---
section: Library
booktitle: "The Great Challenge"
booktype: "Miscellaneous"
bookcode: "GCHALL"
dategiven: "16 August 1970 pm"
chapternum: "Chapter #1"
chaptertitle: "Flight of the alone to the alone"
acode: "7008165"
shorttitle: "GCHALL01"
audio: "No"
video: "No"
esttime: ""
displaytitle: "The Great Challenge: Chapter #1"
---

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<p class="question">PLEASE EXPLAIN WHAT YOU MEAN BY YOGA, THE YOGI, AND MEDITATION.</p>


The first thing to be remembered about meditation is that it is not something that can be done. Throughout the world people have the notion that meditation means doing something. It is not a doing, it is not an act, it is something that happens. It is not that YOU go to it; it comes to you and penetrates you. It destroys you in one way and recreates you in another. It is something so vital and so infinite that it cannot be a part of your doing.


Then what is to be done? You can only create the situation in which it happens. All that you can do is to be vulnerable and open to existence from all sides.


Ordinarily we are like prisons: we are closed up within ourselves with no openings. In a way we are dead. One can say we have become "life-proof": life cannot come to us. We have created barriers and hindrances to life, because life can be dangerous, uncontrollable; it is something which is not in our hands. We have created a closed existence for ourselves so that we can be certain and secure, so that we can be comfortable. This closed existence is convenient, but at the same time it is deadening. The more closed we become the less alive we are. The more open we become the more alive we are.


Meditation is an openness to all dimensions, an openness to everything. But to be open to everything is dangerous, to be open to everything unconditionally makes us insecure. It cannot be comfortable because anything can happen. A mind which longs for security, which longs for comfort, which longs for certainty, cannot be a meditative mind. Only a mind which is open to anything that life offers, welcoming each and everything that happens, even death, can create a situation in which meditation happens.


So the only thing that can be done by you is to be receptive to meditation, to be totally receptive -- not to any particular happening but to anything that comes.


Meditation is not a particular dimension, it is a dimensionless existence, an existence that is open to each and every dimension without any conditions, without any longings, without any expectations. If there are any expectations, then the opening will not be total. If there are any conditions, any longings, if there are any "ifs," then the opening cannot be total. No part of you should remain closed. If you are not totally open, then no vital, vigorous, infinite happening can be received by you. It cannot become the guest, and you cannot become the host.


Meditation is just the creation of a receptive situation in which something can happen, and all you can do is wait for it.


A mind that waits is waiting for the unknown, because what is going to happen cannot be known beforehand; you cannot even conceive of it. You may have heard something about it, but that is not your knowledge; it remains unknown. A mind that is waiting for the unknown is a mind that is meditative.


When you are waiting for the unknown your knowledge becomes a barrier, because the more aware you are of your knowledge the more solidly you imprison yourself. You must not be in a "knowing" mood, you must be completely ignorant; only then can the unknown come to you. The moment your ignorance becomes aware of itself, the moment you know that you don't know, that is the moment you begin to wait for the unknown.


There are two types of ignorant people. The first type are not aware of their ignorance -- they automatically think that they know. This is ignorant knowledge. The other type are those who are aware of their ignorance. This is a knowing ignorance. And the moment you become aware of your ignorance you come to the point where knowing begins.


A pundit, a person who thinks he knows, can never be a religious man. A person who thinks that he knows is bound to be nonreligious, because the knowledgeable ego is the most subtle thing. But the moment you know your ignorance there is no ego, there is no space in which the ego can exist. The greatest attack on the ego is to become aware of your ignorance; the greatest strengthening of your ego is to claim knowledge.


The second thing that I would like to say about meditation is that your mind must be totally aware of its ignorance. And you can only become aware of your ignorance when your accumulated, borrowed knowledge is known as not-knowledge. It is not knowledge, it is simply information, and information is not knowledge even though that is the way it appears.


A person who knows is not dogmatic about his knowledge; he hesitates. But a person who thinks that he knows is dogmatic, assertive; he is absolutely certain.


