Bhakti Sutra #8

The bud and the flower are both one and different. The beginning and the end are joined, and yet apart. A bud can remain a bud; to become a flower is possible, not inevitable.

A seed can remain a seed; it could have become a tree, but it is not necessary that it will. The seed is separate—it has its own existence—and it is also the possibility of the tree. But a tree can be only if there is a seed, first. And a tree can be only if the seed disappears, second. First it must be, and then it must die; only then can the tree be.

If there is no love, there is no possibility of devotion. And if love remains only love and does not go beyond, then too there is no possibility of devotion. If love stops at love, devotion will never be born. And if there is no love at all, the question of devotion does not arise.

So the question is delicate. And great mistakes have happened in the history of man. Some thought that love itself is devotion, so in the name of devotion they went on singing the songs of love—and they missed. And some understood that love is not devotion, that one has to go beyond love; they became enemies of love, escaped from it, ran away—and they too missed.

One is not to run away from love; one is to go beyond it. Love has to be made a ladder. One has to climb through love, transcend love. Use love. If you become inimical to love, then devotion will never be born—that is enmity with the seed. And if one fears the seed, becomes its enemy, and yet hopes for the tree, that is foolishness. He can imagine the tree, he can dream of it—but the tree will never become real.

You have to care for the seed of love—but do not over-care for it; otherwise you may get imprisoned within the seed itself; the seed may become the treasure. The seed is only a possibility—use it! Go beyond! Make it a ladder! Then the seed will sprout, the bud will open, and there will be a flower.

Love is born out of lust, but if one stops at lust, love will never be born. The lotus is born out of the mud. But the mud can remain mud; there is no compulsion that a lotus must be.

Love is born out of lust. Lust is the mud. The lotus of love blooms; its roots remain in the mud, but it has risen beyond the mud. It emerges from the mud and yet is so different from it! It comes from the mud, but there is nothing of the mud in the lotus. If we did not know that the lotus comes out of the mud, we would never be able to relate the lotus to the mud.

What a distance between mud and lotus! Two different realms! Two different worlds! Looking at the lotus, can the mud even be remembered? Looking at the mud, can the lotus be remembered? No connection seems to join them—and yet the lotus comes only from the mud. In the same way, love manifests only out of lust.

Then fragrance arises from the lotus; in the same way, from love the fragrance of devotion arises. The lotus is visible; the fragrance is invisible. Love is visible; devotion is invisible. Devotion is sheer fragrance. You cannot hold devotion in your fist. If you try to hold even love, love will die—so leave aside devotion. If you try to clench a lotus in your fist, the lotus will wither.

Enjoy the lotus. Delight in it. Celebrate it. Dance around the lotus. Do not become the owner of the lotus, do not clench it in your fist; otherwise even love will wither.

Most people's love withers and dies because it is bound in the fist. The moment you start possessing the beloved, the death of love begins. Where ownership enters, love cannot stay. Love is not a thing you can own. It is not a property to be kept locked in a safe. It is a lotus flower. Let it bloom under the open sky. Do not be afraid. Do not harbor the fear that someone else may partake of this flower's joy, that someone else may see its beauty, that someone else's eyes may be filled with its grace. Do not cover this flower. For if you cover it, it may be saved from others' eyes, but you too will be deprived—because a covered flower dies. It needs the open sky, the sun's rays, free winds; only then will the flower live.

Love has died. On the earth there are corpses of love, withered flowers, dead flowers. To bind love in the fist is impossible. Those who tried to bind it have themselves murdered love.

Never claim ownership over love. Let love be your master; do not try to be the master of love.

Love is delicate; it cannot tolerate ownership. Then devotion is even more beyond—devotion is fragrance, invisible; no fist can be clenched around it. Freedom is its very nature; it will touch faraway skies, travel on distant winds.

When love grows wings—that is devotion. When love becomes so subtle that it is no longer seen but only felt—that is devotion.

The intoxication of love is a little gross; the intoxication of devotion is very subtle. Love you can hear a little—the footfall of love can be heard. The footfall of devotion is not heard at all. You can recognize it only if you too have had some taste of the invisible.

Rise above lust. Remember, I say, “Rise above”—I am not telling you to go far away, I am telling you to go beyond. To rise above means: lust remains in your foundation; you rise, the house rises, it goes above the foundation—the foundation remains.

Rise above lust, and there is love. Rise even above love, and there is devotion.

In lust, for a moment two bodies come close—only for a moment, because bodies are very gross. Their boundaries are very clear. They can come close, but they cannot become one.

In love, two minds come close, and for a moment they even become one—because the boundaries of the mind are fluid, not solid. When two minds meet, they do not remain two; for a moment, there is only one mind.

