Bahutere Hain Ghat #1

Anand Divya, the human mind is the principle of division within man. As long as there is mind, there is division. The mind is not one; it is many. Go beyond mind and you have gone beyond the many. The moment the mind drops and thoughts fall away, difference disappears, duality dissolves, the two-ness and the indecision are gone. What then remains is inexpressible—because expression must happen in thought, and once it enters thought it is fragmented again. Beyond the mind lies the realm of the undivided. Beyond the mind there is no “I,” no “you.” Beyond the mind there is no Hindu, no Muslim, no Christian. Beyond the mind there is nectar, godliness, truth—and its taste is one.

How one reaches that no-mind is another matter. As many minds, so many possible paths—because each must begin the journey from where he is. Therefore every pilgrimage will be different. Buddha will reach in his way, Mahavira in his way, Jesus in his, Zarathustra in his.

But that way, that style, that method is left behind when the goal arrives. Paths exist only until the goal is reached. Steps are needed only until you come to the temple door. The very moment the goal arrives, the path vanishes and so does the traveler. There is no path there, and no pilgrim—just as a river disappears into the ocean.

It does not really disappear; it becomes the ocean. From one side, it loses itself—loses itself as a river; and it is good that the river is lost. A river is limited, bound, held between banks. From the other side, the river becomes the ocean. This is a great attainment. Nothing is lost—only chains are lost, the prison is lost, the boundary is lost, and the boundless is found! Nothing has been staked, yet the whole treasure of life and truth is gained; the entire kingdom is gained. The river loses itself to become the ocean—but only by losing itself. And each river will arrive in its own way: the Ganges in her way, the Indus in hers, the Brahmaputra in yet another. But all reach the ocean. And the ocean’s taste is one.

This is what Paltu is saying: just as the river is one, the ghats are many.

If one has to cross the river, one can cross from many different ghats. One can sit in different boats. There can be different boatmen. The oars will be different. But once you reach the other shore, all differences disappear. Who then asks, “By which boat did you come? Who was your boatman? Which carpenter made your boat? Was it made of this wood or that?” Reaching the far shore, all this shore is forgotten. These ghats, this river, these oars, these boatmen—all are forgotten the moment you step onto the farther bank. And it is only that farther bank we have to reach.

But people are mad. They get attached to boats, they get attached to ghats. And if you are attached to a ghat, how will you ever cross? He who has fallen in love with the very ghat, who is attached to the ghat, who has poured his affection onto the ghat, has himself hammered in a stake. Now he will not leave. He cannot leave. Even if you try to free him, he will be angry: “You are tearing me away from my ghat, from my religion, from my scripture!” That which he takes to be scripture has become his death. And that which he takes to be a ghat—if it does not take him across, it is not a ghat; it is a grave.

That is how temples have become graves, mosques have become mausoleums. Scriptures have become burdens on humanity’s chest. Beautiful, lovely words have become chains in man’s hands, shackles on his feet. Man’s prison is built of very fine, very dear bricks. One does not feel like leaving it. Therefore everyone is imprisoned. The prisons can be different—church, gurdwara, temple, Shiva-shrine—what difference does it make? Where you are bound does not matter.

I have heard: one night a few men drank a little too much. It was a full-moon night, very beautiful—silver light was showering everywhere. In their ecstasy, the night’s beauty was magnified a thousand times. One drunk said, “Come, tonight let’s go boating. Such a lovely night! Never have I seen, never have I heard of such a moon! This is not a night for sleeping; it is a night for gliding in a boat.” The other madcaps liked the idea. They all went to the river. The boatmen had tied up their boats and gone home. They chose a fine boat, climbed in, picked up the oars, and began to row—and rowed and rowed deep into the night.

Toward dawn a cool breeze arose. The coolness reduced their intoxication a little. One of the drunks said, “Who knows how far we have come! We have rowed all night. Now it’s time to return. Someone get down and see which direction we have gone in. We were drunk; we don’t know where we’ve reached—north, east, west—wherever we are now. We need to go back home. So someone get down on the bank and find out where we are. If you can’t tell, ask someone whether we went north, east or west.”

One man got down—and burst into peals of laughter. He laughed and laughed so much that the others thought he had gone mad. His laughter sobered them even more. They asked, “What’s the matter?” He couldn’t speak—he was laughing so hard he had to hold his belly. Another got down; he too began to laugh. A third; he too laughed. They all got down, and a crowd gathered at the ghat because all of them were laughing. With difficulty one of them said, “Here’s the story: last night we went boating—such a lovely night! We rowed all night long; we were exhausted, dripping with sweat. And now getting off we have seen that we forgot to untie the boat from the post. The whole night’s journey went to waste; we are exactly where we were. When we rowed hard, the boat rocked; we thought we were traveling.”

So are people tied—unaware, in a swoon. And whatever you grab in unconsciousness becomes your stake; you circle around it.

People are doing circumambulations in temples—circling stakes. People go to the Kaaba, to Kashi, to the Ganges, to Kailash, to Girnar—worship of stakes is going on. No one cares to ask: centuries have gone by, we are tired of rowing—where have we reached? They have no sense of arriving.

Ghats can be dangerous. In the hands of the unconscious, anything becomes dangerous. And every ghat-keeper claims, “Mine is the ancient ghat, mine is gilded with gold, mine alone is true and all others are false; only he who descends from my ghat will reach.”

A great dispute is raging. For centuries people have been arguing scriptures—What is truth? The blind are debating what the elephant is like. One who has touched the trunk says, “It’s like this.” One who has touched the ear says, “It’s like a winnowing fan.” One who has touched the leg says, “It’s like the pillars of a temple.” A heavy dispute among the blind, a heavy scholastic quarrel—each out to prove the other wrong. But no one is aware that without eyes how can there be vision, and without vision how can there be seeing?

These philosophies which entangle people are inventions of the blind. Those with eyes fall silent. They fall silent about truth, about the divine. If they speak at all, they speak of methods by which one can reach the divine. Their speaking is a gesture, a finger pointing to the moon and stars. But the finger is not the moon. To clutch the finger is foolishness.

