Upanishads, Discourses on the Mandukya Upanishad, These discourses are based on the sutras of the Mandukya and Isa Upanishads. Philosophia Ultima Chapter 11: Ego is Just a Habit, Question 1

The first question

Question 1

OSHO: WOULD YOU PLEASE SAY SOMETHING ABOUT THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN SPONTANEITY AND WORKING ON ONESELF? SHOULDN'T WE BE LOVING AS MUCH AS WE CAN? IF THERE ARE CERTAIN THINGS TO DO OR WAYS TO BE TO INCREASE OUR CAPACITY FOR JOY, SHOULDN'T WE DO THEM? SHOULDN'T WE LET OUR EGOS DROP?

MANY GOOD MEN HAVE WRITTEN THAT LOVE CAN BEGIN AS AN IMPULSE OF THE WILL, AND TRYING TO BE SPONTANEOUS SEEMS TO BE A CONTRADICTION. WOULD YOU COMMENT ON THIS?

Mark Siegchrist,

ONE HAS TO WORK UPON ONESELF, but only in a negative way. One cannot work upon oneself in a positive way, because it is not a question of creating something but a question of discovering something which is already there.

When you paint, it is a positive act -- you are creating the painting -- but when you dig a well it is a negative act. The water is already there; you have only to remove a few layers of earth, stones, rocks. The moment you have removed them, the water becomes available. The water is there, YOU are here, and between the two there is a barrier: the barrier has to be removed. That's what I mean by negative work.

Man already has god whatsoever he is seeking and searching for. The truth is there, the bliss is there, the love is there -- in one word, God is there. God is not a person, God is only the totality of all the values which are beyond mind. But the MIND is the barrier, and you have to dig a well. You have to remove a few layers of thoughts, memories, desires, fantasies, dreams. The moment you have opened a door in the mind to the beyond, all that you always wanted becomes available.

The moment Gautam the Buddha became enlightened he laughed, and he said to nobody in particular -- he said to himself -- "This is ridiculous! I have been searching for it for thousands of lives, and it has been Lying deep down within myself!"

The sought is in the seeker. Hence the Upanishads say the method to find it is NETI NETI. NETI NETI means'neither this nor that'; it is a process of elimination. You go on negating, eliminating. Finally, when there is nothing to be eliminated, nothing to be negated, when you have totally emptied yourself, it is found.

So the first thing to be understood, Mark, is: working on oneself gives you the feeling of some positive work and that is wrong. Working on oneself simply means a negative process; it is emptying yourself. And the moment you are empty of the mind and all its processes, spontaneity explodes; Once you understand that the process is negative, then there is no contradiction between the process and spontaneity.

Spontaneity simply means now there is nothing to hinder your self-nature from expressing itself. All the rocks have been removed, all the doors have been opened. Now your self-nature can sing its song, it can dance its dance.

I use both the words: sometimes I say, "Work upon yourself," and sometimes I say, "Be spontaneous." And the logical mind is bound to find a contradiction, but there is no contradiction at all -- because working on oneself means NETI NETI, neither this nor that.

Spontaneity has not to be created; if it is created it is not spontaneity. Then there is a contradiction: if it is cultivated then it is not spontaneous, obviously. A cultivated spontaneity cannot be true; it will be false, phony, pseudo, it will be only a mask. You may be simply acting, you will not be really spontaneous. And it cannot go very deep; it will remain only something painted from the outside. Just scratch the so-called cultivated, spontaneous person, and all his spontaneity will be gone. He was only acting, he was not really spontaneous.

Real spontaneity comes from the center; it is uncultivated, that's why we call it spontaneity. There is no way to cultivate it, no way to create it, no need either. But if you want to become an actor, if you want to act, then it is a totally different matter -- but remember: any real situation will immediately provoke your mind. It will come rushing towards the surface; all spontaneity will disappear.

It was carnival time, and the gay guy dressed himself up as a lioness. A hunter carrying a rifle approached him. "Bang! Bang!" He pretended to shoot him. The lioness fell down dead. The crowd was amused.

As the hunter was about to leave, the gay guy pulled off his lion's head and said softly, "It's the law of the jungle, sweetie: if you kill, you eat!"

