Bin Bati Bin Tel #5
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Read in Original Hindi (मूल हिन्दी)
Questions in this Discourse
Osho, can we accept this story as a doctrine and move ahead...?
No one ever moves ahead by accepting anything as a doctrine. To accept something as a doctrine means you have already rejected it; you have not understood. You will have to inquire. You must search for the element of this story in your own life. Only if you search will the siddhant be revealed to you. Siddhant is a very unusual word. It means that which has been proven, a consummation. There is no exact equivalent for it in English or other languages. Siddhant does not mean principle. Siddhant means that which you have proved in your own life. What has become your experience—only that is a siddhant. Without your experience, no “principle” is a siddhant at all. It is talk, hypothesis, theory, scripture—but not siddhant. You have to search in life. Search from any corner; you will arrive quickly.
When anger arises, the mind at once slips into a story: “He said such and such, therefore I became angry.” Then look closely: can another create anger in you? If anger is in you, the other can provoke it. Look deeper and you will find that anger must already be in you, and the capacity to be stirred must also be in you—only then can another arouse it. Then what significance remains to “the other”?
Then observe those situations where there is no one else at all, and yet you become angry. If you were locked in a room for twenty‑four hours where there is no one, nothing obstructs you, food is slid in from below, water is provided, every facility is there—you would still find within those twenty‑four hours that sometimes you get angry, sometimes dejected, sometimes sad; sometimes you suddenly find great joy, great peace. There is no outer cause. As if everything is arising from within you. Outside you merely search for pretexts. You look for supports outside. You place your hands on others’ shoulders and dump the responsibility on them.
Many experiments have been done in the West—what they call sensory deprivation. All sensory experience is blocked. Tiny chambers are made with every facility. You don’t even need to get up for food; nourishment is given by injection. There is darkness; no sound is heard, no sound goes out—a soundless condition. You are resting in a state of supreme comfort. No sensory stimulus comes. Wires are attached to your brain reporting that your mental state is changing every moment; and there is no external cause there. All causes have been shut down. Sometimes you become angry, the wires report; the graph shows you are angry. Perhaps you are dreaming. Perhaps you met an enemy on the road who said something. You have met no one; you are lying alone in the dark. But now you are imagining.
Psychologists have concluded that if a person is kept completely devoid of sensory stimuli for twenty‑one days, he begins to dream with open eyes; there is no need to close them. Then it is no longer “dreaming”—he experiences a friend sitting beside him, conversation happening; the friend says something and he gets offended.
Go and see the insane; they are doing exactly this. That madness is hidden within you too. The mad talk with friends, quarrel with enemies—and no one is there; they are alone. In twenty‑one days your condition also becomes the same: you become like the mad; hallucinations arise. Then you are not dreaming; you actually feel a friend is sitting in front of you, you are conversing; he says something irritating, you get angry, you stand ready to strike. Right now you do all this in the mind.
Have you ever noticed that when you think of striking, the same anger surges within you as when you actually strike? When you are filled with sexual desire, your body becomes aroused in just the same way as with physical sexuality. The presence of a woman is not necessary; your imagination is enough. It can even happen that there is no woman at all—only a scarf dyed and draped over a stick passes by. But if the scarf evokes the thought of a woman, the whole process begins.
The mind has the capacity to create an entire world. The outer world is only an excuse, a peg. You hang your anger on it, your love, your hate—but you have prepared them within. So first, when anger comes, look: did another truly create it, or was it already in me? Then search within a little: am I, perhaps, waiting for another—so that someone will just give me a nudge and the responsibility will not be mine, and I can flare up? And then, in solitude, observe that anger comes even without a cause; then anger is your inner capacity; it has no real relation to the outside.
If you inquire in this way into the different dimensions of your life, the siddhant of this story will dawn on you. Then this story will become a siddhant for you. But by siddhant I do not mean theory. It will become your experience, your experiment. Then you will know. Then there will be nothing left to explain; it will be a fact, not an explanation.
And whatever revolution comes in life does not come through explanations; it comes through facts. But we avoid facts and cling to explanations. You can hold this as an explanation. Then you will try to fit it, to make it “right”: “Yes, this is absolutely right.” But we only try to “fit” what is not right. What is true does not need fitting; it begins to reveal itself.
Search for this story in your life. There is no need to assume it is right beforehand. For now, let it remain a story. Seek it in your life, and when you find that this is exactly what happens in life, then instantly the story will change form and become a siddhant.
Buddha, Mahavira, Christ—whoever has spoken the ultimate elements of life—have said them in small stories, parables. They have said them in parables precisely so that you take them as stories until they become your lived experience. Until then there is no need to take them as principles. Until then they are just stories, a kind of entertainment. But catch the thread and set out to search in life.
