Chapter 14. To Fly Is Your Birthright

Osho - Finger Pointing to the Moon

Chapter 14. To Fly Is Your Birthright

Knowing oneself as unattached and indifferent as the sky, a yogi is not attached at all after that to any future actions.

Just as the sky present in a pot full of liquor is not affected by the smell of the liquor, the soul remains untouched by all happenings in spite of being present during all of them.

Just as an arrow released will not stop before piercing the aimed at object, the actions done before the happening of enlightenment will not cease to yield fruits after enlightenment happens.

An arrow released taking an animal to be a tiger, cannot be stopped midway if later on the understanding dawns that the animal was instead a cow. The   arrow will hit the target with its full strength. Similarly, action already done comes to fruition even after enlightenment has happened.

One who understands that he is deathless and ever young remains one with the soul and has no relationship with the fruits of his past actions.

In this sutra some deep hints are given regarding the nature of consciousness. Only a jivanamukta, a person liberated while living, passes through such experiences. Only a jivanamukta comes to experience these sutras. We do not have any direct experience of consciousness, whatsoever we know about consciousness is from its reflections in the mind. First let this be properly understood.

Then we shall go into the sutras.

Mind is a wonderful mechanism. Now it has also been confirmed by science that mind is nothing more than a mechanism. A computer works even more efficiently than mind. It is not necessary to send a human being to the moon, computers can be sent instead. Russia has already sent such computers to the moon and they collect data and transmit it to Russian ground stations. They are machines, but receptive and subtle like our minds, and whatsoever is happening around them is accumulated and transmitted.

I said to you earlier that when a jivanamukta returns from samadhi, the happening of enlightenment...

A friend has asked me that since when consciousness enters the experience of samadhi mind is left far behind - and since it is only mind that can remember - who recalls the experiences that have happened to the consciousness? It was consciousness that had entered the experience, but consciousness neither keeps any memory nor does it allow any trace of memory to be left over it; and the mind did not enter into the experience, it was left behind. Who then is remembering? Then who is looking at the experience in retrospect?

Yes, though the mind had not entered into the experience and it was left just standing at the door, it is still able to catch glimpses from a doorway. It catches glimpses of events happening in the outer world as well as in the inner world. It observes on both sides whatever is within its periphery. It is not necessary for the mind to enter into the experience itself. If a camera is kept at a distance over there, it will go on catching all that is happening around here. Or if a tape recorder is kept at a distance over there, it will go on recording all that I am saying - the song of the birds, the rustle of the wind passing through the trees, the sound of the dry falling leaves.

Understand it well that mind is only a machine; it has no soul to it, it is only a biological machine developed by nature. Mind is something in between our soul and the world outside. Mind records all that happens in the world. For that it has five senses as its doors.

The senses are the doors of the mind. For example this microphone placed before me can convey the sound to a tape recorder placed hundreds of miles away. Your senses are like this microphone conveying various types of information to the mind. The five senses are like five doors to the mind.

To convey anything that happens in the outside world of light, color and form, the mind has the eyes as its extension on the outside of the body; they go on recording everything like a camera.

Whatsoever happens in the world of sound such as music, words or silence, is caught every moment by the ears. And what is being caught is also being relayed to the mind and the mind accumulates this information. The hands touch, the tongue tastes and the nose smells, and all this is being relayed to the mind.

All the five senses are the doors of the mind. There is one more sense, and that is your inner sense. This sense catches whatsoever is happening within you. It is also a sense. Whatsoever is happening within you, for example in the state of samadhi, this inner sense goes on recording all that is happening. Peace? Silence? Bliss? Realization of God? Whatever is happening, it keeps track.

This inner sense is like a microphone that is directed inwards. It is the receptivity of the within.

Inside, one sense is enough, five senses are not required there. Outside, five senses are required because there are five basic elements and to record each one a separate sense is required. Inside, there is only one Brahma - five senses are not required, only one sense is enough to register the inner experiences.