Anything cultivated will be only on the surface, it will be only a drama; it will not be your authenticity.

So I will say the first thing to remember is: spontaneity has to be discovered -- or, it will be better to say, rediscovered, because when you were a child you were spontaneous. You have lost it because so much has been cultivated -- so many disciplines, so many moralities, virtues, characters. You have learnt to play so many roles, that's why you have forgotten the language of being just yourself.

The second thing you ask:

SHOULDN'T WE BE LOVING AS MUCH AS WE CAN?

Love is never a should, it cannot be commanded. You cannot FORCE yourself to love as much as you can. That's what people are doing and that's why love is missing in the world. From the very beginning we start making the child false, and every falsity creates schizophrenia, it creates a double personality, it creates a split.

Every child is born whole, but we divide him in two. We tell him what to repress and what to express. We tell him what has NOT to be done and what HAS to be done. Whether he really feels it or not is irrelevant. And the child is so helpless, so dependent, that he has to listen to our dictates. And we have not yet been able to be democratic with children -- we are dictatorial. We TALK about democracy, but our whole way, our very pattern of life is dictatorial, it is non-democratic, it is really antidemocratic.

The child is not allowed to be himself; we start forcing him to be somebody else. And he HAS to follow us because it is a question of survival. If he does not follow us then he is in danger: he cannot live on his own, he has to compromise, and every compromise is a falsification.

We say to the child, "I am your father -- love me!" as if just because you are a father there is some natural inevitability that love should flow towards you. And if it is inevitable, why say it? The very asking shows that it is not inevitable. The child may love, may not love; it will depend on you, on whether you are worth loving or not. Just being a father does not mean anything.

And the institution of father is something invented by man; it is not a natural thing at all, it is institutional. Some day it may disappear because there was a time when it was not there. For thousands of years humanity lived without the institution of fatherhood.

You may be surprised to know that the word 'uncle' is older than the word 'father', because matriarchy preceded patriarchy. The mother was there and the father was not known, because the mother was meeting, merging, melting with many people. Somebody had to be the father, but there was no way to find out. So all were uncles -- all potential fathers were uncles. The word'uncle' is older in EVERY language than the word'father'.

And it will be better to call God 'the Uncle' than 'the Father' -- it is sweeter! But the Talmud, the Jewish scripture, says: "God is not your uncle, he is not nice. If you don't listen to him, if you don't follow him, he will throw you into hell." Exactly these are the words: "God is not nice, God is not your uncle." And I say to you, God is NOT your father, and he is NICE, and it is better to call him 'Uncle'.

The institution of fatherhood came into existence with the invention of private property; they are joined together. The father represents private property, because when private property came into existence everybody wanted his own child to inherit it. "I will not be here, but a part of me should inherit my property." Private property came first, then came the father.

And to be absolutely certain that "The child is my own," the idea became prevalent in almost all the societies of the world that before marriage the woman has to be absolutely virgin -- otherwise it is difficult to decide She may already be carrying a child when she gets married, she may already be pregnant, and then the child will be somebody else's and he will inherit the property To make sure that "It is my child that is going to inherit my property," virginity was imposed on women.

And you can see the difference: man was never expected to be virgin. They say, "Boys will be boys" -- it is allowed -- but the girl should be absolutely virgin. All kinds of stupidities have happened in the past because before getting married the woman had to provide proofs that she was really a virgin.

Sometimes by accident it can happen that the thin screen that proves the virginity of a woman is broken. She may have fallen, or maybe it happened horseriding, or something like that, or on a bicycle... these are dangerous things, avoid them! They are against virginity! The thin screen that proves that the woman has not been penetrated sexually.... In the West, particularly in the Middle Ages, if some accident had happened then the girl had to go to the doctors so they could put a false screen back to prove that she was a virgin, otherwise she would not get a good husband.

It is the whole idea of private property that has created the father, that has created the family, that has created the ownership of the woman by the man. If there was a time when there was no father, no private property, a day is BOUND to come when there will be no private property -- the father will disappear.

