The Work Is Completed

From Silence you came and to Silence you return. This is the ultimate Truth. The concept that there was any work to complete has in itself been completed. This is all. What is there to complete? What was the work? To keep quiet. When you know this you have completed everything. Otherwise you will be hitchhiking for millions of years thinking that you have not completed your work. There is no work to be completed. The idea that you have to complete some work — that you are bound, that you have to be free — is all conceptual. You are fundamentally free all the time, and to know this is the completion of everything. The only hindrance was that you thought that you were bound. That was the obstacle. Removing this obstacle you can call “completion of the work.”

Please remove all doubt by leaving it nowhere to reside. You call it doubt but there is no doubt at all. What is meant by doubt? Will you have any doubt if someone says, “You are not called so-and-so?” You know what your name is. In the same way you are That itself. In a dream you forgot your real nature and doubt arose. You will have to either remove doubt by yourself, or go to one who knows how to remove it — to one who will help you remove your doubt. Nobody can change you; you will remain what you are. A doubt arose: “I am not what I am.” The idea that “I am the body” was this doubt. You are the in-dweller of the body, not the body itself. This simple understanding comes easily in Satsang, but it will not arise outside in the world — or it will take millions of years — simply because everybody is clinging to the concept that, “I am the body.” In actually you are not the body; you are the one who is aware of the body. When you are aware of something it is an object in awareness. You are aware of everything including the body. What is this awareness? Who is aware?

Do not think. Do not even meditate. Meditation means postponing for old age or at least for next year that which is available now. Meditation means rejecting the rose flower and hunting for the thorn. Don’t meditate here. Just now! Sit quietly! Don’t think! Whenever you meditate you are postponing Now! Why postpone this until some other time, until some other moment? Have you ever seen the next moment? Why not now? Isn’t it available now? What kind of meditation do you need? There are people here who have been meditating for many years with all the teachers of the world and still they are not free. Meditation is only postponement. You may have made a habit of sitting in meditation every morning from six to eight, but the mind is very happy to have cheated you. You can do everything — there are some very professional meditators here — but still there is nothing inside.

You can complete this instantly because the Self — the Atman — is ever present. For whom are you seeking through method, through meditation, through thought? For whom? It is here and now. Even before you sit for meditation, it is already here. Even the instinct to meditate came from the same source, to find the same thing. You are running away from it, never turning back. Whatever thought comes, whatever it is, even the thought of meditation: Stop. Discover the source of these thoughts: “I have to meditate, I have to be free. I need freedom.” Keep quiet and wait. Find out from where these thoughts are coming. Return back to the source of these same thoughts and tell me what you see. What do you call this? Where will it lead you? It will strike at your mind forever and you will become what you have always been. You will not find this through any method. Don’t be deceived once again by your mind.

You are here to be free in this very instant without doing anything, without even stirring a single thought. That’s why you are here. I don’t tell you to go to the Himalayas or to the caves or to the forest. I have seen many people with head hanging down doing penance. I have seen many in the higher altitudes of the Himalayas. They did not discover freedom. It is here and now. What is there to think about this? Even without thinking you are That. The habit of thinking, of doing something, is your only impediment. Give at least one second to yourself without doing anything, without even thinking. Do not make any kind of effort, and see the result.

5 December, 1992