The Whole Universe Is a Temple

It will be helpful to understand this.

One who cannot realize God within himself can never realize him in all. One who has not yet recognized God within himself can never recognize him in others. The self means that which is nearest to you; then anyone who is at a little distance from you will have to be considered as being farther away. And if you cannot see God in yourself, which is nearest you, you cannot possibly see him in those far from you. First you will have to know God in yourself; first the knower will have to know the divine — that is the nearest door.

But remember, it is very interesting that the individual who enters his self suddenly finds the entrance to all. The door to one’s self is the door to all. No sooner does a man enter his self than he finds he has entered all, because although we are outwardly different, inwardly we are not.

Outwardly, all leaves are different from each other. But if a person could penetrate just one leaf, he would reach to the source of the tree where all the leaves are in unison. Seen individually, each leaf is different — but once you have known a leaf in its interiority, you will have reached to the source from which all leaves emanate and into which all leaves dissolve. One who enters himself simultaneously enters all.

The distinction between ‘I’ and ‘you’ remains only so long as we have not entered within ourselves. The day we enter our I, the I disappears and so does the you — what remains then is all.

Actually, ‘all’ does not mean the sum of I and you. All means where I and you have both disappeared, and what subsequently remains is all. If ‘I’ has not yet dissolved, then one can certainly add I’s and you’s, but the sum will not equal truth. Even if one adds all the leaves, a tree does not come into being — even though it has had all the leaves added to it. A tree is more than the sum of all the leaves. In fact, it has nothing to do with addition; it is erroneous to add. Adding one leaf to another, we assume each one is separate. A tree is not made of separate leaves at all.

So, as soon as we enter the I, it ceases to exist. The first thing that disappears when we enter within is the sense of being a separate entity. And when that I-ness disappears, you-ness and the other-ness both disappear. Then what remains is all.

It’s not even right to call it all, because ‘all’ also has the connotation of the same old I. Hence those who know would not even call it all; they would ask, “The sum of what? What are we adding?” Furthermore, they would declare that only one remains. Although they would perhaps even hesitate to say that, because the assertion of one gives the impression that there are two — it gives the idea that alone one has no meaning without the corresponding notion of two. One exists only in the context of two. Therefore, those who have a deeper understanding do not even say that one remains, they say advaita, nonduality, remains.

Now this is very interesting. These people say that “Two are not left.” They are not saying “One remains,” they are saying “Two are not left.” Advaita means there are not two.

One might ask, “Why do you talk in such roundabout ways? Simply say there is only one!” The danger in saying ‘one’ is that it gives rise to the idea of two. And when we say there are not two, it follows that there are not three either; it implies that there is neither one, nor many, nor all. Actually, this division resulted from the perception based on the existence of ‘I’. So with the cessation of I, that which is whole, the indivisible, remains.

But to realize this, can we do what our friend is suggesting — can we not visualize God in everyone? To do so would be nothing more than fantasizing and fantasizing is not the same as perceiving the truth.

Long ago some people brought a holy man to me. They told me this man saw God everywhere, that for the last thirty years he had been seeing God in everything — in flowers, plants, rocks, in everything. I asked the man if he had been seeing God in everything through practice because if that were so then his visions were false. He couldn’t follow me. I asked him again, “Did you ever fantasize about or desire to see God in everything?” He replied, “Yes indeed. Thirty years ago I started this sadhana in which I would attempt to see God in rocks, plants, mountains, in everything. And I began to see God everywhere.” I asked him to stay with me for three days and, during that period, to stop seeing God everywhere.

He agreed. But the very next day he told me, “You have done me great harm. Only twelve hours have passed since I gave up my usual practice and I have already begun to see a rock as a rock and a mountain as a mountain. You have snatched my God away from me! What sort of a person are you?”

I said, “If God can be lost by not practicing for just twelve hours, then what you saw was not God — it was merely a consequence of your regular exercise.” It is similar to when a person repeats something incessantly and creates an illusion. No, God has not to be seen in a rock; rather, one needs to reach a state in which there is nothing left to be seen in a rock except God. These are two different things.

Through your efforts to see him there, you will begin to see God in a rock, but that God will be no more than a mental projection. That will be a God superimposed by you on the rock; it will be the work of your imagination. That God will be purely your creation; he will be a complete figment of your imagination. Such a God is nothing more than your dream — a dream which you have consolidated by reinforcing it again and again. There is no problem seeing God like this, but it is living in an illusion, it is not entering truth.

One day, of course, it happens that the individual himself disappears and, consequently, he sees nothing but God. Then one doesn’t feel that God is in the rock, then the feeling is “Where is the rock? Only God is!” Do you follow the distinction I am making? Then one doesn’t feel that God exists in the plant or that he exists in the rock; that the plant exists and, in the plant, so does God — no, nothing of the kind. What one comes to feel is “Where is the plant? Where is the rock? Where is the mountain?”… because all around, whatever is seen, whatever exists is only God. Then seeing God does not depend upon your exercise, it depends upon your experience.

The greatest danger in the realm of sadhana, of spiritual practice, is the danger of imagination. We can fantasize truths which must otherwise become our own experience. There is a difference between experiencing and fantasizing. A person who has been hungry the whole day eats at night in his dream and feels greatly satisfied. Perhaps he does not find as much joy in eating when he is awake as he does when he is dreaming — in the dream he can eat any dish he wants. Nevertheless, his stomach still remains empty in the morning, and the food he has consumed in his dream gives him no nourishment. If a man decides to stay alive on the food he eats in dreams, then he is sure to die sooner or later. No matter how satisfying the food eaten in the dream may be, in reality it is not food. It can neither become part of your blood, nor your flesh, nor your bones or marrow. A dream can only cause deception.

Not only are meals made of dreams, God is also made of dreams. And so is moksha, liberation, made of dreams. There is a silence made of dreams, and there are truths made of dreams. The greatest capacity of the human mind is the capacity to deceive itself. However, by falling into this kind of deception, no one can attain joy and liberation.

So I am not asking you to start seeing God in everything. I am only asking you to start looking within and seeing what is there. When, to see what is there, you begin to look inside, the first person to disappear will be you — you will cease to exist inside. You will find for the first time that your I was an illusion, and that it has disappeared, vanished. As soon as you take a look inside, first the I, the ego, goes. In fact, the sense that “I am” only persists until we have looked inside ourselves. And the reason we don’t look inside is perhaps because of the fear that, if we did, we might be lost.

