Ajhun Chet Ganwar #6

I would like to change the saying a little: “Know, and it is God; otherwise, it’s a stone.” By believing, a stone remains a stone; only your eyes get filled with illusion; only you begin to see a deity in the stone. Belief does not change the stone; it only changes the glasses on your eyes. Put on tinted glasses and everything appears colored—but nothing has actually changed color. Take off the glasses and the colors vanish. Things are as they are.

You go into a Hindu temple: if you are a Muslim, the stone remains just a stone, because you don’t wear Hindu spectacles. If you are a Hindu, the stone seems divine because you have Hindu spectacles on your eyes. If you go into a Jain temple, the image of Mahavira still remains stone; its divinity does not reveal itself because you lack Jain spectacles.

Belief only changes your spectacles. Don’t fall into the deception of believing. Journey toward knowing. Know—and it is certainly God; the stone is nowhere. Not only in statues, even in the mountains, where there is stone, there too God is hidden. When knowing happens, nothing remains except the Divine. When known, the gates of God are open—everywhere, from every side, in every direction, in every dimension. In every pebble, the same. In every blade of grass, the same. In every moment, the same. But by knowing.

Don’t begin with belief; begin with awareness. Belief is self-betrayal. If you have already believed, how will you search? And how can truth enter your believing? A moment ago you saw a stone; now you’ve believed and you start seeing a god. You are forcing yourself to see—but in some inner depth you still know it is a stone, don’t you? How will you change that inner knowing? Doubt will remain hidden somewhere. At most, belief will sit on the surface and doubt will sink deeper. That is even more dangerous. If doubt stayed on the surface, it wasn’t so harmful; now it has seeped inside, entered the very fibers of your being, become your inner constitution.

That is what has happened. In this world countless people go to temples, mosques, gurdwaras, churches—and deep within they are filled with doubt. “Christian” and “Hindu” and “Muslim” are only on the surface, while inside the fire of doubt burns. And that doubt is more true because you haven’t imposed it; it is natural. Your belief, however, is imposed. How can imposed belief dissolve natural doubt? Imposed belief is impotent; natural doubt is immensely vigorous. What can dissolve natural doubt? Only natural trust can. A powerful doubt can be dissolved only by a powerful trust—and when does trust become powerful? Not through your doing, but through knowing, through awareness. When you see that the Divine is, then trust happens. If you merely believe, these are feeble things—crutches on which you have limped long enough.

So those who coined the saying “If you believe, it is a god; otherwise, it’s a stone” did state the condition of most people. They go on believing. A blind man has believed that there is light. He has only believed; the eyes haven’t opened; the open eye has not seen. It is also possible for the blind to wear glasses—but of what use is a pair of glasses to a blind man? If there are eyes, glasses can assist seeing; without eyes, what will glasses do? Many blind people are wearing spectacles—and still they stumble. They will stumble. Many blind people have also taken lanterns in their hands so that light may be with them—and still they will stumble.

Your scriptures are like lanterns hanging from your hands. Your beliefs are like spectacles over blind eyes. They have no value—not even two pennies’ worth. They harm; they do not help in the least. Because of them, eyes don’t open. Because of their delusion, you never become engaged in the effort to know.

I tell you: do not believe in God. There is no need to believe. If you believe in God, then what will you know? To believe in God means you have declared defeat in knowing—you are tired, you have thrown down your arms. You have said, “The search is over; there is nothing to know, so let us believe.” You don’t believe in the sun or the moon; you know them. You don’t believe in this world; you know it. And you believe in God? If your believed God is repeatedly defeated before your known world, it is no surprise. God should also be known. The day God is known, this world becomes insipid—maya, a dream.

Experience is wealth; empty beliefs are not.

So I make a small change in the saying: “Know, and it is God; otherwise, it’s a stone.”

But to know, a great journey is required. To know, you will have to pass through deep disciplines within. To know, the meshes over your eyes will have to be cut and dissolved. To know, first of all you will have to drop all that you have merely believed—and that is very painful, because that is your only “wealth.” You think that believing is your knowledge. That entire “knowledge” has to be dropped. For once, you must become utterly ignorant. Before you receive a ray of true knowing, you must pass through the night of unknowing. For once, you must become absolutely poor, because what you call “wealth” right now isn’t; it exists only in imagination—laddu-sweets of the mind! You must drop them. You must see your own beggary; your ignorance, your darkness, your blindness, your negativity, your atheism. The thorn of atheism should pierce your very life-breath; you must feel its pain. This is necessary.

You have found tricks to become pseudo-theists, while a hidden atheist sits within. Are there as many true theists in the world as people think themselves to be theists? If that were so, this world would be religious. There would be springs of divine energy rising everywhere. Every eye would carry God’s glimmer, every foot would dance God’s dance, every throat would sing God’s songs. There would be a flood of love if so many were theists. Among a hundred so-called theists, there is not even one true one. Then who are the ninety-nine?

They are atheists who have deceived themselves into thinking they are theists. They are worse off than atheists. An atheist at least is honest; he says, “I don’t know, so I don’t believe. Until I know, how can I believe?” The atheist is at least sincere, authentic. He does not believe what he has not known. The theist is dishonest: he believes what he has not known; he denies what he knows; and he believes what he does not know. He lives in deep conflict and misery.

All religions teach you of truth, and you have turned all religions into fundamental untruths. What greater untruth can there be than believing what you have not known?

You relate to God through untruth. Even before God you are false.

Tell lies all around if you must—be dishonest with the whole world if you will—at least leave one place untouched. Do not bring your deception there. Stand naked there, as you are. At least in one place say, “What is, is; I will not falsify it.” Then you will suddenly find your pseudo-theism melting and your atheist surfacing. But this is necessary before true theism can be born.

Before true theism, the false theism has to be dropped. Before true theism, the step of true atheism is essential. All who have journeyed to God’s temple have climbed the steps of atheism; they have rejected the false. Even if their beliefs, trusts, convictions were embedded in that falsehood, they did not spare them; they threw them away. They kept only one criterion: what I shall know, what I shall experience.

“All that is heard by the ear is false; what is seen by the eye is true.”

Is your God heard by the ear, or seen by the eye? Is your prayer heard by the ear, or seen by the eye? The truths on which you stake your life—do they arise from your experience, or are they borrowed, stale, secondhand? If borrowed, the sooner you are free of them, the better. It is they that shackle your feet; you will not reach truth with them.

This is the difference between shraddha and vishvas—between trust and belief. Belief is borrowed, hearsay; truth is one’s own, intimate. I do not tell you to believe in anyone. I only say: if the Divine is, why be afraid? Seek—you will find. Why are you so scared to open your eyes? If the Divine is, you will find; and if the Divine is not, that too will be good to know, so we can be spared the fuss.

