Ajhun Chet Ganwar #2

There is only one ignorance: we do not know who we are. All other ignorances are born out of this one. There is a single seed; then the tree grows large—many branches and sub-branches, many leaves and flowers, fruits. And in one seed, countless seeds appear. Botanists say a tiny seed is capable of covering the whole earth with greenery. And a tiny seed of ignorance has filled the human being with utter darkness.

The seed is small: the lack of the awareness “Who am I?” One who lacks this very awareness—whatever he does will go wrong. When the inner lamp has not been lit, there is no possibility that your actions will be right. Yet we all try to set our actions right. It is like not lighting a lamp in the dark and instead practicing how to walk correctly—so that in the dark I can walk without falling, without bumping into things, not crack my head against the walls, and find the door when I need it.

If only life were static, this might be possible! If you lived forever in the same house, in the same room, then slowly, through practice, you would come to know—without lighting a lamp—where the door is, where the wall is, where the table and chair are placed, in which direction to go and in which not to go. Then there would be no need for a lamp. But life changes every day—that is the hitch. The house of life is mutable. Not for a single moment is anything fixed here. Here all is a current. Everything is flowing. Everything is changing. Therefore what you decided yesterday does not work today. What you experience today will not serve tomorrow. The lamp must be lit.

In this river-flow of life, merely practicing your actions leads nowhere; in fact, it is dangerous. Imagine the room changes every day—while you sleep at night it shifts around: where there was a door, a wall appears; where there was a wall, a door appears. Yesterday you practiced and, assured, went to sleep thinking, “Now I know it all; I won’t bang my head again, I won’t get hurt; when I need to go out, I’ll go out—I know now.” You slept at ease, but during the night the whole house changed. Your knowledge will not help; it will hinder—because you are certain, “Now I know.” You will run straight into a wall. Yesterday there was a door there; today there isn’t.

Hence the one we call the so‑called “experienced” man falls into even more pits. Children may walk a little carefully; the experienced man does not—because he believes, “I already know.”

There is only one thing to know in this world: Who am I? From that, the inner lamp is lit, and your whole life, all your actions, are illumined. And such is the lamp that, though the house keeps changing, as long as the lamp is burning, wherever the door is, it will be seen. This is the difference between morality and religion.

Morality teaches you what to do. It trains you—into the auspicious, the wholesome: “Abandon the bad, don’t cultivate bad habits; cultivate good habits.” Morality changes conduct, while the interior remains filled with darkness. So even if conduct becomes good—what is the outcome? The bad are writhing in the same pits as the good are writhing. There is no difference.

When I say this, you may be startled. You will say, “The bad are locked in prisons and the good sit in their mansions—how is there no difference?” On the surface there is certainly a difference. Their pits look different from the outside. But if you look deeper, it is the one pit of ego. In it, the man confined in prison writhes; in it, the man sitting in the temple doing worship also writhes. The pit is one—the pit of ego. The pit is one because the darkness is one. The bad man has not awakened—had he awakened, how could he be bad? And let me also say: the good man has not awakened—had he awakened, how could he be good? You may be shocked, because an awakened person is neither bad nor good. The awakened person is simply awakened. Awakening stands as far above goodness as it does above badness. The awakened person is neither wicked nor virtuous. The awakened person is a Buddha, the enlightened. Someone asked Buddha: Who are you? Seeing his incomparable beauty, it seemed as if some celestial being had descended from Indra’s throne to the earth—so the questioner asked: Who are you? Are you a god? In this forest hermitage, in this lonely wilderness, sitting under this banyan tree—are you some deity fallen from heaven? Looking at your beauty it seems you are not of this earth. This beauty is not earthly. Are you a god?
Buddha opened his eyes and said, “No, I am not a god.”
The man asked, “Then are you a kinnar—one of the lower celestial orders, the musicians in the gods’ court?”
Buddha said, “No, not that either.”
“Then are you a chakravarti, a universal emperor—the greatest king on earth?”
Buddha said, “No, not that either.”
“Then who are you? At least you must be a man,” the man asked.
And Buddha said, “No, I am not even a man.”
At this the man must have been dumbfounded—Is this fellow in his senses or mad? Not a god—well, fine; not a universal emperor—fine; but at least a man! You deny even that!
So the man asked again, “Then who are you?”
Buddha said, “I am Buddha. I am awakened. And the awakened is only awakened; he has no other boundary, no other definition.”

When the inner lamp is lit, you become luminous. You become awake. From the awakened, evil simply does not arise—it cannot. And how could the awakened still carry the notion, “I am doing good”? In one from whom the possibility of evil has fallen away, even the awareness “I do good” disappears.

As long as the thief lives in you, the philanthropist can also live there. The day the thief departs, the philanthropist departs too. I am not saying giving will not happen. That very day true giving happens—but there is no giver. Something will be given through you, but now the ego of the giver will not be manufactured. You will not claim, “I am charitable.” Violence will not happen through you—yet even “nonviolence” will not remain as an idea. I am not saying your life will lack nonviolence—only nonviolence will be there. But the hollow notion “I am nonviolent” will not be formed. The day the illness is gone, even the memory of health is gone.

Have you seen this, have you noticed? When there is a headache, the head is remembered. When the head no longer hurts, who remembers the head? You don’t go around the world making a commotion: “Today I have no headache; today my head is without pain!” People would laugh. They would say, “Then surely you do have a headache—otherwise who talks about the head?” When the pain is gone, even the head is gone. It is only in pain that there is awareness, only in pain that the wound is felt, only in pain that the thorn pricks. When illness is no more, even “health” as an idea is no more.