Thus man has six senses - five extrovert and one introvert - and mind is the mechanism in between connected to all of them. Just this one branch goes within and catches all the inner experiences.

Whatsoever is happening within is passed on by this inner sense to the mind. Mind need not go anywhere. Thus when a person returns from samadhi the mind itself hands over all the records to him, that such and such a thing happened when you were not here.

If you leave your tape recorder here and go away, then when you come back after an hour the tape recorder will give you a complete record of all the words spoken here and the various sounds that happened. It is not necessary for a tape recorder to have life. Mind is not consciousness; it is matter, and a subtle mechanism. This mechanism goes on collecting data from either side. Hence a seeker returning from samadhi infers through mind what has happened.

The more clarity of mind, the more authentic the information given by it. The more confused the mind is, the more incorrect the information. For example if your tape recorder is defective, it may record things but the recording will not be clear. The sound will be distorted, mixed up or deformed.

Some parts may be clear, some parts may not be.

Hence the mind is first to be purified through right listening, right contemplation and assimilation.

When the receptivity of the mind becomes pure, so that it can produce an authentic copy of whatsoever is happening, only then occurs the entry into samadhi.

So the inner sense records everything. But it is because of their allegiance to truth that seers have said it to be inference of the mind, because the mind was not present there and whatsoever it is now saying is information supplied to it by its inner sense. And mind is aware that there is a possibility of flaws in that information.

Hence there is one more interesting point to be properly understood. When a Hindu returns from samadhi, or when a Mohammedan or a Christian or a Jaina returns from samadhi, their minds give a slightly different version of the information because there are differences in the make-up of the devices which are their minds. The experience of samadhi is the same, but the make-up of the minds is different.

A person who is born in a Jaina family has a conscience developed in the manner of Jainism, and his being a Jaina has entered the mechanism of his mind. He has heard since his very childhood that there is no God, so it has become a built-in process in his mind that there is no God. His mind has also heard that the ultimate experience is that of the soul and not of God. This mind is manufactured and conditioned, so when samadhi happens it is this very mind which will record the event.

Samadhi is the same to whomsoever it happens, but our minds are different - and it is the mind that will record the experience. A Jaina mind knows that there is no God, the ultimate experience is that of soul, there is no experience beyond it; or, this experience itself is God, there is no other God than this experience itself. Now such a mind will immediately record the samadhi experience as: "The ultimate experience of soul is happening."

A Hindu has heard about the experience of God and has the information that what the experience is when the soul dissolves within is the experience of God. His mind will record: "This is seeing God."

The happening is the same, but in this case it is God being experienced.

The mind of a Buddhist who believes in neither the soul nor in God will record neither of the two. His mind will say: "Nirvana has happened, you have become a void, a nothingness."

This is the reason scriptures differ, because scriptures are records of different minds, not of the actual experiences. This is why there will be differences between the Hindu scriptures, the Jaina scriptures and the Buddhist scriptures. Sometimes the differences will even look contradictory, because the mind is limited by the words available and they are a learned thing. Mind is knowledge, a learned thing, a manufactured thing.

Let us understand it this way, putting religion aside. Let us say you have learned Sanskrit, or Greek, or Arabic, so your mind has known one language. Now there is not even a question of any language during the happening of samadhi, but the mind will record the experience in the language it knows.

The one who knows Arabic can never say that it was the happening of samadhi - the very word samadhi is not known to that mind. So a Sufi will say fana - he has remained no more. But the meaning is the same.

You are aware that the grave of a sannyasin is called a samadhi - for the same reason. Not everybody's grave is called a samadhi, only the grave of such a person who has annihilated himself.

He has annihilated his ego while living; there is nothing left for death to annihilate when it comes, the person has annihilated himself on his own.

So a Sufi will call it fana, a Hindu will call it samadhi, and a Buddhist will call it nirvana. These words are there in the mind. So whatever will happen within the mind, it will immediately translate it into its own language. We find it difficult to understand how a mechanism could translate. But this only says that you don't know much about mechanisms.

