This is a very revolutionary sutra:
THAT WHICH IS THE SUPREME BRAHMAN, THE SELF IN ALL, THE ANCIENT SUPPORT OF THE UNIVERSE, SUBTLER THAN THE SUBTLE, AND ETERNAL, THAT ALONE THOU ART.
THOU ALONE ART THAT.
Any search, any inner search begins with elimination, begins with the negative. One has to know what one is NOT in order to know what one is. The "is not" comes first, and the "is" follows. The negative is the beginning, and the positive the realization.
If you begin with the positive you will never reach the real positive. If you begin with the negative, only then you can reach the positive. Why? Because negative and positive are two polar opposites.
They look opposite to us; deep down they are not. Deep down, negative and positive are poles of one existence.
Existence is manifested into polar opposites. They are complementary, not opposites; they are contraries but not opposites - complementary to each other. They supplement each other, they help each other. Really, the one cannot exist without the other. The good cannot exist without the evil, and the light cannot exist without darkness, and love cannot exist without hate, and the friend cannot exist without the enemy.
A Jesus cannot exist without a Judas. A Judas is not opposite to Jesus. He is the complementary, the dramatic complementary of Jesus, the other aspect of Jesus. It is difficult to conceive, because as our thinking goes, it always divides. We see Jesus as the god, and then we see Jesus' opposite, Judas, as the evil.
Jesus cannot exist without a Judas, and a Judas cannot exist without a Jesus. They both come simultaneously into existence. This story is very beautiful and meaningful.... When Jesus was crucified, Judas committed suicide. He was instrumental in Jesus' crucifixion, but when Jesus was crucified, Judas committed suicide. Really, Judas cannot exist without Jesus; when Jesus is no more, Judas becomes meaningless, irrelevant. Then he has nothing to do. He was here only for Jesus to be crucified, or for Jesus to be. He was the counterpart, the shadow. When Jesus disappears, the shadow is bound to disappear. A Judas cannot exist without a Jesus, and a Jesus cannot come into this world without a Judas.
The polar opposites are complementary, deep down; negative and positive are one. And the negative makes the boundary, negative surrounds the positive. The positive is the center, negative is the periphery. So if you want to enter the center you have to pass through the periphery. That's why a religious search begins with the negative - what you are not. You are not the body, you are not the mind. You are not the ego, you are not the self. These are all negatives. These negatives, these "nots" are the periphery, and only when you are past all the "nots," all the negatives, then you enter the positive - then you become aware of what you are.
If you begin with a positive, you begin wrongly, because then the positive will be just in your imagination, not an authentic experience. If you begin with, "I am brahman" without knowing that you are not the body, without knowing that you are not the mind, without knowing that you are not the ego.... If you begin with "I am brahman," this "I am brahman" is not the center; rather, you are outside the periphery and imagining it.
This statement, "I am brahman," can be of two types: one of imagination, the other of experience.
The other is the authentic; the one, the first, is just imaginative thinking. If you have not denied thinking first, you can think that you are brahman, but that is you thinking; just a thought in the mind, not an experience. You have not known that you are brahman, you have only become acquainted through scriptures, through others. This is just a thought in your mind, not a deep realization.
So never begin with any positive. There are many who go on continually repeating, "I am brahman, I am brahman, I am brahman." And by their repetition they only show that they don't know. Because if you know, there is not need to repeat. Whatsoever you know, you never repeat - there is not need.
You know; you know already - then why go on repeating? This repetitive mind shows that you are just suggesting to yourself that you are brahman, just trying to create an illusion by autohypnosis that you are brahman. But this autohypnosis will not lead you deep; it will not even be skindeep. So someone hits you, and the brahman evaporates - you begin to react out of whatsoever you really are. Then you begin to react as a body, then you begin to react as a mind, then you begin to react as an ego and NOWHERE as a brahman! Because that was only a thought - just a dream, just a cloud, not an experience in you.
Never begin with any positive, because beginning with the positive is bound to be illusory. Begin with the negative.
But we are fearful of the negative, we are afraid of the negative, because the negative means renunciation; the negative means renouncing something. Negative means destroying something, negative means eliminating something, negative means DIS-identifying with something. It is painful, one begins to suffer. "I am not this" - then something has dropped from me. "I am not this" - then again something has dropped from me. It goes on dropping and I go on becoming poorer, and poorer, and poorer - that is the fear.
We desire to accumulate. We desire to go on identifying: "This is me, that is me." This is how the mind works. We go on identifying with more and more things, with more and more persons. And the greater becomes the periphery, the more secure we feel.