Truth is benevolent in every case. Whether this side or that, truth is decisive.

So I tell you: set out on the journey of knowing. You have believed enough—where have you reached? Nowhere. Set out on the journey of knowing. First step: all beliefs must be dropped. This may sound upside down to you—that to attain trust, beliefs must be dropped. But the logic is crystal clear. It requires no special intellect.

If you sit in darkness and think there is light, how will you light a lamp? Accept darkness as darkness; that very acceptance will become the aching in you for the lamp to be lit.

You sit steeped in lust and put your trust in celibacy. Drop this nonsense. It only helps you hide lust. Today you know full well you are filled with desire, yet you think, “Celibacy will happen tomorrow, the day after; soon I shall attain it and be free of desire.” You trust in celibacy while you live lust—this creates inner conflict, splits you in two; you never become whole. Without wholeness, what peace can there be? The Mahabharata rages within.

You believe in celibacy but you know lust—this is your obstacle. It is what has made you deranged.

You know wealth but you believe in meditation.

And naturally your life will follow what you know, not what you believe. That’s why you see how flimsy your beliefs are—they do not work. You can talk all you like; you can deliver sermons; you can write scriptures; you can even advise another blind person on the way—but your borrowed knowledge does not serve you. Your life is stirred by your own experience. What have the borrowed beliefs achieved? Look at this truth. The way you live testifies to where your real trust lies.

Imagine: here is a pile of money and here is a pile of meditation, and I say, “Choose. You can choose only one.” You say, “I believe in meditation, but I will choose money.” What does that mean? If you believe in meditation, why choose money? You say, “I believe in meditation, but I am weak; I have children and family; what is the hurry? I will meditate later. Money is available now, let me take it. Later I will donate, build a temple, hire a priest to perform worship—though I believe in meditation.”

What you do reveals where your real trust is; what you say reveals nothing. Your action is the witness to your trust. Examine your actions; they will tell you your real religion. One says, “My religion is Hindu,” another, “Muslim,” another, “Jain,” another, “Buddhist.” Look at their actions—identical. The Hindu runs after wealth, the Muslim too, the Jain too, the Buddhist too—and they claim great differences! Their beliefs differ, yet all four run through the marketplace. Look at their actions and you will find they all share one religion: money is their god; status is their religion. The rest is chatter—like wearing different colored clothes. That is only apparel. Is there any difference in their inner being?

There are only two kinds of people in the world: theist and atheist. But I call theists only those whose way of life attests that they are theists, whose very living indicates their trust. Hence my emphasis is on knowing, not believing. You trust God so little, therefore you settle for believing. You know that if you set out to know, perhaps you won’t find—so better to believe. You don’t trust enough.

I say to you: know—because there is nothing to fear; God is. He won’t vanish because you know, and if He is not, He won’t come into being because you believe. What is not will not be, however much you believe. What is will remain—whether you believe or not, whether you know or not. Your knowing, believing, not believing, not knowing changes nothing in existence. God is.

Therefore I do not make you weak or frighten you. I do not say, “If you lose belief, you will go astray.” No—I say, it is because of belief that you have gone astray.

I heard of this incident. In America, after President Kennedy, his brother Senator Robert Kennedy was assassinated. The killer—Sirhan—was everywhere questioned: why did he do it? No reason was evident. Was Sirhan mad, diseased, deranged? What was the matter? Sirhan’s father lived far away in Israel. Journalists reached him too and asked, “You must know your son well; you raised him. Why? Why did he kill? Do you recall anything in him that could have led to this? Make a statement.”

Sirhan’s father said, “I just don’t know. I am confused and crushed. I taught my children to fear God.” …“I don’t know. I am bewildered and deeply pained. My heart is broken. I taught each of my children to fear God. How could my son do this? I myself want to ask why. I taught my sons, my children, to fear God. I taught my children to fear God.”

If you ask me, it was precisely that teaching—“fear God”—that is the root of the mischief, the house of disease; the illness arose from there. In those two words, “fear” and “God,” are hidden the sins of the whole human race—not only Sirhan’s, everyone’s. Those two words are dangerous and costly.

Any fear—whoever its object—distorts the human being. Fear doesn’t allow a human to grow. Fear of a God in the sky shrinks you, enslaves you; it won’t let you be your own master. And you can never love what you fear. Love never grows out of fear. Tulsidas said the exact opposite: “Without fear there is no love.” I tell you: with fear, love never is. Tulsidas is one hundred percent wrong. Fear—and love? Toward the one you love, you have no fear. Toward the one you fear, you feel hatred—not love.

“I taught my children to fear God,” said Sirhan’s father.

When you teach fear, you unknowingly teach hatred. When you teach fear, you unknowingly teach violence. Teach love; do not teach fear. First thing.

And all of you have been taught fear. Because of fear you are Hindu; because of fear you are Muslim. Because of fear you have a God. Because of fear you tremble. Your prayers carry no joy or celebration—only the tremor of fear. You are afraid of hells; you are tempted by heavens. But you tremble! A great shaking goes on within you. Those trembling knees that bend in namaz, those fearful heads, those servile foreheads placed before temple idols—this is the greatest misfortune of humanity.

Fear will not let man become self-possessed.

I am not saying fear has no utility in life. I am not saying, like a fool, drop all fear. I am not saying fear has no function in protecting life. I am saying: fear facts. Fire burns; it is natural to be wary of fire. That need not be taught. You don’t teach your child “fear fire”; you teach: fire burns—if you want to be burnt, go near; if not, stay away. This is a natural process of life.

If a bull charges at you with horns, I do not say stand there fearless. If a bus driver is honking, I do not say stand meditating in the middle of the road, deaf to the sound, just to prove you have no fear. That would be foolishness. Where facts of life are dangerous, where they lead to pits, be alert. That’s why I said I cannot free you from fear of eighty-four million wombs—because that is a fear like of fire. If you wish to go, go; if not, understand. But fear of God? You don’t even know God. God is not fire. God is not some abyss. God is the most beautiful, the most auspicious, the highest flowering of your life. Fear of God? God is your supremest way of being. God is your ultimate expression. Fear of God? If fear is planted toward God, you will become worms crawling on the ground; you will not be able to fly; your wings will be cut.

Sirhan’s father said, “I taught my children to fear God, so I am astonished this happened.” It happened precisely because of that! Had you not taught fear, this wouldn’t have happened. Fear breeds hatred. Fear breeds anger. Fear breeds violence. Love breeds compassion.

