Modern medical treatment relies on the assumption that the human body is composed of separate, independent pieces and not of an indivisible unit. This has led to the steady increase in the number of specialists in different diseases. An ophthalmologist would treat only the eyes and an orthopedist would treat only the bones. Similarly a cardiologist would deal with the diseases pertaining to the heart only.

On the other hand, traditional therapists of the eastern countries regard the human body as one indivisible unit or entity (as a whole). In their opinion no individual part of the human body can remain healthy or unhealthy independent of the other parts. Their approach is to treat the patient and not the disease. They believe that diseases can be prevented provided the resistance power of the body is strengthened with the help of proper food, proper lifestyle and proper physical exercise. On the other hand, if the patient’s body has lost its resistance power, no medicine or surgery will cure him.

Drugs can give a patient some relief from pain or can give sense of some comfort till the body’s power of resistance completely alleviates the disease. They are of no more use than that. It is a matter worth pondering over whether we should carry on our shoulder, the risk involved in the side-effects of these drugs, which, in turn give only insignificant, temporary benefits.

It is just like the background of a blackboard on which you write with white chalk: the blackboard is not against the white chalk; it simply gives it emphasis, prominence.  Without the blackboard your white writing will disappear. It is like day and night — you see it everywhere, but you go on behaving like blind people. Without the night there is no day. The deeper you enter into the dialectics…it is a miraculous experience. Without inaction there is no action; if you cannot relax, you cannot act. The more you can relax, the more perfection will be in your action. They appear to be opposites; they are not. The better you dissolve into sleep in the night, the sharper, the younger you will wake up in the morning. And everywhere in life you will find the same dialectical process.

The mystics of Zen have a koan: they ask the disciples to meditate on the sound of one hand clapping. It is absurd, there cannot be any sound of one hand clapping.  Clapping with what? For clapping two hands are needed, apparently opposed to each other but deep down creating a single clap; united in their efforts, coherent, neither opposed to each other nor contradictory to each other, but complementary.

The meditation is given for the simple reason so that you can become aware that in life you cannot find a single instance supporting the sound of one hand clapping. The whole existence is two hands clapping: man and woman, day and night, life and death, love and hate. The deeper the disciple meditates…slowly, slowly he becomes aware that in existence it is impossible to find anything.

And the master asks everything — “Have you found it? Have you heard the sound of one hand clapping?” Many ideas come to their minds: the sound of running water, and they think perhaps this is it. And they run to the master to tell him, “I have got it: the sound of running water.” And they will get a hit from the master’s staff: “You idiot! This is not the sound of one hand clapping. There is duality; just go and see. All those rocks in the water, they are creating a sound; it is not the sound of one, it is always the sound of two.” In fact, there cannot be a sound of one. Frustrated thousands of times, each answer that the disciple finds is rejected. He comes to the realization that sound is always of the two. Silence is of the one; only silence can be the answer. It is not a clapping. But going through all this process to reach to the silence…and then he comes to the master and the master asks, “Have you heard it?” The disciple bows down to his feet, tears of joy flowing from his eyes. He cannot even say, “Yes, I have found it.” That will not be accurate. He has not found silence; on the contrary, he has disappeared in silence. It is not a finding, it is a disappearing. He is no more, only silence is. Who is there to say now, “I have found the answer?” — hence the tears of joy and a grateful head touching the feet of the master. And the master says, “I do understand, don’t be worried. Don’t be worried that you cannot say it. Nobody can say it. That’s why sometimes when you had come before, rushing with an answer, even before you told me the answer 1 hit you with my staff and told you, ‘You idiot! Go back!’ And you were puzzled, that you have not even said the answer and it has been rejected. Now you can understand: it is not a question of this answer or that answer. All answers are wrong. Only silence — which is an existential presence, not an intellectual answer — is right.”

All creative energy can become destructive, and all destructive energy could have become creative. For example, Hitler: he wanted to be a painter in the very beginning, but he was not allowed. He could not manage to pass the examination and enter an art school. The man who could have been a painter became one of the most destructive men in the world. With the same energy he may have become a Picasso. And one thing is certain — he had energy. The same energy could have been infinitely creative.

Ordinarily, women are not destructive. In the past they were never destructive because they were continuously pregnant. One child is born, then again they were pregnant. For their whole life they used their energy. Now, for the first time in the world a new danger is arising, and that is the destructiveness of women, because now there is no need for them to be pregnant continuously — in fact pregnancy is almost out of date — but the energy is there.  There is a deep connection between birth control methods and the Women’s Liberation Movement. Women are becoming destructive and they are destroying family life, their relationships. They may be trying to rationalize it in many ways, but they are trying to be liberated from the slavery. In fact it is a destructive phase. They have the energy and they don’t know what to do with it. The birth control methods have stopped their creative channelization. Now if some channels are not opened to them they will become very destructive.

In the West the family life is almost gone. There is continual conflict, continual fighting, quarreling and being nasty to each other. And the reason is — and nobody understands what the reason is — a biological problem.

So whenever you feel the period is corning, be more alert; and before it  starts, do wild dancing. You can go beyond nature because you have a higher nature also. One can go beyond biology, and one has to, otherwise one is a slave to hormones! So whenever you feel destructive, start dancing. What I am saying is that dancing will absorb your energy. You are doing the opposite. You may like to rest and not do anything during these days, but do something — anything, go for a long walk — because the energy needs release. Once you catch the point, once you know that the dance relaxes you completely, those four days of your period will become the most beautiful because you will never have so much energy as then.

