Ajhun Chet Ganwar #4

First, it sounds a little odd that a disciple cannot search for the master. Ordinarily we think that the disciple seeks the master. But it is not possible. The disciple knows nothing—how will he search? He doesn’t even know what is truth and what is untruth, who is a true master and who is not. He doesn’t even know his own whereabouts. And if the disciple searches by his own criteria—and he can only use his own, there are no others—he will find the wrong one.

Whenever a disciple has tried to choose a master, he has chosen the wrong one. He cannot choose rightly. Right choice needs the right vision. Where are the eyes yet to see what is right? So the disciple searches in traditional ways. If he is born in a Jain household, he will look for a Jain monk. Even if, right at his door, there stands a Muslim fakir who has arrived, he will not be able to find him—because he carries fixed lines in his hand. If he is Digambara, then the enlightened must be naked—and this fakir is wearing clothes: the matter is stuck. If he is a Hindu, he will look for a Hindu; if a Muslim, for a Muslim. He holds fixed marks in his hand. He has no eyes, no capacity to see through and through into the heart to glimpse where the happening has occurred, who has awakened.

Recognition of the awakened only comes when a small ray of awakening has entered you too. If you have tasted even a little of the light, then those who are garlanded with the supreme light will be recognized. Even a single sip of water contains all the qualities of water; once you have sipped, you can recognize the oceans.

But ordinarily, in ignorance, we search through scriptures, through tradition, through hearsay—through the conditioning of the house we were born into. That is why Hindus could not find Mahavira even though he was present; there was no connection with them. Jains could not find Buddha, though he was there. When Ramakrishna lived, none but devotees of Kali could reach him. When Ramana was alive—who went? Those who could arrive by traditional routes.

Understand this: first you will search traditionally, and then you will not find the truth. And even if by some fortunate accident a person who has attained to truth is born within your tradition, you still will not see him; you will only tally up external signs: when does he rise, when does he sit; what does he eat, what does he drink—this will be your arithmetic. If, being a Hindu, you reach Ramana, even then you will not see Ramana; you will only see your Hindu image.

Understand it this way: you cannot see anything other than your own reflection. Wherever you go, you will see your own face. So how will you find the master?

Hence, understand: it is the master who finds. But “finds” does not mean he will come searching to your house. You have to set out. From one ghat to another, from one teacher to another, from one door to another—you have to set out. The well does not come to the thirsty; the thirsty must go. But when you come within the master’s sight—that much you must do, to fall within his gaze—and if he feels you are a vessel, he will pour himself into you. That is the meaning of his finding. If he feels you are ready, he will give you a push. If he feels you are not yet ready, he will remain silent; he will let you pass by; he will let you go elsewhere; he will wait till you are ready and then you can return.

You ask: “How is a disciple to understand that the Satguru has found him?”

It is not a matter of understanding at all. When the Satguru’s eyes meet yours, the thing happens. It is like love, not like understanding.

How do you understand that a woman has fallen in love with you? How do you understand that a man has fallen in love with you? How do you understand? There is nothing to understand there. When the master looks into your eyes with love, a stirring arises in your heart. It is not a matter of understanding. The event does not happen in the head; it happens in the heart. It does not occur on the plane where understanding and argument operate; it happens on the plane of love.

The bond between master and disciple is heart to heart—between two souls. When this happens it is recognized; there is no way to avoid recognizing it.

If you understand me, I would say this: when the master chooses you, how could you possibly avoid understanding it? It is impossible to miss! Those eyes will tell you. That feeling will tell you. The very presence of the master will tell you that you have been accepted, that someone has desired you—and from a vast height. In his very longing, your eyes will begin to lift toward the peaks. Someone has called you, from infinite distance, and in that call a thousand flowers begin to bloom within you.

But this is not of understanding; still, I repeat it. The happening is on the plane of feeling, not on the plane of comprehension. The mind has nothing to do with it. And if you insist too much on understanding with the mind, you may miss. Many times the master chooses, and still the disciple misses—if he keeps butting in with his skull. If he does not listen to the heart, the miss can happen. It is not necessary that if the master chooses, you will surely be chosen. Misfortune has many doors; good fortune only one. There are not many doors to arrival; there are many to wandering. There is one path to reaching; there are a thousand paths to going astray. Missing is very possible. First of all, reaching the master seems almost impossible. And even if you reach, will you understand the language of those eyes? By understanding I mean: will you allow your heart to be moved? Is it not possible that you keep your heart shut, keep it aside, and bring the intellect in between? If you think with the intellect, you will miss. If you try to understand, you will go back without understanding. If you drop the worry to understand—that is precisely the meaning of shraddha, trust.

Shraddha means: the anxiety to understand is gone; now the urge is to be. You have tried understanding—what did you understand? You rubbed your head on stones so much; no shine came.

This is exactly like love. When you fall in love, what answer can you give? You stand speechless. Someone asks you: why? how? what is the reason for love? You say: it is without reason. It happened. I just found that it had happened. Something resounded in the heart! Some sprouting occurred! A certain thrill descended!

As love is recognized, so is the master’s gaze recognized.

Life is a stanza whose straightest meaning is love,
Whose pulse beats in every breath, whose call sounds in every throat;
Life is a stanza whose straightest meaning is love.
Its first word is the synonym of birth, its final reference is of death—
There is but this one mantra which the world repeats again and again.

On many planes the same mantra is repeated. On the body’s plane too, the mantra is love. On the mind’s plane too, the mantra is love. On the soul’s plane as well, the mantra is love. When you become lustful toward someone, love happens on the bodily plane. When you are stirred in love for someone, on the plane of mind. When you are stirred in devotion to someone, on the plane of the soul. The mantra is one; the planes differ. In the valleys the song is sung—it is desire. You rise from the valleys; you have not yet reached the peaks, but you come to the middle—far from the valley, near to the summit, but not yet at the summit—and again the same mantra is repeated. This mantra echoed in the mid-journey is love. Then you reach the peak—the mantra is the same—and now, on the soaring height where the summit meets the clouds and converses with the moon and stars, there too the same mantra is repeated. The mantra is the same; now it is faith, prayer, devotion.

Life is a stanza whose straightest meaning is love,
Whose pulse beats in every breath, whose call sounds in every throat;
Its first word is the synonym of birth, its final reference is of death—
There is but this one mantra which the world repeats again and again.