You may have seen a man holding a burning torch and swinging it round and round until it forms a circle of fire. In reality there is no such circle, it is just that when the torch is swinging round with great speed, it gives the appearance of a circle from a distance. If you see it close up, you will find that it is just a fast-moving torch, that the circle of fire is false. similarly, if we go within and look carefully, we will find that the I is absolutely false. Just as the fast-moving torch gives the illusion of a circle of fire, the fast-moving consciousness gives the illusion of I. This is a scientific truth and it needs to be understood.

You may not have noticed, but all life’s illusions are caused by things revolving at great speed. The wall looks very solid; the rock under your feet feels clearly solid, but according to scientists there is nothing like a solid rock. It is now a well-known fact that the closer scientists observed matter, the more it disappeared. As long as the scientist was distant from matter, he believed in it. Mostly it was the scientist who used to declare that matter alone is truth, but now that very scientist is saying there is nothing like matter. Scientists say that the fast movement of particles of electricity creates the illusion of density. Density, as such, exists nowhere.

For example, when an electric fan moves with speed, we cannot see the three moving blades; one cannot actually count how many there are. If it moves even faster, it will appear as if a piece of circular metal is moving. It can be moved so fast that even if you sat on top of it, you wouldn’t feel the gap between the blades; you would feel as if you were sitting on top of solid metal.

The particles in matter are moving with similar speed — and the particles are not matter, they are fast-moving electric energy. Matter appears dense because of fast-moving particles of electricity. The whole of matter is a product of fast-moving energy — even though it appears to exist, it is actually nonexistent. Similarly, the energy of consciousness is moving so fast that, because of it, the illusion of I is created.

There are two kinds of illusions in this world: one, the illusion of matter; second, the illusion of I, the ego. Both are basically false, but only by coming closer to them does one become aware they don’t exist. As science draws closer to matter, matter disappears; as religion draws nearer I the I disappears. Religion has discovered that the I is nonexistent, and science has discovered that matter is nonexistent. The closer we come, the more we become disillusioned.

That’s why I say: go within; look closely — is there any I inside? I am not asking you to believe that you are not the I. If you do, it will turn into a false belief. If you take my word for it and think, “I am not; the ego is false. I am atman, I am brahman; the ego is false,” you will throw yourself into confusion. If this merely becomes a repetitive thing, then you will only be repeating the false. I am not asking you for this sort of repetition. I am saying: go within, look, recognize who you are. One who looks within and recognizes himself discovers that “I am not.” Then who is within? If I am not, then someone else must be there. Just because “I am not,” doesn’t mean no one is there, because even to recognize the illusion, someone has to be there.

If I am not, then who is there? The experience of what remains after the disappearance of I is the experience of God. The experience becomes at once expansive — dropping I, you also drops, ‘he’ also drops, and only an ocean of consciousness remains. In that state you will see that only God is. Then it may seem erroneous to say that God is, because it sounds redundant.

It is redundant to say “God is,” because God is the other name of “that which is.” Is-ness is God — hence to say “God is” is a tautology; it isn’t correct. What does it mean to say “God is”? We identify something as “is” which can also become “is not”. We say “the table is,” because it is quite possible the table may not exist tomorrow, or that the table did not exist yesterday. Something which did not exist before may become nonexistent again; then what is the sense in saying “it is”? God is not something which did not exist before, nor is it possible that he will never be again; therefore, to say “God is” is meaningless. He is. In fact, another name for God is “that which is.” God means existence.

In my view, if we impose our God on “that which is,” we are pushing ourselves into falsehood and deception. And remember, the Gods we have created are made differently; each has his respective trademark. A Hindu has made his own God, a Mohammedan has his own. The Christian, the Jaina, the Buddhist — each has his own God. All have coined their own respective words; all have created their own respective Gods. A whole great God-manufacturing industry abounds! In their respective homes people manufacture their God; they produce their own God. And then these God-manufacturers fight among themselves in the marketplace the same way the people who manufacture goods at home do. Everyone’s God is different from the other’s.

Actually, as long as “I am,” whatsoever I create will be different from yours. As long as “I am,” my religion, my God will be different from other people’s because they will be the creation of I, of the ego. Since we consider ourselves separate entities, whatever we create will have a separate character. If, to create religion, the appropriate freedom could be granted, there would be as many religions in the world as there are people — not less than that. It is because of the lack of the right kind of freedom that there are so few religions in the world.

A Hindu father takes certain care to make his son a Hindu before he becomes independent. A Mohammedan father makes his son a Mohammedan before he becomes intelligent, because once intelligence is attained, a person won’t want to become either a Hindu or a Mohammedan. And so there is the need to fill a child with all these stupidities before he achieves intelligence.

All parents are anxious to teach their children religion right from childhood, because once a child grows up he will start to think and to cause trouble. He will raise all sorts of questions — and not finding any satisfactory answers, will do things difficult for the parents to face. This is why parents are keen to teach their children religion right from infancy — when the child is unaware of many things, when he is vulnerable to learning any kind of stupidity. This is how people become Mohammedans, Hindus, Jains, Buddhists, Christians — whatsoever you teach them to become.

And so, those we call religious people are often found to be unintelligent. They lack intelligence, because what we call religion is something which has poisoned us before intelligence has arisen — and even afterwards it continues its inner hold. No wonder Hindus and Mohammedans fight with each other in the name of God, in the name of their temples and their mosques.

Does God come in many varieties? Is the God Hindus worship of one kind, and the God the Mohammedans worship of another? Is that why Hindus feel their God is desecrated if an idol is destroyed. Or Mohammedans feel their God is dishonored if a mosque is destroyed or burned?

Actually, God is “that which is.” He exists as much in a mosque as he does in a temple. He exists as much in a slaughterhouse as he does in a place of worship. He exists as much in a tavern as he does in a mosque. He is as present in a thief as he is in a holy man — not one iota less; that can never be. Who else is dwelling in a thief if not the divine? He is as present in Rama as he is in Ravana — he is not one iota less in Ravana. He exists as much within a Hindu as he does within a Mohammedan.

But the problem is: if we come to believe that the same divinity exists in everyone, our God-manufacturing industry will suffer heavily. So in order to prevent this from happening, we keep on imposing our respective Gods. If a Hindu looks at a flower he will project his own God on it, see his God in it, whereas a Mohammedan will project, visualize his God. They can even pick a fight over this, although perhaps such a Hindu-Mohammedan conflict is a little far-fetched.

