A drunken man has to be led by a young boy,
whom he follows stumbling
and not knowing whither he goes,
for his soul is moist.

Souls take pleasure in becoming moist.

A dry soul is wisest and best.
Just as I said yesterday, human consciousness can follow two ways: one way is that of water, flowing downward; the other is that of fire, moving upward. Water and fire are symbols, but very meaningful.
When you flow downward you become more and more unconscious. When you flow upward you become more and more conscious. Upwardness is consciousness; downwardness is unconsciousness.
Heraclitus calls the downward flow of consciousness the state of moisture, and the upward rise of consciousness the state of dryness. Moisture and dryness depend on fire and water. He says the spirit, the human mind: …takes pleasure in being moist.
All pleasure is downward. Wherever you are seeking pleasure, you will go downward because pleasure means being unconscious. Pleasure means being in a certain state where you don’t know any anxiety – not that the anxieties have disappeared, but you are unconscious. The world remains the same; the anxieties are there waiting for you, increasing not decreasing, because as time moves they will increase. Your problems remain the same and even become more complicated. While you are unconscious, everything is growing; it doesn’t wait for your consciousness to be there. Your misery is growing, your anguish is growing; it is waiting for you. You are unconscious so you are not aware. Whenever you come to consciousness again, you will have to face all the problems you had escaped from.
Pleasure is escape; that’s why pleasure is not worth it. In fact it is not pleasure, it is a sort of suicide. You escape from the problems, you turn your back on them, but this is no way to solve them. You will have to come back because once you have become conscious, unconsciousness cannot be a permanent state of affairs. You can dive into unconsciousness, but how long can you remain underwater? ? for a second, and then you are back again on the surface. You cannot remain unconscious for long. Anything in which you become unconscious, in which you momentarily lose all your worries or forget about them ? alcohol, drugs, sex – is a forgetfulness, but forgetfulness cannot be a permanent state.
So this is not helping in any way, pleasure doesn’t help. You have to come back again and again, and it becomes a vicious circle. When you come back and find the anguish, the anxiety, all the problems there waiting – rather, they have increased – you become afraid, you become nervous. Your whole being becomes a state of fear; it trembles and you have to escape again and again. The more you escape, the more the problems increase. The more problems you face, the more alcohol is needed. And the quantity of the intoxicant has to be continuously increased because you become attuned to it. You take a certain amount of a drug; the first day you feel unconscious. After a few days you are not unconscious; you are still conscious, the worries are still there knocking at the door, you can hear them – you need a greater quantity. The greater quantity will also become less. You can move to a point ? in India they have tried; there are a few sects which have been working through alcohol, drugs, such as marijuana, mescaline. In the West it is a new phenomenon; that’s why the West is so worried about it. In the East it is one of the oldest things.
A particular sect of Tantrikas have been working through drugs, finding a way to attain consciousness through using them. By and by, they have found that you become so attuned that nothing can make you unconscious. They have poisonous snakes – just a bite and an ordinary man will die. When a drug no longer affects them, they take a snake and let it bite their tongue. Ordinarily a man will die immediately. They do it just to seek unconsciousness through the most poisonous thing – even that doesn’t affect them. A time comes when the man is completely beyond the world of drugs; you cannot make him unconscious, nothing helps. If this man bites you, you will die immediately. His whole body is poisonous.
In ancient Indian history, there is reference to a particular female spy. Every king trained beautiful girls in such a way that from their very childhood their whole body became poisonous. They were known as vishkanya, poisonous girls – very beautiful. The king would send those girls to his enemies, to the enemy king, and they were so beautiful that he was bound to be attracted. Once they kissed the king, he was dead. They were absolutely poisonous; their kiss was enough – no need even to bite.
A moment comes when no drug helps. These Tantrikas have been working through drugs toward awareness. When no drug affects you, you are already integrated, and now you can move toward the height without any fear of falling because you cannot be made unconscious, you have crystallized your consciousness. Ordinarily one is not working through drugs for consciousness; the path is very dangerous. Ordinarily one is seeking unconsciousness, a little forgetfulness in this world of worries, anguish, anxiety; one wants to forget this world which looks like a hell. All your pleasures are just forgetfulness.
Heraclitus says, “This is a moist state of consciousness.” The word is beautiful – he calls these souls, moist. He says, “Souls enjoy pleasure.” Why? – because pleasure is a downward drift. No effort is needed; you don’t have to do anything, you simply sink downward. It is downhill; you can easily run. No effort is needed, the very pull of gravity helps you down. Moving upward is difficult; that’s why you seek pleasure, you never seek bliss. Bliss is upward, pleasure is downward.
Pleasure is forgetfulness, bliss is remembrance.
Gurdjieff says that the only technique to become integrated is self-remembrance, and all the masters of the world have been insisting on being more and more conscious. The more conscious you become, the more a certain dryness happens inside. Literally, you become more and more dry, more and more aware, more and more conscious and alert. You become more and more dry because awareness is fire.
Listen to these words and try to understand them. They will be a great help on the path you are following.
A drunken man has to be led by a young boy,