You have come into the world because of love, and you will go beyond the world because of love. You came into the world—valley-love brought you, brought you down into darkness. You will go out of the world into nirvana, into liberation—peak-love will carry you out. Love brings; love takes away. It is a very simple matter. The doorway by which you entered is the doorway by which you will return. The door for coming and going is not different. The road by which you came here from your home—by that same road you will return home. The road will be the same. Only one thing will differ—your direction will be reversed. While coming here your face was toward me; while going, your back will be toward me. That’s all. The road the same, the feet the same, you the same—only this small difference.

Paltu’s master gave his disciple the name “Paltu”—the one who has turned around. The very path by which he came into the world, by that he began to walk in reverse. He turned completely, set out in the opposite direction.

Love brought you; love will take you. Love bound you; love will also set you free. Many times reason says: the one who bound you—how will that one free you? That is exactly where your mistake will be. The one who bound you will free you—only that one can. Who else could free you? The poison that killed will also cure. That is why poison can be both disease and medicine.

Little love brought you in; great love will take you out. Narrow love built the prison; the love of the vast will give you open sky.

How will you recognize that with a master the thing has happened? The head will empty, and the heart will fill—then you will know. I give you strange signs, for you have heard other kinds of signs. You have collected signs of what a master should be: he eats once a day; he rises before dawn; he does worship or meditation; he wears such-and-such clothes; he speaks this way and not that way. You have gathered the master’s signs. The signs I give you will happen within your heart. The head will begin to feel light.

He is the master in whose presence knowledge dissolves; who frees you from knowledge and fills you with love. And when love fills you, true knowing arises. Without love, what you call knowledge is trash, dust, debris, worth two pennies.

I read books, churned the mind,
Thought and examined a lot—
But the path of knowledge does not suit me.
Even when I speak in purest Hindi,
My chosen deity still does not come near.
Defeated on every side,
I sing the song of surrender;
My broken ego
I lay at your feet.
Take back this knowledge of mine,
And, O Lord, grant me liberation!
Take back this knowledge of mine, and, O Lord, grant me liberation!

You came by love, you will go by love. Knowledge has stalled you. You did not come into the world because of knowledge, and you will not leave it because of knowledge. How can you leave by the cause by which you never came?

Love brings.
Love takes away.
Knowledge obstructs.

Now this is very interesting; understand a little. Knowledge allows neither a deep descent into the world nor a descent into the divine. Knowledge only obstructs. Its function is obstruction. Those whose heads are stuffed with the garbage of knowledge—how can they live even in the world? They cannot love their wife, they cannot love their children. The garbage of knowledge does not allow love. They cannot partake in life’s colors; they remain dry and rough. Knowledge obstructs there too. And the same person, if he goes to a temple, the juice of prayer will not descend—the same knowledge obstructs. Even if by some coincidence he meets a master, there too the same knowledge obstructs.

Wherever you go, knowledge is a wall.

Love surely brought you into the world; it will also take you beyond. Knowledge brought you neither in nor can it take you out. Nothing is more futile than knowledge. No state is more ignorant than knowledge.

So the master is the one in whose company the burden of knowledge begins to lessen. “Enough of scriptural knowledge!”—that garbage and litter of book-learning, as Dariya says, he shakes it off, separates it, bathes you; in whose love, by bathing, you are freed from the dust of information. And the paradox is that the day information falls away, knowing arises. The scriptures are lost, the words fall away; emptiness becomes enthroned. But that very emptiness becomes, for the first time, the doorway of vision. From that emptiness you see for the first time. “Our home is in the Void, our rest in the Unstruck.” There, in the Void, for the first time the home is built, and in the soundless, rest is found.

So how will you recognize that the master has chosen you? The head begins to empty. The master does not give knowledge. The one who gives knowledge is a teacher. The one who removes your knowledge is the master. The one who stuffs your skull with a little more information is a teacher, a school. And where all knowledge is taken out of your head and the slate of your consciousness is wiped clean; the one who snatches away all your memories—that one is the master. Because when all memory is removed, remembrance is born.

Right now there are so many memories! Because of so many memories, remembrance of the One does not come; that One gets lost in the crowd. There is the market, the shop, children, wife, scriptures—Hindu, Muslim, Christian—and knowledge keeps increasing. Naturally, as the traveler travels, more dust collects on his clothes. Five thousand years ago man’s head did not have such a burden as today. Five thousand years hence it will be a hundred million times more. Knowledge keeps increasing, and as knowledge increases, love decreases. As the burden of knowledge increases, the heart dies. It seems as if the brain siphons off all the heart’s energy. The brain becomes like a cancerous lump, drinking up all life-energy. The brain is a tyrant; it exploits everything.

When you come to the master, the master is surgery. If he has chosen you, it means he has begun cutting. He will break your head apart, into fragments, scatter it. Where your head is broken into pieces—that is where you should know you have been chosen. And in the breaking of the head, shoots will sprout in your heart and flowers will bloom.

It is not a matter of understanding. It is a matter of feeling—a state of feeling. And there is no mistake in it. Scholars miss, otherwise there is no mistake. That is why it often happens that when a Satguru is on the earth, the pundits miss. Those of simple, guileless minds, straightforward people, innocent people—those take the benefit.

Do you think the scholars of Kashi will go and bow their heads at Paltu Das’s feet? Hard. That Muslims will bow at the feet of Dariya? Hard. That the weavers will bow at Kabir’s feet—hard. All the pundits of Kashi were offended with Kabir. They had a reason: this man is a weaver, and thousands of simple, innocent people lay their heads at his feet, take him as God. For the pundits this was galling: will God descend into a weaver? If He descended into a pure Brahmin who recites the four Vedas—then it would make sense.

But God has unique ways. He does not care for Veda or division. He does not care how much Veda you know. He looks at how extraordinary your love is—there He descends. God is hungry for love, not knowledge. So He descended into Kabir’s heart. The pundits are perturbed; their situation is painful. Such a light has arisen in the life of a weaver—they neither want to see it nor accept it; even if they see it, they avert their eyes.

The pundits of Kashi remained deprived; only the pundits missed the rare blessing of Kabir. The simple, straightforward, innocent people, who had no calculations about whether one knows the Vedas or not, whether one is Hindu or Muslim—those simple people were drawn, like iron filings are drawn to a magnet. They took the benefit. They drank this nectar.

This has always been so. And it seems, unfortunately, it will always be so. The learned, because of their learning, cannot move an inch. They have vested interests. Their knowledge obstructs. The unlearned can descend into the Unknown; they have no knowledge, no fear, nothing to lose.

