are people behind you who feel that you have triumphed, that you have won in the worldly battle. But if we look inside man, everyone is defeated.

This world is a long history of defeat. Here victory simply does not happen. Here victory simply cannot happen, it is not in the nature of the world. Defeat is destiny here. Defeat is not of any individual, not of any person, but the destiny of being in the world is defeat. You will have to accept defeat there. Nobody ever wins there.

We could not win in the world where everything was a preoccupation with petty things, where it was only a dream - Shankara calls it maya, an illusion. When we were defeated even in that illusion, in that dreamlike happening, how can we then hope to win for ourselves in the world of truth?

Prayer means the realisation of a person who has been defeated in the world. When even after trying for lifetimes and lifetimes he has been defeated in the worldly, what capacity can he claim in matters of the sacred and the absolute?

Hence the prayer. Hence the seer has invoked the whole universe to help him. He has invoked the sun, he has invoked Varuna. All these names symbolise the powers of the universe. The sun has been invoked first because the sun is our life. Without it, we would not be. Within us, it is the sun that lives, that burns. If the sun goes out there, we will go out here. The sun is our life, that is why it has been invoked.

The seer says SALUTATIONS TO VAYU, THE GOD OF AIR - Vayu has been specially saluted in this prayer - BECAUSE YOU ARE BRAHMA'S MANIFEST. It is a little strange. Think about it a little bit. It is very interesting, because Vayu is absolutely unmanifest; all other things are manifest. If the seer had said to the sun, Thou art the manifest Brahma-radiant, burning, hot, living-it would have been understandable. But the seer did not call the sun manifest Brahma, but Vayu, whom we cannot see at all, who is really unmanifest.

Where does this Vayu manifest? We only infer that it is there, we only feel that it is there, but it cannot be seen.

Where is it available to the eyes? Manifest means that which can be seen by the eyes. Now, Vayu is not at all available to the eyes. Rocks, mountains, all are visible, but Vayu is not. But the seer says: OH VAYU! SALUTATIONS TO YOU, FOR YOU ARE THE MANIFEST BRAHMA. He said so because Vayu, the air, is not visible but it is still visible; it is not seen by the eye, yet it is touching the eye every moment - and so is the supreme truth. It is unseen, but it touches us every moment.

Vayu is not seen because we don't have eyes to see it. Vayu is simply there. Without Vayu we cannot exist. Vayu is in our breath, protecting us, and our very life depends on its inhalation and exhalation. Something that is so close to us, which is our own breath, we cannot see it, because our eyes are too gross. What is very gross, that is what we see. What is subtle, we cannot see.

Vayu, the air, is very subtle. It is present before us; it is inside and outside of us. It is present in every cell of our body, but it is not visible. That is why it is said YOU ARE THE BRAHMA MANIFEST - you are just like the Brahma.

Brahma is present here, but it is not visible. And it is present in our every fibre; in fact, it is the fibre, and yet we see no trace of it. That is why Vayu has been saluted, because we know Vayu, but not Brahma. An attempt has been made to establish a thread of relationship, that Brahma is the same as Vayu, the air.

I will call thee the manifest Brahma, says the seer, I will also name thee the truth and the rit, the law, for thou art equal to that which is and is not known to us; which we ourselves are and yet whom we know not; which is now and here from eternity and is not known to us. But this quest can be fulfilled, if all the gods protect us.

What is meant by gods is the infinite number of life forces from eternity. And life is a vast network of an infinite number of forces. Your existence is also a vast network of these infinite forces. Within you are the sun, Varuna, Indra, Vayu; Agni, the fire; Prithvi, the earth; Akash, the sky: they all meet. If we can know an individual in his totality, we will have known all existence in seed form. Everything is there in the individual. Everything has come together in him, and in their coming together there is the individual.

So pray for help from all of these. But will the sun help? That question arises. Even if you pray, will the sun help, or will Vayu help, or will the earth help? It is not a question of the help of the earth or the sun, but that you have prayed, that is the great help! Let this be understood correctly.

No sun will come to help you, but you have prayed and that will affect you, not the sun, because a praying mind becomes humble, a praying mind becomes powerless, a praying mind accepts the fact that it alone can achieve nothing; a praying mind is willing to dissolve and give up its ego and the feeling that it can do it. And these things bring results.

The whole outcome of prayer depends on you. Prayer does not change the sun, it changes you. And the moment you change, you enter another world.