whom he follows stumbling
and not knowing whither he goes,
for his soul is moist.
Imagine the picture, visualize it: A drunken man has to be led by a young boy, whom he follows stumbling and not knowing whither he goes, for his soul is moist. This is very symbolic. When you are drunk, you fall back, you regress, you become a small boy again – this regression is not growth. You have to become like a small boy, not by regressing but by growing ahead, growing forward, growing upward. You have to become like a boy, not by falling back, but by going forward. Falling back you will become juvenile; falling back you will not gain, you will lose; falling back, the whole system inside becomes crippled. On the outside you look like an adult, and on the inside you are just like a small boy; not a child, but childish; not innocent, but very, very cunning. The cunningness is so deep that you are not cunning with others – you are playing tricks with yourself, with your own consciousness, with your own future; you are playing cunning tricks with your own possibilities. You are falling back, regressing.
You carry all the stages that you have passed. Once you were in the womb. A part of you still remains in that state because you cannot throw things off. You simply grow and all that has become the past becomes your foundation. Everything exists in you, not only from this life, but from other lives; not only from human lives, but from animal, vegetable lives. Everything exists, nothing is lost. You carry everything of the past – you are your past. The whole past is there and you can regress any moment. It is just like a ladder; you can go back. When you are drunk you go back. You will become not only like a child, you can also become like a vegetable. Just look at a drunk lying in the gutter; he doesn’t look human at all. He has regressed, he is vegetating; you can’t even say that he is alive. How can you say this man is human? What humanity is he showing right now? What is the difference between him and a tree? The only difference is that the tree is in a better state because at least the tree is not drunk. This man has fallen back, he has become like a tree.
You can be so drugged; in the West they use the word stoned. It is very good – you become like a stone. That is the last thing. You are not even a vegetable. You are rocklike, all possibilities lost. You have come to the last step of the ladder, to the very bottom. You have regressed millions of years – that can be done in seconds. You become helpless, helpless in a negative way, an imbecile. You behave like an idiot, you don’t know what you are doing. In fact, you are not; you are absent, your presence is lost. Now inside, no center exists. This is the state of moisture: no center. You have become water, no center, and the water is overflowing everywhere – without any direction, without any inner integrity. If you die in this moment, you will not even be aware that you are dead. You will not know whatever happens in this moment. You are not. This is an absent state of mind. You have fallen down completely, you have reached to the bottom.
This is easy, and souls enjoy it because anything that is easy you enjoy. No effort is needed. You don’t have to follow a path, you don’t have to do anything on your part. You needn’t worry, you needn’t think – you simply drop. In fact, this is dropping out. You have dropped out of the whole effort of evolution. You are no longer a part of a growing existence, you are no longer part of the constantly evolving divinity. You have lost all. This is the worst state possible. This happens not only through intoxicants, this happens through many things. So that, too, has to be remembered. You may not be taking any intoxicant, you may not be on drugs, but there are many subtle drugs – any “trip” can become a drug.
You may be continuously chanting a mantra; not with awareness, just chanting it. If you continuously chant a mantra without awareness, it becomes alcoholic, it gives you unconsciousness. You will feel much pleasure, but no bliss. You are falling back. In India, that too has been used for thousands of years, and thousands of people have been continuously chanting mantras. If you look at them, you will find them also stoned – through chanting mantras they have become unconscious. Of course, they don’t have any worries because to have worries you need awareness. They are happy, but their happiness is like death – stale, stony. Their happiness is not like a flower blossoming; their happiness is a stagnant pool, not like a river flowing. They are not moving at all, the whole inner movement has ceased.
I talked to you about two types of movement, one vertical, the other horizontal. They have stopped the horizontal movement, but they have not started the vertical movement. They are as if dead, buried alive in their own bodies; their bodies have become graves. You can find many of them near Tibet, in the Himalayas. You will find many people just sitting chanting. The continuous chanting has created such boredom within them that they have become numb, they have lost all sensitivity. They are not more alive because of it, they are less alive. They have become so numb that they can lie on a bed of nails – because they have shrunken inside and have no sensitivity in their body. This is a deeper intoxicant than any alcohol ever invented. Because they are the masters of their own alcohol, they can create it inside.
If you chant a word continuously without awareness, you regress. If you chant, it has to be done with awareness; you remain a witness. If you are chanting, “Om, om, om,” you have to remain a witness to it. The chanting should be done by the body and you should remain a witness. If the witness is lost, the chanting is alcoholic – it has become an intoxicant. There are other ways too. A politician is on a drug trip: power, prestige, is alcoholic. So whenever someone reaches power, he is no longer in his senses. Power corrupts and corrupts absolutely because power is a drug. When you are powerful you are no longer in your consciousness. You start doing things you would never have imagined. You yourself cannot believe that you can do such things.
