means that your total energy has to be brought into it. With only the mind, it won’t do. You can say yes from the mind, but that will not be enough. That is the meaning of virya: your totality, without holding anything back. And that is possible only when there is trust. Otherwise you will hold on to something, just to be secure and safe because who knows, “This man may be leading us in the wrong direction, so we can step back at any moment. Any moment we can say, ‘Enough is enough; now no more.’”
You hold back a part of you just to be watchful. Where is this man leading us? People come to me and say, “We are just watching. First let us watch what is happening.” They are very clever – clever fools because these things cannot be watched from the outside. What is happening is an inner phenomenon. Many times you cannot even see to whom it is happening. Many times only I can see what is happening. Only later on do you become aware of what has happened.
Others cannot watch. There is no possibility of watching it from the outside. How can you watch from the outside? You can see gestures; you can see people doing meditation, but what is happening inside, that is meditation. What they are doing outside is just creating a situation.
It happened…
There was a great Sufi master, Jalaluddin. He had a small school of rare pupils – rare, because he was a very choosy master. He would not accept anyone unless he had chosen the person himself. He worked with very few, but sometimes people passing by would come to see what was happening there.
Once, a group of professors came to his school. Always being very alert, clever people, they decided to have a look for themselves. In the master’s house, which was in the compound, a group of fifty people were sitting, making mad gestures – someone was laughing, someone was crying, someone was jumping around. The professors watched and said, “What’s going on? This man is leading these people into madness. They are already mad, and are fools. And once you become mad it’s difficult to come back. This is nonsense; we have never heard of… People sit silently when they meditate.”
There was a lot of discussion between them. Eventually, a group of them said, “We don’t know what is happening, so it’s better not to make any judgment.”
There was a third group among them who said, “Whatever it is, it is worth enjoying. We would like to watch. It looks beautiful. Why can’t we enjoy it? Why be bothered about what they are doing? Just to watch is a beautiful thing.”
After a few months, the same group of professors came again to the school to watch. What was happening now? – everyone was silent. Again there were fifty people, and the master was also there. They were sitting silently, so silently, as if there was no one there, like statues. Again they had a discussion. One group said, “Now they are useless. There is nothing to see! When we came the first time it was beautiful. We enjoyed it. But now they are just boring.”
The other group said, “But now we think they are meditating. The first time they were simply mad. This is the right thing to do, this is how meditation is done. It is written in the scriptures and described in this way.”
But there was still a third group who said, “We don’t know anything about meditation. How can we judge?”
After a few months, the group came again. Now there was nobody there. Only the master was sitting, smiling. All the disciples had disappeared. They asked, “What is happening? The first time we came there was a mad crowd here and we thought that this is useless, you are driving people crazy. The next time we came it was very good. People were meditating. Where have they all gone?”
The master replied, “The work is done, the disciples have disappeared. I am happily smiling because the thing happened. And I know that you are the fools! I have also been watching – not only you. I know what discussions were going on between you, and what you were thinking the first and second time you came.” Jalaluddin continued, “The effort that you have made in coming here three times would have been enough for you to become meditators, and the discussion that you have been involved in, that much energy was enough to make you silent. In the same period, those disciples have disappeared and you are standing at the same place. Come in! Don’t watch from the outside.”
They said, “Yes, that is why we came again and again, to watch what was happening. When we are certain, okay. Otherwise we don’t want to be committed.”
Clever people never want to commit, but is there life without commitment? Clever people think commitment is a bondage, but is there any freedom without bondage? First you have to move into a relationship, only then can you go beyond it. First, you have to move into a deep commitment, depth to depth, heart to heart. Only then can you transcend it. There is no other way. If you just move out and watch, you can never enter the shrine. And there can be no relationship. The shrine is commitment.
A master and disciple is a love relationship, the highest love that is possible. And unless there is a relationship you cannot grow. Patanjali says: “The first is trust – shraddha; the second is energy – effort.” You have to bring your whole energy in; a part won’t do. It may even be destructive if you only come partially in and remain partially out because that will become a rift within you. It will create a tension within you; it will become an anxiety rather than bliss.
Bliss is where you are in your totality; anxiety is where you are only in part because you are divided and there is a tension. The two parts are going separate ways. You are in difficulty.
Others who attain asampragyata samadhi attain through faith… trust, effort, energy, recollection. This word recollection is smriti: remembrance – what Gurdjieff calls self-remembering. That is smriti.
You don’t remember yourself. You may remember millions of things but you go on continuously forgetting yourself – that you are. Gurdjieff had a technique; he got it from Patanjali. In fact, all techniques come from Patanjali. He is the past master of techniques. Smriti is remembrance – self-remembering, whatever you do. You are walking; remember deep down, “I am walking, I am.” Don’t be lost in walking. Walking is happening – the movement, the activity – and the inner center is there, just aware, watching, witnessing. You need not repeat it in the mind, “I am walking.” If you repeat it, that is not remembrance. You have to be nonverbally aware: “I am walking, I am eating, I am talking, I am listening.” Whatever you do, the “I” inside should not be forgotten, it should remain. It is not self-consciousness, it is consciousness of the self. Self-consciousness is ego; consciousness of the self is asmita, purity, just being aware that “I am.”
Ordinarily, your consciousness is arrowed toward an object. You look at me, and your whole consciousness is moving toward me like an arrow. But you are arrowed toward me. Self-remembering means you must have a double-arrowed arrow, one side showing me, another side showing you. A double-arrowed arrow is smriti, self-remembrance – very difficult because it is easy to remember the object and forget yourself. The opposite is also easy – to remember yourself and forget the object. Both are easy; that’s why those who are in the market, in the world, and those who are in the monastery, out of the world, are the same. Both are single-arrowed. In the market they are looking at things, objects. In the monastery they are looking at themselves.
Smriti is neither in the market nor in the monastery. Smriti is a phenomenon of self-remembering, when subject and object are both together in consciousness. That is the most difficult thing in the world. Even if you attain for a single moment, a split moment, you will have the glimpse of satori immediately. Immediately you have moved out of the body… Somewhere else.
Try it. But, remember, if you don’t have trust it will become a tension. These are the problems involved. It will become such a tension that you could go mad because it is