Notice: only the sick talk about health! The more someone talks of health, understand that much sickness is there. Sick people read books on naturopathy. They become great experts on health. The sick are the ones preoccupied with the question, “What is health? How to create it? What is its meaning?” Precisely because health is absent, the inquiry into health arises. When illness is not, even the shadow of illness—the idea called “health”—disappears.

The mark of the supremely healthy man is that he has no sense of his body at all. Bodilessness is supreme health. He simply doesn’t know that a body is there. Do you know your foot? Not until it “goes to sleep” and tingles will you notice it. Let a thorn enter the foot, and the foot is noticed. Let the head ache, and the head is noticed.

In Sanskrit, one and the same word serves for both pain and knowing—vedana. Ved means knowing; vid means the knower. What an exquisite word vedana is! In no other language in the world is there such a word. Sanskrit has some words that no other language can possibly have—because those who coined them created them out of deep experience. Vedana means both “to know” and “pain.” It is only when there is pain that a certain knowing arises. It is pain that is known. Hence vedana has two meanings—apparently far apart. What relation is there between knowledge and pain? Yet apart from pain there is no knowledge. When pain is gone, knowledge is gone. Then there remains a supreme peace, a pristine silence—where there is neither rogue nor righteous, neither sinner nor virtuous, neither atheist nor theist. Violence gone, nonviolence gone. Morality gone, immorality gone. False gone, true gone. The pairs are gone; you are beyond duality. This state beyond the pairs is called dharma.

Morality (neeti) makes you choose within duality. It says, “Drop violence; practice nonviolence. Drop lies; speak truth. Don’t steal; give in charity. Don’t hate; love.” Morality teaches the right act—yes, the right act. Dharma? Dharma has nothing to do with doing. Dharma is an unprecedented revolution. Dharma says: let the inner lamp be lit, and then everything will happen—of itself. It happens by itself. Then you have nothing to do.

Therefore the supremely wise never gave you rules for life and conduct. They only gave the process by which the inner lamp is lit. The name of that process is meditation.

You ask, “What is our fundamental boorishness? Why does Palatu say, ‘Ajahun chet ganvaar—wake up now!’—Now awaken!”

Understand the word chet. Chet means to wake; chet means consciousness; chet means to be alert. Enough sleeping—open your eyes, wake up! We have slept enough; we have only slept until now—sometimes sleeping in evil, sometimes sleeping in good.

Think of the dreams you see at night. Sometimes you dream you have become a sadhu, carrying a kamandalu and going out to beg. And sometimes you dream you have become a murderer, a thief, and you set out to plunder. The moralist will say: see good dreams; be a saint, not a scoundrel. The religious man will say: dreams are dreams. Whether in dream you become a thief or a saint—what difference? In the morning you will discover both were false. Therefore the religious man says: Wake up! How long will you go on changing dreams? This is exactly what we have been doing—changing dreams. Until you recognize this state of mind, you will not awaken.

A man overeats—he gets fed up; then food becomes suffering, not pleasure. When suffering sets in, he thinks of fasting. One extreme to another. In my experience, eating less is harder; not eating at all is easier. I have seen many people: if you tell them, “Eat a little rightly—don’t eat so much, cut it in half,” they say, “That is hard. If you say so, we’ll stop altogether.”

It is easy for the mind to run to extremes; it is difficult to come to the middle. Naturally, after gorging and suffering—stomach aching, head heavy, a lethargy over the day, no sharpness in intelligence, everything hazy and dim, the body going shapeless, beauty lost, life feeling like a burden—you quickly think of fasting. “Let’s do urli-kanchan—let’s fast!” And you’ll find people who fast and make you fast. But no one understands the condition of your life—where the snag really is.

You will fast—but for how many days? Can anyone fast for a lifetime? After five or ten days of fasting you return home and again run to the other extreme. Because in those five or ten days you did nothing but think of food. What else will you do? The fasting mind thinks only of food. One stream runs in it—food, food. He makes grand plans.

You can see it after the Jains’ Paryushan. Sohan is sitting here—ask her. She keeps the athai, the eight-day fast. What does she think about for eight days? She keeps thinking of the ninth day—that it’s coming, almost here. As soon as Paryushan ends for the Jains, you see vegetable prices jump in the market. For eight or ten days they held themselves somehow—by force, violently. Because fasting is violence. Overeating is violence, and fasting is violence too. In overeating you torment the body, hence violence; in eating too little you torment the body, hence violence. In both cases you are tormenting. Your wickedness does not leave you. Sometimes you torment in the name of religion, sometimes in the name of irreligion—but torment you will. Eight or ten days you torment yourself—in the hope of heaven. Bound by greed, you somehow drag through eight or ten days.

That’s why, when Jains fast, they spend more time in the temple: it’s easier there; others just like them are sitting there, rascals tormenting themselves. Seeing them, relief comes: “We are not alone; there are other fools in the boat.” Alone, doubts arise—“What am I doing?” Seat a fasting person in a restaurant and he will be in great trouble: everyone eating, making merry, talking; the aroma of food rising, exciting the nostrils, stoking hunger. The fasting person does not sit in a restaurant; he goes to the temple. There the world of food is far away: no smells, no one eating, no one bringing food. And those who are sitting there are gloomy, lifeless—also tormenting themselves. Easier there. And there, religious discourse goes on.