Read about Adolf Hitler and his life ? what he did. He never smoked, was against alcohol – he was a perfect sannyasin! He would get up early in the morning, go to sleep early at night; no smoking, no drinking; a vegetarian, not a meat-eater. And what he did! Such a perfect Jaina you cannot find anywhere, and what he did! He was taking the greatest drug. That’s why there was no need to smoke cigarettes – they are nothing. There was no need to drink because he was already drunk with power.
Those who watched Adolf Hitler said that when he started to talk, soon everyone felt that a transfiguration had come. When he started he was Adolf Hitler. By and by, he would become completely unconscious, as if mesmerized by his own talking; his eyes no longer showing any aliveness, as if he was not there, as if someone else had taken possession – possessed! His possession, his alcoholic state, his “moisture,” would immediately infect others. He could create madness very easily. He was so neurotic, and such a charismatic neurotic, that whoever came near him would become neurotic; he was a magnetically neurotic man. His own alcohol was overflowing, and people would become intoxicated – that’s how he led the whole German race toward suicide.
Power is a drug, the greatest drug the world has ever known. This is beautiful because politicians are always against drugs and they are the greatest drug takers, on the greatest drug trip! You can also make your own private drugs. Take wealth; just look what happens when a person becomes rich – he is no longer there, completely absent! He does a lot, he works hard, but he doesn’t know what he is doing. He is completely unconscious. And private drugs: you can become a painter, a poet, and that can become your trip. Anything in which you forget yourself, in which you lose consciousness, in which you become so identified – anything you are doing where the witnessing is lost ? is a drug. And Heraclitus calls this the moist state:
Souls take pleasure in becoming moist.
No effort is needed, no strain, no facing reality. You simply hide. You hide, you escape, close your eyes, just like an ostrich. When your eyes are closed, you cannot see anything. You are happy; all this is what you call happiness. This happiness cannot last – it is momentary.
When you fall in love with someone, you feel very, very happy. This is a drug; a drug your hormones create within your body, a biological drug. Nature has to use it because nature cannot rely on you. Just think, if there is nothing like love, the world will cease – because sex is so ridiculous. If there is no love, sex seems to be just ridiculous! Who will want to experience sex if no intoxicant involved?
Love is just a bait. The real desire of nature is to reproduce. But you cannot be relied upon; if you don’t fall in love, you will not reproduce. You fall in love – nature is playing a trick. Nature is giving a drug and releasing it into your body. It has glands in the body where it releases the drug. It is a natural, biological, hormonal drug. That’s why whenever someone is in love, look at him, he walks differently. He is no longer here – completely absent, lives in the imagination, the desire, the dream, and does not live in reality. He has unknowingly drugged himself. After a few days, when the love is gone – because no drug can last forever – by the time the honeymoon is over, it is also over. You start facing reality and there is trouble because whatever you promised, you promised when you were not conscious. Now you have to fulfill promises given in a moist state, given in a state of unconsciousness. Now you have to fulfill those promises; now the burden grows. Why does every love affair become ugly in the end? Why does every marriage end up on the rocks? – because it is not a conscious phenomenon. If you love consciously love can be eternal because with consciousness everything is eternal. With unconsciousness everything is momentary.
If you love consciously and are not a victim of biological tricks, not a victim of nature, but a conscious love, you don’t fall in love, you rise in love. Love itself becomes an integrating force, not a disintegration. Love itself becomes an awareness; you become more and more aware in relationship. You care for the other, you don’t use the other. You care and share, you don’t possess. You liberate the other, and through the other’s liberation you liberate yourself. You become two partners in an ultimate journey. You help each other because there are pitfalls; the path is long and the journey is eternal. It is very good to be with someone who can share every anguish, every pain, suffering, bliss, every moment of silence; with whom you can communicate and say what is happening to you. Someone whom you can rely on to be helpful whatever happens to you, who will love you in whatever situation you are in – good or bad, angry or happy, sad or blissful. You need not hide anything with someone you love; you can remain open and vulnerable. Whatever the situation the love is unconditional; it doesn’t depend on conditions.
A conscious love is a totally different phenomenon. It happens rarely, but whenever it does happen it is one of the most beautiful things that is possible in this world.
Ordinarily your love is just a drug. I witness it every day. A couple come and say that they are deeply in love, a week passes and they come again – they say everything is falling apart. Just a week! Just a week before you could not have imagined it – their eyes, their faces were radiant with love, their bodies were filled with something unknown; they were intoxicated. Just in a week, everything is finished! What type of love is this? ? it is not love at all. You have been doped by nature; nature has played a trick on you.
Nature wants you to move into sex. It creates a dream world around it because sex in itself is ugly. It is really ridiculous! Just think, you are in a sexual relationship with someone without love. It is simply ugly. That’s why prostitutes are ugly. However beautiful their bodies, they cannot be beautiful because the very act, without love, makes their whole life ugly, dirty. You can tolerate sex only because of love. Sex looks beautiful because of love; otherwise, the postures, the gestures of sex, are all ridiculous. But when you are drugged you are not aware of what is happening. When you are drugged you never look at yourself. The whole world looks ridiculous, not you.
It happened…