The latest discoveries in mechanisms and instruments are very amazing. All that mind can do can also be done by machines. There is nothing that a mind can do that cannot be done by a mechanism.

This has brought a very dangerous attitude - if a machine can do everything that a mind does, then mind is nothing more than a machine. So for those who believe that there is nothing beyond the mind, that there is no soul, then man becomes a machine, nothing else remains. If it is true that there is no soul, then man is just a machine - and not a very efficient one either. There can be machines made more efficient than man.

Soon speeches will be simultaneously translated. If I am speaking here in Hindi, my speech will be simultaneously translated into the five major languages. No human translators will be required for this; only machines. When I speak the word prem in Hindi, the English language translating machine will immediately translate it as love. The impact of the sound of the word prem on the machine electronically will convert it into other sound waves that produce the sounds for the word love.

So there are machines that talk, machines that calculate and machines that have memory; machines have started doing everything that the mind of man can do. When the yogis, the tantrikas and the Upanishads said for the first time that the mind of man is just like a machine, people all over the world did not understand it. Now science has devised machines that do similar work to that of the mind, and there is no problem in understanding it.

The human mind stores data from either side - from the world as well as from samadhi. It is the mind that gives information about the world as well as about Brahma.

Now we shall enter into the sutra.

When one comes to experience that all reflections form only on the mind, and as one moves deeper within oneself to one's very center that there are no impressions, that all conditionings form only on the mind, not on the self - only then will this sutra be understood.

Knowing oneself as unattached and indifferent as the sky, a yogi is not attached at all after that to any future actions.

There are many things to be understood here. Knowing oneself as unattached and indifferent as the sky... We see the sky every day. A bird flies in the sky, but leaves no traces in the sky. When one walks on the ground, footprints are left behind. If the ground is wet the footprints are deeper. If the ground is rocky the footprints are very light, but if you try they can be made deeper there too. But in the sky, when a bird flies, no footprints are left behind. The sky remains the same as it was before the bird flew by. There is no way of knowing from the sky that a bird has flown across it. Clouds gather in the sky, they come and go; the sky remains as it was.

There is no way of contaminating the sky - of making impressions on it, marks on it. We can draw lines on water, but no sooner are the lines made than they disappear; yet if lines are made on stone they last for thousands of years. Lines just cannot be drawn in the sky, so there is no question of their disappearing.

Please understand this difference. Lines cannot be drawn in the sky - I may move my finger across the sky, the finger passes but the line is not drawn and the question of the disappearance of the line simply does not arise. The day a person goes beyond the mind, when the consciousness transcends the mind, he experiences that, like the sky, so far no marks or lines have ever been drawn on the soul. It is eternally pure, eternally enlightened, no pollution has ever happened to it.

Unattached, asanga, like the sky... The word asanga is very valuable. Asanga means one is in the world but unattached, unaffected by anything. The sky is present all around; it is encompassing trees, it is encompassing you; it is encompassing the pious man as well as the impious man; it is present where a good deed is happening, it is present where an evil deed is happening. You sin or you earn virtue, you live or you die - the sky is present, but unattached. It is present with you, but it is not your companion. It does not make any relationship with you. It is present but its presence is unattached. It is always present, but no friendship is created with you, no relationship is formed with you.

Asanga means unrelated. It is there, but unrelated. If you disappear the sky does not even notice that you disappeared or that you ever were. How many earths appear and disappear again, how many people are born and die, how many palaces are built and collapse into dust again - how much has happened under the sky, but the sky keeps no account. You inquire and the sky has kept no history; it is empty. The sky is as if nothing has ever happened.

You may look back at millions of years - it is said that our earth was born some four billion years ago. During these four billion years how much has happened on this small earth - how many wars, how many love affairs, how many friendships, how many enmities, how many conquests, how many defeats and how many people - but the sky has no account of any of it. It is as if nothing has ever happened; no traces of any happenings are left on the sky.

