Chapter No. 3 - Reflections In A Mirror

From Sex to Superconsciousness
Osho

Talks given from 1/8/1968 to 16/11/1970
Original in Hindi
Book Chapters: 5
Year published: 1979
Source: www.osho.com and www.oshoworld.com

ChapterNo. 3 - Reflections In A Mirror
15 October 1972 am in Mt. Abu, Rajasthan, India

THIS BODY IS MADE FROM THE EXCRETA OF YOUR MOTHER AND FATHER AND IS FULL OF EXCRETA AND FLESH. THEREFORE, MOVING AWAY FROM IT, AS FROM A CHANDAL, THE LOWLY UNTOUCHABLE, AND BECOMING BRAHMA, THE ABSOLUTE REALITY, BE FULFILLED.

O SEEKER OF THE TRUTH! BY KNOWING THE ONENESS OF THE SOUL AND THE SUPREME SOUL, JUST LIKE THE ONENESS OF GHATAKASH, THE SKY WITHIN A POT, AND MAHAKASH, THE SKY WITHOUT A POT, BE ALWAYS PEACEFUL.

BECOMING THE SELF-ILLUMINATED, SELF-CREATED, SUSTAINER OF ALL AND THE ETERNAL SOUL BRAHMA, THE ABSOLUTE REALITY, DROP THE SENSE OF YOUR BODY AND ALSO OF THE UNIVERSAL BODY, AS IF THESE WERE CONTAINERS OF EXCRETA.

INVESTING THE SENSE OF EGO THAT HAS CONTROLLED THE BODY INTO THE EVER BLISSFUL CONSCIOUS SELF, GIVE UP THE GROSS BODY AND BE YOUR IMMORTAL LONE SOUL.

O INNOCENT ONE! JUST AS A CITY MAY BE SEEN REFLECTED IN A MIRROR, I AM THAT BRAHMA, THE ABSOLUTE REALITY, IN WHOM THE REFLECTION OF THIS WORLD IS SEEN -- KNOWING THIS, O SINLESS ONE, BE FULFILLED.

Try to understand this a little. You have received your body from your parents. You have nothing in your body that is actually yours. One half of it is a contribution from your father, and the other half from your mother. Then the body is made of the food you eat every day. And further, the body contains the five elements -- the air, the fire, and so on. You can't claim any of these as yours. But your consciousness consists of neither of these elements, nor have you obtained it from your parents.

Whatsoever you know, you have learned it from your schools and universities, you have heard it from your scriptures, you have obtained it from your gurus. But all of that is a part of your body, nor of your soul. Your soul is that which you have obtained from no one. So your true nature consists of that which you have received from no body -- neither from your mother, nor father, society, guru, or scripture. Until you have discovered that pure element which is innately yours, you won't be able to realize your true being.

We know the body only from the outside. Just as a person may go around a palace, see the outside form and beauty of its walls and conclude that this is the whole palace, similarly we see our body only from the outside.

The body is not only that which is seen from the outside. Seeing the body from the inside, one is at once freed of it. The form of the body that is seen from the outside is only the covering. The reality of the body is seen from the inside, the way the body really is.

Buddha used to send his disciples to the cremation ground to see the dead bodies; to see the bones, to see the skulls -- that is how the body is. Everything is covered by the layer of skin, otherwise you would be revolted by it and it would not be possible to have so much lust, so much attachment, and the feeling of 'my-ness' for it. Try sometime to visualize the body from the inside, then you will be able to understand this sutra. Go sometime to a hospital, see the surgeon performing operations in the operation theater; what you will see inside the body, that is the reality.

This sutra is very helpful for meditation. Let it be very clear to you that there is no condemnation of the body in this sutra. Religion is not interested in condemning anything, nor in praising anything. Religion is only interested in knowing as it is.

So when it is said that the body is an aggregate of flesh, bones, blood, marrow, excreta, etcetera, remember there is no intention of any condemnation at all. It is not an attempt to disgrace the body; the body is just so. The whole thing is just a revelation of the facts the way the body is, nothing else.

This sutra says,

THIS BODY IS MADE FROM THE EXCRETA OF YOUR MOTHER AND FATHER AND IS FULL OF EXCRETA AND FLESH. MOVING AWAY FROM IT, AS FROM A CHANDAL, THE LOWLY UNTOUCHABLE, AND BECOMING BRAHMA, THE ABSOLUTE REALITY, BE FULFILLED.