But I understand the difficulty. Why do religious leaders teach fear? Because it is easy to teach fear. Fear can be produced by belief alone. Love cannot. Love happens through knowing. That is the difficulty. So the cheap trick was adopted: frighten people and they will believe in God out of fear. Inside they will not believe; at least outwardly they will pretend. The name of Ram won’t enter the heart, but a cloak of “Ram-naam” will be worn. The head will not truly bow before God—how can it, when His beauty has not been experienced? How can the head bow where there has never been any meeting, where eyes have never met? But because of fear, knees will shake and man will fall.

Fear—a cheap trick. And through this cheap trick the whole of humanity has been terrorized.

So first, Sirhan’s father taught fear; all fathers have. Humanity is tormented by fear. From this fear arise Hitlers, Genghis Khans, Taimurs, Alexanders. From this fear arise petty murderers and great ones, thieves, cheats, politicians—out of this same soil.

The stone of fear must be lifted from the human chest; the flower of love must bloom. But love has one hitch: it happens only when eyes meet. Love happens through knowing; not through believing. Love arises from experience; not without it.

And the ultimate experience of love is God. Therefore I don’t even tell you “Love God.” I only say: love—and one day, loving and loving, God will be at your door. I only say: love! How can I tell you “Love God”? That would become hearsay for you. “All that is heard by the ear is false; what is seen by the eye is true.”

I say: love—love your child, your wife, your husband, your friend, your family, your dear ones, human beings, animals, birds, plants, mountains. Spread love as far as you can. As your love expands, you will begin to glimpse God. Slowly, slowly, the day your love becomes vast, you become love itself, that day God descends. That is why I say: devotion is the ultimate flowering of love.

Forget God. Your God is worth two pennies. Your God is fear-born. Let love surge in your life. Love is natural. A small ray of it is already in you. Take hold of this ray and keep moving—you will reach the sun. If there is a ray, it must come from a sun; somewhere there must be a sun. If it is not visible today, no harm; even if it is a thousand miles away, no harm. Step by step one covers a thousand miles. But begin with the real, with the existential.

People come to me and say, “We are very attached to our family; please free us from it.” I tell them: who wants to be freed from it? It has to be enlarged. You are speaking the wrong language: “free us!” This is your only hope. This small lamp in your heart—that you love your family—is your sole hope. And your so-called gurus and mahatmas teach you: give this up and then you will find God. But only this is the hope; if ever God is found, it will be by growing this. The light is small, yes—make it big. Let your family become large.

That’s why Jesus says: love even your enemy. The day you love your enemy too, your family has become vast. Friends remain, and the enemy is included as well. Love animals and plants—hence Mahavira’s ahimsa. Animals and plants are living; love them too. Buddha says karuna—compassion. These are all names of love. Different people have preferred different words, but they all are modes of love, hues of love, auras of love—love’s reflections. Reflected in Mahavira, it became ahimsa—“Do not cause pain to anyone.” But you will stop causing pain only when love has grown; otherwise how will you stop? Buddha said compassion—spread compassion. Jesus said love.

As your love grows, the distance between you and God shrinks. So never come to me asking, “We have a small, ordinary love—how to get rid of it?” If you extinguish it, the only lamp of hope in your life goes out; then you will wander in the desert. That small spring in your life will dry up; then there is no hope. I say, make that rivulet larger; let it flow toward the ocean. And let every stream that can join it, join—friends and foes, humans and birds and beasts, plants and mountains—let all be included. Let it become a great Ganga. Then it will reach the ocean.

Where you are, as you are—take hold of that reality and move with it. This small thread, this little sutra, will lead you. That’s why the sayings of the saints, the verses of the Upanishads, the ayats of the Quran are called sutras—threads. They are like fine threads; but if you grasp them, you will arrive.

I have heard: An emperor, angry at his vizier, had him imprisoned atop a high tower outside the city. The vizier’s family wept and wailed. He told his wife, “Don’t be afraid. When they lock me away, go to the fakir in the village. Whenever there is a knot I cannot untie with intellect, I go to him. He has gone beyond the mind. He always finds a way. He will surely give you a sutra, and a path will open. Do not fear; do not cry.”

The vizier was locked atop a tall tower, five hundred feet high; no doors, all sealed; guards below. The wife went to the fakir. She had little hope: how could a way be found? How to free her husband? The fakir said, “No problem. Your husband told you to come for a sutra—therein lies the essence.”

She said, “I don’t understand riddles. I’m not here to discuss religion. My husband is dying, starving. Show me a way.”

The fakir said, “Do this: catch a beetle, smear a little honey on its feelers, and tie a thin silk thread to its tail.”

“What will that do?” she asked.

“That will do everything,” he said. “Release the beetle at the foot of the tower.” Smelling the honey, it will crawl upward. The honey is on its feelers, so it will never arrive—its feelers keep moving ahead; the fragrance is always just ahead. That is the name of the world—honey smeared on your feelers. You run after the fragrance; it keeps moving. Your feelers leap ahead of you. Arrival never happens; the fragrance comes, arrival doesn’t. That is why the wise called it maya. “It’s coming, it’s coming… now I have it, now I have it”—but never arrived. Always near, never reached. The goal seems so close you can’t stop. You die, you tire, but you can’t stop—because the fragrance seems just at hand.

Understand the beetle’s plight: honey on its feelers; fragrance draws it madly; it races: “So near!” The feelers slide forward. The silk thread tied to its tail climbs the tower. Soon it reaches the top. The husband sees it, and the thin thread tied to its tail—understands: the fakir has given the sutra. He gently pulls the thread. On that comes a thicker thread; tied to that, a twine; tied to that, a thick rope. Holding the rope, the vizier descends and flees—free.

So it is. Grasp one thread. Do not extinguish this small ray of love in your life. There is no greater suicide. Do not condemn it. Do not call it physical, lustful, worldly. You are in the world—there must be something in the world that connects you to the beyond; otherwise there is no way. There must be a sutra that bridges both shores. There must be something in the world that is not of the world—something that comes here yet belongs there, across.

In your life, other than love, there is nothing else like that. This is the devotees’ declaration.

Love is the only sutra by which, slowly, slowly—step by step, grain by grain—you will one day arrive in God.

Know; do not believe. And if you wish to know, hold to this small thread of love.

Sirhan’s father said, “I taught the fear of God.” There was the mistake. You too have been taught fear, and on the basis of fear, belief. First you are made frightened; then when you tremble and ask for support, they hand you the notion of God: “Here—hold this. When afraid, recite the Hanuman Chalisa. When frightened, remember God.” First they create fear in you, then they sell you the cure. This is a grand fraud. Priests, pundits, gurus, politicians have lived on this fraud.

