life, your livelihood, your money depends on it. So at that moment you are very
quiet.
In the same way listen, observe the truth that to see and hear anything, both
sensory and nonverbal, the mind must be quiet. That is a truth, that is logic, that
is sane. But the mind of a person who has beliefs, who is steeped in tradition,
who calls himself a Hindu, a Buddhist, a Parsi, is not quiet. For a mind to be
completely quiet is very simple, really simple. It is only in that quiet state that
you perceive the beauty of the Earth, the beauty of a tree, the beauty of a bird or
a face. And without beauty you will never come upon what truth is, you will
never see what truth is.
Have you beauty in your life? Do you know what beauty means? Not in
architecture, design in space, not in painting, not in a beautiful face or a beautiful
sari, but that beauty which comes when there is no movement of the “me,” when
there is no movement of the will, when there is no movement of time. In reaching
out, moving outwardly or inwardly, there is no beauty. There is beauty only
when there is total absence of the will, the “me.” Then there is passion, and in
that passion there is great beauty. A mind that is in meditation is concerned only
with meditation, not with the meditator. The meditator is the observer, the
censor, the thinker, the experiencer, and when there is the experiencer, the
thinker, then he is concerned with reaching out, gaining, achieving, experiencing.
And that thing which is timeless cannot be experienced. There is no experience at
all. There is only that which is not nameable.
Look, sirs, when the mind is quiet, the body becomes very still; because the
mind is quiet the body becomes still, not the other way round. You force your
body to sit still; you do all kinds of things to come upon the strange beauty of
silence. Don’t do that; just observe.
You know, in all this there are various powers, like clairvoyance, reading
somebody’s thought—which is the most disgusting thing to do; it is like reading
letters that are private. There are various powers. You know what I am talking
about, don’t you? You call them siddhis, don’t you? You know, all these things
are like candlelight in the sun. When there is no sun there is darkness, and then
the candle and the light of the candle become very important. But when there is
the sun, the light, the beauty, the clarity, then all these powers, these siddhis,
chakras, kundalini are like candlelight; they have no value at all. When you have
that light, there is nothing else.
Sirs, do realize one thing. You need a good, sane, logical, reasoning mind, not
a stupid mind. A mind that is dull can sit for centuries breathing, concentrating
on its various chakras, playing with kundalini, but it will never come upon that
which is timeless, which is real beauty and truth and love. So put aside the
candlelight that all the gurus and the books offer you, and don’t repeat a word
that you yourself have not seen the truth of, which you yourself have not tested.
Not other people’s sayings, but test your own thinking, question it, find out the
truth of it. Then you won’t be a secondhand human being.
QUESTIONER: Sir, how does one cope with the extraordinary energy that human
beings have?