... dreams -- but remembering a dream is a totally different thing. Even the people who remember dreams remember only the last dreams, the dreams of the early morning when you are just waking up, because the mechanism of memory is part of the conscious mind. Dreams happen in the unconscious; the unconscious doesn't have any memory mechanism. Only the conscious mind has the memory mechanism. So if a dream...

... is happening in the unconscious mind but very close to the conscious mind, then it remembers it faintly, vaguely. In the morning when you are waking up you are coming closer to the conscious mind -- from the unconscious, back to the conscious mind. The last dream, the tail end, will be remembered, because it will be very close to when you wake up. So even people who remember, remember only the last...

... dreams. They have been dreaming for almost six hours through the whole night; if they are sleeping for eight hours, they are dreaming for six hours. You can catch hold of just a faint reflection of the last dream, but if you don't catch hold of it for a few seconds, it will be gone. As you become more awake, you are farther away from the unconscious. So to different people, different things will be...

... superficial. Because my whole teaching is: Don't repress; live out every instinct, every feeling, every emotion. If you are living out your emotions, your feelings, then you will not have superficial dreams; your dreams will be very deep. They will be less in the unconscious and more in the collective unconscious -- so deep that you will not be able to remember them. Unless a special effort is made, they...

... cannot be remembered. And the only effort that is possible is hypnosis. If you are hypnotized and led by your hypnotist deep into your unconscious and asked, "What is happening there? What kind of dream is going on?" only then will you be able to express it to him. When you wake up, you will not be able to remember what you have said either. It will take a long training between you and the...

... unconscious, collective unconscious, cosmic unconscious -- these are all parts of the mind, and you are trying to remember them. Just the conscious mind is enough to torture you -- why do you need to remember the unconscious mind? In the East we have been aware that the conscious mind is not the only mind. Below it, there is the unconscious mind; then below that is the collective unconscious mind; then...

... below that is the cosmic unconscious mind. Above it, there is the superconscious mind; above that there is the collective superconscious mind; above that there is the cosmic superconscious mind. And when I say `mind' I mean this whole range -- they are one entity, one rainbow. Ignore them all. There is no need to remember. Many people are in madhouses because by some accident their collective...

... unconscious has broken up and released its memories. Now their conscious mind is not capable of holding those memories, the weight is too much; that's what is driving them mad. For example, in your collective unconscious mind, the woman who is your wife now may have been your mother in your past life. If this memory comes to your mind then you are going to be in trouble. Then how are you going to behave...

... is coming only by fulfilling it. Trusting your own unconscious will give you tremendous self-confidence. You will become more rooted, grounded, and your unconscious will be sending messages to you more and more. Those are the messages of your destiny. Avoiding them, you will always be in misery. Fulfilling them, you will become more and more happy. Happiness is nothing but to do that which you are...

... destined to do - and your unconscious knows what you are destined to do. It goes on helping you, giving you hints and messages in your dreams, in your fantasies: 'Go this way, do this.' But your reason has become too dominating and it doesn't listen. It says, 'Unless something is rational and unless I understand it, I'm not going to just float with this unknown source. Who knows what it is? Who knows...

... from where it comes? Who knows whether it is good or bad, from god or devil?' Reason goes on trying to control it and hence a conflict arises. And reason is most superficial. So whenever you see that some deep urge is knocking at your doors, listen to it. One should befriend the unconscious. One should come to friendly terms with the unconscious. Watch your dreams, watch your desires, and go deeper...

...? You should have been there.' I will call you. Your unconscious on its own accord will start giving you hints as to when you need to be here. Just leave yourself in your unconscious hands. Just listen to the intuitive part of your being and not the intellectual part. Listen to the feminine part, not the aggressive part. That's what we mean when we say to listen to the heart and not to the mind. Once...

... you start befriending it you will be tremendously benefited, because it will show you each moment, each move. And it is always right because it only considers your deepest desires, it only considers your destiny. It has no other considerations. Reason has a thousand and one considerations. You fall in love with a woman.... The unconscious has no other consideration except one - that somehow the...