Indians have never been concerned with history. Westerners wonder why this is so, why Indians do not have a sense of history. We do not know exactly when Rama lived, we do not know the exact date of the birth of Krishna. Nothing is certain. We have mythical stories about them, but no historical records.

The credit for making history a part of the human world goes to Christianity. In the sense that Jesus is historical, Buddha, Krishna or Parashuram are not. With Jesus, human history is divided into two parts: the world before Jesus Christ is considered unimportant and the world after Jesus Christ is considered important. Hence it is only proper that the Christian dating method should have become prevalent all over, because it is with Jesus that history enters the world of man. So we say before Christ and after Christ; a line is drawn.

India has never written any history; there is a reason for it. The fundamental reason is that India has felt that, when the very sky within which everything happens does not keep any account, why should we keep such a useless account? When the one within which everything happens does not bother to keep any account, why should we unnecessarily keep account of who was born when and who died when?

So we did not write any history, we created the puranas, mythology. Mythology is an Indian phenomenon. It means we did not bother about dates and years, birthdays and death days, we bothered about the essence - that a Rama could happen. We did not bother to tie down when he was born, what year and date, where he went for his studies, when he married, etcetera, because keeping the record of all these seemed to be of no consequence at all. But the inner phenomenon that made Rama a Rama, the fact that one individual became a Rama, that one lamp was lit and there was a flame, was remembered. We did not keep any account of the happenings to his shell, the body. We remembered only this much - that an extinguished lamp can be lighted; we kept account of only this much, that a man's life is not just a stink, a fragrance can also happen to it. All the remaining useless details have been left out.

So we do not consider it essential to have kept a precise historical record of Rama; that is of no consequence. A Rama is possible - just that is enough. The phenomenon of being a Rama can happen - this much we have remembered, and that remembrance is enough. A Krishna is possible - whether he has existed historically or not is secondary. Even when we keep an historical record of this kind of person it is only to remind ourselves that such a person is possible, that such a flower can bloom within us also, that such a spring of bliss can flow within us also.

Purana means, only that which is essential.

On entering into consciousness it is discovered that no line, no traces are drawn on the sky, but what is of the essence in you is left behind in the sky.

Try to understand this properly.

No traces are left behind in the sky but your essential fragrance is. And that happens because that essential fragrance is not in any way foreign to the sky; it is the sky within you. When you die it is the sky within you that is released into the sky - the rest of you gets lost. We call that outer sky the sky, but we call our innermost sky the soul.

There is one expanse outside and there is one expanse within. In the outer sky too clouds gather and it becomes covered. In the rainy season, in the evenings of July and August, all is covered with clouds and one cannot even conceive that there was once a blue sky, conceive that one may be able to see that blue sky again. When dark clouds cover the sky the blue sky cannot be seen, only the clouds can be seen.

Similarly, like the dark clouds covering the outer sky, the inner sky also gets covered by clouds. The clouds of the inner sky are called thoughts, choices, desires - or whatsoever we want to call them.

When such clouds cover the inner sky, there too one feels there exists no cloudless sky behind it.

Removing these inner clouds and seeing into the inner blue sky is meditation.

Seeing into this inner sky is the attainment, the ultimate fulfillment.

This sutra says, knowing oneself as unattached and indifferent as the sky... The sky neither laughs with you nor weeps with you. When you die, the sky does not shed any tears; if you live and rejoice the sky does not tie anklets on its feet and dance for your joy. The sky is absolutely indifferent. It does not express any opinion about what is happening. Whether a dead body is being taken to the crematorium, or whether a great celebration is going on due to the birth of a new child, the sky remains indifferent. Whether a marriage ceremony is taking place and the houses are decorated with flowers and garlands, or whether a loved one has just died and living any longer is appearing meaningless to you, the sky remains indifferent. It has nothing to do with whatsoever is happening.

Similarly, as one enters the inner sky he becomes indifferent. He does not have any relationship with whatsoever happens; he begins to see the world just as the sky sees it.

