Have you watched? When trees bloom and the fruit comes and the seeds ripen, every tree tries to send its seeds far away -- with the wind, with the birds. And if the tree sometimes feels that the wind will not be able to take the seed, that the seed is heavy, then it creates devices, naqshbandis, to send the seed far away -- because if the seed falls underneath the big tree it will never grow. It has to be on its own; it has to find its own space.
There are trees which grow their seeds with a small bit of cotton around them. The seed is heavy but the cotton is weightless; the wind can take the cotton away. Then the seed will also go away, far away, and will fall onto some open space where it can become a great tree.
That's what God did with Adam. He tried to push him away -- because you can grow only when you are on your own. One day the child has to be sent to the school, one day the child has to be sent to the hostel, one day the child has to go to the university. He goes crying and weeping. He does not want to leave the family and the familiar. He does not want to leave the past, the comfort, the protection, the security, the safety. He does not want to leave, but he has to be pushed. He has to be thrown into the world. That's what God did. It was a device.
Once you are thrown into the world you will learn on your own. Many times you will fail, that's natural, but by failing again and again, some insight will start arising in you. And that insight will take you back.
Adam came into the world... he had to come. When Adam learns, becomes, attains to his being, he becomes Christ. Christ is nothing but Adam who has become grown-up. Now he can go back home. Now God will welcome him there. He has learned. The world itself is a naqshbandi for people to be.
Consciousness is not like a thing: solid, complete, full and given. It has to be learned, it has to be grown, it has to be guarded. You have to be a gardener of consciousness. You have to provide water, space, sun rays, fertilisers. You have to protect this small sprout -- very delicate it is, vulnerable it is, soft it is. It can be crushed by anything.
So remember: Consciousness is not like a thing: solid, complete, full and given. It is a process and a self-creation. It is our continual improvisation based on the rejection of what it has been up to this moment.
This has to be understood. Consciousness grows only if you go on rejecting your past. Ordinarily we cling to the past -- then the consciousness does not grow. Whatsoever you have learned, forget about it. It is finished. You have learned it; you have absorbed it. Whatsoever you have been up to now, drop it so that you can be something more. Never be confined by your past. People who become confined by the past are the prisoners.
That's what naqshbandi Sufis call the prison, the prison of the past. It has to be broken every day.