Paltu is right: just as the river is one, the ghats are many.

Existence is one. In it, some have reached truth like Moses, some like Jesus, some like Kabir, some like Nanak—through different paths, with different styles and methods. But no one arrives by clinging to methods; one arrives by walking them. No one reaches by carrying boats on his head; you must sit in the boat and journey.

Sitting on the shore and arguing is useless. Leave the shore! Untie the boat, lift the oars! That far shore which you cannot yet even see, for which you don’t yet have the eyes to see, which you don’t yet have the capacity to recognize—that far shore is the goal. That which is as yet invisible is the goal. And the wonder is: however far it seems, it is also within you.

Understand it this way: you are outside yourself, therefore what is nearest has become far. You wander farther and farther outside yourself; you go ever more distant from yourself. How strange man is! He will climb Everest; there is nothing to be gained there.

When Edmund Hillary was asked, “Why? For what did you undertake this terrible, dangerous journey?”—before him, who knows how many expeditions tried and were lost; who knows how many fell, and their bodies were never found. For seventy years this went on. Many lives were lost on the Everest expedition. And it is certain there was nothing to gain there. Hillary shrugged and said, “Is that even a question? Everest exists—that is challenge enough. It is as yet unclimbed—that is challenge enough. It has remained inaccessible—that is challenge enough. Man must climb.” As if gain is not the point at all.

The ego accepts strange challenges: to climb Everest, to go to the moon. Now plans are for Mars. And it will not stop there—then to the planets farther, then to the stars. And the expanse of the stars is infinite. Thus man goes farther and farther from himself.

The true shore is not outside. These many ghats exist only because you have gone out on many outward journeys. You have gone very far from yourself. You no longer have news of where you left yourself, in which forest you forgot yourself, where you lost yourself. Your gaze is fixed on something else—on someone’s wealth, someone’s status, someone’s God, someone’s heaven, someone’s liberation. But the gaze is outward; you want to reach there. The matter is different: you are there; you must reach here. You have gone far; you must return near. Gradually, gently, you must come back to that point which is your center. Upon reaching that, all secrets open; the veiled mysteries become unveiled.

The Rishi of the Upanishads prayed: “O Supreme! Remove the golden lid that covers this vessel!” A lovely prayer. “Remove the golden lid!” It is covered by gold. And because it is covered by gold, we clutch at the lid itself. Who would let go of such a beautiful lid? We hold it tight lest someone else seize it. But the secret is covered precisely by this gold. And until one lets go of this gold…

The word “gold” itself is sweet here—one meaning is “gold,” another is “sleep.” It is those full of sleep who cling to gold. This is the lid: sleep, unconsciousness, swoon. Wake up! How to wake? There can be many ghats.

Mahavira awakened in one way, Buddha in another. Naturally, when one awakens he speaks of the method by which he awakened. How else can he speak? He will speak of the path familiar to him. He can acquaint you with the boat in which he journeyed. But don’t conclude from this that there is only one boat. This is what has been concluded.

Christians think: unless one sits in Jesus’ boat one will not reach.

But they do not even consider—how did Jesus himself reach? At that time there was no “Jesus’ boat.” It’s plain: Jesus was not a Christian. He had never even heard the word “Christian,” not even in dreams. If Jesus could arrive without being a Christian, why can’t others arrive?

Buddhists think their path alone is the sole path. But Buddha had no idea of any such path. He groped, searched, and in the dark somehow found this door. That it is called the Buddhist door—he could never even have imagined. He reached without ever being a Buddhist.

This is true for all. Whoever has reached has not reached by walking someone else’s path. He has to reach from his own ghat. Each must reach from his own ghat. Each must craft his own boat—out of the wood of his own awareness. He has to walk—and by walking carve his own path. There are no ready-made roads. If only there were ready-made roads, macadamized highways! Then buses would run to truth, trains on tracks; people would speed along. There would be no difficulty. The difficulty is: there is no ready-made path.

Remember Buddha’s words: Just as birds fly in the sky and leave no footprints, the bird surely flies, but no path is made; the sky remains empty. No other bird can fly by tracing the footprints of the first. No footprints are formed.

So it is with the sky of truth. No footprints are made there. Yet people worship footprints. They have fabricated footprints. Footprints are made on the sand of time; but truth is beyond time, beyond temporal flow—there, no footprints are formed. There each must walk, and step by step, by one’s own inner awakening, shape one’s own way.

Not imitation—being oneself is essential. The declaration of one’s own uniqueness is essential.

But for centuries you have been taught to clutch at some ghat, some boat, some scripture, some fixed doctrine, to keep repeating second-hand, stale answers from centuries past.

Life keeps asking ever-new questions and your answers are always old. Hence there is no harmony, no music between life and you. Life asks one thing; you answer another. Life asks of the east; you answer the west. Life never repeats the same question twice. Your answers are those your fathers and grandfathers gave, and theirs before them. The more ancient an answer, people think, the truer it must be. The more ancient, the more false! The answer must be new, ever-fresh! It must arise from your own self-luminosity. It must come from your own awareness.

But for centuries you have been fed stupidity, trained into dullness; superstitions have been poured into your head. Thus humanity has come to this sorry pass—and your so-called saints bear responsibility for it; your religious leaders bear responsibility; all those people bear responsibility whose intentions may have been good, whose motives noble, but whose understanding was nil. If a blind man, however good his intentions, takes your hand to lead you, Nanak has said: “When the blind lead the blind, both fall into the well.” Intentions were good; he was trying to guide. There is no doubt about his intent. But if he has no eyes, what can intentions do?

Those with eyes have always said: Appo Deepo Bhava—be a light unto yourself. They have given you freedom, individuality. They have said: within you a flame is hidden—seek it, polish it! They have asked: why do you drink wines from outside? Within you is the wine of wines, which once drunk brings a drunkenness that never fades; a drunkenness that is not unconsciousness, but a drunkenness that is also awareness—awareness saturated with ecstasy, or ecstasy saturated with awareness.

