But there was still a third group who said, “We don’t know anything about meditation. How can we judge?”
After a few months, the group came again. Now there was nobody there. Only the master was sitting, smiling. All the disciples had disappeared. They asked, “What is happening? The first time we came there was a mad crowd here and we thought that this is useless, you are driving people crazy. The next time we came it was very good. People were meditating. Where have they all gone?”
The master replied, “The work is done, the disciples have disappeared. I am happily smiling because the thing happened. And I know that you are the fools! I have also been watching – not only you. I know what discussions were going on between you, and what you were thinking the first and second time you came.” Jalaluddin continued, “The effort that you have made in coming here three times would have been enough for you to become meditators, and the discussion that you have been involved in, that much energy was enough to make you silent. In the same period, those disciples have disappeared and you are standing at the same place. Come in! Don’t watch from the outside.”
They said, “Yes, that is why we came again and again, to watch what was happening. When we are certain, okay. Otherwise we don’t want to be committed.”
Clever people never want to commit, but is there life without commitment? Clever people think commitment is a bondage, but is there any freedom without bondage? First you have to move into a relationship, only then can you go beyond it. First, you have to move into a deep commitment, depth to depth, heart to heart. Only then can you transcend it. There is no other way. If you just move out and watch, you can never enter the shrine. And there can be no relationship. The shrine is commitment.
A master and disciple is a love relationship, the highest love that is possible. And unless there is a relationship you cannot grow. Patanjali says: “The first is trust – shraddha; the second is energy – effort.” You have to bring your whole energy in; a part won’t do. It may even be destructive if you only come partially in and remain partially out because that will become a rift within you. It will create a tension within you; it will become an anxiety rather than bliss.
Bliss is where you are in your totality; anxiety is where you are only in part because you are divided and there is a tension. The two parts are going separate ways. You are in difficulty.
Others who attain asampragyata samadhi attain through faith… trust, effort, energy, recollection. This word recollection is smriti: remembrance – what Gurdjieff calls self-remembering. That is smriti.
You don’t remember yourself. You may remember millions of things but you go on continuously forgetting yourself – that you are. Gurdjieff had a technique; he got it from Patanjali. In fact, all techniques come from Patanjali. He is the past master of techniques. Smriti is remembrance – self-remembering, whatever you do. You are walking; remember deep down, “I am walking, I am.” Don’t be lost in walking. Walking is happening – the movement, the activity – and the inner center is there, just aware, watching, witnessing. You need not repeat it in the mind, “I am walking.” If you repeat it, that is not remembrance. You have to be nonverbally aware: “I am walking, I am eating, I am talking, I am listening.” Whatever you do, the “I” inside should not be forgotten, it should remain. It is not self-consciousness, it is consciousness of the self. Self-consciousness is ego; consciousness of the self is asmita, purity, just being aware that “I am.”
Ordinarily, your consciousness is arrowed toward an object. You look at me, and your whole consciousness is moving toward me like an arrow. But you are arrowed toward me. Self-remembering means you must have a double-arrowed arrow, one side showing me, another side showing you. A double-arrowed arrow is smriti, self-remembrance – very difficult because it is easy to remember the object and forget yourself. The opposite is also easy – to remember yourself and forget the object. Both are easy; that’s why those who are in the market, in the world, and those who are in the monastery, out of the world, are the same. Both are single-arrowed. In the market they are looking at things, objects. In the monastery they are looking at themselves.
Smriti is neither in the market nor in the monastery. Smriti is a phenomenon of self-remembering, when subject and object are both together in consciousness. That is the most difficult thing in the world. Even if you attain for a single moment, a split moment, you will have the glimpse of satori immediately. Immediately you have moved out of the body… Somewhere else.
Try it. But, remember, if you don’t have trust it will become a tension. These are the problems involved. It will become such a tension that you could go mad because it is a very tense state. That’s why it is difficult to remember both: the object and the subject, the outer and the inner. To remember both is very, very arduous. If there is trust, that trust will decrease the tension – because trust is love. It will soothe you; it will be a soothing force around you. Otherwise the tension can become so much that you will not be able to sleep. You will not be at peace for one moment because it will be a constant problem, and you will be continuously anxious.
That’s why we can do just one: go to the monastery, close your eyes, remember yourself, forget the world – that’s easy. But what are you doing? – you have simply reversed the whole process, nothing else. No change. Or, forget the monasteries, the temples, the masters and be in the world, enjoy the world. That too is easy. The difficult thing is to be conscious of both. When you are conscious of both and the energy is simultaneously aware, arrowed in the diametrically opposite, there is transcendence. You simply become the third; you become the witness of both. When the third enters, you first try to see the object and yourself. But if you try to see both, by and by, you will feel something is happening within you – because you are becoming a third; you are between the two, the object and the subject. You are neither the object nor the subject now. …attain through faith, effort, recollection, concentration, and discrimination.
Shraddha – trust, and virya – total commitment, effort, energy have to be brought in; all your potentiality has to be brought in. If you are really a seeker of truth you cannot seek anything else. It is a complete involvement. You cannot make it a part-time job: “Sometimes in the morning I meditate and then I go out.” No, meditation has to become a twenty-four-hour continuity. Whatever you do, meditation has to be continuously there in the background. Energy will be needed; your whole energy will be needed.
And now, a few things: if your whole energy is needed, sex disappears automatically because you don’t have energy to waste. Brahmacharya for Patanjali is not a discipline, it is a consequence. You put your total energy in, so you don’t have any energy left. It happens in ordinary life too. Watch a great painter; he forgets women completely. When he is painting there is no sex in his mind because his whole energy is moving. You don’t have any extra energy.
A great poet, a great singer, a dancer who is moving totally in his commitment, automatically becomes celibate. He has no discipline for it. Sex is superfluous energy; it is a safety valve. When you have too much in you and you cannot do anything with it, nature has made a safety valve. You can throw it out, you can release it; otherwise you will go mad or burst, explode. If you try to suppress it, then too you will go mad because suppressing it won’t help. It needs a transformation, and that transformation comes from total commitment. A warrior, if he is really a warrior, an impeccable warrior, will be beyond sex. His whole energy is moving.
A very, very beautiful story is reported…
There was a great philosopher, thinker. His name was Vachaspati. He was so involved in his studies that when his father said to him, “Now I am getting old, I don’t know when I will die, maybe any moment, and you are my only son. I would like you to be married,” he was so involved in his studies that he said, “Okay.” He didn’t hear what his father was saying. So he married. He married, but completely forgot that he had a wife because he was so involved.
This can happen only in India; this cannot happen anywhere else. His wife loved him so much that she never wanted