Mulla Nasruddin went to be psychoanalyzed. When he went in to see the psychoanalyst, he was asked a few questions; just a test to know what type of person he is. He drew a line and asked Nasruddin, “What does it remind you of?”
Nasruddin replied, “Of course, a beautiful woman!” A line! The psychiatrist was a little puzzled.
He drew a circle and asked, “What does this remind you of?”
Nasruddin replied, “Of course, a beautiful woman in the nude.”
He drew a triangle and Nasruddin closed his eyes and said, “No, no, no, don’t do this!”
The psychoanalyst asked, “But what does it remind you of?”
He replied, “This woman is doing something very nasty.”
So the psychoanalyst said, “You seem to be very preoccupied with sex.”
Nasruddin said: “What! Me? I am preoccupied with sex – or you? Who is drawing these nasty figures on the paper? You or me?”

You can see the whole world, but you cannot see yourself. This is the state of moisture: when you are completely unaware, oblivious of who you are, what you are doing, why are doing it.
When you start meditating you become very, very confused in the beginning because for the first time you become aware of what you are doing. Why are you doing it? And for what reason? You were not aware before. You feel very confused because for the first time your eyes are opening toward reality. By and by, if you don’t escape you feel that you are cracking – not only confused, you are going mad! You have always been mad, but you were not aware. Now you are becoming aware and the madness has to be faced. If you don’t face it, you cannot grow. Escape is not growth and all dimensions of intoxicants are escapes. When you are in an unconscious state, you may believe that you are doing something meaningful, but that is a sheer belief, ungrounded. When you become conscious, you come to know that what you have been doing is simply nonsense. It has not led anywhere. Whatever you believed you were just befooling yourself.
I have heard…

Mulla Nasruddin knocked at the door of a tavern at three o’clock in the morning. The owner of the tavern looked down from an upstairs window, very angry of course, and said, “Go away, whoever you are! This is not the time and you can’t get a drink.”
Nasruddin replied, “Who has come to get a drink? I am here to get my crutches. I forgot them at closing time, and as you and the whole world knows, I cannot walk without them. Now I have to return home so give my crutches back!”