Their establishments are at a little distance from each other — but there are even quarrels between the closely related “divinity shops.” For example, there is quite a distance between Benares and Mecca, but there is not much distance in Benares between the temples of Rama and Krishna. And yet the same degree of trouble exists there.

I have heard about a great saint… I am calling him great because people used to call him great, and I am calling him a saint only because people used to call him a saint.

He was a devotee of Rama. Once he was taken to the temple of Krishna. When he saw the idol of Krishna holding a flute in his hands, he refused to bow down to the image. Standing before the image, he said, “If you would take up the bow and arrow, only then could I bow down to you, for then you would be my Lord.” How strange! We place conditions on God also — how and in which manner or position he should present himself. We prescribe the setting; we make our requirements — only then are we prepared to worship.

It is so strange we determine what our God should be like. But that’s how it has been all along. What, up to now, we have been identifying as ‘God’, is a product based on our own specifications. As long as this man-made God is standing in the way, we will not be able to know that God who is not determined by us. We will never be able to know the one who determines us. And so we need to get rid of the man-made God if we wish to know the God which is. But that’s tough; it’s difficult even for the most kind-hearted person. Even for someone we otherwise consider a man of understanding, it’s hard to get rid of this man-made God. He too clings firmly to the basic foolishness as much as a stupid man does. A stupid man can be forgiven, but it is difficult to forgive a man of understanding.

Khan Abdul Gaffar Khan arrived in India recently. He is preaching Hindu-Mohammedan unity all over the country, but he himself is a staunch Mohammedan; about this, there is not the slightest doubt. It doesn’t bother him that he prays in the mosque like a loyal Mohammedan, yet he is going about preaching Hindu-Mohammedan unity. Gandhi was a staunch Hindu, and he also used to preach Hindu-Mohammedan unity. As the guru, so is the disciple: the guru was a confirmed Hindu; the disciple is a confirmed Mohammedan. And so long as there are confirmed Hindus and confirmed Mohammedans in the world, how can such unity come about? They need to relax a little, only then unity is possible. These zealous Hindus and Mohammedans are at the root of all the trouble between the two religions, although the roots of these troubles are not really visible. Those who preach Hindu-Mohammedan unity do not have the vaguest idea how to bring it about.

As long as God is different things to different people, as long as there are different places of worship for different people, as long as prayers are different and scriptures are different — Koran being father for some and Gita being mother for others — the vexing troubles between religions will never come to an end. We cling to the Koran and the Gita. We say, “Read the Koran and teach people to drop enmity and to become one. Read the Gita and teach people to drop enmity and to become one.” We don’t realize, however, that the very words of Koran and Gita are the root cause of all the trouble.

If a cow’s tail gets cut off, a Hindu-Mohammedan riot will break out, and we will blame ruffians for causing the fight. And the funny thing is that no hoodlum has ever preached that the cow is our sacred mother. This is actually taught by our mahatmas, our holy men, who put the blame for creating riots on ‘hoodlums’. … Because when the tail does get cut off, then for the mahatmas’ purpose, it is not the tail of the cow, it is the tail of the holy mother! When they bring this to people’s attention, the riots begin, in which the hoodlums get involved and are later blamed for starting them.

So the people we call mahatmas are in fact at the root of all such troubles. Were they to step aside, the hoodlums would be harmless, they would have no power to fight. They get strength from the mahatmas. But the mahatmas remain so well hidden underground that we never ever realize they could be at the root of the problem.

What is the root of the problem, really? The root cause of all the trouble is your God — the God manufactured in your homes. Try to save yourselves from the gods you create in your respective homes. You cannot manufacture God in your homes; the existence of such a God will be pure deception.

I am not asking you to project God. After all, in the name of God, what will you project? A devotee of Krishna will say he sees God hiding behind a bush holding a flute in his hand, while a devotee of Rama will see God holding a bow and arrow. Everyone will see God differently. This kind of seeing is nothing but projecting our desires and concepts. God is not like this. We cannot find him by projecting our desires and our concepts — to find him we will have to disappear altogether. We will have to disappear — along with all our concepts and all our projections. Both things cannot go hand in hand. As long as you exist as an ego, the experience of God is absolutely impossible. You as an ego will have to go; only then is it possible to experience him. I cannot enter the door of the divine as long as my I, my ego, exists.

I have heard a story that a man renounced everything and reached the door of the divine. He had renounced wealth, wife, house, children, society, everything, and having renounced all, he approached the door of the divine. But the guard stopped him and said, “You cannot enter yet. First go and leave everything behind.”

“But I have left everything,” pleaded the man. “You have obviously brought your ‘I’ along with you. We are not interested in the rest; we are only concerned with your ‘I’. We don’t care about whatever you say you have left behind, we are concerned with your ‘I’,” The guard explained. “Go, drop it, and then come back.”

The man said, “I have nothing. My bag is empty — it contains no money, no wife, no children. I possess nothing.”

“Your ‘I’ is still in the bag — go and drop it. These doors are closed to those who bring their ‘I’ along; for them the doors have always been closed,” said the guard.

But how do we drop the I? The I will never drop by our attempts to do so. How can ‘I’ drop the very ‘I’ itself? This is impossible. It will be like someone trying to lift himself up by his shoelaces. How do I drop the I? Even after dropping everything, I will still remain. At the most one might say, “I have dropped the ego,” and yet this shows he is still carrying his ‘I’. One becomes egoistic even about dropping the ego. Then what should a man do? It’s quite a difficult situation.

I say to you: there is nothing difficult about it — because I don’t ask you to drop anything. In fact, I don’t ask you to do anything. The I, the ego, becomes stronger because of all the doing. I am merely asking you to go within and look for the I. If you find it, then there is no way to drop it. If it always exists there, what is there left to be dropped? And if you don’t find it, then too, there is no way to drop it. How can you drop something which doesn’t exist?

So go within and see if the I is there or not. I am simply saying that one who looks inside himself begins to laugh uproariously, because he cannot find his I anywhere within himself. Then what does remain? What remains then is God. That which remains with the disappearance of the I — could that ever be separate from you? When the I itself ceases to exist, who is going to create the separation? It is the I alone which separates me from you and you from me.