There is wine, the decanter too, the gathering and the evening as well—
yet in waiting for you, even this cup remained empty.
Union is your promise—come, the dawn is near:
the raptures are awake, and even the evening has fallen asleep.
No messenger came this way, nor message reached that side—
both are caught in perplexity: the longing and the missive too.
My breath could not depart, nor did you become companion—so in your memory
both poets burned, and their poems as well.
Why, O “Khalish,” are you so out of sorts, seeing the mood estranged?
Granted, in autumn both the cupbearer and the goblets are besieged.
There is wine, the decanter too, the gathering and the evening as well—
yet in waiting for you, even this cup remained empty.

Whom are you waiting for? No one is coming. Whom are you waiting for? That which was to come is already within you. For whom are you sitting in expectation? That which was to come has already come—along with you. That which you seek is hidden in the seeker. It cannot be found anywhere else. He who dives within himself, descends within himself, rests in himself—only he becomes capable of attaining it.

Yes—who attains cannot tell what he has attained. It becomes the sweetmeat of a mute man. Even if he wishes to speak, he cannot. He has wished to speak; whoever has attained has wished to speak—but the matter remains unsaid. No scripture has managed to say it; no scripture ever will. It is impossible—what is experienced in the wordless, how can words express it? What is found in silence, how can it be translated into language? Therefore satsang has value.

Satsang simply means the art of sitting near one who has attained, the mode of being quietly present near him, the art of looking into his eyes. In his presence something can happen. It will happen within you—but his presence can become a device to awaken what sleeps within you.

You must have seen many times: if four gloomy people are sitting and you go to them laughing and humming, you become gloomy. Their gloom absorbs your laughter like blotting paper drinks ink. Suddenly you find your songs have flown away, your joy has vanished, clouds have gathered—just now the sun was out, and now it is dark. What happened? Their presence did something within you; their sadness stirred your own sleeping sadness.

What happens with sadness happens with joy as well. You are sad, and four cheerful friends arrive; laughter breaks out, merriment begins—you forget your sadness and join the song. If they begin to dance, your feet too start to throb and tingle.

You have seen it: a dancer dances and even if you cannot dance, something in your feet begins to move; even if you know nothing of music, rhythm, or beat, your fingers begin to tap—if only on the arm of your chair.

So it is in satsang. One who has attained cannot be affected by you. Even if millions sit in gloom around him, they cannot fragment his joy. His ecstasy cannot be stolen. But a single such one can strike chords of joy in millions of hearts.

This cannot be said—and yet it is communicated in the wordless. It showers only in silence.

It is not possible that I could again set the festal gathering of delight;
now even this is much—that I can remember you.
What is this enchantment, that from your place of radiance
I can neither draw near nor go far away?
Between the relish of sight and the springtimes,
such curtains have fallen as I cannot lift.
How will you reassure the seasons, O folk of the garden,
if even I cannot enter the garden?
In your lovely clime, O my new homeland,
is there anyone whom I can make my own?
“Azad,” on the instrument of the heart, dances a murmuring music—
I can hear it myself, but I cannot make another hear.

There is such a song—one hears it oneself but cannot make another hear it. It cannot be told, yet in silence it is communicated. There is a music that is not played on any instrument; it needs no instrument. It plays in the soul, and whoever is silent, ready to receive it, eager to welcome and drink it, it begins to play within him too. The matter travels from heart to heart—not spoken, not heard.

Paltu’s dictum is sweet: many are the ghats. Therefore do not fight, do not quarrel, do not get entangled in argument and dialectics. Do not obsess over what is right and wrong. That which resonates with your love, with your heart’s taste—walk that. Argument arrests and entangles you—right here on this ghat. Argument fills your mind with so many contradictory opinions that walking becomes difficult. What is right?

People ask me, “How can we set out until it is decided what is right?” How will it be decided? There is no way to decide beforehand. It will be decided only by experience. It is decided at the end; it cannot be decided at the beginning.

Yet their question is understandable. Everyone asks, “How to set out until it is decided?” And unless you set out, it will never be decided. Naturally, those who think they will walk only when reason has proved and all is settled—they never walk. They remain stuck here—in argument.

Argument breeds more argument. It breeds smoke. The eyes, already weak, become weaker. Truth is not a matter of argument; it is a matter of experience.

So descend from any ghat, step into any boat; the decision will come in the end. And it is better—even if you have to wander, then wander, but do not sit idle on the ghat. A wanderer learns. If today you took the wrong boat, if today you journeyed in a wrong direction, tomorrow you can go right. Man learns from mistakes. But those who fear to make mistakes—learning never dawns in their lives. Those who are so cautious that only when everything is settled one hundred percent will they move—they never move.

To move, courage is needed. Reason does not give courage; reason is cowardly, impotent. To move, love is needed. Only love gives the courage to step. Some fell in love with Buddha and set out—not because his arguments proved true, but because love compelled them. Some fell in love with Lao Tzu and set out—and setting out, they arrived.

Listen to the heart. Its language is different; it is not the language of logic—it is the language of love. Put the intellect a little aside. Intellect only breeds dispute; set it aside.

Set intellect aside a little and let love sprout. If even two leaves of love appear, revolution in your life is assured. Two leaves of love are more than enough against mountains of thought. Mountains of thought are of no use; they only crush people beneath them.

Paltu is saying: grant that the ghats are many. Do not argue. Let whoever wishes go by whatever ghat he chooses. You walk by that which is dear to your heart. Remember the journey—walking is the point. Those who walk arrive. And if they wander, they still arrive—because every wandering becomes a teaching.

Remember this maxim: before one knocks on the right door, one must knock on a thousand wrong doors. Of a thousand doors, only one is true. But if you do not knock, how will you leave the nine hundred ninety-nine that are false? What way will you have? Knock! The knock itself will decide: “This is not a door, it is a wall—move on.” Thus, by erring and missing, one’s aim becomes unfailing. By making mistakes, man learns. There has never been any other way.

