---
section: Library
booktitle: "Yoga: The Alpha and the Omega, Vol 2"
booktype: "Discourses"
bookcode: "YOGA2"
dategiven: "06 January 1975 am"
place: " in Buddha Hall"
chapternum: "Chapter #6"
chaptertitle: "The Beginning of a New Path"
acode: "7501060"
shorttitle: "YOGA206"
audio: "Yes"
video: "No"
esttime: "84mins"
displaytitle: "Yoga: The Alpha and the Omega, Vol 2: Chapter #6"
---

```style
.sutra {
  font-style: italic;
  white-space: pre-wrap !important;
}
```
<!--This file is automatically generated. Do not edit!-->


The first question:
<p class="question">DO YOU RECEIVE INSTRUCTIONS FROM ANY MASTER OF MASTERS?</p>


I AM NOT ON ANY ANCIENT path, so few things have to be understood. I am not like Mahavira who was the end of a long series of teerthankaras, twenty-four  --  he was the twenty-fourth. In the past twenty-three had become Master of Masters, gods, on the same path, the same method, the same way of life, the same technique.


The first was Rishabh and the last was Mahavira. Rishabh had nobody in the past to look to. I am not like Mahavira, but like Rishabh. I am a beginning of a tradition, not the end. Many more will be coming on the same path. So I cannot look for instructions to anybody; that's not possible. A tradition is born and then a tradition dies, just as persons are born and persons die. I am the beginning, not the end. When somebody is in the middle of the series or at the end, he gets instructions from the Master of Masters.


The reason why I am not any path? I have worked with many Masters, but I have never been a disciple. I was a wanderer, wandering through many lives, criss-crossing many traditions, being with many groups, schools, methods, but never belonging to anybody. I was received with love, but I was never a part  --  a guest at the most, an overnight stay. That's why I learned so much. You cannot learn on one path so much; that's impossible.


If you move on one path, you know everything about it but nothing about anything else. Your whole being is absorbed in it. That has not been my way. I have been like a bee from one flower to another, gathering many fragrances. That's why I can be at ease with Zen, can be at ease with Jesus, can be at ease with Jews, can be at ease with Mohammedans, can be at ease with Patanjali  --  diverse ways, sometimes diametrically opposite.


But, to me, a hidden harmony exists. That's why people who follow one path are unable to understand me. They are simply baffled, bewildered. They know a particular logic, a particular pattern. If the thing fits into their pattern, it is right. If it doesn't fit, it is wrong. They have a very limited criterion. To me, no criterions exist. Because I have been with so many patterns, I can be at ease anywhere. Nobody is alien to me and I am not a stranger to anybody. But this creates a problem. I am not a stranger to anybody, but everybody becomes a stranger to me  --  has to be so.


If you belong not to a particular sect, then everybody thinks you as if you are the enemy. Hindus will be against me, Christians will be against me, Jews will be against me, Jains will be against me, and I am against nobody. Because they cannot find their pattern in me, they will be against me.


And I am talking about not pattern, but a deeper pattern which holds all the patterns. There is a pattern, another pattern, another pattern, millions of patterns. Then all the patterns are held by something underground which is the pattern of patterns  --  the hidden harmony. They cannot look at it, but they are not at fault also. When you live with a certain tradition, a certain philosophy, a certain way of looking at things, you become attuned to it.


In a way, I was never attuned to anybody  --  not that much so that I could have become a part of them. In a sense it is a misfortune, but in another sense it proved a blessing. Many who worked with me achieved liberation before me. It was a misfortune to me. I lagged and lagged behind because never working totally with anything, moving from one to another.


Many achieved who started with me. Even few who started after me achieved before me. This was a misfortune, but in another sense this has been a blessing because I know every home. I may not belong to any home, but I am at home everywhere. That is why I have got no Master of Masters  --  I was never a disciple. To be directed by a Master of Masters, you have to be a disciple to a certain Master. Then you car; be directed. Then you know the language. So I am not directed by anybody but helped by many. The difference has to be understood: not directed, I don't receive any orders, "Do this or don't do that", but helped by many.


Jains may not feel that I belong to them, but Mahavira feels, because at least he can see the pattern of patterns. Followers of Jesus may not be able to understand me, but Jesus can. So I am helped by many. That's why many people are coming to me from different sources. You cannot find such a gathering anywhere on the earth at this time. Jews are there, Christians are there, Mohammedans are there, Hindus, Jains, Buddhists, from all over the world. And more, many more, will be coming soon.


That's a help from many Masters. They know I can be helpful to their disciples; they will be sending many more  --  but no instructions, because I never received instructions from any Master as a disciple. Now there is no need also. Just a help, and that is better  --  I feel more at freedom. Nobody can be so free as I am.


