The fifth sutra:
Kill out desire for sensation.

Learn from sensation and observe it, because only so can you commence the science of self-knowledge, and plant your foot on the first step of the ladder.
Kill out desire for sensation. We live for sensations, we hanker for sensations. We go on seeking newer and newer sensations; our whole life is an effort to get new sensations. But what happens? The more you seek sensations, the less sensitive you become. Sensitivity is lost.
It looks paradoxical. In sensations, sensitivity is lost because then you ask for more sensations and the “more” kills your sensitivity more. Then you ask for even more, and a moment comes when all your senses become just dull and dead.
Man has never been so dull and dead as he is today. Before, he was more alive, because there was no possibility to fulfill so many sensations. Now, science, progress, civilization, education have created so many opportunities to go on moving further and further into the world of sensation. Ultimately, you come out a dead person; your sensitivity is lost. Taste more foods – stronger tastes, stronger foods – and your taste will be lost. Look at many things – go on looking at more and more beautiful things, move around the world – and you will become blind. The sensitivity of your eyes will be lost.
Change your love object every day – your girlfriend or boyfriend, your wife or husband – change them every day, and your sensitivity to love will die. You are moving into dangerous terrain. You will never move in depth; you will only be moving on the surface, the periphery. And the more you experience things, the less your capacity to experience becomes. Then in the end, when everything has gone dead around you, you ask for the divine. You ask for bliss, you ask for truth. A dead man cannot experience the divine.
To experience the divine you need total sensitivity. You need aliveness.
Remember, only the similar can meet the similar. If you want the divine – and the divine means the most alive, the ever-alive, the ever-young, the ever-green… If you want to meet the divine, you will have to be more alive. So what to do? Kill out… all …desire for sensation. Don’t seek sensation, seek sensitivity. Become more sensitive.
The two are different. If you ask for sensations, you will ask for things, you will accumulate things. If you ask for sensitivity, then all the work has to be done on your senses, not on things. You are not to accumulate things. Now, you have to deepen your feelings, your heart, your eyes, your ears, your nose – every sense should be deepened in such a way that it becomes capable of feeling the subtle.
We cannot even feel the gross, and we must become capable of feeling the subtle. The world appears to be gross only because we cannot feel the subtle. Everywhere in the visible, the invisible is hidden.
Look at these trees. You look at the gross, the body of the tree. You never see, you never feel the life within, the growth. The tree is not growing, the tree is just a body. Something else – the invisible – is growing in it. And because of it, the tree grows. The inner is growing and, because of it, the outer grows. But you look only at the tree and only the outer is seen.
Look around you. Look into your friend’s eyes. You only look at the eyes, not at the one who sees through them. Touch your friend’s body. You touch only the gross, you never feel the subtle within. Only the body, the material, is felt because your eyes, your senses, have become so dull that they cannot feel the inner, the invisible.
More sensitivity is needed. Ask for fewer sensations and grow in sensitivity.
When you touch, become the touch. When you see, become the eyes. When you hear, your whole consciousness must come to the ears. Listening to a song or listening to the birds, become the ears. Forget your whole existence, as if you are only the ears. Come to the ears with your total being. Then your ears will become more sensitive.
When you are looking at something – at a flower, at a beautiful face or the stars – become the eyes. Forget everything else, as if the whole of your body has gone out of existence and your consciousness has become just eyes. Then your eyes will be able to look more deeply, and you will become capable of also looking at the invisible. The invisible can also be seen, but you need more penetrating eyes to see it.
Kill out… all …desire for sensation, and grow in sensitivity: fewer things – and more sensitivity. Think less of the world, think more of your senses. Purify them, and they are purified. When you don’t ask for sensations they become purified. When you ask for more and more sensations, you are killing your senses.
The man who finds the divine is the man whose senses are totally alive to their maximum capacity. Then, I say, it is not only that you can see the divine: you can taste the divine, you can smell the divine. From all the senses the divine can enter you. Only when the divine enters you from all the senses, only then – the realization. If you can only see the divine, it is just a partial realization. Then you are not really enlightened, only partially enlightened. If you cannot touch the divine, if you cannot taste it…
To use such words looks illogical. To taste God? You will think, “Is he a food?” Yes, he is everything! You can taste him, but then you need a very subtle capacity to taste. Then your very food will become divine. Through food, the divine will be felt. The Upanishadic rishis have said that food is Brahma: “Anna is Brahma.” They must have tasted him, they must have eaten him.
But we think that God is a logical problem, so we go on arguing about and about, for or against. We go on arguing whether God exists or not. This is irrelevant! God is not a question of argument, of logic, of reasoning; God is really a question of sensitivity.
