One professor of Jerusalem University went to see Jesus. Of course, he went in the night. His name was Nicodemus; he was a very rich, respectable man, a great scholar, well known in the Jewish world. He was afraid to go to Jesus in the daylight, because what will people think? He was known to be a great, learned man, wise — what will they think? that he has gone to this carpenter’s son to ask something?
A very, rich man went on a pilgrimage. He had many servants and a very, big palace where he lived alone with all these servants. He called all the servants and told them, “One by one, by rotation, you have to be on guard. I don’t know how much time I am going to take, it may be many years; the journey is long, the pilgrimage is hazardous. I may come back, I may not come back, but the palace, the garden, and everything has to be present as it is.”
They said, “Of course. Whatsoever you say we will do.”
The man went away. Months passed, years passed. By and by the servants started completely forgetting that they were servants because the master had been gone so long. Man’s memory is not that long, and there are things which one does not really want to remember. One’s being a slave and somebody being the master who wants to remember that?
Each servant had to guard the palace in rotation, and when each servant was guarding, he would pretend that he was the master. Anybody coming to the palace or passing by would ask, “Whose palace is this?” The servant would answer, “It is my palace, my garden. Don’t you like it?”
This was happening with all the guards.
Years passed; the guards completely forgot about the master and that he was going to return. “By now he must be dead, something must have happened. And it is good that we got rid of that fellow — now we are the masters.” They declared to the whole town, “We are the masters” — and the town had also forgotten the master. It was long before — only old people remembered that somebody had been there, but it was only very vaguely. When he went, where he went, and what happened to him, nobody was aware.
But one day, the master appeared; he knocked on the door. The slaves looked at him and suddenly fell at his feet: “Master, you are back!”
He said, “I told you I would come back, even though it may take a long time.”
They said, “Forgive us, because the city people will say we have committed a crime against you. We had forgotten you completely, and we enjoyed being the master so much that we declared that we were the masters — and the city believes that we are the masters.”
Gurdjieff used to tell this story, saying that the same is the case with the watcher. The watcher is absent; the mind — which is just a slave — is pretending to be the master. And it is not a question of a few years — for millions of years the master has been absent. Perhaps the master has never been home; there is no question that he had gone, because once he arrives he never goes. So your thoughts, and the combination of thoughts which you call your mind, certainly, confidently believe that they are the master.
Just tn, to watch your thoughts. Remember one thing: Thought itself cannot watch another thought — that is impossible. A thought cannot become a watcher of another thought; so when in your mind the thought arises, “I am watching,” you have missed, because it is a thought. When the watcher is there you will not even have the idea of “Aha! Got it!” Lost it! You were just on the verge of getting it and Werner Erhard entered, and EST finished everything: “Got it!” Even that much, just two words, is enough; the mind is back.
It is always the mind that gets it, or does not get it; the watcher simply watches. No idea is formed, just absolute silence prevails. And in that moment is the seeing, knowing, experiencing — without any thought. Can’t you experience anything without any thought? You will have to learn, because mind has been trained for centuries just to think every experience in words.
there was a magician who had many sheep. And it was a trouble to get them home from the forest every night — wild animals were there, and he was losing many of his sheep. Finally the idea came to him, “Why do I not use my expertise, my magic?”
He hypnotized all his sheep and told them different things. To one sheep he said, “You are a lion. You need not be afraid; you are the king amongst the animals.” To another he said, “You are a tiger,” to another, “You are a man.” And he told to everybody, to all the sheep: “You are not going to be butchered because you are not sheep, so you need not be afraid to come back home. You should come early, before nightfall.”
And from that day no sheep went missing. In fact, from that day no sheep was behaving like a sheep: somebody was roaring like a lion, somebody was behaving like a man, and nobody was afraid of being butchered, killed — the very question was irrelevant. And the magician was butchering them every day for his food. They may have been roaring like lions — that did not matter; they were sheep after all.
But he managed very beautifully. Giving one sheep the notion of being a lion, there was no need now to be bothered that he would try to escape, seeing that other sheep are being killed. Still sheep were being killed, but this sheep will know, “I am a lion, I am not a sheep. Sheep are bound to be killed!”