It is very good to know which days you will be suffering from your monthly period — whether you are a man or a woman — because when somebody is suffering from their menstrual period, you have to be more compassionate and more loving towards the person. He is not his usual self…. The only thing to be remembered is that if you both have menstrual crises on the same date, then one of you has to go for a honeymoon — just one. Each month you can alternate — next month the other one can go for the honeymoon. But don’t remain together, because that will be a very explosive situation….

Unless you become a watcher, unless you become a witness to your own mental states — this is what I call meditation. And these are great opportunities:  when you are feeling sad, just watch it. It is chemistry — you are consciousness. Don’t get mixed up with chemistry; don’t get identified with chemistry. It is physiology, it is chemistry, it is biology — you are consciousness, a watcher. Slowly, slowly, even when your whole chemistry is going berserk, you will remain centred, grounded, unaffected — and this is true for both, man or woman.”

Your experiences belong to the fourth centre, the heart. It is one of the most important centres, because it is exactly in the middle. Three centres are below it and three centres are above it. That’s why love is such a balancing experience. Your description is, “Whenever I feel open, flowing, connecting with you, other people, nature or myself, I mostly feel it in my heart as silence and expanding spaciousness, and sometimes as radiating light. Is this the same kind of experience you were talking about?”

I was talking about the third eye, which is above the heart. There are three centres above the heart. One is in your throat, which is the centre of creativity; one is between your two eyebrows, exactly in the middle, which is called the third eye. Just as you have two eyes to know the outside world… the third eye is only a metaphor, but the experience is knowing oneself, seeing oneself.

The last centre is sahasrar, the seventh; that is at the top of your head. As consciousness goes on moving upwards, first you know yourself, and in the second step you know the whole universe; you know the whole and yourself as part of it. In the old language, the seventh is ‘knowing God’, the sixth is ‘knowing yourself’, the fifth is ‘being creative’, and the fourth is ‘being loving, sharing and knowing others’. With the fourth, your journey becomes certain; it can be guaranteed that you will reach the seventh.  Before the fourth, there is a possibility you may go astray.

The first centre is the sex centre, which is for reproduction — so that life continues.  Just above it…the sex energy can be moved upwards, and it is a great experience; for the first time you find yourself self-sufficient. Sex always needs the other. The second centre is the centre of contentment, self-sufficiency: you are enough unto yourself. At the third centre you start exploring — who are you? who is this self-sufficient being? These centres are all significant. The moment you find who you are, the fourth centre opens and you find you are love.

Before the fourth the journey has started, but there is a possibility you may not be able to complete it. You can go astray. For example, finding yourself self-sufficient, contented, you can remain there; there is no need to do anything anymore. You may not even ask the question, “Who am I?” The sufficiency is so much that all questions disappear.  A master is needed in these moments, so that you don’t settle somewhere in the middle without reaching the goal. And there are beautiful spots to settle — feeling contented, what is the need to go on? But the master goes on nagging you and wants you to know who you are; you may be contented, but at least know who you are. The moment you know who you are, a new door opens, because you become aware of life, of love, of joy. You can stay there; it is so much, there is no need to move anymore. But the master goads you on, “Move to the fourth! Unless you find the purest energy of love, you will not know the splendour of existence.”

After the fourth, you cannot go astray. Once you have known the splendour of existence, creativity arises on its own. You have known beauty; you would like to create it also. You want to be a creator. A tremendous longing for creativity arises.

Whenever you feel love, you always feel creativity just as a shadow coming with it.  The man of creativity cannot simply go on looking outside. There is much beauty outside…but he becomes aware that just as there is an infinite sky outside, to balance it there must be the same infinity inside. If a master is available, it is good; if he is not available, these experiences will lead you onwards.

Once your third eye is opened, and you see yourself, the whole expanse of your consciousness, you have come very close to the temple of God; you are just standing on the steps. You can see the door and you cannot resist the temptation to go inside the temple and see what is there. There you find universal consciousness, there you find enlightenment, there you find ultimate liberation. There you find your eternity_

So these are the seven centres — just arbitrarily created divisions, so the seeker can move from one to another in a systematic way; otherwise, there is every possibility, if you are working by yourself, to get muddled. Particularly before the fourth centre there are dangers, and even after the fourth centre.

There have been many poets who have lived at the fifth centre of creativity and never gone ahead — many painters, many dancers, many singers who created great art, but never moved to the third eye. And there have been mystics who have remained with the third eye, knowing their own inner beauty; it is so fulfilling that they thought they had arrived. Somebody is needed to tell you that there is still something more ahead; otherwise, in your ignorance, what you will do is almost unpredictable.

Mike had decided to join the police force and went along for the entrance examination. The examining sergeant, realizing that the prospective recruit was an

Irishman, decided to ask him a simple question. “Who killed Jesus Christ?” he asked.

Mike looked worried and said nothing, so the sergeant told him not to worry and that he could have some time to think about it. Mike was on his way home when he met Paddy.

“Well,” said Paddy, “are you a policeman yet?”

“Not only that,” says Mike, “but I am on my first case.”

Man is such that he needs someone who has known the path and knows the pitfalls, knows the beautiful spots where one can remain stuck, and has compassion enough to go on pushing you — even against you — until you have reached to the final stage of  your potentiality.

You may have seen it, but you may not have thought about it. The wife is working the whole day, perfectly healthy, but as the husband comes home, looking from the window, she immediately goes to bed. She has a headache — because unless she has a headache the husband does not show any love. But if she has a headache, reluctantly the husband sits by her side, massages her head, shows some phony kind of love, talks sweet and beautiful words.  For months he has not called her ‘darling’, but when the headache is there he has to call her ‘darling’. And that’s what she wants to hear, “I love you. And I love you not just today, I will love you forever.”