... woman fits with you, somehow she complements you, somehow she makes you whole; that's the only consideration. But for the mind there are a thousand and one considerations: whether she is rich, whether it is economically good, whether she belongs to a good family, whether it will be politically good, whether she is white or black, christian or hindu... a thousand and one considerations. The unconscious...

..., the most essential. and it considers all non-essential things. Seeing into your unconscious, I feel it is good that you go, but go totally. [The sannyasin then asks: Can you tell me a little bit about my work - what I should be doing back there? I don't even know where I am going. I'm just going.] Simply go there. For a few days don't decide anything. Meet friends and see what can be done. Don't...

... are bound to come here one day or other. They will find their own way. You have just to initiate it, just give them a little taste of what meditation is. This is a general directive. The plan has to arise there if you go - and I feel it is good that you go. But still, you have to feel your own unconscious and do whatsoever it says. [Another sannyasin says: I was wondering if you could give me some...

... reached man. It takes time....' It is a beautiful parable. Somewhere in the unconscious you are already a sannyasin. And Zarathustra is right - somewhere in the unconscious, man has killed god. Not that he has killed god - how can you kill god? - but he has become godless, that is the meaning. And it is not suddenly this century that has become godless, it has been coming and coming for three, four...

... centuries. For three, four centuries the human unconscious has been preparing the ground for godlessness. We cannot take the whole credit for it, mm? It is three hundred years work of millions of people: Marx and Freud and all kinds and all sorts of people have been working hard to make man godless. And now when it has happened even man is puzzled, even priests are puzzled - and they have been the...

... murderers. They are puzzled, very much puzzled: what has happened? Their hands are red with god's blood, they are the most responsible people, but even they are puzzled because the news has not reached them yet. In the same way many things happen. Between the conscious and the unconscious there is a vast difference. and we have made our life in such a way that we don't allow the unconscious to have its...

... say: we protect ourselves from the unconscious. The unconscious is like a wilderness and our conscious is like a small english garden - well-groomed, prepared, symmetrical, the lawn and the buses and everything cut in size and shape and everything man-made. And just beyond the fence is the wilderness. If you allow it it will run over the man-made garden; it will destroy it. And that's how it is: the...

... unconscious is vast and tremendous, uproarious like a sea, and we live in a small, small corner of our being where we have made everything clear and everything is put in the right order and disciplined and controlled. Somehow we go on managing that small area of our being and we are very much afraid so we create great walls around this area. We don't even want to remember that there is a wilderness outside...

... which is waiting and knocking on the doors and wants to come in. That's why the unconscious sometimes takes so much time to reach to the conscious. That's why it tries to convey its messages through dreams when you are fast asleep, when the conscious is no more functioning and the guards are a little sleepy. But it is coming - it is just on the door and any moment that you slip, it will be in. And I...

... - perhaps that is not the right word: rediscovered will be the right word - by the West, which the East has already discovered long before. For example, when Sigmund Freud, Jung and Adler and other great psychologists of the beginning of this century started talking of the unconscious mind, the subconscious mind, the conscious mind, it was Freud's rediscovery. But he never came to know that it was a...

... rediscovery, that in India for thousands of years we have known all these divisions are there. But the West was shocked, could not believe there was an unconscious. "If there is an unconscious then why is it not mentioned in the Bible? - because anything which is not mentioned in the Bible certainly does not exist. God has given the whole message entirely about everything: the unconscious mind is not...

... mentioned." Jung went a little deeper and found the collective unconscious mind. But you will be surprised that Buddha talks about not only these minds but a few more minds, because this is only one way.... For example, Freud goes downwards. The conscious mind is of course acceptable to everybody because that's where we are, but Freud goes downwards and finds the subconscious mind. That's when you...

... dream. A boundary line between the unconscious and the conscious, it is just the middle part that joins the unconscious with the conscious. Jung goes a little deeper and finds that if you go deeper into the unconscious, you suddenly find a depth which is not individual, which is collective. It is as if on the surface you see many icebergs, but as you go deeper you find only a big iceberg with many...

