The Natural State

You are individually responsible for the exploitation. As long as you are seeking security for yourself, there can't be security in the world. And as long as you allow yourself to be exploited by somebody for some reason or the other, the structure will continue to be the same.

You use somebody and that is exploitation, no matter for what reason. If the other person allows this, he is also interested in using you. That is the relationship in this world. You call it mutual gratification. You gratify me and I gratify you. Or you exploit for self-fulfilment, self-expression. That is what I mean by exploitation, not necessarily in the field of labor and money and other things.

What can you do? Join a party, start an organization. And it is always tomorrow. People are hungry today and you are promising food tomorrow. My idea, my system, my party and I'll give food and security. The other man also says the same thing and you fight all the time to win over the other, meanwhile the poor man suffers and you let him die of starvation.

You are accumulating wealth, and as long as you hold on to what you have how would the world change? You don't want to let go anything. And that is so with your neighbor and his neighbor and every other person. You think this is marvelous progress, giving charity here and there. Tell me, do you mind if things are taken away from you? You try to take away a simple thing like a fountain pen from somebody, and see what happens. He'll kill you.

(Peals of laughter…)

Sorry, I don't believe anybody who says he is not attached to things or people or anything else. Even if you go and listen to somebody it is only to get something. You want to profit by that and that is your acquisitive nature. You want to benefit yourself, improve yourself, become somebody other than what you are. You want to be a religious man, a holy man, a good man. All that is the acquisitive structure in you. 

The man who acquires knowledge is not very different from the man who acquires wealth. Both are acquisitive. Seeking happiness is acquisitiveness. Facing this fact may contribute something in the direction of solving the human problem. Not otherwise.

There is no collective action involved here. This is a very simple and effective way to bring about a change in the structure of your consciousness, but instead you want to start organizations to change, when basically you are not different from what you want to change out there. 

At no time you are free from it and that is your burden, your problem, your life. Conflict is the ego. Don't deal with ego in terms of religious or spiritual valuation. Ego is the conflict, the division in your consciousness, that's all. Everything is divided up. That division is the separateness from this mechanism.

You have created a separate entity here. It is not real; it is illusory and does not exist at all. It is good for you to say this is atman, this is the Higher Self, this is Brahman and all that. It is all invention of the mind. The moment you accept the mind the division is there. And you want to understand this division in terms of religious concepts, abstractions. This is the basic conflict.

The society, the culture has created this conflict, this division, and you are not different from the society or culture. The society has put the structure inside of you and you are perpetuating that structure because it is in your interest to give continuity to it. But does it exist? Is there an ‘I’, the center? If you ask this question, the question is that one (the self, the ego). It is an illusion, I say; but it is a solid thing for you.

So, how do you understand this basic thing, not according to psychologists or some holy man or guru? You can throw them all out of the window if you have the courage. Are you ready to understand for yourself what this is all about? Have you looked at it? Look at it and find out.

The society is interested in continuity and it does not want to change unless it is pushed by circumstances. So you move like crabs, dig a hole and stay there until you are pushed out by circumstances. Basically, you don't want to change. There is nothing there but ideas, dead things, passed on from generation to generation, that is the momentum of thought, the continuity. 

It is simple but you are making it difficult by your refusal to change. What I am describing is your state and not my state alone. The absence of that movement of thought seeking continuity there is this state.

We have not become human, we are still like animals. And since we do not accept the fact that we are like animals, we are moving away from that state all the time, because we want to be angels, divine—but angels don't exist except as an idea, a myth. In spite of all your struggles, all this centuries-old civilization and culture, you haven't gone one step further. Despite the whole lot and all your so-called achievements, the culture is perpetuating the animal, trying to change a bit here, a bit there.

Actually what is there is not an animal; you have become a human being. You have gone far ahead in the evolutionary process. But the problem is all your energy is spent towards achieving a goal that does not exist. Your moral absolutes and high ideals don't exist; they are only inventions of the mind. And it is that movement that makes it impossible to be what actually you are.

That is what is producing conflict there. That is the structure and that is how you have come into what you are today. But you are not happy, not at peace with what you are today and so you try this, that and the other to do something about it. They teach you yoga, meditation and they produce some results sometime. But it is like a rubber you stretch and then it comes back to its original state. It has to, that's its nature.