When such an experience happens, know that you have become a jivanamukta, one liberated while living. This is when no traces form on your inner sky, when whatsoever happens outside remains just a drama to you, when everything happens only on the circumference and your center remains untouched.

When the mind is put aside, such a thing happens.

Knowing oneself as unattached and indifferent as the sky, a yogi does not become attached at all after that to any future actions.

Now the second part of this sutra: when a person comes to know that none of his actions have ever touched him... If he was defeated, his soul was not defeated, and if he had won, his soul had not won; if he was honored, his soul had nothing added to it, if he was insulted, his soul had nothing taken away from it - with such a realization future actions naturally lose their preoccupation for such a man. He knows that if his actions in the past could not touch him, his actions in the future will also not touch him. Hence all planning for the future will stop. He no longer worries whether he will succeed or fail, whether his prestige will sustain him or someone will dishonor him. For the one who has seen his own self, his whole past becomes disassociated from him and so does his whole future.

The future is just an extension of the past. Whatsoever we have known in the past, either as pleasant or as painful, we continue planning the same for the future. What we have found pleasant, we desire to repeat in the future; and what we have found unpleasant, we desire to avoid in the future.

What is our future? It is only a projection of our past, a little improved version of it. Yesterday we did something which brought unhappiness - we do not want to do it again in the future. Yesterday we had done something that gave us happiness - we want to do it again in the future.

If one sees that in his whole past, its pleasures and pains, its good things and bad things, that nothing has touched him, he has remained as empty as the sky, utterly void, the future becomes meaningless. Nothing has left any mark on him, he has remained unconditioned; now this whole journey is completed and he has remained untouched and virgin within, now the whole future has become meaningless to him.

Remember, for a jivanamukta there is no future. Even if a little of your future has remained, understand that the inner sky has not yet been experienced. If some meditator is still thinking how to attain enlightenment or how to see God, understand that the experience of the inner sky has not yet happened to him. These are still plans for the future; the future is still there. Even an inch of future remaining is enough. Even an inch of future remaining indicates that one has not yet experienced that no action touches the soul. Neither enlightenment nor God can touch the soul. In fact it is this untouchability, this eternal untouchability which is the reality. This eternally remaining, untouched consciousness is godliness, is God. There is no other meaning of God.

If we call Krishna, or Mahavira or Buddha bhagwan, the blessed one, what do we mean by it?

Has Buddha made this universe - that is why he is bhagwan? What is the meaning of 'bhagwan'?

Buddha also falls sick, he gets old, he dies, his body comes to an end - what sort of a bhagwan is he? Sufferings come to him, sickness, old age and death come to him. A bhagwan should not become old, a bhagwan should not get any disease, a bhagwan should not die. Buddha also becomes hungry and thirsty. If one were to cut his body with a knife blood would come out - what kind of bhagwan is he? What does it mean to be a bhagwan?

What it means to be a bhagwan is that all this can happen and the one hidden within the body knows that nothing ever touches it. All this can happen: if a hand is cut, blood will definitely flow out; the body will become hungry and feel thirsty, old age will come and so does death; but the inner sky of the buddha within knows that nothing touches it. Neither death touches it nor life. Life passes, death passes - youth as well as old age - but the inner virginity remains untouched; there is no break in it, not even news of what is happening outside reaches it.

The name of this experience is godliness.

So if somebody is seeking to see God, he has a future. He who has a future never has a meeting with God. The future means the world. The future means that the truth of the past has not yet been seen, that it has not yet been experienced that one is like the sky.

This sutra says that for a yogin, a meditator, no interest whatsoever remains in any future actions.

For a yogin there exists no tomorrow, only today. Even today is a long time, one should say there is only this moment. Here and now is the whole existence; there is nothing left in him moving towards the future.

Just as the sky present in a pot full of liquor is not affected by the smell of the liquor, the soul remains untouched by all happenings in spite of being present during all of them.