... peaks above the surface of the water - but underneath it is only one big iceberg. Buddha goes upwards too. He goes downwards - and farther than Jung. After the collective unconscious mind he says there is a cosmic unconscious mind, because the collective unconscious mind means the unconscious mind of the whole humanity - but what about the animals and the trees and the mountains and the rivers and the...

... stars? Go a little deeper and you will find a cosmic unconscious mind. And Buddha goes upwards too. So going downwards, the conscious mind is just in the middle, where we are. Below it are the subconscious mind, unconscious mind, collective unconscious mind and cosmic unconscious mind. He also moved upwards, which in the future psychology has to do. He says, "Above the conscious mind is again the...

... upwards. Now, before Sigmund Freud, people thought that Buddha was just imagining. But Freud was not a religious man in any sense. He had a scientific mind: he proved the existence of the subconscious, the unconscious. Jung was not a religious man; he proved the existence of the collective unconscious. Now some other scientist is needed to prove the cosmic unconscious. And he will be coming soon...

... can go more towards things. And this is how you are going to move towards things: from the conscious mind you have to come to the cosmic unconscious mind. Perhaps things have a cosmic unconscious mind, absolutely dormant, but it must be there. Otherwise how is it possible that you eat food, which is dead, which is a "thing", but it feeds your brain, your mind, and keeps them functioning...

... aware of something higher than you, beyond you, and beyond, and beyond. The cosmic conscious mind is your ultimate truth. Unless you know it you are not saved, because then you will be moving in the labyrinth of the unconscious, the collective unconscious, the cosmic unconscious; you will be moving in this labyrinth of darkness which creates all your misery. Now, what does Jesus know about it? Just by...

... in those words. Of course he will see the superficial too, but he will be able to understand that that's not all - something more is there. He will not be exactly conscious of it, but an unconscious intuitive feeling is bound to be there. If he lingers here a little longer then that feeling will become more solid, more substantial. First it will be only a shadow, a glimpse, a vision that happens...

.... The student is relaxed because he is unconscious, the devotee is relaxed because he is conscious, but the disciple is vague - vaguely conscious, vaguely unconscious, the disciple lives in the world of twilight, neither day nor night, neither here nor there, in a kind of limbo. Anand Bhavo, you are in the state of being a disciple. Yes, glimpses have started showering on you - now be courageous, move...

...." But Nagarjuna did not say anything like that; he said, "Okay! You can keep my begging bowl, give me the golden one." Even the queen was a little shocked. She was thinking that Nagarjuna would say, "I cannot accept it." She wanted him to accept it, but still, deep in her unconscious somewhere was the old Indian tradition that the awakened one has to live in poverty, in...

..., "Why? What about your stealing?" He said, "You are a cunning fellow! I tried my best: if I am conscious, I cannot steal; if I steal I am unconscious. I can steal only when I am unconscious. When I am conscious the whole thing seems so stupid, so meaningless. What am I doing? For what? Tomorrow I may die. And why do I go on accumulating wealth? I have more than I need; even for...

... I know that you have real gold and we are playing with false gold." The thief became a disciple of Nagarjuna and attained to buddhahood. I cannot say to you what is right or wrong. I can say only one thing to you: be conscious - that is right. Don't be unconscious because that is wrong. And then whatsoever you do in consciousness is right. But people are living in unconsciousness. And let me...

... tell you: in unconsciousness you may think you are doing something right, but it can't be right. Out of unconsciousness, virtue cannot flower; it may appear virtuous but it can't be. Deep down it will still be something wrong. If you are unconscious and you give money to a poor man, watch: your ego is strengthened. This is sin. You are unconscious and you go on serving poor people, ill people; you...

... a do-gooder, avoid it. More mischief has been done by your public servants, missionaries, social reformers, than by anybody else. The most fundamental thing is to be conscious and then act, and then whatsoever you do is going to be right. But people are unconscious. "No, I will not go to the movies with you!" said Jackie. "I know your kind! As soon as we are seated, you will start...