The words chandal and sudra are very valuable. Ancient Indian psychology says that whosoever believes himself to be the body is a sudra. Sudra means the one who has believed himself to be the body; brahmin means the one who has known himself to be the Brahma, the absolute. One is not a brahmin just by being born in a brahmin family, nor is one a sudra just by being born in a sudra family. Sudra-ness and brahmin-ness have nothing to do with houses or families; sudra is a state of being, and so is brahmin.

All are born as sudras, only a few die as brahmins. The whole world is sudra. Sudra means, all those people in the world who live believing themselves to be the body. It is very difficult to find a brahmin. It is not difficult to take birth in the house of a brahmin, but to be a brahmin is difficult.

I have heard, Uddalaka said to his son Shvetaketu, "Go to the ashram of a seer and come back after becoming a brahmin." Shvetaketu said, "But I am already a brahmin, I am the son of a brahmin." Uddalaka then lovingly but firmly told his son, "It has never happened that just by being born in our house a person becomes a brahmin. We have actually been becoming brahmins. So you go to the ashram of a master and come back having become a brahmin. Where in the world has brahminhood been received from a father? It is received from a master! And in our family there has never been a nominal brahmin, we have always actually become brahmins. You go and come back when you have become a brahmin."

This sutra says: move away from your body as if you are moving away from a chandal or a sudra. It is not that one has to move away, the moment one understands it is stinking filth, it is excreta, it is flesh, blood and marrow -- as soon as this is realized, moving away begins on its own. We are attracted, we are pulled there where we think is fragrance. We start moving away, we are repulsed, from there where we feel is stink. Our inclination to be near the body is because of our ignorance of it. We have no idea what our body actually is.

So visualize the inside of your body. Become your own surgeon and open up your own body. The skin is not very thick, it is thin! We have developed so much attachment to all the things that are hidden behind this skin, and we start living in a manner as if that is all there is to our being. So we get attached to it, tied down to it.

If you start realizing the exact reality of your body you will find that a moving away has already begun -- you do not have to move away, moving away begins on its own. Then if we have to re-identify with the body it will require effort. But our being attached to the body means only one thing, and that is, we have never looked at the body from its inside.

We know our body by seeing it in a mirror. But what is seen in the mirror is the outside cover of the body. It will be very good if some day science develops such a machine -- like the x-ray machine -- that if one stands in front of it, it shows everything of the inside of the body just the way it is: bones, flesh, marrow, excreta and all. Such a machine will be very useful.

Once you come to know the real situation of the inside of your body, you will immediately find that a distance has developed between your body and yourself; all those connecting bridges will have collapsed, all the identifications will have disappeared and the gap will start increasing. The seers of the Upanishad have tried to create that eye through which you can glimpse within -- behind the skin, behind your own skin.

Truth is liberating. If we come to know the truth of our body our mind starts becoming free of it. Lack of truth is bondage. Whatever we do not know in its reality becomes a bondage.

O SEEKER OF THE TRUTH! BY KNOWING THE ONENESS OF THE SOUL AND THE SUPREME SOUL, JUST LIKE THE ONENESS OF GHATAKASH, THE SKY WITHIN A POT, AND MAHAKASH, THE SKY WITHOUT A POT, UNDIVIDEDLY BE ALWAYS PEACEFUL.

When the futility of the body is seen and the worthlessness of the body is realized, the body feels to be a heap of filth and pus. And when the distance from the body begins to increase, then only the nearness with God begins to develop. The nearer one is to the body, the farther away from God; the farther away from the body, the nearer one is to God. The stronger our bond with the body, the greater the distance from that bodiless consciousness. When the bond becomes less and when distance from the body starts growing, this has only one meaning -- that closeness with the soul is increasing.

The soul is one pole and the body the other: we are between the two. When we are too close to the body, we are far away from the soul; as we start moving away from the body, we are coming closer to the soul. This is why the act of moving away from the body has been taken as a process of meditation. This was very much misunderstood also. When the Indian scriptures were first translated into Western languages, people thought that these scriptures were enemies of the body. But it is not so. They are only devices. Knowing the reality of the body, our consciousness immediately moves on to the journey within. Realizing the actual truth about the body, the connection with the body loosens. In order to loosen that connection, it is necessary to intensify this realization.

Reflections on death, contemplation on the realities of the body, uncovering the actualities of the body and seeing them clearly -- these are methods of meditation. Through them a person begins to move withinwards. And that moving happens easily, there is no effort required for that. If you want to move withinwards without understanding the body it will be very difficult, because the mind will remain interested in and bonded with the body.