Awaken from belief. If ever you wish to rise into the sky of trust, corrupt belief utterly, destroy it, burn it to ashes. At first you will be very afraid, because fear has been taught. The moment you drop belief, your whole being will tremble: “How will I live without the support of God?” Slowly you will see the fear was false, taught. There is no need for fear. This world is ours; we belong to it. This existence is ours; we belong to it. We have arisen from it; how can it be our enemy? We are its ripples; its waves. This is the ocean and we are the waves—what opposition can there be? Why would it be eager to annihilate us? It is our very life. What comes from it is auspicious.

With such goodwill, set out on the search. And grasp one thread. Devotees have held the thread of love; knowers have held the thread of meditation. But the two are names of the same thread. When you become loving, you become meditative; when you become meditative, you become loving. Invite one, the other comes on its own—like two wheels of a cart: love and meditation.

But know; stop believing.

The second question is related to the first:

When I say “erase yourself,” don’t misunderstand me. Don’t take it to mean that you truly exist and now you have to erase yourself. When I say “erase yourself,” I am saying only this: please look at yourself with full, unblinking attention; you will find you are not. That is what I mean by erasing yourself. If you were real, how could you erase yourself? What is, cannot be erased.

If darkness were something, would it vanish simply by lighting a lamp? You light a lamp, but the furniture in the room does not disappear; only the darkness goes. The furniture remains where it is. In truth, it wasn’t visible in the dark; in the light it is seen—it becomes more manifest, more clear. Darkness disappears; the furniture does not. The walls and doors do not disappear. In the dark they merely seemed to be gone; in the light they are revealed, clear in their being; in the light they become authentic. So what is it that disappears when a lamp is lit?

When the lamp is lit, only that goes which was never there. Now, darkness is not something you “erase.” If it had to be erased, it would be difficult. Darkness would raise a fuss. You’d light a lamp and darkness would say, “I won’t go; I will fight”—there would be struggle, a war. Sometimes the lamp would even go out. Darkness would blow out the lamp; sometimes perhaps darkness would be defeated and the lamp would extinguish the darkness—but it would not disappear as easily as it does. You have barely lit the lamp and—where has the darkness gone? It was never there.

So when I say “erase yourself,” I am telling you that you are not; just look carefully. In that very seeing you will vanish. And the moment you know “I am not,” you will know the Divine is. God is not some murderer who will meet you only if you are destroyed. He has not set such a condition. It is not a bargain that until you behead yourself, he will not meet you. God is not such a fiend, not some killer.

No—the obstacle is only this: as long as you think “I am,” this very thought, this very belief becomes a curtain over your eyes. It is only a belief; you are not. This is what happens when you sit silently in meditation and look within: you find “I am not; I never was.” There was only a misunderstanding, an assumption, a mere feeling that “I am.” That which is not—that alone dissolves in meditation. That which is not—that also dissolves in love. That which is not—only that dissolves.

Understand my words rightly. I am saying: look at yourself rightly. Sit quietly sometime and observe: Who am I? Where am I? What am I?—and you will not find yourself anywhere. A sudden silence will descend. The moment the question “Who am I?” arises, you will find: silence has arisen. That is why Ramana Maharshi used to tell his seekers: one question is enough—ask, “Who am I? Who am I? Who am I?” Keep asking continuously. Whenever you get the chance, sit quietly and keep asking: Who am I! Who am I!

Those who read Ramana carry a great misunderstanding. They think that by asking in this way they will find out who they are. You have missed—you have not understood. By asking thus, one day you will discover: I am not. Ramana’s devotees sometimes come to me. They say: it’s been so long asking “Who am I?”, and still we haven’t found out. I say: you have missed; you didn’t understand the import. The essence of the sages does not come straight to the mind. The matter is so far beyond; it cannot be said in your language. Ramana never said that by asking you would learn who you are. The asking is only a device to wake you up. “Who am I? Who am I? Who am I?”—you keep asking, searching, probing every nook and corner within, peeling the conscious and unconscious layers within, breaking one layer after another, as one peels an onion—peeling on and on: Who am I! Who am I! In the peeling, all layers are finished; emptiness comes into your hand. The onion is gone; only the void remains. That is you and that is the Divine; but you do not remain. In this emptiness, where are you? Where is Pragya? If Pragya sets out to search, one day she will find she is no more. And where Pragya is no more, there the true Pragya is born; there awareness is born; there samadhi blossoms. There the Divine descends.

And it is natural to feel fear about disappearing. The very talk of disappearing is alarming. The very word “disappear” creates fear, a trembling. But you are not there at all. Think like this: why even think of disappearing? What will you disappear into! If you existed, you could also disappear. You are not—then what is there to fear! You are not. Seek this truth.

Do not accept my words on trust—“All right, since you say so, I am not.” Nothing will come of that. You will remain as you are. Take my words only as a provocation, a challenge: since I say you are not, let me see—let me inquire, examine—am I or am I not? Is this true or false? Do not rely on my word, do not believe it. Test it on the touchstone of your own investigation.

This happened with Bodhidharma. Emperor Wu said: I am very anxious, very troubled; my mind never becomes peaceful. How can I become peaceful? Please tell me some method.

Bodhidharma said: Come at three in the night. Come alone. Don’t bring courtiers and the like. No soldiers, no bodyguards—come absolutely alone. I will wait at three. And when you come, remember to bring this “I” of yours along, because I will quiet it then and there.

Wu was alarmed: the man is mad. When I come, I will of course come—why does he say “bring it along”? And Bodhidharma’s eyes, his way of speaking, calling him alone at three in the night! And thousands of rumors were in circulation about this man—what legends: that he is dangerous. He did not accept a disciple until the man cut off his own hand and offered it. This man is strange and dangerous. And to come at three in the dark night! And he also says he will quiet it for sure! He thought it was not right to go; it was not without danger. Yet he could not sleep.

Until then he had told many monks, many holy men: somehow quiet this “I” of mine. Such a vast empire, and still no peace; the restlessness never leaves; there is no trace of repose. Give me peace somehow! No one had ever said, “I will quiet it—just come.” They had spoken grand words, but nothing substantial came of it. For the first time someone had appeared who did not speak at all; he said, “Come tomorrow morning in solitude; we will settle it. How long will you remain troubled? We will quiet it.” What if this man actually knows the art of quieting, and I do not go! And yet to go was frightening: what if he goes crazy and hits me with his staff? Bodhidharma kept a big staff with him! And such stories were told—who knows how he might behave! And to go alone!