Because if you receive directions from Mahavira, you cannot be as free as I am. A Jain has to remain Jain. He has to go on talking against Buddhism, against Hinduism. He has to because it is a fight of many patterns and traditions. And traditions have to fight if they want to survive. And for the sake of disciples they have to be argumentative; they have to say, "That is wrong," because only then the disciple can feel that "This is right." Against wrong, the disciple feels what is right.


With me you will be at a loss. If you are just here with your intellect, you will be confused. You will go crazy because this moment I say something and next moment I contradict it: because this moment I was talking about one tradition, another moment I am talking about another. And sometimes I am not talking about any tradition; I am talking about me. Then you cannot find it anywhere in any scripture.


But I am helped, and the help is beautiful because I am not supposed to follow it. I am not forced to follow it. It is up to me. Help is given unconditionally. If I feel like doing it, I will do; if I don't feel, I will not do it. I have no obligation to anybody.


But if you become some day enlightened, then you can receive. If I am not in the body, then you can receive instructions from me. This always happens to the first person, when a tradition starts. It is a beginning, a birth, and you are near a birth process. And it is most beautiful when something is born, because it is most alive. By and by, as a child grows, the child is coming nearer and nearer to death. A tradition is freshest when it is born. It has a beauty of its own  --  incomparable, unique.


The people who listened to Rishabh, the first Jain teerthankara, had a different quality. When they listened to Mahavira, it was thousands of years old. It was just on the verge of dying. With Mahavira, it died.


When in a tradition no more Masters are born, it is dead. It means the tradition is no more growing. Jains closed it. With the twenty-fourth they said, "Now, no more Masters, no more teerthankaras." To be with Nanak was beautiful because something new was coming out of the womb  --  the womb of the universe. Just as you watch a child being born  --  a mystery  --  an unknown penetrating the known, the bodiless becoming the embodied. It is fresh like dewdrops. Soon everything will be covered with dust. Soon, as time passes, things will become old.


But by the time of the tenth guru of the Sikhs, the tenth Master, things became dead. Then they closed the line and they said, "Now no more Masters. Now the scripture itself will be the Master." That's why they called their scripture "Guru-granth"  --  the Master scripture. Now no more persons will be there; just a dead scripture will be the Master now. And when a scripture is dead it is futile  --  not only futile; it is poisonous. Don't allow anything dead in your body. It will create poison; it will destroy your whole system.


Here, something new is born, a beginning. It is fresh, but that's why it is very difficult also to see it. Because if I you go to the Ganges, the source of the Ganges, it is so tiny there  --  fresh, of course: never again it will be so fresh, because when it moves it gathers many things, accumulates, becomes more and more dirty. At Kashi it is the dirtiest, but then you call it "Holy Ganges" because now it is so vast. It has accumulated so much, now even a blind man can see it. At the Gangotri  --  at the beginning, at the source  --  you need to be very perceptive. Only then you can see; otherwise it is just a trickling of the drops. You cannot even believe that this trickling of the drops is going to become Ganges  --  unbelievable.


It is difficult right now to see what is happening because it is a very, very tiny stream, just like a child. People missed with Rishabh, the first Jain Teerthankara, but they could recognize Mahavira  -- see? Jains don't think much of the first  --  Rishabh. In fact, they pay their whole homage to Mahavira. In fact, in the western mind, Mahavira is the originator of Jainism. Because they pay so much respect to Mahavira in India, that how others can feel that somebody else was the originator? Rishabh has become legendary, forgotten; may have been, may not have been, he doesn't seem to be historical  --  hoary past  -- and you don't know much about him. Mahavira is historical, and he is the Ganges, near Benares, Kashi  --  so vast.


Remember that the beginning is small, but never again the mystery will be so deep as in the beginning. The beginning is life and the end is death. With Mahavira, death enters into Jain tradition. With Rishabh, life entered, came down from the above Himalayas, to the earth.


I have got nobody to be responsible to, nobody to get instructions from, but much help is available. And if you take it in its totality, then it is more than any single Master can instruct. When I am talking about Patanjali, Patanjali is helpful. I can talk exactly as if he was talking here. I am not talking, in fact; these are not commentaries. It is he himself using me as a vehicle. When I am talking about Heraclitus, he is there  --  but as a help. This you have to understand, and become more perceptive so that you can see the beginning.


To move into a tradition when it has become a great force does not take much perceptivity, much sensitivity. To come when things are beginning, just in the morning, is difficult. By the evening many come, but then they come because the thing has become so vast and powerful. In the morning only those few chosen come who have the sensitivity to feel that something great is being born. You cannot prove it right now. Time will prove it. It will take thousands of years to prove what was being born, but you are fortunate to be here. And don't miss the opportunity, because this is the freshest point and the most mysterious.


