One German professor of philosophy, Herrigel, became interested in Zen just by reading in the libraries. And he became so enchanted with it that he took three years’ leave from the university and went to Japan to find a master. He had many acquaintances among professors in the universities, so he enquired and they all told him about one man, a very famous master archer. “Right now there is no one else of that quality. If that man can accept you as his disciple, it will be a great blessing.”
He went. Humbly he said that he has come from Germany and he wants to be his disciple. “And I have come to learn Zen.”
The master laughed. He said, “We don’t know anything about Zen. I am an archer. I can teach you archery, and by the side, if Zen happens you are fortunate. It happens if you follow exactly what I say.”
And he was saying, “Looking at the target, stretching your bow, let the arrow go by itself: you be relaxed.”
This was absolutely absurd. How can the arrow go by itself if one is relaxed? One has to be very tense, one has to concentrate, and the man is saying nothing about concentration; he is talking about relaxation. Herrigel was a very good hunter, so it was not a difficult problem for him: one hundred percent of the time he was hitting the target.
But the master would always say, “No, the thing is missing. You don’t listen to me. You are too concerned with hitting the target, you are too tense, afraid that you may miss the target. That target is not the real target; that is just a device. Stretch the bow, be relaxed, and let the arrow go by itself.”
Three years of constant frustration… Every day it would begin, and every day the master would say, “It seems impossible… you cannot succeed. As far as being an archer, you are — you can compete with any archer — but you had come to know Zen. And I told you I don’t know anything about Zen because I did not want you to be concerned about Zen, because even a concern about it becomes a tension.
“Now I want to say to you: if you can manage to let the arrow go by itself, and you remain relaxed and unconcerned, perhaps by the side you will have a taste of Zen.”
After three years of constant failure Herrigel went to the master and said, “Tomorrow I have to leave. You have been kind and compassionate, but I cannot do this; both together seems to be illogical to me. So tomorrow sometime I will be leaving. If I have time, then I will come just to see you for the last time.”
And he came for the last time. The master was teaching another disciple, and Herrigel was sitting on the bank just looking, because now he was finished. He had decided, “It is not for me.” He could not even understand the language of how it could be possible.
The master was teaching the disciple, and to show him how it should be, he took the bow and arrow in his hands; he stretched the bow. And Herrigel saw, with surprised eyes, that the master was absolutely relaxed, and the arrow reached to the target. And he could see that the arrow was going by itself. It did not have the tension of the master; the master was absolutely relaxed standing there. He was not even worried whether it reached to the target or not.
Herrigel said, “My God! For three years he has been showing me: how could I manage not to see it? It is so apparent that he manages it. Logical or illogical, he is managing it!”
Spontaneously he stood up, went to the master, and took the bow and arrow from his hands. He had not come to try again, but just on the spur of the moment… He had seen for the first time, because for the first time he was unattached, for the first time he was unconcerned — he was leaving, he was finished. His eyes were clear, there was no desire.
He took the bow and arrow, stretched the bow, became relaxed and let the bow be released on its own. It hit the target. The master said, “You have done it! I knew one day you would be able to do it, but I never knew that it would be the last day. And today you had not come to do it. That’s what I have been telling you — that it is a doing which is totally different from ordinary doing. It is action through inaction, doing through non-doing.”
Herrigel said, “Now there is no problem: I have understood it; I have tasted what I had come for. I have tasted that relaxed moment. So that is Zen.”
Now, this is a sharp, swordlike man saying things clearly….
“Without a jot of ambition left I let my nature flow where it will” — no direction, no destiny. I give my nature total freedom.
“There are ten days of rice in my bag” — enough. Who lives with certainty for more than ten days? Enough. Nature has taken care up to now, it will take care after ten days. So I don’t collect, it is enough.
“And by the hearth, a bundle of firewood” — what a richness! What a contentment in utter poverty! Even kings will be jealous of this man.
“Who prattles of illusion or nirvana?” — and who bothers whether I am awakened or not awakened, whether I am in an illusion, in a dream, or in nirvana…? In awakening, “who prattles?”
“Forgetting the equal dusts of name and fortune” — all is dust of name and fortune.
“Listening to the night rain on the roof of my hut… both legs stretched out.” Relaxed, listening to the dance of the rain on the roof — this is a right way of expressing the inexpressible. He is expressing utter relaxation, no concern even about nirvana, so silent….
He is saying, “I sit at ease, both legs stretched out” as if time has ceased, nothing matters. This is the space in which you can say you have come home.
I know, I know…just hear me out. When I was exposed to this, I too thought, I know this, don’t waste my time. But…this gave me a revelation which I will never forget.
The question has always been ” 1/2 empty OR 1/2 full ” ? The very question is misleading, it takes you away from Truth. Its the nature of mind which lives in duality. Now lets experience an answer from those who live in the absolute:
THE TRUTH: ITS BOTH, IT IS HALF EMPTY AND HALF FULL AT THE SAME TIME
Gautam Buddha was the most cultured and the most educated, the most sophisticated person ever to become a mystic. There is no comparison in the whole of history. He could see where the innocent mystics had unknowingly given chances for cunning minds to take advantage. He decided not to use any positive term for the ultimate goal, to destroy your ego and any possibility of your ego taking any advantage.
He called the ultimate, nothingness, emptiness, shunyata, zero. Now, how can the ego make zero the goal? God can be made the goal, but not zero.
Who wants to become zero? — that is the fear. Everybody is avoiding all possibilities of becoming zero, and Buddha made it an expression for the ultimate.
His word is nirvana.
He chose a tremendously beautiful word, but he shocked all the thinkers and philosophers by choosing the word `nirvana’ as the most significant expression for the ultimate experience.
Nirvana means blowing out the candle.
The other mystics have said that you are filled with enormous light, as if thousands of suns together have suddenly risen inside you, as if the whole sky full of stars has descended within your heart.
These ideas appeal to the ego. The ego would like to have all the stars, if not inside the chest then at least hanging on the coat outside the chest. “Enormous light”… the ego is very willing.