..., and what you really do, are totally different things. You may be doing something which you never wanted to do, you may not be doing something which you always wanted to do. You live a schizophrenic life, divided into the unconscious and the conscious. And out of this schizophrenia whatsoever happens is wrong. Biff was the strong, silent type. He walked into the school cafeteria, ordered coffee, and...

... stubborn old maid." Whatsoever the conscious goes on pretending, the unconscious is the real source of your acts, and unless the unconscious disappears totally from your being, you can't do right. Only one tenth of your being is conscious, nine tenths are unconscious. The unconscious is almost a continent underneath a shallow layer of water you call consciousness. The unconscious motivates you. The...

... conscious only finds rationalizations for doing what the unconscious wants to do. The conscious is at the service of the unconscious; this is a wrong situation. Let the unconscious be at the service of the conscious - and you become a sannyasin. That is what sannyas is all about: making consciousness more and more the center of your being, and transforming more and more chunks of unconsciousness into...

... that the future is nothing but death, the future holds no hope. And I bring a new hope to you. I give you a new promise, I herald a new humanity. Hence it falls on deaf ears; it is so much against their conditioning, they cannot bridge the gap, and it is a very very repressive conditioning. India has repressed all that is natural; it has gone into its unconscious, it is there boiling within. And I am...

... of my people what I have received from existence. But the moment you take me for granted, immediately you forget, become unconscious, create distance. I don't want to hit anybody, but except hitting you I cannot wake you up when you have fallen asleep. Consciously, whatever you say is absolutely right, that you would rather cut your tongue than say a word against me, that you would rather die than...

... offend me. These are not just poetic assertions. I understand you perfectly, but you still have the unconscious mind and that unconscious mind manages to sabotage whatever you are gaining in your consciousness. In mythological terms, it is a conflict between good and evil. In a more contemporary psychological way, it is the conflict between the conscious and the unconscious. The unconscious is afraid...

... -- and its fear is real. If your whole being becomes conscious, it will be the death of the unconsciousness in you, and the death of mortality in you, and the opening of eternal life. Your unconscious mind does not want to commit suicide. It will give you every resistance; hence once in a while it will catch you unawares, and something will come out of you that you had never meant. But if I let it go...

... without hitting you, then your unconscious will be gaining more and more power over your conscious. Hitting you is simply a loving way to put the unconscious back and to help your consciousness to be stronger, more powerful, more capable to understand what comes from your unconscious and what comes from your conscious. The unconscious is not your friend. The unconscious is all the past centuries, it is...

... come from your no-mind. So now there are three things, Sarjano: the conscious mind, which you know and out of which whatever you have written to me has come. Behind and below is the unconscious mind, from where all kinds of sabotage will come, disruptions, to destroy the whole possibility of consciousness. Without your knowing, you have been disrespectful. I know that with your knowing, you will be...

... the last person to be disrespectful, and it does not matter to me whether you are disrespectful to me or not. The point is, I don't want your unconscious mind to sabotage the beauty that has arisen in your consciousness. Below is unconscious, above is no-mind, or super-conscious. I will hit you if I see that the unconscious is pulling you down, and I will hit you if I see that you are not moving...

... insist I will have to do it -- reluctantly, but there is no other way. If you only understand the language of the sword, then I will have to speak that language. I am not using it; I am using only words. So be careful. Whenever you start getting angry at me, remember: it is your unconscious that is disrupting your love, it has nothing to do with me. When you start thinking something against me...

..., remember it is your unconscious that is feeding the idea to you. Otherwise, whatever you said is so beautiful, Sarjano, I would like to read it again so that everybody understands clearly. It is not only a question, it is a statement from the very deepest core of his heart. " BELOVED OSHO, WHAT DO YOU SEE IN MY EYES NOW, AFTER YOU HIT MY HEAD SO HARD?" I see your eyes. I see you -- the same as...