In devotion, two souls come close, two consciousnesses come close—the individual and the totality, the drop and the ocean, the particle and the vast. And they become one forever.

In lust, bodies come close and are flung apart. Therefore there is always melancholy in lust. The joy of coming together is very small; the pain of being thrown apart is very deep. Hence it is difficult to find a person who has not felt repentance after lust. The repentance is not for lust as such: lust brings you close, but immediately throws you far apart. We become even farther than we were before. This momentary nearness intensifies the distance; the distance becomes infinite.

So behind every lust there is regret, a repentance—as if something has been lost. You may not be clear what was lost, but something was lost, something wasted, nothing gained.

In love, losing and gaining are equal. In lust, the loss is more and the gain is almost nothing. In love there is a balance; loss and gain balance; the two pans of the scale are equal. So in the lover you will find a certain contentment that you will not find in the lustful. The lustful will always be unfulfilled, filled with sadness, filled with repentance: “Something is being lost, something is being lost! Somewhere in life some miss is happening, some mistake is being made.”

Repentance is the story of lust.

In the lover you will find contentment, balance, a certain peace. Loss and gain are equal—but that is not enough. When loss and gain are equal, there can be contentment, but not great contentment. It will seem—everything is okay. But no moment of celebration draws near. You will not be able to dance in the courtyard of the infinite. No cry of wonder arises from it. As much is given as is taken; all is balanced. No loss is felt—but neither is any gain felt.

So you will find the lover perplexed. You will find the lustful repenting. You will find the lover puzzled: “What is this? Gained and lost came out equal! Nothing remains in the hand. The account is balanced, but life just went by.”

You will find the lover perplexed. You will find a question mark in his inner state—why all this, what is the purpose?

Then there is the world of the devotee—where there is only gaining and no losing. The world of the lustful is where there is only losing and no gaining. And the world of the devotee is exactly the opposite, the other pole—where there is only gaining, no losing. Then the cry of wonder arises; then Meera ties the ankle-bells and dances. Then the dance happens. Then there is no entanglement, no question. Then all questions are resolved. Then, for the first time, life is filled with meaning! And for the first time the head bows in gratitude.

Love alone is the begetter of devotion, not devotion—because devotion is the final summit. Devotion is the mother of God, not of love. Whoever attains devotion gives birth to God.
Understand this a little, too.
Ordinarily people think God is sitting somewhere—He is to be searched for. Make some inquiries, do a little investigation, and you will find Him.
God is not sitting anywhere—you have to give birth to Him. God is not an object—He is a manifestation of your own being. And each person has to arrive at his own God. Someone else’s God will not be of any use to you. In the realm of God, adoption will not do.
In this world you can even get by with what is borrowed; here you can deceive yourself. Even the barren, by borrowing children, become “givers of birth.” But this deception will not work in the world of the Divine. There you will have to become a mother.
A devotee means a mother. Devotion means you have become pregnant. Your very consciousness, gathering your entire life-energy into itself, is born with a new rhythm and a new song; your consciousness enters a new dimension—from death to deathlessness, from the limited to the limitless. There, the drop becomes the ocean.
So God is not some person sitting somewhere whom you visit, lift a curtain, and discover. Do not get entangled in such childish notions. Nor is God an object that someone can hand over to you. You will have to give birth to Him. You will have to practice unremittingly, day and night. You will have to call to Him over lifetimes. You will have to carry the burden of the pregnancy, endure the pains of delivery. At times you will laugh with joy; at times you will also weep. You will have to water and tend Him with your tears and your smiles. And when He is born, He will be born only at that very instant when your death happens.
There is a very unique story among the Buddhists. A story, yes, but profoundly symbolic. The Buddhist scriptures say that when a Buddha is born, the mother dies at the moment of birth. Buddha’s mother also died upon giving birth. For centuries people have asked, “Why so? Krishna’s mother did not die. Jesus’ mother did not die. Mahavira’s mother did not die. Why do the Buddhists maintain this new idea that when a Buddha is born, his mother dies?”
This notion is very significant. Whether Buddha’s mother died or not, whenever Buddhahood is born within you, you die. That is the essence of the story. The seed must surely die; only then can the tree be. In ordinary life, when a mother gives birth she does not die; she bears the pain and survives. The moment of death seems to arrive—she screams and cries while giving birth. It seems she will die, die. She does not die; she survives. But the seed does not survive; it breaks—only then does the tree happen.
When God is born within you, you will not survive—you will be effaced. Your death is His birth. Your disappearing is His being.
To avoid this death, people have spun countless notions about God—as if He were sitting somewhere and you only had to find the road. He is not sitting anywhere; He has to be born. You must seek a womb, not a path.
From sex arises love; from love arises devotion; from devotion God is born. Devotion is the mother of God.
So until devotion has manifested within you, you will neither see, nor understand, nor recognize God. You do not yet have the eyes. You are blind. And merely hearing talk about light will not open your eyes. The eyes must be treated. Blindness must be removed.
When the eyes open, you see light; when devotion opens, you see God. When the eye of devotion opens, nothing remains anywhere except the Divine.