When he is killed, others will be thinking, “He was just a sheep, we are men. And he was not only a sheep, but a foolish sheep who used to think that he is a lion, and never listened to us. We argued many times, `You are a sheep. We are men, we know better. You stop roaring, that is not going to help.’” But the magician was in absolute control.
The story Gurdjieff was telling was about your religious leaders. They have managed to tell you things which you are not. They have managed to convince you that you know things which you know not. And this is the greatest crime that can be committed. But you cannot call them criminals, because they are not doing it to harm you. They are trying to serve you, they are trying to help you.
A man renounces the world, his wife, his home. He is young and he is going in search of a master. Just outside his village under a tree, an old man is sitting. The sun is just setting, and darkness is descending. The young man asks the old man, “You look as if you are a traveler; you certainly don’t belong to my village.
I am a young man and I am in search of a master. You are old; perhaps you have come across a master in your journeys, and will be kind enough to help me with some directives, some guidelines — because I am feeling at a loss, where to go.” The old man said, “I will give you exact details. The master looks like this” — and he described the face of the master, the eyes of the master, the nose of the master, the beard of the master, his robe. ”
And he sits under a certain tree” — and he described the tree. And he said, “You will find him; just remember these details. Whenever you find a man who fulfills these criteria, you have found your master.” Thirty years passed. The young man became old, tired. He never came across anybody fitting the description given by the old man. Finally he gave up the whole idea of finding a master: “Perhaps there is no master anywhere.”
He went back to his village. And as he was entering the village, under the same tree… It was sunrise, there was more light. The old man had become very old. The last time they had met he must have been sixty; now he was ninety.
And because for thirty years the man had been looking for certain eyes, a certain nose, a certain beard, a certain robe, a certain tree…. As he saw the tree and he saw the old man he said, “My God, so you were describing yourself! Why didn’t you tell me? Why did you force me to travel unnecessarily around the world for thirty years searching for you, while you were sitting here?”
The old man said, “First throw out all your tantrums and your anger; then I will tell you the truth. Thirty years ago you were too young. The time was not right; it was sunset, darkness was descending. And you were in such a hurry to go in search, that if I had told you that I was the master you would have laughed and said, `This is strange that you are sitting just outside my village!’ And you cannot blame me because I explained every detail, but your eyes were looking far away.
You were listening to me, but you were not looking to see that I was describing my eyes, my nose, my beard, my robe, that I was describing the tree under which I was sitting. You were not ripe. “These thirty years have not gone to waste; they have matured you. Now you can recognize me. Just look; it is sunrise, the right time. And it is not the beginning of your journey, you had already given up. I am meeting you at the end of thirty years of long, arduous effort.
That which you can get cheap you cannot recognize. You had to pay these thirty years and all the troubles that you went through just to be mature enough to recognize me. “I could have told you on that day too — but it would have been pointless, and you would have missed me. “And you think you have been in trouble for thirty years?
Just think about me — for thirty years I have been sitting under the same tree, because I described this tree. I have not left it for a single day because I was aware that any moment you might come, and if you didn’t find me here I would have been proved to have spoken lies. I have been sitting here for thirty years continuously — day in, day out; summer, winter, rain, but I have been sitting here.
And you see I am old. I was worried that if I died before you came back, it would be a tragedy. So I have been trying to somehow cling to life — because as far as I am concerned there is nothing left; I have realized myself. Life has given everything that it can give. I have been sitting just for you.” The story is strange, but significant. It takes time to realize that which you are.
A bird was flying with a dead mouse and twenty or thirty birds were chasing him. The bird was very much worried. ‘I am not doing anything to them; I am just carrying my dead mouse. They are all after me.’ And they hit him hard and in the conflict, in the struggle, the bird opened his mouth and the mouse dropped.
Immediately they all flew towards the mouse; they all forgot about him. Then he sat upon a tree and brooded. They were not against him, they were also on the same trip — they wanted the mouse. If people are hurting you, open your mouth. You must be carrying a dead mouse! Drop it! And then sit — if you can, sit on the tree or under the tree and brood. And suddenly you will see that they have forgotten about you. They are not concerned. They never were concerned. The ego is a dead mouse.