When an earthen pot is full of liquor, it is affected by the liquor. The clay of the pot actually drinks the liquor, all the pores soak up the liquor. And if some pot has been used for a very long time for the storage of liquor, then one may get intoxicated even by chewing the clay of that pot. The clay of a pot is affected by the liquor, becomes soaked with it. Why? Because clay is porous.

Try to understand this. The clay of the pot has many pores, the liquor fills up those pores and hides there. The earthen pot drinks the liquor and becomes a drunkard... the pot gets intoxicated. But the pot is full of one more element, and that is sky - the emptiness of the pot.

Now this is very interesting. One is pouring liquor into the emptiness of the pot, not into the clay of the pot. The liquor collects not in the clay of the pot but in the emptiness - the sky of the pot. Are we pouring liquor into the clay of the pot? No, the clay is there only to surround that emptiness from all sides. The sky is very big, the liquor is very little. Hence we choose a small area of the sky and enclose it with clay walls, ending up with a small sky within. Then we pour liquor in it.

Liquor is thus poured into the sky, not into the clay. But the interesting thing to note is that the clay becomes intoxicated and drunk and the sky in which liquor is actually poured remains untouched by it. If you remove the liquor from the pot the emptiness in the pot retains no smell of the liquor but the clay pot does. The clay becomes drunk due to the proximity - just the satsang, being in close company, brings results - and everything is actually contained in the sky but the sky remains untouched.

So whatever you have done has touched only your body, nothing else. It has gone into your clay, the body, but it has not touched your inner sky, the soul. You may have committed sin or have done good deeds - good things or bad things; everything has touched only your clay, the body.

Your mind is clay and your body is also clay. The emptiness, the void between these two is your soul - nothing has ever reached there.

To have known this, to have experienced this, is going beyond all disturbances. All disturbances are of the body and of the mind, not of you. But whatsoever the clay has absorbed, the clay will have to live it.

Even the body of the enlightened person will have to live all that has been absorbed by it. The good, the bad, the sorrows; all that has been done and all that has happened - the whole past is there in every cell of the body. So even when enlightenment happens and the person awakens and becomes like the sky, whatever was happening to the body will complete its journey.

It is as if you were riding a bicycle and you just stopped pedaling because you came to realize that all journeying was futile and that you have nowhere to go. But the bicycle has gathered a momentum.

You have been pedaling the bicycle for thousands of miles and it has gathered a force of its own.

Even though you have stopped pedaling the bicycle will not stop then and there. Even without further pedaling it will move on for some distance, because the bicycle has momentum.

Until that momentum is fully exhausted the bicycle will continue to move. Once the momentum is spent it will fall, but if you go on providing momentum it will never fall. If you stop providing momentum it will not fall immediately, but after some time.

We have been riding our bodies and minds for innumerable lifetimes: if we become awake today and separate ourselves from the body and mind they will not fall immediately. Body and mind will have to exhaust the momentum they have acquired.

Just as an arrow released will not stop before piercing the aimed at object, the actions done before the happening of enlightenment will not cease to yield fruits after enlightenment...

So, be it Buddha, be it Krishna, or be it someone else, whatever has been done in the past has to come to fruition; the arrow will go the full distance.

It means that the fruits of previous actions have to be endured even after enlightenment. Past actions are not destroyed by enlightenment.

Enlightenment brings the experience that one is not the doer, but it does not destroy the past actions.

Whatsoever has been done will come to fruition.

It can be explained through the example of an arrow which has been released after taking aim. After the arrow is released, even if one realizes that he is doing violence and that he should not do it, nothing can now be done, the arrow will complete its journey.

I utter a word, and immediately after uttering it I realize that I should not have uttered it, but it is too late now, the word will complete its journey. The momentum the word has received in its utterance will keep it on the move till the momentum dissipates.

When we throw a stone, we are giving our energy to the stone; the stone moves on while that energy lasts and then falls. After throwing the stone even if we realize we should not have thrown it there is no way of calling the stone back.