Not a grain of truth. And that statement belongs to the knowers. The jnanis have kept saying that bhakti is duality and jnana is non-duality. If you want to know about bhakti, ask the devotees. Asking the jnanis is asking in the wrong place.

Devotees say: bhakti too is non-dual, and jnana too is non-dual. But bhakti is a non-duality full of juice; jnana is a dry non-duality.

Bhakti is like a lush, green garden. And jnana is like a desert. The divine is in the desert too—no one denies it. And there are some who even find the desert beautiful; that too no one denies. To each his own!

But greenery is something else entirely! Flowers bloom! There is the shade of trees! The music of waterfalls! The songs of birds! Greenery has a magic all its own!

The desert is his too! The thorns are his! The flowers are his!

Bhakti is a non-duality brimming with rasa. The two dissolve, but what remains as the One is not barren and dry. What remains is overflowing with love. What remains is not dry like arithmetic and the jnani—it is like poetry, full of sweetness.

The jnani’s God is the conclusion of logic. The bhakta’s God is the epiphany of love. Remember, logic too is his—there is no quarrel with logic; it also belongs to the divine. And if some get a taste for logic alone, that path too can take them there.

But love is another matter.

Devotees have not said much about this, because devotees speak less and live more. Jnanis issue statements, so the jnanis’ statements have become prevalent. The devotee listens and smiles. He doesn’t even bother to refute, because refutation is the jnani’s business. Refutation and counter-refutation—both belong to them. The bhakta doesn’t enter that tangle. Instead of getting caught in the net of argument, he dances. When energy wells up, he sings, he hums. You will find his God in his eyes, not in his words. In matters of words, the devotee is a little tongue-tied. His tavern is in his eyes.

You will find the jnani’s eyes closed. If Shankaracharya is sitting or Buddha is sitting, the eyes will be closed.

You will find the devotee’s eyes brimming with the wine of the divine. Whether open or closed, the devotee’s eyes will intoxicate you.

The devotee lives in a kind of divine frenzy. He has known awareness in his very ecstasy. He has touched his being through total absorption. By disappearing, he has recognized his true existence.

Yet you can see the difference. The devotee too attains non-duality; but his non-duality is very different from the jnani’s. Even upon attaining non-duality, the devotee uses the language of duality.

This needs a little understanding.

That is why the jnani’s pronouncement seems right—that bhakti is duality and jnana is non-duality. Because the bhakta says: wherever there is language, it will be the language of two. The very meaning of language is “two.” To speak is to acknowledge the other. Speech means dialogue, the presence of two.

If you say “there is only the One,” to whom are you saying it? The speaker and the listener are already two. If you try to prove that nothing exists except That, why this effort to prove it? If nothing except That exists, you must be mad. When nothing else is, what is there to prove, what is there to strive for?

Those who try to prove that the world is maya at least grant this much to the world—that it is, and that it must be proved illusory. If the world is truly maya, the matter is finished—what is there to prove! When you wake in the morning you don’t prove that the night’s dreams were false. You simply know they were dreams and the matter ends—who bothers to prove it! Who gets into such a fuss!

If, on waking, someone starts proving that last night’s dream was false, then one thing is certain: he still has a little trust in the dream; otherwise, to whom is he proving it? And people will laugh—world-laughter will follow: “Look at this madman—he says the dream is false!” Even saying it is pointless. A dream is so false that calling it false begins to lend it a kind of truth. That’s why no one, on waking, starts an argument. No one goes around saying, “I dreamt, and it was false.”

The devotee does not say the world is maya. The devotee knows. The jnani says it. The devotee does not say that God is One. To whom is he to say it? Who is there to hear? When there is only One, saying and hearing are meaningless. The devotee lives that unity. But the devotee’s language is of duality, because he says all language is dual. And the language of love will certainly be dual. So the devotee speaks to God, converses with him. This is what jars the jnani.

Meera stands in Krishna’s temple, talks to him, even complains, even sulks. The jnani dislikes such things. He feels, “This is madness. There is only One.” Meera too knows. But that One is not a dead unity. In that One there is a very alive paradox. It is not such a One that there is no room for two within it.