To cut the very roots, Buddha says the experience is as if you were to blow out a candle. There was a small flame on the candle giving a small light — even that is gone, and you are surrounded with absolute darkness, abysmal darkness.
People used to come to ask him, “If you go on teaching such things, nobody is going to follow you. Who wants darkness, enormous darkness? You are crazy. You say that the ultimate experience is ultimate death. People want eternal life, and you are talking about ultimate death.”
But he was a very consistent man, and you can see that for forty-two years he hammered on the genius of the East without ever compromising with the ego. He also knows that what he is calling darkness is too much light; that’s why it looks like darkness. If one thousand suns rise in you, what do you think? — that you will feel enormous light? You will feel immense darkness, it will be too dazzling. Just look at one sun for a few seconds — and you will feel your eyes are going blind. If one thousand suns are within you, inside the mind, the experience will be of darkness, not of light.
It will take a long time for you to get accustomed, for your eyes to become strong enough to see — slowly slowly — darkness turning into light, death turning into life, emptiness turning into fullness.
But he never talked about those things. He never said that darkness would ever turn into light. And he never said that death would become a resurrection at some later point, because he knows how cunning your ego is. If that is said, the ego will say, “Then there is no problem. Our aim remains the same; it is just that we will have to pass through a little dark night of the soul. But finally, we will have enormous light, thousands of suns.”
Gautam Buddha had to deny that God existed — not that he was against God, a man like Gautam Buddha cannot be against God. And if Gautam Buddha is against God, then it is of no use for anybody to be in favor of God. His decision is decisive for the whole of humanity, he represents our very soul. But he was not against God. He was against your ego, and he was constantly careful not to give your ego any support to remain. If God can become a support, then there is no God.
One thing becomes very clear: although he used, for the first time, all negative terms, yet the man must have had tremendous charismatic qualities. He influenced millions of people. His philosophy is such that anyone listening to him would freak out. What is the point of all the meditations and all the austerities, renouncing the world, eating one time a day… and ultimately you achieve nothingness, you become zero! We are already better — we may be miserable zeros, but we are at least. Certainly, when you are completely a zero there cannot be any misery; zeros are not known to be miserable — but what is the gain?
But he convinced people — not through his philosophy, but through his individuality, through his presence. He gave people the experience itself, so that they could understand: it is emptiness as far as the world is concerned, it is emptiness for the ego. And it is fullness for the being.
There are many reasons for the disappearance of Buddha’s thought from India, but this is one of the most significant. All other Indian mystics, philosophers, and seers have used positive terms. And for centuries before Buddha, the whole of India was accustomed to thinking only in the positive; the negative was something unheard of. Under the influence of Gautam Buddha they followed him, but when he died his following started disappearing — because the following was not intellectually convinced; it was convinced because of his presence.
Because of the eyes of Gautam Buddha they could see: “This man — if he is living in nothingness then there is no fear, we would love to be nothing. If this is where zeroness leads, if by being nothing such lotuses bloom in the eyes and such grace flows, then we are ready to go with this man. The man has a magic.”
But his philosophy alone will not convince you, because it has no appeal for the ego.
And Buddhism survived in China, in Ceylon, in Burma, in Japan, in Korea, in Indochina, in Indonesia — in the whole of Asia except India — because the Buddhists who reached there dropped negative terms. They started speaking in positive terms. Then the ultimate, the absolute, the perfect — the old terms returned. This was the compromise. So as far as I am concerned, Buddhism died with Gautam Buddha.
Whatever exists now as Buddhism has nothing to do with Buddha because it has dropped his basic contribution, and that was his negative approach.
I am aware of both traditions. I am certainly in a better position than Gautam Buddha was. Gautam Buddha was aware of only one thing — that the ego can use the positive. And it is his great contribution, his courageous contribution, that he dropped the positive and insisted on the negative, emphasized the negative — knowing perfectly well that people were not going to follow this because it had no appeal for the ego.
To me, now both traditions are available. I know what happened to the positive — the ego exploited it. I know what happened to the negative. After the death of Gautam Buddha, the disciples had to compromise, compromise with the same thing which Gautam Buddha was revolting against.
So I am trying to explain to you both approaches together — emptiness as far as the world is concerned and fullness, wholeness as far as the inner experience is concerned. And this is a total approach, it takes note of both: that which has to be left behind, and that which is to be gained.
I call my approach the only holy approach.
All other approaches up to now have been half-half. Mahavira, Shankara, Moses, Mohammed, all used the positive. Gautam Buddha used the negative. I use both, and I don’t see any contradiction.
If you understand me clearly, then you can enjoy the beauty of both viewpoints, and you need not be exploited by your ego or be afraid of death and darkness and nothingness.
Maitri, they are not two things. It is almost as if I were to put a glass of water in front of you, half full and half empty, and ask you whether the glass is empty or full. Either answer would be wrong, because the glass is both half full and half empty. From one side it is empty, from another side it is full.
Half of your life is part of the mundane world, the other half is part of the sacred. And it is unfortunate, but there is no other way — we have to use the same language for both the mundane and the sacred. So one has to be very alert. To choose the mundane will be missing; if you think of the mundane, you will find the sacred life empty. If you think of the sacred, you will find it overflowingly full.
Yes, he was fully enlightened. But because he lived amidst a people who were absolutely ignorant about enlightenment, he had to speak in a language which may indicate he was not. He had to use such language because, at that particular time and place, there was no other possibility — only this could be understood. Languages differ. When a buddha speaks, he uses a language that is totally different. He cannot say, “I am the son of God,” because to talk about the son or the father is just nonsense. But for a Jesus it is impossible to use any other language — Jesus is speaking to a very different type of person.
Yet in many ways, Jesus is connected to Buddha.
Christianity has no knowledge of where Jesus was for thirty years. With the exception of two earlier incidents — when he was born, and once when he was seven years old — only the three years of his ministry are known; the remaining period is unknown. But India has many traditions about it: there are folk stories in Kashmir indicating that he was meditating in a Buddhist monastery there during all the years which are not accounted for.
Then, when he was thirty, he suddenly appeared in Jerusalem. Then he was crucified and there is the story of his resurrection. But again, where does he disappear to after he resurrects? Christianity has nothing to say about it. Where did he go? When did he die a natural death?