But the father insists: "Love me -- I am your father!" and the child has to pretend that he loves. There is not even any necessity for the child to love the mother. It is one of the laws of nature that the mother has a natural instinct of love for t-he child, but not vice versa -- the child has no natural instinct to love the mother. He NEEDS the mother, that's one thing, he uses the mother, that's one thing, but there is no law of nature that he should LOVE the mother. He LIKES her because she is so helpful, so useful; without her he cannot exist. So he is grateful, respectful -- all these things are okay -- but love is a totally different phenomenon

Love flows downwards from the mother to the child, not backwards. And it is very simple because the child's love will flow towards his own child, it cannot go backwards -- just as the Ganges goes on flowing towards the ocean, not towards the source. The mother is the source, and love flows onwards to the new generation. To turn it backwards is a forced act, unnatural, unbiological.

But the child has to pretend because the mother says, "I am your mother -- you HAVE to love me!" And what can the child do? He can only pretend, so he becomes a politician. Every child becomes a politician from the very cradle. He starts smiling when the mother enters the room -- a Jimmy Carter smile! He does not feel any joy, but he HAS to smile. He has to open his mouth and do some exercise of the lips -- that helps him, that is a survival measure. But love is becoming false.

And once you have learnt the cheaper kind of love, the plastic kind, then it is very difficult to discover the original, the real, the authentic. Then he has to love his sisters and brothers, and there is no reason really. In fact, who loves his own sister and for what? These are all ideas implanted to keep the family together. But this whole process of falsification brings you to a point where when you fall in love that love also is false.

You have forgotten what real love is. You fall in love with the color of the hair -- now, what has that to do with love? After two days you will not look at the color of the hair at all. Or you fall in love with a certain shape of nose or a certain kind of eyes, but after the honeymoon these things are just boring! And then you have to go on managing somehow, pretending, cheating.

Your spontaneity has been corrupted and poisoned, otherwise you would not fall in love with parts. But you only fall in love with parts. If somebody asks you, 'Why do you love this woman or this man?" your answer will be, "Because she looks so beautiful," or, "Because of her nose, eyes, proportion of the body, this and that" -- and all this is nonsense! Then this love cannot be very deep and cannot be of any value. It cannot become intimacy. It cannot have a lifelong flow; soon it will dry up -- it is so superficial. It has not arisen out of the heart, it is a mind phenomenon. Maybe she looks like an actress and that's why you like her, but liking is not love.

Love is a totally different kind of phenomenon, indefinable, mysterious -- so mysterious that Jesus says, "God is love." He makes God and love synonymous, indefinable. But that natural love is lost.

And, Mark, you say:

SHOULDN'T WE BE LOVING AS MUCH AS WE CAN?

Do you think it is a question of DOING something as much as you can? It is not a question of doing. It is a heart phenomenon. It is a kind of transcendence of the mind and body. It is not prose, it is poetry. It is not mathematics, it is music. You cannot DO it, you can only BE it. Love is not something that you DO, love is something that you are. But these'shoulds' are heavy on your spontaneity.

And you say:

IF THERE ARE CERTAIN THINGS TO DO OR WAYS TO BE

TO INCREASE OUR CAPACITY FOR JOY,

SHOULDN'T WE DO THEM?

The whole idea is of DOING something, and the reality is discovered by being, not by doing. The question is not of doing anything; the question is of becoming silent and discovering your being. Doing is always extrovert.

Of course, if you want more money, you have to DO something. Just sitting silently doing nothing, the spring comes... and the money does not grow by itself! The GRASS grows by itself, but not the money. You will have to do much: you will have to run after it, you will have to fight for it, you will have to be aggressive, ambitious, violent; it is a very competitive world as far as money is concerned. But your BEING IS not something outside you.

If you want to be the president or the prime minister of a country you have to do much, you have to be constantly doing; there is no rest, no peace. And you have to be almost insane, because the fight is going to be tough. Unless you are utterly mad after power it is impossible for you to reach.

But your being is not outside, there, and there is nobody competing with you for your being. And nobody can enter into your being; you are alone there. And it is already the case; you just have to turn in, you just have to look in.

So all that is needed is, Mark, sitting silently, doing nothing.... When you are not doing anything -- physically, mentally -- when you are in a DEEP interval, in a pause, all activity has ceased, then the being is discovered. Activity creates dust.

When Winston Churchill had become very old, his physician came and asked him, "How are you feeling?"

He was ill. He said, "I am kicking, but I am not creating as much dust as before."