One of Buddha's bhikkhus is passing through a village. He is very handsome, and meditation has added a dignity, a grace to his beauty. Silence has crystalized within him and its rays are emanating from his eyes and his face. An aura of light has graced him. One very famous prostitute sees him and is enamoured of him. Rabindranath Tagore has written a beautiful poem about this event.

That prostitute comes to him and requests the bhikkhu to rest for one night in her palace. The bhikkhu replies, "There is no rule about this so I will not refuse your invitation. I will come, but the time is not yet right. When the actual reality of your body is revealed to you, that's when I will come. Right now you are mistaken. The day you awake to the reality of it, I will come."

The prostitute could not understand this. The very meaning of a prostitute is one who does not understand any other language but the language of the body. So do not think that just because a woman is somebody's wife, she is not a prostitute. If she understands only the language of the body, she is a prostitute. As long as the language of the soul is not understood, nobody can rise above prostitution. And don't think that the word prostitute applies only to women; no, it applies to men too. Only the language of the body is understood; all transactions are carried out at the body level. The whole mind is focused only on the body, the body itself is the trade -- this is all that is meant by the word prostitute.

The bhikkhu said, "I will certainly come, but only when the reality of your body is revealed to you."

The prostitute said, "Are you mad? This is the time for you to come -- while I am young and at the peak of my beauty. My body will never be in any better condition."

The bhikkhu replied, "The concern is not for the better, the concern is for the real. When your body manifests its reality, then I will come."

The prostitute said, "I am unable to understand what you say. Please make it clearer to me.

The bhikkhu said, "When nobody comes to you anymore then I will come, because at that time your body will be showing its reality. Then the body will look the same from the outside as it really is inside. Right now it does not look the same on the outside as it really is inside. So when nobody comes to you, then I will come."

Many years passed, and the prostitute became old, leprosy had spread all over her body, every limb had started wasting away, and the people threw her outside the village.

These were the same people who used to hover around her door! These were the same people who used to be dying for entry into her palace, who used to consider themselves lucky and grateful even to get a distant glimpse of her. The same people threw her out of the village.

It was a dark night with no moon. She was in agonizing pain and thirst. There was nobody even to offer her a cup of water. That night the bhikkhu came; he laid his hand on her head and said, "I have come. Now your body is in its real condition, now nobody comes near you. Now the outside body has become the same as it is inside. Now the distance between the outside and the inside has disappeared, the illusion that the skin was maintaining is no longer there. Now the inner filth and pus is manifest outside also; now you are the same inside and outside. Now I have come. This is the day I had promised I would come when I said that when nobody else comes to you, I will come."

The bhikkhu further said, "As far as I am concerned, even at that first meeting I could see in you what has now manifested. Yes, then you couldn't see it. I could have become your guest even on that day, there was no difficulty, but your illusion would have increased: "Now even bhikkhus have begun to be my guests." I had no difficulty, I could have come on that first day, because I could see your body as it is today. What the whole village can now see, I had seen that day."

But that prostitute, now lying on the outskirts of the village, was not looking at her body. With closed eyes, she was still remembering those days when she had a beautiful body, when she had dignity and lived with pride in the village.

Even in old age people reflect about their days of youth. When the body manifests itself in its true form, they continue to cover it up with their mind. When even the skin cannot hide their old age, they close their eyes and delight in brooding over the past.

When an old man derives delight in thoughts of his youth, he will die a sudra. And when even a young man sees the old age in his body before it actually occurs, he will die a brahmin. When even a dying person is carrying the lust for life, know well he is a sudra. When even in the peak of youth someone begins to see his death, understand that the brahmin is being born in him. And it is necessary that this reality of the body is seen by us, so that the bonds are loosened and we can turn towards where consciousness is.

Just turn away from the body and look towards that mahakash. That mahakash, that vast existence, is very near.

If an earthen pot is on the ground and we turn it over and place it upside down, and if the pot then looks up, it will see only its earthen body, not the sky. Kept upside down, even if the pot looks upwards, what will it see? All it will be able to see is its own base, its own layer of mud -- its body -- but not the sky. Then we place the pot the right way up, its face towards the sky. Then when it looks up toward the sky it will be able to see, "I am not the body." Now the pot will also be able to see, "The small sky which is within me is the same sky that is outside; and between the two of us nowhere is there any gap, we are inseparable. It is me who has expanded into the sky above, and it is the sky above that has come all the way down into me -- nowhere is there any obstacle, any boundary, any wall in between."