The whole gist of the discourse is: what you are doing here will yield great fruit in heaven—moksha will be yours, the supreme abode. There, supreme splendor: only bliss, the wish-fulfilling tree! So the faster sits and thinks, “Only a few days more, then I will sit beneath the kalpavriksha, and whatever I want I will obtain—exactly when and how I want it.” In this way, listening to sermons for ten days, expanding his greed, he passes the time. Then, afterward, he pounces on food. He must take revenge for those ten days—where will that go! It has to be taken. The mind, starved for ten days, is bored; now it says, “Eat properly—now really eat; give me two or four days of complete freedom!”

So whatever weight drops in fasting returns within five or seven days—indeed a little more—because fasting awakens hunger and persuades the body to digest more. The body lunges; it digests quickly; it eats quickly. The digestive juices are secreted quickly, more abundantly.

You’ll see: weight falls in fasting, and within a few days it is back; perhaps a bit higher, not lower. Then after some months you think, “Let’s fast again.” Such is the mind’s oscillation.

Running after women you get exhausted; one day you decide to renounce women and flee to the forest—“Woman is the gate of hell!” Or battering your head after men—having seen the world and found no taste—you think, “Enough; abandon all this, withdraw.” But it is one extreme to the other.

Morality carries you from one extreme to the other. No revolution happens. Revolution is freedom from extremes. Revolution is standing in the middle. Balance is revolution. Rightness (samyaktva) is revolution.

Understand the word samyaktva. It means balanced, equanimous; you have come exactly to the middle, as when the two pans of a scale align and the needle rests at center—neither tilting here nor there. Neither leaning toward the world nor toward liberation; standing in the middle.

That is what Palatu said yesterday: “Ida and pingala have become my two pans; I hold both with the staff of the True Name.”

As awareness grows within you, balance grows. The inner conflict lessens. The name of this state beyond conflict is advaita—nonduality.

There is only one mistake: your lamp is not lit.

Do not worry overmuch about improving your conduct. And remember, I am not saying you should worry about spoiling it. If even “improving” I value at two pennies, how will I value “spoiling”? I say: shift from conduct to vision; change the gear; turn inward.

Inside is darkness. How to make it luminous? How to bring forth light here?

By meditation. Meditation is the process of lighting the flame. And the marvel is, all the means are present. In your house the lamp is there, filled with oil, the wick set; the matchbox lies ready. Just strike the match—strike it, and a flame appears. Touch that flame to the wick—just touch it—and the lamp will blaze.

You have brought everything with you. In your innermost core everything needed is present. All that is necessary is already there. It only needs a little assembling. Just a little assembling. The potential for witnessing lies hidden within you. A little effort, a little shaking yourself awake.

That very shaking Palatu calls: “Ajahun chet ganvaar!”
Wake now! Now wake up—you have slept enough. How much have you slept! Sleeping, you have passed birth after birth; centuries have passed, endless time has flowed away. Now open your eyes. You have seen many dreams—now see the truth. See yourself.

The treasure is indeed being looted—but first you must be able to see it! The river is flowing, but you must feel thirsty to drink. The thirsty one sees the river; even if it is a thousand miles away, his thirst will drive him there. The one without thirst won’t see the Ganges even if it flows past his doorstep.

Remember this: you see only what you are looking for. Only what you set out to see appears before you.

They say a cobbler walking down the road sees only people’s shoes—just shoes. That is what he’s after; that is where his eye rests. From shoes he reads people like a biography: worn-out shoes, “He must have lost the election this time.” Shoes shining like a mirror, “Looks like he won.” The shine of the shoes tells him whether the pocket is warm or cold; the condition of the shoes tells him whether to call the man in for work or just let him pass; sometimes even, “Brother, better you just go on—if you come back you’ll only ask for credit.” A tailor looks only at your clothes; he doesn’t see you—he sees garments.

What you search for is what you perceive. Grasp this truth deeply. It’s the same road, the same market—but on different days different shops catch your eye. Have you noticed? Think about the small facts of life, and from there you will grasp the big ones. When you are hungry, you see restaurants, eateries, hotels—nothing else. Fast for a day and walk through the market; you’ll be amazed at how many restaurants there are, how much food is being sold—you never noticed before. On a full stomach, you won’t see them at all.

One whose sexuality is inflamed will see women on the street, not men. Men will pass by without leaving a trace. One whose sexuality is at ease sees no difference between men and women. And the one who has gone beyond sexuality finds even the distinction between male and female hard to make. You make that distinction only so long as the fire of desire burns within. Otherwise, who bothers?

Notice it: you see what you are seeking. Palatu says the divine treasure is piled up before you—if you can plunder it, plunder it! Why just stand and watch? But the onlooker sees nothing there; perhaps the plunderers seem mad to him. If he sees no treasure, and yet they hurl themselves upon it, what else can he think? “What are these people pouncing on? There’s nothing there!” He’ll conclude they’re tangled in fantasies.

That is how it goes. You are sitting here; those who are not will consider you crazy. They will say: “Why get lost in such notions? See the real world! Don’t tangle with this hypnotism! This will ruin your household. Think of your wife, children, your duties. Spend this time in your shop and the market—earn something. That will be useful. What use are these talks on religion and truth? Can you bake bread with them, make clothes, build a roof? They won’t feed your children or buy your wife a sari. What trouble have you fallen into?” People will advise you, “There’s still time—turn back now before it’s too late. Don’t get in too deep; don’t lose your senses. Others have.”