If you can feel it, if you can allow it to go deep into || you, many things will become possible in a very short period of time. It is yet not respectable to be with me  --  it is not a prestige. In fact, only gamblers can be with me who do not bother and worry about what others say. People who are respectable cannot come. After a few years, when the tradition becomes by and by dead, it becomes respectable. Then people will come, but those will be dead people. They will come only when something becomes respectable. They will come because of the ego.


You are here not because of the ego, because with me there is nothing to gain for the ego at least. You will lose. With Rishabh, only people who were alive and courageous and daring, adventurous, they moved; with Mahavira, dead businessmen  --  not gamblers. That is why Jains have become a business community. The whole community is business community; they don't do anything except business. Business is the least courageous thing in the world. That's why businessmen become cowards. In the first place they were cowards; that's why they became businessmen.


A farmer is more courageous because he lives with the unknown, does not know what is going to happen, whether rains will be there or not  --  nobody knows. And how can you believe in the clouds? You can believe in the banks, but you cannot believe in the clouds. No  --  nobody knows what is going to happen; he hangs with the unknown. But he lives a more courageous life  --  a warrior.


Mahavira himself was a warrior; all the twenty-four teerthankaras of the Jains were warriors. Then what misfortune happened? What happened that the whole followers became businessmen? They became businessmen with Mahavira because they came only with Mahavira  -- when the tradition was glorious, had a legendary past, become already a myth and was respectable to be with.


Dead people come only when something becomes dead; alive people come only when something is alive. Younger people will be coming to me more. Even if somebody old comes to me, he is bound to be younger in the heart. Old people look for prestige, respect. They will go to dead churches and temples where nothing is except emptiness and a past. What is past?  --  an emptiness. Anything alive is herenow, and anything alive has a future, because future grows out of it. The moment you start looking at the past, there can be no growth.


DO YOU RECEIVE INSTRUCTIONS FROM ANY MASTER OF MASTERS? No. But I receive help which is more beautiful. And I have been a loner, a vagabond with no home, passing, learning, moving, never staying anywhere. So I have nobody to look up to. If I had to find something, I had to find it myself. Much help available, but I had to work it out. And in a way that is going to be a great help because then I don't depend on any code. I watch the disciple. There is nobody as a Master to me to look to. I have to look at the disciple more deeply to find the clue. What will help you, I have to look into you. That's why my teaching, my methods, differ with each disciple. I have no universal formula, cannot have; no fixed rules, I have to respond. I have not a discipline already  --  ready-made. Rather, a growing phenomenon. Every disciple adds to it. When I start working with a new disciple, I have to look into him, seek, find what will help him, how he can grow. And each time, with each disciple, a new code is born.


You are going really in a mess when I am gone  -- because there will be so many stories from each disciple, and you will not be able to make any end, head or tail of it  --  because I am talking to each individual as individual. The system is growing through him, and it is growing in many, many directions. It is a vast tree, many branches, many sub-branches, going in all directions.


I don't receive any instructions from the Masters. I receive instructions from you. When I look into you, in your unconscious, in your depth, I receive instructions from there and I work it out for you. It is always a new response.

The second question:
<p class="question">WHY DO MASTERS NEED DIRECTIONS FROM MASTER OF MASTERS? ARE THEY NOT ENOUGH IN THEMSELVES WHEN THEY HAVE REACHED ENLIGHTENMENT? OR ARE THERE STAGES OF ENLIGHTENMENT TOO?</p>


No, there are not stages in fact, but when a Master is in the body, and when the Master leaves the body and becomes bodiless, there is a difference  --  not exactly stages. It is just like you are standing by the side of the road under a tree: you can see a patch of the road; beyond that patch you cannot see. Then you climb up the tree. You remain the same; nothing is happening to you or your consciousness. But you climb up the tree, and from the tree now you can look miles to this side and miles to that.


Then you fly in an airplane. Nothing has happened to you; your consciousness remains the same. But now you can see for thousands of miles. In the body you are on the road  --  by the side of the road  --  encased in the body. The body is the lowest point in existence because it means committed to the matter still, being with the matter still. Matter is the lowest point and God is the highest point.


When a Master attains to enlightenment in the body, the body has to fulfill its karmas, the past samskaras, the past conditionings. Every account has to be closed; only then can the body be left. It is like this: your airplane has arrived, but you have many businesses to finish. All the creditors are there, and they are asking to close the account before you leave. And there are many credits, because many lives you have been promising, doing things, acting, behaving, sometimes good, sometimes bad, sometimes a sinner, sometimes a saint. You have accumulated much Before you leave, the whole existence demands you to complete everything.