Here is the wall of this house. Under the illusion that they divide space into two, walls stand — although space never becomes divided in half; space is indivisible. No matter how thick a wall you erect, the space inside the house and the space outside are not two different things; they are one. No matter how tall you raise the wall, the space inside and outside the house is never divided. The man living inside the house, however, feels that he has divided the space into two — one space inside his house and another outside it. But if the wall were to fall, how would the man differentiate the space within the house from the space without? How would he figure it out? Then, only space would remain.

In the same way, we have divided consciousness into fragments by raising the walls of I. When this wall of I falls, then it is not that I will begin to see God in you. No, then I won’t be seeing you, I’ll only be seeing God. Please understand this subtle distinction carefully.

It will be wrong to say I would begin to see God in you — I won’t be seeing you any more, I will only be seeing the divine. It’s not that I would see God in a tree — I would no longer see a tree, only the divine. When somebody says God exists in each and every atom he is absolutely wrong, because he is seeing both the atom and God. Both cannot be seen simultaneously. The truth of the matter is that each and every atom is God, not that God exists in each and every atom. It is not that some God is sitting enclosed inside an atom — whatever is, is God.

God is the name given out of love to “that which is.” “That which is,” is truth — in love we call it God. But it makes no difference by which name we call it. I do not ask, therefore, that you begin to see God in everyone, I am saying: start looking inside. As soon as you look within, you will disappear. And with your disappearance what you’ll see is God.

Question  2

ANOTHER FRIEND HAS ASKED: IF MEDITATION LEADS TO SAMADHI AND SAMADHI LEADS TO GOD, THEN WHAT NEED IS THERE TO GO TO THE TEMPLES? SHOULDN’T WE DO AWAY WITH THEM?

It is useless to go to temples, but it is equally useless to do away with them. Why should one bother to do away with something in which God doesn’t exist anyway? Let temples be where they are. What question is there of getting rid of them? But every so often this trouble comes up.

For example, Mohammed said that God is not to be found in idols, so the Mohammedans thought it meant idols should be destroyed. And then a very funny thing started happening in the world: there were already people crazy about making idols; now another bunch of crazy people cropped up to destroy the idols. Now the idol-makers are zealously busy making idols, while the idol-destroyers are occupied day and night figuring out ways to destroy the idols. Someone should ask when Mohammed said that God is to be found in destroying idols? God may not be present in an idol, but who said God is present in destroying idols? And if God is present in destroying idols, then what’s the problem with God being present in the idol? God can be present in the idol too. And if he is not present in the idol, how can he be present in its destruction?

I am not saying we should do away with temples. What I am saying is that we must realize the truth that God is everywhere. Once we have realized this truth, everything becomes his temple — then it’s difficult to distinguish between a temple and a non-temple. Then wherever we stand, that will be his temple; whatever we look at, that will be his temple; wherever we sit, that will be his temple. Then there will no longer be any sacred places of pilgrimage — the entire world will be a holy place. Then it will be meaningless to create separate idols, because then whatever is will be his image.

I am not advocating that you should get involved in doing away with temples, or that you should dissuade people from going to temples. I have never said that God is not present in the temple. What I am simply saying is that one who sees God only in a temple and nowhere else, has no knowledge whatsoever of God.

One who has realized God will feel God’s presence everywhere — in a temple as well as in a place which is not a temple. Then how will he distinguish what is a temple and what is not a temple? We identify a temple as a place which has God’s presence in it, but if one feels his presence everywhere then every place is his temple. Then there will no longer be any need to build separate temples, or, by the same token, to do away with temples either.

I have observed that instead of making sense out of what I am saying, people very often make the mistake of understanding something totally opposite to what I may have said. People become interested more in what is to be done away with, what is to be destroyed, what is to be eliminated — they don’t try to understand what is. Such mistakes happen continuously.

One of the fundamental errors committed by man is that he hears something totally different from what is communicated to him. Now, some of you may take me as an enemy of temples, but you will rarely find a person more in love with temples than me. Why do I mention this? For the simple reason that I would like the whole earth to be seen as a temple; my concern is that everything be turned into a temple. But after listening to me, someone may come to understand that things would be better if we did away with temples. No purpose will be served by getting rid of these temples. Things will only work out well when the whole of life is made into a temple.

Those who see God in temples and those who destroy temples — both are wrong. One who only sees God in the temple is mistaken. His mistake is: who else does he see outside the temple? Obviously, his mistake is that he does not see God except in the temple. Your temple is very puny; God is very vast — you cannot confine God to your puny little temples. The other person’s error is: he wants to get into doing away with temples, into destroying them — only then, he thinks, can he see God. Your temples are too small to serve as dwelling places of God or to prevent anyone from seeing God. Remember, your temples are so ridiculously small they cannot become God’s residence, nor can they become his prison, which, when destroyed, would supposedly make him free. You need to understand exactly what I am saying.

What I am saying is: only when we have entered meditation do we ever enter a temple. Meditation is the only temple with no walls; meditation is the only temple where, as soon as you enter, you really enter a temple. And one who begins to live in meditation begins living in the temple twenty-four hours a day.

What’s the point in a man visiting the temple if he does not live in meditation? What’s the sense in his going to someplace we generally identify as a ‘temple’? It’s not so easy that, while sitting in your shop, you may suddenly find your way to the temple. Of course, it’s easy to carry your body to the temple; the body is such a poor thing you can bring it along with you anywhere you like. The mind is not that simple. A shopkeeper counting money in his shop can in fact get up suddenly, if he wants to, and bring his body to the temple. Just because his body is in the temple, the man may foolishly think that he is in the temple. However, if he ever looked into his mind a little, he would find, to his astonishment, that he was still sitting in his shop counting money.

I have heard….

A man was terribly harassed by his wife. All men are, but he was harassed a little too much. He was a religious man, but the wife was not at all religious. Ordinarily the opposite is the case — the wife is religious, the husband is not — but then, everything is possible! My understanding is that only one of the two can become religious. Both husband and wife can never become religious together; one will always be opposite the other. In this case the husband had become religious first, while the wife did not care to; however, every day the husband tried to make her religious.

A religious person carries a fundamental weakness: he wants to make others like himself. This is very dangerous; this is being violent. It is ugly to try to make others like oneself. It is enough to state our point of view to others, but to get on their case and force them to believe what we believe amounts to what we might call a kind of spiritual violence.

All gurus indulge in this kind of activity. You can rarely find a person more violent than a guru. With his hands around the disciple’s neck, a guru attempts to dictate what clothes to wear, how to keep his hair, what to eat, what to drink, when to sleep, when to get up — this, that, and all kinds of things are thrust upon him. With impositions like these, the gurus just about kill people.

