The Book of Secrets

"Tantra says, accept whatsoever you are. This is the basic note
-- total acceptance. And only through total acceptance can you
grow. Then use every energy you have.

How can you use them? Accept them, then find out what these
energies are -- what is sex, what is this phenomenon. We are
not acquainted with it. We know many things about sex, taught
by others. We may have passed through the sex act, but with a
guilty mind, with a suppressive attitude, in haste, in a hurry.
Something has to be done in order to become unburdened. The
sex act is not a loving act. You are not happy in it, but you
cannot leave it. The more you try to leave it, the more
attractive it becomes. The more you want to negate it, the more
you feel invited. You cannot negate it, but this attitude to
negate, to destroy, destroys the very mind, the very awareness,
the very sensitivity which can understand it. So sex goes on
with no sensitivity into it. Then you cannot understand it.

Only a deep sensitivity can understand anything; only a deep
feeling, a deep moving into it, can understand anything. You
can understand sex only if you move in it as a poet moves amidst
flowers -- only then! If you feel guilty about flowers, you may
pass through the garden, but you will pass with closed eyes.
And you will be in a hurry, in a deep, mad haste. Somehow you
have to go out of the garden. Then how can you be aware?

So tantra says, accept whatsoever you are. You are a great
mystery of many multidimensional energies. Accept it, and move
with every energy with deep sensitivity, with awareness, with
love, with understanding. Move with it! Then every desire
becomes a vehicle to go beyond it. Then every energy becomes a
help. And then this very world is nirvana, this very body is a
temple -- a holy temple, a holy place.

Question: WHAT ARE THE INDICATIONS TO KNOW THAT A PARTICULAR
TECHNIQUE WILL WORK FOR ME? (from Chapter 2, The Book of Secrets)

There are indications. One, you begin to feel a different
identity within you. You are no more the same. If the technique
fits you, immediately you are a different person. If you are a
husband, you are no more the same husband. If you are a
shopkeeper, you are never again the same shopkeeper. Whatsoever
you are, if the technique fits you, you are a different person;
that is the first indication.

So if you begin to feel strange about yourself, know that
something is happening to you. If you remain the same and do
not feel any strangeness, nothing is happening. This is the
first indication of whether a technique fits you. If it fits,
immediately you are transported, transformed into a different
person. Suddenly this happens: you look at the world in a
different way. The eyes are the same, but the looker behind
them is different.

Secondly, all that creates tensions, conflicts, starts dropping.
It is not that when you have practiced the method for years,
then your conflicts, anxieties, tensions will drop -- no! If
the method fits you, immediately they start dropping. You can
feel an aliveness coming to you; you are being unburdened. You
will begin to feel, if the technique fits you, that gravity has
become reversed. Now the earth is not pulling you down. Rather,
the sky is pulling you up.

How do you feel when an airplane takes off? Everything is
disturbed. Suddenly there is a jerk, and gravity becomes
meaningless. Now the earth is not pulling you, you are going
away from gravity. The same jerk happens if a meditative
technique fits you. Suddenly you take off. Suddenly you feel
the earth has become meaningless; there is no gravity. It is
not pulling you down, you are being pulled up.

In religious terminology, this is called "grace." There are two
forces -- gravity and grace. Grace means you are being pulled
upwards; gravity means you are being pulled downwards. That is
why in meditation many people suddenly feel they have no weight.
That is why many people feel an inner levitation. So many have
reported this to me when the technique fits them: "This is
strange! We close our eyes and we feel that we are a little bit
above the earth -- one foot, two feet, even four feet above the
earth. When we open our eyes we are just on the ground; when we
close our eyes we have levitated. So what is this? When we open
our eyes we are just on the ground! We never levitated."
The body remains on the ground, but you levitate. This
levitation is really a pull from the above.

If the technique fits you have been pulled, because the working
of the technique is to make available for you the upward pull.
This is what the technique means: to make you available for the
force which can pull you up. So if it fits, you know -- you
have become weightless.

Thirdly, whatsoever you will now do --whatsoever, howsoever
trivial, -- will be different. You will walk in a different
way, you will sit in a different way, you will eat in a
different way. Everything will be different. This difference
you will feel everywhere. Sometimes this strange experience of
being different creates fear. One wants again to go back and be
the same, because one was so attuned with the old. It was a
routine world, even boring, but you were efficient in it. Now
everywhere you will feel a gap. You will feel that your
efficiency is lost. You will feel that your utility is reduced.
You will feel that everywhere you are an outsider.