He has always walked on crutches, not knowing that he can walk without them – believing only in them. Unconscious, he had left the crutches in the tavern, and he had been wandering around the town the whole night. Now, as he is returning to consciousness, he asks for his crutches back because as he says, “The whole world knows that I cannot walk without crutches.”
Your beliefs are your crutches. You cannot walk without them, you cannot live without them. You cannot think of how you will be without your beliefs – they are your crutches. When you become aware, you simply cannot think of how you existed in such a state of affairs for so long.
But in a moist state of mind, things happen. You are not in control of anything. They just go on happening and you go on reacting. A woman laughs at you, and you are in love. You start talking to her and appreciating her, and because you appreciate her, she starts falling in love with you. Now the hormones have started functioning. Now you are on a drug trip. Soon you will become aware and you will have to come out of it. When you come out of it again, it is painful. You cannot tolerate the pain, it is too much, intolerable. Sooner or later, just to console yourself, to intoxicate yourself again, you will find another woman. And the same circle goes on being repeated. A man who is drugged can believe anything.

I once asked Mulla Nasruddin, “Is your new relationship with the banker’s daughter growing?” I know the banker and I know the daughter, and it seems to be a difficult relationship, almost impossible. But Nasruddin beamed very happily.
He replied, “Yes, recently there are signs, hints, indications. Things are falling in line.”
So I asked, “What has happened? Has she started smiling at you or something?”
He said, “No, not exactly that – but last night she said, ‘I am saying no to you for the last time!’”

When one is drugged, one has one’s own interpretations. “I am saying no to you for the last time!” When you are not conscious you don’t know what yes means, what no means. You don’t know anything, you simply drift. This drifting state is the state of moisture.
A drunken man has to be led by a young boy, whom he follows stumbling and not knowing whither he goes, for his soul is moist. Souls take pleasure in becoming moist. You all take pleasure in becoming moist because that is the easiest thing to do. That’s the only pleasure in it – the easiest. You needn’t do anything, you simply leave yourself and drift. You fall toward the earth and gravitation pulls you down. And you feel very, very happy because no strain, no effort – nothing!
People come to me and say that they cannot get up early in the morning for the meditation. Even that much effort is too much for you. If you cannot get up early in the morning to meditate, what else can you do? What else do you think you can do? You don’t want to make any effort – but your demands are very high. Even a man who cannot get up early in the morning to meditate asks, “How is peace of mind possible?” and, “How will I come to know God?” and, “Help me! I don’t want to come again to this world.” But nobody comes to this world. If you live in a drifting way, if you always live falling downward – choosing the easiest, the path of least resistance, the path of no challenge, no struggle, nothing, just falling, living on the gravitation – you need not make any effort to come. There is no need to come, you will be coming because this is how one comes into this world; a moist state of mind will always revolve around this world. Only a dry soul can fly toward the sky because there is no effect of gravitation on a dry soul; the downward pull doesn’t exist for a dry soul. What is the meaning of being dry? ? the meaning is, keep alert. Whatever you do, do it knowingly – whatever! I don’t say, “Don’t do this and don’t do that.” Whatever you do, be simply more alert. By and by, every act helps you to become more and more dry, and a detachedness comes to you. With alertness you automatically become detached.
You love a person, but still it is not an attachment. You love a person, you care, you share your being, you give everything, but still it is not an attachment. It is very, very detached. When there is a detached love, there is nothing like that – it is the most beautiful flowering. Love and detached; it means it comprehends both the polarities. It is paradoxical. You can be detached without love, or you can be in love without detachment. That’s easy, to choose one extreme, one polarity. To choose both the polarities together – detached and in love ? what does it mean? It means you are alert. Doing whatever needs to be done, but remaining alert, you are detached. You can live in this world without being a part of it. You can be in the world and the world will not be in you.
This dryness comes as you more and more close the ways of falling asleep, you close the doors of falling downward, you close the doors of pleasure – you don’t seek pleasure. Remember, happiness is not pleasure. Happiness is a different phenomenon – it is a state of being.
Pleasure is forgetfulness, happiness is remembrance.
When remembrance becomes absolute, when remembrance is so absolute that there is no possibility of falling down from it, bliss arises. Between bliss and pleasure is happiness.
Don’t ask for pleasure because if you ask for it, you will become a victim of the downward drift, the gravitation. Look at a person who is addicted to food; when he eats, just watch him. You will see that he is completely unconscious – because how many times, millions of times, has he decided not to eat too much? When he eats again, he forgets or rationalizes: “Just one more time ? next time I’m not going to eat so much.”

