You Got to Die

T hirty years ago, on that evening when I shook myself out of a flood of ecstasy and realization, I thought, ‘This is it, this is so simple. I am going to set the whole world on fire.’ Since then, very slowly but steadily, the world has been trying to humble me to reduce the size of my geographical boundaries. I am not complaining about the world. I think as life comes, internally there is no question, it has come in the best possible way to me. Even externally, it has come in the best possible way to me, so I cannot complain. But still, it intrigues me, it bothers me, I have still not learnt a lesson in thirty years. Though I have started speaking to people with reduced goals, within myself I still burn with the passion, ‘Why can’t it happen to everybody?’ Because logically, I cannot find a single reason why everybody cannot have it. I cannot find a single reason in my intelligence as to why it is not possible.

There are many glorious names to this which are out of people’s understanding. People call this ‘enlightenment’ - that means, of course, it is beyond you. People call this ‘God-realization’ - it is up in heaven, you cannot touch it. People call it simply ‘self-realization’ - a more humble description. Or, it is just an ‘awakening’. I call it a reminder. You can be reminded in many ways. Tomorrow morning, you have to wake up at a certain time. You could be reminded by yourself; if you cannot, you can have an alarm bell which beeps. Otherwise, somebody will beat a drum, or somebody will kick you awake. The choice is yours, but you could be awakened, or we can remind you. It is just a reminder, it is not an achievement. It is not about going somewhere.

This happened…a woman was on a river bank. It looked so beautiful - the expanse of the river and the other side of the bank. Then she noticed there was another woman on the other side. So she called out and said, ‘How do I get to the other side?’ That woman looked up and down the river looking for a solution, then she looked at her and said, ‘You are on the other side.’

It is that simple, it is that obvious, but we were given a mind of a certain competence. I know these days people are telling you that you should become a ‘no-mind’. A lot of people already are, and that is the biggest problem on the planet. The biggest problem on the planet is just that quite a few people are refusing to use their mind. This mind is given to you so that you can project, you can think of the next moment, tomorrow, a thousand years, a million years, backwards or forwards, depending upon what your profession is - whether you are a historian or an astrologer. You are playing this game, oscillating between these two professions all the time. Some are lamenting about yesterday, some are looking forward to something glorious or fearful about tomorrow. You are either functioning as a historian or as an astrologer. This is constantly happening.  Nothing wrong - this is the capability of the mind and it is fantastic. The only problem is the projections become so real, they will obliterate the reality.  And the projections are coming from a certain package of compulsions which are physiological, chemical, hormone-based, karmic and social - so many kinds of compulsions. Because the body and mind are functioning from these compulsions, simply being reminded of the nature of your existence seems to be so complex.

In a Sunday school, a teacher wanted to inspire the children to aim for the highest. In Sunday school, in a church school, the highest is heaven of course, not God. So the teacher asked the children, ‘If I give my wealth away to the church and serve the church, will I go to heaven?’ The children in unison said, ‘No!’ Then he asked, ‘If I serve the poor, wash the leper’s feet and wipe the tears of a child’s face, will I go to heaven?’ The children said, ‘No!’ Then he asked, ‘If I love my wife, love my children, take care of my family, do my duty to my nation, will I go to heaven?’ They said, ‘No!’ Then he asked, ‘Then what should I do to go to heaven?’ Little Tommy from the backbench said, ‘You got to die.’

That is all it is, you got to die. This is the only problem. It is just a reminder that what you think as ‘yourself’ is a make-believe projection of your mind. If you kill it, then everything is right here, life is a flood of ecstasy. You don’t have to kill the world; you just have to kill ‘this one’. You have no business to kill the body because you didn’t make it. You have every right to kill all that you have created; you have no right to kill what the Creator has created. Nobody has any business to kill anything that you cannot create. But the person that you call as ‘myself’ is all your making. If you just kill that one guy, everything, the whole universe is yours.

This is a tradeoff - me or the cosmos? One who makes the deal is not asking for currency, just you. This is all the tradeoff is, this is all the whole business of enlightenment is. ‘God-realization’, ‘awakening’, ‘reminder’ - whatever you call it, this is all it is. Just kill what you have created; the Creator’s creation will explode within you.

Love and Grace,