... the tongue, and you will go on once in a while being disrespectful, without the tongue. The tongue is not needed, just your face can show it, your eyes can show it. Just the smallest gesture can show it. Don't think in terms of cutting your tongue. Think in terms of from where within you any ugly thing crept into your conscious... and destroy that unconscious. The tongue has nothing to do with it...

...; it is only a means, which the conscious mind can use, the unconscious mind can use, the super-conscious mind can use. I am using it; it is a perfect mechanism to convey things which cannot be conveyed. And finally, you say, "And I will kill myself with joy, rather than be unloving to You." That is easier, to die for someone. The real difficulty is to live for someone. Many have died in...

... him even more unconscious than he has ever been. Almost everybody before death goes into a coma, becomes unconscious. He has missed life; he cannot experience the climax of life - which is death. Only a man of awareness realizes a tremendous phenomenon: death comes to him as the ultimate orgasm. In his awareness he passes death without dying. He becomes aware of eternity. Now he knows he has always...

... been here, and he will always be here. He is part of an eternal existence. But the goal-oriented people are the most idiotic ones. Question 3: BELOVED OSHO, IT IS STATED THAT MAN BECOMES UNCONSCIOUS AT THE TIME OF DEATH. WHY IS THIS SO? IS IT DUE TO THE TERROR OF DEATH OR THE PROCESS OF DEATH? Neither terror of death nor the process of death make man unconscious. He has been learning unconsciousness...

...... shopping for everything except yourself! While you are talking, be alert and you will be surprised, just by your unconscious talking, how many troubles you have created, how many quarrels, fights you have created - just by talking. Just think: if you were not talking and you were just a silent man, ninety-nine percent of your troubles would be dropped. They come out of your talking! You say something...

... tears and pillow fights. But the reason is not talking, the reason is talking unconsciously. And the same is true about all your activities. They bring more and more misery to you, more and more suffering to you, but you go on doing the same things again and again. An unconscious man is bound to fall in the same pit again and again. A conscious man also commits mistakes, but one mistake one time. A...

... conscious way, step by step. And if he wants to return before he has taken the fourth step, he can come back. His death is simply dropping the body, the mind, the heart, and finally, the individual center, into the universal whole. Each thing is perfectly done in alertness. So it is not the process of death that makes one unconscious. And it is not the terror - because you have never seen death, so how...

... can you be afraid of it? You don't know what death is. You don't know even what life is. You are alive, and unaware of life. You are unconscious in life; that's why at the ultimate peak of life you become totally unconscious. A man of awareness is conscious in his life; that's why at the moment of death he becomes fully conscious. Your death says everything about your life. Your death is the...

... ultimate declaration of your existence, how you have lived. If you fall in a coma, that means you lived in unconsciousness, you have not lived at all. You have been postponing: tomorrow, always tomorrow.... It depends on you, not on the process of death. It depends on you to prepare. Death is a great celebration if you prepare. But unprepared, you have to become unconscious. And it is good of existence...

... that it makes you unconscious, completely unconscious before death, because death is a great surgery. Your being is taken away from the body, from the mind, from the heart, and finally from that individual self. This is the greatest surgery. Anesthesia is needed; existence provides it. It happened in 1915, the king of Varanasi had to be operated on to remove his appendix, but the king refused to take...

... do. There was no question either, because that man is not going to take anything that makes him unconscious. So finally, reluctantly, unwillingly, they operated on the man. Great surgeons were there; their hands were shaking for the first time. They had done much surgery but they had never done surgery on a man who was lying there fully conscious, with open eyes, looking at the doctors and once in...

.... Don't dump your responsibility on death! Accept the phenomenon that one becomes unconscious because one has lived unconsciously, and that is the ultimate outcome of one's whole life. If you want a conscious death, then start from this moment being conscious, because - who knows? - the moment may be death. And a man of consciousness starts almost six months before death comes - he starts feeling the...

... steps, hearing the sound of the steps of death coming closer. There is a very simple method - even camels can do it. Before a person dies, six months ahead, nature gives indications, but you are unconscious so you don't understand those indications. But a very simple indication I give to you, which I don't think you can misunderstand. Before death comes, six months before, you stop seeing the tip of...