It is strange that you show your love to your children when they are sick. But you don’t understand a simple psychology of association — sickness and love become associated.  Whenever the child needs your love he has to be sick. Who cares about the healthy child, who cares about the healthy wife, who cares about the healthy husband? Love seems to be something like a medicine; it is needed only by the sick.

It should be clear to you — take care of the sick, but never show love. Taking care of the sick is a totally different thing. Be indifferent, because a headache is not something great. Take care, but avoid your sweet nothings; take care in a very pragmatic way. Put the medicine on her head, but don’t show love, because that is dangerous.  When a child is sick, take care, but be absolutely indifferent. Make the child understand that by being sick he cannot blackmail you. The whole humanity is blackmailing each other. Sickness, oldness, disease have become almost demanding, “You have to love me because I’m sick, I’m old….”

When somebody is sick you show love…. And that’s the routine that humanity has followed. To the sick person you don’t show anger, even if you are angry. To the sick person, even if you don’t feel any love, you show love; if you cannot show love, at least sympathy.  But these are dangerous, and very much against psychological findings….

You should love yourself without thinking whether you deserve it or not. You are alive — that is enough proof that you deserve love, just as you deserve breathing. You don’t think whether you deserve breathing or not. Love is a subtle nourishment to the soul, just as food is to the body. And if you are full of love for yourself you will be able to love others.  But love the healthy, love the strong.

Take care of the sick, take care of the old; but care is a totally different matter. The difference between love and care is the difference between a mother and a nurse. The nurse takes care, the mother loves. When the child is sick it is even better for the mother to just be a nurse. When the child is healthy, pour as much love as you can. Let love be associated with healthiness, strength, intelligence — that will help the child a long way in his life.

In sleep we reach the same place we do in meditation. The only difference is that in sleep we are unconscious, while in meditation we are fully conscious. If someone were to become fully aware, even in his sleep, he would have the same experience as in meditation.  For example, if we were to put a person under anaesthetic, and in his unconscious state bring him on a stretcher to a garden where flowers are in full bloom, where fragrance is in the air, where the sun is shining and the birds are singing, the man would be completely unaware of all this. After we brought him back and he was out of the anaesthesia, if we asked him how he liked the garden, he would not be able to tell us anything. Then, if you were to take him to the same garden when he was fully conscious, he would experience everything present there when he had been brought in before, In both cases, although the man was brought to the same place…he was unaware of the beautiful surroundings in the first instance, while in the second instance he would be fully aware of the flowers, the fragrance, the song of the birds, the rising sun. So, although you will undoubtedly reach as far in an unconscious state, to reach some place in an unconscious state is as good as not reaching there at all.

In sleep, we reach the same paradise we reach in meditation, but we are unaware of it.  Each night we travel to this paradise, and then we come back — unaware. Although the fresh breeze and the lovely fragrance of the place touch us, and the songs of the birds ring in our ears, we are never aware of it. And yet, in spite of returning from this paradise totally unaware of it, one might say, “I feel very good this morning. I feel very peaceful — I slept well last night.”

What do you feel so good about? Having slept well, what good happened? It cannot be only because you slept, surely you must have been somewhere; something must have happened to you. But in the morning you have no knowledge of it, except for a vague idea of feeling good. One who has had a deep sleep at night gets up refreshed in the morning. This shows the person has reached a rejuvenating source in sleep — but in an unconscious state. One who is unable to sleep well at night finds himself more tired in the morning than he was the previous evening. And if a person does not sleep well for a few days it becomes difficult for him to survive, because his connection with the source of life is broken. He is unable to reach the place it is essential he should….

In New York, at least thirty percent of the people cannot sleep without tranquilizers. Psychologists believe that if this condition prevails for the next hundred years, not a single person will be able to sleep without medication. People have completely lost sleep. If a man who has lost sleep were to ask you how you go to sleep, and your answer were, “All I do is put my head on the pillow and fall asleep,” he will not believe you. He will find this impossible and suspect there must be some trick he doesn’t know to it — because he lays his head on the pillow too, and nothing happens.

God forbid, but a time may come, after a thousand or two thousand years, when everyone will have lost natural sleep, and people will refuse to believe that, a thousand or two thousand years before their time, people simply rested their heads on their pillows and fell asleep. They will take this as fiction, a mythical story from the Puranas. They will not believe it to be true. They will say, “This is not possible, because if that isn’t true about us, how can it be true about anyone else?”

It is hard to believe there was a time when a man could close his eyes and go into meditation — because now, when you sit with your eyes closed, you reach nowhere; inside, thoughts keep hovering around and you remain where you are. In the past, meditation was as easy for those who were close to nature as sleep is for those who live close to nature. First meditation disappeared; now sleep is on its way out.  Those things are first lost which are conscious; after that, those things are lost which are unconscious. With the disappearance of meditation the world has almost become irreligious, and when sleep disappears the world will become totally irreligious. There is no hope for religion in a sleepless world.

Sleep is not total as long as one is dreaming — one keeps moving between the states of sleep and wakefulness. Dreaming is a state in which one is half asleep and half awake. To be in a dream means, even though your eyes are closed, you are not asleep; external influences are still affecting you. The people you met during the day, you are still with them at night in your dreams. Dreams occupy the middle state between sleep and wakefulness. And that you don’t remember in the morning that you dreamed all night is beside the point. Much research on sleep is being carried out in America. Some ten big laboratories have been experimenting on thousands of people for about eight to ten years.

