Bhakti Sutra #4

It can, and it may not. A possibility opens; there is no inevitability. If the futility of life becomes visible, the search for the divine may begin—but that it must begin is not necessary.

On realizing life’s futility, a person may also fall into despair, abandon hope, settle into futility, accept it, take no step toward seeking—then life becomes arduous, a burden; there will be no journey toward the divine.

This much is true: one who has not known life’s futility will not go in search of the divine; there is no need to. If one still finds flavor in life as it is, there is no reason to lift one’s eyes toward any higher flavor.

When life’s futility is understood, two possibilities arise: either you sit down and stop within that futility, or you search beyond it for meaning—it is up to you.

That is the line that distinguishes the atheist and the theist.

The atheist is one who does see the futility of life but lacks the strength to go further, to rise higher, to inquire. He stops at the “no,” he cannot move toward the “yes,” he takes negation as his religion and forgets the language of affirmation.

The theist goes beyond the atheist.
The theist is not the opponent of the atheist, but his transcendence. In the theist’s life too, there comes a stage of atheism, but he does not stop there. He takes it as a halt, and he engages in freeing himself from it. For where there is “no,” there will also be “yes.” And in the very life whose futility we have recognized, somewhere in its deeper strata meaning must also be hidden; otherwise, what would “futility” itself mean?

One who has known suffering is capable of knowing joy; otherwise he could not even know suffering. One who has recognized darkness has eyes that can also recognize light.

The blind do not see darkness. We ordinarily think the blind must live in darkness. That is a mistake. To see darkness also, eyes are needed. Darkness too is a perception of the eyes. You see darkness when you close your eyes, because you have seen darkness. One born blind does not even see darkness; having never seen anything, how would he see darkness?

So, if darkness is visible to you, you have eyes; there is no reason to remain stuck in the dark. And when darkness appears as darkness, it is clear that within you there is some hidden source of light; otherwise how would you call darkness “dark”? There is some criterion within you, some deeply hidden yardstick.

To stop at darkness—atheist. To recognize darkness and set out in search of light—theist. To declare on seeing darkness that “darkness is all”—atheist. To know darkness and begin the quest, saying, “Then light must be somewhere; if darkness is, light will be too”—theist. For opposites always coexist.

Where there is birth, there will be death. Where there is darkness, there will be light. Where there is sorrow, there will be joy. If hell has been experienced, then heaven cannot be far.

Heaven and hell are neighboring, joined to one another.

If you have known anger in life, know that compassion is hidden somewhere—only seek it. You have already touched the first layer of compassion! Anger is the first layer of compassion. If you have recognized hatred, recognizing love may take some time, but it is not impossible.

The question is important.
Life’s futility is necessary, but not sufficient. Do not mistake only that for the beginning of the divine. Do not think that by itself the point of “athato” has arrived. It is necessary, yes. But you may also stop there.

In the West there is a great thinker, Jean-Paul Sartre. He says: darkness is everything. Suffering is everything. Beyond suffering there is nothing. Beyond suffering there is only a web of human imaginings. Melancholy is everything; anguish is everything; dread is everything. There is only hell—no heaven.

Buddha too one day knew: there is suffering. Sartre also knew there is suffering. Up to this point they walk together. Then their paths diverge. Buddha asked: Why is there suffering? And if suffering is, will there not be its opposite, the cessation of suffering? He went in search. He discovered the causes of suffering; he discovered methods to end suffering; and one day he attained that state which is the cessation of suffering—bliss.

Sartre stopped at the first step. He walks a little way with Buddha, then halts. He says: there is no path beyond; everything ends here.

You too can live accepting only darkness, as Sartre does. Then your life will become a great sadness. The juice will dry up. No flowers will bloom in your life—only thorns. If a flower should bloom, you will call it imagination and refuse it. If in someone else’s life a flower blooms, you will deny it: it must be false, self-delusion, deceit, dishonesty—flowers do not exist. Then with your own hands you have locked yourself in a prison. You will writhe. No one else can take you out of this prison. If your own anguish does not give you the strength to rise beyond it, if your own pain does not become the support for a new quest, who will lift you? Yet one day you will rise, because no one can accept pain forever. In one life one can be a Sartre, but not forever; today one can be a Sartre, but not for all time—because suffering is such that it cannot be accepted.