In the world if you want money, power, prestige, you have to kick and create as much dust as you can. The more you kick, the more dust you create, the better. But for the inner world you have to stop kicking and creating dust so that all dust settles and you can see clearly who you are.

So it is not a question of doing anything. Bliss is your self-nature -- just discover your being and you will find it AS a consequence.

Jesus says: "Seek ye first the kingdom of God, and all else shall be added unto you" -- and he is right. "Seek ye first the kingdom of God" -- and that is within you, because he repeats again and again: "The kingdom of God is within you."

So just go withinwards and find your self-nature, and finding it all is found. Joy is found, truth is found, love is found, freedom is found, eternity is found, God is found.

And you ask:

SHOULDN'T WE LET OUR EGOS DROP?

You are thinking as if ego is something that you are carrying and that you can drop. Ego is only an illusion, it is only an idea. It has not to be dropped, it cannot be dropped. How can you drop an idea?

For example, it is getting dark in the evening and on the road you see a rope, but it appears to you as a snake. Now, can you kill the snake? In the first place the snake is not there! Can you avoid the snake? In the first place the snake is not there. Can you be unafraid of the snake? In the first place the snake is not there, so all these things are irrelevant. All that is needed is a little light -- just a candle will do -- and you will see the snake has never been there. It was just an idea, an illusion, a projection.

The moment you find the rope, will you ask, "Now what to do with the snake? Should I drop it? Should I forget all about it?"

The moment you discover your being there is no ego found. Ego is only a projection: just as the snake is projected on the rope, ego is projected on the being. You don't know the rope, hence the snake; you don't know your being, hence the ego. Ego is not knowing your being; not being aware of your being is what ego is all about. So there is no question of dropping it.

But many people try to drop it, and the miracle is, they even succeed! They become humble. But humbleness is another trick of the ego, a very subtle trick -- the ego has come from the back door -- because to drop it simply means you have not understood it at all, so it is BOUND to come.

I used to live in a town where a man was very well known, almost as a saint, and many people had told me, "He is so humble!" Finally the man came to see me; he touched my feet and he said, "I am just dust underneath your feet!"

I looked at him -- his eyes were saying something else, his nose was saying something else -- so I said, "I can see you are absolutely right: you are just dust underneath my feet!"

He said, "What?!" He became very angry.

I said, "But I am simply agreeing with you! I have not said anything of my own! You started it and I have simply agreed with you, so why are you getting irritated?"

I told him, "Now close your eyes and sit silently and see the point! This is just another way of your ego trying to fulfill itself. The ego is there; now it is upside-down, doing SIRSHASANA, the headstand. But it is the SAME ego; now it is pretending to be humble."

Three Christian monks met on a road. One said, "As far as scholarship is concerned, our sect is the most scholarly, the most philosophical. Nobody can compete with us in theological matters."

The second said, "You are right, but as far as ascetic practices are concerned, you stand nowhere compared to us!"

The third laughed and he said, "You are both right, but as far as humbleness is concerned, we are the tops!"

Now humbleness..."And we are the tops!" Even humbleness will play the same game.

Please, Mark, don't drop your ego! Understand it, be aware of it, bring the light of awareness and see -- and you will not find it. You will not find it so there is no question of dropping it. DON'T DROP IT! If you drop it, it will come back in some other form. It cannot leave you -- it is just an old habit of unconscious mind.

The political situation in a South American country was very shaky. The military was worried. They managed to apprehend the country's greatest gossiper and they condemned him to death.

The gossiper was lined up for execution in front of a wall. When the order "Fire!" was shouted, the man fell down. After some minutes the gossiper realized that he was not dead.

The general approached him and said sternly, "You are such a fucking gossiper that I did this just to scare you. These bullets are blanks! Now I hope you have learnt your lesson -- you can go free."

The gossiper ran hurriedly to the street outside where he was immediately approached by a friend. "Hey, Pablo," the friend asked him, "do you have any news?'

"Well," said the gossiper in a hushed voice, "don't tell anyone, but our headquarters don't have any ammunition! "

Old habits... they die hard!

Ego is just a habit, a habit of ignorance, unconsciousness -- it will come back. Please don't drop it! Don't feed it, don't drop it, because in both ways you will be saving it. Just watch it, and you will not find it.