Actions are like arrows released from the bow. Any afterthoughts are of no use, the arrows will complete their journey. Until the journey of all previous actions is finished there will be only jeevanamukti, nirvana while living, but no mahanirvana, the ultimate merging with existence.

Try to understand this. A jivanamukta will live in a state of liberation but around him the activities of his body and mind will continue. Nothing new will be fed, but until the old feelings are exhausted the activities will continue.

Understand it this way. Suppose you decide to leave your body by fasting. You won't die the very day you begin your fast, it will take at least about ninety days - it may take even longer, but ninety days are a minimum - before death can happen.

Why? You fasted today, you should die today. But no, your body has an accumulation of flesh from the past and it will take about three months for that flesh to be consumed. You will have become just a skeleton of bones by then, all the flesh stored in the body will have been consumed. This is how when you fast for a day you lose weight by nearly by a pound.

So the fatter a person, the longer he will last when fasting, because he has a larger accumulation of fat. Thus one goes on losing a pound or so every day, and you will not die while the stock of accumulated flesh lasts. It will take about three months.

Similarly, when the consciousness is fully awake, one should attain to mahanirvana, the ultimate merging, at once. But that does not happen. Once in a while it has happened that way, but such events are very rare - as good as non-existent - that a person has died immediately upon becoming enlightened. It would be as if someone was already a skeleton, there was nothing at all of any accumulation, and the person died the very first day he fasted. It would mean that such a person was just ready to die, he had no savings at all. But it is difficult to find such a person; even a hungry beggar's body keeps savings, some accumulated stock necessary for any emergencies.

Such a coincidence may happen sometime that a person's actions also come to completion at the same moment as enlightenment. It is, however, a very rare phenomenon. Normally they have stayed and lived for many years after enlightenment - be it Buddha or Mahavira or someone else. What is the reason for continuing to live? - because liberation has already happened. It is the burden of past action, its momentum, that goes on pushing the body ahead on the journey for some time. When that momentum is dissipated, jeevanamukti, the liberation while living, will become mahanirvana.

But it is necessary and useful too that such persons live on after enlightenment, because if they die immediately upon enlightenment, whatsoever they have known they will not be able to tell us. A person liberated while living is able to tell us, share with us, because there is this interval of time.

Buddha lived for forty years after his enlightenment, Mahavira also lived for forty years after his enlightenment. It is these forty years which became useful to us. In these forty years their minds could communicate to us whatsoever they had experienced and known.

An arrow released taking an animal to be a tiger cannot be stopped midway if later on the understanding dawns that the animal was a cow instead. The arrow will hit the target with its full strength. Similarly, action already done comes to fruition even after the enlightenment has happened.

So if an enlightened person is seen by you to be suffering sometimes, do not wonder why existence should torture such a pure and peaceful, such an enlightened, person. Nobody is torturing anybody.

However great an enlightened person one may be, one still has behind him a long journey of ignorance. The very fact that one is enlightened means that one has traveled long in ignorance.

Whatever dirt and dust has been gathered during that long journey will have to be dealt with. The enlightened one now lives it with his sky-nature. But the people who gather around him may not be able to deal with it in the same way.

When Ramakrishna was suffering from cancer, Vivekananda still used to weep. Vivekananda had not attained to enlightenment, his sky-nature. When Ramana Maharshi had cancer, the people in his ashram were unhappy because those who had gathered there had not known the sky-nature.

At the time of his death, almost as he was breathing his last, somebody asked Ramana, "Now what will happen to us?" Ramana replied, "What will happen? I will be here."

People's tears stopped. The assurance had come that he would remain. They thought he was not going to die - and he died! People had misunderstood the statement. When Ramana was saying, "I will be here," he was talking about the sky that he was. Where can the sky go even when the pot is broken?

It is only the pot that breaks. Ramana is saying, "I will be here; why do you weep?" But these were the words of the sky, not of the pot. Those who were around him understood that the words were of the pot, that the pot would remain, but then the pot broke. They thought, "Has Ramana deceived us? Did he say all that just to console us? Was that just a consolation?"