So the husband was very keen to make his wife religious. Actually, people find great pleasure in making other people religious. To become religious, as such, is a matter of great revolution, but people find tremendous satisfaction in pestering others to become religious, because in doing so they have already assumed they are religious people. But the wife would not listen to her husband. In despair, the husband approached his guru and begged him to come to his house and persuade his wife.

Early one morning, at about five o’clock, the guru arrived. The husband was already in the room of worship. The wife was sweeping the courtyard. The guru stopped her right then and there and said, “I have heard from your husband that you are not a religious person. You never worship God, you never pray, you never enter the temple your husband has made in your house. Look at your husband — it is five o’clock and already he is in the temple.”

The wife replied, “I don’t recall my husband ever going to the temple.”

The husband, sitting in his temple, overheard what his wife said and grew red with rage. A religious person gets angry very easily, and this is true beyond one’s imaginings about one who is sitting in a temple. Heaven knows whether people sit in the temple to hide the flames of their anger or for something else. If one person becomes religious, he creates hell for the rest of the household.

The husband was totally outraged. He was halfway through his prayers when he overheard his wife. He couldn’t believe his ears; what she said was total rubbish. Here he is, sitting in the temple, and she is telling his guru she doesn’t know if he ever goes in there! He hurried to finish his prayer so he could come out and repair such a lie.

The guru began scolding the wife, “What are you talking about? Your husband goes to the temple regularly.” Hearing this, the husband began reciting his prayer even more loudly. The guru said, “See how vigorously he is praying!”

Laughing, the wife said, “I can hardly believe you are taken in by this loud recitation too! Of course he is chanting God’s name loudly, but as far as I can see he is not in the temple, he is at the shoemaker’s, haggling over the price.”

Now this was too much! The husband could hold himself back no longer. He dropped his worship and came running out of the temple. “What are all these lies? Didn’t you see I was praying in the temple?” he shouted.

The wife said, “Look within yourself a little more closely. Were you really praying? Were you not bargaining with the shoemaker? And didn’t you get into a fight with him?” The husband was taken aback, because what she was saying was true.

“But how did you know this?” he asked.

“Last night, before going to bed, you told me the first thing you would do this morning was go and buy a pair of shoes you badly needed. You also said you felt the shoemaker was asking too much for the shoes. It’s my experience that the last thought before going to bed at night becomes the first thought the next morning. So I merely guessed you must be at the shoestore,” the wife answered.

The husband said, “There is nothing left for me to say, because you are right. I was indeed at the shoemaker’s and we fought over the price of the shoes. And the more heated the argument became, the louder I repeated the name of God. I may have been chanting God’s name outwardly, but inside I was involved in a fight with the shoemaker. You are right; perhaps I have never really been in the temple.”

Entering a temple is not so easy — it is not that you can enter any place and say that you are in a temple. Your body may have entered the temple, but what about your mind? How can you trust where your mind will be the next moment? And once your mind has entered the temple, why bother if the body is in the temple or not? The mind which has found the entrance into the temple suddenly discovers that it is surrounded on all sides by the vast temple, that now it is impossible to step out of the temple. Wherever you go, you will still be within his temple. You may go to the moon…. Recently Armstrong landed on it. Does that mean he left God’s temple? There is no way you can step out of God’s temple. Do you imagine there is any place left where one can be outside his temple?

So those who think the temple they have made is the only temple of God, and that no temple of God exists outside of it, they are wrong. And those who think that this temple should be destroyed because God is not present here — they are equally wrong as well.

Why blame the poor temples? If we could step out of our illusion that God exists only in temples, our temples could become very beautiful, very loving, very blissful. A village, in fact, looks incomplete without a temple. It can be a very joyful thing to have a temple. But a Hindu temple can never be a source of joy, nor, for that matter, can a Mohammedan or a Christian temple be a source of joy. Only God’s temple can be a source of joy.

But Hindu, Mohammedan and Christian politics are so deep that they never allow a temple to represent the divine being. That’s the reason Hindu shrines and Mohammedan mosques look so ugly. An honest man hesitates to even look on them. They have turned into hotbeds of scoundrels; all kinds of mischief is planned there. And those who plan this mischief do not necessarily know what they are doing. It is my understanding that no one plans mischief with much understanding; mischief is always planned in unawareness. And the whole earth is caught up in this mess.

If temples ever do disappear from the face of the earth, it will not be because of the atheists, but because of the so-called theists. Temples are already disappearing; they have almost disappeared. If we want to save temples on this earth, first we will have to see the vast temple around us — existence itself. Then the smaller temples will automatically be saved; then they will survive as symbols of the divine presence. It’s as if I gave you a handkerchief as a gift… the gift may be worth a few paisa, but you preserve it safely in a treasure chest.

Once I visited a village. People came to see me off at the railway station and someone put a garland around my neck. I took it off and handed it to a girl standing nearby. I visited the same village after six years, and the same girl came up to me and said, “I have saved the garland you gave me last time. Although the flowers have faded and people say there is no fragrance left in them, yet they are as fresh and fragrant as they were the first day. After all, you gave them to me.”

I visited her house and she brought out a lovely wooden box in which the garland was carefully placed. The flowers had withered and were all dry; they had lost their fragrance. Anyone seeing it might have asked, “Why have you left this rubbish in such a beautiful box? What’s the need? The box is valuable and the rubbish is worthless.” The girl could throw the box away but not the rubbish. She could see something else in the rubbish — for her it was a symbol; it contained someone’s loving memory. It might be rubbish to the rest of the world, but not to her.

If the temples, the mosques, the churches could just remain the reminders of man’s longing to ascend toward God…. And this is the truth. Take a look at the rising steeple of a church, the rising minaret of a mosque, the sky-high dome of a temple. They are nothing but symbols of man’s desire to rise, symbols of his journey in search of God. They are symbols of the fact that man is not happy with only a house, he wants to build a temple as well. Man is not happy only being on the earth, he wants to ascend towards the sky as well.

Have you ever noticed the earthen lamps burning in the temples? Have you ever wondered why these lamps, containing ghee, containing purified butter, are kept burning in the temple? Have you ever realized that these lamps are the only things on earth whose flame never goes downwards? — it always moves upwards. Even if you turn the lamp upside down, the flame still moves upwards. The flame, which always moves upwards, is a symbol of human aspirations. We may be living on the earth, but we would also like to make our abode in the sky. We may remain tied to the earth below, but we also long to move freely in the open skies.