Americans are showing interest in meditation because they have lost sleep. They think that perhaps meditation may bring their sleep back, that it may bring some peace into their lives.  That’s why they look upon meditation as nothing more than a tranquilizer. When Vivekananda first introduced meditation in America, a physician came to him and said, “I enjoyed your meditation immensely. It is absolutely a non-medicinal tranquilizer. It’s not a medicine and yet it puts one to sleep — it’s great.”  Yogis are not the reason their influence is growing so much in America — the lack of sleep is the real cause. People’s sleep is in a mess, and consequently life in America is filled with heaviness, depression, tension. And so in America we see the growing need for tranquilizers — somehow, to bring sleep to people.  Each year, millions of dollars are being spent on tranquilizers in America. Ten big laboratories are conducting research on thousands of people who are being paid to undergo nights of rather uncomfortable, painful sleep. All kinds of electrodes and thousands of wires are attached to people’s bodies, and they are examined from all angles to find out what is happening inside them. One incredible discovery these experiments have revealed is that man dreams almost the whole night. Waking up, some people said they didn’t dream, while some said they did. But in fact, all of them dreamed. The only difference was that those with better memories remembered dreaming, while those with weaker memories could not recall dreaming. But it was found that a completely healthy person was able to slip into a deep, dreamless sleep for ten minutes.

Dreams can be scanned through machines. Nerves in the brain remain active during our dreaming state, but as the dream stops, the nerves cease to be active as well, and the machine indicates a gap has occurred. The gap shows that, at that time, the man was neither dreaming nor thinking — he was lost somewhere.

It is interesting that the machines keep recording movement inside the man while he is in the dreaming state, but as soon as he falls into dreamless sleep, the machine shows a gap. They don’t know where the man disappeared in that gap. So, dreamless sleep means the man has reached a place beyond the machine’s range. It is in this gap that man enters the divine. The machine is unable to detect this space in between, this gap. The machine records the internal activity as long as the man is dreaming — then comes the gap and the man disappears somewhere. And then, after ten minutes, the machine starts recording again. It is difficult to say where the man was during that ten-minute interval. American psychologists are very intrigued by this gap; hence they consider sleep the biggest mystery.

You sleep every day, yet you have no idea what sleep is. A man sleeps all through his life, and yet nothing changes — he knows nothing about sleep. The reason you don’t know anything about sleep is that when sleep is there, you are not. Remember, you are only as long as sleep is not, and so you come to know only as much as the machine knows. Just as in the face of the gap the machine stops and is unable to reach where the man has been transported, you cannot reach there either — because you are no more than a machine as well.

Since you do not come across the gap either, sleep remains a mystery; it remains beyond your reach. This is so because a man falls into wakeless sleep only when he ceases to exist in his ‘I-am-ness’ . And therefore, as the ego keeps growing, sleep becomes less and less. An egoistic person loses his capacity to sleep because his ego, the ‘I’, keeps asserting itself twenty-four hours a day. It is the ‘I’ that wakes up, the same ‘I’ that walks on the street. The `I’ remains so present the entire twenty-four hours that at the moment of falling asleep, when the time approaches to drop the ‘I’ , one is unable to get rid of it. Obviously, it becomes difficult to fall asleep. As long as the exists, sleep is impossible. And as long as the ‘I’ exists, entering into existence is impossible.  Entering into sleep and entering into existence are exactly one and the same thing; the only difference is that through sleep one enters into existence in an unconscious state, while through meditation one enters into existence in a conscious state. But this is a very big difference. You may enter existence through sleep for thousands of lives, yet you will never come to know existence. But if, even for a moment, you enter meditation you will have reached the same place you have reached in deep sleep for thousands and millions of lives — although always in an unconscious state — and it will transform your life totally.

The interesting thing is, once a person enters meditation, enters the emptiness where deep sleep takes him, he never remains unconscious — even when he is asleep.

Ananda lived with Buddha for many years, for years he slept near Buddha. One morning he asked Buddha, “For years I have been watching you sleep. Not once do you ever change sides; you sleep the whole night in the same position. Your limbs stay where they were when you laid down at night; there is not the slightest movement. Many times I have got up at night to check whether you have moved. I have stayed up nights watching you — your hands, your feet, rest in the same position; you never ever change sides.

Do you keep some kind of a record of your sleep the whole night?” “I don’t need to keep any record,” Buddha replied. “I sleep in a conscious state, so I find no need to change sides. I can if I want to. Turning from one side to another is not a requirement of sleep, it’s a requirement of your restless mind.” A restless mind cannot even rest in one place for a single night, let along during the day. Even sleeping at night, the whole time the body shows its restlessness.

If you watch a person asleep at night you will see he is continuously restless the whole time. You will find him moving his hands in much the same way he does when he is awake during the day. In his dream at night, you will find him running and panting in much the same way it happens with someone during the day — he feels out of breath, tired. At night, in dreams, he fights in much the same way he fights during the day. He is filled with passion during the day, at night as well. There is no fundamental difference between the day and the night of such a person, except that at night he lies down exhausted, unconscious; everything else continues to function as usual. So Buddha said, “I can change sides if I want to, but there is no need.”

But we don’t realize…. A man sitting in a chair keeps jiggling his legs. Ask him, “Why are your legs jiggling like that? It’s understandable if they move when you walk, but why are they moving when you are sitting in a chair?” No sooner do you say this than the man will stop immediately. Then he won’t even move for a second, but he will have no explanation as to why he was doing it. It shows how restlessness within causes agitation in the entire body.  Inside is the restless mind; it cannot be still, in one position, even for a moment. It will keep the whole body fidgeting: the legs will move, the head will shake; even sitting the body will change sides.