Even so, he could neither sleep nor refrain. Though it was difficult, he went. Such intense longing pulled him. He reached at three in the night. Bodhidharma sat with his staff, a lamp lit. He was staying in a temple outside the town. He said: So you have come! Have you brought the “I” or not?

The emperor said: What are you saying! If I have come, how could I have left the “I” behind? How could I come without it? Why do you keep asking again and again whether I brought the “I”?

Bodhidharma said: I say this because only if you bring the “I” can I quiet it; if you leave it at home and come alone, whom shall I quiet? All right, sit down, close your eyes, and search where this “I” is. And the moment you find it, catch it—pounce and seize it right there—and tell me. Then I will quiet it at once. Because first it has to be caught! And since it is within you, how will I catch it? You catch it.

The emperor thought coming was pointless—what is this man saying: “pounce and catch it”! But now that he had come, he sat before him, closed his eyes, began to search. Bodhidharma sat in front with the staff—who knows when he might strike!—and kept saying: Search! Don’t fall asleep, don’t doze—I am sitting here with the stick. We must settle this today; how long will you be troubled by it! We will quiet it and send you off. Before morning, this must be finished.

The more Wu searched in Bodhidharma’s presence, the more he searched. He had never looked within before. Who looks! You talk: I, restlessness, mind—chatter. You never search. When he searched, he was astonished: it does not come into his grasp. Which “I,” what “I”! He went here, there; he scanned the inner layers; nowhere did he find any “I.” Slowly he began to become peaceful. In that very search he began to grow quiet. When the sun was rising, an unprecedented radiance was on his face.

Bodhidharma said: That’s enough. Open your eyes and answer. Were you able to catch it or not? Wu began to laugh. He said: I could not catch it—but by your great grace you have quieted it. It cannot be found. If it is not, what restlessness can there be!

All the experiments of meditation, of witnessing, move in this very direction.

So I would say to Pragya: fear arises—this is natural—because you have assumed that you exist and that you must vanish. But what we are saying is altogether different: we are saying you do not exist at all. Just know this, and the disappearing has happened. And the moment disappearing happens, the Divine is revealed. Here Wu disappeared; there the Divine appeared. The curtain lifted, and that which was hidden became manifest.

This fear arises because the mind is not yet bored with this restlessness, with this ego. The mind is not yet sated.

I myself hesitate—how can I claim divine madness?
I still somewhat relish this prison of doors and roofs.

I am afraid, I hesitate: how can I even claim the ecstasy of God now, how can I say I am mad to attain the Beloved!

I myself hesitate—how can I claim divine madness?
I still somewhat relish this prison of doors and roofs.

Even now, this prison bounded by doors and roofs—there is an attachment to it. How can I claim freedom yet? I am still enamored of this prison.

We say we feel afraid of disappearing because the journey of the ego is not yet fulfilled. The experience that the ego reaches nowhere has not yet become deep. There is still the foolishness: “I will accomplish something.” “I will show the world something.” “Let me try a little more. Don’t erase the ‘I’ so soon. Perhaps something is just about to arrive—who knows! True, nothing has come so far; but it may come tomorrow, who knows! The day after tomorrow!” So we keep trying a little more, a little more.

You are still attached to the prison. The day it is seen that this is a prison, who can stop you? It is you who are holding on. You are clutching the bars of your own cage. You are holding them. The door is open; the day you decide, you will step out. The Divine is present within you; the day you decide, you will know.

But right now you have hopes from this “I.” Because of those hopes, the obstacle arises. Fear also arises when you hear that you will have to disappear. When you hear Paltu saying: “I went to seek the Beloved, and I myself got lost,” you feel alarmed—should one go seeking such a dear one only to be lost?

Right now your love is for yourself; there is no other love in your life. Even if you involve yourself in talk of love and the like, that too is love of oneself. The Upanishads say: Which husband loves his wife? A husband loves his wife for his own sake. From the wife, pleasure comes—but for himself. Which wife loves her husband? From the husband come security, love, comfort—but the attention is on oneself. Here everyone loves oneself. Here everyone is engaged in worship of the ego. In all the temples here, the worship of the ego is going on. Here you have made an idol of your own self; before it you have set the plate and perform the aarti. Look closely. And that is precisely why love does not happen—how can love happen? Because of this ego, how can love happen?

Love means: now I am not—only you are. Even in small loves, this is so. The day the lover can say to his beloved, “Now I am not—only you are,” and the day the beloved can say to her lover, “Now I am not—only you are”—one cannot even say it; rather, such a state of feeling arises—on that day a ray of love descends. And on that day, even in small love, the awareness of the Divine begins to dawn.

First of all, don’t say—even by mistake—that “you and all the saints say this.” I am saying something else. I am not telling you to drop passions and rise above them. I am telling you exactly the opposite: live your passions—only then will you be able to rise beyond them. Otherwise passions will go on arising, will keep coming.

I have supreme trust in life. As life is, there is nothing in it to be renounced; everything is to be experienced. It is through experience that movement happens. Now, if you sit down and try to meditate while your desires lie unsatisfied and the mind is eager to enjoy a thousand passions—then as you sit to meditate, the mind will throw up desires. The mind does not raise desires for no reason. The mind is saying: Why are you wasting time? These are the days to taste a little joy. These are the days to savor the body’s juice. These are the days to revel in beauty. Let there be song and dance now. Why sit here trying to fix the mind in meditation? The mind is saying, First be free of the world.

Many people want to ripen while still unripe; that is the hindrance. If you try to ripen raw, you will rot—you won’t ripen. Let ripening happen. Why such panic? What is the hurry?

This question has been asked by Prajna. She has been here a long time. She is young; but she is full of repressed desires. In any other ashram she would be considered religious; here, she is the most irreligious young woman of all. There are repressed passions—and a great opposition, an enmity toward desire. There is condemnation of everything. That is the obstruction.

Now, this question is hers. She asks: again and again the mind wanders into many kinds of desires. If it didn’t wander, what else would it do? There is a strong opposition to those desires. There is no acceptance. And without acceptance, without welcoming them, understanding will not arise. Desires are futile—this is true. But that futility must become visible to you; by my saying so, they won’t become futile. The saints may have said it. Nothing happens just because they said it. They spoke after knowing. Paltu Das turned back after he had known. And Prajna wants to turn—without knowing! Paltu turned through the experience of the world; he saw it was insubstantial. He did not hear it with his ears; he saw it with his eyes. Through experience he saw there is no essence in it. The day this ripening came, this maturity arrived, that day he turned back—and never looked back. Why look back when there was nothing there? What was there to look at?

Prajna too wants to become a Paltu. But in her mind the world still has substance. And the more you suppress the mind, the more substantial it will seem. No one is ever freed by suppression; people are freed only through experience.

