My vision of a real humanity is of pure individuals -- relating to each other but not tied in any relationship; loving to each other but not being possessive of each other; sharing with each other all their joys and all their blessings, but never even in their dreams thinking of dominating, thinking of enslaving the other person... a world consisting not of families, not of nations, not of races, but only of individuals.

Only a world where families have disappeared and nations have died and races are no longer existent can have beauty, and can have immense possibilities for human growth. Otherwise all your relationships are destructive, because they are all possessive -- your love is followed by your jealousy; your love is full of suspicion, mistrust. Everybody is trying to keep the other remaining within his control. It is a very strange situation where everybody is a prisoner and everybody is a jailer too. You are the jailer, you are the jail, you are the jailed, and you are trying to manage all three functions simultaneously. Certainly your life has become a mess!
From The Razors Edge

In my vision of life materialism and spiritualism are not contraries; materialism paves the way for religion. Hence I am utterly materialistic and utterly spiritualistic. That is one of the most fundamental teachings that I am delivering to you: never create an antagonism between the body and the soul, between the world and God. Never create any antagonism between materialism and spiritualism; they go together, just as body and soul. Remain materialistic and use your materialism as a stepping-stone towards spirituality. That creates much confusion in people's minds because they have always been thinking that poverty is something spiritual. That is utter nonsense. Poverty is the most unspiritual thing in the world. A poor man cannot be spiritual. He can try, but his spirituality will remain superficial. He has not yet been disillusioned by riches, how can he be spiritual? A great disillusionment is needed, a great disillusionment with the outer world; then you turn in. The turning in comes only at a certain point when you are utterly disillusioned with the outside -- when you have seen the world, you have lived the world, you have experienced and you have come to know that there is nothing in it, all soap bubbles, momentary experiences. They promise much but they deliver nothing, and in the end only emptiness is left in your hands. The outer world can only give you death and nothing else. Life has to be searched for within. The sources of life are IN you.

The tree is in the seed. If you cut the seed open you will not find the tree, true, because that is not the way to find it. You will have to let the seed grow; then the blueprint that is hidden in the seed comes out. When a child is conceived in a mother's womb he is just a seed, but he has all the blueprint, all the possibilities -- what kind of body he will have, what kind of face, what color of eyes, hair, height, age, how long he will live, healthy or unhealthy, man or woman, black or white -- all is contained in the seed. Life grows out of that seed.

Meditation is turning back towards the innermost core from where all has arisen -- the body has arisen, the desires have arisen, the thoughts have arisen, the mind has arisen. You have to go back to the source. Religion is a return to the source -- and to know the source is to know God. To know the source is to know the goal, because they are both one. To come back to your innermost core, from where you had started, means you have come to the ultimate where you wanted to reach. The circle is full. There is a moment where the alpha becomes the omega, and then there is fulfillment. When the circle is complete there is fulfillment.

And that is the whole teaching of THE SECRET OF THE GOLDEN FLOWER of Master Lu-tsu. He's trying to make the path clear to you: how the circle can be complete, how the light can circulate, how you can move inwards, how you can also have a little bit of sky, a little bit of heaven. And then you can be happy anywhere -- even in hell you will be happy.
From The Secrets of Secrets

 

 This is going to be finished sooner that you can imagine, because the woman is asking for a relationship. The person who is lonely is asking for a relationship: "Fill the gap, I am lonely. Be part of my being."

But a person who is alone knows that neither can you fill anybody's gap, nor can anybody else fill your gap.

You can meet, but you will remain two alonenesses.

And it is beautiful that two alonenesses can meet, two individuals can meet, but the meeting cannot be made solid, concrete. It cannot be reduced to a relationship, it will remain a relating. It will always remain a changing flux, a movement, because the other person is changing and you are changing. You are not statistical -- though that's what people expect.
From Ignorance to Innocence

God has to be freed from all concepts of personality. Personality is a prison. God has to be freed from any particular form; only then he can have all the forms. He has to be freed from any particular name so that all the names become his.

Then a person LIVES in prayer -- he does not pray, he does not go to the temple, to the church. Wherever he sits he is prayerful, whatsoever he is doing is prayerful, and in that prayerfulness he creates his temple. He is always moving with his temple surrounding him. Wherever he sits the place becomes sacred, whatsoever he touches becomes gold. If he is silent then his silence is golden; if he speaks then his song is golden. If he is alone his aloneness is divine; if he relates then his relating is divine.

The basic, the most fundamental thing is to be aware of your own innermost core, because that is the secret of the whole existence. That's where the Upanishads are tremendously important. They don't talk about a God, they talk about godliness. They don t bother about prayer. their whole emphasis is on meditation.

Meditation has two parts: the beginning and the end. The beginning is called dhyana and the end is called samadhi. Dhyana is the seed, samadhi is the flowering. Dhyana means becoming aware of all workings of your mind, all the layers of your mind -- your memories, your desires, your thoughts, dreams -- becoming aware of all that goes on inside you.

Dhyana is awareness, and samadhi is when the awareness has become so deep, so profound, so total that it is like a fire and it consumes the whole mind and all its functionings. It consumes thoughts, desires, ambitions, hopes, dreams. It consumes the whole stuff the mind is full of.

Samadhi is the state when awareness is there, but there is nothing to be aware inside you; the witness is there, but there is nothing to be witnessed.

Begin with dhyana, with meditation, and end in samadhi, in ecstasy, and you will know what God is. It is not a hypothesis, it is an experience. You have to LIVE it -- that is the only way to know it.
From I Am That

My whole insistence is to learn to be alone, but never to get too much attached to your aloneness, so you remain capable of being, relating with others. Learn to meditate but don't move to the extreme so that you become incapable of love. Be silent, peaceful, still, but don't get obsessed by it, otherwise you will not be able to face the world, the marketplace.
From A Rose is a Rose is a Rose

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