Miguel Serrano, in his book The Serpent of Paradise, writes: “Nobody knows what he did or where he lived until he was thirty, the year he began his preaching. There is a legend, however, that says he was in Kashir — the original name of Kashmir. Ka means the same as or equal to, and shir, Syria.”
It is also reported that a Russian traveler, Nicholas Notovich, who came to India sometime in 1887, visited Ladakh in Tibet where he was taken ill and stayed in the famous Hemis Gumpa. During his stay in the Gumpa he went through various volumes of Buddhist scriptures and literature wherein he found extensive mention of Jesus, his teaching, and his visit to Ladakh. Later Notovich published the book, Life of Saint Jesus, in which he related all that he had found about the visit of Jesus to Ladakh and to other countries in the East.
It is recorded that from Ladakh, after traveling through lofty mountain passes, along snowy paths and glaciers, Jesus reached Pahalgam in Kashmir. He lived there for a long period as a shepherd looking after his flock. It is here that Jesus found some traces of the lost tribes of Israel.
This village, it is recorded, was named Pahalgam, village of shepherds, after Jesus lived there. Pahal in Kashmiri means shepherd and gam, a village. Later, on his way to Srinagar, Jesus rested and preached at Ishkuman/Ishmuqam — the place of rest of Jesus — and this village was also named after him. When he was thirty, suddenly he appeared in Jerusalem and there follows the crucifixion and the story of the resurrection.
While Jesus was still on the cross, a soldier speared his body, and blood and water oozed out of it. The incident is recorded in the Gospel of St. John: “But one of the soldiers with a spear pierced his side, and forthwith came there out blood and water.” This has led to the belief that Jesus was alive on the cross, because blood does not flow out of a dead body.
But Jesus must die. Either the crucifixion is complete and he dies or the whole of Christianity dies.
Christianity depends on the miracle of the resurrection; it had been prophesied that the coming Christ would be crucified and then resurrected. Jesus was resurrected — it had to be so. If it were not so then the Jews would not believe that he was a prophet.
They waited for this, and it happened. After three days his body disappeared from the cave where it had been put and he was seen by at least eight people. Then Jesus disappeared again. Christianity has nothing to say about where he went after the resurrection and nothing has been recorded about when he died.
He came to Kashmir again and he lived there until he was one hundred and two, when he died. And the town, the exact place where this occurred, is known.
Question 2
DID HE LIVE IN KASHMIR UNDER ANOTHER NAME?
No, not another name really. While those of you from the West call him Jesus, the whole Arabic world calls him Esus, or Esau. In Kashmir he was known as Yousa-Asaf. His tomb is known as The Tomb of Yousa-Asaf who came from a very distant land and lived here. It is also indicated on the tomb that he came to live there 1900 years ago.
Miguel Serrano, the author of The Serpent of Paradise, who visited the tomb, writes: “It was evening when I first arrived at the tomb, and in the light of the sunset the faces of the men and children in the street looked almost sacred. They looked like people of ancient times; possibly they were related to one of the lost tribes of Israel that are said to have immigrated to India. Taking off my shoes, I entered and found a very old tomb surrounded by a filigree stone fence which protected it, while to one side there was the shape of a footprint cut into the stone. It is said to be the footprint of Yousa-Asaf, and according to the legend, Yousa-Asaf is Jesus.
“On the wall of the building hangs an inscription and below it a translation from the Sharda into English which reads: YOUSA-ASAF (KHANYA, SRINAGAR).”
Jesus was a totally enlightened being. This phenomenon of resurrection as far as Christian dogma is concerned seems inconceivable, but not for Yoga. Yoga believes — and there are ample proofs of it — that a person can totally die without dying. The heart stops, the pulse stops, the breathing stops — Yoga even has methods that teach this. In India we know that Jesus must have practiced some deep Yogic exercise when he was put on the cross because if the body really dies, there is no possibility of resurrection.
When those who had crucified Jesus felt that he was dead, his body was brought down from the cross and given to his followers. Then, after wrapping the body in thin muslin and an ointment, which even to this day is known as the “ointment of Jesus,” two of his followers, Joseph and Nicodemus, removed the body to a cave, the mouth of which they blocked with a huge boulder.
There is one sect, the Essenes, that has its own tradition about it. It is said that Essene followers helped Jesus to recover from his wounds. When he was seen again, because his followers could not believe that he was the same Jesus who had been crucified, the only way — and this is recorded in The Bible — was to show them his healed wounds. Those wounds were healed by the Essenes, and the healing took place during the three days when Jesus remained in the cave recovering from his ordeal. Then, when the wounds were healed, he disappeared. The huge boulder at the mouth of the cave had been rolled away and the cave was found vacant.
Jesus was not there! It is this disappearance of Jesus from the cave that has led to the common theory of his resurrection and ascent to heaven.
But after he had shown himself to his disciples he had to disappear from the country, because if he had remained there he would have been crucified again. He went to India into which, one tradition says, a tribe of the Jews had disappeared.
The famous French historian, Bernier, who visited India during the reign of Aurangzeb, wrote: “On entering the kingdom after crossing the Pir Panjal Pass, the inhabitants of the frontier villages struck me as resembling the Jews.”
Yes, Kashmiris really do look Jewish — in their faces, in their every expression. Wherever you move in Kashmir, you feel that you are moving in a Jewish land. It is thought that Jesus came to Kashmir because it was a Jewish land in India — a tribe of Jews was living there. There are many stories in Kashmir about Jesus, but one has to go there to discover them.
The crucifixion changed Jesus’ mind totally. From then on, he lived in India for seventy years continuously, in complete silence — unknown, hidden. He was not a prophet, he was not a minister, he was not a preacher. That is why not much is known about him.
Christianity lacks much. Even about Jesus it lacks much. His whole life is not known: what he practiced, how he meditated is not known. The Christian apostles who recorded what he said were ignorant people: they never knew much. One was a fisherman, another was a carpenter. All twelve apostles were ignorant.