This needs to be understood a little.

It is such a One in which two have become one. It is the unity of love, not the unity of mathematics.

If you have ever loved someone, you enter a strange experience—beyond logic. When you love, an extraordinary sense arises that you are two and also one. By nature you are two—otherwise who would love whom? Who would weep for whom? Who would dance for whom? Certainly you are two. And yet, you are not two. Somewhere twoness has melted. Somewhere the banks have broken and the currents have entered each other. Somewhere, in the inner world, you are one. On the surface you are two; deep within, you are one. Perhaps it is not so every single moment; sometimes such moments come when you become one—and the rest of the time you remain two. But those moments do come when the paradox happens, when unity flowers between two.

The devotee’s non-duality is alive. Alive means: it is not monotonous. One way is to pluck a veena and keep sounding a single note—it will turn insipid. Another is to let many notes rise, but let there be a dialogue among them, a music among them—let the music be one though the notes are many; let rhythm be one, let the meter be one—then it is alive, then there is no boredom.

The devotee sees the divine as living—an oneness not of mathematics but of music, of rhythm. The lover and the beloved—or the beloved and the lover—remain two, and somewhere they have also become one. Meera dances before Krishna, speaks, converses. They are two and yet they are one.

To speak, two are necessary. And remember: if it is to be true speaking, oneness is necessary too.

That is why the devotee’s talk is utterly transrational. Only one who lives it will know.

The advaitin’s discourse you can understand even from scripture; the discourse of bhakti will not be understood by scripture alone. The advaitin’s talk is logic-bound; anyone with a little logical capacity will grasp it. But the devotee’s words arise from experience—existential experience.

So I tell you: the devotee too is speaking of non-duality, but his way of speaking it is love. His tone is different. His style is different.

And I tell you: the devotee’s non-duality is more precious. In it pulses life; breath moves. The jnani’s non-duality is utterly dead, like a corpse. The jnani’s non-duality is as if a river tries to flow with only one bank. The devotee’s non-duality is like every river that flows with two banks.

But have you ever noticed: a river needs two banks, yet down below in the depth the two banks become one; only above do they appear two, separate. If you want to go from one bank to the other, you must take a boat. But in the river’s depth the two banks have met; they are one. It is one and yet two; it is two and yet one.

If you want to know about bhakti, don’t try to learn it through the jnanis. You will have to taste bhakti itself. This is not something to be known second-hand. And to learn from a devotee requires a different way. There is only one way to ask him: dye yourself a little in his color. From a distance you won’t understand the devotee’s way. Enter. Sink a little into his ecstasy. With the devotee, be a little mad. With the devotee, take a dip in devotion.

To understand bhakti is a costly bargain. To understand jnana poses no difficulty—you can understand it from scriptures, standing safely on the bank. The devotee’s challenge is deeper.

If you want to dive in, you have to be a little mad. These are ways to go mad—nothing else. These are ways to break your cleverness—nothing else. These are ways to wipe off your so-called wisdom—nothing else.

Put someone in ochre robes, and he’s made mad! Now wherever you go, there will be laughter. Wherever you go, people won’t let you stand in peace. All eyes will be on you. Everyone will ask, “What happened?” Every gaze will seem to say, “Something has gone wrong. So you too got into this uproar? Got hypnotized?”

In themselves, ochre robes have no value. You won’t attain liberation through them. Their only value is that you have made a declaration: you are ready to be mad. Then the journey can proceed further. If you get scared here, what journey will there be ahead?

Today we put you in ochre robes; tomorrow we’ll place an ektara in your hands. If we get hold of a finger, we’ll take the whole arm too. This is simply to see whether a person has courage or not. If he has, we will gradually expand that courage. The hope is that someday you can dance in the streets like Meera and Chaitanya.

Man has lost his courage. How long will you walk behind the crowd?

These ochre robes are a device to set you apart from the crowd, an arrangement to give you individuality—so that you stop being afraid of the crowd; so that you can raise your own voice, move your own feet, choose your own footpath.

No one has ever reached the Divine by the highways, nor will they; one arrives by the footpaths. And slowly we have become so accustomed to trailing the crowd that even the slightest step away from it makes us afraid.

The desire to wear it is clear, but the desire is to wear it under the clothes. No, wearing it inside won’t do; that is as good as not wearing it. There is a reason I ask you to wear it outside. The reason is simply this: somehow I want to free you from the fear of the crowd—by any means. Only when this concern about “what others will say” leaves your life can you take the next step. If the divine is to be realized, you will have to stand a little apart from society, because society is in no way of the divine. You will have to become a bit free of the social framework.