Those whose minds are full of big preconceptions, prior assumptions—they can go nowhere, because preconceptions block every path. If you have already decided that a Satguru must be like this, you will miss the Satguru. You have not yet met the Satguru—how do you know what he should be like? Keep your eyes open, remain free of bias for now; say only, “We will see. If the connection happens, we will join; if the bond forms, we will enter.” What is there to lose? Why this anxiety? At most, what can happen? You may fall in love with a person who is not a Satguru. That is the worst that can happen. But I tell you: if you fall in complete love even with a false master, you have found the true master—because love is the true master. You will still arrive. And you may sit by the Satguru himself and not fall in love, and then you will reach nowhere—because the essential thing is being missed.

Love can turn earth into gold; and in the absence of love, even gold remains like dust.

In the ultimate sense, there is no difference whatsoever.
Where there is motive, there is desire. And where there is desire, how can there be bowing? There the bowing is a deception. Then it makes no difference before whom you bow. You will bow before the prime minister because there is hope of getting something from him. You will bow before a saint because there is hope of getting something from him too. But you are bowing because of the hope of getting. You are really bowing before your own greed.
You bow before the powerful because he possesses worldly power. And you bow before the saint because it seems he possesses the power of God, the power of the Divine. But why are you bowing? Do you have a motive? Are you bowing to ask for something? If you bow to ask, there is greed in your bowing. Then even if you bow before God, it makes no difference.
That is why I say again and again: the prayers in which there is asking died before they were born. Do not ask from God. That is an insult to God. Your prayer is spoiled, and you have insulted God; the sin turns back on you. It would have been better not to pray at all.
Prayer to God means bowing without cause—ahaituki, without motive. Now you have no motive. You bowed because there was joy in bowing. Swantaḥ sukhāya Tulsī Raghunāth gāthā—for the joy of his own heart, Tulsidas sang the saga of Raghunath. Swantaḥ sukhāya: for the joy within. There is nothing else to ask. There was joy simply in bowing. Without cause. No goal. No purpose. The moment a purpose enters, filth enters. When purpose enters, the world enters. Hetu—motive—means the world.
I have heard that Mulla Nasruddin was reciting poetry. Little by little, the listeners slipped away one by one. But Mulla was so absorbed in reciting that he never noticed. When he finished, he came to his senses: only one person was left in the audience. Mulla, overjoyed, began to praise him. The man, annoyed by this sudden praise, said, “Oh, enough, sir! I didn’t stay to hear your poetry; you took my suitcase off the bus, and I took yours. Please give me mine back, and here is yours. I have been waiting only for you to finish your poem. I have other work to do.”
Now this man, sitting through the poetry because the suitcases got exchanged—was he really listening to poetry? He must have been cursing, “Stop this nonsense! I have other things to do!” Because he has a motive, he misses the poetry.
If you look at a rose with a motive, you miss the rose. If you are a gardener selling flowers in the market and you look at a rose and think, “All right, this will fetch four annas, maybe eight annas”—you have missed the rose. The eight annas have come in between. Those eight annas have become more valuable; the rose has receded. In this rose there was a unique happening, a descent of the Divine, a momentary glimpse of God—but you missed it, missed it for eight annas.
If you want to see a rose, look without any motive; neither to sell nor to pluck. Not even with the thought of offering it at God’s feet; even then you will miss. You will have missed seeing this rose; you will have missed seeing this expression of the Divine.
Where motive comes in, there is error. Keep some part of life free of motive. Those are the moments of prayer, the moments of meditation, the moments of the Divine—of remembrance, of inner attention. For an hour, even for half an hour, drop motive! Market, market, market; get, get, get—and a calculation behind everything! Even salutations people offer are calculated! They bow their heads only as much as serves their interest. They bow before those who are useful to them. When the need is over, no one bows; they avoid the person, slip past with averted eyes so they won’t have to salute those gentlemen again. The matter is finished.
You must have seen it too—within yourself—that even salutations are for a purpose! In small villages, even now, in the countryside, people say “Jai Ramji”—without any reason! They don’t know you; they have no acquaintance with you. They have nothing to take or give. A stranger is passing through the village, and you will see many people greet him with “Jai Ramji.” In the city this does not happen. City people have become “more clever”: “If there is no purpose, why say Jai Ramji? I have nothing to gain. He is going his way, I am going mine—why greet him? Why nod the head? Why raise the hand?” City people have become more clever. Villagers are still simple—simple meaning still innocent.
But there is a certain beauty in the village way. When villagers say “Jai Ramji” without cause, they are saying: at least say Jai Ram without a reason! Do everything else with a reason… If you salute only those whose pockets are warm, then you have not really said Jai Ramji.
Listen to the words “Jai Ramji”! There are many styles of greeting in the world, but the style India has is unique. Someone says, “Good morning”—but that is not a very great thing. Not a very great thing. India’s way is unique: “Victory to Ram!” It becomes a way to remember Ram. An unknown person passes by; you say, “Jai Ramji”—“Brother, victory to Ram!” Because of you I remembered Ram; thanks to you as well. You passed by and gave me an occasion to remember Ram! A causeless moment is made into a support for the remembrance of Ram.
When you say “Jai Ramji” to someone, you are saying, “I bow to the Ram seated within you.” You are a stranger, but your “Ram” is not a stranger; I am as related to him as you are. Your face may be unfamiliar; I may not know your name, address, whereabouts; who you are or what you are has nothing to do with it—but one thing is certain: whoever you are, you are Ram. Whether you are a woman or a man; Hindu or Muslim; black or white; good or bad; thief or gentleman; saint—whoever you are, it doesn’t matter. All that is secondary. Those are parts in a play. One thing is certain: you are Ram. Right now you may have taken up the part of a thief, or a saint; you may have done great charity, or you may have caused great harm to people—whatever part you are playing, we have nothing to do with your part. Behind the curtain, you are Ram. We remember him, and we remind you as well.
And that remembrance is enough. Swantaḥ sukhāya.
When a city man goes to the village, he feels a little bothered that he has to say Jai Ramji to every Tom, Dick, and Harry! “What is the point? Why?” All his doing has become a matter of calculation.

Not the slightest difference. Ordinarily, you think there is. You say, “We touch a saint’s feet for otherworldly wealth; we touch the Prime Minister’s feet so the boy might get a job; to get a promotion; since retirement is near, to push it ahead five years. There’s some purpose—some wealth of this world. But a saint’s feet we touch for the wealth of the other world, so there should be a difference”—so argues your logic. But there is not the slightest difference. Wealth is wealth—of this world or that. Attachment to wealth is attachment. Desire here or there—it makes no difference. Desire is desire; desire is the noose of the gallows.