You must become aware of the fact that what you have not known cannot be your knowledge. You cannot borrow knowledge: that is the difference between a theological mind and a religious mind. Theology is one of the most irreligious things in the world and theologians are the most irreligious people, because what has been claimed by them as knowledge is borrowed.


Knowledge never makes any claims, because inherent in it is the phenomenon that the moment one knows, the I is lost. The moment one knows, the ego is no longer there. Knowledge comes when the ego is not, so the ego cannot claim to have it. The ego can only collect information; it can accumulate many facts, it can quote scriptures.


To go into meditation is to transcend your accumulated knowledge. The moment this knowledge is transcended, learning begins. And a learner is something quite different: he never claims that he knows, he is always aware of his ignorance. And the more aware of it he is, the more receptive he becomes to the new.


The moment you have learned something, discard it; otherwise there is every possibility that it will become part of your knowing, part of your accumulation. If your knowledge comes from your past experiences, then too it is borrowed, because you are not the same person any more. And whether your knowledge is borrowed from the past or it is borrowed from someone else makes no difference at all.


Yesterday's me is far away; it is already dead... it is nowhere to be found except in my memory. Yesterday's me is as "other" to me now as you are. In fact, it is even more "other," because you are nearer to me in time. In this moment, if you can be silent, you ARE me, part and parcel of me.


If I am telling you something that came to me yesterday, it is not I who will be talking to you: I will be a dead person, a dead record. I will not be living in this moment, adjusted to this moment. Something that is dead will be asserted through me. And to rely upon something that is dead... it is impossible.


If I am still living in the memory of yesterday, then I am not capable of living today. If I can live yesterday's moments yesterday, then I must live what is happening today this very moment and what I say must come through the me of this moment. If it comes from the dead past, it is borrowed. Even if it comes from me, from my own past, it is dead weight, it is not knowing.


Knowing is always spontaneous, whereas all claims are always to past knowledge, to memory. When you borrow from your memory you are not in the moment of knowing. One must not borrow from anyone, not even from one's own past. One must live moment to moment, and live in such a way that everything which comes to you becomes part of your knowing.


If I look at you, my look can be knowing only if my memory is not in between. If I am looking at you through my memory of our past meetings then I am not really looking at you. But if I can look at you without any burden of the past, the look becomes meditative. If I can touch you without the burden of any experience that my hand has known in the past, the touch becomes meditative. Everything that is innocently spontaneous becomes meditative.


The third point that I would like to stress is that a meditative mind lives moment to moment. It does not accumulate, it lives each moment as it comes. It never goes beyond the here and now, it is always in the now, receptive to each moment as it comes.


What is dead is dead; what has passed is past. The past has gone and the future has not yet come. This moment between the past and the future is the only thing that exists.


The past is part of memory and the future is part of longing. Both are mental; they have no existence in themselves, they are human creations. If mankind did not exist on the earth there would be no past and no future. There would just be the present, the now, only now -- without any passage of time, without any coming, any going. The meditative mind lives in the now -- that is its only existence.


A Zen monk was sentenced to death. The king of the country called him and said to him, "You have only twenty-four hours -- how are you going to live them?"


The monk laughed and said, "Moment to moment -- as I have always lived! There has never been more than this moment for me, so what does it matter whether I have twenty-four hours or twenty-four years? It is irrelevant. I have always lived moment to moment so one moment is more than enough for me. Twenty-four hours is too much -- one moment is quite enough."


The king could not understand it. The monk said, "Let me ask you, sir: can you live two moments simultaneously?"


No one ever has. The only possible way to live is one moment at a time. Two moments are not given to you simultaneously; only one moment is ever in your hand. And that one moment is so flickering that if you are engrossed in the past or enchanted by the future you will not be able to catch it. It will pass you by and you will miss it. Only the mind which is receptive, here and now, can create the situation in which meditation happens.