From their side, they’re not wrong.

People have come to me from far and wide—Japan, Germany, Iran, Ethiopia, America, Sweden, England, Italy; from almost every corner of the earth—except China and Russia, because they cannot come. But my own neighbors here in Poona don’t come. They think these folks have gone mad. And in a way, they are right—from their side. They see nothing here; no treasure is being looted. They think they are the ones earning real wealth, while you, sitting here, grow poorer. You feel you are looting the treasure.

Understand this: the word “wealth” has two meanings, and you must learn to distinguish them. To those who see wealth only in outer things, the inner riches remain invisible. To those who begin to see inner riches, the value of outer wealth disappears.

When Buddha left his palace, his old charioteer—who had driven him since childhood and loved him like a son—fell at his feet in the forest and pleaded, “What are you doing? Where are you going—leaving this marble palace, your beautiful wife Yashodhara, your newborn son Rahul, your aged father? You are his staff in his old age. What will you find in the jungle? I’ve roamed the forests; there is nothing there. The whole world wants to come to palaces, and you are leaving one! Anyone would want to be a king, and kingship is in your grasp—yet you turn away?” The old man wept. From his side too, he was right: the forest showed him nothing; all value was in the palace.

To the poor man, wealth seems to live in palaces; it takes an actual rich man to discover that palaces are empty. Having seen, he finds no essence there—much noise, no substance.

Buddha laughed. “From your side you’re right,” he said. “But from my side there is nothing there. I have looked from within. You remained a charioteer; I dwelt inside. Those shining palaces—I see them in flames. Let me run, before they reduce me to ashes as they have my father’s father and his father and his father. The flames are rising.”

The old man looked; he saw no flames. This is the difference of vision. And Buddha was right—because in the forest he found it: the supreme treasure showered one day as he sat beneath the banyan on the bank of the Niranjana, after six tireless years.

There is an invisible treasure—only invisible while your eyes are entangled outwardly. The moment your gaze is freed from the outside, it becomes visible. A revolution of vision is needed.

You ask: “Palatu says the divine treasure is being looted and whoever wants may take.”

He is exactly right. The wanting itself is sufficient to receive. Whoever wants may take. No one is stopping you.

The treasure of samadhi is such that no one prevents you from it. And yet the irony: you fling yourselves at what is hard to get, covered with obstacles—and even if you obtain it, it gives you nothing. There the scramble is on. But the treasure no one seems eager to snatch, which is so abundant it would not diminish even if everyone received it—that treasure you don’t even approach.

You all run outward, while your treasure is within. Your treasure is you—hidden in your being, in your silence, in your very is-ness.

You came carrying the chest—and the key is with you. But you keep turning that key outward, never inward. These very eyes racing to the far horizon are the eyes that, when they turn back, discover your wealth. These very hands grasping the world—turned inward, their energy gathers and guards the supreme treasure. No one stops you. Yet you are not thirsty for it.

You are not yet tired of the world. You still think, “Perhaps it’s here—if not today, tomorrow. Maybe I’m not yet satisfied because too little has come; a little more, then I’ll be fulfilled.” If you have ten thousand, you think, “When I have a million, I’ll be content.” With a million, the mind says, “When it is a hundred million…” The mind’s expansion has no end; it keeps enlarging the numbers. Wherever you stand, its figures reach outward into the future, like an ever-receding horizon. The mind will never allow you a moment when there is no “further.”

I would have died long ago beneath calamity’s hardest blows
if hope did not whisper in my ears each day with love:
“Drink this draught—the crisis is passing;
tomorrow will be better than today.”

Long ago the mind would have died under disaster’s cruelest lash—had hope not kept its tiny lamp burning. “Never mind, the bad days are past; the good ones are just ahead. Don’t turn back now; the goal is in your very grasp!” Tomorrow never comes. The mind keeps saying, “It’s coming, it’s close, almost here.” Tomorrow never comes. The distance between you and tomorrow is eternal—and the mind forever talks of tomorrow.

The mind’s treasure is in tomorrow—and tomorrow never arrives. The real treasure is now, here, within you, born with you. The real treasure is never lost—only forgotten. The false treasure is never found—only hoped for.

So Palatu is right: “Whoever wants may take.” The day you truly decide—“I am bored, tired; no more chasing tomorrow, no more hustle and bustle. I see the mind’s arithmetic—it will always say ‘tomorrow,’ not in this life but the next, not here but in heaven, somewhere else”—the mind always says, “Happiness is elsewhere.”

Look: the beggar thinks the happiness is in the mansion where the lord sits. And the lord, haggard and sleepless—there is no sleep in palaces; even hunger dies there—kept alive by medicines, looks at the beggar ambling down the road strumming his ektara, napping in the open sun, snoring away, and thinks: “Perhaps happiness is in giving everything up.” You think like that too; that’s why I tell you—notice how you always imagine someone else is happy. City folk dream the villagers are happy; ask the villagers—his only dream is to reach the city. The Mumbaikar dreams of the village; the villager dreams of Bombay. The city poet writes odes to pastoral beauty—yet never moves there. Who stops him?