Touch a saint’s feet in awe and gratitude, not with a motive. Touch a saint’s feet with the feeling: “Blessed am I that I could see and meet such a person—someone in whom the Divine has manifested fully, or at least more than in me! My own future—what I may become tomorrow—I have seen today in this saint!”

That alone is enough. Touch the feet in thankfulness; touch them with gratitude. Let there be no aspiration toward the future; this present moment itself is supremely beautiful. Do not even ask for a blessing. The moment you ask, you miss. If you do not ask, the blessing happens.

You may be a little surprised. If you ask for a blessing and say to the saint, “Place your hand upon my head and bless me,” for what are you asking a blessing? Is the saint’s very presence not blessing enough? What more blessing do you want? Then lust creeps in from the back: “May my life be long; may my illness go; may the girl be married; may the house be built; may I gain a place in heaven; may I not have to go to hell—give me your blessing.” You start accounting for the future. You miss the present moment. This supreme moment in which you could have taken a plunge, the chance to become one for a little while with this silent being—you were deprived. You ran ahead. You said, “Give me a blessing.” You dragged in the future so that you missed the present.

The saint’s presence is the blessing. It need not be asked for. The one who asks, misses. The one who does not ask, receives. Receives inevitably. Sit near a saint and you have received. Pass by a flower and fragrance will fill your nostrils. Go near light and rays will shimmer in your eyes. The saint’s trumpet is sounding; day and night the instruments play. Music is resounding within him. What blessing are you asking for? Sit for two moments. Keep company in satsang. Be with this man for a couple of moments; be carried in his current; become a wave with his wave. For two moments, let go of your world full of motives and business—“I want this and I want that, let this happen, let that not happen.” Drop those worries, that tangle! For a couple of moments, be with this man. This man, having set down all worries and entanglements, abides in supreme bliss! Resting in the unstruck. This man’s rest is in the unstruck—descend for a little while into that unstruck yourself. That is the blessing.

Silent prayers reach God quickly
because they are freed from the burden of words.
Leave aside even the talk of motive. A motive is a heavy stone tied to your chest. Now this bird of prayer cannot fly. Even words become heavy. True prayers are not only free of motive, they are free of words; free of craving, free of speech, free of voice.

Sit near a saint, tears may come to your eyes—that is understandable… that you begin to sway, overwhelmed—that is understandable. That you start dancing—that is understandable. But what is there to say? What is there to speak? It is good to listen; as for speaking, there is nothing at all.

Therefore real prayers listen to God; they do not speak to God. Have you ever gone to a temple, ever gone to a mosque, and simply sat? Give God a chance to speak. There too you keep chattering! There too you open your ledgers! There too you bring your motives and your world! There at least fall silent—deeply still. Listen! If God speaks, listen; if God remains silent, then listen to His silence. And do with a saint exactly what you do with God.

Because what else is a saint? The saint has vanished; on his own side, he is finished; from his side, nothing remains. That is what a saint means: one who has erased himself and only Truth remains. Sat alone remains—that is the saint.

This word “saint” is very lovely; it is formed from sat—being, truth. One who has come to the end of himself, who has ended himself, whose “I”-sense has gone, and now only sat-ness, pure being, remains.

A saint is a living temple; a walking God. Perhaps you cannot yet see Him in trees—your eyes are not yet so capable; you cannot yet see Him in flowers—your eyes are not yet so capable; you cannot see in the moon and stars; you cannot see in rivers and mountains, because you have not learned that language. So first see Him in a human being, because the language of man is close to you. First see saintliness in some person. Learn from there; slowly the language will come, and then you will begin to see everywhere. The day you truly see, on that day un-saintliness vanishes from the world; then whatever is, is God; whoever there are, all abide in saintliness. Even if they do not know it, it makes no difference. Only then can one say to everyone, “Jai Ram ji—Victory to Ram, victory to the Divine!”

First thing, Manoharlal: you’re not completely mad yet. You’re still moving along very cleverly. The family may be calling you mad; I don’t call you mad yet. You haven’t yet been dyed in my color, haven’t even become a sannyasin. You’re very shrewd, sensible. Your people have started calling you mad a bit too soon. And how much understanding do they have! You’re lukewarm, and they’re saying you’ve begun to boil! Your family must be ice-cold, so your lukewarmness looks to them like boiling. After all, everything is known only by comparison, isn’t it!
As I see it, you’re still completely lukewarm. You haven’t boiled at all, and you’re already making plans to become steam! I will certainly give you a push, but let the madness grow a little more. Because if I push you before you’re fully mad, you’ll simply run away. Then you won’t come to me again. So even I have to push with care: will this fellow bolt or not?
Right now, Manoharlal, there is still a possibility you will run.

You say, “Morning and evening, night and day, only thoughts of you arise.”
They do arise, surely—but very faintly. They’re not making any real difference. That too is a kind of indulgence. What difficulty is there in thinking of me! You’re not staking anything. Sometimes you remember my name—fine. You like my words—fine. But when will you live them? If you like them, do them. Only doing will prove they truly touched you. Otherwise it’s entertainment—you listened, you read; an intellectual pastime. Nothing substantial will come of it.

And your family calls you mad because you must be talking about me, arguing, trying to explain my words. I will call you mad when you become like my words.
This is not about understanding and explaining. Who has ever managed to make anyone understand! Look at it yourself, Manoharlal: I haven’t managed to make you understand yet; whom will you make understand? You’ve been listening to me for years and you still remain Manoharlal’s Manoharlal! At least let me change your name. If you must go mad, start at least with ochre robes. That will be some evidence that the madness has begun. Let that be the beginning.

You ask, “Morning and evening, night and day your thought arises. The family calls me mad.”
The family will start calling you mad as soon as you become even a little different. It’s their device to keep you from going further. It’s how they place stones in your path. Because if people fear anything in this world, they fear going mad: everything else is fine—only, at least let me not go mad! They are frightening you.