... that they have become enlightened! That is the greatest trick your unconscious can play on you. I know a German sannyasin who used to become enlightened once in a while. Whenever he was in Germany he would become enlightened, and he would start writing letters to me, "I have become enlightened, and I am grateful to you." He wanted me to confirm it; all those letters were just ways.... I...

... by itself there will be no discipline in it, there will be no order in it, it will be a chaotic act. And only when it is chaotic is it helpful. A disciplined act is not helpful because it is always a function of the conscious mind; it never goes deep. Only when an act is chaotic does it become deep, and only then can it reach the unconscious, because the unconscious mind is a chaos, a great chaos...

.... The unconscious is just like the beginning of the world. Everything exists in a potential form in the unconscious, but it has not as yet taken form and shape; everything is hazy, cloudy, uncertain. If you try to impose some set pattern on it, you will not achieve anything. You will only go on circling around your conscious mind, because the conscious can be forced into discipline while the...

... unconscious can never be forced into discipline. But the unconscious is the root, the unconscious is the source. Meditation means going into the unconscious: diving into it, being in it. It is to be chaotic in the chaos. It is to be without form within the formless. It is to let go of oneself, to float in the clouds, untethered; to let oneself move into an unmapped territory, an uncharted sea. Don't go into...

... man with a disciplined mind may be a great man, like Gandhi, but he will have a small mind because his total concern is with the conscious mind and with discipline. He will never move into the undisciplined - he will never touch it. The conscious mind is just like a garden growing beside your house, it is never like a forest. And the unconscious is like a dense forest that has no boundary. You can...

... never know the boundaries of the unconscious, so there is every possibility of being lost. To remain in the conscious mind is safe; there is no risk. To move into the unconscious is risky. Courage is needed. So do not discipline your body and do not discipline your mind. Live with the undisciplined, live with the chaotic, live with danger. That is what meditation means to me: to live in insecurity, to...

..., there will be an inner consistency running through it. If you discipline yourself from without, there is every possibility that you will never come to know the unconscious. And the conscious mind is no mind at all, it is not life at all. It is just a utilitarian instrument developed because of society; it is not you. But because we have to live with others, we need certain things that can be known...

... this question to find out if you know that there is something else besides the related and the unrelated or whether you think everything belongs to one of these two categories." This third - which is neither related to you nor unrelated to you - is the unconscious part of your existence; it is the realm of meditation. The conscious mind is a help as far as your relationship or nonrelationship to...

... within, waiting for you, the water of the deep unconscious. Between you and your unconscious mind is a layer of earth, a great layer of suppressed vibrations, suppressed thoughts created by you as a barrier against the insecurities and aggression of the unconscious. You yourself have created this barrier, so you have to go on digging. As time passes you may not feel that you are progressing, because...

... were so absolutely certain. And a moment afterwards you yourself cannot believe what has happened to you. Have you gone mad? What made you so certain? You trusted too much in the one-tenth part of your mind, and you forgot completely about the unconscious mind which is so vast. And it is so dark that you don't know what is going on there, what is cooking there. Just on the surface you are thinking of...

... God to pray to, you are left in deep aloneness. And a man like Mahavira, rather than giving you some comfort, some consolation, tells you 'perhaps' about everything. No consolation. But he has a great insight about you. He knows even if you believe in God, your belief is only an 'if'. It cannot be more than that, because your unconscious knows nothing about God. Have you ever dreamed about God? I...

... have asked many, many people, "Have you ever dreamed of God?" They say, "No." The unconscious has not even heard the word 'God'. And nobody has repressed God so deep into himself that it becomes part of the unconscious and uncoils in your dream like a djinn coming out of a bottle. And you will meet neither Jesus Christ nor Buddha. It is very strange. Your unconscious is your...

.... Nothing is wrong in it, there is no condemnation. Be playful and rejoice in it. Here, for the first time, a totally original experiment is going on. Sex is accepted with deep respect: it is our heritage; we are born out of it; it is in our every fiber and every cell. To condemn it is to condemn oneself. Trying to drop it means only to repress it into the unconscious. And then things become more and more...