People ask my sannyasins, “What happened—why did you become a sannyasin?” And my sannyasins naturally get stuck—it is an old, age-old snag—they cannot answer, or whatever answer they give feels insufficient to them. However they try to explain, in their own hearts it is clear: something is missing in my answer.

It cannot be answered. The matter is of love, of devotion. It is a matter of madness, of moths. What answer can a moth give for why it burns in the flame? And who will understand its answer? Only a few other moths will understand—and they need no explanation.

He who sets out to seek truth must be prepared to be ridiculed by the crowd. The crowd will condemn, oppose, deny, ignore. The crowd will call him mad. The crowd will place every obstacle in his way. But no one has ever been able to stop a lover. The truth is, the more one tries to hinder him, the more strength wells up within him. He makes each stone on the road into a step. Lovers do not argue; lovers live without argument. And for those who live without argument, the goal is not far—it has already arrived!

The journey can be completed in a single step; it is a matter of courage. The nectar of nirvana can shower in a single moment; it asks for a heart filled with love. So tell each one: go by the ghat you love—sit in the boat, begin the journey. And let me walk by that which is dear to me.

Paltu speaks this to cut through dispute; he speaks this to cut through pedantry: just as the river is one, the ghats are many. This dictum is sweet, and worthy of every seeker’s remembrance.

Veena Bharti, if you learn to talk to walls, meditation has arrived. Conversations can’t go on long with walls, because walls won’t say anything. They won’t answer. They won’t raise questions. With neither question nor answer, how long can anyone talk to a wall!

About Bodhidharma it is said that he sat facing a wall for nine years. And merely by gazing at the wall he attained supreme enlightenment. There are many paths! Perhaps you never imagined that one could attain supreme awakening by looking at a wall. But one thing is clear: if someone keeps staring at a wall for nine years, how long will you keep the talk going? How long can you drag it on all alone? It will remain a monologue; dialogue cannot happen. The wall is already enlightened. The wall will say, “As you wish—babble if you must. We have already arrived!” How long will you keep up a monologue? The wall won’t even go “uh-huh.” If it at least said “uh-huh,” the discussion could continue. But the wall will simply remain silent. A bare wall!

At first you will project your dreams onto the wall. You will make a screen of it. You will spread your mind’s film on the wall. You will fling your rubbish at it. But for how long? Watching the same film again and again, you will tire, you will get bored. Soon you will understand that the wall is silent; I myself am doing all the blabbering. And what’s the essence of it? The wall doesn’t even nod. No praise, no appreciation. It doesn’t even say, “What a lovely thing you said!” No clapping. The wall will give you no support of any kind.

Bodhidharma sat looking at a wall for nine years, Veena! And in that looking he became as blank as the wall. As silent as the wall, so silent he became. True communion happened. From the wall he received what he could not have received from the greatest scholars. From the wall he gained what is not in the scriptures.

Only the Sufis have a book in which nothing is written; it is blank. It is about a thousand years old. And when that book was first found, the Sufi fakir who had it kept it hidden all his life. He would not let anyone—no, not even his dearest disciple—see it. He wrapped it carefully in a bundle and kept it with him. He even took it when he went to bathe. At night he slept with it under his pillow. For all the disciples’ eyes were on that book—what secret does it hold! There was great longing to see it just once. He would shut all doors and windows before he “read” it. The disciples, full of suspicion and curiosity—as disciples are—climbed onto the roof, peeped through the cracks to see him reading. Surely it contained some secret! He never opened it before anyone.

When that fakir died, the disciples worried about his cremation later; first they pulled the book from beneath the pillow. As if they had only been waiting for him to depart so they could look! And when they opened it, they were dumbfounded. The book was empty. Only blank pages; not a thing written. Since then a thousand years have passed. Masters have kept giving that book to disciples. Nothing is written. Not a single word. From beginning to end it is absolutely empty; just like a wall.

Bodhidharma was more intelligent. Why carry it? The wall is present everywhere; wherever you sit, just keep your gaze on the wall. You have turned temples into garbage heaps; he turned walls into temples.

Veena, don’t worry that talking to walls feels good. Who else will you talk to? Talking to people means talking to the almost deranged—those who know nothing. About God—ask and they are ready to tell. About liberation—ask and they are ready to tell. They are ready to tell even about that of which they have no inkling, not even in dreams. Just ask. No, you don’t even need to ask. The true chatterboxes will grab you by the neck even if you don’t ask.

A little boy was saying to his friend, “My mother is amazing! Give her the slightest pretext and then she won’t stop for hours. One thing leads to another, and another, and another. It’s just as well father has to go to the office, has to bathe—he somehow escapes. Otherwise her talking would never end.”

The other boy said, “That’s nothing. My mother needs no pretext at all. She just starts. Not only that, one day father was sitting quietly, and she said, ‘Why are you sitting quiet?’ And she was off! ‘Has a hyena got you? You’re sitting as if I had died!’ No pretext needed.”

With such people, Veena, what will you talk about? If you talk with them you will certainly go mad. Walls have never driven anyone mad.

You say—
“Talking to walls feels good.
It seems we too will go mad.”

Impossible! If you talk to walls, you cannot go mad. Not a single instance in the history of humankind. There is one mention of Bodhidharma—he talked (or rather, sat) for nine years and attained supreme enlightenment. There is no mention of anyone going mad. Madmen don’t talk to walls. For madmen the whole earth is available. Here there are madmen of the highest order.