A similar thing happens when you are looking towards your body; you are like a pot turned upside down -- you see only the body. When you turn away from your body, you become like a pot kept right way up -- now you are facing the sky. As a person turns away from the body, immediately he is focused towards the sky and sees for the first time that there is not even a grain of difference between him and this vast existence spread all around. He has become the vast existence, the vast existence has reached out to him.

It is one whole, the whole existence, and we are not separate from it. We are rooted in it. We cannot exist for a single moment without our roots in existence. Those roots are not visible, but we are breathing -- these are our roots. Each pore of the body is breathing -- these are our roots. They don't show. You don't even realize that your whole body is breathing, breathing the cosmos. If, leaving aside your nose, your whole body is thickly painted so that you cannot breathe from your body, you will be dead within three hours. The nose alone will not be enough. It is the main root, but all these branches, thousands of branches, of roots, are spread into the cosmos.

As soon as this unity is seen, peace happens.

What is the unrest, in fact? What is our restlessness? Our restlessness is that we are too big and imprisoned in the tiny. Our restlessness is like that of a person who has been made to put on a child's clothes and cannot move freely, he feels restricted. And again, if these clothes are made of iron, how much greater will the difficulty be? Our difficulty is similar.

We are big -- not only big but vast -- and we are imprisoned in a small body. The house is small and the resident is very large. It feels inconvenient on all sides; everywhere there seems to be a boundary and everywhere inconvenience. There seems to be no place where one can get out. And the difficulty has multiplied because what we think is our house is our prison. We are busy decorating it, furnishing and developing it. We are arranging for gold and silver decoration inside the prison, we are beautifying and ornamenting the prison walls -- and this is the same prison we are trapped in. We are facing towards the walls, not towards the door.

It will be so, because you turn towards what attracts you. The face is towards where the attraction is and the back is towards where the repulsion is. As long as you are identified with the body, you will be facing the wall. And the moment there is repulsion towards the body, you have found the door.

In your body too there is a door. But that door will only be seen by you when your attraction to the body disappears. That door in the body is called the heart. It is not the real heart that you call the heart; what you call the heart is the organ that is beating near the lungs. There is no door there, that is only an arrangement for pumping the blood. This is not the heart.

The heart, in the language of yoga, is the name of that door where you suddenly find yourself standing when you have turned away from the body, when you have no interest in even looking at the body -- when there remains no attraction to the body and the infinite is born in you. It is here that the door is -- where the pot opens towards the sky.

There are many types of doors in your body, but you come to know of them only when you arrive at them, not before that.

Look at a small child: a child does not know that there is a sex door in his body. But when the child grows and becomes a young man, suddenly one day he will become aware of that door. Through that sex door he can enter into the world, that too is a door for going out of the body. And, remember, this is the reason why there is so much yearning for sex. Because of it we are able to flow out of our body for a moment, but only for a moment. For a moment the body is forgotten and we drown in nature.

One of the doors of man is towards nature -- downwards -- and one is towards godliness -- upwards. When our mind is filled with sexual desire we are closest to the body. And when we are closest to the body, then the door opens through which we enter into the world of other bodies. When we are disinterested and far away from the body, then the door opens from where we enter into the world of souls. Both these doors are there in the body.

In the body is the door that leads towards matter and also in the body is the door that leads towards godliness. But disinterest in the body will not happen just by thinking so. If you go on just thinking that the body is only flesh, bones and marrow and nothing else, this won't help; thinking only indicates that you do not know -- and that's why you are thinking.

Many people go on saying to themselves for lifetimes, "What is there in the body?" But they know that there is something in the body, otherwise why the necessity for this auto-suggestion, otherwise where is the need for repeating this suggestion to yourself? They are only attempting to persuade themselves, their minds, not to fall for what the body says because there is nothing in it. But who is this mind that is getting involved in the body? -- it is they themselves. And the mind's interest in the body is still sustained, that is why it needs to be persuaded.

This sutra is not meant for persuasion. Do not repeat it; do not start chanting it sitting with your eyes closed. This sutra is for revelation. Understanding this sutra, try to search within your body with closed eyes to see whether it is true, as the sutra says, that this body is nothing but bones, flesh and marrow.

Don't just believe it. Believing it will be dangerous because you will start repeating it. No, explore it, search for it. Maybe the seer is simply joking, maybe he is telling a lie. Whatever the seers have said is not for you to believe in, but for knowing through your own search.