So drop this repressed language. Drop this religiosity. Be free of borrowed, secondhand talk and babble. Listen also to what the mind is saying. That mind too belongs to the divine. The mind is saying: for now, climb these steps. Yes, do not get stuck on those very steps—this is true.

There are two kinds of fools in the world. One, out of fear, do not climb the steps at all; they never reach the temple. If you won’t climb the steps, how will you reach the temple? The others climb the steps but then never leave them; they sit right there. They too never reach the temple. If you cling to the steps, how will you reach the temple? Climb the steps, and also leave the steps. One day, hold; another day, let go. This is life’s balance. In life, everything is to be known; there is nothing that should not be known. And in knowing, liberation is hidden.

So to Prajna I would say: your tendency is deeply repressed. You are religious in the old, sickly mold. You have come here; my words please you; but the machinery of your mind, its structure, is made of very rigid doctrines. You are full of prejudice. Your mind is already stuffed with judgments; there is condemnation of everything. Everything is wrong. The world is nothing but sin. So one must escape the world. And you are not even of much age yet.

Even at a young age one can get out—but not by escape. One can get out by experiencing. One can get out even at a young age—if the experience is lived with great awareness. One experience is enough to be free of a thing. Get angry once—and if a person has complete understanding, that one anger is sufficient; he will not be angry again. Why repeat the same thing? It’s seen, it’s known; nothing was gained; the matter is finished.

The foolish person repeats. The wise becomes free even through a single experience. But no one has ever been so wise as to become free without experience. Keep this in mind. There have been people so wise they were freed by one experience. And there are many fools who are not freed even after many experiences. To such people Paltu calls out—“Even now, wake up, you simpleton!” Paltu is not saying: wake up on the first day. Paltu is saying: now at least wake up! After so many experiences, wake up now! But if there has been no experience at all, no one is so intelligent as to awaken. At least one experience is indispensable. To know the insubstantial, the experience of the insubstantial is indispensable.

So drop doctrines of suppression. Make the mind natural and simple. Otherwise this inner contradiction keeps happening.

Among those who are with me here, the ones moving most swiftly are precisely those whose minds hold no repressed doctrines; who have no notion of sin—this is sin, that is sin; who don’t carry guilt; who have no concept of sin; who are willing, with great simplicity of heart, to enter into life’s experiences—without any prior doctrine, without prejudice. Their liberation is near. They are growing. And those who are stuffed with doctrines—this is wrong, that is wrong; who have already assumed what is wrong and what is right without knowing; who are clutching their doctrines tightly—such stubborn, obstinate, and repressed people have no possibility of growth with me.

A revolution can happen in your life here—but you must fulfill one condition. The condition is: put your junk theories aside. Otherwise those same junk theories will keep gnawing at your head. You will meditate, and desires will arise. Desires are only saying: First, complete us. They are making their claim. They are saying: Settle our account first; pay our debt. Pay the debt and then go—fine. Without paying the debt...

And remember: the person who passes through desires and becomes free of them gains a certain richness in life; and the person who tries to slip past desires somehow acquires a certain poverty, a fearfulness. Fear will remain, because he will always be afraid that some desire may catch hold of him again.

When Buddha was born, astrologers told his father that he would either become a sannyasin or a universal emperor. Buddha’s father was frightened. He asked for a way to prevent his becoming a renunciate. The pundits—old-style pundits, no doubt—said: Arrange it so he has no experience of death, and gather around him as many of the most beautiful women as you can. From childhood, let him grow amidst pleasure and color. Let him be raised in absolute luxury. Do not let sorrow touch him. Don’t let him know that in life there is suffering, there is death, that a man can become old. They went so far as to say: not a single flower in his garden should wither, otherwise he will wonder, Why has the flower withered? And from that, a feeling for renunciation might arise! Not a single dry leaf should remain in his garden. Keep him hidden. Build the most beautiful palaces for him.

So the father did just that. He built beautiful palaces—different ones for different seasons. He gathered the most beautiful young women from the whole kingdom. From childhood Buddha was raised in great luxury. And that became the very cause of his renunciation. Because of that, he became a sannyasin; otherwise, he might not have. Had he lived an ordinary life, perhaps it might not have happened; perhaps two or four more lives would have been needed. But such dense pleasure came—and yet no joy came. The most beautiful women were there—and yet no experience of beauty. He grew bored quickly. He passed through desire—fast. There remained nothing more in desire; he saw it all. All that was to be seen, he saw; nothing was gained. Early, while still young, dispassion arose; he left home and went to the forest.

If Buddha’s father later asked those pundits where the mistake had been, they would have said: You did not complete the arrangement. When he went out on the road, he saw a sick man. So the story goes. When he went out, he saw a corpse. This should not have happened. From this, questions arose in his mind—life comes to an end. Because of this he left. You did not manage things as we had said.

My view is: it was precisely because of their arrangements that Buddha left.

That is why passing through all of life’s experiences is the method of liberation. In Buddha’s buddhahood those pundits had a great hand—unknowingly. His father had a great hand—unknowingly. They intended something else; something else happened. Buddha saw all that the world could give. He saw it quickly. By the time he was twenty-five, he had seen all the pleasures. The man who keeps thinking till seventy-five—he had seen it all by twenty-five; it was finished. Nothing remained. At twenty-five, Buddha had grown old—old in the way a man normally becomes at seventy-five.

Hindus say: at seventy-five a man should become a sannyasin; Buddha became a sannyasin at twenty-five. Because in ordinary life, pleasures do not come in such abundance, not gathered together, not wholesale—they come retail, bit by bit; it takes till seventy-five for them to arrive. In Buddha’s life they came wholesale; they poured in all at once. By twenty-five, all was complete.

If you are in my ashram, keep in mind: I am not a supporter of repression. I am a supporter of experience. The desires that arise again and again in your mind—fulfill them. Why be so frightened of a desire? They are steps—climb them. Yes, do not get caught holding onto the steps. Which steps ever grab hold of anyone? Just don’t grasp the steps yourself, that’s all. I’ve never heard of stairs catching someone. So why fear the stairs? Place your feet, climb. Pass through. You will reach the temple.

Only by climbing the stairs of desire does one reach prayer. And only by climbing the stairs of thought does one reach no-thought. The world is the arrangement, the challenge, for going to the divine.

Drop opposition. Drop suppression. Drop negation.