When you have become enlightened, now you know that you are not the body, but you owe many things to the body and the material world. Time is needed  --  Buddha lived forty years after his enlightenment, Mahavira also lived near about forty years  --  to pay, to pay everything that they owe, to complete every circle that they started. No new action, but the old hanging things have to be finished, the old hangover has to be finished. When all the accounts are closed, now you can take your aircraft.


Up to now, with matter, you have been moving horizontally  --  just like in a bullock cart. Now you can move vertically. Now you can go upwards. Before this, you have always been going forwards or backwards; there was no vertical movement. And the higher you rise  --  and the God is the highest point, the Master of Masters  --  from where the perception is total. Your consciousness is the same; nothing has changed: an enlightened man has the same consciousness as the supreme state of consciousness, God  --  no difference of consciousness. But the perception, the field of perception, is different; now he can look everywhere.


There was a great debate in the times of Buddha and Mahavira. It will be useful to understand it at this point for this question. There was a debate: followers of Mahavira used to say that Mahavira is omnipotent omniscient, omnipresent, sarvagya, all-knowing. In a way they are right, because once you are freed from matter and body you are God. But in a way they were wrong, because you may be freed from the body, but you have yet not left it. The identification is broken; you know that you are not the body. But still you are in it.


It is as if you live in a house; then suddenly you come to know that this house doesn't belong to you  -- somebody else's house and you were living in it. But then too, to leave the house you will have to make arrangements, you will have to remove things. And it will take time. You know this house is not yours, your attitude has changed. Now you are not worried about this house what happens to it. If next day it falls and becomes a ruins, it is nothing to you. If next day you leave and it takes fire, it is nothing to you: it belongs to somebody else. Just a moment before, you were identified with the house; it was your house. If there was fire, if the house fell down, you would have much worried. Now the identification is broken.


Mahavira's followers are right in a sense, because when you have come to know yourself, you have become all-knowing. But Buddha's followers used to say that this is not right  --  a Buddha can know if he wants to know something, but he is not all-knowing. They used to say that if the Buddha wants, he can focus his attention in any direction, and wherever he focuses his attention, he will be able to know. He is capable of omniscience, but not omniscient. The difference is subtle, delicate, but beautiful. Because they said if he knows everything and all things continuously, he will go mad. This body cannot bear that much.


They are also right. A Buddha in the body can know anything if he wants to know. His consciousness, because of the body, is like a torch. You go in the dark with the torch. You can know anything if you focus; light is with you. But a torch is a torch; it is not a flame. A flame will give light in all directions; a torch focuses in a particular direction  --  wherever you want. The torch has no choice You can look to the north, and then it will reveal the north. You can look to the south, and then it will reveal the south. But all the four directions are not revealed together. If you move the torch to the south, then the north is closed. It is a narrow flow of light.


This was Buddha's followers' standpoint. And Mahavira's followers used to say that he is not like a torch, he is like a lamp; all directions are revealed. But I favor Buddha's followers' standpoint. When the body is there, you are narrowed down. Body is a narrowing. You become like a torch  --  because you cannot see from the hands, you can see only from the eyes. If you can see only from the eyes, you cannot see from your back because you don't have any eyes there. You have to move your head.


With the body everything is focused and narrow. The consciousness is unfocused and flowing in all directions, but the vehicle, the body, is not in all directions  --  it always focused, so your consciousness also becomes narrowed down to it. But when the body is no more there, and a Buddha has left the body, then there is no problem. All directions are revealed together.


That's the point to be understood. That's why even an enlightened person can be guided, because an enlightened person is still tethered to the body, anchored in the body, in the narrow body, and a god is unanchored, floating in the highest sky. From there he can see all directions. From there he can see the past, the future, the present. From there his view is unclouded. That's why he can help.


Your view, even if you become enlightened in the body, is clouded. The body is there all around you. The status of consciousness is the same, the innermost reality of the consciousness is the same, the quality of the light is the same. But one light is tethered to the body and has become narrow; one light is not tethered to anything at all  --  just a floating light. In the highest of skies, guidance is possible.

WHY DO MASTERS NEED DIRECTIONS FROM A MASTER OF MASTERS?

That's the reason.

ARE THEY NOT ENOUGH IN THEMSELVES WHEN THEY HAVE REACHED ENLIGHTENMENT OR ARE THERE STAGES OF ENLIGHTENMENT TOO?


They are enough. They are enough to guide disciples; they are enough to help disciples. Nothing is needed. But still they are tethered, and one who is untethered is always a good help. You cannot look in all directions; he can look.


You can also move and look, but that has to be done. This is what I am doing: having no instructor above, nobody to guide me, I have to be continuously on move  --  looking from this direction and that, watching from this direction and that, looking at you through many standpoints so that your totality can be looked. I can look through, but I have to be moving around you. Just a glance will not help because a glance will be narrowed through the body. I am having a torch and moving all around you, looking from every standpoint possible.