Apply a little discernment; if there is any siddhant in a story, you will come to see it. And this is the difference between new and old stories. In the old stories facts lie concealed; the modern story is mostly imagination. In the old stories some truth is hidden; there is not an atom of untruth in them. If there is any untruth, it is in the form. As soon as you go inside the form, you will find the blazing fire of truth.
Gurdjieff made two divisions of art: one he called objective, factual; and one he called subjective, personal. So stories are of two kinds, paintings are of two kinds, poems are of two kinds. There are paintings that merely project the painter’s mental sickness onto the canvas—like Picasso’s paintings; they are not objective. The greatest painter of this century is of no real use in this sense. Whatever inner disease he has, he paints it out; it serves as catharsis. Picasso feels lighter—his illness has come out. But the viewer will become afflicted. If you meditate while looking at a Picasso painting, in a little while your head will begin to spin; you will feel as if you are going mad. If you remain for an hour or two in a full exhibition of Picasso, you will return very tired, dejected, depressed—as if some energy has been drained from you.
Modern art is like derangement, because the artist is unloading his illness. Read modern poetry: no flowers will bloom within you after reading it. You will not be immersed in peace or joy. Modern poetry will feel “right” to you because your life too is as dismal as modern poetry; the two will resonate.
Gurdjieff says a few old paintings, old sculptures, old stories are factual, objective. In them no one has dumped his disease; rather, he has distilled the experience of his life.
And the one who wrote this Sufi story had discovered some siddhant of life through experience; he had recognized something, had an encounter. He put that encounter into such words that even a child can understand—and if an old man wishes to understand, he will find it difficult. It is objective. For centuries this story will continue to conceal that truth.
And there is a delightful fact: the language of doctrines always changes, but the language of story never does. Therefore the language of a two‑thousand‑year‑old doctrine may be unintelligible to you, but a two‑thousand‑year‑old story you will understand.
Therefore Buddha, Mahavira, Zarathustra, Christ put their essential message into stories. And the Sufis are wondrous storytellers. The Sufis gave birth to objective art to such depth that it cannot be measured. Yet it is being lost. Because even when it stands before us—as the Taj Mahal stands—the Taj Mahal is an example of objective art—no one cares. The rest is just the story: that it was built by a lover for Mumtaz. That is merely the story. Built—yes; there is no untruth in that story either, but it is the outer outline.
If one meditates upon the Taj Mahal, one becomes silent at once. Its structure, and on certain nights the aura that arises from it—the marriage of moonlight and marble—in the night of the full moon there is no building on this earth more tranquil than the Taj Mahal. But even if people arrive there on the full‑moon night, they go on eating peanuts, or turn on the radio. The radio could have been listened to at home! Or they gossip meaninglessly, discuss politics. They have no idea they are standing before a great, unique, objective work, a factual work in which the secret of meditation is hidden. It was not made for Mumtaz—that is a pretext. Mumtaz is a pretext. The Sufi fakirs used Shah Jahan and raised a story in marble.
But the keys have been lost. As with this story being read by children.
No, do not proceed by taking it as a siddhant. With “accepting” begins the very confusion of life. There is no need to believe; there is a need to search—search! One day you will find this story is true. That day the story will disappear and the siddhant will remain. And that siddhant can transform life. It will transform—certainly it will—because whenever you see some truth, you cannot remain the same as you were before seeing it.
The vision of truth destroys the old in you and gives birth to the new.
That’s all for today.
When anger arises, the mind at once slips into a story: “He said such and such, therefore I became angry.” Then look closely: can another create anger in you? If anger is in you, the other can provoke it. Look deeper and you will find that anger must already be in you, and the capacity to be stirred must also be in you—only then can another arouse it. Then what significance remains to “the other”?
Then observe those situations where there is no one else at all, and yet you become angry. If you were locked in a room for twenty‑four hours where there is no one, nothing obstructs you, food is slid in from below, water is provided, every facility is there—you would still find within those twenty‑four hours that sometimes you get angry, sometimes dejected, sometimes sad; sometimes you suddenly find great joy, great peace. There is no outer cause. As if everything is arising from within you. Outside you merely search for pretexts. You look for supports outside. You place your hands on others’ shoulders and dump the responsibility on them.