One has to pass through this period. You will become attuned
again. You have changed, not the world, so you will not fit.
So remember the third thing: When the technique fits you, you
will not fit into the world. You will become unfit. Everywhere
something is loose, some bolt is missing. Everywhere you will
feel that there has been an earthquake. And everything has
remained the same; only you, you have become different. But you
will be attuned again on a different plane, on a higher plane.

The disturbance is felt just like when a child grows and becomes
sexually mature. At the age of fourteen or fifteen every boy
feels that he has become strange. A new force has entered -- sex
. It was not there before, or it was, but it was hidden. Now for
the first time he has become available for a new kind of force.
That is why boys are very awkward; girls, boys, when they
become sexually mature they are very awkward. They are nowhere.
They are no longer children and they are not yet men, so they
are in between, fitting nowhere. If they play with small
children they feel awkward -- they have become men. If they
start making friendships with men they feel awkward -- they
are still children. They fit with no one.

The same phenomenon happens when a technique fits you. A new
energy source becomes available that is greater than sex. You
are again in a transitory period. Now you cannot fit in this
world of worldly men. You are not a child, and you cannot yet
fit in the world of saints; and in between one feels awkward.
If a technique fits you these three things will come up.

You may not have expected that I would say these things. You
may have expected that I would say you will become more silent,
more quiet, and I am saying quite the contrary: you will
become more disturbed. When the technique fits you will become
more disturbed, not more silent. Silence will come later on.
And if silence comes and not disturbance, know well that this
is not a technique; this is just getting adjusted to the old
pattern. That is why more people go for a prayer than for
meditation because prayer gives you a consolation. It fits you,
adjusts to you, to your world.

Prayer was doing virtually the same thing that psychoanalysts
are now doing. If you are disturbed they will make you less
disturbed, adjusted to the pattern, to the society, to the
family. So by going to a psychoanalyst for one, two or three
years you will not get better, but you will be more adjusted.
Prayer does the same thing, and priests do the same thing --
they make you more adjusted. Your child has died and you are
disturbed, and you go to a priest. He says, "Do not be disturbed.
Only those children die early whom God loves more. He calls
them up." You feel satisfied. Your child has been "called up."
God loves him more. Or the priest says something else: "Do not
be worried, the soul never dies. Your child is in heaven."
These prayers, they make you adjusted to the pattern... you
feel better.

Meditation is a science. It is not going to help you in
adjustment, it is going to help you in transformation.

That is why I say these three signs will be there as
indications. Silence will come, but not as an adjustment.
Silence will come as an inner flowering. Then silence will not
be an adjustment with the society, with the family, the world,
the business -- no! Then silence will be a real harmony with
the universe. Then a deep harmony flowers between you and the
totality, then there is silence -- but that will come later.
First you will get disturbed, first you will become mad. If a
technique fits, it will make you aware of everything that you
are. Your anarchy, your mind, your madness, everything will come
to light. You are just a dark mess. When a technique fits, it
is as if suddenly there is light and the whole mess becomes
apparent. For the first time you will encounter yourself as
you are. You would like to put the light off and go to sleep
again -- it is fearful.

This is the point where the master becomes helpful. He says,
"Do not be afraid. This is just the beginning. And do not
escape from it." At first this light shows you what you are,
and if you can go on and on, it transforms you toward what you
can be.

TRY THIS TECHNIQUE: (from The Book of Secrets, Chapter 49)

IN SUMMER WHEN YOU SEE THE ENTIRE SKY ENDLESSLY CLEAR, ENTER
SUCH CLARITY.

Mind is confusion; there is no clarity. And mind is always
crowded, always cloudy -- never the open sky, cloudless, empty;

mind cannot be that. You cannot make your mind clear; it is
not the nature of the mind to be so. Mind will remain unclear.

If you can leave the mind behind, if you can suddenly transcend
the mind and come out of it, clarity will happen to you. You
can be clear, but not the mind. There is not such a thing as a
clear mind; never has been and never will be. Mind means the
unclarity, the confusion.

Try to understand the structure of the mind, and then this
technique will be clear to you. What is mind? A continuous
process of thought, a continuous procession of thoughts --
associated, non-associated, relevant, irrelevant -- many,
multi-dimensional impressions gathered from everywhere. The
whole of life is a gathering, a gathering of the dust. And this
goes on and on.