That’s why, even for ten minutes, you find it so difficult to sit still in meditation. And from a thousand different spots the body urges you to twitch and turn. We do not notice this until we sit with awareness in meditation. We realize then what sort of a body this is; it doesn’t want to remain still in one position even for a second. The confusion, the tension, and the excitement of the mind stir up the entire body.

For about ten minutes everything disappears in wakeless sleep — although these ten minutes are available only to one who is completely healthy and peaceful, not to everyone.  Others get this kind of sleep anywhere from one to five minutes; most people get only two, or one minute of deep sleep.  The little juice we receive in that one minute of reaching to the source of life we apply to making our next twenty-four hours work. Whatever little amount of oil the lamp receives in that short period, we utilize it to carry on our lives for a full twenty-four hours. The lamp of one’s life burns on whatsoever amount of oil it receives then. This is the reason the lamp burns so slow — not enough oil is collected to make the lamp of life burn brightly, so it can become a flaming torch.

Meditation brings you slowly to the source of life. Then it is not that you keep taking a handful of nourishment out of it, you are simply in the source itself. Then it is not that you refill your lamp with more oil — then the entire ocean of oil becomes available to you. Then you begin to live in that very ocean. With that kind of living, sleep disappears — not in the sense that one doesn’t sleep anymore, but in the sense that, even when one is asleep, someone within remains wide awake. Then dreams no longer exist. A yogi stays awake, he sleeps, but he never dreams — his dreams disappear totally. And when dreams disappear, thoughts disappear. What we know as thoughts in the wakeful state are called dreams in the sleeping state. There is only a slight difference between thoughts and dreams: thoughts are slightly more civilized dreams, while dreams are a little primitive in nature. Of the two, one is the original thought.

In fact, children, or the aboriginal tribes, can think only in pictures, not in words. Man’s first thoughts are always in pictures. For example, when a child is hungry he does not think in words, “I am hungry.” A child can visualize the mother’s breast; he can imagine himself sucking the breast. He can be filled with the desire to go to the breast, but he cannot form the words.  The word formation starts much later; pictures appear first….

The language of words is handy during the day, but it is not useful at night. We again become primitive at night. We disappear in sleep as we are. We lose our degrees, university educations, everything. We are transported to a point where the original man once stood.  That’s why pictures emerge at night in sleep, and words appear during the day. If we want to make love during the day, we can think in terms of words, but at night there is no way to express love except through images.

Thoughts do not seem as alive as dreams. In dreams the whole image appears before you.  That’s why we enjoy watching a movie based on a novel more than reading the novel itself.  The only reason for this is that the novel is in the language of words, while the movie is in the language of images. In the same manner, you feel greater joy being here and listening to me live. You would not feel the same joy listening to this talk on a tape, because here the image is present, on tape there are only words. The language of images is nearer to us, more natural. At night words turn into pictures; that’s the difference there is.

The day dreams disappear, thoughts disappear too; the day thoughts disappear, dreams disappear as well. If the day is empty of thoughts, the night will be empty of dreams. And remember, dreams don’t allow you to sleep, and thoughts don’t allow you to sleep, and thoughts don’t allow you to awaken.   Make sure you understand both things: dreams do not let you sleep, and thoughts do not let you awaken. If dreams disappear, sleep will be total; if thoughts disappear, awakening will be total.  If the awakening is total and the sleep is total, then not much difference exists between the two.  The only difference is in keeping the eyes open or closed, and in the body being at work or at rest. One who is totally awakened sleeps totally, but in both states his consciousness remains exactly the same. Consciousness is one, unchangeable; only the body changes. Awake, the body is at work; asleep, the body is at rest.

Why God is not attained in sleep, he can be attained if you can remain awake even in your sleep. And so in sleeping method — sleeping in awareness, entering into sleep with awareness. That’s why I ask you to relax your body, to relax your breathing, to calm down your thoughts. All this is a preparation for sleep. Therefore, it so often happens that some friends go to sleep during meditation — obviously; this is a preparation for sleep. And, while preparing for it, they don’t know when they go to sleep. That’s why the third suggestion: stay awake inside, remain conscious within; let the body be totally relaxed, let the breathing be totally relaxed, more relaxed that it normally is while sleeping. But stay awake within. Within, let your awareness burn like a lamp so you don’t fall asleep.

The initial conditions of meditation and sleep are the same, but there is a difference in the final condition. The first condition is that the body should be relaxed.

If you suffer from insomnia, the first thing a doctor will teach you is relaxation. He will ask you to do the same thing: relax your body, don’t let any tension remain in your body; let your body be totally loose, just like cotton fluff. Have you ever noticed how a dog or a cat sleeps? They sleep as if they are not. Have you ever noticed a baby sleeping? There is no tension anywhere — its arms and legs remain unbelievably loose. Watch a youth and an old man — you will find everything tense in them. So the doctor would ask them to relax.

The same condition applies to sleep: the breathing should be relaxed, deep and slow. You must have noticed that jogging, the breathing becomes faster. Similarly, when the body exerts itself at work, the breathing becomes faster and the blood circulation increases. For sleeping, the blood circulation should slow down — the situation should be just the opposite to jogging — and then the breathing will relax.  So the second condition is: relax your breathing….

So the conditions for meditation are primarily the same as those applicable to sleep: relax your body, relax your breathing, let go of thoughts. And so, for sleep as well as for meditation, the initial conditions are equally true. The difference is in the final condition. In the former you remain in deep sleep; in meditation you remain fully awake — that’s all.

There is a deep relationship between sleep and meditation. However, there is one very significant difference between the two: the difference between a conscious and an unconscious state. Sleep is unawareness, meditation is awakening.”