In themselves, neither the mala nor the ochre robes have any value; their value lies elsewhere, for another reason. If this entire country were already wearing ochre, I would not have you wear ochre; I would choose something else: black clothes, blue clothes. If everyone here were wearing malas, I would not have you wear a mala; we would choose some other device.

Many devices have been used. Buddha had his monks shave their heads—just a device, to set them apart. Mahavira had people go naked—also a device.

Think a little of those who dared to go with Mahavira and stood naked—just consider their courage. Reflect on it. In that very courage, truth must have come knocking at their door.

Buddha turned princes and the wealthy into beggars, sent them door to door with a begging bowl in hand. Those who lacked nothing—what purpose could there be in making them beggars? If the divine could be had by being a beggar, beggars would have attained long ago. No, the point was not to become beggars; it was to bring them down to a place where they would seem utterly mad. To pull them out of the world of arguments, out of the world of calculations. The courageous accepted the challenge. The cowards found rationalizations within themselves. They said, “What will happen by shaving the head? What will happen by being naked? What will happen by wearing ochre robes?”

That is not the real question. The real question is: “Do you have courage?” Ask instead what happens through courage. Through courage, everything happens. Besides courage, man has no other means. You need audacity!

People will laugh. People will mock you—and you, undisturbed, keep walking your path. Do not worry about their laughter. Do not be shaken by it. Do not be hurt by it. And you will find that even their laughter becomes a support; their laughter helps to focus your meditation; their laughter dissolves the anger within you; their laughter brings compassion into your life.

It is an arrangement to free you from the circle of society. Whoever wishes to be free, who has a little courage within and a little trust in themselves—if you have not sold yourself completely into society’s hands, if you have not mortgaged your whole soul—then this is a challenge worth accepting.

Truth is not for the weak; it is for the courageous.

The whole of life is a play—of relationships, of the marketplace, of the household. Life is acting. Where will you leave it and go? Where can you run? Wherever you go, there again you will have to enact some drama. So I am not in favor of escapism.

Become a skillful actor. Do not run away. Act knowingly, not in unconsciousness; act with awareness. Awareness has to be cultivated. A thousand tasks will have to be done—and perhaps they are necessary. But doing them with awareness is essential. Slowly you will find that life is no longer “life” as you knew it; it has become sheer play, and you have become an actor.

To be an actor means that there is a great distance between you and what you do. For example, someone who plays Rama in the Ramleela performs the role completely—perhaps better than Rama himself, because Rama never had a chance to rehearse. He had to do it the first time; no one had done it before. So the one who has done it many times, who has prepared again and again, will do it better than Rama. He will weep when Sita is abducted, he will ask the trees, “Where is my Sita?” Tears will stream from his eyes—and yet inwardly he remains beyond it. Inside he knows he has nothing at stake. He steps off the stage and the matter is finished. Backstage, Rama and Ravana sit together sipping tea; on the stage they stand with bows and arrows. On the stage there is enmity—beyond the stage, what enmity!

I tell you, this was the state of the real Rama as well. That is why we call his life Ramleela—leela! It was play. Krishnaleela—also play. For the real Rama too, it was a play.

Play means: you are not identified with what you are doing; you have not become one with it; you stand apart; there are thousands of miles between your act and you. You are not the doer; you are the witness. That is all “play” means: you are the watcher. Those who sit before the stage as spectators—somewhere among them you too are sitting hidden. You are working on the stage and at the same time hidden among the audience, watching from there. From within you are seeing what is happening; you have not got lost, you have not forgotten. The delusion has not arisen in you that “I am the doer.” You know: it is a play, and you are completing it.

So I will not tell you to run away. Where would you go? I will tell you: even running away is a play. Wherever you go, there too is a play. Even if you become a sannyasin, I will still tell you: sannyas too is a play, an acting. Wear the robes only on the outside—do not let them fall upon the soul. Let this color remain only on the surface; do not let it seep within. Within you must remain beyond. Whether you wear white garments, ochre, or black—let the clothes remain outside; do not let them enter within. Let your soul remain unclad, naked. Let no covering lie upon your consciousness. There, remain free—from all clothes, from all forms.

You have some name and address; you may drop them and run away—I will give you a new name. But keep a distance even from that name; do not identify with it either. The old name was not yours, nor is this one—you are nameless. I helped you drop the old because you had got into the habit of becoming one with it; I gave a new one not so that you make a new habit of it—otherwise this too will become futile.

The art of keeping yourself at a distance is sannyas.
The art of being an actor is sannyas.
Where you become the doer, there you are a householder.
Where you remain the seer, there you are renounced.