The fourth thing is seriousness. People who think and talk about meditation take it seriously. They regard it as work, not play. But if you take meditation seriously, you cannot create the situation for it to happen. Seriousness is tension, and a tense mind can never be in meditation.


You must take meditation as a game, a child's game. People who meditate should be playful -- playing with existence, playing with life -- weightless, non-tense; not in a doing mood but in a relaxed mood. It is only in a relaxed moment, only in a playful moment, that the happening is possible.


A serious person cannot be religious. And all religious people are so serious! It seems as if only diseased people with long faces become religious. But meditation is not something that is a "must," it is something absolutely purposeless; it is something whose end is intrinsic to it. There is nothing to be achieved by it or through it -- it cannot be made a means.


But as I see it, people who become interested in meditation are not really interested in meditation, they are interested in something else and meditation is used as a means to attain it. They may be interested in silence, in achieving a non-tense state of mind -- they may be interested in anything -- but they are not simply interested in meditation as such, so they cannot be open to it.


Meditation comes only to those who are interested in meditation as an end in itself. Silence comes: that is another thing. Peace comes: that is another thing. The divine comes: that is another thing. These are consequences, byproducts; they cannot be longed for because that very longing creates tension.


The divine comes, or it would be better to say that everything becomes divine, everything becomes blissful. It comes indirectly, unlonged for, as a shadow of meditation. And this is one of the mysteries of life: everything which is beautiful, everything which is true, everything which is lovely always comes indirectly. You cannot go after meditation, you cannot reach for it directly, because if it is approached in that way -- as a longing for happiness, for the divine, or for anything else -- you will lose it; it will not come and overwhelm you. It must not be made a means, it cannot be made a means. And seriousness is the barrier.


Meditation is play regained. Childhood has gone, but now you have regained its playful mood. You can play with colored stones, with flowers; you can play with anything. You can just relax into a playful mood but not be playing at all. In this relaxed moment, the situation is created, the ecstasy is created, and there is the happening: the temple becomes a playhouse where everyone becomes a child playing with existence.


You ask me what Yoga is and what a Yogi is. A person who is meditative is a Yogi: a person who lives meditatively, eats meditatively, bathes meditatively, sleeps meditatively. His whole existence, everything that he does, is meditative. He does not regard existence as a burden but as play. The Yogi is not concerned with the past, he is not concerned with the future; he lives only in the present moment. Life becomes a constant flow with no goal to be reached, because there is no goal in playing.


Even when we play we create a goal; we destroy the playfulness and turn our play into work. Work cannot exist without a goal, play cannot exist with a goal. But we have become so serious that even when we play we create a goal: there is something to win, somewhere to be reached. We cannot do something just for the sake of doing it -- as art for art's sake. The moment art is for art's sake, it becomes meditative. When singing is for singing's sake, it becomes meditative. When love is for love's sake, it becomes meditative.


If the ends and the means are one, then the thing becomes meditative. But if the means are the beginning, the end is the goal and there is a continuity in between, a process in between, then it becomes work which has to be taken seriously. Then tensions, conflicts and burdens are created and your innocence is destroyed.


The means are the end. The end is the means. Anything taken with this attitude becomes meditative. The beginning is the end. Your first step is your last. Your birth is your death. Meeting is parting. These pairs are two poles of a single whole, they are one. If you see them as one, then your mind becomes meditative. Then there is no burden: life becomes just a leela, a play.


The cross of Jesus is a serious affair, but Krishna lived in playfulness. Krishna's dance is qualitatively different from the carrying of the cross by Jesus. The cross must have been a burden: it had to be carried. It was not play, it was a serious affair. That is why Christians say that Jesus never laughed. How could he laugh if he had to carry the cross? And he did not just carry it for himself, he had to carry the cross for the whole of mankind -- for those who had gone and for those who were yet to come. But I don't think that this is the real picture of Jesus. This is the Christian picture, but I cannot conceive of a Christ who never laughed. If one is incapable of laughing then one is incapable of being religious.