In a way it is difficult because I have to work more. In a way it is very beautiful because I have to work more and I have to look from every standpoint possible. I come to know many things which ready-made instructions cannot do. And when the Master of Masters in Patanjali's ideology  --  a god  --  gives instructions, he gives no explanations; he gives simply instructions. He simply says, "Do this; don't do that."


Those who follow these instructions, they will also look like ready-made. It is bound to be so because they will say, "Do this." They will not have the explanation. And very coded instructions are given. Explanations are very difficult  --  and there is no need also for them, because when it is given from a higher standpoint it is okay. Just one has to be obedient.


The Master is obedient to the Master of Masters, and you have to be obedient to the Master. An obedience follows. It is just like a military hierarchy; not much freedom. Much is not allowed Order is order If you ask for explanation, you are rebellious. And this is the problem, one of the greatest problems humanity has to face now: now man cannot be obedient as in the past. You cannot simply say, "Don't do this"; explanation is needed. And not any ordinary explanation will do. A very authentic explanation is needed because the very mind of humanity is no more obedient. Now rebelliousness is built in; a child is born rebellious now.


It was totally different in the days of Buddha and Mahavira. Everybody is taught to be individual, to stand on his own, to believe in himself. Trust has become difficult. Obedience is not possible. If somebody follows without asking, you think he is a blind follower. He is condemned. Now only a Master can help you who has all the explanations  --  more than you require, who can exhaust you completely. You go on asking; he can go on answering you. A moment comes when you are tired of asking, and you say, "Okay, I will follow."


Never before this it was so. It was simple: when Mahavira says, "Do this," you do this. But this is not possible, simply because man is so different. The modern mind is a rebellious mind, and you cannot change it. This is how evolution has brought it to be, and nothing is wrong in it. That is why old Masters are falling off the road; nobody listens to them. You go to them. They have instructions, beautiful instructions, but they don't provide any explanation, and now the first thing is explanation. The instruction should follow as a syllogism. All explanations should be given first, and then the Master should say, "Therefore, do this."


It is a lengthy process, but it's how it is. Nothing can be done. And in a sense it is a beautiful growth, because when you simply trust, your trust has no salt in it, no tension in it. Your trust has no sharpness in it. It is a hodge-podge thing  -- shapeless: no tonality in it, no color in it. It is just grey. But when you can doubt, you can argue, you can reason and a Master can satisfy all your reasons and arguments and doubts, then arises a trust which has a beauty of its own because against the background of doubt it has been achieved.


Against all doubts it has been achieved, against all challenges it has been achieved. It has been a fight. It was not simple and cheap: it has been costly. And when you achieve something after a long fight, it has a meaning of its own. If you simply get it on the road it just Lying there and take it home, it has no beauty. If Kohinoors are there all over the earth, who will bother to take them home? If a Kohinoor is just an ordinary pebble Lying anywhere, then who will bother?


In the old days, faith was like pebbles all over the earth. Now it has to be a Kohinoor. Now it has to be a precious achievement. Instructions won't help. A Master has to be so deep in his explanations that he exhausts you. I never say to you don't ask. In fact, just otherwise is the case. I say to you ask, and you don't find questions.


I will bring all the questions possible from your unconscious to the surface, and I will solve them. Nobody can say to you that you are a blind follower. And I will not give you a single instruction without totally satisfying your reason  --  no, because that is not going to help you in any way.


Instructions are given from the Masters of Masters, but they are just quoted words  --  sutras; "Do this; don't do that." In the new age, that won't help. Man is so rational now that even if you are teaching irrationality you have to reason it about. That's what I am doing: teaching you the absurdity, the irrational, teaching you the mysterious  --  and through reason. Your reason has to be so much used that you yourself become aware that this is futile  --  throw it. You have to be so much talked about your reason that you get fed up with it; you drop it on your own, not through instruction.


Because instruction can be given, but you will cling. That won't help. I'm not going to say to you, "Just trust me." I'm creating the whole situation in which you cannot do otherwise. You will have to trust. It will take a time  --  a little longer  --  than simple obedience. But it is worth.

The third question:
<p class="question">WE, IN OUR UNAWARENESS AND EGOISTIC STATE, ARE NOT ALWAYS IN TOUCH WITH THE MASTER. BUT IS THE MASTER ALWAYS IN TOUCH WITH US?</p>


Yes, because a Master is in touch with all the four layers of you. Your conscious layer is only one of the four layers. But that is possible only when you have surrendered and accepted him as your Master  --  not before that. If you are just a student, learning, then when you are in touch, the Master is in touch; when you are not in touch, he is also not in touch.