... complex and perverted. Once you start repressing sex into your unconscious ... There is no other place in you - whatever you repress goes into the unconscious. The unconscious is your basement, where you go on throwing all that you don't want, that you don't want to show to the world. But whatever you throw in the unconscious creates a very strange problem and that problem is: you start becoming afraid...

... of your own unconscious. You cannot go there, even with a lamp in your hand, because you know what you are going to encounter. I was staying in a friend's home. They were a little old-fashioned, so their bathroom and their toilets were not attached to the house, but a little distance behind the house. There was a small lawn, and beyond the lawn were their toilets and bathroom. They had one small...

... lamp, all the ghosts in all the trees will see me, and say, 'He is going now. This is a good time.'" I said, "This is right. Your logic is perfect." I have always remembered this whenever I have talked about your unconscious and your repressions. If you repress all that you have been told is ugly, then there is no possibility of your ever becoming a meditator, no possibility of your...

... psychologists, psychoanalysts, psychiatrists are born in the West, not in the East. It was a necessity in the West. Christianity has created the necessity because it has created the disease. It has created the repressive mind. It was absolutely necessary for a Sigmund Freud and a Carl Gustav Jung and an Alfred Adler to somehow help the Western part of humanity become acquainted with the unconscious...

.... Christianity has cut humanity completely away from the unconscious. And unless the unconscious becomes part of the conscious, becomes conscious itself, there is no way of your ever being beyond the animal, which you are repressing within yourself. Sex should never be repressed. Sex should be lived in its totality, with joy, without any guilt. And then what Nandan is saying and so many sannyasins have been...

... to his followers - and there is a great tradition from Patanjali, five thousand years old, which believes in samadhi - means to become perfectly unconscious. To every outsider he was almost in a coma; to the psychologist he had gone deeper into the unconscious layers of the mind. And there was no way to bring him back. Automatically, whenever his consciousness surfaced again, he would become aware...

... you let me continue it?" Now, Buddha himself would not consider it a samadhi. His samadhi means prajna, and prajna means awareness. You have to become more and more conscious, not unconscious; just two polarities, samadhi and prajna. Prajna is perfect awareness of your being. And samadhi in Ramakrishna's case means absolute oblivion. Nobody has gone into the deeper search for what exactly is...

... the difference deep inside. Both talk about great blissfulness, both talk about eternity, truth, beauty, goodness as their ultimate experience. But one is completely unconscious - you can cut his hand and he will not know - that much unconsciousness; and Buddha is so conscious that before sitting on the floor, first he will look to see if there is any ant or anything that may be killed by his...

... crossed from both ends. One tenth of the mind is conscious, nine tenths of the mind is unconscious. Just think of mind: the upper layer is conscious and nine layers are unconscious. Now mind can be passed from both the ends. You cannot pass from the middle, you will have to travel to the end. Ramakrishna passed the mind by going deeper and deeper into the unconscious layers. And when the final...

... unconscious layer came, he jumped out of the mind. To the world outside he looked as if he was in a coma. But he reached to the same clear sky although he chose a path which is dark, dismal; he chose the night part of consciousness. But he reached to the same experience. Buddha never became unconscious in this way. Even walking he was stepping every step fully conscious and gracefully, every gesture fully...

... conscious, gracefully. He transformed his consciousness to such a point that unconscious layers started becoming conscious. The final enlightenment is when all unconscious layers of the mind have become conscious. He also jumps out of the mind. Both samadhi and prajna are no-mind states, going outside the mind. So the experience is the same but the path is different, very different. One is the white path...

... the darkness, goes deeper and deeper into the darkness of the mind and the unconscious, reaches to the very end of the mind and jumps out of it. And another tries every possible way to make the unconscious also conscious. And when everything becomes conscious in him, he also takes a jump. Perhaps Buddha's method is more scientific. There is no question of right and wrong. Both lead to the same space...