In Delhi, a renowned Hindi poet came to see me. He recited a poem lavishly praising the village. I asked, “The poem is fine, but a question—don’t be offended. Who is stopping you? Why don’t you go? Does Delhi hold you hostage? You have no wife, no children, not even a house; you live in a hotel. Which village would you like? I’ll arrange a ticket; go today, and don’t return to Delhi.” He was startled, uneasy among those present. “Will you really send me off?” he said. “Which village is this poem about?”—“No particular village, ‘the village’ in general.”—“Still, there must be a place; we can send you there. Just don’t come back.” He said, “It’s just poetry; you’re taking it too seriously.” I thought you stayed up nights to craft it—must have meant something! But they won’t go. They came from villages; they know well the ‘beauty’—the mud and mire, mosquitoes, bedbugs, diseases, hunger. All this ‘nature and beauty’ is a fantasy born in the city.

You always think the real thing is where you are not. As if existence has sworn that only where you stand will nothing real happen—and everywhere else it will.

Everyone else’s face looks happy to you. And you know well how you, before leaving home, check the mirror, arrange your face, paste on a smile. Yet it never occurs to you that others do the same. It’s deception. No one is really smiling; they are all crying inside. The smile is a mask to hide inner tears—because open weeping seems uncivil. Who will dishonor himself in public? So they paint smiles, powder over life’s creases, line their eyes with kohl to cover the darkness, dress up somehow and step out—others are fooled and think, “Ah, this one has found it; look at that carefree gait!” Ask him! Or simply look within yourself—you’re doing the same.

We fool others, so the whole world fools us back. No one here is happy, because happiness comes from going within—and no one seems to go within. All energy flows outward into wealth, status, prestige. “To Delhi!” Everyone is going to Delhi; even being near its road feels like progress.

Happiness is found by coming inside. Then you need not paste on smiles; there is an effortless radiance rising from within, a peace that requires no arranging—awake or asleep, walking or sitting, speaking or silent. A current of bliss runs twenty-four hours a day—that inner music Palatu calls “the drum sounding all eight watches.” It is sounding now within you—loot it if you can.

What obstructs you? Nothing—except that you don’t turn within; you keep running without. You stand miles away from yourself, fleeing as if from an enemy or from death. You never come home. You circumnavigate the moon and stars, but never return to your house. The path to your own home has become unfamiliar through lives of neglect. That is why a master is needed—to remind you of the way back.

All religion is a homecoming, a return. Mahavira called it pratikraman—counter-march. Attack means: “Happiness is there—I will seize it.” Counter-march means: “Turn back—happiness is here. I am happiness; I return to myself.”

Palatu says, only this is needed—that you want it. But how does that wanting arise? Only when you see the concentrated pain of your outer wanting. What are you doing? The moment the reality of the outer becomes visible—and why should it not? Only because you refuse to look.

With every uncertainty, something in me is lost;
with every refusal, something empties;
after each new acquaintance, I feel twice as unfamiliar;
after every fulfilled desire, I am pained in a new way.
Each undefined step places me nearer the defined;
after each attachment, the mind is ringed by desolation.
Awaken—and look.

Every attachment spends me in such a way
that it feels as if no future is left for living.

How many times have you tasted the very “happiness” you still hanker for? What did it give? Examine it a little. You fell in love—with a beautiful woman or man; you found them—then what? Where did the beauty go, the love go? Ash in your hand—not even a live coal. And you plan again.

Mulla Nasruddin’s wife died. A friend, visiting after a few days, said, “Mulla, you seem so heartbroken, it looks like you’ll never marry again.” Mulla said, “Forgive me—my lifelong experience is that hope always triumphs over experience.”

Hope triumphs over experience! The friend was right, but Mulla uttered a deep truth: this wife brought nothing but misery—you know it, I know it—but who knows, perhaps happiness is destined with another woman!

Again and again, hope conquers experience. You burned years for a house, schemed, cheated, lied, did every trick, finally bought it—then what? Did bliss descend, flowers bloom? Again emptiness. Then the thought of a second house. You have passed through this in every sphere—but you do not learn. Hope tops experience.

If you learned, you’d see:

With every uncertainty, something in me is lost;
with every refusal, something empties;
after each new acquaintance, I feel twice as unfamiliar;
after every desire, a new kind of pain.

Are you not strangers to your spouse even after thirty years? You thought marriage would bring intimacy—did it? No harmony, no music arose; the notes never met. The more you live together, the more unfamiliar you become.

Each undefined step places me nearer the defined;
after each attachment, the mind is ringed by desolation.

How many times you fell in love—and how many times your hands remained empty! How often you mistook a glittering stone for a diamond. Yet even now, when another sparkling pebble appears, you will be deluded again—so determined are you to be deceived. Then Palatu’s treasure will not appear.

Until the wealth you crave in the world appears as trash to you, the inner wealth will not be seen. Both cannot appear at once. If the world looks like wealth, the soul won’t. When the world’s riches are seen as worthless, the turnaround is near—you will see the inner treasure.

Every attachment spends me in such a way
that it feels as if no future is left for living.

Then the surge returns; after a night’s sleep, morning revives you; again the chase, again the spread of fantasies. If you see the sum total of your pains clearly, the conclusion is: the world is suffering. The more deeply this engraves itself in your being, the quicker Palatu’s words will make sense.

So familiar has my heart grown with life’s sorrow
that when autumn departs, even in spring I cannot settle.