Who are these “family”? As far as the wife is concerned—and Manoharlal’s wife is also here—so… You say “family,” but as I see it—wife. Wives are very afraid that the husband might step beyond the line. A great fear haunts them, because their concern is security: if he goes a little further, who knows what he will do! He might run away, abandon us. What will happen to the child, to me, to house and home!
And it isn’t only wives who fear; if wives begin to take a deep interest in God, husbands begin to fear. Husbands obstruct too—but their obstruction is crude: “I’ll break your head, I’ll break your legs if you go there.” Crude—because men’s minds are cruder. Women come to me and say, “My husband says if I go again, he’ll break my legs.” Wives can’t break your legs; they use subtler strategies. They say, “You’re going mad! You’ll go mad!” They make you panic. They create psychological fear. They don’t break your legs; they break your spirit. Wives are subtler, more clever. They keep you scared. And this fear is natural. There is attachment between husband and wife, a deep bond. As soon as one of the pair becomes interested in a master, a new attachment arises, stronger than the old—that’s very frightening. Your wife will not be so frightened if you relate a little to another woman—after all, a woman is a woman; she can be handled. But if you start relating to a master, panic sets in: this matter is getting out of hand, beyond handling. And when you become interested in a master, your whole life-energy is drawn as if by a magnet. So the wife becomes restless; naturally—until yesterday she was your magnet, today you have found a new magnet, and a far more powerful one! Now the wife begins to feel secondary; you might even leave her—such a situation arises. Or the wife may leave the husband—such a situation arises. The mind becomes full of dread. From that frightened mind these arrangements are made. She will tell you, “You’ve gone mad.” The husband will say, “Your brain is spoiled, you have no sense. Women are simple; whose spell have you fallen under?”
So the family must have begun saying you’ve gone mad. But if you truly want to go mad, tell them, “It’s my good fortune.” Tell them, “Now you too, come along.”

And give them a little proof as well. Poor things keep saying you’re mad, and you provide no evidence! Their feelings must be hurt—“We keep saying it and he gives no proof; Manoharlal remains Manoharlal.” Give some proof. When you return to Jalandhar this time, arrive in ochre robes. Say, “Well, you all kept saying I’d gone mad, so I thought, how long shall I deny your words? Now it’s done.”

And move ahead slowly in this; a push will also come. But first show at least that you can take a push. Start with your clothes; later let the push come to the soul. Begin with the ABC. Don’t think of plunging at once into the deep sea. First learn to swim a little in the shallows.

“Master, give me one more push so I may dive deep into meditation and be free of you.”
If you want to be free of me, you will have to drown in me. There is no other way to be free. And what you have asked is itself the snag. If you want to be free of me, you must drown in me—totally. Only by drowning in me completely will you be free of me. And if you do meditation in order to get rid of me—because you say, “Let me dive deep in meditation so I may be free of you”—then you won’t be able to meditate either. What kind of meditation is it if you enter meditation to be rid of me? Even there I will keep appearing. How will you be free? That will be a form of suppression.

You want to get rid of me so the family won’t call you mad. You want to get rid of me so the world will think you sensible. You want to get rid of me so that this day-and-night remembrance will stop. You are afraid of me, nervous about me. You feel that sooner or later what people are saying will happen: I will surely go mad. So you want to be rid of me. For that you’re even ready to meditate. But that is not the right reason for meditation. Not a right cause.

How will you meditate? Many people do it like this. Someone wants to be rid of money; he goes to a temple to meditate. Only money, money comes to mind—rows of notes parade before his eyes; heaps of wealth pile up all around. Someone wants to be rid of women; he goes and sits in a mosque, knocks his head, offers namaz—and as soon as he prays, the woman stands there more and more beautiful. Apsaras begin to appear. Houris start descending from paradise.
The tales of your rishis and sages are full of this—apsaras arriving, descending from the sky, anklets jingling. What’s the matter? They went to be free of women.

If you go into meditation to be free of me, I will surround you from all sides. Then it will be only me, me, me. In meditation you will truly begin to feel crazy. If you genuinely want to be free of me, there is only one way: drown in me. The moment you drown, there is freedom. For then—what is there to be free from! Why this attempt to run away? Where will you run? By now you have crossed the point, Manoharlal, from where you could have run. If you do not go forward, you will remain stuck.

The condition of the half-mad is very bad. Either become fully mad or fully not-mad. But the condition of the half-mad is very bad.
Right now your condition is half-mad. Bring it to some completion—either this side or that. Do not get stuck in between. Either this bank or that bank. Don’t stand in midstream.

And what are you so afraid of? What will I take from you? What do you have that you want to protect by getting rid of me? Who is it that wants to be saved? It must be your ego that wants to be saved. What will you do by saving it? You’ve been carrying it from birth after birth; even saving it, what have you gained?

You have a chance now to drown your ego somewhere. This depth is standing before you. Take a dip and see. You will be saved; the ego will go. You won’t be saved as the “you” you’ve known; you will be saved as the divine. When you come out, you will find all the paints and polishes stuck on top have washed away; those colors have flowed off; what remains is the real form—your original nature.

You have not yet known that suffering is suffering. You still carry the illusion of happiness within suffering; that is why, even after hearing, you do not understand.

I tell you: that which appears in the distance is a mirage. The oasis you think you see in the desert is not; it is only an illusion. You hear my words; but your eyes insist, “We can see it.” And indeed you do seem to see it. I remind you that your eyes have deceived you before as well. At many a halt you thought you saw an oasis, and even then someone told you it was only an eye’s trick, a mirage—appearing, but not being. Even then you said, “But we do see it.” After so many such experiences, you still have not learned. Your mind whispers, “It is possible—perhaps we were wrong all those times; who knows, this time we may be right!” Such is the dilemma. You feel, “Perhaps this time it will happen!”

You did not find happiness with this woman, nor with that one; but with this third woman—who knows—perhaps you will! You haven’t known her yet. You tired of one woman, tired of two, tired of a thousand; but the earth is filled with unending women—perhaps there is one from whom it will come, perhaps the very one you were made for! Every man harbors this illusion: somewhere there is one woman for whom he was made, and who was made for him; when union happens, a stream of nectar will flow. That union never happens—indeed, it has never happened. But the illusion persists. You free yourself from one woman, then another, then a third—but you do not free yourself from woman. You have noticed that woman A caused you sorrow, woman B caused you sorrow, woman C caused you sorrow—but that woman as such causes sorrow, or man as such, or relationship as such causes sorrow—this has not dawned on you.

So I say: you do hear me. In rare soaring moments, when you begin to take wing with me into the sky, a glimpse of truth does flash—“Perhaps he is right.” But the “perhaps” remains. “It must be so, it is so”—such a certainty does not happen.

I heard Mulla Nasruddin’s beloved say to him, “After marriage I will share all your sorrows.” Mulla said, “But I’m not unhappy.” She replied, “I am speaking of after marriage.”

The greatest difficulty in understanding is precisely this: to see that hope is deceptive. Hope keeps decking out new dreams.