Has to be understood, this phenomenon... You have four minds: the supermind which is the possibility of the future, of which only seeds you carry  --  nothing has sprouted  --  only seeds, just the potentiality. Then the conscious mind  --  a very small fragment with which you reason, think, decide, argue, doubt, believe  --  this conscious mind is in touch with a Master to whom you have not surrendered. So whenever this is in touch, the Master is in touch. If this is not in touch, then the Master is not in touch. You are a student, and you have not taken the Master as a Master. You still think about him as a teacher.


Teacher and student exist in the conscious mind. Nothing can be done because you are not open; your all three doors are closed. Superconscious is just a seed; you cannot open its doors.


Subconscious is just below the conscious. That is possible if you love. If you are here with me only because of your reasoning, your conscious door is open. Whenever you open it, I am there. If you don't open it, I am outside; I cannot enter. Just below the conscious is the subconscious. If you are in love with me  -- not just a teacher and a student relationship but more intimate, a love-like phenomenon  --  then the subconscious door is open. Many times the conscious door will be closed by you. You will argue against me; you will be sometimes negative; sometimes you will be against me. But that doesn't matter. The unconscious door of love is open and I can always remain in touch with you.


But that too is not a perfect door because sometimes you can hate me. If you hate me, you have closed that door also. Love is there, but the opposite, hate, is also there  --  it is always with love. The second door will be more open than the first  -- because the first changes its moods as fast that you don't know... Any moment it goes on changing. Just one moment it was here, the next moment it is not there; it is a momentary phenomenon.


Love is a little longer. It also changes its moods, but its moods have longer periods. Sometimes you will hate me. In thirty days almost there will be eight days  --  one week and four days, you will hate me. But three weeks it is open. With the reason, a week is too long; it is an eternity. With the reason, one moment here, another moment against: for, against, it goes on. If the second door is open and you are in love with me, even if the door with reason is closed, I can remain in contact.


The third door is below subconscious: that is the unconscious. Reason opens the first door  --  if you feel convinced with me. Love opens the second door which is bigger than the first  --  if you are in love with me: not convinced, but in love  --  feeling an affinity, a harmony, an affection.


The third door opens by surrender, if you are initiated by me, if you have taken the jump into sannyas, if you have taken a jump and said to me, "Now  --  now you be my mind. Now you take the reins of me. Now you guide me and I will follow." Not that you will always be able to do it, but just the very gesture that you surrendered opens the third door.


The third door remains open. You may be against me rationally. It doesn't matter: I am in touch. You may hate me. It doesn't matter: I am in touch  --  because the third door always remains open. You have surrendered. And it is very difficult to close the third door  --  very, very difficult It is difficult to open, it is difficult to close. It is difficult to open, but not as difficult as to close it. But that too can be closed because you have opened it. That too can be closed You can decide some day to take your surrender back. Or, you can go and surrender yourself to somebody else. But that never  --  almost never  -- happens, because with these three doors the Master is working to open the fourth door.


So there is very... almost impossible possibility that you will take your surrender back. Before you have taken it, he must have opened the fourth door which is beyond you. You cannot open it, you cannot close it. The door that you open, you remain the master to close it also. But the fourth has nothing to do with you. That is the superconscious. All these three doors are needed to open so the Master can forge a key for the fourth door, because you don't have the key, otherwise you yourself can open it. The Master has to forge; it is a forgery because the owner himself doesn't have the key.


The whole effort of a Master is to have enough time from these three doors to enter to the fourth and forge a key and open it. Once it is opened, you are no more. You cannot do anything now. You may close all the three doors  --  he has the key for the fourth and he is always in contact. Then even if you die, it doesn't matter. You go to the very end of the earth, you go the moon, does not make any difference; he has the key for the fourth. And, in fact, a real Master never keeps the key. He simply opens the fourth and throws the key in the ocean. So there is no possibility to steal it or do anything. Nothing can be done!.


I have forged a fourth-door key with many of you and have thrown it, so don't unnecessarily trouble yourself; it is futile, now nothing can be done. Once the fourth is opened, then there is no problem. All the problems exist before it, because at the very last moment the Master was getting ready the key because the key is difficult...


For millions of lives the door has remained closed; it has gathered all sorts of rust. It looks like a wall, not like a door. It is difficult to find where the lock is  --  and everybody has a separate lock, so there is no master key. One key won't help because everybody is as individual as your thumbprint. Nobody has that print anywhere  --  not in the past, never in the future. Your thumbprint will be simply yours, a single phenomenon. It never is repeated.


Your inner lock is also like your thumbprint  -- absolutely individual: no master key can help. That's why a Master is needed, because a master key cannot be purchased. Otherwise, once a key is made, everybody's door can be opened. No, everybody has a separate type of door, a separate type of lock  --  his own locking system  --  and you have to watch and find and forge a key, a special key for it.


