Authentic knowledge of consciousness

comes only through meditation and all else is

just superficial acquaintance

and basically erroneous

because the very source of it is fallacious and poisonous.

243. Love.

Life is a dream so enjoy it;

but do not ask for more because

then you only disturb the dream

and get nothing except a disturbed night.

Be a witness to the dreaming mind

and then there is transcendence:

then you go beyond dreaming and beyond mind itself.

And know well that there is an awakening

below the dreaming mind

which is nothing but just a disturbed dream.

One can get to this below-dreaming state of awakening

through asking for more, desiring more –

as ordinarily we all do.

In a dream Mulla Nasruddin saw himself

being counted out coins

and when there were nine silver pieces in his hand

the invisible donor stopped giving them.

Nasruddin shouted: I must have ten! so loudly

that he woke himself up.

Finding that all the money had disappeared

he closed his eyes again and murmured,

All right, then, give them back –

I will take the nine.

There is also an awakening above the dreaming mind –

the real awakening

in comparison to which man ordinarily is asleep.

One can reach this awakening

through witnessing the dreaming mind –

and unless one reaches it one is not really alive.

244. Love.

The divine is that from which one cannot depart,

and that from which one can depart is not the divine.

So find that from which you have never departed

and cannot ever depart from –

and then laugh at the absurdity of the human mind

and its efforts!

Buddha is still laughing because of that.

Listen!

245. Love.

Why does man suffer?

Man suffers because of his craving,

craving to possess that which cannot be possessed,

and craving to keep things forever with himself

which are essentially impermanent.

And chief among these things is his own ego,

his own persona.

But all things are impermanent.

Except for change itself

everything changes.

Really nothing is

because everything is only a process,

so as soon as one tries to possess anything it slips away.

The possessor himself is slipping away constantly!

Then there is frustration

and then there is suffering.

Know this well,

realize this well and there will be no suffering

because then you have unearthed the root.

246. Love.

The self can never be free –

because the self itself is the bondage.

This is the meaning of the penetrating saying of Jesus:

He that saveth his life shall lose it

and he that loseth his life shall know life abundant.

Or that of Lao Tzu in Tao-te-Ching:

He who humbles himself shall be saved,

he who bends shall be made straight,

and he who empties himself shall be filled.

One is not to make the self free;

rather on the contrary, one has to be free from the self.

The self is nothing but the husk of the seed.

Do not cling to it.

Sings Wu Ming Fu:

The seed that has to grow must lose itself as a seed,

and they that creep may be transformed

through the chrysalis to wings.

Wilt thou then, O mortal, cling to husks

which wrongly seem to you to be the self?

247. Love.

The gates of the temple are wide open

and it is only after thousands of years

that such opportunity comes to this earth.

Know well that they will not remain open forever.

The opportunity can be lost very easily,

and you are still wavering,

and you are still hesitating –

to enter or not to enter,