The apostles didn’t understand what Jesus was doing when he went to the hills and was silent for forty days. They only recorded that it happened and that when he came back again, he began preaching. But what was he doing there? Nothing is known — nothing.
After his period of silence, he became more and more involved in something which looked more social and political than religious. It had to be so, because the people around him were absolutely non-philosophical, so whatever he said was misunderstood. When he said, “I am the king of the Jews,” he was not talking about a kingdom of this world; he was speaking in metaphors.
Not only his enemies misunderstood him — even his followers and apostles misunderstood. They, too, began to think in terms of an earthly kingdom; they could not understand that what he was saying belonged to another world, that it was only symbolic. They also thought that Jesus was going to become king sooner or later.
That created the whole trouble. Jesus might not have been crucified in a different land, but for the Jews he was a problem. Jews are very materialistic. They were materialistic in the time of Jesus, and they still are.
To them the other world is meaningless; they are only concerned with this world. Even if they talk of the other world, it is only as a prolongation of this world — not a transcendence but a continuity. They have a different way of thinking.
That is why, as far as the material sciences are concerned, the Jewish contribution is so great. It is not accidental. The person who is most responsible for molding the whole world in terms of a materialistic concept was a Jew, Karl Marx.
Karl Marx, Freud, Einstein — these three Jews are the builders of the twentieth century. Three Jews building the whole world! Why? No one exists in the world today who has not been influenced by the Jewish concept.
Jews are very down-to-earth, rooted in the earth, so when Christ began to talk like a Buddha, there was no meeting, no communion. He was continuously misunderstood.
Pilate was more understanding toward him than his own race. He continuously felt that an innocent man was being unnecessarily crucified and he tried his best not to crucify him. But then, there were political considerations.
Even when they were about to crucify Jesus, at the last moment, Pilate asked him a question: “What is truth?” Jesus remained silent. It was a Buddhist answer. Only Buddha has remained silent about truth, no one else.
Something has always been said — even if it is only that nothing can be said. Only Buddha has remained silent, totally silent. And Jesus remained silent. The Jews understood this to mean that he did not know. They thought, if he knows, then of course he will say. But I have always felt that Pilate understood. He was a Roman; he might have understood. But Pilate disappeared from the scene; he put the priests in total charge and just disappeared — he did not want to be involved.
This whole thing happened because there were two languages being used. Jesus was speaking of the other world — of course, in terms of this world — and the Jews took every word literally.
This would not have happened in India where there is a long tradition of parables, a long tradition of symbols. In India, the reverse misunderstanding is possible because the tradition has been going on for so long that someone speaking of this earth may be understood to be speaking of the other world. There are poets in India who talk about romance, love, and sex — of this world, totally of this world — but their followers interpret these as symbolic of the other world. Even if you talk about wine and women, they think that the wine means ecstasy and the women are devas. It happens!
Jews are literal, very literal. And incredibly, they have remained the same. They are a strange race, with a different outlook from the rest of the world. That is why they have never been at home anywhere. They cannot be, because they have a different type of mind. To penetrate a Jew is always difficult. He has a certain closedness, a certain defensiveness. And the longer Jews have been homeless, the more defensive they have become.
The basic thing about Jews is that they think in terms of matter — even God seems to be part of the material world. That is why it was impossible for them to understand Jesus. For example, Jews say that when someone does something wrong to you, you should do something wrong back to him — and with double the force. This is how matter behaves. React! If someone puts out one of your eyes, then put out both of his eyes.
Jesus began to say an absolutely contradictory thing: if someone slaps you on one side of the face then give him the other side also. This was absolutely Buddhist. One cannot really conceive of how a Jew could suddenly begin to talk like this. There was no tradition for it, no link with the past.
Nothing happens unless there is a cause. So Jesus is inconceivable as a Jew. He suddenly happens, but he has no roots in the past of Jewish history. He cannot be connected with it because he has nothing in common with it. As far as the Jewish god is concerned, Jesus’ love, his compassion, is just nonsense.
You cannot conceive of a more jealous god, a more violent and angry god than the Jewish god. He could destroy a whole city in a single moment if someone disobeyed him. Then Jesus suddenly emerges and says, “God is love.” It is inconceivable unless something else had penetrated the tradition.
When Buddha talks about compassion it is not inconceivable. The whole of India has been talking about it for centuries, and Buddha is part of the tradition. But Jesus is not part of the Jewish tradition. That is why he was killed, crucified.
No buddha has ever been killed in India because, however rebellious, he still belongs to the tradition; however rebellious, he conforms to the deeper ideals. One even begins to think that he is more Indian than Indian society in general because he conforms more to the basic ideals of the country.
But Jesus was a total outsider in Jerusalem, using words and symbols, a language, totally unknown to the Jews. He was bound to be crucified; it was natural. I see Jesus as living deep in meditation, deep in enlightenment, but involved with a race that was political — not religious, not philosophical.
Jews have not given great philosophers to the world. They have given great scientists but not great philosophers. The very mind of the race is different; it works in a different way. Jesus was just an outsider, a stranger. He began to create trouble; he had to be made silent.
Then he escaped, and he never tried again. He lived in silence with a small group — working silently, esoterically. And I feel that there is still a hidden, esoteric tradition that continues. If one forgets Christianity and goes back to discover Jesus without the Christianity, one will be enriched. Christianity has become the barrier now.
Whenever you think about Jesus, the Christian interpretation of Jesus becomes the only interpretation. When the Dead Sea Scrolls were found twenty years ago near the Dead Sea, they caused much agitation. The Scrolls, which were originally possessed by the Essenes, are more authentic than The Bible. But Christianity could not compromise. The Dead Sea Scrolls tell a different tale, a totally different story about the Jews. Even the Koran has a different story to tell.
It seems that Mohammed also was in contact with many Jewish mystics.
This always happens: when I say something, I create two groups of people around me. One group will be exoteric. They will organize, they will do many things concerned with society, with the world that is without; they will help preserve whatsoever I am saying. The other group will be more concerned with the inner world. Sooner or later the two groups are bound to come in conflict with one another because their emphasis is different. The inner group, the esoteric mind, is concerned with something quite different from the exoteric group. And, ultimately, the outer group will win, because they can work as a group. The esoteric ones cannot work as a group; they go on working as individuals. When one individual is lost, something is lost forever.