If you truly understand life’s sorrow—if your heart becomes so acquainted with it, seeing through every veil that nowhere is there real joy—then not only in autumn but even when spring arrives, your heart won’t be deceived. Right now, you imagine happiness where none exists; you mistake pain for joy. Then even worldly joys will show their sting—because you know these are all illusions, mirages.

There is no reason you cannot see this now—if only you would look. You have lived enough; your experiences are few and repetitive. Think: the same anger again and again, the same attachment, delusion, jealousy, pride—so few that they can be counted on your fingers. Keep a diary for a month: you’ll see you’ve repeated everything that ever repeats in life—hurt, upset, insulted, inflated, attached, enraged. What new is left? You become a broken gramophone record, stuck in one groove.

Life is repetition; that’s why our sages compared it to a wheel—chakka, chakra—spinning and repeating. Where is the new? You don’t see because you don’t distill anything from experience. That distillation is called awareness.

You know the famous Mahabharata story. The Pandavas, thirsty in the forest, came upon a lake. The first brother bent to drink; a yaksha’s voice from a tree warned, “Stop. Answer my questions first. If you try to drink without answering, you will fall dead.” He asked questions; the answer given was wrong, and when he reached for water he fell dead. Four brothers fell this way. Finally Yudhishthira came. The yaksha asked again. Yudhishthira’s answer was simple and profound—the very thing sages say and you refuse to hear: “What is most astonishing about man?” “That he does not learn from experience.” The answer was true; the yaksha was freed, Yudhishthira drank, and at his request his brothers were revived.

Would you have returned alive from that lake? Would this answer have arisen from your life? If not, you are in the same folly as everyone else. Experiences happen to all, but only the wise squeeze perfume from each.

Consider flowers: you cannot preserve them; by evening they wither. Lock them in a safe and they’ll rot. But you can extract attar—the essence, the fragrance—which can last for centuries. So too with the flowers of experience: today anger bloomed—don’t let it pass unpressed; extract understanding. Today love bloomed—distill its essence. Today you were insulted, lost control, raved—press it for insight. If you keep extracting from each flower of experience, a perfume of awareness gathers—and that is how one becomes wise. Wisdom doesn’t come from scriptures but from living the scripture of life. Life is the same for rich and poor, literate and illiterate; only a few extract the attar. Those will understand Palatu. By distilling, you will find that no outer experience contains happiness—only suffering, pure suffering.

Hence Buddha said: birth is suffering, old age is suffering, death is suffering; the whole tale of life is suffering. Outside are ornaments of joy; inside are wounds of pain. Fine garments of pleasure on the surface; a dark night within. The day it becomes clear that outside is only suffering—where will you go? No place remains outside; only within.

Yesterday Palatu said, “I sit at the tenth door.” There are nine doors in the body—eyes, ears, nose, mouth, genitals. All your so-called pleasures enter through these nine openings: fragrance by the nose, music by the ears, beauty by the eyes, and so on. And through these you rush out into the world. You see a beautiful woman—you’re already outside, gone. Your wife may be walking beside you, but you are not there; she senses it immediately. Even if you avert your eyes, the image rises within—you have already gone out.

These nine doors open outward. The sages speak of a tenth door that opens inward. The world has nine paths; that’s why it’s easy to run in the world: if you miss one train, another awaits. One is mad for music, another for form, another for sex, another for money—everyone is mad, each on his own track.

The inward path is one—call it meditation, call it devotion; it is awareness. Through the nine, you are torn to pieces—one part runs here, another there: a hand in one train, a foot in another; the head in one, the heart in another. Hence the inner discord, anxiety, and madness. The more desires multiply, the more deranged one becomes; the inner rhythm breaks, the one-stringed lute falls silent. The fakir carries an ektara, not a many-stringed veena; many strings lead outward. The ektara announces the tenth door. He remembers the One. He does not love many; he loves One.

Thus Palatu said: “Chaste as a devoted wife.” The devotee is single-hearted; he holds the One and leaves the many. “Grasp the one and all is accomplished; grasp all and all is lost.”

The worldly man loses everything; the inward-bound gains all. I speak only facts—no poetry, no philosophy. I’m not teaching scripture; I’m asking you simply to turn the pages of your own life attentively. I don’t advise you to read the Gita, the Vedas, the Koran—how will you understand them if you haven’t understood the living scripture of life? If the living God surrounding you on all sides doesn’t remind you, how will dead books help? Find Him here, and you will find Him there too.

So I say: first read life, then read the Vedas, the Buddha, the Jina—you’ll find them everywhere. If you don’t find Him here, you won’t find Him anywhere. Wake up to facts. You have facts, and the capacity to be aware. Why sit idle? Why not extract the attar?

That is why, though there is no obstacle, still only one in millions becomes rich with this treasure. All should be; all are entitled to it—it is everyone’s inheritance. Not just birthright, more truly nature-right: it belongs to your very being. Yet it remains your choice. You are so free that you can choose slavery. Your freedom is absolute—even to wander. As long as you choose to roam, you will roam. The day you decide to return, you will return.

Buddha once passed a riverbank where children were playing, building houses of sand, fighting over “mine” and “yours,” drawing boundaries, planting nameplates, policing borders. When one child’s foot ruined another’s sand-house, they thrashed him—much like your courts, police, and laws, born of mutual fear. The day’s play went on till evening, when a servant called out, “Children, come home—your mothers await.” They looked—yes, the sun was setting. They had forgotten the time in their play. And then? Buddha watched: those same children who had shouted “mine” and “yours” leapt upon their own sand-houses, toppled them, erased all boundaries, and ran home to their mothers.