Search within yourself. Grope within for your bones. Press your fingers in your flesh and feel. Touch your skull and feel what is in there. Try to become acquainted with your body from all sides. The day this acquaintance is complete.... And why delay? -- it can happen today. You have already been given your body, but you have never bothered to explore it, you have never bothered to examine it. But the behavior of man is so unbelievable that perhaps you may be forgiven.

I know of doctors whose whole education and study is of the bones, flesh and marrow, but they too are equally infatuated with the body. A doctor being infatuated with the body is a miracle! It means their blindness is unequalled and unaccountable. As surgeons they cut and dissect bodies on their operation tables, and yet, like Majnu, they go on singing songs in praise of Laila. This is a real miracle; the producing of amulets etc., from the air by Satya Sai Baba is no miracle at all. The miracle is that a doctor, who daily cuts open the body and knows all the flesh, marrow and excreta, who closes his nostrils so that the stinking smell from inside the body may not enter his breathing, who is familiar with every bone and each vein in the body and knows there is nothing in the body that can be called beautiful, also becomes mad with desire for someone's body.

A very interesting thing happened.... I was saying all this to a doctor -- he is my friend. He said, "Now, while you are telling me this, I remember an incident. Once I was operating upon a woman's belly. When it was opened, I was nauseated because of all I saw there; it was very unsettling. While all this was happening," the doctor told me -- he is an honest man -- "side by side, my attraction to the beautiful nurse standing by my side was also asserting itself. The open stomach was there in front of me, and I was thinking how to complete the operation as soon as possible as I was later going to see a movie with this nurse."

Now this is how man's mind is! We are so skilled in deceiving ourselves. This man too will do the same things. Soon he will be out of the operating theater, he will hold the hand of the nurse, and forget completely what, in reality, a hand is.

So an average man can be forgiven -- but I am saying so only in comparison to the doctor. Otherwise no man can be forgiven, because we have our own body and we have not been able to acquaint ourselves with that body either. And people set out in search of their soul! Unable to even acquaint themselves with their bodies, they set out in search of the soul.

People ask me, "How to attain to the soul?" Be kind enough to first know the body well. First get acquainted with what is so near you. And acquaintance with it becomes a ladder for rising towards the soul, because whosoever becomes acquainted with the body disidentifies with it; and whosoever turns away from the body faces the soul -- his opening is towards the soul. And when the sky meets with this ghatakash, this little sky within the pot, what happens then is called peace.

To remain imprisoned in the body is the cause of unrest, and to experience being one with the all pervasive, the vast space outside of the body-prison, is the advent of peace. Without meeting the ultimate no one has ever become peaceful. Therefore, all other attempts to become peaceful will fail. At the most there can be only more or less unrest. Sometimes more unrest, sometimes less; that is all. What you call peace is nothing but less unrest; nothing more than this, just normal unrest. When there is normal unrest people say everything is peaceful, everything is going fine! When the unrest increases a little, one feels troubled.

Psychiatrists say that their whole business is to keep people normally abnormal, normally mad. There are two types of mad people in the world -- in fact there are only two types of people as such -- one, the abnormally mad, they have to be kept in madhouses; and the normally mad, they are sitting in houses, offices and shops everywhere. The difference between the two types is only of the degree of madness. Anyone of the second type can at any time abruptly take a jump from his shop to the madhouse. There is no difficulty in it, it is only a question of a rise in the degree.

And several times every day you come very close to the madhouse. When you are full of anger -- just for a few moments you have become mad. At that time there is no difference between you and a mad person. You will do the same things that a mad person does. The only difference is that this happens to you occasionally, this madness of yours happens only occasionally, whereas someone else's madness has settled, it just does not leave them, it has become stationary. You are a little liquid in your madness, it keeps itself flowing. Somebody else has solidified in it, frozen in it like ice.

Psychiatrists say that their whole work is to pull back those who have gone a bit too far in their madness and to bring them back alongside the normally mad crowd. They say they cannot do anything more than that; that somehow, through persuasions and seductions, treatment and therapies, possibly in a year or two, at the most we can bring them back to their shops or offices where they came from. They are allowed just that much madness which does not interfere with the day-to-day work they are doing.

Unrest has become our nature. And it is only natural to be so because there is only one meaning of being peaceful: when your river of life falls into the ocean of life, in that moment of meeting there is peace.

Without meeting the universal life, there is no peace.

