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The only thing you cannot separate yourself from is your witnessing energy. That means you are that. You cannot separate yourself from it. You can separate from everything: you can know you are not your body, not your mind, but you cannot know that you are not your witnessing, because whatsoever you do you will be the witness. That witnessing is consciousness. And unless you come to a point where separation becomes impossible, you have not come to yourself.
Self-remembering: Whatsoever you are doing, remember yourself—that you are. Don’t forget it. First remember that you are, and this remembering that “I am” must become so basic that it follows you like a shadow. Then even while asleep it will enter, and you will remember.
If you can remember the whole day, by and by it enters even in your dreams, even in your sleep, and you will know that “I am.” The day you can know even in your sleep that you are, you are grounded in your center. The yogi remembers even in his sleep that he is—that “I am.” Sleep is just on the periphery. In the center, the remembrance is there.
By self-remembering, you are forgetting everything other than yourself: the society, the mad world around you, the family, the relationships, everything, you are forgetting. You are simply remembering that you are. This remembrance is not given by the society to you. This self-remembering will detach you from all that is peripheral.
Obedience destroys everyone, because obedience means now you are not the center: the other is the center; you are just to follow him. The Buddha is his own master. His subjectivity remains aloof and untouched. That’s the secret. A Thing can not impress. Any thing from the outside can not condition him. He remains detached; he remains himself, nothing can overpower him. It is your weakness which is attracted. Be more powerful and nothing will attract you.
That will give you real freedom. No political freedom, no economic freedom, no social freedom, can be of much help. They will not give you the thing which the innermost core of your being is longing for—the freedom from things, from objects, the freedom to be oneself without any possibility of being possessed by anything or anybody.
When this happens for the first time—things move around you and you are not influenced—you will feel a subtle joy of being. For the first time, really you feel you are; nothing can drag you out of you.
For an enlightened person, things are there, he is there, but there is no bridge between him and the things. The bride has broken. He moves alone. He lives alone. He follows himself. Nothing else can possess him. Because of this feeling we have called this attainment moksha—total freedom, Mukti.
For you to be made a total freedom the whole society has to be thrown out of you, but that doesn’t mean that you are going to become anti-social. Once you throw the society out, once you become aware of your pure freedom inside, you can live with society; no need to be “anti.” But then the society cannot enter into you. You can move in it, you can act in it, but then the whole thing becomes just a psychodrama.
Those who become anti-social simply show that they are still bound to the same society. All the anti-social movements in the West are reactionary, not revolutionary. You are reacting to the same society, you are related to the same society in a reverse manner. You are standing on your head: that is all. You are doing shirshasana (the headstand posture), but you are the same person.
If you are “anti,” you will never be beyond the society. You are part of it. If the society dies, you will die. You are already the person you long to be, you are already where you want to reach. You have reached your home already. You have never left it really. You have always been there, but dreaming, asleep. Because you are already there, there is no need to dream about it. Dreams means you have to trek away.
You are THAT, but you have been trekking long. All these techniques are just to make you alert so that you can come out of your dreams back to the place where you have been always been, to the state which you have never missed. And you cannot miss it: it is your nature. It is your very Being, so how can you miss it?
Revolutionaries will struggle to change the world. They will destroy their whole life in changing it, and it is already changing. They are not needed. They will only consume themselves. They will burn out in changing the world, and it is already changing. No revolution is really needed. The world is a revolution: it is changing.
For an Enlightened One, everything is complete. He has eaten his food; now he is not thinking about eating again. When he feels hungry he will eat again, but meanwhile there is no thought of eating.
He has taken his bath; now he is not thinking of the bath tomorrow. When the time comes, if he is alive, he will take it. What are you doing? You are constantly rehearsing—constantly rehearsing for tomorrow as if you are an actor and you are to show someone. Why are you rehearsing? When the time comes, you will be there.
If you want to see yourself you will need a mirror. Only in the mirror can you see yourself, but then you will have to stand in front of the mirror. If your mind is a mirror, it can reflect the whole world. It cannot reflect you because you cannot stand before it. You are always behind, hidden behind the mirror.
Just go on eliminating change, and you will come to the unmoving, to the center—the center of the wheel. Whatsoever you are doing, remain with the act. Don’t move anywhere else. If you are taking a shower, be there. Forget the whole world. Now this shower is the whole universe. Everything has ceased; the world has disappeared. There is only you and the shower. Remain there. Move with each act so totally that you are neither lagging behind nor jumping ahead: you are with the act.
The self is always the knower. It cannot be reduced to a known, it cannot be reduced to an object. If you think that you know the self, then the self that you know will not be your self, but the one who is knowing the self will be the self. You will always remain the knower; you cannot become the known.
By and by, the more you get rooted in existence, the more and more you settle down in the feeling of being, the thoughts will be far away, you will feel a distance—as if those thoughts are not now happening to you, but they are happening to someone else, very, very far away. There is a distance.
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