Mulla Nasruddin was dieting and the doctor had said, “Now, this is the last time. If you don’t listen to me you can be certain that you will have to leave the body. You are going to die because your heart cannot carry the burden anymore.” He had had two heart attacks already.
The next day he was eating as much as four men would find more than enough. Suddenly, he looked at his wife and said, “What are you doing, sitting there? You don’t have even that much will to stop me from going off my diet!”

The wife – even for that she is responsible; she doesn’t have that much willpower to stop him!
Nobody can stop you. Nobody’s will can be of any help to you. Rather, on the contrary, it can be destructive. If someone stops you too often, you start going against it, you react. The upward flow cannot be forced by anybody. This is a very subtle and delicate phenomenon to be understood; if people carry on trying to make you good from all sides, they will force you downward because your ego will feel a resistance. This is very delicate because those who want to help you toward the height cannot force you, they can only persuade you. This is all that I am doing. Sometimes I even see that this can be stopped, but I cannot stop it. I see that you are taking a step downward. I can talk to you, I can make you aware and say, “Stop and much will happen,” but that cannot be said because if I say too much, I will help you to go downward. You will take the step even sooner – because your ego will come in. I can only persuade you. I can divert your mind. I can give you something to play with so that you forget that you were going to take a step there – your mind is diverted. But I cannot say, “No, don’t take that step.” If I say, “No,” it is almost certain that you will take that step.
This is the problem. A master has to persuade you. This has become more and more difficult in the modern world. In the old days it was easier because people were taught to be obedient, now they are taught to be rebellious. In the old days people were taught to be disciplined, now they are taught to be undisciplined. To be undisciplined now is something very meaningful; to be disciplined now is just to be part of the establishment. To be disciplined is to be square, to be undisciplined is to be a revolutionary.
In the old days it was simple because the master could have said, “No,” and he could have relied on it that the no would do. A simple no can save you many lives of unnecessary struggle. But now it is impossible, now it is difficult. You have to be persuaded in such an indirect way that you never feel that you are being persuaded. You have to be diverted in such a subtle way that you don’t become aware that you are being led somewhere. Even if you become aware that somebody is guiding you, you resist – you do just the opposite. This creates a very new phenomenon in the world, this is something new in the modern age. That’s why to achieve the ultimate has become more and more difficult – an unnecessary wastage of energy. I can see, I am seeing, that you are taking a step in the dark, that you will fall down, will be crippled, but even then I cannot say, “Don’t take that step,” because you won’t listen. If I say no you will feel more attracted toward it.
That’s how Adam fell. God said, “No, don’t eat the fruit of this tree!” And he had to. He fell because God said no. Now, if God creates another Garden of Eden, he is not going to commit that mistake again. On the contrary, it will be good to say, “Only eat the fruit of this tree, and all other trees are prohibited.” Then Adam will not be tempted, he will not go toward that tree. The modern Adam particularly is in an absolutely chaotic state of consciousness – much too moist, falling like a dead weight, falling continuously toward the valley, the downward flow. Of course, pulling upward will need effort.
Souls take pleasure in becoming moist.