I have heard a story. A wasp made its abode near a window outside a big building. In winter this wasp would sleep and rest, in summer it would fly, dance and collect the pollen of the flowers. It was very happy. But this wasp was a special one – it was a thinker. It used to think a lot and used to look down upon other wasps because there was no thinking in their lives. Their lives were full of desire.
They never did any thinking, they never contemplated, they never knew the scriptures. Sometimes it used to fly into that building also. It loved that building. The people visiting the building seemed to it of its own type because they were thinkers. Actually, this building was a big library. Professors, teachers, writers, philosophers, poets used to come there. Usually people used to drive out the wasp but it always would come back.
Gradually it started reading and writing. It started in the children’s department and soon it was studying big books of philosophy. It began to read big volumes of science and poetry. It became very proud and just could not tolerate the other wasps – they seemed very insignificant. It became very egoistic. It was thinking day and night. It forgot all about dancing in the sun, flying in the air and visiting the trees. Now mostly it used to sit down engrossed in deep thoughts like, ”Who made this world? Why was it made? From where has this existence come and where is it going?” It used to think about these serious questions all the time.
One day it was reading a book on the science of aviation. It was written in that book of aerodynamics that the body of a wasp is heavier than its wings, so theoretically a wasp cannot fly because its wings are small and weak and the body is big and heavy. On reading this it became confused and puzzled.
Up to now it did not know that its body was big and its wings were small. It was the first time it had learnt this and, of course, whatever is written in the scriptures cannot be denied. It is not possible to go against what is said by the scientists. It became very sad. That day it did not fly back to its hive, it arrived there by crawling. How was it possible for it to fly – to do something which was quite against science? It became very sad and stopped moving about altogether.
It still saw the other wasps flying around, going to the flowers, but it thought that they were doing so out of ignorance – how can a wasp fly? Its wings are small and its body is big. It was full of pity for those who were flying because they did not know the facts of science. If they knew they would have stopped flying.
But one day a bird attacked the wasp, intending to eat it for breakfast. In its nervousness and confusion the wasp forgot all about the scriptures and flew away. It sat on a bush, rested a little and became calm and realized that it had flown! ”I was thinking that a wasp cannot fly but I have flown, so there must have been a block in my mind stopping my natural capacity for flying which melted in the moment of danger.”
It had read about mental blocks in the mind in a book on psychology. So it started flying again from that day. It gave up the knowledge of scriptures from that day, and from that moment it again became the wasp – the natural wasp! From that day it became free of knowledge and stopped looking down on other wasps. That day it experienced its true nature.
Religion is freedom from knowledge, and in that freedom is the ultimate knowledge. The scriptures are not meant to make you lame but to give you the capacity to fly. If the scriptures have made you lame, then it is sure that you have misunderstood them or you have interpreted them wrongly. If the scriptures have made you sad, then you must have missed something in them or must not have understood them properly. The scriptures which have snatched away your natural capacity to fly or flow are not your friends – you have turned them into your enemies.
A scripture is a scripture only if it gives you freedom. A scripture is a scripture if it makes you natural. A scripture is a scripture if it does not fill you with condemnation for others and is able to make you realize that the divine is hidden also within them.
Mulla Nasruddin is chosen an honorary magistrate. The first case appears. He hears one side and declares to the court, “Within five minutes I will be back with the judgment.”
The court clerk could not believe it — he has not heard the other side! The clerk whispered in his ear, “What are you doing? Don’t you see a simple thing? You have heard only one party, one side. The other side is waiting, and without hearing them you cannot give any judgment.”
Mulla Nasruddin said, “Don’t try to confuse me. Just now I am absolutely clear. If I hear the other side too, then there is bound to be confusion.”
These Sufi stories are not just ordinary stories, they are extraordinary. It is saying that every judge is listening only to one side because he already has a prejudiced mind; he is not capable of listening to both sides. For that a totally different kind of man is needed — which no educationalist concerning law and jurisprudence has even thought about.