A child is born. A child is clear because the mind is not there.
The moment mind appears, the unclarity, the confusion enters.
A child is clear, a clarity, but he will have to gather
knowledge, information, culture, religion, conditionings --
necessary, useful. He will have to gather many things from
everywhere, from many sources -- opposite, contradictory sources
. From thousands and thousands of sources he will gather. Then
the mind will become a marketplace, a crowd, and because of so
many sources, confusion is bound to be there. And whatsoever
you gather, nothing is certain, because knowledge is always a
growing affair.

I remember, someone related an anecdote to me. He was a great
searcher, and he told me this about his professor who taught
him for five years in a medical college. The professor was a
great scholar of his subject. The last thing he did was to
gather his students and tell them, "One thing more I have to
teach you. Whatsoever I have taught you is only fifty percent
correct, and the remaining fifty percent is absolutely wrong.
But the trouble, is, I don’t know which fifty percent is correct
and which fifty percent is incorrect -- I don’t know."

The whole edifice of knowledge is such. Nothing is certain, no
one knows, everyone is groping. Through groping we create
systems, and there are thousands and thousands of systems.
Hindus say something, Christians say something else, Mohammedans
still something else -- all contradictory, all contradicting
each other; no agreement, no certainty -- and all these sources
are the sources for your mind. You collect: your mind becomes
a junkyard; confusion is bound to be there.

Only a person who doesn’t know much can be certain. The more
you know, the more uncertain you will become. People, primitive
people, were more certain and appeared to be more clear. There
was no clarity -- simply unawareness of facts that could
contradict them. If the modern mind is more confused, the reason
is that the modern mind knows more. If you know more you will
be more confused, because now you have more knowledge, and the
more you know, the more uncertain you become. Only idiots can
be certain, only idiots can be dogmatic, only idiots will never
hesitate. The more you know, the more the earth is taken away
from your feet, the more hesitant you become.

What I mean to say is, the more the mind grows, the more you
will know the nature of the mind is confusion. When I say only
idiots can be certain, I don’t mean that a Buddha is an idiot
-- because he is not uncertain. Remember the difference. He is
not certain, he is not uncertain -- he is simply clear. With the
mind, uncertainty; with the idiotic mind, certainty. With no
mind both certainty and uncertainty disappear.

Buddha is a clarity, a space, open space. He is not certain --
there is nothing to be certain. He is not uncertain, because
there is nothing to be uncertain. Only one who is seeking
certainty can be uncertain. Mind is always uncertain and always
seeking certainty; always confused and always seeking clarity.
A Buddha is one who has dropped the mind; and with the mind
all confusion, all certainty, all uncertainty, everything is
dropped.

Look at it in this way: your consciousness is just like the sky
and your mind is just like the clouds. The sky remains
untouched by the clouds. They come and go; no scar is left
behind. The sky remains virgin: no record, no footprints,
nothing of the clouds, no memory. They come and they go; the
sky remains undisturbed.

This is the case within you also: the consciousness remains
undisturbed. Thoughts come and go, minds evolve and disappear.

And don’t think that you have one mind; you have many minds,
it is a crowd. Your minds go on changing. You are a communist,
so you have a certain type of mind. You can leave it and you
can become anti-communist. Then you have a different mind; not
only different, quite the opposite. You can go on changing
your minds just like your dress. And you go on changing -- you
may not be aware of it -- these clouds come and go.

Clarity can be achieved if you become aware of the sky; if your
focus changes. You are focused on the clouds if you are
unfocused on the sky. Unfocus on the clouds and focus on the
sky.

This technique says: IN SUMMER WHEN YOU SEE THE ENTIRE SKY
ENDLESSLY CLEAR, ENTER SUCH CLARITY.

Meditate on the sky; a summer sky with no clouds, endlessly
empty and clear, nothing moving in it, in its total virginity.
Contemplate on it, meditate on it, and enter this clarity.
Become this clarity, this space-like clarity.

If you meditate on open unclouded sky, suddenly you will feel
that the mind is disappearing, the mind is dropping away. There
will be gaps. Suddenly you will become aware that it is as if
the clear sky has entered in you also. There will be intervals.
For a time, thoughts will cease -- as if the traffic has
ceased and there is no one moving.