This happens with every teacher. Ultimately the outer group becomes more and more influential; it becomes an establishment. The first thing an establishment has to do is to kill its own esoteric part, because the esoteric group is always a disturbance. Because of “heresy,” Christianity has been destroying all that is esoteric.
And now the pope is at the opposite extreme to Jesus: this is the ultimate schism between the exoteric and the esoteric. The pope is more like the priests who crucified Jesus than like Jesus himself. If Jesus comes again, he will be crucified in Rome this time — by the Vatican. The Vatican is the exoteric, organizational part, the establishment.
These are intrinsic problems — they happen, and you cannot do anything about it.
Yes, Jesus was an enlightened being just like Buddha, Mahavira, Krishna.
Question 3
IN THE BIBLE, MANY MIRACLES ARE RECORDED. FOR EXAMPLE, THE RAISING OF LAZARUS FROM THE DEAD BY JESUS AFTER THE BODY WAS ALREADY SMELLING. IS IT POSSIBLE FOR A DEAD MAN TO BE REVIVED?
It is possible, but it is possible in a very different way — very different. If the person is really dead, if the body is dead, then it is not possible. But it may be that the person only appears to be dead….
Question 4
BUT IT STATES IN THE BIBLE THAT THE BODY WAS ALREADY SMELLING.
The body may smell; the person may be in a deep coma and the body can begin to smell. There are other possibilities also, but the Jews of that time could not understand what those other possibilities were. For example, your soul may be out of the body and yet connected to it. Then the body will be in a deep coma, and it has to be preserved or it will begin to deteriorate — it is a problem now. A very strong force is needed to bring the soul which is hovering around the body back to the body. But it can be revived, and a person like Jesus can help it to revive.
In India, we have many such events….
You may have heard the story about Shankara’s great debate with Mandan Mishra, the great Indian scholar of dualism.
He came to debate with him, because that was the traditional way in India. It was not a fight but a very friendly discussion, and if one could convince the other, then the other would become his disciple. With this as the condition, the debate continued. Shankara would go from one village to another all over India in order to discuss the issue with Mandan Mishra. But there was a problem: whom could they make the judge?
They were both pillars, one of dualism and the other of nondualism. Who would preside over the debate? No one was worthy of presiding. And who would be able to understand what they were saying? Who would know which one had been defeated and which one had won?
The only person possible was Mandan Mishra’s wife, and it was rare to allow a woman to preside over such a debate. But there was no other alternative, so Mandan Mishra’s wife was made the judge.
Finally, Mandan Mishra was defeated. But his wife declared that even though he was defeated, he was only half defeated because she was his other half. “So now, Shankara,” she said, “you will have to debate with me!” It was a trick! Now Shankara was in great difficulty.
It was declared that Mandan Mishra was defeated but only by half because in India we say that a husband is only half a person, his wife is the other half, and it is the two halves which make one whole. So Mandan Mishra was only half defeated; half still remained. “Now Mandan Mishra will preside and I will debate with you,” said the wife. And she was really a rare woman — she began to discuss sex!
Shankara was at a disadvantage. He was a celibate, so now he felt that he was going to be defeated. He knew nothing about sex; the whole phenomenon was unknown to him. It was a trick and now he was caught, so he said, “First give me six months’ leave so that I can learn about sex. Only then can I come and discuss it with you. Otherwise I am already defeated.” And the six months’ leave was granted.
Then there was another problem — the story is beautiful — Shankara had taken a vow of celibacy for the whole of his life and so he could not use his body for any experiments in sex. Therefore he had to leave his body and enter another body, leaving his own body with his disciples to be continuously guarded and preserved, because if anything happened to it, he would not be able to enter it again. For six months a group of twelve disciples kept a constant vigil. They remained with the body continuously.
A king had just died, so when Shankara entered the king’s body, it was already dead. Then the dead body revived and Shankara lived inside the body for six months, deep in sexual experiments. The king’s wife began to feel that something was different, but what could she do? The person was different but the body was the same. After six months, Shankara returned to his own body, the discussion took place, and Bharati, Mandan Mishra’s wife, was defeated.
This is one possibility: Jesus may have helped to revive Lazarus who was not really dead but only appeared to be. Christianity is unaware of many things. Lazarus may have been in a deep coma, and the body may have begun to deteriorate. And a coma can continue for years. I have seen one woman who was in a coma for nine months. If someone had not preserved the body, she would have died immediately. Everything had to be done for her. She was just lying there as if she were dead. She could not do anything for herself. Had she been forgotten for seven days she would have begun to smell, stink.
So Jesus might have helped a person who was in a coma, or a person whose soul, for whatever reason, was out of his body. A dead man cannot become alive again. If he comes alive it only means that he was not really dead. As far as I am concerned, no miracle happens in the world. Something appears to be a miracle because we do not know the whole story, we do not know the whole reason for it.
Question 5
WHAT ABOUT THE OTHER MIRACLES REPORTED IN THE BIBLE? FOR EXAMPLE, THE ONE WHERE JESUS FED THOUSANDS OF PEOPLE WITH TWO LOAVES OF BREAD AND FIVE FISH. CAN YOU EXPLAIN IT?
Many things are possible. Nothing is a miracle, nothing. Even materialization is not a miracle: it is a science. Materialization is possible. So are many other things. Something can be brought here by an unknown route. You are not aware of the route, but something suddenly appears here. That is not materialization. A Swiss watch can be brought here from a store — spirits can help to bring it here. You will not see the spirits, only the watch. But that is not materialization. It is just a Swiss-made watch coming here via some route that is not known.
But materialization is also possible. Something coming out of nothing….
Question 6
HOW IS IT POSSIBLE?
When you ask how it is possible, that how is difficult to answer. You have to pass through a long, long practice to be able to do it.
Question 7
CAN YOU GIVE AN EXAMPLE OF THIS?