Once your fourth door is open, then the Master is in constant touch with you. You may forget him completely: it makes no difference. You may not remember him: it makes no difference. The Master leaves the body: it makes no difference. Wherever he is, wherever you are, the door is open. And this door exists beyond time and Space. That's why it is the supermind: it is superconscious.

WE IN OUR UNAWARENESS AND OUR EGOISTIC STATE ARE NOT ALWAYS IN TOUCH WITH THE MASTER, BUT IS THE MASTER ALWAYS IN TOUCH WITH US?


Yes, but only when the fourth door is opened. Otherwise, with the third door, he is more or less in contact. With the second door, half the time almost in contact. With the first door, only momentarily in contact.


So allow me to open your fourth door  --  and the fourth door is opened in a certain moment. That moment is when all your three doors are open. Even if a single door is closed, the fourth cannot be opened. It is a mathematical puzzle. And this condition is needed: your first, conscious door is open; your second door is open  --  your subconscious, your love  --  you have surrendered, you have taken a step into initiation, your third, unconscious door is open.


When all the three doors are open, when in a certain moment all the three doors are open, the fourth can be opened. So it happens that while you are awake, the fourth is difficult to open. While you are asleep, only then. So my real work is not in the day. It is in the night when you are fast asleep snoring, because then you don't create any trouble. You are so fast asleep, you don't reason against. You have forgotten about reasoning.


In deep sleep, your heart functions well. You are more loving than when you are awake, because when you are awake many fears surround you. And because of fear love is not possible. When you are fast asleep, fears disappear, love flowers. Love is a nightflower. You must have watched night queen  --  the flower that flowers in the night. Love is a night queen. It flowers in the night  --  because of you; there is no other reason. It can flower in the day, but then you have to change yourself. Tremendous change is needed before the love can flower in the day.


That's why you see that when people are intoxicated they are more loving. Go into any tavern where people have drunk too much: they are almost always loving. See two drunkards moving on the street hanging on each other's shoulder: so loving  --  as if one! They are asleep.


When you are not afraid, love flowers. Fear is the poison. And when deep down in sleep, you are already surrendered because sleep is a surrender. And if you have surrendered to a Master, he can enter into your sleep. You will not be even able to hear his footsteps. He can enter silently and work. It is a forgery, just like thieves enter in the night when you are asleep. A Master is a thief. When you are fast asleep and you don't know what is happening, he enters in you and opens the fourth.


Once the fourth is opened, then there is no problem. Every effort and every trouble that you can create, you can create only before the fourth is open. The fourth is a point of no return. Once the fourth is open, the Master can twenty-four hours be with you  -- there is no problem.

The last question:
<p class="question">HOW CAN ONE CUT DESIRES WITHOUT SUPPRESSING THEM?</p>


Desires are dreams: they are not realities. You cannot fulfill them and you cannot suppress them, because to fulfill a certain thing it needs to be real; to suppress a certain thing also needs to be real. Needs can be fulfilled and needs can be suppressed. Desires neither can be fulfilled nor can be suppressed. Try to understand this because this is very complex.


A desire is a dream. If you understand this, it disappears. No need to suppress it. What is the need to suppress a desire? You want to become very famous: this is a dream, a desire, because the body doesn't bother to be famous. In fact the body suffers very much when you become famous. You don't know how the body suffers when a person becomes famous. Then there is no peace. Then continuously you are bothered, troubled by others because you are so famous.


Somewhere Voltaire has written that "When I was not famous, I used to pray to God every night that 'Make me famous. I am nobody, so make me somebody.' And then I become famous. Then I started to pray, 'Enough is enough: now make me again a nobody'  --  because before I used to go on the streets of Paris and nobody will look at me and I felt so sad. Nobody would pay any attention to me  --  as if I didn't exist at all. I will move into the restaurants and come out; nobody, even the waiters will not pay attention to me."


What about kings? They didn't know that Voltaire existed. "Then I became famous," he writes. "Then it was difficult to move from the streets because people will gather. It was difficult to go anywhere. It was difficult to go in a restaurant and take food at rest. A crowd will gather."


A moment came when it was almost impossible for him to get out of the house because in those days there was a superstition in Paris, in France, that if you can get a piece of cloth from a very famous man and can make a locket out of it, it is a luck. So wherever he will go, he will come naked because people will tear his clothes  --  and they will harm his body also. When he used to come from some other town back to Paris, or will go, police was needed to bring him home.


So he used to pray that "I was wrong. You simply make me again a nobody, because I cannot go and watch the river. I cannot go out and see the sunrise, I cannot go to the hills, I cannot move. I have become a prisoner."