Normally, when you pray you think that someone is going to do something for you, so you pray. No, prayer is only a resource. Certainly, you join your hands in prayer towards another person, but its consequences happen within you: in the one who has joined hands in prayer.

That is why there is difficulty in understanding it. If you pray in the presence of a scientist, O sun, help me, the scientists will say, What nonsense! How can the sun help you? When has the sun ever helped anyone? Or you pray, O Indra, bring rains and he will say, "Have you gone mad?

Has it ever rained by praying? The scientist is right.

Neither the sun nor the clouds nor the winds will listen to you. None will listen to you. But the fact that you have called will transform you. The intensity of your call will create in you an equally profound intensity. If your whole being calls out to you, you will become a totally different person.

That is what prayer is for.

Enough for today.

We are working on it!

INVOCATION

IN THE CAVITY OF THE HEART, WHICH IS SITUATED INSIDE THE BODY, LIVES AN ETERNAL UNBORN.

THE EARTH IS HIS BODY, HE DWELLS IN THE EARTH, BUT THE EARTH DOES NOT KNOW HIM.

WATER IS ITS BODY, IT DWELLS IN WATER, BUT WATER DOES NOT KNOW IT.

LIGHT IS ITS BODY, IT DWELLS IN THE LIGHT, BUT THE LIGHT DOES NOT KNOW IT.

THE AIR IS HIS BODY, HE DWELLS IN THE AIR BUT THE AIR DOES NOT KNOW HIM.

HEAVEN IS HER BODY, SHE DWELLS IN HEAVEN, BUT HEAVEN DOES NOT KNOW HER.

THE MIND IS ITS BODY, IT DWELLS IN THE MIND, BUT THE MIND DOES NOT KNOW IT.

THE INTELLECT IS HIS BODY, HE DWELLS IN THE INTELLECT, BUT THE INTELLECT DOES NOT KNOW HIM.

THE EGO IS HIS BODY, HE DWELLS IN THE EGO, BUT THE EGO DOES NOT KNOW HIM.

THE REASONING MIND IS ITS BODY, IT DWELLS IN THE REASONING MIND, BUT THE REASONING MIND DOES NOT KNOW IT.

THE UNMANIFEST IS HIS BODY, HE DWELLS IN THE UNMANIFEST, BUT THE UNMANIFEST DOES NOT KNOW HIM.

THE INDESTRUCTIBLE IS HIS BODY, HE DWELLS IN THE INDESTRUCTIBLE, BUT THE INDESTRUCTIBLE DOES NOT KNOW HIM.

DEATH IS HIS BODY, HE DWELLS IN DEATH, BUT DEATH DOES NOT KNOW HIM.

IS THE INNERMOST BEING OF ALL THESE ELEMENTS, HIS SINS ARE ALL DESTROYED, AND HE IS THE ONE DIVINE GOD NARAYANA - THE SUSTAINER OF ALL HUMAN BEINGS.

THE BODY, THE SENSES, ETC., ARE NON-SOUL MATTER, AND THE FEELING OF I-SELF ABOUT THEM IS ADHYAS - ILLUSION. THEREFORE, AN INTELLIGENT PERSON MUST ABANDON THIS ILLUSION BY ALLEGIANCE TO BRAHMA - THE ABSOLUTE REALITY.

A fish in the sea remains a stranger to the sea, not because the sea is far away from the fish, but because the sea is too close. What is far away is seen, but what is very close becomes invisible to the eye. It is not difficult to know what is far away, it is difficult to know what is near. And it is impossible to know what is nearer than what is near. Let this be well understood, for it is something that must be known for the inner journey.

People ask where to look for God. They ask: "How have we forgotten that which is hidden within us? How has that which is closer to us than our heartbeat, which is closer to us than our breath, been separated? How has that which I myself am been forgotten? And his question seems logical.

It seems that what they are asking for is valid and should not have happened this way.

If I am unable to know even what is hidden in me, if even what I am remains unknown, then who else will we know, who else will we recognise? When even that which is near slips through our fingers, how can we reach that which is far away? And it is not that it has only approached us today. It has always been close to us, always. Not even for a single moment have we been separated or distanced from it. Wherever we run, it runs with us; wherever we go, it goes with us; it travels with us to hell as well as to heaven; it is at our side in sin as well as in virtue. It is not correct to say that he is beside us, because even when he is beside us there is a certain distance. In reality, our being and his being are the same thing.