So there is nowhere to run from.
There is nowhere to go.
Where you are, awaken there.

“Let the heart learn that tavern-manner:
be a reveler among revelers, yet let not the hem of your robe be wet.”

Become a drinker among the drinkers—and yet let your robe remain dry. Be like the drunkards, but let no unconsciousness seize you, let no stain be made; let wakefulness remain. So whatever is going on in the world—home, householding, children, wife, husband—it is fine. Even by running away, what will happen? Where will you go? Wherever you go, the world is there. And if you go there without having changed, you will set up the same world there.

There is only one way to escape the world: awakening. So wherever you are, awaken there. And begin to act as if it is all a play. If a person can remember only this much—that everything is a play—then nothing else remains to be done. This alone is to be done—

“In the nest there is no bother, nor in the cage any pain—
all is the same, if the spirit remains free.”

Then it makes no difference—at home or outside, at home or in a prison—if the spirit remains free. And what is the freedom of the spirit? Witnessing is the freedom of the spirit. There is no bondage for the witness. The witness is the only liberation. The moment you become the doer, you forge chains. The moment you say, “I am the doer,” just there you are imprisoned. If you simply go on seeing, if you maintain the continuity of seeing—an unbroken stream of the seer—then nothing can bind you. There is no way to bind consciousness: there are no chains, no walls. All is the same, if the spirit remains free.

Because he was a great logician and a great pandit. Had he been a small-time pandit, it wouldn’t have happened. He was such a great logician that the futility of his logic became visible to him. He was such a great scholar that his scholarship looked like rubbish. Small scholars get stuck in scholarship. Petty logicians cannot rise above logic.

If you are truly skilled in thinking, then today or tomorrow the futility of thought will reveal itself. That is the final outcome of thought. Waking up to the fact that thought is futile—that is thought’s last conclusion.

As we remove a thorn with a thorn, so with great logic, logic is removed; with great thought, thought is removed.

Chaitanya was a great pandit; had he been a small-time pandit, he would have drowned. He wasn’t small-time—otherwise he would have stiffened with pride and forgotten himself in his erudition. He was a true pandit.

The word ‘pandit’ is very meaningful. Its meaning has been lost, distorted. But the word is important. It comes from prajña—awakened intelligence. A pandit has nothing to do with pedantry; he has to do with prajña. Not with how much you know—but with how awakened you are...!

So Chaitanya saw: I have known so much, and nothing has come to hand. I surveyed all the scriptures and remained a beggar. I argued much and defeated many, but no inner treasure came to hand; the inner darkness is still the same. The net of logic did not kindle the flame; the inner light was not found. He was a great pandit—he understood. He threw away the tomes, he threw away the nets of logic. He dropped thought itself. In a single instant this revolution happened.

If you are still entangled in scholarship, if you are still entangled in cleverness, understand that your cleverness is not great—it is small-time. Half-baked scholars remain scholars. Real scholars become free.

So I say to you: if you still take delight in argument, take a little more delight. There is no hurry—eternity remains; no need to be anxious. Go deeper into logic. Become more proficient. Enter subtler depths. One day you will suddenly find: your logic itself has brought you to the place where a vision happens that logic is futile. The scriptures themselves bring you to the place where scriptures become futile. And don’t run away before this. If you run away before this, your pedantry will only be stuck. Then even if you sing bhajans, do devotion, perform worship—you will become a pandit of worship, a pandit of devotion—but a pandit you will remain; you will not become unconditioned.

If you want that unconditioned state, drag thought to its very last hour.

Everything dies after its time. Every child—if he does not die in between—will grow old. Every youth reaches old age. As things rise, they also decline. Morning comes, evening begins. Morning comes, evening begins. When thought happens, no-thought begins to approach.

Don’t be afraid. Move on a little further!

I do not tell you to hurry. My constant wish, and my constant emphasis, is: do not hurry—ripen. Without maturity nothing happens. Maturity is everything.

So don’t drop logic after hearing me. I too dropped it only after completing it. And I know: whoever drops it in haste, drops it half-done—he will remain incomplete. Let things reach their highest peak; they subside on their own. All you can do is support them to reach their ultimate height—they fall by themselves.

Morning of its own becomes evening. You don’t need to close your eyes at high noon to manufacture evening. There is no need to believe in evening at noon. And such an evening will be false. Has anyone ever reached God through falsity?

Most people’s theism is false. They have not even fully tested logic. They were not even atheists, and they became theists. They had not yet said no, and they said yes. They had not fought, and they surrendered. What is the hurry to surrender?

Unripe surrender will not work.