Every hospital should have a teacher of meditation.  The person who is going to die should be given one month and will be allowed… if he changes his mind he can go back, because nobody is forcing him. Emotional people who want to commit suicide cannot remain emotional for one month — emotionality can be momentary. Most of the people who commit suicide, if they had waited one moment longer, they would not have committed suicide at all. It is out of anger, out of jealousy, out of hatred or something that they forget the value of life.

The whole problem is that the politicians think accepting euthanasia means suicide is no longer a crime. No, it does not mean that. Suicide is still a crime.

Euthanasia will be with the permission of the medical board. One month’s rest in the hospital — every kind of help that can be given to the person to become calm and quiet… all friends coming to meet him, his wife, his children, because he is going on a long journey. There is no question of preventing him — he has lived long, and he does not want to go on living, his work is finished.

And he should be taught meditation in this one month, so that he can do meditation while death comes. And for death, medical help should be given so it comes like a sleep — slowly, slowly, side by side with meditation, sleep going deeper. We can change thousands of people’s deaths into enlightenment. And there is no fear of suicide, because he is not going to commit suicide; if somebody tries to commit suicide he will still be committing a crime. He is asking permission. With the permission of the medical board…and he has one month’s time in which he can change his mind at any moment. On the last day he can say, “I don’t want to die” —then he can go home. There is no problem in it: it is his decision.

Right now there is a very strange situation in many countries. People try to commit suicide: if they succeed, good; if they don’t succeed, then the court gives them the death sentence. Strange! — they themselves were doing that. They were caught in the middle. Now for two years a trial will go on; judges and advocates will be arguing, and this and that, and finally the man has to be hanged, again. He was doing that in the very first place, by himself!

Why all this nonsense?

Euthanasia is becoming more and more a need, because with medical science progressing people are living longer. Scientists have not come across any skeleton from five thousand years ago of a person who was more than forty years old when he died. Five thousand years ago the longest a person was going to live was forty, and out of ten children born nine were going to die within two years — only one would survive — so life was immensely valuable.  Hippocrates gave the oath to the medical profession that you have to help life in every case.  He was not aware — he was not a seer — he had not the insight to see that a day could come when out of ten children, all ten would survive. Now that is happening. On the one hand, nine more children are surviving; and on the other hand, medical science helps people to live longer — ninety years, one hundred years is not rare. In developed countries it is very easy to find a ninety-year-old person or a one-hundred-year-old person.

In the Soviet Union there are people who have reached one hundred and fifty years, and there are a few thousand people who have reached one hundred and eighty years of age — and they are still working. But now life has become boring. One hundred and eighty years, just think of it, doing the same thing even the bones will be hurting — and yet they still have no possibility of death. Death still seems to be far away — they are still working and healthy.

In America there are thousands of people in the hospitals just lying in their beds with all kinds of instruments connected to them. Many are on artificial breathing machines. What is the point if the person himself cannot breathe? What do you expect him to do? And why are you burdening the whole nation with this person when there are many people dying on the streets, starving?

Thirty million people in America are on the streets without shelter, without food, without clothes, and thousands of people are taking up hospital beds, doctors, nurses — their work, their labour, medicines. Everybody knows they will die sooner or later, but as long as you can you should keep them alive. They want to die. They shout that they want to die, but the doctor cannot help in that. These people certainly need some rights; they are being forced to live, and force is in every way undemocratic.  Make it seventy-five years or eighty years; then life is lived enough. The children are grown up…when you are eighty your children will be fifty, fifty-five; they are getting old. Now there is no need for you to be bothered and worried. You are retired; now you are simply a burden, you don’t know what to do.

And that is why old people are so irritable — because they don’t have any work, they don’t have any respect, they don’t have any dignity. Nobody bothers about them, nobody takes note of them. They are ready to fight and be angry and shout. These are simply their frustrations that are showing; the real thing is they want to die. But they cannot even say it. It is unchristian, it is irreligious — the very idea of death.

They should be given freedom, but not only to die; they should be given the freedom of one month’s training in how to die. In that training meditation should be a basic part; physical care should be a basic part. They should die healthy, whole, silent, peaceful — slowly slipping deep into sleep. And if meditation has been joined with sleep they may die enlightened. They may know that only the body is left behind, and they are part of eternity.

Their death will be better than the ordinary death, because in the ordinary death you don’t have the chance of becoming enlightened. In fact more and more people will prefer to die in the hospitals, in the special institutes for death where every arrangement is made. You can leave life in a joyous, ecstatic way, with great thankfulness and gratitude.

Hence euthanasia should be there but with the above conditions.

Western medicine takes a mechanical view of man, so wherever mechanics can be successful, it is successful. But man is not a machine; man is an organic unity, and man needs not only the treatment of the part that is sick. The sick part is only a symptom that the whole organism is going through difficulties. The sick part is only showing it because it is the weakest.  You treat the sick part, you are successful…but then somewhere else the disease appears. You have prevented the disease from expressing itself through the sick part; you have made it stronger. But you do not understand that man is a whole: either he is sick or he is healthy, there is no station between the two. He should be taken as a whole organism.  Healing takes man as a whole organism.

Man should be taken as a whole, treated as an organic unity. But the problem with modern medicine, Western medicine, is that it does not think you have any soul, that you have anything more than a body-mind structure. You also are a machine: your eyes can be replaced, your hands can be replaced, your legs can be replaced — and sooner or later brains will be replaced. Healing takes man as a whole organism for treating.

Mind functions logically, rationally, intellectually. Neither madness nor enlightenment function intellectually. They are similar: madness has fallen below reason, and enlightenment has gone above reason, but both are irrational; hence, sometimes in the East a madman is misunderstood as being an enlightened man. These similarities are there.