And have you ever noticed how fast a flame rises and disappears? Also, have you ever observed that once the flame has risen and disappeared, you can never find a trace of it? This is symbolic too — of the fact that the one who ascends, disappears. The earthen lamp is solid matter, while the flame is very fluid — no sooner does it rise than it disappears. So the flame of the lamp contains the message. It is a symbol of the fact that whosoever rises above the gross will disappear.

It is purely out of love that a man chooses to burn ghee in his lamp. Although there is nothing wrong in using kerosene oil in a lamp — God is not going to prevent you from doing so — we feel that only one who has become pure like ghee can move upwards. The flame of a kerosene lamp will move upwards too — kerosene is no less than ghee — but ghee is a symbol of our feeling that one who has become pure will be able to rise higher.

Temples, mosques, and churches are also symbols of a similar type. They can be very lovely. They are beautiful symbols — incredible illustrations created by man. But they have become ugly because so much nonsense has entered them. Now a temple no longer remains a temple — it has become the temple of the Hindus. And not only of the Hindus but of the vaishnavas. And not only of the Vaishnavas but the temple of such and such a person. And so, with such continuous disintegration, all temples have turned into hotbeds of politics. They nurture the groupism and bigotry that lead everyone to disaster. By and by, they have all turned into establishments which continue to exploit and maintain their vested interests.

I am not asking you to do away with temples, I am asking you to get rid of all that is worthless and has become part of the temples. Their vested interests have to be destroyed. Temples have to be saved from turning into establishments; they have to be saved from groupism and bigotry. A temple is a very beautiful place if it remains just a reminder of God, if it remains his symbol, if it reflects a phenomenon rising towards the sky.

What I am saying is that as long as temples remain the mainspring of politics, they will continue to cause misfortune. And, indeed, now the temples are nothing but the mainsprings of politics. When a temple is built for the Hindus, it automatically becomes a hotbed of politics, because politics means groupism. And religion is something which has absolutely nothing to do with groupism. Religion means a sadhana, an individual commitment to spirituality, and politics means groupism. Always be aware that religion can be related to a sadhana, but it can have no relation to groupism. Politics survives on groupism, groupism survives on hatred, and hatred survives on blood — and the whole mischief goes on….

As a symbol of God the temple has become impure. That impurity has to be removed; then it will be a symbol of great beauty. If a village has a temple which belongs neither to the Hindus nor to the Mohammedans nor to the Christians, the village will look beautiful. The temple will become an adornment of the village. The temple will become a reminder of the infinite. Then those who enter the temple will not feel that, by doing so, they have come near God, that outside they were away from him; people will simply feel that the temple is a place which makes it easy to enter within themselves, that the temple is only meant to be a place where one experiences beauty, peace and solitude. Then the temple will simply be an appropriate place for meditation. And meditation is the path leading to God.

Everyone cannot find it easy to make his house so peaceful that it can be used for meditation, but together a whole village can certainly build such a peaceful house. Everyone cannot afford to hire a tutor for his children and provide them with a separate school building, garden and playground. If each and every person started doing this, it would create a problem — only a limited number of children would get educated — so we build a school in the village and provide all that is necessary for the children of the entire village. Similarly, each village should have a place for sadhana, for meditation. That is all a temple and a mosque mean, nothing more. At present, they are no longer places for sadhana, they have become centers for spreading trouble and mischief.

So we don’t need to do away with the temples. We must, however, take care that a temple does not continue to be a center for causing trouble. We must also take care that the temple returns to the hands of religion, and does not remain in the hands of Hindus or Mohammedans.

If the children of a town can go as freely to the mosque as they can to the temple, as freely to the church as they can to the temple of Shiva, then such a town is truly a religious town. Then the people of this town are good people. Then the parents of this town are not the enemies of their children. One can see that the parents of this town love their children, and are laying a foundation so that their children do not fight amongst themselves. The parents of this town would tell their children, “A mosque is your house as much as a temple is. Go wherever you find peace. Sit there, seek God there. All houses are God’s, but to have a glimpse of him is what matters. And for this, go within yourself. Or go wherever you feel.” The day this will become a reality, the right kind of temple will be created in the world. We have not been able to build it as yet.

I am not among those who wish to get rid of temples. On the contrary, I am saying that our temples have already been destroyed by the very people who claim to be their guardians. But when we will be able to see this is hard to say. And then people misunderstand, they get the idea that I am among the destroyers of temples. What would I gain by destroying a temple? Whatsoever is unlike a temple, which has gathered around the temple, must, of course, be eliminated. It is quite all right to involve oneself in an effort to do so.

One last question, and we will begin our meditation. One friend has asked after the morning discussion:

Question  3

DO SOULS SOMETIMES WANDER AFTER LEAVING THE BODY?

Some souls do find it difficult to take on a new body right after death. There is a reason for this, and perhaps you may not have thought that this could be the reason. All souls, if divided, would fall into three categories. One is the lowest — people with the most inferior type of consciousness; another is of the very highest kind, very superior, the purest kind of consciousness; and the third consists of people in between — a combination of something of both.

Let’s take the example of a damroo, a small drum. It is broad at the ends and thin in the center. Were we to reverse it so that it was broad in the center and narrow at the ends, we would understand the situation of disembodied souls. At the narrow ends there are very few souls. The most lowly souls find it as difficult to take a new body as the superior ones do. Those in between do not face the slightest delay — they attain a new body as soon as they leave the previous one. The reason is that for the mediocre souls, the middle ones, a suitable womb is always available.

As soon as a person dies, the soul sees hundreds of people, hundreds of couples, copulating — and whichever couple it becomes attracted to, it enters the womb. Many superior souls, however, cannot enter ordinary wombs; they require extraordinary wombs. The superior soul requires the union of a couple with an exceptionally high level of consciousness so that the highest degree of possibilities becomes available for their birth. And so, a superior soul has to wait for the right womb. Similarly, inferior souls have to wait also, because they cannot easily find a couple either, they cannot easily find a womb of an inferior type. Thus, both the highest and the lowest types are not easily born, while the mediocre types have no difficulty. There are wombs continuously available to receive them — the mediocre soul is immediately attracted to any one of them.