There are, of course, different types of laughter. When one laughs at others it is irreligious, but when one begins to laugh at oneself it becomes religious. And a person who can laugh at himself cannot be serious: he is playful and then life also becomes play with no end, with no purpose; nothing has to be achieved because everything that is possible is in the present.


The achieving mind can never sever itself from the future, the achieving mind is bound to be future-oriented. And a mind that is future-oriented must be past-based, because the future is nothing but a projection of the past. We project our past memories into future longings. Our dreams of the future are our experiences of the past painted more beautifully, longed for more aesthetically.


A meditative person lives in the present, because there is no other way to live. But if you want to postpone living, you can live in the past or in the future.


Yoga is not a method of meditation but a way of creating a situation in which meditation happens. And a person who has begun to live -- who lives in the moment and is not concerned with any life goals -- is a Yogi, a renunciate, a sannyasin.


Ordinarily we think that a sannyasin, a renunciate, is a person who has left life. This is absolute nonsense! A sannyasin is the only person who has begun to live. Sannyas is not renunciation but initiation into living. It is a renunciation of the dead past and of the unborn future. It is a renunciation of suicidal tendencies and of the postponement of living. It is initiation into life. And Yoga is nothing more than initiation into the mysteries of life and a method for creating situations in which meditation can happen.


India is not the only land that has developed Yoga: whenever and wherever a person has truly lived he has created a Yoga. Buddha had his own Yoga, Mahavira and Jesus had their own Yogas. So there may be thousands and thousands of different Yogas.


Every person, every individual, has his own way, his own door through which he approaches reality. So no one can follow anyone else. The moment you follow, you cannot become a Yogi. The follower can never be a Yogi, because following again means that you are longing for security: you want to be certain of achieving so you follow the path of someone who has already achieved. But what was a path for someone else may not be the path for you. In fact it cannot be, because individuals are unique, everyone has to create his own path.


It is not that a path is readymade and one just has to walk on it to reach somewhere; it is your own life which creates a path for you to walk on. You create the path and you move on it, and the more you create it, the more you move. A path created by one person cannot be trodden by anyone else because the path of Yoga is inner. There are no outer markings and milestones, there are no outward signs at all. Buddha followed a certain path, but the path was an inner one which existed for him alone. No one else can move on it.


No person can ever take another person's place. You cannot die in my place. You can die for me -- that is another thing -- but you cannot replace me in my death. Even if you die for me it will be your death, chosen by you; it will not be my death.


In the same way, you cannot love in my place. There can be no substitute, there can be no help, there can be no alternative. My love is bound to be my love and my death is bound to be my death. So how can my life be your life? My life is my life; no one else can make it his way to live. It is absolutely mine, and so individual that it cannot be shared.


So everyone has his own Yoga. Everyone has to create it himself. Everyone has to search in total loneliness, in total darkness. But that very search becomes the light in the dark because the very awareness of being alone destroys the loneliness and creates its own courage.


When you know absolutely that you are alone then there is no fear. When you know that there is no possibility of anyone else being with you then there is no fear. The fear comes with the longing, with the dream, with the imagining of the possibility that someone else can be with you. But if you are absolutely aware of the fact that you are alone, there is no fear. If this is the case, then you see that there is no way out of it.


The moment you accept your total loneliness you become a Yogi and transcend society. This is the only meaning of leaving society: it does not mean that you actually leave society -- no one can leave society -- wherever you go, you will create it. Even with the trees, even with the animals, a family will be created and there will be a society. Society is something that follows you like an individual space: wherever you go, you create a space to live, and that space becomes a society; all those who are on the boundary of that space will become members of your society.


But a single moment of knowing the realization that you are alone -- alone to tread the path, alone to create the path, alone to be committed to living, alone to be involved in the moment -- can penetrate you and society vanishes. You are alone.


There is no guru now, there is no one to be followed. There is no leader, there is no guide. You are alone; you are the aloneness. There is no one to adulterate it or contaminate it. It is so pure, innocent and beautiful. This aloneness is the path, this aloneness is meditation, this aloneness is Yoga.