Many experiments have been done in the West—what they call sensory deprivation. All sensory experience is blocked. Tiny chambers are made with every facility. You don’t even need to get up for food; nourishment is given by injection. There is darkness; no sound is heard, no sound goes out—a soundless condition. You are resting in a state of supreme comfort. No sensory stimulus comes. Wires are attached to your brain reporting that your mental state is changing every moment; and there is no external cause there. All causes have been shut down. Sometimes you become angry, the wires report; the graph shows you are angry. Perhaps you are dreaming. Perhaps you met an enemy on the road who said something. You have met no one; you are lying alone in the dark. But now you are imagining.
Psychologists have concluded that if a person is kept completely devoid of sensory stimuli for twenty‑one days, he begins to dream with open eyes; there is no need to close them. Then it is no longer “dreaming”—he experiences a friend sitting beside him, conversation happening; the friend says something and he gets offended.
Go and see the insane; they are doing exactly this. That madness is hidden within you too. The mad talk with friends, quarrel with enemies—and no one is there; they are alone. In twenty‑one days your condition also becomes the same: you become like the mad; hallucinations arise. Then you are not dreaming; you actually feel a friend is sitting in front of you, you are conversing; he says something irritating, you get angry, you stand ready to strike. Right now you do all this in the mind.
Have you ever noticed that when you think of striking, the same anger surges within you as when you actually strike? When you are filled with sexual desire, your body becomes aroused in just the same way as with physical sexuality. The presence of a woman is not necessary; your imagination is enough. It can even happen that there is no woman at all—only a scarf dyed and draped over a stick passes by. But if the scarf evokes the thought of a woman, the whole process begins.
The mind has the capacity to create an entire world. The outer world is only an excuse, a peg. You hang your anger on it, your love, your hate—but you have prepared them within. So first, when anger comes, look: did another truly create it, or was it already in me? Then search within a little: am I, perhaps, waiting for another—so that someone will just give me a nudge and the responsibility will not be mine, and I can flare up? And then, in solitude, observe that anger comes even without a cause; then anger is your inner capacity; it has no real relation to the outside.
If you inquire in this way into the different dimensions of your life, the siddhant of this story will dawn on you. Then this story will become a siddhant for you. But by siddhant I do not mean theory. It will become your experience, your experiment. Then you will know. Then there will be nothing left to explain; it will be a fact, not an explanation.
And whatever revolution comes in life does not come through explanations; it comes through facts. But we avoid facts and cling to explanations. You can hold this as an explanation. Then you will try to fit it, to make it “right”: “Yes, this is absolutely right.” But we only try to “fit” what is not right. What is true does not need fitting; it begins to reveal itself.
Search for this story in your life. There is no need to assume it is right beforehand. For now, let it remain a story. Seek it in your life, and when you find that this is exactly what happens in life, then instantly the story will change form and become a siddhant.
Buddha, Mahavira, Christ—whoever has spoken the ultimate elements of life—have said them in small stories, parables. They have said them in parables precisely so that you take them as stories until they become your lived experience. Until then there is no need to take them as principles. Until then they are just stories, a kind of entertainment. But catch the thread and set out to search in life.
Apply a little discernment; if there is any siddhant in a story, you will come to see it. And this is the difference between new and old stories. In the old stories facts lie concealed; the modern story is mostly imagination. In the old stories some truth is hidden; there is not an atom of untruth in them. If there is any untruth, it is in the form. As soon as you go inside the form, you will find the blazing fire of truth.
Gurdjieff made two divisions of art: one he called objective, factual; and one he called subjective, personal. So stories are of two kinds, paintings are of two kinds, poems are of two kinds. There are paintings that merely project the painter’s mental sickness onto the canvas—like Picasso’s paintings; they are not objective. The greatest painter of this century is of no real use in this sense. Whatever inner disease he has, he paints it out; it serves as catharsis. Picasso feels lighter—his illness has come out. But the viewer will become afflicted. If you meditate while looking at a Picasso painting, in a little while your head will begin to spin; you will feel as if you are going mad. If you remain for an hour or two in a full exhibition of Picasso, you will return very tired, dejected, depressed—as if some energy has been drained from you.
Modern art is like derangement, because the artist is unloading his illness. Read modern poetry: no flowers will bloom within you after reading it. You will not be immersed in peace or joy. Modern poetry will feel “right” to you because your life too is as dismal as modern poetry; the two will resonate.
Gurdjieff says a few old paintings, old sculptures, old stories are factual, objective. In them no one has dumped his disease; rather, he has distilled the experience of his life.
And the one who wrote this Sufi story had discovered some siddhant of life through experience; he had recognized something, had an encounter. He put that encounter into such words that even a child can understand—and if an old man wishes to understand, he will find it difficult. It is objective. For centuries this story will continue to conceal that truth.