In the beginning it will be only for moments, but even those
moments are transforming. By and by the mind will slow down,
bigger gaps will appear. For minutes together there will be no
thought, no cloud. And when there is no thought, no cloud, the
outer sky and the inner become one -- because only the thought
is the barrier, only the thought creates the wall; only because
of the thought the outer is outer and the inner is inner.

When the thought is not there, the outer and the inner lose
their boundaries, they become one. Really, boundaries never
existed there. They appeared only because of the thought, the
barrier.

To meditate on the sky is beautiful. Just lie down so you forget
the earth; just lie down on your back on any lonely beach, on
any ground, and just look at the sky. But a clear sky will be
helpful -- unclouded, endless. And just looking, staring at
the sky, feel the clarity of it -- the uncloudedness, the
boundless expanse -- and then enter that clarity, become one
with it. Feel as if you have become the sky, the space.

In the beginning, if you only meditate on the open sky, not
doing anything else, intervals will start appearing, because
whatsoever you see enters you. Whatsoever you see stirs you
within; whatsoever you see is pictured, reflected. You see a
building. You cannot simply see it; something immediately starts
happening within you. You see a man, a woman; you see a car --
you see anything. It is not just outside, something has started
within, the reflection, and you have started reacting to it. So
everything you see moulds you, makes you, modifies you, creates
you. The without is constantly related with the within.

To look into the open sky is good. Just the expanse is beautiful
, with no boundaries there. Your own boundaries will disappear,
because the no-boundary sky will reflect within you. And if
you can stare without blinking your eyes it will be good. If
you stare without blinking your eyes... because if you blink
your eyes your thought-process will continue. Stare without
blinking the eyes. Stare in the emptiness, move into that
emptiness, feel that you have become one with it, and any
moment the sky will enter within you. First you enter into the
sky and then the sky enters you. And there is a meeting: the
inner sky meeting the outer sky.

In that meeting is realization. In that meeting there is no
mind, because the meeting can happen only when the mind is
not there. In that meeting you are for the first time not your
mind. There is no confusion. Confusion cannot exist without
the mind. There is no misery, because misery also cannot exist
without the mind.

Have you observed this fact anytime or not -- that misery cannot
exist without your mind? You cannot be miserable without your
mind. The very source is not there. Who will supply you with
this misery? Who will make you miserable? And the same is true
from the opposite direction also: you cannot be miserable
without your mind and you cannot be blissful with your mind.
The mind can never be the source of bliss.

So if the inner and outer sky meet and mind disappears, even
for a moment, you will be filled with a new life. The quality
of that life is absolutely different. It is life eternal,
uncontaminated by death, uncontaminated by any fear. In that
meeting you will be here and now, in the present -- because
past belongs to thoughts, future belongs to thoughts.

Past and future are part of your mind. Present is existence --
it is not part of your mind. This moment doesn’t belong to
your mind. The moment that has gone belongs to your mind; the
moment that has yet to come belongs to your mind. This moment
never belongs to you. Rather, you belong to this moment. You
exist here, right now here. Your mind exists somewhere else,
always somewhere else.

Unload yourself. I was reading one Sufi mystic. He was traveling
on a lonely path, the way was deserted, and he saw a farmer
with his bullock cart. The cart was stuck in mud. The road was
rough. The farmer was carrying a big load of apples in his
bullock cart, but somewhere on the rough road the tailboard of
the wagon became unfastened and the apples were scattered. But
he was not aware of it; the farmer was not aware of it. When
the cart got stuck in the mud, first he tried to bring it out
somehow, but all efforts were in vain, so he thought, "Now I
must unload my cart, then maybe I can pull it out." He looked
back. Hardly a dozen apples were left -- the load was already
unloaded! You can feel his misery. The Sufi reports in his
memoirs that that exasperated farmer made a remark. He said,
"Stuck, by heck! Stuck! -- and not a damn thing to unload!"
The only possibility was that if he could unload the cart it
could come out; but now -- nothing to unload!

Fortunately you are not stuck in such a way. You can unload --
your cart is too much loaded. You can unload the mind, and
the moment the mind is not there, you fly; you become capable
of flying.