Two professors went mad. Even otherwise professors are almost mad—otherwise they wouldn’t be professors. To be mad is the essential qualification. These two went a bit further—beyond the limit—so they were put in an asylum. Space was short, so both were kept in the same room. A psychologist was eager to know what they talked about. He hid by the wall and listened. He peeped through the keyhole and listened. He was astonished, because there was no rhyme or reason in their talk, no coherence at all. One spoke of the sky, the other of the netherworld—no connection. But one thing was striking: when one spoke, the other sat completely silent and listened, even nodded now and then. When the first finished, the second began and the first fell silent and nodded now and then. Yet there was no connection between the two monologues—no thread. That astonished him. That they both babbled was not surprising. What was surprising was: if they are mad, why does the other fall silent when one is speaking? And not only fall silent, he even nods.

He asked them, “Gentlemen! Tell me just this one secret: why does one of you go quiet when the other speaks?”

They said, “What do you take us for? Do you think we are mad? Why, that is the rule of conversation: when one speaks, the other should be silent and nod. We are merely following the rule.”

People are only following the rules of conversation. Just watch—watch yourself. When you are talking with someone, you are merely following the rule. While the other is speaking you keep quiet. And if he never lets you speak, you tell people he is a bore! Meaning: he doesn’t let you bore him; he does it all by himself and won’t give you a turn. If he gives you a turn, then you say, “Ah, what a delightful conversation! What a lovely man!”—as long as he gives you your turn.

Watch closely: when you are talking with someone, are you listening to him? You are not listening at all. Inside you a thousand other things are going on that you are listening to. Yet you nod—and at exactly the right times; you nod when nodding is appropriate. Inside you are arranging your own arithmetic. Inside you are fixing your own accounts. You have nothing to do with that person. Whatever he is babbling—let him babble. When your time comes, you will see to it. Now your time is coming; you are preparing what you want to say. You are merely waiting for some cue in his talk—some little thing that can serve as your pretext to launch your own talk. The moment you get a pretext, you start. You start, he falls silent. Don’t think he is listening to you; now he is arranging his own arithmetic: “All right, babble for a bit; meanwhile I’ll prepare, then I too will give you such a taste that you’ll remember your sixth-grade milk! It’s only a matter of a little while—bear it.” He will nod at the right time, smile, say yes; but inside he is doing his own math.

Veena, talking to people you can go mad. Walls are very innocent. Walls won’t make you mad. And it is a good sign that talking to walls has begun to feel good. This is not a symptom of going mad; it is a symptom of being released from madness. It is a beginning. Make it into meditation. And when the wall says nothing to you, don’t harass the wall too much. The danger is that the wall may go mad. There is no danger of your going mad—you are already mad, Veena! How much madder can you get! The fear is only that the wall may go mad.

There is a limit to endurance. Who knows beside what sturdy wall Bodhidharma sat! The old walls were thick. Today’s walls are so thin that you talk to the wall and the neighbor replies, “Yes, lady, quite right. True words! That’s exactly what we say!”

People say in the old days walls had ears. They didn’t. Now they do. Not only ears, they have mouths too. The walls are so thin that you fear the neighbors will start answering. So don’t pester the wall too much. A few days are fine; then take pity on the wall. When you are sitting before the wall, what is there to say or hear? Then become as silent as the wall, as blank as the wall. And that same silence is the key.

No one can go insane by becoming silent. By silence a person is liberated. It is the babble running inside you that can derange you—that is deranging you! Every person is mad.

Khalil Gibran wrote a little incident. A friend of his went mad, so he went to visit him in the asylum. The friend was sitting in the garden, very happy. Gibran had come to offer sympathy. But he was so joyful that there was no chance to show sympathy—how can you offer sympathy to a happy man? He was swaying with the trees, humming with the birds. Mad, of course.

Still, Gibran had determined to express sympathy, so he couldn’t leave without saying something. He said, “Brother, it makes me very sad to see you here.”

The man said, “Seeing me makes you sad? No, you should not be sad to see me. The situation is the reverse. Seeing you makes me sad. Since I came within these walls, I have come outside the madhouse. My sorrow is that you are still in that great madhouse—the madhouse outside these walls. Here there are a few selected people who are not mad. Outside is the real madhouse.”

Gibran was startled. There was a bit of truth in it. He couldn’t sleep that night. A thoughtful man, he reflected: there is some truth here. Outside the walls is a great madhouse indeed.

You can test it yourself. For ten minutes, write on paper whatever runs through your head. Don’t hesitate, don’t edit. Don’t cut, don’t beat it into shape. You won’t show it to anyone; lock doors and windows; keep the stove ready—burn it as soon as you’re done so it won’t fall into anyone’s hands! So there’s nothing to fear. Just write whatever comes, however it comes. You will be very surprised at what comes into your mind. The neighbor’s dog starts barking and your mind starts up: “Why is that dog barking? These damn dogs! They have nothing to do! Won’t let anyone live in peace.” And the train starts—think of a freight train, every wagon packed with stuff.

Then you’ll remember: oh, you once had a sweetheart; she had a dog too… Now the train is rolling. The dog barked at just the right time! For a while your beloved will come to mind; then how her mother created trouble; how her wicked father stood in the way; how society opposed you…

Where you’ll end up, no one can say. And when you come back and read the whole page, you won’t be able to believe it: what sequence is there? What logic? Some sentence stops halfway—no period. In the middle another sentence barges in. In between, film songs pop up—“lare-lappa!” Verses from the Gita appear—“Na hanyate hanyamane sharire!” No accounting for it. What doesn’t come!

From a fifteen- or ten-minute experiment you will see clearly that what is hidden inside you is deranged. And you won’t be able to show that paper to anyone.

Man is mad. And the root cause of his madness is the Kumbh mela of thoughts running inside… What thoughts! Naked ascetics! Such ascetics that they drag a jeep tied to their member! Such thoughts! And a whole Kumbh fair! What isn’t there! See everything. The naked washerwoman of Bombay—what relation is there between Bombay and a naked washerwoman?

When I was a child, people used to come to our village with a little box—inside it, the naked washerwoman of Bombay was sure to be there. I often wondered: what is the connection between Bombay and a naked washerwoman! And now Bombay isn’t even Bombay—it’s Mumbai. What will happen to the naked washerwoman now? Such thoughts will come—lofty thoughts! You could never imagine the kind of trash is piled up inside you. Just look at it once, closely.