So first, you hear my words. You are drawn to me, and so you also sense a glimmer of truth in what I say. But your attachment to yourself is stronger still. Your attachment to me is there, true; but it is not yet as strong as your attachment to yourself. Do not think it is only so with Manoharlal—it is so with all the “lals.” You are more attached to yourself. Therefore whenever a decision arises in life, you will always decide in your own favor; you will not be able to follow my decision. There lies the difficulty. And there the struggle is bound to be. Between master and disciple, there is war at precisely that point.

You have seen it, no? The Mahabharata war happened—that was a mock war, nothing special in it. The real war took place between Krishna and Arjuna on the chariot—from which the Gita was born, churned out. The real war was between them. The rest was nothing: people were killed—anyway they would have died. Even had none killed them, they would still have died; none remains alive forever. So that was no special matter; it was bound to be, it happened. Whether they died on a cot or on a battlefield—what great difference does it make? The real war was another. The true Mahabharata, as I see it, took place atop the chariot—between Krishna and Arjuna. A most significant event. And in that war, Arjuna lost—that was his good fortune; had he won, it would have been misfortune. He could have won too. Many times, to their misfortune, disciples do win—and then go astray. Your victory lies only in the master’s victory. The struggle is simply this: shall I choose the master, or choose myself? Shall I protect myself, or protect the master? The moment you come to a master, this commotion begins: whom to save, whom to heed, whom to obey?

I say only this to you: you have followed your own counsel for so long—how much longer will you continue to do so? Still not awake, you simpleton! After obeying yourself so long, what have you gained? What is there in your hands? Empty—your pot is empty. You have filled and filled and grown tired, yet it is not filled—not even a little. You have run and run and grown weary; not a drop have you received. Contentment is far off—no, not even a drop of contentment. You have wandered only in dreams.

Wise is the one who sees this truth: until now I have wandered, and the reason for wandering is that I obeyed myself. Now I shall obey someone who is wholly other than me, utterly different from me. Where I see an oasis, let him see nothing at all—let me heed him. Where I perceive a thousand lures of illusion, let him feel no lure—let me follow him. I have walked long enough by my own lights; let me, for a few days, walk by another’s.

Let Arjuna be defeated; let Krishna be victorious. Then it is very simple—it can happen this very moment. But if you think you must win, it will never become simple.

Then there is a third reason. You have not been sitting empty-handed until now; you have been busy doing things. Much is left unfinished; in truth, everything is left unfinished. What ever gets completed? In God nothing is ever incomplete, and in the world nothing is ever complete. Here, which story ever comes to “The End”? Films finish—with “The End.” But in life, which story ever reaches the end? None. They begin in the middle, and end in the middle—suddenly they begin.

A child is born—suddenly a story begins—in the middle. Life was already going on. Thousands were alive, millions were alive. The net was spread out; the child landed in that net. One more story got woven into thousands of stories. But those stories were already running; this child will become a part of them. His mother had a story, his father had a story; he has become part of their stories. Suddenly he has entered into their story.

Think of it this way: a play is on; you are seated as a spectator. Suddenly you rise and stroll onto the stage. There Rama and Sita are conversing—Ramleela is in progress—and you begin to speak in between. You will be chased off, because no stage will tolerate this. “What is this? How did you get here?” The manager will rush, drop the curtain, throw you out.

But in life it goes exactly like this. Husband and wife were living out their story; you suddenly arrived—this child was born. No one gave him a part, no one invited him. No one was even waiting for him; they were using birth control, and yet here he is. Even sterilization failed, and still he came. And now he has changed everyone’s parts. A tiny child changes the entire story—because a tiny child is no small event. He will change everything. Now the father will not sleep at night.

One day Mulla Nasruddin said to his wife, “Seems morning has come—I should get up.” She asked, “How do you know? It’s still dark.” He said, “The boy has gone to sleep—morning has come. The whole night, because of him, I cannot sleep.”

By morning the boys do finally sleep—cleverly so; but at night they create an uproar. Now this man, exhausted through the night, will go to the office; he may get into a quarrel with his boss—trouble will start. No one will know that the son did not let him sleep; but the son has changed his office too. He fought with the boss, lost his job, had to shift towns. All this will happen. The wife will, little by little, leave caring for the husband and care for the son. Naturally, the child needs more attention; the husband will slowly, slowly be pushed to the margins. If time remains, she will look to him.

That is why no husband likes children much—because the moment they arrive, the wife is no longer the husband’s. As soon as a woman becomes a mother, she belongs to the child. The husband… well, he remains; his status is reduced to that of a servant. And this child is a tyrant in every way. Little children are great tyrants—every demand must be fulfilled—immediately!

Thus a story arrives in the middle and ends in the middle. Nothing ever gets completed.

So when you hear me, your story is already in full swing. You have spread many nets; you run many shops; you conduct many businesses. In all of these you have invested your life energy. Now if, suddenly hearing me, you feel my words are right, it would mean that all you have done till now was futile, all went to waste. If my words seem right, then the businesses you have pursued, the trades you have done in the name of life, the relationships you have made, the hopes and plans you have woven—all are futile. Very few people have that much courage. They say, “Let at least something be salvaged. I have spent thirty years, forty years, fifty years in this endeavor…”

A friend comes to me. For some fifteen or twenty years he has been trying to become a chief minister. He has risen as far as minister. He says, “What you say seems absolutely right to me. I assure you, once I become chief minister, then I will take sannyas. But just once—let me become chief minister… After all, I have been laboring for thirty years.”

Since 1947, when the country became free, he has been striving. And he says, “Now I am right at the threshold; it could happen any time.” The thirty years he has invested have become a bond. He says, “I understand I should drop it—that I do understand. I understand there is nothing of substance in it. I became a minister and found nothing there. When I was deputy minister, I ran after becoming minister. As deputy I used to say, there is nothing in a deputy’s post. Then I became minister, and now I say there is nothing in that either.”

I told him, “As chief minister you will say the same. And then you will catch the intoxication: why not prime minister now? And you are not even that old—look, Morarji was eighty-two and got there. If even a dead man got news in his grave that an election is on, he would rise and stand to contest: ‘Let me try just once…’”

Ambition does not depart till the last breath.

So I told him, “You are not even that old yet—you are only fifty. If you keep trying, by eighty-two you too will get there—by being pushed and shoved.” There is a proverb: “Let me take a hundred shoe-beatings, but let me get in and watch the show!” Let the shoes fall, what does it matter? But let me get in and see the spectacle once. “So you too will get in and watch the show—but when will you leave?”

He says, “Your point appeals to me, and I have taken quite a few shoes—and still am. But…” And that “but” blocks everything. He says, “I wasted thirty years—please consider that too. Now it’s only a matter of a year or six months.”