The more capable your mind becomes of concentration, the closer you come to the point where materialization can happen. If you can be in absolute concentration, materialization can happen. But with your mind the way it is, you cannot concentrate even for a single moment. If you can concentrate on something for a single moment, focusing your total mind for even one second, then you can will it to appear and it will appear.
But try it first in very easy ways. For example: you can take a glass, fill it with water, and then put some glycerin or oil on the surface of the water. Then float a very thin pin on the surface of oil or glycerin. Then concentrate on the pin. Concentrate! Without blinking, focus both your eyes on the pin for two minutes. After two minutes of concentration, begin to order the pin to go toward the right. Within seven days of practicing it, you will be able to move the pin.
Once a pin can follow orders from your mind, you have achieved something that is needed for materialization. It is a long process, but now at least you can feel that mind does have power over matter. Once this power is felt, once you are totally able to concentrate, materialization becomes possible. Then only willing is needed, nothing else. If the mind is totally concentrated on making a rose appear, then a rose will appear.
Because of this, Indians have always said that the whole world is just a dream in the mind of the divine. God dreams something, and it appears. When he stops dreaming, it dissolves.
Question 8
ARE YOU YOURSELF ABLE TO MAKE THINGS MATERIALIZE?
I am able to do it. And I am also able not to do it — because I feel the absurdity of it. And the second ability is better. Buddha could not be persuaded to do it, but Jesus had to do it. Again, the reason is the same: because the Jews could not believe anything unless it was something material. They could not be convinced without a miracle.
In India one can conceive of a Buddha who does not perform any miracles. But the Jews began to ask, “Can you do miracles? Only if you do miracles can we believe that what you are saying is meaningful.” It was not Jesus who wanted to do the miracles, it was the Jews who compelled him. Without miracles, his thinking, his preaching, would have seemed meaningless to them. We cannot even conceive of Buddha’s doing miracles. It is appealing to a much lower state of mind. Why be so concerned with convincing anyone? Why be so concerned?
Sometimes a miracle would happen around Buddha, but it was not deliberately done. It would happen in a particular situation.
Still, there are layers of meaning to it. All the miracles recorded in The Bible — sometimes bread appears, sometimes disease disappears, or a dead man becomes alive again — are all very material, very ordinary things. They are concerned with the day-to-day problems of the ordinary man: bread, disease, death.
Buddha says that the whole of life is a dream. So what does it matter if someone becomes alive again? It is meaningless. It only means that a particular dream has begun to have some reality again.
There is one story recorded. Buddha was in a certain village where a child had died. The mother was so obsessed with the child that she was weeping and crying and trying to escape in order to commit suicide. So someone said, “Come to see Buddha. He can do anything. He is an enlightened man; anything is possible. Come! He is the compassionate one. If he begins to feel compassionate toward you, the child may revive.”
So she came to Buddha with the dead child in her arms and laid the child at Buddha’s feet. Imagine what would have happened to Jesus in a similar situation in a Jewish country. If the child had not been brought back to life, Jesus would have been finished completely because this would have proven that he was not the man he claimed to be.
But when the child was brought to Buddha, what did he say? He said to the mother, “I will make your child alive again, but first you will have to do one thing. Go to every house in the city and find out if there is any house where no one has ever died. If there is any house in the village where no one has ever died, then in the evening I will revive your child.”
The woman went and asked everyone. In every house, in every family, someone had died. By the time she returned in the evening she had become aware that death is a reality, death is a part of life.
Buddha asked her, “What do you say now? Is there any house, any family, any person who has not suffered due to someone’s death?”
The woman said, “I have not returned now so that my child can be revived. I have come to be initiated. Death is a reality. The child has gone, I will go, everyone will have to go. Initiate me into that life which never ends.”
This is a greater miracle! But we cannot conceive of it. If the child had been brought back to life, it would have been a miracle. But this is a greater miracle, with deeper compassion. With a particular race it is possible; otherwise, it is not possible. The woman became a sannyasin: the death of the child was not used to satisfy the lust for life, it was used for renunciation.
If Buddha’s disciples were hungry, he would not perform a miracle and provide them with bread. On the contrary, he would say, “Witness your hunger. Witness the hunger so that you can transcend it, so that you can move away from it. The hunger is not you; it is somewhere on the periphery. Remember that. Use it.” Jesus had to supply bread and Buddha had to convince his followers to fast. To give someone bread is not a miracle really, but to make someone ready to fast is a miracle.
It depends on how we define things. I am not concerned with miracles because it is all nonsense. This whole life that we are living is absurd, so even if you can create something in it, it is meaningless. The only miracle that I am interested in is pushing you beyond. Even a glimpse of the beyond will be a miracle.
As I see it, if Jesus had prevented himself from doing these things, he would have served humanity better — by doing them, he attracted fools. The masses became interested in Jesus only because of his so-called miracles. He tried to help them through his miracles but it was not possible; on the contrary, he himself got into trouble.
I do not see that Christ was able to help anyone in this way.
If I were to materialize something, it would be bound to happen that fools would gather round me more and more. Soon I would be amongst fools, because only they are interested in such things.
If you go to Sai Baba you will see that he is doing certain things. But then only fools are attracted. If a ring appears in my hand, what does it matter? How is it related to any spiritual phenomenon? Even if this whole house disappears and then reappears again, what does it matter? So what? That is why I am not concerned with miracles. And those who are only attract fools.
Question 9
IN COMPARING JESUS TO BUDDHA, JESUS SEEMS VERY ACTIVE AND REVOLUTIONARY. WHY IS THIS?
There is a reason. But first, some explanation is needed. Yoga divides man into two parts: the sun part and the moon part. The sun is symbolic of inner positivity and the moon is symbolic of inner negativity. Sun does not mean the outer sun nor does moon mean the outer moon. These words are used for the inner universe.
There is even one breath that is known as the sun breath and another breath that is known as the moon breath. Every forty to sixty minutes, your breath changes from one nostril to the other. If you need more heat in the body, or if you suddenly grow angry, your sun breath starts functioning. Yoga says that if you use your moon breath when you are angry, then you cannot be angry at all, because the moon breath creates a deep coolness inside.