Next day Buddha said to his monks: the world is just like this—sand houses, “mine and yours,” great quarrels, wars, courts, murders. Then evening comes—death—and the call from home. Everything is left behind. Lines drawn in sand are erased by the wind.

How many have played this game on this earth—in these same houses, shops, marketplaces, offices! Billions and billions—gone when evening came. Your evening will soon come. Awake now, you simpletons! He who awakens before sunset is wise. If you awaken at death, it’s too late—you’ll have to be born again. If you awaken while alive, you need not return. Dying in awareness, there is no next birth; dying unconscious, there is. How will you die aware? Only if long before death you’ve recognized it is coming and that life is suffering. The outcome of this recognition is sannyas—renunciation.

Not running away, but loosening the grip. I’m not telling you to abandon your shop or your family—where would you go? People don’t loosen their grip; they drop one object and clutch another. Leave home, and you grasp an ashram; leave wife and children, and you clutch disciples. Same game, new labels. I don’t say drop what you hold—I say open your fist. Let things be where they are; you stop clutching. Don’t call anything “mine.” The moment you say “mine,” the grip begins. There is no need to flee; it was never yours—what will you leave? If you imagine you left “what was mine,” the illusion persists.

One who has seen the futility of pleasure has no need to “renounce” anything. If you still boast, “I gave up millions,” it means you still see value in them; you’ve merely shifted the deposit from worldly banks to God’s bank, expecting compound interest in heaven. You’ve bargained; you haven’t let go.

There is no “leaving”—there is awakening. Then you too can be that “one among millions.” Everyone can—whoever wants may take. Why delay? Why stand watching like a spectator?

Palatu says: How long will you be a bystander? Wake up! Will you wait until the whole town has looted the treasure before you step in? Why put yourself last? What can be had now—why postpone to tomorrow? What is already yours—why not drink it now? Why not let the festival arise from your life? Why not let the stream of nectar flow?

Raso vai sah—That One is pure essence, pure rasa!

The third question is related to the second; let us take it up with it.
The third question is:

It is sweet—well, you will know that only when you taste it! Just because I say it is sweet, you won’t taste it. And there lies the hitch. If you taste it, you’ll know it is sweet; but you want to know in advance that it’s sweet, and only then taste. That won’t work. It could have worked, but it got spoiled before it even began.

I have heard: Mulla Nasruddin wanted to learn to swim. He went to the river with a friend who could teach him. As fate would have it—no, one shouldn’t call it fate; there must have been inner causes, he must have gone frightened—the riverbank steps were slimy with moss, his foot slipped, and he fell flat. His head got hurt. He got up and ran straight home. His friend called out, “Brother, where are you going?” Mulla said, “Only when I have learned to swim will I come near the river. This is dangerous business. Had I fallen into the water, I would have lost my life. Namaskar!”

“Only when I have learned to swim will I come near the river.”

But where will you learn to swim? At home, cushioned with pillows and mattresses? If you want to swim, you have to come to the river. And you’ve taken an oath never to come again. Mulla’s stance sounds sensible, experienced, practical: “This is dangerous; a little more and I would have fallen into the water—today would have been my last. I’ll keep away from the river. I’ll learn to swim first, then I’ll come.”

It is mathematics, logic—pure logic. But it falls apart at the very start. This way he will never learn to swim and never come near the river.

You say: “The fruit of sannyas is sweet; then why doesn’t everyone taste it?”

Taste it and you’ll know. There is no other way. If you don’t taste, you won’t know. It is known only by tasting. What to do then? People’s minds are crammed with logic; they say, “First give us proof that God is—then we will move toward God.” But by moving toward God, the proof comes that He is. This is the difficult crux, the baffling riddle of religion. Proof comes from experience, and there is no other proof. Flavor comes by tasting, and there is no other means.

Therefore the daring ones say, “All right—at the most it might be bitter; we’ll spit it out.” At most, the fruit may not be sweet, it may be bitter—well, you’ve tasted so many bitter fruits in life; one more won’t hurt.

How many bitter fruits you have tasted! You haven’t yet tasted a truly sweet one. You are trained in bitterness. So what is the fear? Even if it turns out bitter—taste it! Yet those who have tasted have found it sweet—but by tasting.

If you drown, you will have the experience. Enter the river and you will learn to swim. Learn to swim, and you can reach the other shore. Learn to swim, and you gain the capacity to go into the depths. And in the depths pearls lie. On the surface of the river only dry leaves and such float, not pearls. You have to dive into the depths of the ocean; you have to become a diver. Without swimming, how will you dive?

Many are deprived because many are devoted to logic. Rationalism is an obstacle to religiosity. The one who goes toward religion is the one of whom Paltu says, “in whom faith has arisen.” How does faith arise? What is its connection? I am not telling you—nor does Paltu—that you should just go and jump into the river. Paltu says: Find someone who knows how to swim. Keep his company. Befriend him. Find a friend. Surely someone must know how to swim. Surely you’ve seen someone skimming over the water with joy. One whom you have seen floating, playing in the water without sinking—become his friend, keep his company. This is what is called searching for the Sadguru.