The Bishop received a large number of complaints about Father O'Reilly's bitter attacks on the British from his London pulpit.

"You can't go on speaking to your congregation in that fashion," his Lordship told the priest. "Remember the law of charity and the fact that you live in the country of which you speak so harshly. Next week I ask you to give a sermon on the Last Supper. With that topic you will not be able to indulge your bias."

Father O'Reilly accepted the rebuke mildly, but the Bishop discreetly attended the service the following Sunday to check that all went well. He had no cause to complain, and not once in the course of his sermon did the priest refer to the Base, Brutal and Bloody Saxon. The Bishop noticed with satisfaction that he was drawing to the end of what had been a very good and inoffensive piece of religious instruction: "... and having asked all the disciples, it was time to turn to Judas," Father O'Reilly said. "'Judas,' came the question, 'wouldst thou betray me?' "

The priest paused and looked around. "Judas looked back without blinking an eyelid and then, with the treachery of his kind, he answered, 'Not bloomin' likely, guv!'"

The whole sermon went well, but his bias has come from the back door: "Not bloomin' likely, guv!" He has said it -- he may not even be aware of it himself.

The only thing to remember is to watch where the ego is, and you will not find it -- nobody has ever found it. Whosoever has looked for it has not found it, and those who have been trying to drop it have never been able to get rid of it.

Then you ask:

MANY GOOD MEN HAVE WRITTEN

THAT LOVE CAN BEGIN AS AN IMPULSE OF THE WILL.

That is sheer nonsense! Love can NEVER begin as an impulse of the will. Will means effort, will means imposition, will means compulsion, will means discipline. Will means forcing yourself to do something AGAINST yourself.

Love cannot begin that way, and if it begins in that way it will not be love but something else. And if the beginning is wrong, if the first step is wrong, the last step cannot be right.

And I know that many good men have written Mark, but those good men are just phony. They are not Buddhas, they are not awakened people. They are as blind as anybody else, they are as blind as the whole of humanity. They are good -- they have tried to be good, they have managed to be good -- but they are boiling within. They have repressed themselves, that's all, and they have succeeded in repressing themselves. They have been able to create a beautiful facade and they are hiding behind the facade. They may be wearing glasses, but they are blind. And if you are wearing dark glasses, nobody will think that you are blind. Many blind people wear dark glasses just to hide their blindness.

"I want to go to the cinema, Mom! I want to go to the cinema! Let's go to the cinema," says the little boy very excitedly.

"Shut up and don't bother me!" says the mother irately. "You know very well that you are blind!"

But it is very difficult to know very well that you are blind! You can be good, you can be very disciplined, you can have a moral character, you can have a conscience, but unless you have consciousness you don't have any eyes. Those good people were good because they followed the rules of the crowd, and that's why one person may be thought good in one society, and the same person may not be thought good in another society.

Hindus think Ramakrishna is enlightened. Ask the Jainas and they cannot agree with you because he continued to eat fish, and according to the Jaina morality to eat fish and to become enlightened is impossible. One has to be absolutely vegetarian.

The Jainas have not conceded enlightenment even to Krishna, because he was the cause of the great war of MAHABHARAT. He persuaded Arjuna to fight. In fact, Arjuna was going to become a Jaina monk; he wanted to renounce the world and go to the mountains, but Krishna persuaded him -- not only persuaded him, forced him in every possible way, gave him all kinds of arguments, and he argued well. It does not seem that he CONVINCED Arjuna, but he silenced him. His argument was such, Arjuna tried in every possible way to escape, but Krishna would not give him any door to escape by.

Seeing that "This man is not going to leave and I cannot convince him," Arjuna thought, "it is better to fight and be finished." So finally he said, "Thank you, I am convinced" -- but he was NOT convinced.

And the proof is that the MAHABHARAT has the STORY that when they were reaching THE ultimate goal of paradise they all started melting on the way. Only Yudishthira with his dog reached the door of the ultimate. Even Arjuna melted on the way, disappeared on the way, evaporated on the way; even he was not able to reach the ultimate door. That shows perfectly that he missed Krishna's message -- he was not yet enlightened, he was not yet awakened.