Mulla Nasruddin is appointed as the prime minister of a king because he was known to be very wise; somewhat weird was his wisdom, but still, wisdom is wisdom. The first day when they went to have their dinner together, a certain vegetable called bindhi was made by the cook, stuffed with Eastern spices. It is a delicacy.
The king appreciated the cook, and after that Mulla said, in appreciation of the bindhi, “This is the most precious vegetable in the world. It gives you long life, it keeps you healthy, it gives you resistance against diseases,” and so on and so forth.
The king said, “I never knew that you know so much about vegetables.”
The cook heard about it, so he thought if bindhi (lady finger) is such a thing that our king can live long and healthy and young… Next day again bindhi was made, and again Mulla praised it, going even higher than the first day. The third day bindhi was made and Mulla went still higher. The fourth day bindhi was made and Mulla was going higher and higher. The fifth day Mulla even said that bindhi is a divine food — God eats only bindhi.
But the king was bored. He threw the plate of bindhi and told Mulla Nasruddin, “You are an idiot. Bindhi… and God eats bindhi every day? You will drive me mad!”
Mulla said, “Lord, you are getting unnecessarily hot. I am your servant; you said bindhi was good, I simply followed you, and when I do something I do it perfectly. I am not a servant to bindhi, I am your servant. The truth is that bindhi is the worst thing in the world — even devils don’t eat it. You did well that you threw it.”
He threw his plate farther away than the king. He said, “You should always remember that I am your servant, and you are always right. And I am a consistent man; I will remain consistently your servant, whatever happens.”
So if you really want to enter into the world of God you will have to learn the ways of creativity — and that has disappeared. Instead of creativity we value productivity: we talk about how to produce more. Production can give you things but cannot give you values. Production can make you rich outwardly but it will impoverish you inwardly. Production is not creation. Production is very mediocre; any stupid person can do it, one simply needs to learn the knack of it.
There is a famous Zen story. I would like to tell it to you. A monk called himself the ’Master of Silence’. He was actually a fraud and had no genuine understanding. To sell his humbug Zen, he had two eloquent attendant monks to answer questions for him; but he himself never uttered a word, as if to show his inscrutable ’silent Zen’.
One day, during the absence of his two attendants, a pilgrim monk came to him and asked:”Master, what is the Buddha?” Not knowing what to do or to answer, in his confusion he could only look desperately round in all directions – east and west, here and there – for his missing mouthpieces.
The pilgrim monk, apparently satisfied, then asked him:”What is the dharma, sir?” He could not answer this question either, so he first looked up at the ceiling and then down at the floor, calling for help from heaven and hell. Again the monk asked:”What is Zen?” Now the Master of Silence could do nothing but close his eyes. Finally the monk asked:”What is blessing?” In desperation. The Master of Silence helplessly spread his hands to the questioner as a sign of surrender.
But the pilgrim was very pleased and satisfied with this interview. He left the ’Master’ and set out again on his journey. On the road the pilgrim met the attendant monks on the way home, and began telling them enthusiastically what an enlightened being this Master of silence was.
He said:”I asked him what Buddha is. He immediately turned his face to the east and then to the west, implying that human beings are always looking for Buddha here and there, but actually Buddha is not to be found either in the east or in the west. I then asked him what the dharma is. In answer to this question he looked up and down, meaning that the truth of dharma is a totality of equableness, there being no discrimination between high and low, while both purity and impurity can be found therein.
In answering my question as to what Zen was, he simply closed his eyes and said nothing. That was a clue to the famous saying: ’If one can close his eyes and sleep soundly in the deep recesses of the cloudy mountains he is a great monk indeed.’
Finally, in answering my last question, ’What is the blessing?’ he stretched out his arms and showed both his hands to me. This implied that he was stretching out his helping hands to guide sentient beings with his blessings. Oh, what an enlightened Zen Master! How profound is his teaching!”