And in the West, once in a while — it is not an everyday phenomenon, but once in a while — an enlightened person has been understood as being mad, because the West understands only one thing: if you are out of your mind, you are mad. It has no category for above the mind; it has only one category — below the mind.

In the East the misunderstanding happens because for centuries the East has known people who are out of their mind and at the same time above the mind; hence, they are similar to madmen. For the Eastern masses it creates a confusion, it creates a problem. They have decided it is better to misunderstand a madman as being an enlightened man, than to misunderstand an enlightened man as being a madman —because what are you losing by misunderstanding a madman as being an enlightened man? You are not losing anything. But by misunderstanding an enlightened man as being a madman you are certainly losing a tremendous opportunity. But the misunderstanding is possible because of the similarities…. A madman sometimes can have glimpses which the rational man cannot have because the madman has stepped out of the mechanism of mind; of course on the wrong side, from the back door, but still he is out of the mind. Even from the back door he can have some glimpses which are not available to the people who never come out of the house. Certainly he is not as fortunate as to have come from the front door: that needs tremendous effort.  Madness is disease. It happens to you — you don’t have to make an effort to be mad. It is a sickness and it is curable. Enlightenment happens through tremendous awareness and arduous effort.

Enlightenment is the supreme health.  You should understand the word ‘health’ carefully. It is not only physiologically meaningful.  Of course physiologically it is meaningful, but not only physiologically; it has a far higher meaning too. Health means healing the wounds. It comes from the root which means healing. If your physiology needs some healing then medicine is offered. If your spirituality needs some healing, then meditation is offered. Strangely, ‘health’ comes from the same root from which comes the word ‘wholeness’.

Health means the body is whole, nothing is missing. And from wholeness comes the word holy: the spirit is whole, nothing is missing. Similarly, the word medicine and the word meditation come from the same root — that which cures. Medicine cures Wounds in your physiology, and meditation cures wounds in your spiritual existence, in your ultimate being….  Sufis call the madman masta; masta means intoxicated. The madman and the enlightened man both have to pass through a certain state, that is, getting out of reason, out of their mind. They have to cross the same boundary: by the wrong door or right door, they both cross the same boundary, and while they are crossing the boundary they both become mastas — intoxicated. But the enlightened person soon regains his balance because he has made the effort to get out of the mind; he is prepared to get out of the mind, he is ready to get out of the mind. The madman has got out of his mind unprepared. He was not ready. He has simply fallen out of his mind — it is an accident. Enlightenment is never an accident….

The enlightened man is also always blissful. I am using a different word just so you don’t get confused. The madman is always happy. But there is a possibility he can be cured; then he will become unhappy, then he will start worrying. He will worry more than you because he will see that he had gone mad: now he will worry about madness. When he was mad he had no worry at all, he could not care less. Now he will worry that he had gone mad and he will worry that tomorrow it can happen again because it has happened….

Just see the point: even if you fall below the mind you are happy. It is the mind that is causing you all kinds of misery, suffering, jealousies, hatred, anger, violence, greed; and they all go on making you more and more a pain to yourself. You start hurting all over, everybody is hurting all over. Even to fall below the mind — which is Falling below humanity, because that is the only difference between you and the animals… A madman is really back in the world of animals. He has dropped out of evolution. He has gone back; he has turned his back on Charles Darwin. He has said, “Good-bye. Good-bye to your evolution!” He has simply fallen back to a subhuman level.

The enlightened man is out of his mind but he has full control of his mind. And he does not need a switchboard — just his awareness is enough. If you observe anything minutely, you will have a little experience of the enlightened man — not the full experience but a little taste, just a tongue-tip taste. If you observe your anger minutely, anger disappears. You are feeling a sexual urge: watch it closely, and soon it disappears. If just by your watching, things evaporate, what to say about the man who is continually above the mind, simply aware of the whole mind? Then all those ugly things that you would like to drop simply evaporate. And remember, they all have energy. Anger is energy. When anger evaporates, the energy which is left behind turns into compassion. It is the same energy. Through observation the anger has left — that was the mode, the form surrounding the energy — but the energy remains. Now, the energy of anger, without anger, is compassion. When sex disappears the tremendous energy of love is left behind. Each ugly thing in your mind, disappearing, leaves a great treasure behind.

The enlightened man has no need to drop anything and has no need to practice anything. All that is wrong drops of its own accord because it cannot stand up to his awareness, and all that is good evolves of its own accord because awareness is nourishment for it.

The madman can be helped very easily because he has tasted something out of the mind, but he needs to be shown the right door. In a better world our madhouses will not only be trying to make those people sane — that is meaningless — our madhouses will be trying to help those people to use that opportunity to move through the right door. A madman going into a madhouse will come out enlightened — not just the same old self again, miserable, suffering.  So, to me, madness has immense significance. It can become a way towards enlightenment.”

LSD is not addictive.  However adverse pasychiatric reactions such as anxiety, paranoia and delusions are possible.    LSD is in the ergoline family and is sensitive to oxygen, ultraviolet light and chlorine, though its may last for years if it is stored away from light and moisture at low temperature.  In pure form it is odorless and clear or white in color.

LSD  can be used as a help, but the help is very dangerous. It is not so easy. If you use a mantra, even that can become difficult to throw, but if you use acid it will be even more difficult to throw.

The moment you are on an LSD trip you are not in control. Chemistry takes control and you are not the master. And once you are not the master, it is difficult to regain that position. The chemical is not the slave, now you are the slave. Now how to control it is not going to be your choice. Once you take LSD as a help you are making a slave of the master, and your whole body chemistry will be affected by it.  Your body will begin to crave LSD. Now the craving will not just be of the mind as it is when you get attached to a mantra. When you use acid as a help, the craving becomes part of the body; the LSD goes to the very cells of the body. It changes them, your inner chemical structure becomes different. Then all the body cells begin to crave acid and it will be difficult to drop it.