BECOMING THE SELF-ILLUMINED, SELF-CREATED, SUSTAINER OF ALL AND THE ETERNAL SOUL BRAHMA, THE ABSOLUTE REALITY, DROP THE SENSE OF YOUR BODY AND ALSO OF THE UNIVERSAL BODY, AS IF THESE WERE CONTAINERS OF EXCRETA.

Not only has this body to be given up, but this vast body that we see as the universe has also to be given up.

Man is a miniature form of the universe. There is this body surrounding you, and within it you are the immortal flame of soul. Similarly, the body of the whole is this universe, and within it is hidden Brahma, the universal soul. The sense of this body has to be given up, but even the sense of this vast universal body spread all over is to be given up also -- it becomes meaningless too.

When a person disidentifies with his body, he experiences his soul. Try to understand this clearly. When a person drops attachment to his body then the luminosity that comes to his eyes for the first time is that of his own flame, his own soul; it is that of the ghatakash -- the sky within the pot. And when somebody becomes free even from the universal body of the whole, what he experiences then is that of the flame of Brahma, the absolute.

This is the only difference between the soul and the universal soul. Soul means, you experienced just the tiny flame. Universal soul means, now you are standing in front of the super sun. Being free from one's own body one experiences the soul, being free from the universal body one experiences the universal soul. But the difference is only one of degree. So for one who has reached up to the soul there are no obstacles, no hindrances for him; he can easily take the second jump also.

INVESTING THE SENSE OF EGO THAT HAS CONTROLLED THE BODY INTO THE EVER BLISSFUL CONSCIOUS SELF, GIVE UP THE GROSS BODY AND BE YOUR IMMORTAL LONE SOUL.

The meaning of sannyas is that our face constantly remains toward the sky. The grihastha, the householder, once in a while gets a glimpse of the sky through effort, but soon returns again to his home, the body.

Be clear about the meaning of grihastha; grihastha means one who keeps falling back to his body. The word griha, the house, does not refer to that house in which you live, it refers to the house -- the body -- with which you are born. And one who became settled in this house is a grihastha. Sometimes he gets glimpses of the sky too, but he keeps coming back to the body. Sometimes the pot faces the right way up, but it soon turns back down again -- gets stuck again. To remain upside down has become its habit. And because of habit, to remain upside down feels to be the right thing -- because of the habit, the long-time habit.

If a person is made to remain in a headstand from the time of his birth, and is brought up in the same posture, then if one day he is asked to stand the right way -- on his legs -- he will ask why is he being made to stand in a wrong way! Naturally, because now he has become habituated to standing on his head.

I have heard.... There is a small tribe in South America; it is a tribe of some three hundred persons living on a small hilltop, and on that hill there is a type of fly whose bite makes people blind. All those three hundred people of the tribe are blind. All the children are born with sight but they become blind within three months, because by that time the fly has bitten them. Therefore nobody in that tribe is even aware that there is anything like sight. How much can a child of three months know about eyes? Before he is older than three months of age, he turns blind. And all the others are already blind.

Now if by chance some child grows with sight intact, the doctors of that tribe will certainly label that child abnormal and have his eyes operated upon. Such an operation to destroy the eyes would seem a completely normal thing to do. They will say, "Is there such a thing as eyes? Who has ever had eyes? No one. This case is certainly some mistake of nature!" Destroying the eyes through an operation will become an absolute necessity. To be blind is natural to them; it has become a habit.

What we are ordinarily, appears as natural. But it is not necessary that it be natural. Try to understand this.

A habit can appear to be your nature, but habit is not nature. What is the difference between the two? Habit means a thing which we have been doing and we are therefore continuing to do it. Nature means a thing which will continue to happen even if we drop all our doings; it is something that does not need to be done.

It is our habit for life after life to be bound to the body, a habit of countless lifetimes. It is not our nature, so once you have the right experience of the true nature, this habit will break. One may go on getting glimpses, but that makes no difference. A glimpse is like lightning that suddenly happens and then again darkness settles, then we settle back into the old habit.

A sannyasin is one who takes the decision, "Now I will break the mind's identification with the house, the body, and I will continuously keep awareness of the open sky. And my effort will continue ceaselessly -- sitting, moving, in waking and even in sleep -- so that as far as I can manage I will be aware that my mind does not identify itself with the body, that my soul keeps flowing in the vast ocean of the whole."

And when I say "keeps flowing," I am not just using words. When you do this experiment, you will experience that you are actually constantly flowing. Just as you will face towards the soul, you will feel that you are continuously being emptied, that like the Ganges you are falling into the ocean. This remembrance should remain continuous.

