Chapter 7: Silent Within Your Boundaries🔗

Beloved Master,

I have been Your disciple for some time and You have given me so much. You have brought joy into my life. I have not been directly associated with You though; I have not gotten the chance to speak with You personally too often. But in the past week that I have been in the ashram continuously, I have been feeling the strong need to get personal guidance from You. And this strong need was reinforced during the sitting that I had with You this morning. Can You please comment on this?

You see: with the way you are growing, with the way gratitude is flowing from you, there is no need for personal guidance. In fact, you need to be more and more open to the impersonal Existence.

And I am with you, so why do you bother? For you, I am not needed, only you are needed. You are a service oriented person. Service is your path. Do not feel bad when you do not have some sort of special attention from me.

I always tell people: if you are continuously around me, if you receive attention from me, you will be with me. But if you are in some corner of the ashram, cleaning some bathroom, I will be with you.

So now I tell you, 'I am with you'. What more do you want?

Yes, to be with the master is beautiful. In fact, many people crave to be with Him. So much of confusion and politics happens amongst the devotees just to be with the master; so much of possessiveness and comparison takes place.

And after all, poor guy, how many people can he give attention to at one time?! And you fellows will be sitting and thinking, 'He is giving so much of space to him, and not to me. He must love him more.' Nonsense!

You see, as I said before, some people are service oriented. To these people, the master's attention will not be important, but spreading his mission will be. The mission will be their greatest love. Yes, these people love the master as well. Otherwise, how could they love his mission. But these people do not bother if the master gives space or not. And I tell you: your path is service. And you will see in your service that I will be with you. You may not be with me, but I will be with you. You will be able to feel my presence very clearly in each and everything that you do, every moment. In fact, you will be able to feel my presence in my absence and my absence in my presence. And this is what the master is. He is neither present nor absent; he just is.

So, never think that he is giving space to others and not to you. Never think this way. Understand, the master knows the energy of each and every person. If you need to be with the master in order to grow, it will happen. But if your growth will happen in the master's absence, he will see to it that it happens. So the master will behave accordingly with you. And it is not that he likes someone better than the other. Be very clear: it is only because he loves you that he is taking the time to work on you. Otherwise, why should he bother? He is working on you only because he wants to see you transformed. And the master/disciple relationship is the deepest relationship that can ever happen on the planet Earth. You see: the master is neither mother, nor father; he is neither a beloved, nor a child; he is not a friend and he is not even the Guru. He is all of these and something more. All of these many dimensions will be felt at some point in time. And sometimes, you will feel all of them at the same time.

It is a relationship like no other. So do not miss me just because of an attention-need. You must be very clear: I am with you. Lose yourself in service to the mission and you will see me there with you.

Yes.

Beloved Master,

Is there a relationship between silence and bliss? Can You speak about this?

Does silence come first and everything else follows? Is silence the only thing that is important?

Actually, there is no difference between silence and bliss. They are just two names for the same thing. To be silent is to be blissful. It may give a different explanation in the dictionary, but in reality, at the experiential level, they are one and the same.

When you become silent, you will have no worries, no inner chatter. There will be no tension whatsoever. If all of these emotions are there, how can you be silent? So, when all of these emotions and problems are gone and silence enters, then naturally bliss will follow! They are almost the same thing because they happen at the same time.

One thing: the silence which happens to you should not be forced. It should simply arise without effort. If you force the mind to be silent, there will only be emptiness; there will be no bliss. It will be like the silence of a well kept and dead garden.

The meditative silence is different. This is the silence which I am talking about. This is the silence where bliss simply oozes out of every cell of your body. It is the silence wherein your very blood boils with bliss.

So, if your silence is not bringing bliss, be very clear that your silence is not what I am talking about. It is just forced; it is not spontaneous. In meditation, silence comes completely by itself. There is no need for you to force it onto yourself.

I will tell you how to do this: Just go on watching the mind. Watch every thought, every impulse. Do not go behind a thought and do not stop the thought flow. You just remain a witness to whatever the mind wants to do. Do this without even the least bit of expectation that silence will come. Only when you do this will silence come, like a breeze from the sky.

It will come and never leave you.

Yes.

Beloved Master,

I have been noticing that the longing within me to go beyond the mind and experience something a bit more from what I already know has been growing and growing every day. But it is beginning to seem like such a long process; does it have to be this way?

It is only when you succeed does everything feel meaningless. In failure, there is still hope that everything will work out. But in success there is no hope. When you have already attained everything in the external world that needs to be attained, you feel as if you have come to a dead end; that there is nothing more to achieve, and you begin to wonder where else to go. This is what I call ‘depression of success’.

In this depression, you simply feel hopeless. You feel as if there is nowhere else to go. And this feeling rises to such a peak, that it all of a sudden becomes clear to you: the thing that was missing in you was yourself. You begin to realize the meaninglessness of the whole outer world quest. And I tell you honestly, to be in such a state is the greatest blessing. Depression of success is the greatest blessing. Now you may be wondering, 'how can depression be a blessing?' While in this depression, you understand the meaninglessness of your whole life. You understand that what you have been running for all the time was of no use. You run and run until you have nowhere else to go. You have come to a dead end. Then what happens? You turn inwards.