What you have invested entangles you. You say, “I have staked so much life; I am now about to arrive.” And always, mind you, everyone is “about to arrive.” That is the very delight and lure of life—one always feels: now it is coming, now, almost now; now it will happen; it is happening! If not today, tomorrow it will surely happen! Just one more dawn! Thus hope keeps sliding forward. And behind, the uproars you have raised line up, waiting to be completed.

I’ve heard: Mulla Nasruddin’s servant said to him, “Sir, the cobbler says he still hasn’t been paid for repairing your shoes.” Mulla said, “All right—tell him he will get his turn when it comes; right now I still have to finish paying for the shoes themselves.”

Such are the tangles. You haven’t yet finished paying for the shoes; now that the cobbler has repaired them, how can his turn come! When his number comes in the queue, we’ll see.

Behind you stands a queue of a thousand entanglements. You hear me, you even understand me, and yet you do not understand. You do not have enough courage to drop the curtain in a single stroke and say, “All right—this play is over.” And unless you are willing to halt midway, you will never be able to stop. You will die; the play will continue; even to your dying breath it will go on.

Do you think that at the last moment there will arrive a time when you find all knots untied, all tasks resolved? That will never be. If you somehow escape your own tangle, sons and daughters will be born—their tangles; if you escape those, grandchildren will be born—their tangles. The tangling goes on. One day death arrives.

Before death comes, let sannyas—renunciation—arrive. Before death comes, let samadhi arrive. And remember: death does not ask before it comes. That is the hitch. Death does not ask you; hence it comes. If death too had to ask, no one would ever die.

Just think on this. If death also asked before coming—sent a letter beforehand: “I am thinking of coming; what is your view?”—you would say, “Wait a bit, Mother! I have some… many things tangled up; let me straighten them out. A year or two—let me at least become chief minister. Then come. What is the hurry? There are so many others—take them away for now. Take away the one who is chief minister—then my turn can come.”

But death does not ask. That is why it comes; otherwise it could never come.

With samadhi there is a different difficulty: it will come only if you invite it. Death comes uninvited. Even when invited, samadhi comes with difficulty. Uninvited guests are worth two pennies. To invite a true guest, a great arrangement is needed—invitation cards must go out, persuasion must be done, he must be coaxed to come. The greater the guest, the longer the waiting and the deeper the prayer. Do you invite samadhi? All that I am telling you is the arrangement for inviting samadhi. I am teaching you how to write a note to samadhi—how to write a letter, how to write a love-letter to the divine so that it may come. You say, “We surely will write—but not today; tomorrow. For a few more days, let us… the world…”

And you cannot even say that my words are wrong, because your own experience tells you my words are right. This is your obstruction: your experience says that what I say is true—that there is nothing here. Your experience says so. But your hope and your experience never match—never. Hope always goes opposite to experience. Experience says one thing; hope says another. Hope speaks against experience. It says, “It is true that until yesterday there was sorrow; but what certainty is there that tomorrow there will be sorrow too? Tomorrow there could be happiness—try a little more.”

The day my words truly, exactly penetrate you—and by “exactly” I mean the day you are ready to stake your all—on that day you will understand:

How can sighs find rest even in union,
When the thought of separation is already knotted?

Then you will not find rest even in happiness. Leave aside the happiness yet to come—even when happiness comes, you will not find rest.

How can sighs find rest even in union,
When the thought of separation is already knotted?

Then you will know: “This union that has happened—what rest is there in it? For the moment of farewell is drawing near.” Right now you live on the hope of what has not yet been attained. When understanding dawns, even in what you attain there is no hope; its moment of departure is already approaching—soon it will have to go. Night has come—morning will be. Morning has come—evening will be. Life keeps changing and changing. In this whirling wheel where nothing is still, only one thing is unmoving—samadhi, pure consciousness, the witness. Attain that one, and you have attained all. Lose that one, and all is lost.

I cannot free you from fear; only you can. The fear is real. You would like me to tell you, “No, no, there’s nothing to worry about, these eighty-four crores of wombs don’t exist”—so that you can feel light and jump back into the race of your desires. No, that I cannot say. It is as it is. The truth is that this wheel is revolving. If you do not make use of being human, you forfeit the right to be human. It is simple arithmetic. Human birth came to you for a reason.

Someone asked Buddha—once a young man came wishing to renounce. He said, “Seeing you, watching you walk the path, your grace-filled radiance, that unearthly beauty—I have felt a deep longing arise. But never before had I thought of sannyas. I was never interested in religion and the like. I kept my distance from scholars and priests. Even when my parents wanted to take me to them, I would escape with a thousand excuses. Listening to pundits only gave me a headache and boredom. Yet seeing you I am deeply stirred; a feeling arises within to be initiated. But I don’t understand how such a great desire has arisen out of nowhere—no past thread, no chain. How can such a thing happen all of a sudden?”

Buddha closed his eyes and said, “Young man, you do not know: in your past life you were an elephant. A forest fire had broken out and you were running, as were all the animals and birds. Exhausted, you stopped under a tree to rest a little. Your legs were tired and a thorn was pricking one foot, so you lifted that foot. Just then a rabbit came and sat under the very foot you had raised. You looked down. The whole forest was ablaze. In that moment you saw: we are all running to save our lives. This poor rabbit is also running. I am tired—I am an elephant—so he too is tired. And how trustfully he sits beneath my lifted foot; if I put it down now, he will die.

“It was a moment when your urge to live was at its peak—you wanted to survive—but at the same time you felt: just as I want to live, so does everyone. A great understanding dawned on you. You held your foot aloft, and the rabbit sat below without a care. When the rabbit moved away, you lowered your foot—but your leg had grown stiff. You could not place it properly and you fell. The rabbit escaped, but you burned to death in that forest fire. Yet at the moment of death there was great contentment in you, a deep peace, an extraordinary joy: ‘I did not kill the rabbit; so be it if I die.’ The fruit of that compassion is that you were born human.

“Because of that compassion you became human. And that very compassion planted a seed in you.”

Buddha used to say: Where there is compassion, prajna—wisdom—arises; and where there is prajna, compassion arises. They are two sides of the same coin. So one who attains meditation and wisdom finds that great compassion arises in his life. And one in whose life there is even a fragrance of compassion—if not today, then tomorrow—will become eager for samadhi. Because of that compassion, seeing me today on the path, this feeling has arisen in you. It is not without cause; there is a chain behind it.