O INNOCENT ONE! JUST AS A CITY MAY BE SEEN REFLECTED IN A MIRROR, I AM THAT BRAHMA, THE ABSOLUTE REALITY, IN WHOM THE REFLECTION OF THIS WORLD IS SEEN -- KNOWING THIS, O SINLESS ONE, BE FULFILLED.

Just as a reflection is seen in a mirror.... But the reflection that is seen in the mirror is not the actuality; the actuality is the mirror in which the reflection is seen. Are you aware that when you look into a mirror, you see the reflection and not the mirror? When you are standing before a mirror, have you ever found yourself seeing the mirror? No, you are always seeing your face, not the mirror. And the face which is not there in the mirror is seen and the mirror which is there is not seen.

If a mirror can be made in which the reflection of your face cannot be seen, then you will not notice that there is a mirror there at all. Because your face is seen, you infer that there is a mirror. The mirror is only inferred because you are able to see your face; so only the face is seen, not the mirror. Yes, if there is some flaw in the mirror that is another matter. The more flawless, the purer the mirror, the less it will be seen. If we can make an absolutely flawless mirror it will not be seen at all.

The whole story of the Mahabharata happened because of the making of such a flawless mirror. It was just a joke, but the joke proved to be very costly. Duryodhana and all his brothers were the sons of a blind man, so a joke was played on them. The joke was not in good taste anyway, because a joke which may hurt someone is more of violence than a joke.

The Pandavas had built a new palace and had invited their cousin-brothers to see it. Absolutely flawless mirrors had been fitted in that house; the mirrors were so flawless that they were not visible as mirrors. So if a mirror was fitted opposite a door, the door appeared in the mirror and the mirror itself could not be noticed. Poor Duryodhana, in trying to pass through such doors, smashed his head in the mirrors and fell down. Draupadi saw this and laughed: that laughter gave birth to the whole Mahabharata. It was the revenge of that laughter.

In a way it was not such a serious thing, but sometimes even a small laugh can bring out so much violence! The satire behind the laughter was deep: "You are the son of a blind man, so naturally how can you see? It is bound to be so, because you are the son of a blind man." Hence the laughter, "You are bound to fall, son of a blind man -- you are seeing doors where there are no doors!"

Completely flawless mirrors had been used, thus the reflection in the mirror is seen, but not the mirror.

The seer says,

O INNOCENT ONE! JUST AS A CITY MAY BE SEEN REFLECTED IN A MIRROR, I AM THAT BRAHMA, THE ABSOLUTE REALITY, IN WHOM THE REFLECTION OF THE WORLD IS SEEN -- KNOWING THIS, O SINLESS ONE, BE FULFILLED.

The soul within us is a clean, flawless mirror; the whole world is seen reflected in it. So we run to catch hold of the world but we do not see the mirror in which the world is seen reflected.

If a diamond, a Kohinoor, is seen, you run after it. However, you do not even consider finding out who is this in whom the diamond is reflected, the one who is seeing it. What is that mirror within me which reflects the diamond right to the depths within? The moon is seen in the sky. Who is there within that is reflecting the moon?

There is a revolving mirror within us that goes on reflecting the whole world in it. As long as you are running to catch the world, you are trying to catch the reflections. The day you begin to be aware of the mirror you have entered the world of truth. And the one who sees the mirror does not become infatuated with the reflections. It does not mean that there will no longer be reflections in the mirror; no, they will form, but the insistence to catch hold of them is dropped.

And a mirror is never polluted by reflections. No matter in how many worlds you may have been wandering your mirror has always remained pure and innocent. Understand this properly. This is why it is said in the sutra: "O innocent one!" It is addressed to you, "O, innocent one!" Even you will suspect that the seer has probably made some mistake in addressing you thus. "Me? Calling me innocent?" But no, it is said with a reason. No matter how many faults may happen, the mirror always remains pure and innocent.

You may put anything in front of a mirror -- even stinking excreta -- it will reflect it. But do you think the mirror was polluted by that stink? No, remove the excreta you placed before it, and the mirror is the same as ever before, there won't even be a trace of that filth left behind on the mirror.

So a lot has been happening in front of your mirror but it only happens in front of it, nothing enters within it. Nothing can enter it. This is why it has been addressed: "O innocent one."

This is a very fundamental difference between Christianity and Hinduism. Christianity asks you to stop committing sins, Hindu thinking asks you to know that you are already innocent. Christianity says, "Efface all sins, drop all wrong doings," Hindu thinking says, "What is there to be effaced? You are a mirror; just know this much and everything is already effaced -- then you are already pure and innocent."