Evaporating on the way means getting born again into the world. Even the dog of Yudishthira reached, and the disciple of Krishna could not reach!

Jainas say Krishna has gone to the seventh hell because he created the greatest violence in the world. Now, who is good?

Do you think Jesus Christ is good? Ask Hindus, ask Buddhists, ask Jainas, and they will say, "No, not at all!" because according to THEIR morality, according to THEIR philosophy one suffers only because of past life sins -- and the crucifixion is a great suffering. That simply proves that Jesus Christ must have committed great sins, may have murdered somebody, raped somebody, must have done something REALLY bad, otherwise why should he get crucified?

Jainas say that when Mahavira -- their TEERTHANKARA, their Christ -- walks on a path, if there is a thorn lying on the path it immediately turns upside-down, seeing that Mahavira is coming by, because even a thorn cannot give pain to Mahavira. He is finished with all bad karmas, pain is impossible -- so what about crucifixion? Jesus must have been a criminal in his past lives -- may have been a Genghis Khan, Tamerlane, Nadir Shah, a Hitler -- something like this!

And ask the Christians what they say about Mahavira or Buddha or Shankaracharya, and they will say these people are very selfish people -- just meditating, not serving the poor. Jesus helped the blind, gave them eyes, turned stones into bread to serve the poor, even raised the dead back to life. His whole life was one of service to humanity.

Now what is there of service to humanity in Mahavira's life? Standing naked... is that a service to humanity? Just meditating with closed eyes and enjoying your inner self, being blissful -- is that service to humanity? When the whole of humanity is suffering and you are enjoying yourself -- is it human? It is inhuman!

Buddha, Mahavira, Krishna, these people cannot be thought good people according to the Christians. Now, what is this Krishna doing? -- playing on the flute and girls dancing around him, and the whole of humanity is suffering! There are poor people and blind people, and hospitals are needed and schools are needed.

Do you think if Krishna was alive he would have got the Nobel Prize? Mother Teresa of Calcutta gets it, because she runs houses for orphans, serves the poor, feeds the poor. And this man Krishna, instead of serving the poor, was hitting with stones the poor girls carrying their milk-pots, so their pots would be broken, their milk would be spilt... and this man they call God! Instead of helping the poor he would take the poor women's clothes when they were taking a bath in the river and sit in a tree with the clothes. What kind of religiousness is this? This man has to be given to the police!

If you look around, who is good? Mohammed is good? -- who carried a sword his whole life and killed many people and fought many wars? According to Buddha he is not good, according to Mahavira he is not good -- he is violent. He married NINE women. Now, is this the sign of a man of character? A man of character remains celibate! Shankaracharya is a man of character, remains celibate.

Jesus drinks wine. Now, Mohammed cannot agree with that -- he is very much against wine. And this Krishna playing on the flute -- Mohammed cannot agree that this man is good. He is as allergic to music as I am to perfume! He is very anti-music.

Now, who is good...?

Mark, all our ideas of good are invented -- only the awakened is good. So, according to me, the awakened person is good. Acts don't count at all, only consciousness counts. So, according to me, Mahavira is good, Krishna is good, Mohammed is good, Buddha is good, Ramakrishna is good, Christ is good, for the simple reason that they are all awakened. Now it is up to THEIR consciousness to decide what to do and what not to do.

Jesus is so awakened that he can drink wine but he does not become drunk. What is wrong in it? There is nothing wrong in it. He has to decide for himself nobody else can decide for him.

Mahavira is so awakened that he wants to be just as naked as a child; there is no need to hide anything, so he drops his clothes. Nobody else can be decisive. When you have your own consciousness, your acts are born out of that consciousness.

According to me, the only possible definition of good is: the act that comes out of a conscious being, whatsoever the act. But ordinarily we think about acts as good and bad; acts are neither good nor bad. The same act of drinking wine is good because JESUS IS doing it, and it is bad if somebody who is not awakened goes on doing it. Both are doing the same act! Mahavira standing naked is good and a girl doing a striptease is not good. Consciousness is the only decisive factor.

MANY GOOD MEN HAVE WRITTEN

THAT LOVE CAN BEGIN AS AN IMPULSE OF THE WILL...