Suffering means precisely that which we cannot accept. For a while we may persuade ourselves: “All right, this is all, there is nothing beyond.” But again and again the mind will reach forward. For deep down the mind knows: there is joy. On that very basis we recognize suffering. Perhaps in deep sleep you have tasted a little joy.

Patanjali, in the Yoga Sutras, explains samadhi through sushupti—deep sleep: a profound slumber. When you wake after a night of deep sleep, nothing is remembered; yet a subtle fragrance surrounds you in the morning. You recall nothing of where you went or what happened; and yet you went somewhere, and returned drenched in bliss!

You plunged somewhere!
Some deep stratum within was touched!
You found rest!
You paused under some shade!
There was no glare there!
There was deep silence!
No waves of thought could reach there!
No nets of dream either!
Within yourself you found such a deep refuge, such a sanctuary.
In the morning only a faint remembrance remains—the far-off hum of a song remains.

If you slept deeply, you say in the morning: “I slept so well, I woke so delighted!”
Perhaps in deep sleep you go where the yogi goes in samadhi. In deep sleep you go where devotion takes the devotee. In deep sleep you touch the same absorption the lover of God attains by dissolving in the Beloved. The difference is slight: you attain it in unconsciousness; he attains it in awareness. That slight difference is a great difference.

Therefore in the morning you can only say, “Pleasant! The night was good.” But the devotee dances, for his experience is not gained in unconsciousness; it is gained in awareness.

At some moments of sleep you too have known it; that is why you recognize suffering; otherwise how would you recognize it? Perhaps in childhood, when the mind was innocent and the world had not yet distorted it, when desires had not yet arisen, when longings had not begun their play, when you were fresh from the house of God—perhaps then, sitting in the morning sun, or picking flowers in the garden, or running after butterflies, you knew some joy beyond thought; you knew an absorption in which you were lost, an immense ocean remained and the drop had shed its boundaries! Now it has become a dim and faded thing, hardly remembered. You cannot even be sure it happened—forgotten.

People only keep saying: childhood was like heaven. If someone presses you to prove it, you will not be able to prove what heaven there was. If a logical person asks, “Prove it—what was heaven in childhood?” you will not be able to prove it. It has become like the experience of deep sleep now. Only a memory remains. You yourself are not fully sure it happened, it is almost forgotten. What does not fit with the structure of your present life gradually slips into oblivion. Slowly you remember only that which matches your mind’s frame; the mismatched we drop. The mismatched is hard to remember.

Somewhere within you there is such an experience. In some deep moment of love, if you ever loved and the mind fell still—in a vision of beauty, or gazing at the sky on a moonlit night, and the mind fell silent—you have known a glimpse of joy. A ray has descended sometime into your life. By that ray you recognize that this is darkness. Had you never known the ray, how would you call darkness “dark”? Recognition is through the opposite.

So the one who stops at life’s futility is an atheist. That is why I do not call the atheist as courageous as the theist. He stopped too soon. He took a wayside halt to be the destination! There is farther to go. Farther to go!

There is an old Sufi tale. A fakir sat in the forest. Each day he watched a woodcutter cutting and carrying wood—his poverty, his torn clothes, his skeletal body. Compassion arose. Whenever the woodcutter passed, he would touch the fakir’s feet. One day the fakir said, “Tomorrow when you go to cut wood, go farther—and farther.” The woodcutter did not understand, but he thought, “If the fakir has spoken, there must be some meaning.” The fakir never spoke; this was the first time: “Go farther, and farther!”

So he went a little beyond the place where he used to cut wood. He was astonished—his nostrils filled with fragrance! There were sandalwood trees. He had never gone there. He cut sandalwood. When he sold it, he wept that night in joy and in sorrow—“Had I been selling this all along, I would be a millionaire. But now at least poverty is gone.”

The next day while cutting sandalwood, he remembered: the fakir had not said, “Go up to sandalwood.” He had said, “Farther, and farther!” So he did not cut sandalwood; he went farther and found a silver mine. Then he had the thread! He went farther and found gold. Farther still—he reached a diamond mine.