I don’t know about all the saints, because among your so‑called saints most are not saints at all. Out of a hundred of your saints, perhaps one is a saint; the other ninety‑nine are as sick as you are—and often far more chronically sick. But you understand the language of those ninety‑nine, because they speak the language of your disease. The one who is a real saint—you don’t understand his language. I am choosing to speak about those few, those one‑in‑a‑hundred saints, so I can sift for you who the real saints are. There are too many non‑saints; they’re not worth counting. I keep speaking on saints. They are not many. Your “all saints” are not saints—and certainly Pragya’s “all saints” cannot be. For her, those she calls saints will be the sick and deranged—because her mind, her way of thinking, her chain of logic is repression: anti‑body, anti‑world.

“You and all the saints say that once one is free of the mind it becomes easier to approach God.”
It’s not that it becomes easier once you are free of mind; the moment you are free of mind, you have arrived. What more ease could there be? What difficulty remains? The moment you are free of mind, you know you have always been in God. Because you were clutching the mind, you kept getting lost and confused.

“But becoming free of mind feels impossible.”
It will remain impossible, Pragya—at least in the way you want it. In the way you have tried, no one has ever become free. In that way people become deranged, not liberated. That is not the path of release; it is the path of unbalance.

Freedom from mind is impossible if there is no experiencing. You have to experience the mind. You must pass through the mind’s pains. You must examine the mind’s pleasures. In the end one finds there is no real pleasure in the mind; it is suffering through and through. But that is found at the end, not in the first hour.

Remember, life is not some key‑book, not a math book where the questions are in front and, if you turn to the back, the answers are printed there. Little children do that. They quickly peek at the answers—now they “know” the answer and they “know” the question, but they don’t know the method in between. Then they’re in a mess. They think they know everything necessary—the question, the answer—but they have no idea of the steps in between. Now it’s hard to put up the ladder. Even the correct answer is useless. What will you do with it?

The answer must come through your own method; only then is it an answer. You cannot steal answers. In this school of life, you cannot copy.

Even if a true master sits before you, you cannot manage with his answers. You will have to find your own. God honors your individuality. Until you find, you will not be counted as having found.

So yes, it is impossible if you proceed timidly and refuse to experience the web of the mind’s imaginings. If you experience it, it is utterly simple. Forget “impossible”—it is utterly simple. Nothing is simpler, because the experiences of the mind never, anywhere, bring real happiness. So you can’t stay entangled forever; sooner or later one comes out. How long can you get caught in a mirage? If it is only a dream, you will have to wake up. You can look at a dream for a long time, but no fulfillment will come.

Imagine someone slept at night after fasting all day; he is hungry, and he dreams he has been invited to a royal palace, is seated for a meal, delicious dishes have been prepared, and he eats and keeps on eating! But will there be any real satiety? When his eyes open in the morning, he will find himself as hungry as ever.

Such are the mind’s pleasures. When the eyes open, you find they were just castles in the air; there was no truth anywhere. They bring neither fulfillment nor nourishment. But one has to pass through them. Something about the process is unavoidable.

There are three rungs in man: body, mind, soul. And then there is the fourth state: turiya. As Paltu says, “Seated in the fourth, I now sell only the fourth!” That fourth state is the Divine. If you try to skip past the body, trouble will come; you won’t reach the mind. If you try to skip past the mind, you won’t reach the soul. And if you try to skip past the soul, you won’t reach God.

Climb upon the body with courage; become the master of the body. There is no need to be afraid of it. This horse can be reined. But if you sit upon it in fear, you will never become its master. Step onto the rung of the body. Step onto the rung of the mind, too. The mind displays a net of many desires. Choose among them; there aren’t that many. If you look closely, they can be counted on your fingers. How many desires are there, really? Because you repress, a single desire appears in thousands of forms. If you actually live it through, it is finished.

Climb through the mind and the soul is found.

Some people are stuck at the body. Their whole way of life is fixed there. Many of these are considered religious: fasting, ritual baths, sacred thread—this and that—all body‑business. They go to the Ganges, go on pilgrimages; but they have not gone beyond the body. If a Shudra touches them, they must bathe—body‑logic, as if the body were everything. They go on scrubbing the body clean, but no inner purity comes from that. They will cook their own food, lest something impure enter from another’s touch! But food goes into the body; it doesn’t go beyond the body.

Some people are entangled in the mind. Their whole trouble is: How to be free of desire, of thought, of mental movements? Since Patanjali said “chitta‑vritti‑nirodha”—cessation of the modifications of mind—“only then is yoga,” they keep wrestling there. They grow sick, unbalanced, crazed. Somehow, outwardly, they strap on restraints, but inside the fire of unrestrainedness burns.

Some go beyond even that and get stuck in the soul—stuck in the sense of I, in atta, in ego.

One who goes beyond even that reaches God.

These three are the rungs of life; they are to be gone beyond. Beyond these three rungs is the temple of the Lord. But only through experience can anyone cross. Only by climbing, by passing through, can one cross.

Do not be afraid—do not be afraid of life. Life is auspicious. All its forms are auspicious. Pass through them all with awareness.

Now Pragya says, “Again and again desires arise. And with much carefulness a little awareness comes, and again the mind starts flowing into fantasies.”
This “little awareness” that comes with so much carefulness is awareness brought by effort. It’s worth two pennies; it has no real value. Awareness should come from experience. Awareness should be natural. Kabir says: sahaj samadhi is best—natural absorption. If you somehow drag it in by effort, it will last only a moment. It’s like my telling you to love someone and you manage by effort to “love”—how long will it last? The moment you relax, it’s gone.

If love happens, it stays. How can it come by effort? Just so, love does not come by effort; nor does meditation. And this effort is driven by fear: “Lest a desire arise.” So by effort you try to keep careful, and inside a battle is going on: between desire and meditation. If you make a battle between desire and meditation, desire will win; meditation will not.

It is like making a flower fight with a stone. The stone will win; the flower cannot. Though the flower is a higher state and the stone a lower, remember: whenever you make the lower and the higher fight, the lower will win; the higher will not. Because the higher is delicate; it is like a flower.

Do not make the vast fight with the petty in life. Do not pit a club against a sitar; the club will win, the sitar will lose. And this doesn’t mean the sitar is weak—only that it is superior, higher, subtle. Do not pit the gross against the subtle. Yet this is what people do: they make the gross fight the subtle. They set desire against meditation. Desire is like a stone; meditation like a flower. In such a match, meditation will be defeated again and again. Tie this knot well.

Never pit God against the world, or the world will win and God will lose. It is no fault of God; your mistake was to make God fight the world.

God is the ultimate, the subtlest—the fragrance, the music, the beauty. If you pit him against the coarseness of the world, he will be shattered, broken, scattered. God is not attained by fighting. Nor is meditation—only by understanding.

