But it happens only sometimes, and only for a moment, that you are silent. That’s why you feel that those situations in which this happens are lovely. You start desiring those situations. You go to a hill, and while the sun is rising in the morning you look at it. Suddenly you have an upsurge of joy. You feel blissful, a beautitude descends upon you.

What has happened really? Because of the silent morning, and the silent rising of the sun, and the greenery, and the hill, suddenly your inner chattering has stopped. The phenomenon is so great – all around you such beauty, such peace and tranquillity – that you have stopped for a moment. In that stopping you have realized a non-ego state – for a single moment of course.

This can happen through many situations. In sex it happens, in music it can happen; in anything which is so great that you are overwhelmed, overpowered, and your constant chattering is put aside, forced aside for a moment, it will come again. Whenever you are egoless, accidentally or through some practice, you feel a subtle bliss which you have not felt before.

The bliss is not coming from outside. It is not coming from the hills or from the rising sun or from beautiful flowers; it is not coming from the sex act. It is not coming from outside. The outside is only creating an opportunity – it is coming from inside. So if you repeat the outer situation again and again, it will not come, because you will get immune to it, you will get accustomed to it.

The same hill and the same morning…again you go there and you don’t feel. You feel something is missing. Because for the first time it was so new that it stopped your mind completely. The wonder was so great and the miracle was so new, you couldn’t continue with the past chattering. It stopped – just in awe it stopped – but next time you go there you know everything. There is no awe, no mystery – the mind continues. This happens with every experience. In any experience, if you feel a joy, it will be destroyed if you repeat it, because then, in a repeated experience, you cannot put aside the mind.

So the second thing to remember is that mind is accumulation. Your consciousness is just hidden behind this accumulated past, and you are identified with it. Whenever you say “I am this, I am that,” you are creating the ego.

Thirdly: if you can understand this, then the third point is not difficult, and that third point is that mind has to be used. There is no need to get identified; you can use it as an instrument – and it is an instrument. There is no need to get identified with it. Remain always above it.

And really, you are always above it, because you are here, now, always present, and mind is always past. You are always ahead of it. It is just lagging behind you; it is a shadow. This very moment is a new thing; your mind cannot have it. A moment later it will be absorbed in the memory; then the mind can have it. Every single moment you are free.