Farther and farther—until the diamond mine is reached! That is what we call the divine.

You are like the woodcutter selling ordinary wood; a little farther are the sandalwood groves. You are entangled in thoughts, where there is only firewood. Their price is meager.
Walk a little in no-thought: there are sandalwood groves.
There is great fragrance there!
Go a little deeper: there are the mines of samadhi.
Deeper still: there are the mines of seedless samadhi, nirvikalpa samadhi.
Deeper yet: the divine itself.

The yogi goes step by step, halting; he makes many stops. The devotee goes straight, dancing, without stopping, without making halts. He plunges directly into absorption.

The devotee has even more courage than the yogi. The theist has more courage than the atheist. The devotee has more courage than the yogi because he does not even build steps; he takes a single deep leap, in which he drowns himself, effaces himself.

It is essential to come to the experience that life is futile.

“Andheri raat, tufan-e-talatam, nâkhudâ ghafil—
Yeh âlam hai, to phir kishti sar-e-mauj-e-rawan kab tak?”

A dark night! Darkness everywhere. Nothing is visible. “A storm of turbulence!” Great gales, great tempests—everything is uprooted; nothing seems steady; great chaos. “The helmsman is asleep!” The one whose hands hold the boat is unconscious. “If this is the state, then how long can the boat ride the cresting waves?” What future does this boat have? It will sink any moment. To bind your hope to this boat is not wise. To stay tied to this boat is not right.

But where will you go? Where will you run? This very boat is life. You are asleep, unconscious; the storm is fierce; the night is dark; apart from drowning, no place is visible.

Yet drowning can be in two ways. One: the boat drowns you. And another: while seated in the boat, you find an ocean to drown in. That ocean we call the divine.

“Acchha yakeen nahin hai to kishti dubo ke dekh—
Ek tu hi nâkhudâ nahin, zalim! Khudâ bhi hai.”

If you do not have good trust, then go ahead—sink the boat and see. You are not the only helmsman, tyrant; God is also there.

Then courage arises. Then one says: “All right. If, o helmsman, you insist the boat must sink, then sink it and see! You are not alone; above you is God.”

“Ek tu hi nâkhudâ nahin, zalim! Khudâ bhi hai.”

Then the dark night, the storm, the imminent sinking of the boat—all become distant matters. Within, you drop an anchor in a place where storms do not touch, where the darkness of night cannot enter. And where no helmsman is needed—because there, the divine itself is the helmsman.

It is necessary that life’s futility be seen. Many, without seeing it, try to drown themselves in theism—they will never be able to drown. They are trying to drown in a palmful of water. They are deceiving themselves.

Until the roots of your life have been uprooted, until you have weathered the fierce tempests of atheism, until every hair of your body has trembled in life’s darkness, until your chest has been struck with fear—until then, the theism you talk about is consolation, not truth. The worship you do in temples and mosques is deception. It is your formal behavior, your conditioning. It has no direct connection with your life. You did not discover that temple by your own intelligence; it is borrowed. A borrowed God is not the real God. You will have to pay with yourself, donate yourself, pour out your all to attain him. Until you hang on the cross, you will not reach the throne.

So first remember: do not become a theist in haste. This is not a hurried job. Deep waiting is needed. And this is not a blanket of consolation to wrap around yourself—it is transformation. The divine is not comfort; it is a great revolution. What you are will be dissolved; what you ought to be will be revealed.

Cheap theism leads nowhere. Better than cheap theism is genuine atheism; at least it places you on that threshold from which, if you wish, you can take the next step.

No one has ever gone by way of false theism; one cannot. A false prayer is never heard. However loudly you shout, prayer has nothing to do with the loudness of your voice; it has to do with the sincerity of your heart, your humility, your egolessness, your helplessness. When your prayer rises from there, it reaches; then every particle of existence becomes your ally.

So first, avoid false theism; then, do not get entangled in atheism. To be an atheist is necessary; to remain one is not. A moment will come when only darkness will be visible, only storms upon storms; no support will be found; all supports will seem false; the path will be lost; you will stand utterly like a stranger, without any support, utterly alone—do not panic and sit down there; the beginning is right there. If from there you take the next step, there is worship, devotion. From there, if you take the next step, beyond the world begins the divine.