So I say to you: when desire arises, do not force meditation. When desire arises, understand the desire. What is its message? What is your mind trying to tell you? Where does it want to take you? Listen to it. It is your mind; if you won’t listen, who will? If it lodges a complaint, where else can it go? It too has wishes. If it doesn’t tell you, whom can it tell? It is thirsty and you are trying to meditate! It is hungry and you are trying to meditate! Listen to it! It isn’t asking for anything terribly difficult—thirst, hunger, sex, love—small things. Give them. And remain aware; watch: even when it is given this much food, is it satisfied or not? Even when it gets this much opportunity for love, does it taste real juice or not? Gradually, when you catch this one fact—no matter how much you give, it doesn’t find the juice—then you will see that giving will not solve anything.

But be careful: don’t be hasty. Let this ripen within you. Not because I said it—“Whatever is heard by the ears is false.” The day this voice arises from within your own experience—“This mind will remain unsatisfied; unsatisfiability is its nature. Desire is dushpoor—it cannot be filled”—the day you understand this, mind will drop. And then an unbroken awareness begins to burn. A lamp is born—a wakefulness that is not brought in from outside, that is natural. Friends, sahaj samadhi is best.

It is because I am not; because I am not the one who is speaking.
When Ashtavakra speaks, I let him speak. When Buddha speaks, I let Buddha speak; I do not come in between. And when Palatu Das speaks, I let Palatu Das speak. Why should I interfere? When I let Dariya speak, I let Dariya speak. I am only a medium.
I am not a commentator. These are not commentaries; no exegesis is happening. I simply give an opportunity: Palatu Das, sing again, speak again. It has been long; people haven’t heard you. It has been long; people have forgotten you. Live again through my pretext. Through me, address people once more.
I only become an instrument.
So my “commentary” is not like Lokmanya Tilak’s commentary on the Gita, or like Mahatma Gandhi’s commentary on the Gita. They have their own fixed views and look for those views in the Gita. I have no view. I am view-less. Empty, from a state of inner void, I let the one I am speaking on speak for himself.
Therefore, when I speak on Buddha, naturally Buddha’s incisiveness, Buddha’s clarity, Buddha’s logic will shine forth. And when I speak on Dariya, or Palatu, or Kabir, then their quirky sayings, their love-soaked utterances, their love-drenched songs, their ecstasy will shimmer. With Buddha I become Buddha; with Palatu I become Palatu. I do not inject my own view. I have no view. I am not a philosopher.
Naturally, then, at times you may feel uneasy. At times you will see contradictions—of course. Because Buddha speaks one way, Dariya speaks another way, Dadu a third. Such an experiment has not been attempted on this earth before, so I understand your difficulty. This is happening for the first time. Jains did not write commentaries on the Gita—why would they? Hindus did not comment on Mahavira’s words; they did not even mention Mahavira, let alone comment on his sayings. Hindus did not look into the Dhammapada, nor did Muslims concern themselves with the Vedas; nor do Christians speak on the Quran. Everyone has their fixed grooves, their own dogmas. No one goes beyond the boundaries of their own beliefs.
I have no dogma; I am neither Hindu, nor Muslim, nor Jain, nor Christian. I have no little courtyard; the whole sky is mine. When you listen to such a vast sky, you will feel afraid. You have the capacity to accommodate small courtyards. Such an immense sky will erase you, wipe you clean—and that is precisely the work underway.
If I were to keep speaking only along a single thread of doctrine—say, only on Buddha, or only on those in Buddha’s lineage: Buddha, Vasubandhu, Nagarjuna, Bodhidharma, Dharmakirti, Chandrakirti—then gradually I would crystallize your intellectual identity; I would build a courtyard around you. Then if you kept listening to me, you would become Buddhists. If I spoke only on Muslim fakirs, then, listening and listening, if you got attached to me, you would become Muslims.
Today I speak on a Muslim, tomorrow on a Hindu, the day after on a Buddhist. I do not want to let you settle anywhere—nowhere at all. Before you manage to settle in, before you start hammering pegs to pitch the tent and sleep, I say: Enough, get up, it’s morning, we must move. You get annoyed too, many times: at least let us rest a little. It was feeling right; you yourself had made it feel right—this place is beautiful, rest here. Taking your word—though it was a hassle at first to agree with you—somehow we agreed, drove the pegs, cleared the ground, were just laying out the bedding, lighting the stove—and the time to move arrived.
There are reasons.
Our home is in the void; our rest is in the limitless.
I will not let you settle anywhere. Rest is in the limitless! Wherever there are limits, I will not let you stop. The day you can say, “Now the sky is our tent, the earth our bedding; all religions are ours and we are of all religions”—that day I will say, Now sleep at ease; rest has come in the limitless. So long as I see you building little courtyards—you're always in a hurry, you are so quick to grab one point and say, Fine, home has been found—as soon as I sense that a house has been found, that it is getting hold of you, I begin to dismantle your house.
So sometimes I speak of intelligence, and sometimes beyond intelligence—sometimes odd, tangential talk. Sometimes of logic, and sometimes of the illogical. I must not let you stop anywhere.
This experiment is happening for the first time on earth. So you are unfamiliar with it. Your unfamiliarity brings difficulty, brings trouble. You want somehow to quickly form a belief. You say: just say clearly once what is right, so that we can relax. You want to be a pond, and I want you to be a river. That is the struggle between you and me. You say: quickly tell us this place is right, that we have arrived at the right spot; let us become a pond and live at ease, and don’t harry us again—don’t say again, Move on, keep moving, keep moving.
I want you to be a river. Only as a river will you meet the ocean. Do ponds ever find the ocean? You are stuck in ponds, and suffering. As Palatu says: as the water dries, the fish writhes. The pond begins to dry, someone comes to catch and kill the fish, and where once there was water there remains only dry earth, clods of dirt, cracked ground.
Become a river! Become a flow! Do not stop anywhere! There is no place to stop. Drop stopping itself. Be movement, be dynamic.
My sannyas is dynamic. My disciple will not stop—before the limitless he will not stop. And upon arriving in the limitless, what movement is there then? You have reached the ocean. That is why I speak of all these halting places. These are all ghats along the Ganges. I am taking you on the entire pilgrimage of the Ganges. A ghat comes; you say, What a lovely ghat! I too praise that ghat. You begin to say, Then let us tie up the boat, let’s disembark—have we reached Kashi? I say, Wait—where are we yet? This ghat is lovely, but we are not to stop. Enjoy the ghat; while passing this ghat, pass with a sense of wonder. It is a beautiful ghat. But we must arrive in the void, arrive in the limitless.
Our home is in the void; our rest is in the limitless!
That’s all for today.