Those who are famous are always prisoners. Body doesn't need to be famous; body is so absolutely okay, it needs nothing like such nonsense things. It needs simple things  --  food; it needs water to drink; it needs a shelter when it is too hot, to come under: its needs are very, very simple. The world is mad because of desires, not because of needs. And people go mad They go on cutting down their needs, and growing and increasing their desires. There are people who would like to drop one meal per day, but they cannot drop their newspaper, they cannot drop going to the cinema, they cannot drop smoking. They can drop food  --  needs can be dropped  --  desires cannot be. The mind has become a despot.


Body is always beautiful: remember it. This is one of the basic rules I give to you  --  a rule unconditionally true, absolutely true, categorically true: body is always beautiful, mind is ugly. It is not the body that has to be changed. There is nothing to change in it. It is the mind And mind means desiring. The body needs, but body needs are real needs.


If you want to live, you need food. Fame is not needed to live, respect is not needed to be alive. You need not be a very great man or a very great painter  --  famous, known to the whole world. You need not be a Nobel Prize winner to live, because Nobel Prize doesn't fulfill any need in the body.


If you want to drop needs, you will have to suppress them  --  because they are real If you fast, you have to suppress hunger. Then there is suppression, and every suppression is wrong because suppression is a fight inside, and you are wanting to kill the body, and the body is your anchor, your ship which will lead you to the other shore. Body keeps the treasure, the seeds of divine within you, protected. Food is needed for that protection, water is needed, shelter is needed, comfort is needed  --  for the body, because the mind doesn't want any comfort.


Look at the modern furniture: it is not comfortable at all, but the mind says, "This is modern, and what are you doing sitting in an old chair? The world has changed and the modern furniture has come." The modern furniture is really weird. You feel uncomfortable in it; you cannot sit in it long. But it is modern The mind says modern must be there because how can you be out of date? Be up to date


Modern dresses are uncomfortable, but they are modern, and the mind says that you have to be with the fashion. And man has done so many ugly things because of fashion. Body needs nothing: these are mind needs, and you cannot fulfill them  --  never, because they are unreal Only unreality cannot be fulfilled. How can you fulfill an unreal need which is not there in fact? What is the need of fame? Just meditate on it. Close your eyes and look. Where it is needed in the body? How it will help if you are famous? Will you be more healthy if you are famous? Will you be more silent, peaceful, if you are famous? What you will gain out of it?


Always make the body the criterion. Whenever the mind says something, ask the body, 'What do you say?n And if the body says foolish, drop it. And there is no suppression in it because it is an unreal thing. How can you suppress an unreal thing? In the morning, you get out of bed and you remember a dream. Have you to suppress it or you have to fulfill it? Because in the dream, you dreamed that you have become the emperor of the whole earth. Now what to do? Should you try? Otherwise the question arises, "if we don't try, then it is a suppression." But a dream is a dream How can you suppress a dream? A dream disappears by itself. You have to be only aware. You have to only know that it is a dream. When a dream is a dream and known as such, it disappears.


Try to find out what is a desire and what is a need. Need is body oriented; desire has no orientation in the body. It has no roots. It is just a floating thought in the mind. And almost always your body needs come from your body and your mind needs come from others. Somebody purchases a beautiful car. Somebody else has purchased a beautiful car, an imported car, and now your mind need arises. How can you tolerate this?


Mulla Nasruddin was driving the car and I was sitting with him. The moment we entered the neighborhood  --  it was a very hot summer day  --  he immediately closed all the windows of the car. I said, "What are you doing?" He said, 'What do you mean? Should I let my neighborhood people know that I don't have an air-conditioned car?"


Perspiring, I also perspired with him. It was like an oven, hot, but how can you allow your neighbors to know that you don't have an air-conditioned car? This is a mind need. The body says, "Drop it Are you mad?" It is perspiring. It is saying, "No" Listen to the body; don't listen to the mind. Mind's needs are created by others all around you; they are foolish, stupid, idiotic.


Body needs are beautiful, simple. Fulfill body needs; don't suppress them. If you suppress them, you will become more and more ill and diseased. Never bother about the mind needs; once you know that this is a mind need... and is there much difficulty to know? What is the difficulty? It is so simple to know that this is a mind need. Simply ask the body; inquire in the body; go find the root. Is there any root for it?


You will look foolish. Your all kings and emperors are foolish. They are clowns: just see. Dressed with thousands of medals, they look foolish What they are doing? And for this they have suffered long. To attain this, they have passed through so many miseries and still they are miserable. They have to be miserable. Mind is the door to hell, and the door is nothing but desire. Kill desires. You will not find any blood coming out of them because they are bloodless.


But kill a need and there will be bloodshed. Kill a need, and you will die in part. Kill a desire; you will not die. Rather, on the contrary, you will become freer. More freedom will come out of dropping desires. If you can become a man of need and no desires, you are already on the path and the heaven is not far off.
			

> [!info]
> Copyright 1964-1990 Osho (Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh)
>