A dry soul is wisest and best.
The whole of wisdom consists in becoming a dry soul. But try to understand that dry doesn’t mean that you become insensitive; dry doesn’t mean that you become uncaring; dry doesn’t mean that you become aloof, indifferent – no. Dry simply means that you become aware. You care, you have a deep concern, but this concern never becomes an anxiety. You care. You do for others as much as you can – for your wife, friend, daughter, son, your husband, father, mother. Whatever you can do, you do totally. That’s all. Whatever happens, you accept it. There is no frustration. If you do everything possible, what is the frustration? There is no frustration. You don’t feel worried that you should have done this or that. No, you have done everything – it is finished! You come clean out of every relationship, not dirty.
But ordinarily, if the soul is moist, after every relationship you come out dirty. The relationship doesn’t cleanse you, it makes you dirty. It is not really the relationship that makes you dirty, it is your moisture. It is just like when you go for a walk and your clothes get wet – when you return you will be very, very dirty because the dirt will cling; not because the road was dirty but because your clothes were wet. The same happens inside; if your soul is moist, whatever you do, you come out of it dirty because all dirt clings to it. If you are dry nothing clings. The dust is blowing about, but it cannot cling to you. Buddha lives in the same world as you do, but every day you feel that you are becoming dirty. Buddha remains fresh, as if he has just taken a bath, clean. The cleanliness depends on dryness, and dryness comes the more you become aware.
When you are aware, you become like a flame inside. The flame goes on burning; even when you are asleep, the flame burns. Ordinarily, even when you are awake, you sleepwalk. But when the flame is burning and you are alert, alert to every moment, alert to the whole of what is happening all around; alert – not in a concentrative way because if you concentrate you become alert to one point and you become unconscious of the whole thing. Just alert, an opening, all doors open, all dimensions open, you are simply alert, even while sleeping the doors remain open and the fresh air goes on flowing. Deep down a flame burns in you and that flame dries all moisture, all unconsciousness. This is the meaning of being enlightened; not achieving some god – there is none, no somebody waiting for you. Rather, it is becoming a god oneself because when you are aware, you are a god; when you are perfectly aware, you are a perfect god. God is the absolute dry state of being.

And if you become even a little dry – A dry soul is wisest and best – you start becoming wiser because all foolishness consists in being unconscious.

There was a case against Mulla Nasruddin in the court, and the magistrate said, “What? You ? again? I wasn’t expecting you this time. First you came for a parking offence, then for fast driving, then for faulty brakes, then for faulty night lights, then for drunken driving. Now what have you come for? Because last time I revoked your driving license!”
Nasruddin looked shamefacedly at the ground and said, “Jaywalking, your honor.”