You are trying to control a thing over which you have no control. It's like trying to hold your breath and you choke. So there is nothing you can do about it and that is the first thing you have to understand and accept. You don't and then some holy man comes along and says you can control it, you can do something about it, you can become a good man, a holy man, Brahman, Jesus, Allah. And you are back again playing the same old game.

When you see a woman and recognize her as a woman and what she can give you, what is that but the continuity of your self. There is always something building up inside of you and you are constantly reaching out for something, whether it is sex or pleasure, relationship or security, some new idea or experience—that is continuity. This is not something mystical; you can see this for yourself. There are only sensations hitting you one after another all the time and you are translating it as good, bad, pleasant, disgusting and so on and that is continuity. This is your everyday existence, is it not?

What I am saying is that all beliefs and practices give continuity to that structure. If you knock off this structure, what happens? You think you'll become a moron, abnormal or insane and you are afraid. You don't have that courage, you only talk of courage. If you have the courage and bring this movement to an end, the structure collapses and then you become what you actually are. That is the natural state and the life there will express itself in its own way and that will be your way, something unique, unparalleled.

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There is no such thing as sleep for me. The division between sleep, wakefulness and dreaming is not there. It is all one state of consciousness; pure consciousness. Others say that I sleep for three or four hours and the body is in perfect repose. And you do not dream because you experience everything totally and completely.

Why there is no need for me to dream? It is because I am not selective in what I am looking at and listening to. I leave the sensations alone completely and don't manipulate the sensations to get something out of them. I am completely occupied with what is there around me and that is the only world that exists for me at that particular given time.

Whereas in your case you want to look at and listen to something good and beautiful and so you are cutting out ninety-eight percent of what is there. But the camera and the tape recorder inside of you is recording everything and when the body is at ease, resting, the mind becomes active and brings out all those things and that is the dream. You do not experience anything completely.

Psychiatrists tell you that you have to sleep in order to dream. But that is not true as far as this state of being is concerned. So I don't sleep and I don't dream. In this state, since you are open you don't shut out any sensation and do not translate them as good, bad or as anything. All these sensations are bombarding you and you have no choice. When the body becomes tired or it becomes impossible to be active, it goes into a state of repose in its own way—there is a change in the metabolism of your body and you go into a state like you go into when you are given anaesthesia. There is a sort of curtain that falls before you and you don't know what you are looking at, you stay that way for some time. That is repose.

You function in two ways: activity, which is part of life, and repose; and this goes on continuously all the time. This repose and activity is an automatic thing. Perhaps that is why the yogis call it a state of samadhi. You are completely, totally cut out, it is like death, physical death, even your breathing slows down, and then what happens nobody knows. And then you come back, the field is ready and you are ready to take in anything.

That is the Vedantic idea that they have put into our heads, the idea that in deep sleep you are not there. All right, let's see if it is so. After the so-called deep sleep you come awake and you ask if I was there or not. You were certainly there before and after sleep. Why do you ask this question? It is a speculation on your part that you were not there during deep sleep. When you are not there after the deep sleep, only then you can say you were not there in the deep sleep. If you were really not there during the sleep, you cannot be there now.

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Affection is not something that moves from here and flows in the direction of some individual, but you are affected by everything that is there. This is affection. You are affected by everything because there are no frontiers here, nothing to protect you against. 

The other day this friend was saying that I turned blue because he was very angry. That is how you are affected by everything around you.

There is what is called thymus gland here (to the right side of the chest). This is where you experience the feelings, not emotions as you understand, this is a physical thing. This happened in India. One evening I heard a wild wailing of a child coming from the backyard and was drawn to the spot. I saw the mother beating her child. She was mad, hopping mad, and she hit the child so hard, the child almost turned blue. I simply could not move. You are the child and you are the mother, which one you are and for which one the heart is beating, you do not know. There is one continuous movement here. I was also part of that and then I found all those things (marks) on my back. That is possible because consciousness cannot be divided. Anything that is happening there is affecting you—this is affection, you understand? There is no question of your sitting in judgment on anybody; the situation happens to be that, so you are affected by that. You are affected by everything that is happening there. 

This is affection, compassion. To bear and suffer; sorrow and pity excited by the misfortunes of another. It is not a question of practicing sympathy or kindness.

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What do I get out of that individual is the relationship—friendship, togetherness, sharing of common ideas, feelings, food, sex—at every level. You establish some kind of (unwritten) contract that you have to live together. Is that a living relationship? 