I talked about Bardo in the morning. In this method the dying man is told, “You will see hundreds of couples copulating. Don’t be in a hurry. Think a little, take a little time, remain there for a while before you enter a womb. Don’t immediately enter whichever womb attracts you. It is as if a person goes downtown and buys whatsoever catches his fancy in a showroom. Whichever shop comes into view first, he is pulled to it; he enters the shop immediately. But an intelligent customer goes to several shops, checks and rechecks the items, makes enquiries, confirms the prices, and then decides.

So in the Bardo method the dying man is warned, “Beware! Don’t rush, don’t hurry, keep searching; give it thought, take everything into consideration.” This is told to him because, continuously, hundreds of people are copulating. The person clearly sees hundreds of couples making love, and among them he is only attracted to that couple capable of giving him a suitable womb.

Both superior and inferior souls have to wait until they find a suitable womb. The inferior souls do not easily find a womb of such an inferior character that through it they can attain their possibilities. Also, superior souls do not readily find a womb of a superior character. The inferior souls, stranded without bodies, are what we call evil spirits, and the superior souls waiting to take birth, we call them devatas, gods. Superior souls waiting for the right womb are gods. Ghosts and evil spirits are the lowest kind of souls — stranded because of their inferior quality. For the ordinary soul a womb is always available. No sooner does death occur than the soul instantly enters a womb.

Question  4

THE SAME FRIEND HAS ALSO ASKED: CAN THESE SOULS WHO ARE WAITING TO BE BORN ENTER INTO SOMEONE’S BODY AND HARASS THAT PERSON?

This, too, is possible — because the inferior souls, those who have not yet found a body, remain very tormented; while, without bodies, the superior souls are happy. You should keep this distinction in mind. Higher souls always look upon the body as a kind of bondage of one sort or another. They wish to remain so light they even prefer not to carry the weight of a body. And, ultimately, they want to be free from the body, because they find even the body is nothing but a prison. Eventually, they feel the body makes them do certain things which are not worth doing. And so these souls are not very attracted to the body. The inferior souls cannot live for a moment without a body; their interest, their happiness is tethered to the body.

Certain pleasures can be attained without being in a body. For example, there is the soul of a thinker. Now, one can have the pleasure of thinking without being in a body, because thought has nothing to do with the body. So if the soul of a thinker begins to wander and does not attain a body, it never shows any hurry to be in the body again because it can enjoy the pleasure of thinking even in the state it is in. But, let’s say someone enjoys food with a passion. That pleasure is not possible without being in a body, so in such a case, the soul becomes tremendously restless to find a way to enter a body. And if it fails to find a suitable womb, then it can enter a body which has a weak soul. A weak soul means one which is not the master of its body. And this happens when the weak soul is in a state of fear.

Remember, fear has a very deep meaning. Fear means that which causes you to shrink. When you are in fear you shrink; when you are happy you expand. When a person is in a state of fear his soul shrinks, and consequently a large space is left vacant in his body for another soul to enter and occupy. Not only one, many souls can enter and occupy that space at once. So when a man is in a state of fear, a soul can enter his body. And the only reason a soul would do that is because all its cravings are tethered to the body; it attempts to satisfy its cravings by entering someone’s body. This is totally possible. Complete facts are available to support it; it is totally based on reality.

What this means is that a fearful person is always in danger; he is always in a shrunken state. He lives, as it were, in one room of his house, while the rest of the rooms remain vacant and can be occupied by other guests.

Occasionally higher souls also enter a human body, but they do so for very different reasons. There are some acts of compassion which cannot be carried out without being in a body. Say, for example, that a house catches fire and no one steps forward to save it from burning down. The crowd stands there, powerless; no one dares enter the burning house. Suddenly a man steps forward, puts out the fire and manages to save somebody trapped inside. Later on, when everything is over, the man himself wonders how he did it. He feels quite sure he moved and acted under the influence of some unknown power — that it was not his doing, that someone else did it. In such instances, where man is unable to muster the courage for some good cause, some higher soul can enter a human body and accomplish the task. But these are rare happenings.

Since it is difficult for superior souls to find suitable wombs, they sometimes have to wait for hundreds of years before their next birth. And surprisingly enough, these souls appear on the earth almost at the same time. For example, Buddha and Mahavira were both born in India 2,500 years ago. Both were born in Bihar, and during the same period six other enlightened beings were present in the same state, in Bihar. Their names are not known to us because they did not initiate any disciples, because they had no followings — that is the only reason — but they were of the same caliber as Buddha and Mahavira. And they conducted a very daring experiment: none of them initiated any followers. One of these people was Prabuddha Katyayana, another was Ajit Keshkambal, and yet another was Sanjay Vilethiputra. Then there was Makhali Gosal, and there were others. In that period of time, eight people of the same genius and the same potential were born simultaneously, in that very state of Bihar. With all the world available, these eight souls waited for a long time to be born in that small area of Bihar. And when the opportunity came, it came all at once.

Often it happens, as well as for evil souls, that a chain of births comes to pass for the good. At the same time as Buddha and Mahavira, Socrates was born in Greece, followed after a time by Plato and Aristotle. At about the same time in China, Confucius, Lao Tzu, Chuang Tzu and Mencius, Meng Tzu, were born. Some incredible people took birth all at once in different parts of the world at approximately the same time. The whole world was filled with some fascinating people. It seems as if the souls of all these people were waiting for some time. Then an opportunity came their way; wombs became available to them.

When, by chance, wombs do become available, many wombs become available all at once. It is just like the blooming of a flower. When the season arrives, you find one flower has blossomed, and then you see the second flower, and then the third. The flowers were just waiting to bloom. Dawn arrives, and it is just a question of the sun rising above the horizon and the flowers begin to bloom. The buds burst open and the flower blooms. The flowers were waiting the entire night, and as the sun arose, they bloomed.

Exactly the same thing happens with inferior souls. When a suitable environment develops on earth, they take birth in a chain. For example, in our time, people like Hitler, Stalin and Mao were all born during the same period. Such horrible people must have waited for thousands of years to take birth; they can’t find wombs that easily. Stalin alone killed about six million people in the Soviet Union, and Hitler killed about ten million people all by himself.

The death contraptions devised by Hitler were unique in the history of mankind. He carried out mass murder in a way no one had ever done before; next to him, Tamerlane and Genghis Khan seem novices. Hitler devised gas chambers for mass murder. He found it too cumbersome and costly to kill people one by one and then dispose of their bodies, so he devised ingenious methods of mass murder. There are other means of mass murder too — for example, as happened in the recent communal riots at Ahmedabad, or at other places — but these are all very expensive methods.

