Uncovering Buddha’s 8th Fold

Consciousness

Consciousness is a quality of the mind, awareness is the transcendence; it is going beyond the mind. Mind, as such, is the medium of duality, so consciousness can never transcend duality. It is always conscious of something, and there is always someone who is conscious.

Consciousness is energy, the purest energy. The mind is not so pure; the body is still less pure. The body is much too mixed, and the mind is also not totally pure. Consciousness is totally pure energy. But you can know this consciousness only if you make a cosmos out of the three, and not a chaos.

Consciousness is the highest form of energy. And when all these three energies function together, the fourth arrives. The fourth is always present when these three function together. When these three function in an organic unity, the fourth is always there; the fourth is nothing but that organic unity. In the East, we have called that fourth simply the fourth ¯ turiya; we have not given it any name. The three have names, the fourth is nameless. To know the fourth is to know the divine. Let us say it in this way: the divine is when you are an organic orgasmic unity. The divine is not when you are a chaos, a disunity, a conflict. When you are a house divided against yourself there is no divinity.

The whole is more than the sum total of the parts. It expresses itself through the parts but it is more. To understand that it is more is to understand the divine. The divine is that more, that plus. It is not a question of theology; it cannot be decided by logical argumentation. You have to feel beauty, you have to feel music, you have to feel dance. And ultimately you have to feel the dance in your body, mind and, soul. You have to learn how to play on these three energies so that they all become an orchestra. Then the divine is ¯ not that you see it; there is nothing to be seen. The divine is the ultimate seer, it is witnessing.

Learn to melt your body, mind, soul. Find ways in which you can function as a unity.

Unity

Zorba the Buddha: The body has to be enjoyed as much as your soul. Matter has its own beauty, its own power, just as consciousness has its own world, its own silence, its own peace, its own ecstasy. And between the two is the area of the mind – something of matter and something of the spirit. The poet is just in the middle, between the materialist and the spiritualist; his poetry touches both extremes. I would like all three points – the two extremes and the middle – to become one unity.

A man who rejoices in his body and the wisdom of the body, a man who uses his mind as a tremendously significant mechanism that evolution has brought, and a man who does not stop at mind but goes on searching beyond, into the realms of divineness, into the realms of godliness – to produce this man should be the effort of all those who are in some way concerned with educating the new generation. The educationists, the journalists, the spiritual teachers – all people who are involved in some way in creating a better human being than has been possible in the past – have to accept the totality of man without rejecting anything.

Journalists can do a tremendous service to humanity if their minds are clear, if they are not themselves prejudiced, either in favor of spiritualism or in favor of materialism. A journalist has to be of an open mind, receptive to all kinds of possibilities. He has to be a seeker and a searcher and an agnostic; he has not to be a believer. The moment you believe in something, you start enforcing your belief, whether it is right or wrong. The journalist has to be open to all dimensions, ready to accept anything that is going to beautify existence and make man more blissful, more healthy, more intelligent, more aware of the tremendous mystery that surrounds us.

This is the only prayer: to become aware of the miraculous, the mysterious that surrounds us. And only a man who has come to a unity within himself is capable of understanding the mystery of existence.

Consciousness brings inner Unity, Buddha’s eight fold, Right Meditation will be revealed to you.