Still, you may ask what is to be done with this aloneness. Nothing is to be done, because every doing is nothing but an escape from it, every doing is an occupation to forget the aloneness. This aloneness is not to be escaped from and left behind. You must be deeply in it, you must remain in it, you must live with it. You must walk the path of life totally alone. Amidst the crowd, although there will be fellow travelers, you must be totally alone.


When two persons are walking on the road, they are not walking as "two," they are walking as one and one -- they are two alonenesses walking. There may be five members of a family living together: these are five alonenesses living in a home. So live in the family but know also that you are alone.


And the moment you understand your aloneness, you become compassionate toward others and their aloneness. This compassion is the indication that a person has truly been initiated into Yoga, because now that you know your aloneness, you can understand the aloneness of all.


Everyone is lonely: the husband, the wife and the child. But they are without compassion, without sympathy; they live without loving attitudes because they are using others as an escape. The wife uses the husband as a means of escape from her aloneness, and because of this there is possession. The wife is afraid that if her husband forgets her, if he leaves her, then she will become lonely -- he has become an escape for her. She is not aware of her aloneness, she does not want to be aware of it, so she becomes aware of her husband instead. She becomes possessive, she clings. And the husband clings in his own way, too: his wife is an escape from his aloneness.


We are alone. The moment this realization is there -- that man is alone -- then there is no escape, because then you know that no escape is possible. It is just a wish. There is no escape! The wife is just as lonely with her husband as she was without him. But we create illusory escapes, illusions of togetherness. Our families, our nations, our clubs, groups, and organizations -- this whole society is an escape from our aloneness.


How ugly it is that no one thinks himself worth living with! If you are alone in your room you are bored with yourself. One bored person goes to another bored person, and together they try to transcend boredom. Mathematically, the possibility is just the opposite: the boredom is doubled. Now each bored person will be doubly bored and will think that it is the other who is at fault somehow. Each will object to the other and there will be conflicts.


A Yogi, a person who has come to Yoga, has come to know this naked fact, that it is everyone's nature to be absolutely alone and there is nothing to be done about it; one has to live alone with it. Once this awareness is accepted, there is an explosion. Now there is no need to escape because now there is no escape. He has begun to live with himself and now he can live alone but will not be lonely. He will not go to the mountains, he will not go to a cave, because now he knows that wherever he is, even in the marketplace, even in a crowd, he is alone. Now everyone looks different to him -- everyone is alone! Then compassion follows, compassion for everyone's absolute loneliness.


When there is compassion for others, the Yogi experiences meditation. This realization is a doubleheaded arrow: one end pointing to meditation, the other pointing to compassion. In your innermost world there is meditation and in your outer relationships there is compassion.


Buddha has used two words: prajna and karuna, because basically religion is concerned only with these two words. Prajna means meditation, the peak of knowing, and karuna means compassion. Prajna, meditation, is the flame, and karuna, compassion, is the light that spreads out and fills the whole world. Both come simultaneously -- they are one.


Don't think in terms of this Yoga or that Yoga, this religion or that religion; that whole thinking is basically wrong. Think in terms of existence, life. Begin to live each moment that comes to you: live it totally, live it in total aloneness. Live life moment to moment. Be open: open to the unknown. Accept things as they come. Denial and non-acceptance are the only atheism. Acceptance -- a yes-saying spirit that says yes to everything, that welcomes everything unconditionally -- is religiousness.


Create the situation and the happening will come by itself. But it cannot be predicted. Nothing valuable can be predicted; only mechanical things can be predicted. We can predict a machine but we cannot predict life; life is unpredictable. One must simply create the situation and wait, letting things happen in their own time, in their own way.


For example, I may have prepared my home to receive a guest, but the preparation is not the guest. He may come, he may not come. The Indian word for guest, atithi, is very beautiful: it means a person whose coming is dateless, unknown. He may come this very moment or one may have to spend one's whole life waiting for him. This waiting is the only test: if you can wait and you are not bored with waiting -- that is the only indication of your love. Now one must wait with a throbbing heart, and the waiting must continue every moment because any moment can be the moment of explosion.