It is one and the same thing. Even if one is engaged in effacing everything, by the time all wrong has been effaced from in front of the mirror, the mirror will look pure -- it already was. So it can be begun from this end also.

There is the same difference between Jaina and Hindu thinking also. It is a very interesting thing. Jainas' emphasis also lies on the removal of sins; remove all sins, so that when all sins are removed you will be able to see the pure mirror -- although the mirror was pure in the very first place. Hindu thinking emphasizes: Why make meaningless efforts in removing sins? Just realize the truth that you are a mirror, then even if the sins continue to remain before the mirror, you still are innocent, sinless. Therefore Jainas as well as Christians have always felt that Hindu thinking is a bit dangerous -- it does not leave much room for your concepts of morality and sins and virtues.

It is dangerous. The deeper the truth is, the more dangerous it is; because the deeper the truth is, the more powerful it becomes. And in power there is danger. If it falls into the hands of the wrong people, then there is great danger. Often the wrong people are in search of power, so it does fall into their hands. But Hindu thinking is very, very deep. The whole matter is that your consciousness within is just a mirror. Whatever you have inside, it is outside your consciousness. Nothing has ever entered inside your consciousness, though it feels that this has happened.

If you put something in front of a mirror, it appears as far inside the mirror as it is away from the mirror. It is a simple law of the rays of light and their ratio: the farther a thing is from the mirror, the deeper inside the mirror it appears. So take note of a very interesting principle: the deeper inside you something appears to be, know that the further away from you it is. If something appears to be totally inner, you can be absolutely sure that there can be nothing else more outer than it. As it often happens, people say, "This love is very deep within me." It means it is something far away from you. When you say that somebody's love has entered very deep in your heart, you should know that you are attempting to touch something that is far away from you. It means that someone is far away from you and therefore is being seen deeply within your mirror.

The things that are nearer appear shallower, and the things that are far away appear deeper in the mirror. Again it is not necessary that if a thing appears deep in a mirror, that the mirror itself should be really as deep within. Even in a small lake the moon appears as deep inside the lake as it is far away in the sky, and the lake is not so deep as that. How deep are your mirrors? Put a mirror on the ground and the moon will appear in it as deep as is its distance far away in the sky.

Howsoever deep the reflections may go inside, they actually never do penetrate. Nothing has ever gone inside you, it cannot. It only appears to be going within because there is a mirror within. Our consciousness is a mirror, the purest mirror, so pure that.... Because no matter how pure glass may be, it is still glass; that much matter is there. But the purest consciousness!

Even if we make a mirror out of air, that too won't be as pure as the mirror of consciousness. If we make a mirror of air, and something is reflected in it, we will set out in search of that reflection through the mirror, because the mirror will not obstruct us in any way. It is a mirror of air; you will just go through it.

The mirror of consciousness is much purer because consciousness is the subtlest phenomenon in the world. It is the subtlest energy. The whole world is reflected in it.

The seer says, "O innocent one! Just as reflections are seen in a mirror so does the world appear within you. Knowing this -- recognizing that 'I am Brahma, that I am the mirror, not that which is reflected but that in which everything is reflected' -- be fulfilled."

There simply is no fulfillment other than this. As long as one does not recognize the purity of one's consciousness one is unfulfilled. He may go on doing anything, he may go on achieving anything, but all that achievement will be useless. All that is done will be undone; all running about will be as good as drawing lines on water -- they disappear even before he has finished drawing them. He may go on drawing these lines again and again, but they will just go on disappearing.

At the end of life, at the moment of death, people who have been searching for reflections come to realize that they have been drawing lines on water. Everything disappears: all reputation, all positions, all wealth, all accumulations -- everything disappears. It is discovered in the moment of death that it was all a great mistake, that one was drawing lines on a granite stone but actually one was drawing lines on water. But it is only discovered when nothing can be done about it.

But if it can be known today, if it can be known now, then something is possible; drawing lines on water can come to an end. And a person who chooses to stop drawing lines on water enters a different world, a world in which nothing ever dies.

There is one world of death, there is another world of the deathless. Whosoever moves away from death attains to the deathless.

Enough for today.

Chapter No. 4 - Sex, the genesis of love
Chapter No. 5 - From repression to emancipation
Chapter No. 6 - The pinnacle of meditation
Chapter No. 7 - Sex, the super-atom
Chapter No. 8 - From lust to the lord