1

Illumination


The moment you are illuminated, the whole of existence is illuminated. If you are dark, then the whole of existence is dark. It all depends on you.

There are a thousand and one fallacies about meditation prevalent all around the world. Meditation is very simple: it is nothing but consciousness. It is not chanting, it is not using a mantra or a rosary. These are hypnotic methods. They can give you a certain kind of rest—nothing is wrong with that rest. If one is just trying to relax, it is perfectly good. Any hypnotic method can be helpful, but if one wants to know the truth, then it is not enough.

Meditation simply means transforming your unconsciousness into consciousness. Normally only one-tenth of our mind is conscious, and nine-tenths is unconscious. Just a small part of our mind, a thin layer, has light; otherwise the whole house is in darkness. And the challenge is to grow that small light so much that the whole house is flooded with light, so that not even a nook or corner is left in darkness.

Then the whole house is full of light, then life is a miracle; it has the quality of magic. Then it is no longer ordinary—everything becomes extraordinary. The mundane is transformed into the sacred, and the small things of life start having such tremendous significance that one could not have ever imagined it. Ordinary stones look as beautiful as diamonds; the whole of existence becomes illuminated. The moment you are illuminated, the whole of existence is illuminated. If you are dark, then the whole of existence is dark. It all depends on you.


2

Amateurs and Experts


All great discoveries are made by amateurs.

It always happens that when you start new work, you are very creative, you are deeply involved, your whole being is in it. Then by and by, as you become acquainted with the territory, rather than being inventive and creative you start being repetitive. This is natural because the more skilled you become in any work, the more repetitive you become. Skill is repetitive.

So all great discoveries are made by amateurs, because a skilled person has too much at stake. If something new happens, what will happen to the old skill? The person has learned for years and now has become an expert. So experts never discover anything; they never go beyond the limit of their expertise. On the one hand, they become more and more skillful, and on the other hand they become more and more dull and the work seems to be a drag. Now there is nothing new that can be a thrill to them—they already know what is going to happen, they know what they are going to do; there is no surprise in it.

So here is the lesson: it is good to attain a skill, but it is not good to settle with it forever. Whenever the feeling arises in you that now something is looking stale, change it. Invent something, add something new, delete something old. Again be free from the pattern—that means be free from the skill—again become an amateur. It needs courage and guts to become an amateur again, but that’s how life becomes beautiful.


3

Choose Nature


Wherever you find that society is in conflict with nature, choose nature—whatever the cost. You will never be a loser.

The thinking up to now has been that the individual exists for the society, that the individual has to follow what the society dictates. The individual has to fit with the society. That has become the definition of the normal human being—one who fits with the society. Even if the society is insane, you have to fit with it; then you are normal.

Now the problem for the individual is that nature demands one thing, and society demands something contrary. If society was demanding the same as nature demands, there would be no conflict. We would have remained in the Garden of Eden. The problem arises because society has its own interests, which are not necessarily in tune with the interests of the individual. Society has its own investments, and the individual has to be sacrificed. This is a very topsy-turvy world. It should be just the other way round. The individual does not exist for the society, the society exists for the individual—because society is just an institution, it has no soul. The individual has the soul, is the conscious center.


4

An Echoing Place


The world is an echoing place. If we throw anger, anger comes back; if we give love, love comes back.

Love should not be demanding; otherwise it loses wings, it cannot fly. It becomes rooted in the earth, becomes very earthly. Then it is lust and it brings great misery and great suffering. Love should not be conditional, one should not expect anything out of it. It should be for its own sake—not for any reward, not for any result. If there is some motive in it, again, your love cannot become the sky. It is confined to the motive; the motive becomes its definition, its boundary. Unmotivated love has no boundary: it is pure elation, exuberance, it is the fragrance of the heart.

And just because there is no desire for any result, it does not mean that results do not happen. They do, they happen a thousandfold because whatever we give to the world comes back, it rebounds. The world is an echoing place. If we throw anger, anger comes back; if we give love, love comes back. But that is a natural phenomenon; one need not think about it. One can trust—it happens on its own. This is the law of karma: whatever you sow, you reap; whatever you give, you receive. So there is no need to think about it, it is automatic. Hate, and you will be hated. Love, and you will be loved.


5

Retrospective Wisdom


The other is never responsible. Just watch. If you become wise in the moment, there will be no problem. But everybody becomes wise when the moment is gone. Retrospective wisdom is worthless.

When you have done everything and fought and nagged and bitched and then you become wise and see that there was no point in it, it is too late. It is meaningless—you have already done the harm. This wisdom is just pseudo-wisdom. It gives you a feeling “as if” you have understood. That is a trick of the ego. This wisdom is not going to help. When you are doing something, at that very moment, simultaneously, the awareness should arise, and you should see that what you are doing is useless.

If you can see it when it is there, then you cannot do it. One can never go against one’s awareness, and if one goes against it, that awareness is not awareness. Something else is being mistaken for it.

So remember, the other is never responsible for anything. The problem is something boiling within you. And of course the one you love is closest. You cannot throw it on some stranger passing on the road, so the closest person becomes the place where you go on throwing and pouring your nonsense. But that has to be avoided because love is very fragile. If you do it too much, if you overdo it, love can disappear.

The other is never responsible. Try to make this such a permanent state of awareness in you that whenever you start finding something wrong with the other, remember it. Catch yourself red-handed, and drop it then and there. And ask to be forgiven.


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