The negative is cool, silent, still. The positive is hot, vibrant with energy, active. The sun is the active part in you and the moon is the inactive part in you. When one first becomes acquainted with the sun, the light is burning hot, like a flame.
If you analyze the inner life of Buddha or of Jesus with this distinction in mind, many things which are ordinarily hidden will become apparent. For example, whenever an enlightened one like Buddha is born, his early life will be very revolutionary. The moment one enters the inner dimension, the first experience is of a fiery flame. But the older Buddha grows, the more an inner coolness is felt. The more perfect the moon stage becomes, the more the revolutionary fervor is lost.
That is why Buddha’s words are not revolutionary.
Jesus did not have this opportunity. He was crucified while he was still a revolutionary and he died, as far as Christianity is concerned, at the age of thirty-three. If you compare Buddha’s sayings with those of Jesus there is a clearcut difference. Jesus’ sayings look like those of a young man — hot. Buddha’s early sayings were also like this, but he was not crucified for them; he lived to be eighty.
The reason he was not crucified is that India has always known that this happens. Whenever a person moves within, whenever a buddha enters into himself, his first expression is fiery, revolutionary, rebellious. He bursts open and explodes into fire. But then that phase disappears and ultimately there is only the moon: silent, without any fire, with only light. That is why India has never killed anyone; that is why India has never behaved the way the Greeks behaved with Socrates or the Jews with Jesus.
Jesus was crucified early. Christianity still remains incomplete because Christianity is based on the early Jesus, on Jesus when he was just a flame. Buddhism is complete. It has known Buddha in all his stages. It has known Buddha’s moon in all the stages of the moon — from the first day to the full moon light.
It has been a misfortune for the West, it has proven itself to be one of the greatest misfortunes in history, that Jesus was crucified when he was just a flame, when he was only thirty-three. The flame would have turned into moonlight, but the opportunity was not given. The reason is that the Jews were not aware of the inner phenomenon.
India has known many buddhas, and it is always true that whenever someone enters the inner dimension, he has to feel the fire of the revolutionary side coming up. If one continues going inward, this dissolves, and then there is only silence, a moonlit silence. To change heat into light is the secret science of inner alchemy. To change coal into diamonds, to change baser metals into gold — these are just symbols.
Alchemists were never really concerned with changing baser metals into higher metals, but they had to hide what they were doing. They had to create an esoteric, secret symbology, because it was very difficult in early times to talk about an inner science and not be murdered. Jesus was killed: he was an alchemist. And the Christianity that developed after Jesus went against him. The Christian Church began to kill and murder those who were practicing the alchemy of inner transformation.
Christianity could not really flower into a religion; it remained a clerical thing. It could not create sannyasins, it could only create preachers — trained, dead, disciplined.
Question 10
IF JESUS WAS STILL IN A REBELLIOUS AND ACTIVE STAGE AT THE TIME OF THE CRUCIFIXION, DOES THAT MEAN THAT HE HAD NOT ACHIEVED THE TOTAL SPIRITUAL GROWTH AND INNER SILENCE OF BUDDHA?
At the time of the crucifixion he had just entered the moon center. But only on that very day! That has to be understood.
The Jesus of The Bible is not like Buddha, Mahavira, or Lao Tzu. You cannot conceive of Buddha’s going into a temple and beating moneylenders. But Jesus did it.
There were many different activities connected with the great temple of Jerusalem. There was a great moneylending business which exploited the whole country. People would come for an annual gathering and for other gatherings during the year, and obtain money at the temple at a high rate of interest. Then it would be impossible to repay and they would lose everything.
The temple was becoming richer and richer: it was religious imperialism. The whole country was poor and suffering, but so much money would be automatically coming into the temple. Then Jesus entered one day with a whip in his hand. He overturned the moneylenders’ boards and began to beat the moneylenders. He created chaos in the temple.
You cannot conceive of Buddha doing this. Impossible! Jesus was the first communist: he was fiery, rebellious. That is why Christianity could give birth to communism. Hinduism could not give birth to it, no other religion could give birth to it; it is impossible. Only Christianity could do it, because with Jesus it has a relevance. The very language he used was totally different. He got so angry at some things that we cannot even believe it. He cursed a fig tree which was not yielding any fruit because he and his disciples were hungry. He destroyed it!
He threatened in a type of language that Buddha could not even utter. For example, he said that those who would not believe in him and the kingdom of God would be thrown into the fires of hell, the eternal fires of hell, and they would not be able to come back. Only the Christian hell is eternal. Every other hell is just a temporary punishment: you go there, you suffer, you come back. But Jesus’ hell is eternal.
This looks unjust, absolutely unjust. Whatsoever the sin, eternal punishment cannot be justified. It cannot be! And what are the sins? Bertrand Russell has written a book, WHY I AM NOT A CHRISTIAN, and one of the reasons he gives is that Jesus seems absurd. Russell says, “If I confess all the sins that I have committed, and all those sins which I have just thought about but never committed, you cannot give me more than five years’ imprisonment. But eternal hell?”
Jesus speaks the language of a revolutionary when he talks about eternal, nonending punishment — revolutionaries always look to the opposite end, to the extreme. You cannot conceive of Buddha’s saying it or Mahavira’s saying it, but Jesus says that a camel can pass through the eye of a needle sooner than a rich man can enter the kingdom of God. He cannot pass! This is the seed of communism, the basic seed. Jesus was a revolutionary. He was not only concerned with spirituality but with economics, politics — everything. Had he been only a spiritual man he would not have been crucified, but because he became a danger to the whole social structure, to the status quo, he was crucified.
He was not a revolutionary like Lenin or Mao but still, Mao and Lenin and Marx are inconceivable without there having been a Jesus in history. They belong to the same path as Jesus: the early Jesus, the fiery man — rebellious, ready to destroy everything — the Jesus who was crucified.
But Jesus was not simply revolutionary, he was also a spiritual man. He was, somehow, a mixture of Mahavira and Mao. The Mao was crucified and only the Mahavira remained in the end. The day Jesus was crucified was not only the day of his crucifixion, it was the day of his inner transformation also.