A car isn’t needed. If everything is taken from you so that now you think, “I am unconscious because of this,” that won’t help – then you will be found jaywalking. You will do something else because you will remain the same. People think that they are entangled in the world because of their wives. They leave their wives and escape to the Himalayas – but this is just revoking the license. It won’t help because you cannot escape from yourself. You will remain the same in the Himalayas and you will create the same situation again. Your wife was there because of you. You will find another one, you will find something else, and the same problem will arise. A dry soul is needed. That is the Himalaya: the dryness, the alertness.
Whatever you do, make it a point not to do it in a sleepy way. Watch every act, thought, feeling. Watch and move. Every moment is very precious – don’t waste it in sleepiness. If you use every moment as an opportunity to become more conscious, by and by consciousness grows. Suddenly, one day, you find that the light is burning inside. If you work hard toward it, suddenly one morning you rise a completely new man – dry, unattached; loving, but not in any way involved; remaining in the world and yet a watcher on the hills. This is the paradox that has to be fulfilled: remaining in the world and yet watching from the hills; simultaneously being in the world and not being in it. This is the wisest and the best soul. You have the potentiality. Just as every seed can become a tree, you can become a Buddha, a Heraclitus, a Jesus. But you have to work hard for it. A lukewarm effort won’t do. You have to boil completely; one hundred degree heat and evaporation happens.
Water is moist, flows downward. Heat is dry – with heat even water flows upward. With the flame of awareness even all that you have been thinking is wrong will become right. Love seems to be an entanglement, an imprisonment; with awareness that becomes a liberty, a freedom. Anger without consciousness is a destructive force, a suicidal force. It hurts you, by and by it kills you; it is a poison. With awareness the same energy is transfigured, becomes compassion. The same radiance comes to your face, but not in anger – in compassion. The same blood flows, the same chemistry happens in the body, but a new foreign element has entered and the whole chemistry changes.
That is how base metals are transformed into gold. With unconsciousness you are a base metal, with consciousness you will become gold, you are transformed. Just the fire of awareness is needed. You lack nothing else, everything is there. With the fire of awareness a new arrangement happens. You lack nothing, remember; you have everything that a buddha needs. Just one thing is missing – and that, too, is fast asleep within you. You just have to awaken it; just some effort to awaken, some effort to become more alert.
Remember, effort will be needed right now. Heraclitus believes in effort. Zen masters believe in no effort, Heraclitus believes in effort – but no effort is also an effort deep down because you have to attain the state of no effort.
In the West, much misunderstanding exists about Zen masters because they talk of no effort. But you see, a man has to be with a Zen master working hard for twenty years to achieve no effort. With Heraclitus effort is the base, and if you make real effort, automatically the no-effort follows. When you have done all, you become skilled in it. You become so skilled that there is no need to do it – it happens. If you try toward awareness, by and by there simply is no need to do anything about it – it is there, it is just like breathing. But as you are, Heraclitus will be more helpful than Zen masters. Zen masters came at the culmination of the Buddhist school. One thousand years of hard effort and the Zen masters flowered. Zen masters are just at the end of a long effort, of a long journey. The plant is absolutely ready and it flowers. There is no effort in flowering. What do you do? Nothing is needed; the tree is ready and it flowers by itself. But a long effort is needed to make the tree ready. Ask a gardener how much he has been working. Then you look at the flower and think: “No effort is needed. They come by themselves.”
Zen is the culmination of a long effort that started with Buddha. Heraclitus is just the beginning. This is a misfortune; the Greek mind completely missed Heraclitus, couldn’t understand him, and there has never been a culmination – the flowering never happened. The Greek mind follows a totally different path. It never listened to Heraclitus and the flowering never happened. The seeds were lost, they never sprouted. But that’s also why I have chosen Heraclitus – that will make the whole complete. I have been talking about Zen masters, but that can mislead you because that is the end. I must talk about Heraclitus so you can understand the beginning because there has to be a growth from the beginning to the end in you. You have to move from Heraclitus to Basho, from the seed to the flower.
Become a dry soul without becoming insensitive. If you become insensitive, you miss. You are simply dry without any awareness. The fire is not converted into awareness; the fire has simply dried you. That won’t help. Life automatically dries many people that way. Look at old people – they are dried. Look at a child – a child is moist. An old man is dry. Life dries all moisture out of him; just the struggle of life and he becomes insensitive, and to protect himself he becomes insulated. That is not the point. You have to be like a child – alive, elegant, graceful, agile – and yet dry like an old man.
There is a beautiful story said about Lao Tzu ? that he was already born an old man. He was eighty-two years old when he was born; he lived in his mother’s womb for eighty-two years. This is a beautiful phenomenon! It is said that he was born with gray hair – eighty-two years old, of course he would be! A child and yet not a child; very, very old, completely dry. From his very childhood he was aware. That is the meaning: that he was perfectly aware from the very beginning.
It is said about Buddha that when he was born, the first thing he did was to walk seven steps. The first thing! Must have been very old just out of the womb. He was born standing and walked seven steps with perfect awareness. His mother couldn’t believe this. The whole phenomenon was so absurd that it is said that she died simply out of shock. A story is told that whenever a buddha is born to a mother, the mother dies. It is too much, it is unbelievable; you cannot comprehend!
But these stories show something. They are not literal truths – they are symbolic, metaphorical. Never ask for history in the East. These people in the East never believed in history. They believe in myth and say that history is useless. What is history? ? just a compilation of newspapers, rubbish; old newspapers, that’s all. They never believed in history, they believed in myth. They say that myth is the essence; history is just on the periphery, just events. Myth is the very essence of all that exists at the center.
Be like a child and be like an old man – dry, all desires known, finished; all experiences known, finished; having moved all over the world, reached to yourself, at home at last. Sensitive like a child and dry like an old man. This is all that wisdom is about. This is how one becomes wise.
Enough for today.

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