Yes, life is basically related. That is an expression of life. But we are creating another kind of relationship through our desires and that is the movements of thought, of the self, which is parallel to the movement of life. There is no duality, no division in consciousness. It is all one. But you have isolated yourself from this unitary movement of life and that is the problem and that is why you ask all these questions. And from this isolated position you are trying to establish relationships and that is bound to run you into all kinds of conflict situations. Being isolated you feel lonely and you want to be free from loneliness and you create a relationship and seek gratification. You call this relationship mutual gratification.

Man is also an animal and on that you have superimposed the idea of a perfect man. The idea of a perfect man doesn't exist. This is the conflict. The society has created this conflict in you by imposing the idea of a perfect human being on you. There is no such thing as a perfect human being, but you can become a human being and once you become a human being the animal qualities are not there anymore.

You are three-fourths animal and one-fourth all these ideas and fantasies. So the animal remains an animal and you don't want to accept this fact. The only difference between you and the animal is that you are more complex. They have instincts and because of which they are very intelligent in certain things; but man has lost the animal instinct and in its place he has not developed the human instinct.

If there is any purpose to human evolution it is to surpass the animal in you and become fully human. Such a human being is unique and unparalleled. Once you become a human flower you are free of sex and all the other things that culture has imposed on you. The continuity of all kinds has come to an end. The evolution has come to an end. It is finished, complete. It is just a flower giving out its own fragrance. But the society is interested in creating human beings in a common mold and that is the barrier that prevents you from blossoming into a unique human flower.

From time to time it (nature) is throwing up a few individuals, pointing out that that (society, culture) is not the way, this is it. Why and how it happens only to a few individuals nobody knows. It just happens. You can use the words luck, chance or grace or any other word, but there is no explanation. But it can happen now, to you or anybody; you don't have to wait. 

This is nature's law. When evolution slows down, revolution takes place. Suddenly it throws up something like this. This is the way it has gone on through centuries.

What is love? It is said, at least according to the dictionary, that love is warm affection, paternal feeling, liking someone, something, fondness and so on. And that love is always in relationship with something, whether it is a person or a thing. Then we speak of another kind of love, divine love, which is supposed to be qualitatively different from what you feel towards others.

All right, we have feelings towards persons and things and it changes all the time. But you want some kind of a permanent relationship, a beautiful relationship, full of harmony and never ending. That's the reason why you are searching for what is called love. 

Actually, if you are in a state of love, which is not any of these definitions, there is no relationship whatsoever. 

There is no attachment to persons or things. You cannot acquire anything. Acquisitiveness is out, whether it is acquisitiveness of knowledge or things or persons.

The absence of attachment, of acquisitiveness is love. It does not mean you are in a state of detachment, there is no such thing. Detachment gives continuity to attachment and you are obviously tired of attachment and you want to change the nature of attachment into something else. 

Love is not different from life. Life, love, truth, reality, God or whatever word you use, they are all the same. But that's a thing you cannot capture, contain, much less give expression to it.

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We seem to have some difficulty about this word consciousness. When do you become conscious of an object? This microphone, that person, black hair, fountain pen and shoes there—you become conscious of these things only when thought interferes, otherwise you are not conscious of the object and at the same time you are not unconscious.

You are asking the question because obviously you have not lived through that state of awareness. So I have no way of communicating to you that state of awareness where you are not conscious of the objects. You really don't know what you are looking at, that is all. If you are aware of anything as it is, just once, this whole structure would collapse once and for all. Just one second by the clock, this whole thought structure will be finished.

You may say that you have become aware of things, of feelings, your anger, your jealousy. It is all just one thought becoming aware of another one. The moment you say this is anger, you cannot be aware. Anger is just like any other feeling like say sex feeling, but you are dividing the feeling as anger, jealousy, sex and so on. You are classifying them, otherwise they are all one and the same.

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There is already enough junk, enough garbage there. You can't do a thing about it and can't get rid of it. But what is the point in adding more and more to this garbage and that's what you are doing. 

What is there is enough for you to last for the entire evolution. There isn't anything you can do about the garbage and it is not garbage; that is the intelligence. What you call conditioning, what you call mechanical, is the intelligence. Why do you call that garbage? It is not getting in the way; you are getting in the way. You are all the time interfering with what you call garbage…which is not garbage.

How do you get this know-how? You come here or you go to someone else, some authority or wise old man and he tells you something when actually he may or may not know a thing of what he is saying. So where are you? Why do you ask such questions? That's my problem. I don't have any questions.

