Ah This

lost it in the first place. You are dreaming that you are unenlightened. You can dream you are in heaven. You can dream you are in hell. And you know: you dream sometimes you are in heaven and sometimes in hell. In the morning you can be in heaven and by the evening you can be in hell. One moment you can be in heaven, another moment you can be in hell. It all depends on you. It is something to do with your psyche. It is not something outside you

The ancients said: “(Self-) cultivation takes an unimaginable time (while) enlightenment in an instant is attained.”

So the first path is not really a path but a deception, a very alluring deception. In the first place, it is self-cultivation. It is not against the ego. It is rooted in the refinement of the ego. Refine your ego of all grossness then you become a self. The ego is like a raw diamond. You go on cutting it and polishing it and then it becomes a Kohinoor, very precious. That is your idea of “self,” but it is nothing but the ego with a beautiful name, with a spiritual flavor thrown in. It is the same old illusory ego.

cannot be free of them in life, while you are alive. And a man who has lived unconsciously his whole life, his death is going to be the culmination of unconsciousness. He will die in unconsciousness. In death also he will not be able to disillusion himself. The person who dies in unconsciousness is born again in unconsciousness. It is a vicious circle. It goes on and on. The person who is born in unconsciousness will repeat the same stupidities that he has been repeating for millions of lives.

The people who stop desiring worldly things start desiring heaven and heavenly pleasures. But what are they? Magnified forms of the same old desires, in fact more dangerous than the worldly desires because with the worldly desires one thing is absolutely certain, you are bound to get frustrated sooner or later. You will get out of them. You cannot remain in them forever. The very nature of them is such that they promise you, but they never fulfill their promises. The goods are never delivered. How long can you remain deceived by them? Even the most stupid person has glimpses, once in a while, that he is chasing illusions which cannot be fulfilled by the very nature of existence. The intelligent one comes to the realization sooner.

But with the otherworldly desires there is far greater danger because they are otherworldly. To see them and to experience them you will have to wait till death. They will happen only after death so you

communication we will call it “the second path,” arbitrarily. The second path is not part of time. It is part of eternity. Hence it happens instantaneously. It happens in the present. You cannot desire it. You cannot be ambitious for it.

On the first path, the false path, all is allowed. You can imagine, you can desire, you can be ambitious. You can change all your worldly desires into otherworldly desires. That’s what the so-called religious people go on doing. They don’t desire money any more. They are fed up with it, tired of it, frustrated with it, bored with it. But they start desiring God. Desire persists, it changes its object. Money is no longer the object of desire but God. Pleasure is no longer the object of desire but bliss. But what bliss can you imagine? Whatsoever you imagine in the name of bliss is nothing but your idea of pleasure. Maybe a little bit refined, cultivated, sophisticated, but it can’t be more than that.

The first path, the path of self-cultivation, is a time path. It has nothing to do with eternity. And truth is eternity.

The second path, the path of enlightenment, Zen masters have always called the pathless path because it does not appear to be a path at all. It cannot appear as a path, but just for the purposes of

The past and the future are mind phenomena. And the past and the future make your whole idea of time. Ordinarily you think that time is divided into three divisions: past, present, and future. That is totally wrong. That is not how the awakened ones have seen time. They say time consists only of two divisions: past and future. The present is not part of time at all. The present belongs to the beyond.

to be fulfilled, we have so many imaginations yet to be realized. And desires need a future like a screen onto which they can be projected.

This paradox has to be understood as deeply as possible. The first appears to be a path but is not. The second appears not to be a path but is. The first appears to be a path because there is infinite time. It is a time phenomenon. But anything happening in time cannot lead you beyond time. Anything happening in time only strengthens time.