LSD can be used to bring you to meditation only if your body has been prepared for it. So if you ask if it can be used in the West, I will say that it is not for the West at all. It can be used only in the East — if the body is totally prepared for it. Yoga has used it, Tantra has used it — there are schools of Tantra and Yoga that have used LSD as a help — but then they prepare your body first. There is a long process of purification of the body. Your body becomes so pure and you become such a great master of it that even chemistry cannot become your master now. So Yoga allows it, but in a very specific way.

First your body must be purified chemically. Then you will be in such control of the body that even your body chemistry can be controlled. For example, there are certain yogic exercises…. If you take poison, through a particular yogic exercise you can order your blood not to mix with it and the poison will pass through the body and come out in the urine without having mixed with the blood at all. If you can do this, if you can control your body chemistry, then you can use anything because you have remained the master.

In Tantra, particular in ‘leftist’ Tantra, they use alcohol to help meditation. It looks absurd; it is not. The seeker will take alcohol in a particular quantity and then will try to be alert. Consciousness must not be lost. By and by the quantity of alcohol will be raised, but the consciousness must remain alert. The person has taken alcohol, it has been absorbed in the body, but the mind remains above it. Consciousness is not lost. Then the quantity of alcohol is raised higher and higher. Through this practice a point comes when any amount of alcohol can be given and the mind remains alert. Only then can LSD be a help.

In the West there are no practices to purify the body or to increase consciousness through changes in body chemistry. Acid is taken without any preparation in the West. It is not going to help. Rather, on the contrary, it may destroy the whole mind.

There are many problems. Once you have been on an LSD trip you have a glimpse of something you have never known, something you have never felt. If you begin to practice meditation it is a long process, but LSD is not a process. You take it, and the process is over.

Then the body begins to work. Meditation is a long process — you have to do it for years; only then will the results be forthcoming — and when you have experienced a shortcut it will be difficult to follow a long process. The mind will crave to return to using the drugs. So it is difficult to meditate once you have known a glimpse through chemistry. To undertake something that is a long process will be difficult. Meditation needs more stamina, more faith, more waiting, and it will be difficult because now you can compare.

Secondly, any method is bad if you are not in control all the time. When you are meditating, you can stop at any moment. If you want to stop, you can stop this very moment. You can come out of it. You cannot stop an LSD trip: once you have taken LSD you have to complete the circle. Now you are not the master.

Anything that makes a slave of you is ultimately not going to help spiritually, because spirituality basically means to be the master of oneself. So I wouldn’t suggest shortcuts. I am not against LSD, I may sometimes be for it, but then a long preliminary preparation is necessary. Then you will be the master.

But then LSD is not a shortcut. It will take even longer than meditation. Hatha Yoga takes years to prepare a body. Twenty years, twenty-five years — then a body is ready. Now you can use any chemical help and it will not be destructive to your being.

But then the process is far longer. Then LSD can be used; If you are prepared to take twenty years to prepare the body in order to take LSD then it is not destructive, but the same thing can be done in two years with meditation. Because the body is more gross, mastery is more difficult. The mind is more subtle so mastery is easier. The body is further away from your being, so there is a greater gap; with the mind the gap is shorter.

In India, the primitive method to prepare the body to be ready for meditation was Hatha Yoga. It took so long a time to prepare the body that sometimes Hatha Yoga had to invent methods to prolong life so that Hatha Yoga could be continued. It was such a long process that sixty years might not be enough, seventy years might not be enough. And there is a problem: if’ the mastery is not achieved in this life then in the next life you have to begin from ABC because you have a new body. The whole effort has been lost.  You do not have a new mind in your next life so whatever is attained through the mind remains with you, but whatever is attained through the body is lost with every death. So Hatha Yoga had to invent methods to prolong life for two hundred to three hundred years so that mastery could be attained.

If the mastery is of the mind then you can change the body, but the preparedness of the body belongs to the body alone. Hatha Yoga invented many methods so that the process could be completed, but then even greater methods were discovered: how to control the mind directly — Raja Yoga. With these methods the body can be a little helpful, but there is no need to be too concerned with it. So Hatha Yoga adepts have said that LSD can be used, but Raja Yoga cannot say LSD can be used because Raja Yoga has no methodology to prepare the body. Direct meditation is used.

Sometimes it happens — only sometimes, rarely — that if you have a glimpse through LSD and do not become addicted to it, that glimpse may become a thirst in you to seek something further. So to try it once is good, but it becomes difficult to know where to stop and how to stop. The first trip is good, to be on it once is good you become aware of a different world and then you begin to seek, you begin to search, because of it — but then it becomes difficult to stop. This is the problem. If you can stop, then to take LSD once is good. But that ‘if’ is a great one.

Mulla Nasruddin used to say that he never took more than one glass of wine. Many friends objected to his statement because they had seen him taking one glass after another. He said, “The second glass is taken by the first; ‘I’ take only one. The second is taken by the first and the third by the second. Then I am not the master. I am master only for the first, so how can I say that I take more than one? ‘I’ take only one — always only one!”

With the first you are the master; with the second you are not. The first will try to take a second and then it will go on continuously. Then it is no longer in your hands. To begin anything is easy because you are the master, but to end anything is difficult because then you are not the master. This is the condition: if you can remain the master, then okay. Use anything, but remain the master. And if you cannot remain the master, then do not enter into a dangerous road at all. Do not enter at all. It will be better.”