If you don’t feel him, become more sensitive. No logical thinking will be of any help. Become more sensitive. If you are sensitive, he is here. He has always been here, but you are not sensitive. Things dull you, sensations dull you. Kill out desire for sensation.
The sixth sutra:
Kill out the hunger for growth.
This sutra is very revolutionary, very dangerous.
Kill out the hunger for growth. It looks absurd, because if we kill all hunger for growth then what is the need to grow into the divine? Then how can one grow into the divine, how can one reach the truth, and how can one become enlightened? Then why this meditation and all this fuss? We will have to go deeply into this sutra.
Kill out the hunger for growth. There are two types of growth: one which you can do something about, and the other which you cannot do anything about. For one your effort is needed and for the other your effortlessness is needed.
Spiritual growth is of the second type. Your effort will be of no help, it will only create barriers. You cannot do anything about it. You can do only one thing, and that is surrender. That means non-doing. You can do only one thing: allow existence to work within you. You can simply cooperate, that’s all. You can simply float – your swimming is not needed – a deep let-go. This is what is meant by: Kill out the hunger for growth.
Grow as the flower grows, unconsciously, but eagerly anxious to open its soul to the air. So must you press forward to open your soul to the eternal.
But it must be the eternal!
But it must be the eternal that draws forth your strength and beauty, not desire of growth. For in the one case you develop in the luxuriance of purity; in the other you harden by the forcible passion for personal stature.
I will repeat: But it must be the eternal that draws forth your strength and beauty, not desire of growth – because every desire is a hindrance, even the desire to reach the divine. Every desire is slavery, even the desire to be liberated. Desire, as such, is the problem, so you cannot desire the divine. That is contradictory. You can only desire the world; you cannot desire the divine because desire is the world, desire is sansar. You cannot desire moksha: when you are in a state of no desire, moksha happens to you. When you are in a state of desirelessness, liberation happens to you, the divine happens to you.
Allow the divine to bring forth all that is hidden in you.
Don’t seek growth. Surrender so that growth happens. Growth will happen, but this growth is not going to be through your effort but through the grace of existence. It is going to be through it. There are reasons for it…
Whatsoever you do will never be greater than you. It cannot be. Whatsoever you do will be lower than you. The doer is always greater than the deed, otherwise is not possible. The painter is greater than his painting, and the meditator is greater than his meditation.
Whatsoever you do will be lower than you, so how can you reach the divine? The divine is not lower than you, so through your own efforts you cannot reach it. If there was any possibility that through your own effort you could reach God, that God would be lower than you; he could not be higher than you. That God would be just a commodity – something in your hand, something that you have achieved. So remember, godliness cannot be achieved through your efforts. Godliness can happen to you, but not be achieved.
Then what is to be done? What can you do on your part? On your part you have to make a negative effort. That negative effort is: don’t create barriers, don’t create hindrances. Remain open. Remain open and waiting and ready to move, ready to grow. If the magnet starts working, allow the magnet to work.
Then what is the meditation I am emphasizing so much? It is just to destroy your barriers, it is a negative effort. Through meditation you will not reach the divine, but through meditation you will become available for the divine to work. Through meditation you will become open; through meditation your prayerfulness will reach to it, indicating that now you are ready, that now you will be cooperative.
That’s all that is needed on your part: allowing, let-go, surrender. Through will, nothing can be done. In the dimension of the divine, nothing can be done through will, only through surrender. But then, everything happens.
Through these meditations we are just breaking barriers. That’s why I emphasize to be like children. Go back – be like children. Forget your civilization, your culture, your manners, your postures, your personalities, your faces; all that is a facade. Throw it off! Become like small children.
But it will look like madness. Through your mind, going back to your childhood will look like madness. So be mad! But whatsoever the cost, be like children again.
Jesus says, “Only those who are like children will enter the kingdom of my God.” I also say the same. Move back to the point where civilization started to corrupt you, to the point where education started to corrupt you, to the point where society entered. Move to the point where you were unsocial or pre-social, when there was no society forced on you; you were innocent and pure. Move to that point. Unless you move back to that point again, barriers will remain.
Become children again. In the process you will feel madness, because you are throwing out all your adult values: education culture, religion, scriptures, manners. You are throwing out everything. You are moving back to the point where you were yourself, no society had yet corrupted you.
The whole process will look like madness. It is not. It is a catharsis, and if you can go through it, you will come out saner, less mad. The madness will be thrown out. You will become more pure, more sane.
Now, be ready for the meditation.

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