One has to be aware, one has to be constantly awaiting, knowing full well that there is every possibility there may not be any happening at all, that the guest may not come.


Now, people who are incapable of waiting have created all types of certainties. They say, "Do this and the happening is guaranteed." It cannot be! If you are certain that the guest is bound to come then you are not waiting -- the certainty has killed the waiting. If the guest has to come, then there is no question of waiting.


With full knowledge of this possibility, in this uncertainty, the heart becomes an awaiting. Its very throbbing is an awaiting; now the very breathing is an awaiting. Every moment one is aware of everything that is happening -- of the rain, the flowers, the stars. One is aware of everything, because no one knows how the guest may come. No one knows when he will come and knock at the door.


So a Yogi is a person who waits and who is not asleep. Even in his sleep he is waiting, because who knows? -- the guest may come while you are asleep and then he will have to go away. So a Yogi is awake every moment -- waiting and waiting, hoping against all hopes, certain in the face of all uncertainties. And even if for a single moment one can be totally absorbed in one's waiting.... But that is not a guarantee. I can only say that it happens, and it has happened.


Waiting is the only arduous part because we are in so much of a hurry. This hurriedness of modern man is the only irreligiousness: it has pushed the whole of modern society in the direction of materialism. We are in such a hurry that we cannot wait, and that is the only test. We are moving so fast that we cannot stop and look for God. We are constantly running, and waiting cannot exist in a running mind.
A person who waits must be sitting, he cannot be running.
If you are occupied in doing, you can escape from the waiting mind.


In Japan the word for dhyana, meditation, is zazen. Zazen means just sitting and waiting -- doing nothing. It does not mean that you have to sit in one position for five hours; you can be occupied and still be just sitting. If you are sleeping, just sleep and wait, and do nothing else. If you are eating, eat. But then just eat -- don't do anything else -- and wait. Then everything can go on and still there is sitting, and still there is waiting, and still there is no doing. This is meditation. This is Yoga.


This is not renunciation but initiation into living. I am against all kinds of so-called renunciation because they are life-denying, life-negating, anti-God. People who seem to be so engrossed with God do not really accept him totally because they deny the life that he has created. They say, "We accept you, Lord, but we deny your life." They say, "We choose between you and your world." There is no choice: life is divine, life itself is God.


One must not choose; be choiceless. Live life, be in life deeply, be involved in it, and still be alone. You are alone. Everything will come and go, yet your aloneness will not be destroyed because it is part of your nature. This aloneness is the basic fact from which meditation begins to grow, through which the initiation into Yoga happens and ultimately through which a person becomes a Yogi and authentically individual.


Authenticity can come only through individuality, so don't believe in dead formulas -- karma yoga, bhakti yoga, jnana yoga, raja yoga. There are as many Yogas, as many paths as there are persons to travel on them. Everyone must create his own Yoga, only then can one's authentic being be realized; otherwise, only a borrowed, phony realization is possible.


And there are so many phony realizations. All followers reach a phony god, not the real one; they cannot reach the real one, because they have lost their own authentic being somewhere along the way. They are imitators, and an imitator can never reach a true realization; an imitator will only realize an imitation god, a phony god. This kind of realization is simple and easy, but it won't help. Nothing will be gained by it.


There is only one true God, but there are many phony gods: the Christian god, the Hindu god, the Jaina god, the Mohammedan god, and the paths by which these religions reach God are all phony. The authentic path is always individual. One must be courageous enough to be oneself, to accept oneself and to jump into the unknown, discarding all that has become known, discarding all knowledge.


God is absolute aloneness. The moment you say, "Oneness with God," you create the other again. Your "God" is a means to escape from yourself -- he becomes the other. The other was previously your wife, your friends. Now you have to become one with God, who is the other.