Therefore Paltu says: Even if you get a boat, what will you do with it? You need a boatman. Where is the ferryman? Even if you have the scriptures, what will you do? You need a master. Where is the one who will take your hand? A scripture you can hold—but you yourself are going to drown; the scripture will drown with you. You need someone who can hold you—then perhaps you can be saved. Someone who can swim himself can save you. And once you spend a little time with him, you’ll gain the feel of swimming.

Swimming is not a very difficult thing.

The truth is, in swimming we don’t really learn anything; only self-confidence grows. That’s all; we learn nothing else. It isn’t learning in the usual sense. That’s why, if you learn to swim once, even if you don’t swim for fifty years you won’t forget. If you learn a language and don’t speak it for fifty years, you’ll forget—it can’t be retained so long; what is learned is forgotten. But swimming is not forgotten. So it isn’t of the nature of memory; it is something different. Swimming is innate to us; it is our nature. Then why do we fear the river? The cause of fear is a lack of self-confidence—not that we don’t know how to swim.

What does a swimmer do? Take a novice to the river—what does he do? Both, the novice and the adept, do the same thing: they move their arms and legs. The novice flails haphazardly, panics and is afraid. The trained swimmer also moves arms and legs—but orderly, in rhythm—and without fear, because he’s gained trust. He knows. And when one becomes truly skilled, he doesn’t even move arms and legs—he just floats across the river.

Have you seen this marvel? A dead body floats, and the living sink. There must be something to it. The dead, sunk below, come up and begin to float. Do corpses know the trick while the living do not? The dead neither flail arms nor legs—they simply float. What is the secret? The dead have no fear. Once dead, whom to fear? The dead are fearless. The living are fearful. Fear drowns you, not the river. Keep this in mind. Tie it like a jewel-knot: fear drowns; the river does not drown. So when you become skilled and fear disappears, you can float on water like a corpse—even while alive. A real swimmer hardly moves; he just glides. That’s the difference between floating and swimming. Floating means: he simply lies on the water, starts enjoying himself, the sun is warm; he takes a sun-bath while lying on the river, not even moving—and he does not sink. What changed? Trust has arisen.

It is all a matter of trust—trust in oneself. Right now you don’t trust yourself; therefore hold the hand of one who trusts himself—one in whom you can see that he trusts himself; one in whom there is not even the outline of doubt; one who no longer wavers. Paltu says, whose wavering has vanished, who sits settled—hold his hand.

What else is the meaning of sannyas? Only this: hold someone’s hand; take initiation. Accept discipleship—of someone who knows how to swim, who floats without flailing. Soon you too will become capable. And the “skill” is nothing special. First, by entering the water again and again, you gain confidence that by moving arms and legs you can avoid drowning—that’s one thing. Then gradually a second thing becomes clear: even flailing is not needed; not-sinking is natural. If water can float a corpse, I am alive—why would it not float me! You stop and lie still. Once you lie still and you do not sink—once a ray of experience descends that you do not drown, that drowning simply doesn’t happen—fear goes, and it goes forever.

In the company of the Satguru, fear dissolves. The Satguru cannot give you God; he can only take away your fear. And when fear is gone, God is found. Right now, the “God” you have is only your fear. Things are upside down. You go to temples and mosques out of fear. The God you worship is nothing more than the ghost of fear. How can God be found through fear? God is found by the fearless.

So the whole issue is not “How to find God?”—the whole issue is “How to become fearless?” Sit near someone fearless; do satsang. Let his rays of fearlessness stir you; let his waves touch you—and slowly, you too will become fearless.

Company bears fruit. Live with cowards, you become a coward. Live with the brave, you become brave. As is the company, so, slowly, you become. Company brings results.

If you seek the Divine, if you seek the wealth of the Self, keep the company of those who have found. Don’t waste time sitting with pundits; they too haven’t found—how will they give it to you? Beware of the man to whom you say, “I want to learn to swim,” and he opens a book and says, “Look, I know everything about swimming. It’s all written here. Here is the manual—let me explain to you what swimming is like.”

No. The one who is ready to take you to the riverbank—ask him, “What is swimming?” and he says, “Come.” Ask him, “What is meditation?” and he says, “Come.” Ask him, “What is devotion?” and he says, “Come and take a dip—I’ll show you”—whose pointing is toward reality.

The fruit of sannyas is certainly sweet. In fact, only the fruit of sannyas is sweet; all the fruits of the world are bitter. And if they don’t taste bitter to you, it is only because your tongue has become accustomed—numb.

Isn’t it so? The first time you drink coffee, it tastes bitter. Then keep practicing for a few days—in the hope that one must learn it; a “cultured” person who doesn’t drink coffee would be rustic—so you must learn. Keep at it, and after a while coffee doesn’t taste bitter. The first cigarette—your cough rises, tears come to your eyes, your throat feels choked. This is perfectly natural. But then, thinking it a weakness—“all strong men smoke”—you go on practicing. In a few days the body accepts this torture: taking in and out the filthy, feverish tobacco smoke—and slowly you begin to feel “taste.” If taste were really there, it would have come on the first day. It wasn’t there; you manufactured it by practice.

That is why I say to you: the taste of the Divine comes at the very first experience. It needs no practice. Just turn once—just taste once—the first morsel of the Divine, and the nectar is found. No practice is needed. In the very first morsel, life-breath is set free. One morsel—and every pore is filled with ambrosia. But you must summon the courage for that one mouthful.

Enough for today.