When Jesus remained silent after Pilate asked him, “What is truth?” he was behaving like a Zen master. If you look at the previous life of Jesus, if you look at his whole previous life, this silence was not like Jesus at all. What happened? Why did he not speak? Why was he at a loss? He was one of the greatest orators the world has ever produced; we may even say, without hesitation, the greatest. His words were so penetrating. He was a man of words, not a man of silence. Why did he suddenly remain silent?
He was moving toward the cross. Pilate asked him, “What is truth?” Jesus had spent his whole life talking about truth; he was defining only that, that is why Pilate asked him. But he remained silent.
What happened in Jesus’ inner world has never been reported because it is difficult to report. Christianity has allowed it to remain submerged because what happened in the inner world of Jesus can only be interpreted in India, nowhere else. Only India knows about the inner changes, the inner transformation that happens.
What happened was this: Jesus is suddenly on the verge of crucifixion. He is about to be crucified and now his whole revolution is meaningless. Everything that he has been saying is futile, everything that he has been living for is coming to an end. Everything is finished. And because death is so near, he must now move within. No time can be lost, not a single moment can be lost. He must come to the end of his journey now, and before he is crucified he must complete the inner journey.
All along he had been on an inner journey. But because he was also entangled with outer problems he could not move to that cool point, the moon point; he remained fiery, hot. But it may be that he did this consciously. Jesus was a disciple of John the Baptist who was a great revolutionary and spiritual leader. John the Baptist had waited for Jesus for many years. Then, on the day he initiated Jesus in the River Jordan, he said to Jesus, “Now take over my work and I will disappear. It is enough.” And from that day on, he was rarely seen again; he disappeared. In the words of the inner language, he disappeared from the sun point and moved to the moon point; he became silent. He had done his work and had now given the work to someone who would complete it.
On the day of the crucifixion Jesus must have become aware that now his work was finished: “There is no longer any possibility of doing anything more now. I must move within. The opportunity must not be lost.” That is why, when Pilate asked him what truth is, he remained silent. Because of this, the miracle happened which has remained an enigma for Christianity. Because of this.
As he was moving to his cooler side, to the moon center, he was crucified. When someone comes to the moon center for the first time, his breathing stops because breathing, too, is an activity of the sun point. Now everything becomes silent; everything is as if dead. They thought he was dead, but he was not. He had simply come to the moon center where breathing stops: no outgoing breath, no ingoing breath — the gap.
When one remains in the gap, there is such a deep balance that it is a virtual death. But it is not death. The crucifiers, the murderers of Jesus, thought that he was dead so they allowed his disciples to bring the body down. But he was not dead, and when the cave was opened after three days he was not there. The “dead” body had disappeared. After three days, Jesus was seen again by four or five people. But no one would believe them when they went to the villages to say that Jesus was resurrected. No one would believe it.
When he escaped from Jerusalem, Jesus went to Kashmir, where he remained. But then his life was not the life of Jesus but the life of Christ. Jesus was the sun point and Christ the moon point. From then on, he remained totally silent. That is why there is no record of him. He would not talk, he would not deliver any message, he would not preach. He remained in Kashmir, not as a revolutionary but as a master, living in his own silence. A few people traveled to be with him. Those who became aware of his presence in Kashmir, without having had any outward information about it, would travel to him. And really, there were not so few — maybe only a few in comparison to the world, but there were many.
Christianity is incomplete because it knows only the early, revolutionary Jesus. And because of that, Christianity could give birth to communism. But Jesus himself died as a fully enlightened man — a full moon.
One Sufi mystic, Junnaid, was going to the mosque with his disciples. On the road, they saw a man who was trying to move his cow. It was apparent, clear that the man was absolutely new at the job. He was doing hard work, pulling the cow with the rope, but the cow was stronger. She was backwards. He would manage somehow to pull her one foot, and she would back up two feet.
Junnaid and his disciples stood there… because that was the method of Junnaid, to use actual situations in life for teaching. He said, “This man has done no harm to the cow. He is taking her home, where food will be ready, shelter will be ready; a cozier, warmer place will be ready — but why is the cow reluctant? Why is she feeling annoyed, irritated, humiliated? Rather than going home with him, she’s FIGHTING!”
Junnaid said this to his disciples and the servant who was taking the cow was also listening. Junnaid said, “There is an art that, even in the smallest job like this, is needed. This man has good intentions but has no understanding of how the mind of man or animals functions. He’s creating a reaction. He’s making the cow an enemy.”
He said to the man: “This is not the way. You are new; you just stand aside and I will show you what has to be done.”
And he went into his house, brought out a bundle of green grass, and just walked ahead of the cow — not even a rope on the neck of the cow. He simply walked. Sometimes he went slowly, and when the cow would come too close he would go fast, almost running. The cow would start running.
When he came back, he said, “This is the situation of every human being. Society has created so many reactionary attitudes that he goes on doing things which are harmful to himself, and he goes on doing them the wrong way.”
Imagination can take you way away from the truth. And this is always the case for hardcore spiritual seekers. They imagine the truth, and never attain. Again and again ( life after life ), they end up making the same mistake…imagining something that cannot be imagined.
Imagination is of the mind, its a mind game. You can imagine anything, but the truth has to be known. Imagination becomes a great barrier. But all seekers have to go thru it, it’s a learning process. Any idea whatsoever has to be dropped, only then the cup is empty…only then the universe can pour into ‘you’. Then ‘you’ will not be ‘you’ anymore…
Shiva beautifully gives one technique…” imagine the biggest you can, and keep imagining until you can’t imagine anymore “ …as this happens, the mind slowly tires and it drops. Only then, there is possibility…possibility of knowing the unknown which is known but made unknown. The more of the mind, the less of you. Mind is not an enemy, it’s a tool, treat it such, but transcendence is required. In today’s society, the mind is very complex. Hence, based on the personality of the person, techniques are prescribed by awakened ones.
For seekers, remember, until one is empty of all dogma, one cannot attain. The mind is cunning, a very cunning mechanism…don’t bother. Just be an observer, be silent…and taste truth. Truth Rocks !
TRUTH ROCKS ! 