Those good men are not GOOD really; they are just traditional, orthodox. They have followed the scriptures, and when you are unconscious whatsoever you interpret is your interpretation.

A country bumpkin sort of fellow was elected Justice of the Peace in a backwoods town. Although he could count money, he had never learnt to read and write much beyond being able to sign his name. Not being able to read the law and also not wanting people to know how ignorant he was, he developed a system of fining people -- not from a lawbook but from a Sears Roebuck catalog.

One day a stranger who was visiting a cousin in town was picked up for speeding. When he was found guilty the judge solemnly fingered through his catalog and fined the man $9. The man was angry about the way he had been treated and was complaining about it to his cousin.

His cousin said, "You are lucky. He fined you the price of a parasol for only $9. If he had turned the page he would have fined you $385 for a piano!"

People are turning the pages of their scriptures, not knowing about their own selves. What can they understand? They are all catalogs! It may be the Gita or the Bible or the Koran, it makes no difference. What you are finding there is your own mind, it is your own reflection; it cannot be otherwise.

You are unconscious -- you cannot be good.

A female voice on the phone at three a.m. begged the police to come as fast as they could. She said her husband was awakened by a noise in the back yard and when he went outside to investigate he was set upon and struck down by an unseen attacker.

A patrolman was dispatched from the police station at once and he was on the scene of the crime within minutes. Half an hour later he returned to headquarters with a sour look on his face and a huge lump on his forehead.

"Back already?" the desk sergeant asked. "Did you find the attacker?"

"Yes," the patrolman said, "I stepped on the rake too!"

In your unconsciousness what good can come out of you!

You say, Mark:

MANY GOOD MEN HAVE WRITTEN

THAT LOVE CAN BEGIN AS AN IMPULSE OF THE WILL..

They don't know at all about love OR about will. Will is another name for the ego and love means egolessness. How can egolessness begin through the ego?

A really religious person is not a man of will. A really religious person has dropped his will; he allows God's will to flow through him. That's what Jesus says at the last moment on the cross: "Let thy kingdom come, let THY will be done."

There are hundreds of books written all over the world about will power -- that is nothing but ego power. The really religious person is absolutely egoless, will-less; he is just a hollow bamboo, a flute. Whatsoever God wants to sing he sings; if he does not want to sing, the flute remains silent. The flute has no will of its own because it is no more separate from existence.

The religious person is good -- good in the sense that he is one with God. He has dissolved himself into God, he has forgotten all separation, he has attained to union with God.

Love cannot begin in will, as will, as an impulse of the will.

And you say:

... BUT TRYING TO BE SPONTANEOUS

SEEMS TO BE A CONTRADICTION.

Of course if you think that love begins in an impulse of the will, then being or trying to be spontaneous will be a contradiction. But love does not begin as an impulse of the will and there is no contradiction. Love is spontaneity itself.

And I am not telling you to try to be spontaneous. How can you try to be spontaneous? That will be a contradiction! I am telling you to understand what you are doing, what you are thinking, what you are feeling -- watch it.

That's what meditation is: watching all your acts, physical, mental.... When you can watch actions, thoughts, feelings -- these three dimensions have to be watched -- as your watchfulness grows, you will enter the fourth, TURIYA. The Mandukya Upanishad talks about the fourth. Watching the three you will enter the fourth -- just by watching; it is not a question of trying. Trying means effort; watching means relaxedness, being utterly relaxed, just seeing whatsoever is passing.

Thoughts are passing always on the screen of the mind. Just be relaxed, sit in an easy chair as if you are watching the television. The mind is an inbuilt television! You can simply watch, and it is very colorful. Just by watching it you will see the watcher is not the watched, the observer is not the observed. A separation has started happening, a disidentification from the bodymind complex. And in that very disidentification you start centering, you start getting grounded in your very being. That will bring spontaneousness.

It is not a question of practising it. It is only a question of watching all that is happening IN YOU, through you, so that you can see one day your seer, so that one day you can become aware of your own awareness. That is the ultimate peak of human growth; beyond that nothing else exists. One becomes a Buddha, and then whatsoever you do is good, whatsoever you do is love, whatsoever you do is service, is compassion.

Upanishads

PHILOSOPHIA ULTIMA

Chapter-11

Ego is Just a Habit