This is what lust means. Lust means a desire for accumulation - "This house belongs to me." Then suddenly I become the house. "This car belongs to me" - then I become the car. So when someone falls in love with a car - and many fall - then the car is not just something outside of you; it becomes part of you, it is your body. Then you don't feel that the car is a possession; you begin to feel identified with it. Whatsoever is attached to you becomes part of your body - this is how our mind goes on working, accumulating. So elimination becomes difficult.
Mind is the accumulator in you.
Meditation is the eliminator.
That's why mind and meditation are in conflict.
If you meditate, then you go on destroying your mind.
The Zen monk Rinzai has defined meditation as a state of no-mind, a deep freedom from the mind. It only means a deep freedom from accumulation. The reverse process is needed: elimination. Go on eliminating and saying, "This is not me, this is not me, this is not me" - go on. In the UPANISHADS the formula for this elimination is NETI-NETI. This formula means... these two words are the base of the negative process.
Neti-neti means, not this - not that. The word means, not this - not that. Go on saying, "I am not this, I am not that" - go on.
When the negative is completed, you fall into the positive. When the negative is crossed, you enter the positive; and now the positive is not imagined - you experience it, you encounter it, you become it.
"I am brahman" is an experience, not a statement to be made before experience - it NEVER should be made, never should be believed, never should be assumed. If you assume "I am brahman" without knowing it, you will never be able to encounter the reality which reveals to you, which explodes in you, and becomes brahman.
Pass through the negative and attain the positive. The positive should not be tried directly; it is always reached indirectly. Whatsoever you need is just elimination, and when all else which is not you is eliminated, SUDDENLY that which is you is revealed. That's a revelation. You have nothing to do for it directly; indirectly, you have to do much.
Go on cutting and renouncing, go on breaking identities. Unless you come to a point where nothing remains which you can call "this" or "that" - only you, only the center; everything of the periphery eliminated, only the center without the periphery.... Then suddenly the whole focus of consciousness changes. You enter into a different world, the world of the positive. You become aware what you are.
Meditation is negation.
Realization is positive.
Meditation is negating, negating to the extreme where nothing remains to be negated; denying to the very end, where nothing more remains to be denied. When everything has been denied and negated, and you cannot deny and negate anything, because nothing remains to be denied - then is revealed that-which-is, which you are, which everything is. Then you fall into the existential. Then you transcend the world and enter brahman; then you enter the beyond.
One thing more: When you enter the positive, you feel it as positive only because of the negative you have experienced. When you enter the positive - this center - you feel it as the center because you know the periphery. But once entered, both are lost - the periphery and the center both, the negative and the positive both. That's why the Indian term for it is PARABRAHMA. It means that which is always beyond - beyond the duality, mm? It will be good if we translate it as the "beyondness," as the transcendence; that which is beyond the duality.
First you eliminate; first you use the negatives. Then you enter the positive. And then both are lost.
Only when both are lost do you enter totality.
So remember, we have three terms: One is SAMSARA - the world, the MAYA, the illusion, the world of the objects. Then we have brahman, the seer, the knower, the world of the the subject, the subjectivity. Then we have the beyondness, the world of the the beyond, which goes beyond both. First we have the objective world, then we have a subjective world, then we have neither this nor that - the remaining. The remaining consciousness which transcends both is parabrahma, the beyondness, the absolute existence, the ultimate.
Begin with negation; attain to the positive; then attain to the beyond where both are dissolved... or both become one, or both are known as one... but the twoness is not there.
THAT WHICH ILLUMINES THE WORLDS OF RELATED EXPERIENCES LIVES IN THE WALKING, DREAM, AND THE PROFOUND SLEEP STATE.
ONE WHO BELIEVES THAT BRAHMAN AND I ARE ONE, IS LIBERATED FROM ALL BONDAGE.
Knowing this, realizing this, encountering this, that "I am that brahman which transcends all, I am that brahman which is expressed in all, I am that brahman which is the negative and the positive AND the beyond," one is liberated, one becomes free; rather, one becomes freedom.
This is the religious longing, this is the religious thirst: How to be liberated? How to be totally free?
How to be beyond suffering? How to be in the eternal bliss?
Only when you transcend duality do you attain it.
Begin with elimination; then you will come to the positive realization. And then that also dissolves.
You have to do only the elimination; then you enter spontaneously, without any effort, into the positive. Then you have to do nothing - the positive disappears itself, because it can exist only with the negative. When the negative is not there, you have only a glimpse of the positive; and then the positive disappears. It cannot exist without the negative.
So whatsoever you have to do is only the process of elimination, meditation - nothing else; all else HAPPENS.
Renouncing that which you are not is the alpha and omega - all - the beginning and the end.
Now be ready for morning meditation.