If this is true, then it is a great miracle in the world that we have lost ourselves, which sounds impossible. How can one lose oneself? It is not even possible to lose our shadow, and we have lost our soul. How is it possible? But it has happened. How this loss of self takes place, that is the essence of this sutra. Before we go into the sutra, let us understand its basic fundamentals.

The eyes have a limit of vision, a range. If an object is beyond that range, the eyes cannot see it. If an object is within that range, but too far to either side, the eyes cannot see it either. The eyes have a

range of vision. A thing too close to the eyes cannot be seen and too far away cannot be seen either. Beyond a certain field of vision, the eyes cannot see: then they are blind. Now, you yourself are so close that you are not only close to the eyes, you are behind them.

And that is the problem.

Let's put it this way. If you stand in front of a mirror, at a certain distance your image is very clear. If you move too far away from the mirror there will be no image. If you get too close to the mirror, to the point of putting your eyes against it, then you will not be able to see your image at all.

But here the situation is that you are standing behind the mirror; therefore, there is no possibility of there being any image of you in the mirror: the eyes are in front and you are behind.

The eyes see what is before them; how can the eyes see what is behind them? The ears hear what is outside them, how will the ears hear what is inside them? The eyes open outwards, the ears also open outwards. I can touch you, but how can I touch myself? And even if I can touch my body, it is only because I am not the body; the body is also the other, so I can touch it. But how can I touch what I am, what is touching, with what can I touch?

That is why hands touch everything, but cannot touch themselves. The eyes see everything, but they cannot see themselves. We are blind to ourselves, none of the senses we know are of any use to us. Unless other senses are opened - some eye that can see inwards, backwards, upside down, or some ear that is also affected by inner sound - there is no way we can see and hear and know ourselves. Until that happens, there is no way to touch ourselves.

What is near is missed; what is nearer to everything cannot be known. That is why the fish cannot know the sea.

The second thing: a fish is born in the sea, it lives in the sea, the sea is its food, the sea is its drink, the sea is its life, the sea is its everything. Then it dies and dissolves in the sea, but it never has the chance to know the sea because it has no distance from the sea. A fish, however, gets to know what the sea is if someone comes and takes it out of the sea. This is something very contradictory: the fish comes to know the sea when it is far from the sea - when it is fighting for its life on the sand under the burning sun, then it knows what the sea is. To know requires so much distance.

How can we know the one who existed even before we were born and who will continue to exist even after we have died? How can we know the one into whom we are born and into whom we will disappear?

In order to know, a certain separation is necessary. That is why the fish does not know the sea; it only gets to know it when someone throws it ashore.

Man finds himself in a greater difficulty. The divine is the ocean that surrounds us. It has no shore on which you can be thrown, on which you can begin to writhe in pain like a fish. It would be very easy if there were such a shore. But there is no such shore; God is the ocean. That is why those who seek God as a shore are never able to find Him. The shore is only available to those who are willing to drown in the ocean of the divine.

There is simply no shore, so there is no way to find it. How can there be a shore? Everything else can have a bank; the whole cannot have a bank, because something else is needed to form the bank. The bank of a river is formed by something other than the river. The shore of the sea is formed by something other than the sea. But there is nothing other than God that can form the shore.

The very meaning of God is that there is nothing else but him. God does not mean someone sitting somewhere in the sky and running the world from there. No, those are children's stories. What is meant by God is that element apart from which nothing exists. This is the scientific definition of God.

God means the whole, the total, everything: that which is. That which is cannot have a shore, because there is nothing else left to form the shore. Therefore God is everywhere; there is no shore. He who is willing to drown is saved. He who tries to save himself is drowned.

We are on it. We are in what we are trying to find.

There is no need to call out to the one we keep calling out to, because there is not even that much of a gap to call out to. That is why Kabir asked, Has your God become deaf that you shout your ajan so loud?.

God is so close that it is not even necessary to call out to him. Even if there is silence inside you, he will be heard too: he is so close. If you have to call the other, you have to speak. But to call out to oneself, what need is there to speak? You only hear others when you utter words, but even your own silence is heard.

To be so close is the difficulty. Let it be understood: we have failed in the truth because we are born into it. Our flesh, our marrow, our bones, our whole body is made of it. It is our breath, our life, everything. In numerous ways, through numerous doors, we are combinations of it, we are its work. There is no gap, therefore no memory. That is why its remembrance has become impossible. That is why we see the world, but the truth is not seen at all. The world is at a distance, there is a gap between the two, therefore the passion for the world arises.

What does passion mean? Passion means an attempt to shorten the distance between you and the