Having No Desires Is Happiness

PAPAJI: Because there is a thought, therefore I say, don’t touch it. I’m not touching that untouched space. As where there’s a lake and the lake is covered with algae and weeds, the surface of the lake is covered up — then there’s no need to create the face that you will see after removing the weeds from the surface of the lake. Just remove the impediment. This is a thought, you see. Not to touch thoughts means not to create a face that you will see after this is done away with. As when all weeds are thrown away, so also with thoughts.

So I say, remove this thing because this is your own creation. You have to do it yourself and not create anything afresh. Your face will appear by itself. Only this is a thought, you see, which is camouflaging your reality. Only the reality is camouflaged by unreality. Reality cannot be realized by anything that is not real. Reality will be known only by reality. So unreality is a concept and as such it does not exist. The snake in the rope that you saw yesterday evening never existed. So we have to remove the concept of the snake, not create a rope. The rope is always there.

Absence of thought is your nature and every time you have thoughts you are disturbed, you get fatigued, and you want to get rid of them at night to be able to sleep. So what did you do to sleep? You didn’t need to purchase or call for any exercise to sleep; you’ve been doing enough of that during the waking state, ‘I will do this. I will do that. I’ll meet this person. I’ll meet that person. This belongs to me and that I will get’. These things you kept aside and simply you went to sleep. For sleep you did not have to make any effort. If you make any effort to sleep, you will never sleep. If only you go on saying, ‘I want to sleep. I want to go to sleep. I must have a sleep. I want to have a deep sleep’, you can never sleep. You have to reject this notion of sleep itself. Then you will sleep.

So that’s why I say, don’t touch this, don’t touch this. The absence of thought I cannot show you. The thought, this impediment which is the hindrance between you and your own real nature, about that I can advise. Afterwards you and I are one. Neither can I speak to you nor can you listen to me. Therefore, what these boys say is all bullshit. [Laughter] And if you look at this as I tell you, you don’t have to do anything, no effort to think or not to think. Just look at it. Look at this thought and it vanishes, you see. You are happy when you have no thought. Then only you are happy. Mind you, everybody forgets about it, you see. For everybody, when you have no thought that is happiness.

Supposing I want a new model Mercedes Benz, the most powerful model [much laughter in the hall] I have no money. I am much in trouble, you see. Everybody tells me we want this car. The neighbor already has this car. My wife is telling me, the children are telling me, ‘We want to have the latest model.’ So much trouble. You can’t sleep. So you borrow money from the bank and arrange to buy the car. Now the car is at your front door. You are happy. Your wife is happy. Your children are happy. Isn’t it?

Where does the happiness come from? Neither the steel, nor the metal bodywork of the car, nor the rubber of the tires, have any capacity to give you happiness. None of these. You are happy. Everybody’s happy. Now this happiness comes because the desire to have a car troubled you. Now that desire is gone, is vanished. This is what brought happiness, this is where you derived the happiness from.

Desirelessness gave you happiness. This period, this transit period gave you happiness to come out of desires.  This is the point of happiness and whenever you are happy, even to meet a friend, whenever you get something that you want to get, desire gives you trouble. When that thing comes the desire goes. That is happiness. When there’s no desire you are always in happiness. (Laughter) So that period when the desire is not there is giving you happiness, not the apartment, nor the car, nor anything else in the world. So this is a very simple trick. You can enjoy this when there is no thought. 

When there’s happiness you laugh out of nothingness. Everything is rejected and that’s the point of happiness and what you call freedom; you can call it anything. When there’s absence of desire, there is happiness. Things can happen without desire also. It is not in your hand. Things will happen. Enjoy them. I’m not telling you to run away from the world and go to the Himalayas. I have seen people in the Himalayas also who have gone to get freedom. They are more miserable than when they were in the world. [Much laughter again] It is in your own hand. If you want to be happy, nobody can disturb you.

PAPAJI [was asked to clarify the previous point.] Happiness was created after finishing the desire for a car, then that gap has given you happiness, you see. So that is your own place. In that interval there is consciousness. That interval is called consciousness. Between two clouds there is an interval. In that interval is the blue sky. Slow down the thought process and look into the intervals. Yes. Look at the intervals and pay more attention to the interval than to the cloud. First thought has left; the next one has not arisen yet. That is consciousness and that is freedom and that’s your own place, your own abode. You’re always there, you see.

Shift the attention, change the gestalt, don’t look at the figure, but at the background. If I put a blackboard, a big blackboard the size of the wall here and mark it with a white point and ask you, what do you see? Ninety-nine percent, the possibility is you will not see the blackboard. (Laughter)  You will see only the white dot because you see the figure, not the backgrounds. Such a big blackboard, but if I ask you what do you see there? You will say, ‘I see a little white spot.’ (Laughter) Such a big blackboard is not seen and only a little white spot, which is almost invisible, why? Because it is a fixed pattern of the mind to look at the figure not at the blackboard, to look at the cloud not at the sky, to look at the thought not at the consciousness. That’s why.