When the attendant monks returned, the ’Master of Silence’ scolded them thus:”Where have you been all this time? A while ago I was embarrassed to death, and almost ruined, by an inquisitive pilgrim"
1. Thinking is borrowed. All your thoughts are given by others to you. Watch — can you find a single thought that is yours, authentically yours, that you have given birth to? They are all borrowed. The sources may be known or unknown, but they are all borrowed. The mind functions like a computer, but before the computer can give you any answer you have to feed it. You have to supply all the information; then it will give you the answer. That’s what mind has been doing. Mind is a biocomputer. You go on collecting data, knowledge, information, and then when a certain question arises your mind supplies the answer out of that collection. It is not a real response; it is just out of the dead past. What is understanding? — understanding is pure intelligence. That pure intelligence is originally yours; you are born with it. Nobody can give you intelligence. Knowledge can be given to you, not intelligence. Intelligence is your own sharpened being. Through deep meditation one sharpens one’s being; through meditation one drops borrowed thoughts, reclaims one’s own being, reclaims one’s originality, redaims one’s childhood, innocence, freshness. Out of that freshness, when you act, you act out of understanding. And then the response is total, here-now; and the response is because of the challenge, not because of the past.
1. There is an art of seeing things as they are, without naming, without being caught in the network of words, the whole operation of thinking interfering with perception.
You may have heard a story like this: once a brahmin bought a goat and was taking it home. Three or four thieves saw him and thought the goat could be snatched away from him. But the brahmin was strong and to steal from him would be no easy job, so they decided to try diplomacy, a little trickery.
One came up to him on the road saying, ”Well done! How much did you pay for the dog?” That man, that brahmin said, ”Dog! Are you blind? Or only mad? It is a goat! I am bringing her from the market. I paid fifty rupees for her.”
The thief said, ”It’s up to you, but you know... seeing a brahmin carrying a dog on his shoulders.... Dear brother, to me it looks like a dog. Could there be some mistake?”
The brahmin went on his way, wondering what kind of man was that! But he fingered the feet of the goat just to check, saying to himself, ”It is a goat.” Another of the gang was waiting across the road.
He called over to the brahmin, ”What a fine dog you bought!”
Now the brahmin hadn’t the courage to insist it was not a dog: who knows maybe it was a dog – two men could not be wrong. Still he said, ”No no, it’s not a dog.” But it was weaker now. He said it, but the foundations inside were shaken. He said, ”No, no it’s a goat.”
The man said, ”It’s a goat? You call this a goat? Then, respected brahmin, the definition of goat needs to be changed! If you call this a goat then what will you call a dog? But it’s up to you. You are a scholarly man; you can change it if you want. It’s just a name. Perhaps you say dog, perhaps you say goat – a dog it remains. Nothing changes just by calling it a goat.”
The man went away. The brahmin put the goat down and looked: it was definitely a goat... a goat like any other goat. He rubbed his eyes and splashed them with water from a roadside tap. He was nearing his own neighborhood: if people saw a brahmin carrying a dog on his shoulders it would be a blow against worship in the temple and against scholarship. People paid for his worship – they would stop paying, they would think him mad.... Again he thoroughly inspected the animal, making sure it was a goat. But what was with those two guys?
Again he shouldered the goat and started off, but now he moved a little nervously. What if anyone else saw him? Then he came across the third fellow. He exclaimed, ”What a fine dog! Where did you get it? I too have wanted to have a dog for a long time.”
The brahmin said, ”Friend, you just take it! If you want a dog, take it. It is really a dog. A friend gave it to me, you please relieve me of it.” And he ran home before anyone could find out that he had bought a dog.
This is how man lives. You have become what you believe. And there are many cheats and scoundrels all around – you have been led to believe all kinds of things. They have their own motives. The priest wants to convince you that you are a sinner, because if you are not a sinner how will he continue to pray for you? It is in his interest that a goat be taken for a dog.
A pundit... if you are not ignorant what will become of his scholarship? How will he run his business? A religious
teacher... if he explains to you that you are inactive, free of doing, that you have never committed sin – then what need is there of him?
It is as if you go to a doctor and he explains that you are not sick, that you have never been sick, you cannot be sick, health is your nature – then the doctor is committing suicide. What will happen to his business? In robust health go to a doctor, go when you are not at all sick; then too you will find that he discovers some problem. Go and try it. Go in absolutely top form, when you are not sick at all; just go and do it, tell the doctor that you just want him to do a check-up. It is not easy to find a doctor who will say you are not ill.