You just stop the whole rat race. It becomes clear to you all of a sudden. You understand what the mind has done to you. You understand the nonsensical emotions that it goes on creating in you. You understand the unnecessary suffering that it creates. And this one understanding is enough to take you beyond the mind. At this point there will be no question of how to go beyond the mind; you simply cannot remain in the mind any longer.

See as of now, you are only within the boundaries of the mind because you are not clear. You do not understand that all of your sufferings are caused by it. Because you don't understand, you go on throwing the responsibility of your sufferings onto someone else. You say, 'It is all because of her; it is all because of him.' This is nonsense! You are not seeing that the cause of your suffering is the one thing that you trust most – your mind.

Once you understand that it is the mind's work that has created all these negative emotions in you, the mind will simply disappear; it has to disappear. Then there will be no need for this longing to go beyond the mind; there will be no desire for it. You don't have to do anything else - just this one understanding is enough. Understand the cause for your suffering; nothing more is needed; you will simply drop the mind. There will be no second thought about it. You will drop the mind and the mind will drop you.

First of all, be very clear: your desire to go beyond the mind is from the mind. Your longing to go beyond the mind is from the mind. Your urge to have some deep spiritual experience is from the mind. When you realize this, where does your so-called longing stand? Nowhere at all! Your mind wants to drop itself, yet it is your mind that is fighting back. Do you understand how the mind is tricking you?

It is the nature of the mind to ask for all possible forms of nonsensical things. The mind will always ask for more; that is its very nature. The mind is the only thing that will never be fulfilled. There is no such thing as fulfilling the mind, yet the mind is always looking to be fulfilled.

So, try to understand what the mind is. Look at the way in which it works. Look into every corner of your mind and try to see exactly where all of these passions, all of these desires actually come from. Only when you understand where they come from will you actually understand that they are from the mind. Otherwise you will just sit here and look at me and nod your head. And then after the talk is over, what will you do? You will go back home and when I ask you tomorrow what I spoke about today, you will simply look at me! So I want you to first understand these truths for yourself. When a desire comes up, when anger arises, see exactly where it is coming from. Only when you become clear about this, will you be able to drop the mind.

It is like this: when you see that your house is on fire, what do you do? You do not sit and contemplate; you do not consult any ancient scripture for guidance. No! You simply jump out of the house. Whether you jump out of a door or window doesn't matter for you. Your house is on fire, so you get out! There is nothing more to it.

In the same way, understand that your mind is the culprit. It is the reason for all of your suffering, yet you still tag along with it. Understand this. Then you will automatically drop it.

So, understand what the mind is; understand what it is doing to you. This one understanding is enough; the mind will be dropped with no effort whatsoever.

Yes.

Beloved Master,

When I first started meditating, I had many beautiful experiences. They were very intense. But time has passed and I am no longer having these experiences. And yes, I can feel the expectation within me. And I also realize that in the beginning, when I was having experiences, I had no expectations at all. Now, I am wondering where these experiences have gone. Also, how can I become innocent again with no expectations?

See, your question itself has the answer inside. You said that when you did have experiences you had no expectations. So, don't you see? It is these expectations that are stopping you from experiencing anything more.

And you are looking for a method, aren't you? You have asked, 'How can I become innocent again with no expectations?' To tell you honestly, if I give you a method, it will only make things more complicated. And this is only because you will be doing the technique with the expectation to experience something which cannot be expected!

This is the problem, with not only you but with almost everyone who meditates. You have an experience and then you go on wanting more. Enjoy the experience and simply move on. Don't try to cling to it. One more thing: are you happy or not when you meditate even without experiences? Obviously you are, otherwise you would have dropped meditation long back! So if you are enjoying, just enjoy the fact that you are enjoying! Do not bother about where these experiences have gone. What is the use of bothering about it? What are you getting out of holding on to it?

Life itself is like a river. It is like this: when you keep your hands in a river and try to grab the water, try to posses it, what happens? The water will not stay with you. It will vanish right before your eyes. But if put your hands in the river and allow the water to flow over them, what happens? If you keep you palms open, what happens? The water will simply flow through you. And only when you allow it to do this, will you have all of the water.

Your experiences happen in the same way. If you allow your experiences to come and go whenever needed, they will do so freely. But if you go on wondering about how to make them come back to you, they will only move away from you; they will never come towards you. Do you understand?

You like meditating, don’t you? You love the silence. Then, what more do you need? Feel good that you have this silence. Feel refreshed with this silence.

Initially, it will be there; the desire for more experiences than you already have will be there. But when you go deeper, when your meditation takes you deeper, you will forget these experiences. The silence will be so alive, so fresh, that experiences won’t seem to matter.

Yes, if experiences do come, you should enjoy them but then move on. You should not cling to them. But even if you crave for silence, be sure that it will not happen. You will only be preventing it from happening. So, enjoy what is happening to you right now. Do not cling on to something which has already happened. What is happening to you is by itself beautiful; so enjoy it!

Just move deeper into it.

You cannot expect the unexpected. It has to simply happen. The whole of Existence is waiting for you to experience it. Just move into it with no expectations whatsoever.

Yes.