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He said, "It has happened."
I said, "Then give it a try. For three days you forget remembering, stop remembering."
He said, "I cannot stop, it has become automatic."
I said, "You just wait and try."
It took him at least two days, forty-eight hours, to stop. It was hard to stop, it had become automatic. There was now no need to remember; for thirty years he had been remembering, it was simply there like an undercurrent. But within forty-eight hours it stopped.
And on the morning of the third day he was very angry. He said, "What have you done? All that joy has disappeared. I am feeling very ordinary, I am feeling the same as I was before I started on the journey thirty years ago." He started crying out of anger and out of sadness; tears started coming to his eyes. He said, "Give me back my method -- please don't take it!"
I said, "Just look! If this is so dependent on the method, then nothing has happened. It is just an illusion that you are creating by continuous remembering. This is nothing but autohypnosis."
All the great masters say this, that one day you have to drop the method. And the sooner you drop it, the better. The moment you attain, the moment awareness is released in you, immediately drop the method.
Just look: this is only the fourth sutra. In the third sutra Atisha says:
EXAMINE THE NATURE OF UNBORN AWARENESS.
And in the fourth, immediately:
LET EVEN THE REMEDY ITSELF GO....
Now no more examination, no more mindfulness, no more remembering that all is a dream. Once the first taste of awareness has happened on your tongue, be quick! Because the mind is very cunning -- the mind can start telling you, "Look, you are no longer ordinary, you are extraordinary. Look, you have attained. Look, you have become a buddha, you are enlightened. Look, this is the goal of all human beings, and very rarely, one in a million attains. You are that one in a million."
The mind will say all these beautiful sweet nothings, and of course the ego can come back. You can start feeling very good, holier than thou. You can start feeling special, spiritual, saintly. And all is lost. Through
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