So, Veena, no one goes mad by talking to a wall. Mulla Nasruddin said, “Whoever proved the earth rotates must have been a bhang-eater.”

I said, “What’s gotten into you, Nasruddin? How do you know that?”

He said, “What’s the problem? Last night after eating bhang I also felt the earth was rotating. Before that I never had such an experience. Surely, whoever proved it was a bhang-eater.”

You say—
“Talking to walls feels good.
It seems we too will go mad.
This heart’s madness has even drowned the eyes;
Whoever comes and goes looks like you.”

This is not a matter of insanity. This is a matter of great awakening. This is the first ray. Only when, in my love, everyone begins to seem like me, is that love true. If it gets stuck on me, it will rot. Whenever love gets stuck, it rots. Love is a flow; it should keep spreading, keep spreading. It should spread to the infinite. If your love for me stops at me, it has become a bondage, a burden. Let me be a door, nothing more. From my door let your love go out and spread into the open sky, spread and spread, and take all the moons and stars into itself. Let nothing remain outside your love. At first it will surely seem like madness, Veena, because we have been taught to love only one; that love must be tied to one; love is a bondage—that’s what we were taught.

Wedding invitations come to me saying, “The bride and groom are entering into the bond of marriage.” What amazing people! At least don’t make such announcements on the invitation. But the truth cannot be hidden. They haven’t even thought what “bond” means! “Entering into a bond.” In love should one be freed or bound? Love is freedom, not bondage. And that which binds in the name of love is a deception, something else.

You say—
“This heart’s madness has even drowned the eyes;
Whoever comes and goes looks like you.”

So it should be.

Keep the mind’s window
always open;
do not close it.
Let the rays of dawn
come in,
the birds’ chorus,
the ripples of the breeze,
the fragrance of flowers.
Let in the burning noon,
let in dust-laden gusts,
let in stormy showers,
the dense night’s darkness—
do not fear at all.
Be assured:
again through this very window
the morning will peep,
birds will chirp again,
flowers will scent again.
Keep the mind’s window
always open;
do not close it.

Love is opening, blossoming—like a flower. And when a flower opens and its fragrance spreads, it doesn’t fly with a fixed address for some particular nostrils—“we must go to so-and-so’s nose!” When fragrance spreads, whoever wishes may receive it, whoever wishes may drink it.

Love is freedom. Love is supreme freedom.

This notion of binding love to one has created great confusion. From it love has become jealousy. From it love has become possessiveness. From it love has become a struggle. From it lovers have become enemies, not friends. “Lover” and “friend”—almost an impossible combination. Lovers are not friends. They become each other’s enemies—after them with washed hands! Each trying to put the other in his place. Is this love? But people are unconscious; so if they love, their love is also unconscious. Whatever they do is unconscious. We cannot expect otherwise from the unconscious.

My sannyasins are engaged in one work only: how to break this stupor, how to go beyond it, how to awaken. And as awakening happens, along with it the whole current of life changes—its course changes, the flow changes. Then love spreads—as when someone tosses a pebble into a still lake. The moment it falls, a ripple arises; then another ripple, then another—ripples upon ripples spread far and wide to the distant shores. So too love: it begins with one, but then it keeps spreading. And this existence has no shores, so it never stops. There is no way for it to stop. Whoever tried to stop love poisoned it. He killed it; he committed a kind of prenatal murder.

The greatest murder in this world is the murder of love. Kill a man—bad, but not so bad. Do not kill his love. For if the man dies, he will be born again. But if his love is killed, perhaps he will still be born again, but will that love which died ever sprout again? And those who kill love will still be around, because you are not the only murderer. There is a whole arrangement for killing love…

A child is born, and we begin killing his love. The mother says, “Love me, because I am your mother—and love only me.” The father says, “Love me, because I am your father.” As if being a father were a necessary cause for love. A father is a father—so what? Must love arise from it? Being a father may be a legal right. But what right is there to love? We don’t try to give birth to love; we try to impose it by force. And the child is helpless; he must love the mother, otherwise life will be difficult. He must smile at the mother, whether a smile comes or not. Politics begins from there. Then all his life he will smile—his smile only on the lips, not a shade deeper than the lips, only as deep as the lipstick goes. Even that damages the lips a bit.

Have you seen the lips of women who use lipstick? Look when they are without it—the skin is damaged, dried out. The deception ruins everything. This smile is on the lips. This love is on the lips. This love is just talk.

Mulla Nasruddin came home and sat down to read the newspaper—as all husbands do. It is the husband’s dharma: the moment he comes home, quickly pick up the paper. Where else can he hide? The wife has jurisdiction everywhere and roams all around with her rolling pin. Poor fellow—whether he reads or not… Nasruddin wasn’t even reading, for it was obvious he was holding the paper upside down. The wife buzzed with anger. “Enough is enough,” she said. “You’re not reading. You’re holding the paper upside down—how can you be reading?”

She immediately raised a ruckus: “Now you don’t love me anymore!” The logic of wives can’t be reckoned with. What has the paper… even if he’s reading it upside down, let him read. His head is upside down, understand? How does it harm you? The poor fellow is just reading the paper upside down—innocently. He harms no one, commits no violence, no strike, no gherao, no movement—quietly sitting and reading the paper upside down. How is anyone harmed by it? Like Veena sitting before a wall. Reading the paper upside down—meditating. But the wife flared up, “You’re not reading the paper; you only want to avoid me. You find it painful to look at my face. And earlier you used to say, ‘Ah! What are you! Even the full moon pales before you!’ And now you are reading the paper upside down. You don’t love me at all.”

She burst into tears. Who knows what wives will do, when! That’s why men through the ages keep saying: no one can understand women. To say “women” is the mistake; what can’t be understood is “wife.” To understand womanhood—no great difficulty. But to understand a wife is very difficult. And you yourself made her a wife. You became a husband. Husband means master; what should the poor wife do then? Wife means one who stands up to the husband—and she will! When you sit as the husband, what can she do? She will stand up to you.