But you cannot become one with him because you already are one with him. Your total aloneness is the realization that you are God, that you are not separate from him. There can be no oneness with him, there can be no communion, because communion is possible only when there are two. When you realize your total aloneness, then it is not that now you will commune with God; now you are God, you are the divine! Even the language of oneness is leftover from the dualism of the other.
<p class="question">IS IT THE MIND THAT CREATES THIS DUALITY?</p>


Once you realize your total aloneness, there is no mind -- the mind is your past, the mind is the other. Ordinarily, when you are alone your mind continues talking, it becomes the other; there is dialogue between your mind and yourself. But when you are totally alone, you are alone. Now there is no mind and there is no God; you are the divine.


So I cannot say you become one with God because to say so presupposes duality: it presupposes that God is one and you are the other. Even to say that existence is divine is to divide it; there can be no nondivine existence. It is divineness or it is existence; there is no need to use two terms. To say it is existence is enough; to say it is divineness is enough. The moment we say divine existence we create a division; then existence is divine and something else is not divine. But that is not the case: there is nothing that is not part of existence, nothing that is not divine.


Existence is one, so even to talk of oneness is incorrect. That is why in India we have chosen the word advaita: it means not two. It does not mean that there is one, it simply denies twoness: it says that now there are not two. Even to use the word one is to create the series of two, because one cannot exist without two, three and so on. Now the series will go on. But once you realize your total aloneness, in that moment you come to know that there are not two, that there have never been two.


I cannot say that you become one with God, because you have always been him; you have never been separate. Separation is your illusion; and because of that illusion you create another illusion of oneness. Separation itself is an illusion, a mental concept, and now in order to deny it you create another concept: oneness. But if the separateness is false, the oneness is also bound to be false.


You are one, not oneness. There is no one else; the other has gone, the other has dropped away. And when the other has dropped away, in that very moment the mind ceases. Mind is the other, and when there is no mind there is no other.


It is as if you were to put a barrier of earth in the middle of a river. The river is one, it has always been one, but now there is a barrier of earth dividing it. This barrier of earth is the only other: the river is one, the riverness is one -- it has always been one, it is still one -- and when the barrier is removed the river is again one.


And this barrier creates ignorance. Because the barrier is there, we create philosophies to deny its existence. That is the difference between religion and philosophy: philosophy creates anti-barrier concepts and religion destroys the barrier.


Philosophy says that there are not two, that the twoness is false and the oneness is real. Against twoness, the concept of oneness is created. But the religious man asks: Where is the one? Where is the other? There has never been an other. The other is a concept and oneness is also a concept; both are concepts.


The reality is a conceptless, nonconceptualized existence. So do not say divine, do not say God, and do not say now you have become one with him. Now there is only aloneness, there is only oneness. Now you are; there is no one from whom to be separate and there is no one with whom to be one. This total aloneness is samadhi.
<p class="question">IS SLEEP A STATE OF ALONENESS?</p>


No. Sleep as it exists is not aloneness. It is not oneness, it is not twoness, it is just unconsciousness. You are unconscious of that which is. In ordinary wakefulness you are conscious of the two. In ordinary sleep you are not conscious of oneness nor are you conscious of twoness. But in real wakefulness -- in meditation, in samadhi -- you are conscious of aloneness.


There is a similarity and there is a difference also. In sleep, you are unaware of the two but not aware of the one; in samadhi, in meditation, you are aware of it. If you can become totally aware and there is no twoness -- as in sleep there is not -- then oneness happens.


In sleep the mind goes to sleep. In samadhi the mind dies. So sleep and samadhi appear to be similar but they are not, because after samadhi there is no survival of the mind. When you awaken from your sleep in the morning your mind is strengthened, more fresh, and again duality is seen. But after samadhi there is no coming back. This is the point of no return: you cannot come back. Now the oneness will be eternal.


So samadhi and sushupti, dreamless sleep, have a similarity. You can say that samadhi is awakened sushupti, or you can say that sushupti is a sleeping samadhi.
			

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> Copyright 1964-1990 Osho (Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh)
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