All right, if there is any such thing as learning, you look out there; you see something sitting there, of purple color; what is that extraordinary thing that is standing there on the balcony? This is all I am concerned about learning. Not about garbage, conditioning, mutation and all that. What is there? I am wondering what it is that is moving there. This is the state of learning and you have learnt and it is finished. Then you look at something else and you are back again with the same question. This is the state of not knowing. What you mean by inquiry is a simple, innocent question: what is it that is there on the balcony? All this is learning, not about the nature of reality, ultimate reality, conditioning and all that, which is nothing but dialectical thinking, thinking about thinking itself. This is what the philosophers do and write books about.

You see, I look at my foot here and I don't know to whom it belongs and what it is actually. There is nobody here. A beautiful woman comes and that beautiful woman is nothing but me. There is no separation here at all. When there is a question, when there is a demand, it gets clutched and the word is thrown out. It's a chair and it is finished. It's a woman, it is finished.

It is not a question of coming out of non-dual state into a state of duality or going back into the state of non-duality. There is no movement in any direction either outward or inward. There is only one movement of life, and that is acting. You cannot stop that, but you want to look at it and understand that and that is not possible.

So you want to look at the garbage there. The one who is trying to look at the garbage and wanting to do something about it is the garbage. Why is he interested in finding out the nature of the garbage? It is because through that you are seeking the continuity of the garbage, otherwise there is no garbage. 

You have memorized these phrases very well, like the Vedantins sitting on the banks of the river indulging in hair-splitting discussions. They discuss everlastingly these abstractions: the observer and the observed, the thinker and the thought—we have been through all this for too long.

So what is the good of you people sitting here and discussing the same things again and again? There is no such thing as experiencing without the experiencer and the experienced. Even if it is there, it cannot become part of your conscious structure. So what are you going to do about it? You just throw in the towel. That's it. Then there'll be tremendous energy for you to deal with this reality. This is the only reality and there is no other reality and you cannot run away from it.

Then you'll find out that it is utter nonsense to talk about the religious mind. You have imposed all these abstractions, your profound ideas of religious mind, stillness of mind, self-realized state, atman, Brahman and all that and that is the unnatural movement of life. It is moving out in the direction of something else outside of you and that is what is creating that division in you.

How long can you go on this way, chewing the cud like the cows do? You can't help yourself and that is the situation. You must just let go. But as long as you accept any mystery, any miracle, any agency outside of you, you are going to be caught up in this mischief. 

There is no power outside of you. If there is God, you are that God, not the abstractions, absolutes and all that nonsense. There is no intelligence outside of you and you have to just let that intelligence come into operation.

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Concentration is a part of your education, right? But why do you want to meditate? If there is a mind here—I don't know if there is—its nature is to move in all directions. That is your natural state. But somebody tells you that you should meditate. So you sit there and meditate. What happens? Thoughts begin to move in all directions, so you bring it back to this point, and this is what you call concentration. And then it begins to move again, you bring it back, it moves again because that is its nature.

The purpose of your meditation is to be at peace with yourself or to be full of love, or I don't know for what else you seek. Anyway, you sit here, cross-legged, and then what happens? You think about things that happened yesterday or of things that are going to happen tomorrow; this is the movement of thought that is going on. You want to be at peace and you think this movement is disturbing your peace, so you try to control it. But this never stops. And it is this that is wearing you out.

So this constant attempt on your part to hold the thing that you cannot hold tires you and that tiredness gives you some kind of peace. It is an artificially created dumbness, dullness, stupidity. This wears out the sensitivity of your senses and that you think is what you have achieved. When that is gone you are back again.

It is like opium, you have to go back every time. If you are successful you become a chain-smoker. Like a chain-smoker you meditate for five or six hours and you get drunk. Actually you are completely tired and that you think is what you are achieving. Now you are able to achieve concentration for thirty minutes, next for forty-five minutes and you succeed in the effort and can do it for one hour and that is the feeling that makes you feel that you are getting somewhere.

It has a will of its own. So you are using another will, you understand. Now, there is a table here. Say I cannot push it but I must push it to the corner. So you develop this will; in other words, you are goading, pushing this body to move things it normally cannot. The will has given you the additional strength. So the will is a very important factor for you and that is your education, culture.

