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As
my own Self. When you see your hands, feet, body,
mind, senses, intellect, you know they are part
of you. You say, 'My "I" includes all these'.
In the same way you must see the world as yourself,
as not different from who you are. Right now you
regard your hands, your feet, your nails and your
hair as not being any different from you. See
the world in the same way.
Are
you saying that there is no place where 'I' ends
and 'you' begin?
There
is. I am taking you to that place.
Papa,
you speak about freedom. What is freedom?
Freedom
is a trap! A man who is imprisoned in a jail needs
to be free, doesn't he? He is trapped in the jail
and he knows that the people outside are free.
You are all in prison and you have heard about
outside from your parents, priests, teachers and
preachers. 'Come to us,' they say, 'and we will
give you freedom. Come to me and I will give you
rest.' That is the promise, but this is only another
trap. Once you believe it, you are caught in the
trap of wanting freedom. You should be out of
both these traps — neither in bondage nor
in freedom — because these are only concepts.
Bondage was a concept which gave rise to the concept
of freedom. Get rid of both these concepts. Then,
where are you?
Here.
Here,
yes. 'Here' is neither a trap of bondage nor of
freedom. It is not 'there'. In fact, It is not
even 'here'.
Words
seem to me to be a very great trap. Throughout
the time I have been here, words have been inadequate
to express the nature of the awakenings that take
place here. They cannot even express why words
are inadequate. I would have to compare them to
what was adequate and I can't do that in words.
But one word that is thrown around a lot in the
West and in the East is the word 'enlightenment'.
Is what you speak of enlightenment?
Enlightenment
is Knowledge Itself, not knowledge of a person,
a thing or an idea. Just Knowledge Itself. Enlightenment
is there when there is no imagination of the past,
no imagination of the future, not even an idea
of the present.
I
can't imagine a state with no imagination.
That
is what is called bondage. It is called suffering.
It is called samsara. I tell you, 'Don't
imagine. In this present moment, don't have any
imagination.' When you imagine, you are constructing
images, and all images belong to the past. Don't
recall the past and don't aspire to anything in
the future. Then imagination goes. It is no longer
in the mind. Everything in the mind comes from
the past.
When
you tell me not to think of anything, it is like
telling me not to think of a hippopotamus. The
first thought that comes to mind is, of course,
a hippopotamus.
I
am not asking you to think of anything. What I
am saying is, 'Don't imagine anything that belongs
to the past, the present and the future. If you
are free from all imagination, you are also free
of time, because any image will remind you of
time and keep you within its framework. In the
waking state you see images: of persons, of things,
of ideas. When you go to sleep, all these vanish.
Now, when you are sleeping, where are all these
images? Where are the people? Where are the things?
In
sleep these things are still there. They don't
go away when I sleep.
You
are describing the dream state. I am talking about
the sleep state. I will show you. What time do
you go to sleep?
About
11.30 at night.
Think
of this last second, the one after 11.29 and fifty-nine
seconds. What happens in that final second? Does
the sixtieth second belong to sleep or to the
waking state?
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