The wife stiffened, cried loudly, “You don’t love me anymore.” Nasruddin folded the paper and said, “Fazlu’s mother! What are you talking about? Listen—I love you. I swear a thousand times, I swear by Allah—I love you. Your face is more beautiful than the full moon. The fragrance of your body is more intoxicating than flowers. Again and again I say—I love you. Now close your mouth and let me read the newspaper!”

What to do? Under compulsion one must say, “I love you.” But how long can you hide reality? It slips out anyway: “Now close your mouth. Enough of this babble. Let me read the paper. Let me sit in peace for a while. I come tired from the office; and here you strike up the raga of love! No sense of time or season—just the raga of love!”

People only say “love.” They have to say it. From childhood to old age this continues. The root cause behind it all is that we try to seize love. Parents try; then husband and wife try; then children try. We turn love into an instrument of ownership over each other, whereas true love is freedom.

Veena, if you love me, then naturally I will begin to appear in everyone to you. It should be so. Only when love spreads is it true. When it keeps spreading, it is the vast truth. Let it not stop anywhere. This is not a matter of going mad; it is good news.

My love has no price, no reward.
I have no complaint against anyone, no grievance at all.
I was so compelled by my helpless heart
I mistook you for a human like myself and became enchanted.
I didn’t know I was making a heart in the breast of a stone;
I’ve been scattering my embers upon a slab of ice till now.
I kept singing songs holding a broken sitar in my hands;
Often I remained restless, giving myself to you as my own peace.
This is the reward I have now for my love, my devotion:
that your heart’s wound has been stitched with my heart’s tears.
If someone else had been the mirror-bearer of my pledge of fidelity,
if in your place some other sharer of sorrow had been—
I would have pushed him out of my soul, out of my heart;
I would have poured the hells of my contempt upon his head.
But what shall I say to you now—you are the rapture of my soul and heart;
even if you give me darkness I am happy, for you are the light of my eyes.

A man’s love is deranged. A man’s love carries all his unconsciousness. Now this person sings:

If someone else had been the mirror-bearer of my pledge of fidelity,
if in your place some other sharer of sorrow had been—
I would have pushed him out of my soul, out of my heart;
I would have poured the hells of my contempt upon his head.

That is the reality.

But then:
What shall I say to you now—you are the rapture of my soul and heart;
even if you give me darkness I am happy, for you are the light of my eyes.

In the name of love, man supports only hypocrisy. One thing inside, another outside. He says one thing, he lives another.

The basic part of my teaching is this: your love should arise out of meditation—only then can it be love. Love is the pinnacle of meditation. Love is the flame of meditation. Where there is no meditation, there is no love. Try a thousand techniques; they will be futile. Only one possibility exists for your love to be true—that it arises out of meditation.

Veena, sit before the wall, but don’t talk. Sit silently before the wall. Don’t pour your useless derangement onto the blank wall. Sitting before the wall, begin to become a wall. And truly, the wall can become a useful aid to meditation. How long will the mind run? A month, two; a year, two. Keep sitting before the wall. Slowly the mind will depart. An inner blankness like the wall will arise. And when inside, too, there is a wall-like blankness, the supreme treasure has been found. There are many paths—the wall too can be a path!

The last question:

Chintamani Pathak, as long as people like you exist, as long as Chintamani Pathaks are alive, the welfare of this despondent humanity cannot happen. Impossible. Your very question proves that you won’t allow well-being to happen—or that you are bent on forcing well-being. That too is a sure way to ill-being.

And why are you fretting over the welfare of humanity? Chintamani Pathak, first be free of your own worry. You have been taking worry as a jewel, and you are worrying about miserable humanity!

Come to your senses a little. Where is this “humanity”? Go looking: you will find human beings; you will not find “humanity” anywhere. “Humanity” is just a word. And these empty words have thoroughly misled people and kept them sad—“the welfare of humanity! the welfare of the nation! the welfare of society!” There is no society anywhere, no nation anywhere, no humanity anywhere. Wherever you find anything, you will find the individual. The person is real; the rest is bunk.

And if you want to know how the individual’s sadness can end, then at least end your own sadness—you are the first person. Start there. Light your own lamp. If you yourself are in darkness, whose lamp will you light? The fear is that you may blow out someone else’s lit lamp.

A blind man can even gouge out others’ eyes. And with great good intentions: “Let me make him like myself.” What a sweet feeling! What a noble urge to serve—“Let me make him like myself. The poor fellow sees nonsense! He’s caught in delusion. Where is light? Where are colors? Where are rainbows, moon and stars? In what fancy has he lost himself? I’ll set him straight! If his eyes are put out, he’ll come to his senses.”

If the blind serve, they will blind those who have eyes. If the unconscious serve, they will spread more unconsciousness. People full of darkness—what else can they give? We can give only what we have.

But Chintamani Pathak is asking very deep questions—by his reckoning! He asks, “What is the name of your religion?”

As if religion could have a name! When religion has a name, know it has turned into irreligion. Religion is nameless because the Divine is nameless. And the nameless cannot be sought within named religions. Where adjectives are attached, your fixations are attached.

My religion has no name. In truth, I don’t even call it religion; I call it religiosity. My emphasis is on quality, not on doctrines, names, or forms.

Does love have a name? Ask someone, “What is the name of your love?” The poor fellow will just stare at you, dumbfounded—this man has gone mad: he’s asking love’s name! Does love have a name? Is love Christian, Hindu, Muslim, Jain, Buddhist? And if love has no name, religion is the climax of love—how could it have a name?

My religion has no name.

Your miracle of beauty has bestowed countless favors on my heart.
All the delicacies of my seeing, they are your gifts.

The sun whose brow is youthful bears the light of your forehead.
Dawn is lovely because on its face shine the graces of your face.