This was not a consolation, this was a truth. But you have no way of experiencing Ramana as the sky as long as you have not experienced yourself as the sky. As long as you think yourself to be only the pot, for you Ramana is gone.

When Ramakrishna was dying his wife, Sharda, started weeping and wailing. Ramakrishna said, "Why are you weeping? You will not become a widow." And Ramakrishna died - leaving the message, "You will not be a widow, and how in the first place can I die?" But Sharda was no ordinary woman. Ramakrishna died, his body was cremated, but there was not even a tear in her eyes.

People gathered and, according to the tradition in Bengal, wanted to shatter and remove the bangles from Sharda's wrists. But she asked them not to, "Because," she said, "I am not a widow." People asked her to put on traditional clothes of a widow, but Sharda asked them not to even mention it, that she trusted in the words that had been said to her by Ramakrishna, that they had not been said to her as a consolation.

What happened is a very sweet story. As long as Sharda lived after his death, she never accepted even in her dreams that Ramakrishna had died. People wondered if she had gone mad. But she was not mad, there were no other signs of madness. On the contrary, the truth of the matter is that from the very day Ramakrishna died and Sharda did not accept that he had died, she herself became deathless and sky-like.

For Sharda the experience of Ramakrishna's death remained only an experience of the death of the pot, the body. And there had never existed any transaction between the pots - the marriage of Ramakrishna and Sharda was an extraordinary marriage. During their married life the pots never met. Ramakrishna always treated Sharda like his mother. There was no bodily transaction in it.

Their marriage was nothing but a meeting of two skies.

It is really a very beautiful and amazing story. Sharda lived for many years after Ramakrishna's death, but she used to prepare food as she had in the past and then go near Ramakrishna's bed and say, "Paramahansadeva, the food is ready" - all continued as it had before. She would still prepare food, go near the bed - where there was nobody - and address Ramakrishna as usual.

People used to see this and weep at her condition. She would call him for food and even wait as usual for him to get up, and then, when he began walking, she would follow him. Only she could see all this happening - no one else could. She would make him sit for food, she would fan him while he would be eating. She would make him go to sleep at night and would wake him up in the morning.

All continued as usual.

Somebody asked Sharda whom she was waking and whom she was feeding and whom she was putting to bed - what was going on? Sharda replied that it was the same person she had served before. Now the body had gone, but the sky has remained.

Sharda did not become a widow even after her husband's death. It was a unique experience for any wife in the whole history of mankind. This is the only event of its type. It is difficult to find another woman like Sharda.

Past actions come to their completion even after enlightenment, but after this experience of the inner void the person watches all that is happening as a witness. He has no desires, no will as to what should happen and what should not happen. He accepts whatsoever happens.

Witnessing means suchness. Whatsoever is happening or not happening is good. The inner trust in the experience is constantly present, that nothing has ever happened or can ever happen to the sky within.

One who understands that he is deathless and ever young remains one with the soul and has no relationship with his past actions coming to fruition.

Understand this. This sutra appears a little contradictory but it is not. Past actions continue, but the enlightened person remains unrelated to them. The enlightened person comes to know that he is sky-like - deathless, ever young, unconcerned, unattached, indifferent and neutral. He knows, "I have never gone outside myself, nothing has ever come inside me, neither I was born nor will I die; only to be is my state." To such a person actions go on happening because of their chain in the past, but the person has no relationship with them. When unhappiness and pain or age come to the body he does not identify and say, "I am getting old," he only says that he is seeing the body getting old, or he is seeing the body getting sick, or that happiness has come or unhappiness has come.

He who is settled in the self does not identify. And when one does not identify, past actions dissolve after exhausting their momentum, the body drops after completing its journey, its desires, and tires out, and the witness becomes one with the empty sky.

As long as the body is there, there is only jeevanamukti, the liberation in life, and when the body also drops, there is mahanirvana.

Enough for today.

Author : John Nguyen

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