This technique -- to look into the clarity of the sky and to
become one with it -- is one of the most practiced. Many
traditions have used this. And particularly for the modern mind
it will be very useful, because on earth nothing is left. On
earth nothing is left to meditate on -- only the sky. If you
look all around, everything is man-made, everything is limited,
with a boundary, a limitation. Only the sky is still,
fortunately, open to meditate on.

Try this technique, it will be helpful, but remember three
things. One: don’t blink -- stare. Even if your eyes start to
feel pain and tears come down, don’t be worried. Even those
tears will be a part of unloading; they will be helpful. Those
tears will make your eyes more innocent and fresh -- bathed.
You just go on staring.

The second point: don’t think about the sky, remember. You can
start thinking about the sky. You can remember many poems,
beautiful poems about the sky -- then you will miss the point.
You are not to think "about" it -- you are to enter it, you
are to be one with it -- because if you start thinking about
it, again a barrier is created. You are missing the sky again,
and you are again enclosed in your own mind. Don’t think about
the sky. Be the sky. Just stare and move into the sky, and
allow the sky to move in you. If you move into the sky, the sky
will move into you immediately.

How can you do it? How will you do it -- this moving into the
sky? Just go on staring farther away and farther away. Go on
staring -- as if you are trying to find the boundary. Move deep.
Move as much as you can. That very movement will break the
barrier. And this method should be practiced for at least forty
minutes; less than that will not do, will not be of much help.
When you really feel that you have become one, then you can
close the eyes. When the sky has entered in you, you can close
the eyes. You will be able to see it within also. Then there is
no need. So only after forty minutes, when you feel that the
oneness has happened and there is a communion and you have
become part of it and the mind is no more, close the eyes and
remain in the sky within.

The clarity will help the third point: ENTER SUCH CLARITY. The
clarity will help -- the uncontaminated, unclouded sky. Just
be aware of the clarity that is all around you. Don’t think
about it; just be aware of the clarity, the purity, the
innocence. These words are not to be repeated. You have to feel
them rather than think. And once you stare into the sky the
feeling will come, because it is not on your part to imagine
these things -- they are there. If you stare they will start
happening to you.

The sky is pure, the purest thing in existence. Nothing makes it
impure. Worlds come and go, earths are there and then disappear
, and the sky remains pure. The purity is there. You need not
project it, you are simply to feel it -- to be vulnerable to
it so you can feel it -- and the clarity is there. Allow the
sky to happen to you. You cannot force it; you can only allow
it to happen.

All meditations are really allowing something to happen. Never
think in terms of aggression, never think in terms of forcing
something. You cannot force anything. Really, because you have
been trying to force, you have created all kinds of misery.
Nothing can be forced, but you can allow things to happen. Be
feminine. Allow things to happen. Be passive. The sky is
absolutely passive: not doing anything at all, just remaining
there. Just be passive and remain under the sky -- vulnerable,
open, feminine, with no aggression on your part -- and then
the sky will penetrate you.

IN SUMMER WHEN YOU SEE THE ENTIRE SKY ENDLESSLY CLEAR, ENTER
SUCH CLARITY.

But if it is not summer what will you do? If the sky is clouded,
not clear, then close your eyes and just enter the inner sky.
Just close your eyes, and if you see some thoughts, just see
them as if they are floating clouds in the sky. Be aware of the
background, the sky, and be indifferent to thoughts.

We are too much concerned with thoughts and never aware of the
gaps. One thought passes, and before another enters there is a
gap -- in that gap the sky is there. Then, whenever there is no
thought, what is there? The emptiness is there. So if the sky
is clouded -- it is not summertime and the sky is not clear --
close your eyes, focus your mind on the background, the inner
sky in which thoughts come and go.

Don’t pay much attention to thoughts; pay attention to the
space in which they move. For example, we are sitting in this
room. I can look at this room in two ways. Either I can look
at you, so that I am indifferent to the space you are in, the
roominess, the room you are in -- I look at you, I focus my
mind on you who are here, and not on the room in which you are
-- or, I can change my focus: I can look into the room, and I
become indifferent to you. You are there, but my emphasis, my
focus, is on the room. Then the total perspective changes.

Just do this in the inner world. Look at the space. Thoughts
are moving in it: be indifferent to them, don’t pay any
attention to them. They are there; note it down that they are
there, moving. The traffic is moving in the street. Look at
the street and be indifferent to the traffic. Don’t look to see
who is passing; just know that something is passing and be
aware of the space in which it is passing.

Then the summer sky happens within."



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