Avoid false atheism and false theism. Even true atheism—do not make it your home. Bear the pain of real atheism so that, out of that very anguish, true theism may be born.

If you call it “unpleasant,” then from the very start the interpretation has gone wrong—then fear will take hold. Calling it “unpleasant” is itself the mistake.

Think again: what is unpleasant in being a nothing? In truth, the unpleasantness lies in being something. Because all the sorrows of life arise from your being “something.”

Ego is like a wound. And when you carry a wound within—and there is no greater wound than ego; it is a festering sore—then everything hurts. The slightest touch hurts; even a gust of wind hurts; your own hand brushing against it hurts.

Ego means: I am something.

If you make a list of all the pains of life, you will find they all arise from the ego. But you have never looked at it closely. You think others inflict pain on you.

Someone abuses you, and you think, “This man, by abusing me, is hurting me.” It is an error of interpretation, a lapse in analysis, a lack of vision. Open your eyes and look again. If there is any pain in that person’s abuse, it is because your ego is touched by it and feels hurt. If there were no ego within you, his abuse could not harm you at all. You would hear it and go on your way. It might even awaken compassion in you—that the poor fellow is needlessly entangled in empty talk. But his abuse hurts you because you carry a tender, poignant spot, ever ready to catch pain—so sensitive, so delicate, always waiting in case pain should come; it lives on pain.

So it is not necessary that someone actually abuse you. If someone passes you on the road without greeting, pain arises. Someone looks at you and looks away as if not seeing you, pain arises. Two people laugh together and pain arises—“perhaps they are laughing at me.” Two people whisper to each other and pain arises—“perhaps it is about me”...

This “I” is deeply diseased! Carrying it, you will never be healthy and happy.

So if anything is to be called “unpleasant,” call the ego unpleasant.

And it is this very ego that tells you, “Be afraid—be afraid of love,” because in love it will have to be dropped. “Be afraid of devotion,” because in devotion it will drown completely; in love it drowns for a moment, in devotion it drowns eternally, forever. “Keep away!”

This ego says, “Do not go near any place where there is a danger of drowning. Walk cautiously! Be careful.”

And this very ego is the cause of your pain!

Understand it this way: you carry a suppurating sore and you avoid the physician.

“In this vast existence I am a nothing; accepting this unpleasant fact fills me with great fear.”

This fear is not gripping you; it is gripping the ego, which is frightened of submergence, of being absorbed. For absorption means death—the death of the ego, not yours! For you, a new door of life will open. From that very death, supreme life will be attained. From that very death you will, for the first time, behold the nectar. But for you—not for the ego!

This knot of “I” within you is what pains you. Recognize this unpleasant “I,” and you will find nothing more delightful than egolessness.

And one who has attained egolessness has attained everything! Then there is no need to go to any temple. One who has found the temple of egolessness—why should he go to temples of stone?

One who has found the temple of egolessness—the doors of the inner temple have opened!

“Every speck of the tavern teaches courtesy;
In hundreds of ways, prostration comes.
Love is bound to fidelity, not to custom;
Merely lowering the head is not called prostration.”

“Every speck of the tavern teaches courtesy.” If you look closely, every particle of existence is teaching humility. Ask the trees, ask the mountains and hills, ask the waterfalls, the birds, the animals; there is no ego anywhere!

“Every speck of the tavern teaches courtesy.”
Every particle—the whole of existence—is teaching one thing: become a nothing!

“In hundreds of ways, prostration comes.”
And if you listen to what is resounding throughout existence, from all sides, in all directions, there are hundreds of paths by which the thread of worship will fall into your hands—you will learn prostration, the art of bowing.

It is not necessary that you read scriptures; there is no scripture greater than the scripture of existence. It is not necessary that you learn only from the learned; if you open your eyes and look, all of existence is eager to teach you.

Here, except for man, no one is afflicted with ego—and therefore, except for man, no one is afflicted. Man alone is troubled, anxious; the trees are not troubled—they stand in prostration. Worship is going on continuously!

Man’s worship lasts for a few moments; the worship of existence is continuous. You sometimes perform arati; the stars, the moon, the sun keep performing arati—twenty-four hours a day, ceaselessly!