The springs I am nurturing in the prison of sorrow, my friend,
are colorful tales of someone’s tresses, eyes, cheeks, and lips.

Who knows how many goblets I have spilled, how many ewers I have flung—
yet my thirst still has complaints against your glance.

In my eyes I carry not torrents of flowing tears, but lightning—
such are the proud, self-respecting ways of the people of grief.

In the lap of night I scatter not stars but sparks.
In the heart of dawn, with my tears, I am sowing rebellions.

Religiosity is a rebellion, an uprising. “Religions” are traditions. Religions are the past—whose time is gone, long dead, and whose corpses you carry. Once upon a time there was life in them, true. But when there was life, they were not corpses; then they too were religiosities.

What was happening around Buddha was religiosity. And what goes by the name of Buddhism today is only a corpse. Its color and form, its ways and shapes are exactly like Buddha’s religiosity—missing just one thing: life. That had a beating heart, breathing lungs; now this breathes no more, no heart beats. That veena held music, its strings still alive; now these strings broke long ago—no music rises. This has happened to all religions.

I do not want to give my religion any name. I teach a continual rebellion; rebellion against the past, against tradition, against scriptures, against words, against the mind. What then remains is nameless, without adjectives. That very emptiness is called religiosity. In that emptiness the flower of the Whole blooms.

You ask, “Who is the object of worship in your religion? What is worship?”

I do not accept a personal God. The Divine is not a person sitting up on the seventh sky running this world. To think of the Divine in the language of personhood is fundamentally wrong. Not God, but godliness. Yes, one who attains to godliness we have called “God”—that is another matter. We have called Buddha “Bhagwan,” though Buddha denied that there is any God—in the very sense I am denying: there is no person who runs the universe and writes your fate on your skull that you will be a taxi driver, that you will open a cloth shop on M.G. Road, that you will beg in the holy city of Poona, that you will be a goon. And if there is such a God, he is utterly deranged. What nonsense he writes!

There is no God. Godliness is an experience, not a person. Whenever you experience the total stillness of your consciousness, and in that stillness recognize the music of love arising, then godliness is experienced.

So don’t ask me who my object of worship is. I have none. Therefore there is no worship here; without a deity, what worship? I teach meditation, not worship. Worship necessarily assumes a personal deity: some God to praise, to sing hymns to, to placate—praise is flattery—and to whom you offer bribes.

And who knows what kinds of bribes this God likes! Offer a coconut! They still haven’t had their fill of coconuts. Centuries have passed, people keep cracking coconuts. But these are bribes. You offer one coconut and say, “My boy must get a job. If he doesn’t, remember! If he does, I’ll offer another coconut. If he doesn’t, I’ll be your worst enemy! Let a son be born in my house!” One coconut! And what price are you paying? And if by offering a coconut a son is born, what sort of son will he be? Why, a coconut! And a coconut even looks like a human face—eyes, beard, moustache! Only coconuts will be born.

This is no God you are praying to, praising. This has taught you sycophancy. That is why in India bribery is very hard to eradicate—impossible. For this country has been bribing even God. These petty tehsildars, constables, collectors, commissioners—what status do these poor fellows have? With a single coconut you can placate God, with a little prasad along with it.

There are trees in the country hung with rag strips. The gods of those trees are lovers of rags. People go and make vows: “If a child is born in my house, I will tie a strip.” Naturally, so many make vows that in some houses children will be born. They go tie their rags. Those rags become the tree’s advertisement. When thousands of strips are tied to a tree, obviously the tree’s deity is proven and powerful. More and more people come. Those whose rags didn’t work, whom this tree didn’t hear, go searching for other trees. Somewhere, sometime, in some house a child will be born; they will tie a rag on some tree. This stupidity, this nonsense.

There is no deity, and no worship.

And you ask, “What is the goal of your religion?”

None at all. The very language of goal is the language of business.

My religion is rejoicing, celebration. Does celebration have a goal? Joy is its own goal. Ask someone, “What is the goal of your love?” He will tell you. Here in our country, anyone will tell you the goal of love: to get a scooter. Someone else wants something else in dowry. What all things people demand! The goal of love! If love is true, its goal is itself; it has no other goal. Love is its own joy—supreme joy. Joy has no goal. Religiosity is another name for joy.

We sing love’s song to the instrument of ecstasy.
With the heat of our sorrow we melt stone.

Once we awaken, even on the gallows sleep does not come.
If the time demands, we sleep on burning coals.

Who could love life more than we do?
And if it comes to dying—then we die.

Even buried in the dust we cannot remain buried—
as tulip and rose we spread across the wastes.

We are the ones who arrange color and fragrance in the garden,
who draw aside beauty’s veil from the face of the world.

At the mere reflection, the features of the face are adorned—
thus we hold up a mirror to the Beloved of existence.

Good tidings to drinkers, glad news to the thirsty of centuries:
with our own gathering and our own cupbearer, now we come.

Good news for those who have been thirsty for centuries. Good tidings for the wine-lovers, for those who long to drink the Divine. Glad news to the age-old thirsty!

With our own gathering and our own cupbearer, now we come.
This is a tavern, not a temple. Don’t ask the name of my religion. Do drunkards have a religion? Do wine-lovers have a religion? There is ecstasy, there is joy. Don’t ask what my goal is. There is no goal. Existence is not for a goal. Existence is spontaneous joy.

And you ask, “What is the purpose of the organization that the thousands around you are building?”

There is no organization here, nor is anyone building one. But even a tavern needs a bit of arrangement! It is just the tavern’s arrangement. A tavern has its own order. After all, in a tavern someone must be the cupbearer, someone will bring the ewer, someone will hand out cups, someone will pour from the ewer. A tavern has its own order, its own arrangement. This is not an organization; it is simply an arrangement so that those who are drinkers do not remain thirsty, and those who are non-drinkers are not allowed inside.

Good tidings to drinkers, glad news to the thirsty of centuries:
with our own gathering and our own cupbearer, now we come.

That’s enough for today.