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and was being prepared for burial

when he revived.

He sat up but he was so shocked at the scene around him that he fainted.

He was put in a coffin

and the funeral party set off for the cemetery.

Just as they arrived at the grave

he regained consciousness,

lifted the coffin lid

and cried out for help.

It is not possible that he has revived, said the mourners,

because he has been certified as dead

by competent experts.

But I am alive! shouted the man.

He appealed to a well-known and impartial scientist

and jurisprudent who was present.

Just a moment, said the expert.

He then turned to the mourners, counting them:

Now we have heard what

the alleged deceased has had to say;

you fifty witnesses tell me what you regard as the truth.

He is dead, said the witnesses.

Bury him, said the expert.

And so he was buried.

296. Love.

Choice is the root cause of all anguish.

Choose and you always choose hell –

even when you choose heaven.

And who chooses hell directly?

Yet everyone lives in hell.

What a trick!

The gates of heaven open into hell!

Then what is to be done?

Nothing at all,

because in doing nothing

you can rest content with all things as they are,

and you have knocked at the right door

without even knocking!

297. Love.

Silence is benediction

but not the silence you can create,

because you are the noise

so you cannot create silence.

But you can create the illusion of it,

and this illusion is created by all sorts of

auto-hypnotic techniques.

So never use auto-suggestions to be silent;

rather, be aware of the constantly chattering mind,

and be aware, not to make it still but to understand it.

This very understanding flowers into a silence

which is not just absence of noise

but a positive bliss.

298. Love.

To explore truth one must be free of one’s prejudices –

that is, from oneself.

Otherwise one goes round and round in circles,

because the known can never

be the door for the unknown;

and the known is the mind,

so mind becomes the barrier.

Look attentively at this fact.

Be alert to the vicious circle of the mind –

and then there is transcendence.

The known must cease for the unknown to be.

The known must go for the unknown to come in –

and this cessation of the known is meditation.

299. Love.

The more deeply you go within yourself

the less you will find yourself –

and yet that is the very heart of your being.

And vice versa also:

because the more you go without

the more you will find yourself –

and yet that is the very heart of your non-being.

These are the two ways in which you can go.

The first is the way of meditation,

and the second is the way of the mind.

300. Love.

Be ordinary, so ordinary that you come to be

virtually nobody –

and there is the opening,

and there is the explosion.

Only when you are not are you the extraordinary!

But do not think about it

and do not crave it,

and if the craving comes – be aware and laugh.

It will be stopped by awareness

and the created energy will be used by the laughter,

and after the laugh you will feel a deep relaxation.

Then begin to dance or sing

and the negative state of the mind

will be transformed into the positive.

The craving to be someone, somebody,

is absolutely negative

because the ego is the negation of being.

The ego is the principle of negation,

and if the negative is negated then you are positive.

The ego is the source of all inferiority,

but the trick is subtle

because the ego promises superiority

and in the end only results in inferiority.

Decode this secret and understand it very clearly.

One who thinks in terms of superiority

will always remain inferior

because these are two aspects of the same coin.

Sow the seeds of superiority

and you will reap the crop of inferiority.

Begin with the longing for superiority

and you will end up with nothing but inferiority

and all the hell that is involved in it.

Begin with humbleness, with humility,

and you are nearer to the divine.

In fact you are divine

but the ego will not allow you any gap

to look into your own divinity.

On the contrary

it will go on creating new, imaginary heavens

only to make way for new hells.

Enter heaven and you are entering hell!

Beware of this, and beware of your so-called self –

the creator of all the agonies that exist on earth.

Be a no-self and you will be that which you are already

and have been always –

that which is bliss eternal,

and freedom,

and the cosmic being, the brahman.

Tat tvam asi – that art thou, my love.

301. Love.

Man is unaware of himself.

He does not know what is happening to him,

nor does he know the state of his being.

A man cut down a tree one day.

A Sufi who saw this taking place said:

Look at this fresh branch which is full of sap, and happy

because it does not know yet that it has been cut off.

But his companion said:

Yes, it may be ignorant of the damage it has suffered,

but it will know in due time.

Hearing this the Sufi laughed and said:

Meanwhile you cannot reason with it.

This reverence is the state of man.

This ignorance is the state of man –

and meanwhile you cannot reason with him!