TO TURN WITHIN MEANS ALL THE TWENTY-FOUR HOURS, AND IN EVERY SITUATION, TO PIERCE, ONE BY ONE, THROUGH THE LAYERS COVERING THE SELF, DEEPER AND DEEPER, TO A PLACE WHICH CANNOT BE DESCRIBED. IT IS WHEN THINKING COMES TO AN END AND MAKING DISTINCTIONS CEASES, WHEN WRONG VIEWS AND IDEAS DISAPPEAR OF THEMSELVES WITHOUT HAVING TO BE DRIVEN FORTH; WHEN, WITHOUT BEING SOUGHT, THE TRUE ACTION AND TRUE IMPULSE APPEAR OF THEMSELVES. IT IS WHEN ONE CAN KNOW WHAT IS THE TRUTH OF THE HEART.

In these few statements he has covered the whole journey from falsehood to truth, from darkness to light, from death to immortality. What he has said can be condensed, so that you can remember it not as knowledge but only as a finger indicating the moon -- just a few hints for your own inner journey.

The first thing is, twenty-four hours a day, to remember what you find in your meditations. You will forget again and again, but the gaps of forgetfulness will become less and the length of remembering will become longer. By and by the gaps of forgetting will disappear. There comes a time when you are a whole circle of remembrance, twenty-four hours. Even in your sleep you know you are a buddha.

 

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But there are religions like Zen which go to the very end of the road. They are not satisfied just by dropping the ego. They are satisfied only when there is nothing left to drop -- even the self is gone -- when the house is absolutely empty, when you can say, "I am not."

This nothingness is creating the space for the ultimate to blossom. It does not come from anywhere else. It has always been there, just cluttered with rotten furniture, with unnecessary things. As you remove all those things and your subjectivity becomes empty -- just as a room becomes empty as you remove everything from it -- in this emptiness of your subjectivity, blossoms the flower of ultimate experience -- you are no more.

Naturally, you cannot have your old miseries, your old traumas and dramas. You cannot have any connection with your own past; you have abruptly cut yourself away from all that you used to be. Suddenly a new, totally fresh opening... in a way, you disappear. In a way your authentic essence has the first opportunity to come into its full glory, into its absolute splendor.

This is what enlightenment is. It is a negative process: negate the ego, the psychological; negate the self, the spiritual. Go on negating until nothing remains to negate -- and the explosion! Suddenly you have arrived home, with the revelation that you have never been out of your home. You have always been there, your eyes were just focused on objects.

Now all those objects have disappeared. Only a witnessing, pure awareness, has remained. This witnessing is the end of all your misery and all your hell. It is also the beginning of the golden gate -- the doors are open for the first time.

 

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