I teach atheism, so that one day you can become a theist. And I say to you: reason, argue. I am not among those weak people who say, “Drop logic.” I say, logic will drop—first do it. I did it and it dropped. And I also know those who left without doing it—and to this day it has not dropped, and never will.

Life comes from experience.

Become an atheist. Don’t be afraid. What is there to fear? God is. There is no need to be so frightened of being an atheist. He will not be angry because you are an atheist.

Jesus said: A father told one son, “Go, work in the garden; the harvest is ripe.” The son said, “I’m going right away.” And that was the end of it—he didn’t go. The father told the second son, “You go.” He said, “No, I won’t—there’s too much to do.” But later he repented and went.

Jesus asked his disciples: Which son will be dear to the father—the one who said yes and did not go, or the one who said no and went? The one who said no and went is the dear one.

Reflect a little. If you have never said “no,” your “yes” will be impotent. It will have no life in it. You said it as a formality. Father says so, so you say, “All right, I am going.” You said it just to put it off.

Your family believes there is a God, so you believed. Society believes, so you believed. That is not your belief; that is social etiquette. You went to mosque, to temple, to gurudwara and bowed—not to temple or mosque, but to society; you bowed out of fear—what will people say!

But when you refuse—when you say, “Until I understand, how can I believe?”—you at least declare authenticity; you at least say, “I will not be dishonest here—maybe in the marketplace I can get away with it—but not in the temple. Here I will be authentic. Here I will say yes only when it comes; until it arises from within, from my heart, I will wait; until then this neck will not bend.”

And I tell you, God will not be angry with you.

Your “no” is the first step toward “yes.” You have set out. Whoever has truly said “no” will one day say “yes,” because who can live in “no”? How long can one live there! There is no way to live on negation. “No” fills no one’s belly; “no” creates no blood; it brings no breath into the soul.

“Yes” is needed! Supreme trust is needed—only then does the flower of life blossom. Say “no”—today or tomorrow, you will yourself grow anxious with your “no”; today or tomorrow, your “no” will start pricking and tearing you apart. Then the right moment comes to drop it.

Chaitanya was a great pandit, a great logician—hence, one day he could become a devotee.

Devotion is not a cheap thing. It is the step beyond logic. Poetry is no small matter; it is understanding beyond mathematics. It is the last station—beyond it there is no station. All other stations are completed before it.

So if your mind is still entangled in the web of logic, in pedantry, in scripture, then understand: your scholarship is half-baked; your knowledge is childish. Grow it a little more! As soon as it ripens, knowledge falls away by itself—like a ripe fruit from the tree.

That the illusion has broken hundreds of times—this very impression seems illusory. In truth it has not broken. You must have assumed it broke without it actually breaking. The illusion did not break; you were in a hurry. Something else broke and you thought the illusion broke.

Understand: you fell in love with a woman and found sorrow. You think the illusion is broken? That is mistaken. The relationship with this woman broke; the illusion did not—because the illusion has nothing to do with this particular woman. Now your mind is seeking another woman. The illusion continues. You made a relationship with another woman, again you found sorrow—you think the illusion is broken? You are mistaken; the illusion has not broken. The mind is now looking for a third woman. The mind keeps saying that until the right woman is found, keep searching. On this vast earth, surely somewhere there will be the right woman who will give you happiness. That is the illusion.

One woman, two women—not three, but millions of women you have related with and separated from across millions of births; millions of men you have related with and separated from—yet the illusion has not broken. It broke with this particular woman—not with woman as such. It broke with this particular man—not with man as such. And until it breaks with man as such, with woman as such, the illusion remains; it goes on.

You bound your hopes to earning ten thousand rupees; you earned them. You had thought, “I will get everything”—but you got nothing. Now you think, “It should be twenty thousand.”
You say, “Has the illusion broken?”
The illusion has not broken. The illusion persists. It has simply shifted forward—from ten to twenty. It has moved from one to another, slid from one desire to the next. But the illusion is alive.

It even happens that your mind gets bored with all the desires of the world, and then you begin to desire heaven. Still the illusion has not broken. Now you have projected all your longings onto heaven. What you did not get here, you start asking for there.

If the illusion breaks, it does not break hundreds of times. If it breaks once, that is enough—it is finished. If it seems to break again and again and yet does not break, understand that a mistake is being made.

In the deserts there is nothing but dust-devils.
In deserts there is nothing but storms and dust-devils.
In the deserts there is nothing but dust-devils—
what have I to do with the shade of fleeing clouds!

At most, the shade you can find in a desert is the shadow of clouds racing across the sky.
If this is understood—how long can you linger in the shade of clouds running in the sky?—then you will awaken.