Also, it is such an effort to kill people one by one — and it takes a lot of time as well. Killing people one by one doesn’t work: you kill one here, and another is born somewhere else. So Hitler would have five thousand people put in a gas chamber together, and with the flick of a button these five thousand people were virtually turned into vapor; they would simply evaporate. The chamber would be empty; no sign of them would be left. Not a drop of blood was spilled, not a single grave was dug. It was all very neat.

No one can accuse Hitler of bloodshed. If God is still dispensing justice by the old standards, he will find Hitler totally innocent. He did not spill a drop of blood; he pierced no breast with his sword, he simply devised an ingenious method of killing, a means beyond description. He placed people in a gas chamber, switched on a high-voltage button and the people simply evaporated. Not a sign was left to prove they had ever existed. Hitler, for the first time, got rid of people as one boils water and turns it into vapor. He turned ten million people into gas!

It is very difficult for a soul like Hitler’s to find a new body quickly. And it is good it is so difficult, otherwise the earth would be in great trouble. Hitler will have to wait for a very long time, because it is extremely difficult for a conception of such a low quality to take place again.

What does it mean to be born through an inferior conception? It means that generations of the parents’ ancestors have a long chain of evil deeds to their credit. In a single lifetime one cannot accumulate enough evil to account for the conception of a person like Hitler. To produce a son like Hitler, how much evil, how many murders can one man commit in one lifetime? For a son like Hitler to choose his parents, a long chain of evil deeds is required, deeds performed by the parents for hundreds, thousands, millions of years. This means that if a person were to work in a slaughterhouse continuously for thousands of years, only then could his genes, his breed, become capable of attracting a soul like Hitler’s.

The same holds true for a good soul. For an average, ordinary soul there is no difficulty taking birth; there are wombs all over ready to receive such souls. And besides, its demands are very ordinary. There are the same cravings: eating, drinking, making money, enjoying sex, seeking honor and position — such ordinary longings. Everyone longs for these things, and so the soul has no problem finding a womb. All parents can give any soul the opportunity to achieve all these ordinary things. However, if, in a human body, a soul wants to live a life so pure that he will even hesitate to press the earth with his feet, he will live in such total love that he won’t want anyone to be troubled by his love or his love to become a burden on anyone, then we will have to wait a long time for such souls to take birth.

Now let’s get ready for the evening meditation. Let me first make a few things clear. I have observed that you sit very close to each other, and this doesn’t allow you to sit without worrying you might fall on somebody else. This situation won’t allow you to go deep. So the first thing you need to do is: be at a distance from each other. Those who feel like lying down may do so. Even later, during the meditation, if you feel your body is going to fall on the ground, then don’t hold yourself back. Let go completely; allow the body to drop.

Now, turn off the lights.

The first thing: close your eyes. Relax your body…. Relax your body totally, as if there is no body left any more. Feel that all the energy of your body is moving in… feel that you are moving inside the body. You have to withdraw all your energy inside.

For three minutes I will give suggestions that your body is relaxing, and you have to feel it. You have to keep feeling your body and relaxing it. Slowly you will feel that you have lost your hold over the body — then if the body begins to fall, let it fall; don’t hold it. If it falls forward, let it fall; if it falls backwards, let it fall. From your side, don’t maintain any hold on the body. Let your hold over the body go. This is the first stage.

Now I will give suggestions for three minutes. Similarly, I will give suggestions for your breathing, and then for your thoughts. At the end, for ten minutes, we will be lost in silence.

Your body is relaxing. Feel it: your body is relaxing… your body is relaxing… your body is relaxing…. Let go, as if the body is no more. Give up your hold. Your body is relaxing… drop all control over the body, as if your body is dead.

You have moved inside; the energy has been sucked inside — now the body is left behind like a shell. The body is relaxing… the body is totally relaxed…. Let go. You will feel that it has gone, gone, gone. Let it fall if it will. The body is relaxed, as if you are dead now, as if the body is no more, as if the body has disappeared….

Relax your breathing also. Your breathing is relaxing… feel that your breathing is relaxing… your breathing has totally relaxed…. Let go… let the body go; let the breathing go too. Your breathing has relaxed.

Your thoughts are also becoming silent… thoughts are becoming silent…. Feel your thoughts becoming totally silent… feel inside, thoughts are calming down. The body is relaxed, the breathing is relaxed, thoughts are silent….

Everything is silent within you. We are sinking into this silence; we are sinking, we are falling deeper and deeper as one falls into a well, keeps on falling deeper and deeper… just like this, we are falling deeper and deeper into emptiness, into shunya. Let go, let go your hold completely…. Keep drowning in emptiness, keep drowning…. Inside, only consciousness will remain, burning like a flame, watching, just a witness.

Just remain a witness. Keep watching inside…. Outside everything is dead; the body has become totally inert. Breathing has slowed down, thoughts have slowed down; inside, we are falling into silence. Keep watching, keep watching, watching continuously — a much deeper silence, a much more profound silence will grow. In that watching state, ‘I’ will also disappear — only a shining light, a burning flame will remain.

Now I will be still for ten minutes, and you keep on disappearing within, deeper and deeper. Give up your hold, let go. Just keep watching. For ten minutes, just be an onlooker, be a witness.

Everything is silent…. Look within, keep looking within…. Inside, let there be just watching. The mind is becoming more and more silent…. At a distance you will see your body lying — as if it is someone else’s body. You will move away from the body, as if you have left the body. It seems someone else is breathing….

Go even further within, go deeper inside…. Keep watching, keep looking inside, and the mind will totally sink into nothingness. Go deeper, go deeper down within… keep watching… the mind has become totally silent.

The body is left behind, the body is as if dead. We have moved away from the body. Let go, let go totally; do not hold back at all, as if you are dead inside. The mind is becoming even more silent… the body is lying far away; we have moved far away from the body…. The mind has become totally silent….

Look inside. The ‘I’ has disappeared totally, only consciousness is left, only knowing is left. Everything else has disappeared….

Slowly, take a few deep breaths. The mind is now totally silent. Watch each and every breath, and you will feel the mind becoming even more silent. Your breathing will also seem separate from you, far away from you. Breathe softly and slowly. Watch how far away the breath is… watch how distant it is from you.

Slowly, take a few deep breaths. Then open your eyes slowly. There is no need to hurry to get up. If you are unable to open your eyes, there is no need to hurry. Open your eyes slowly and softly, and then look outside for a moment….

Our evening meditation is now over.