You see, I am stupid and I do not understand mathematics or languages and I have taken seven years to learn French. I use my will but I keep forgetting, but the society says you must learn and fit into this framework. Since you give stories of politicians, businessmen, artists and even religious leaders reaching great heights through sheer will power and hard work, I use will, my effort and the hope that tomorrow I too will succeed like the others. But you are not always successful, so you put in more and more will and effort into it.

And you apply the same logic to reach this state. You believe that through relentless effort, sadhana, through yoga, meditation, you will reach this state. But that is not how it works. In fact, it puts you on the wrong path and sends you in the opposite direction. What I am saying is that this natural state, this mechanical or automatic functioning of the organism or whatever you want to call it, operates when there is an absence of will and effort. So when I say the absence of will is the natural state, you are frightened. What would I be without the will? How can I live in this world without effort and hope? That's how you give continuity to the question and thereby yourself, your thought structure with all its will, effort and hope. To be that it doesn't need time, will and effort.

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In the natural state of a human being the sex has no place. Why? Because there is no continuity there in the natural state. The sex glands function normally like in any other individual. It has a definite rhythm and if you don't give expression to sex, you'll understand how rhythmic it is in the case of man as well as woman.

During spring the sex activity, as in the case of animals, becomes extraordinarily active. And you think about sex and thereby you invest what you call sex with tremendous life and give continuity to it all the time. What you call new sex experience is really not new but it is the same sex experience you experienced before and you are repeating that experience again and again. You want to release that tension building up inside of you.

But here there is no continuity. No accumulation of experience. I really don't know what a sex experience is like, that means the past experience is not impinging upon the activity of the sex glands and translating this feeling in terms of that past experience. It is like any other feeling, like any other sensation. There is no translation because the translator is not there.

Man is a positive electromagnetic field and woman a negative electromagnetic field. When there is a collision caused between these two different magnetic fields there is bound to be some kind of disturbance there. Immediately you translate that disturbance inside of you (both man and woman) in terms of your past (sex) experience.

Actually anything that happens in this organism (in this natural state) is exactly the same thing. Eating something, smelling, touching, even the movement of the bowels are all sensations, feelings, and there is no difference between them at all. 

But in your case the structure that gives continuity is making choices: this sensation I like and want to live with, this I don't like—this is how you give life to these sensations.

Here, in this state, since there is no continuity, no building up, the sensations are moving, they come and go one after another. You are always on the move. There is no such thing as sublimation. The sex activity (inside) goes on and on like in any other human being but with a difference. 

The difference is that when this kind of structural or chemical or biological change takes place, the hormones too undergo change. In the case of man the male hormone is predominant and in the case of woman female hormone; this is all the difference that is there. But when this kind of alchemy takes place there is a balance established between the two and then you are neither (completely) a man nor a woman.

It is not in the sense you use the word ‘eunuch’. One half of you is man and the other half woman—there is a harmonious blending of the two. That is how the sex, in the sense you feel about it, is absent in such an individual. 

There is no separateness in what you are looking at. What is there in front of you is not different from what is here. It is like a mirror reflecting the person—it does not matter whether it is a man, woman, a flower or a barking dog there. There is no space, therefore, no difference between the two. So there is nothing to make love to. If you have to make love to, you have to make love to yourself if there is any such thing.

(Laughter…)

In imitation of this state, the religious people try to practice celibacy, continence and they think that is the means to attain this state. That is the reason why monks deny themselves sex and through denial they feel very important and think that they are getting somewhere. But that is an illusion. You become an imitator and not a mutant. This is not the foundation to create a religious mind or religious life.

Denial of sex has no meaning. It is absurd. Through sex there is a possibility of breaking that structure. Anything—it doesn't matter what—even the falling of a leaf, the beautiful or ugly face of a woman or man—anything can snap the continuity and then the whole thing falls in its proper place and you begin to function naturally.

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If you blink your eyes it means you are not looking. You don't look at a person with unblinking eyes. The fact you are blinking your eyes all the time means that you are frightened to look at a person or anything for that matter. It is not a nervous action or reaction, or even a reflex action. Throw out all those doctors and psychologists who say that it is a nervous action. There is reflex action only when there is physical danger. But when you are blinking it is not due to physical danger.

You just don't want to or can't look at anything totally. You are frightened, that is why you blink or close your eyes now and then. In India, it is considered as one of the signs of spirituality. Not blinking eyes is supposed to be the quality of a divine man, so the yogis try to keep their eyes open for days together, and then nothing happens.

(The small crowd in the room dissolves into laughter.)