Here, all shadows are the shadows of clouds racing in the sky. And where you have taken there to be oases, there too are deserts. Where you have assumed spring, there autumn is hiding. What you have taken to be life is merely a manner of death.

O heart, if you must weep, then weep with your whole being—
beyond this world you will find no wilderness greater.

But the illusions have not yet broken.
There is also the illusion of the illusion breaking. That is what has happened.

So what to do?
Do not fall again into this illusion that the illusion has broken. Do at least this much; the rest will happen by itself. Until the illusion truly breaks, do not nurture the illusion that it has broken.

People come to me and say: “We have tried anger and found nothing of value. Still anger does not go.” I tell them, you must have found some value. You are not telling the truth. Otherwise it would have gone. When you say you found no value—that is you displaying cleverness. But if truly nothing were gained, who goes on trying to extract oil from sand? No one. Who tries to get out through a wall? No one. Even if someone tries once, he bangs his head, intelligence comes to its senses, and he begins to use the door.

People say, “Nothing is gained from lust,” yet the mind does not let go. You must have gained something.

Drop this illusion.
Borrowed cleverness will not help. Only what you gain from the experience of life is true. Because of borrowed cleverness, real wisdom does not arise.

I say to you: be angry properly, totally, consciously—watching to see what you are getting. Are you getting anything or not? If nothing at all is gained, anger will end on its own; you will not have to end it.

Enter into lust—fully, consciously! See—are you getting anything? Awake, with remembrance! Do not listen to the scriptures. Do not get entangled in the babbling of sadhus. Only your own experience will be of use to you.

Borrowed knowledge becomes an obstacle. It interferes with the birth of real knowing. Put borrowed knowledge aside. Do not think, “Lust is bad.” Until it is bad for you, how is it bad? Do not think, “It is futile.” Until in your experience it is futile, how is it futile? Who knows—perhaps it is just right for you!

Go with an impartial mind, fresh and empty—without carrying assumptions. And then, suddenly, you will be amazed: what the scriptures have said, life itself will say to you. And only when life’s scripture speaks to you does revolution happen—never before.

The borders of search and seeking now come to an end—
God has begun to appear to me in the Perfect Man.

If, even in the completeness of a single human being, the Divine starts appearing to you, the search is over. If it begins to appear in me too, the matter is finished. Then I become a window. You will then be able to look beyond me.

No—I tell you, it may not yet have appeared to you even in me. You must have assumed it. You must have accepted it. You have not seen. Somewhere within you, doubt still stands. That very doubt remains a veil upon your eyes.

If you have seen in one, the matter is finished—then you will start seeing in all.

It is like this: one who has tasted a palmful of ocean water knows the whole sea is salty.

If you have tasted the Divine in me, you have tasted the entire ocean of the Divine. Then it is impossible that it will not appear everywhere. This is the touchstone: if it has appeared in one, it will start appearing in all. If it is not appearing in all, then even in that one you merely believed—you suppressed your doubt; but inside your intellect keeps saying, “God, the Divine—I cannot be sure!”

So look again, carefully. It is not so much a question of seeing it in me; the real veil is within you. With the veil of doubt upon your eyes, you do not see it in the trees, nor in the moon and stars. It is present everywhere, in every leaf! Without That, life could not be. Life itself is its name—or the name of life is God. If you drop the word “God,” no harm; remember the word “Life.” Wherever life appears, bow there.

Just look at life! Look at the sprouting shoots from a seed! Look at the flowing stream! In the hush of night, look at the moon and the stars! Peer into a child’s eyes! Everywhere—only That! The veil is within you. The veil is you.

You alone are there, wherever we lift our eyes to see—
Nothing appears before our sight but Your splendor.

But this is not in God’s hands. If it were in His hands, the veil would long ago have been lifted. It is in your hands. This veil is you. And until you lift your own veil, you will not see anywhere.

And I tell you: if it appears in one place, it appears everywhere. To the one who sees it in a temple, it appears in a mosque as well. Once the eye of seeing is born, the matter is finished. If someone has seen light in a single lamp, will he not see the light of the sun?

But the blind man! He says, “I can see the light in a lamp, but not the light of the sun.” What shall we say? We will say, you merely believed in the lamp; you talked yourself into it. Look again. Do not fall into this deception.

So I tell you, look into my eyes again; peer again into my emptiness! If you look without doubt, if you look with trust, a single glimpse is enough. With the support of that glimpse, you will find it everywhere. Then the alchemy is in your hands; the key is in your hands.

This is the very meaning of the Master: that through him you get the first glimpse, that the key comes into your hand—then all locks open with that key.

That is all for today.