I tell you: your being human is not without cause. Something you must have done. Somewhere, sometime, over an endless journey, you have earned your humanity. It is earned. But it is only an opportunity. It is not your eternal property. You have not become its owner. It is transient. It is here today and may be gone tomorrow. Just as you earned it, you can lose it.

If an elephant can become human through compassion, then a human can become an elephant through hardness. Straight arithmetic. If an elephant, through compassion, creates the capacity and worthiness to be human, then through hardness, violence, cruelty, you will descend to the capacity of being an animal. Where else will you go? The wheel will turn. The potter’s wheel revolves. The spoke begins to go down. Then there is a long journey, because the spoke returns only after the whole wheel has made its full round.

As for this talk of eighty-four crores, it is not at all unscientific. Nor is it merely a mythic figure. It is so. Now scientists, step by step, are arriving at the conclusion that the Hindu figure may indeed prove right. The count has reached into crores, because there are many life-forms that are invisible—countless minute and subtle organisms, microbes—now also being enumerated. Slowly the number has climbed into crores. And now it seems to scientists that perhaps the Hindu figure of eighty-four crores (840 million) will be verified. They will not be fewer; if anything, they may be more. This much is now clear from the latest research: the modes of life may be more, not less. The tally is not complete yet, but it will be.

It is a whole wheel. Think of these eighty-four crores as the teeth or spokes of a wheel, and the wheel revolves in full. Once you rise to the human spoke—the summit—if you leap from there, you leap. Because here there is a little awareness—very little! Even as a human you miss from here. As an elephant, a horse, a dog, awareness dwindles further; missing there is then certain.

So I cannot free you from fear—you can free yourself. Do not miss, and the fear is finished. Use the fear. Why call it fear? Call it truth.

Suppose you are walking on a path and I tell you, “There is a ditch on the left.” You say, “You’ve terrified us. Now what are we to do? Please free us from fear; tell us there is no ditch.” I can say, “There is no ditch,” but the ditch will not hear me, nor will it disappear. By my saying so, the danger will only increase. If I tell you, “There is no ditch; go on, my son, happily, sing a tune from a film—no ditch at all; I only said it to scare you,” then you will surely fall.

There is a ditch. On both sides. The path is narrow—thin as a rope. Have you seen a tightrope walker—now he falls, now he doesn’t? Life is just like that. Danger is intrinsic here. Do not take it as fear; take it as fact. Use this fact. Rise above it.

Do not waste the opportunity of human life. Ajahun chet, ganvaar! Wake up even now, O simpleton! This opportunity is precious. The way you are squandering it is why poor Palatu Das had to say “ganvaar”—because you are wasting it. Whoever wastes it is a simpleton. What are you spending this chance on? Someone is chasing a woman, someone a man, someone money, someone position. But this is exactly what you have been doing for births upon births, across countless species. It goes on there too.

Have you seen a troop of monkeys? They have a president—the most troublesome, cantankerous, quarrelsome, adept at bullying. He leads. The rest fear him. Those who have studied monkeys say that monkeys have politics in full—you will find a whole cabinet, a full ministry. Around the worst of them, a gang of a few advisers; then others below them, and so on. There you will even find the classes. Some do only menial tasks; some only the work of “Brahmins”—they advise, suggest ways out of disputes; some are “Kshatriyas”—ready to fight when there is trouble, young and strong. There are females and children; all are protected. When the troop moves, the females and children go in the middle; the leader goes ahead; the Kshatriyas encircle and guard them.

In monkeys you will find the entire politics of humans. You can find all the colors of New Delhi among monkeys. So if there is a little monkey business in Parliament, don’t worry too much—it’s bound to be so. If there are scuffles, pulling and shoving, that too is bound to be. You cannot expect much more from politicians. Politics is that very jungle-mentality, that animal instinct—how to become the master of the other!

As long as you want to be the master of others you live by animal instinct. The day you want to be the master of yourself, that day you truly become human. The search to master oneself is religion; the search to master others is politics.

And if you are hoarding wealth—what will come of it? Everything will be left behind. All pomp will lie there when the caravan moves on. You are losing the opportunity. God’s treasure lies before you, yet you do not tie up that bundle; instead you tie up rubbish and scraps! So if Palatu calls you a simpleton, do not be offended—he speaks the truth. You stand and merely watch. In relation to the real, you stand afar and look; for the false, you run at once. You collect the futile; the meaningful doesn’t concern you. And life is passing. Time slips from your hands; each moment flows away. Soon death will be standing at the door.

Before death stands at the door, the wise will station samadhi at the door. Samadhi before death—that is the goal of the wise. And one who attains samadhi before death does not die; he attains the immortal. Amritasya putrah—the Vedas say—he becomes a son of immortality.

So how shall I free you from fear? There is only one way to be free of fear: attain samadhi. Only in meditation will fear die, because in samadhi death dies. As long as death is, fear will be. Go beyond death; drink the nectar. Become nectarous—immortal.

You can become immortal. It is your possibility. Call it! Invoke it! Awaken it! Be alert!

You are human; you can become divine. And if you do not become divine, there is no alternative but to become animal. Man is a transition. Man is a bridge. Either go to the other shore, or fall back to this shore—you cannot remain suspended as man.

Akbar built a city: Fatehpur Sikri. On the bridge that connects that city he wished to inscribe a saying. His scholars searched for a saying worthy of it. Many were brought. Then a saying of Jesus pleased him. The Muslims were not very happy—they wanted a saying of Mohammed. Hindu pundits in his court were not very happy either—they wanted something from the Upanishads or the Vedas. But the saying was truly precious: This life is like a bridge; pass over it; do not build your house upon it.

No one builds a house on a bridge! Man is only a transition, a bridge; on one side is animal, on the other God. Man is the middle rung. Pass over it; do not build your house upon it. For if you stop here, you will fall. Either fall below, or go above; remaining here is impossible.

This is the meaning of saying that you will have to wander through eighty-four crores of wombs. The saints did well to tell you plainly. There are pits—and after falling in, returning is not easy. When it could have been easy, it did not happen; while there was awareness, it did not happen—you fell into the pit. Then in unawareness it becomes very difficult. Only after a long cycle of nature’s process, perhaps sometime in the infinite, you may return. Right now the reins could be held in your hands. If not now...

Animals do not have their reins in their own hands. Man does.

There is only one way to be free of fear: use this fear creatively. Call in samadhi—and there will be resolution. All problems will dissolve. Whether through devotion, through prayer, or through meditation—by any path, find that state of consciousness: let our knot be tied in the Void; let our rest be in the Unstruck Sound.

That is all for today.