And there is a delightful fact: the language of doctrines always changes, but the language of story never does. Therefore the language of a two‑thousand‑year‑old doctrine may be unintelligible to you, but a two‑thousand‑year‑old story you will understand.
Therefore Buddha, Mahavira, Zarathustra, Christ put their essential message into stories. And the Sufis are wondrous storytellers. The Sufis gave birth to objective art to such depth that it cannot be measured. Yet it is being lost. Because even when it stands before us—as the Taj Mahal stands—the Taj Mahal is an example of objective art—no one cares. The rest is just the story: that it was built by a lover for Mumtaz. That is merely the story. Built—yes; there is no untruth in that story either, but it is the outer outline.
If one meditates upon the Taj Mahal, one becomes silent at once. Its structure, and on certain nights the aura that arises from it—the marriage of moonlight and marble—in the night of the full moon there is no building on this earth more tranquil than the Taj Mahal. But even if people arrive there on the full‑moon night, they go on eating peanuts, or turn on the radio. The radio could have been listened to at home! Or they gossip meaninglessly, discuss politics. They have no idea they are standing before a great, unique, objective work, a factual work in which the secret of meditation is hidden. It was not made for Mumtaz—that is a pretext. Mumtaz is a pretext. The Sufi fakirs used Shah Jahan and raised a story in marble.
But the keys have been lost. As with this story being read by children.
No, do not proceed by taking it as a siddhant. With “accepting” begins the very confusion of life. There is no need to believe; there is a need to search—search! One day you will find this story is true. That day the story will disappear and the siddhant will remain. And that siddhant can transform life. It will transform—certainly it will—because whenever you see some truth, you cannot remain the same as you were before seeing it.
The vision of truth destroys the old in you and gives birth to the new.
That’s all for today.
Osho's Commentary
A thief, intending to steal, was climbing into a palace through a window. The window frame gave way; he fell to the floor and broke his leg. He sued the owner of the palace in court.
The householder said, “For this you should sue the carpenter who made the frame.” When the carpenter was called, he said, “The mason didn’t make the window opening properly. So the mason is at fault.” And the mason, in his defense, said that for his error a beautiful woman was responsible, who happened to be passing by just then while he was working at the window. That woman, in her defense, said, “At that time I had on a very beautiful scarf. Ordinarily, no one even looks at me. It’s the fault of that scarf, cleverly dyed in rainbow colors.”
At this the judge said, “Now the culprit has been found. For the thief’s broken leg the dyer is responsible.” But when the dyer was caught, it turned out he was the woman’s husband—and it also came to light that he himself was the thief!
The story is delightful.
The first point: life is a joint event; everything is connected. Seen from the surface, the story seems absurd, foolish. The judge appears insane. But the story is precious.
It is truer about life than your scriptures are, truer than your theories; because the primary truth of life is that we are not separate—we are together. And if somewhere a theft is happening, the saint is also responsible, even though he seems to have nothing to do with the theft. If somewhere a war is going on, then you—who may not even be aware of it—you too are culpable. Because life is interlinked.
Here, events are not cut apart and neatly divided. We are all connected, all parts of one consciousness. We are waves of the same ocean. If a wave nearby trembles, our hand is in it.
Buddha has said: as long as the last sinner is not freed, how can I be free? This is not only a statement of compassion; it is truth. If life is collective, how is it possible for a single person to be liberated? Buddha said, “I will wait at the very gates of nirvana until the last traveler has entered.”
People thought it was only an utterance of great compassion. Compassion is there, yes—but something more is there as well. The last sinner is also a part of Buddha. If one of my hands is sinning, how can my soul enter heaven? If my left hand is committing a sin, how can my right hand be a saint? First, understand this.
Second, understand that if life were like mathematics, then this judge would indeed be mad and this Sufi tale a piece of derangement. But life is not like mathematics; it isn’t clean and tidy. Here, everything melts and merges into everything else. Boundaries aren’t neatly drawn; they interpenetrate. In truth, there are no boundaries. The thief is melting into the saint; the saint is melting into the thief. Moment to moment, you are sometimes a saint, sometimes a thief.
Life is fluid, not solid.
That’s why it cannot be divided into fixed compartments. In the morning when you sat in prayer, you were utterly saintly. Then you reached your shop, lost your saintliness, and became a thief. Then the temple again, then prayer again; the mantra rises, the bell resounds—you change again.
Man is fluid.
Reasoning would be correct if life were solid. Life is not solid; it is fluid. Therefore logic cannot be finally correct.
This story is illogical. But life itself is illogical. There is no way to grasp it by intellect. To understand it you need other eyes—eyes the intellect cannot provide.
Once in China, a devotee of Lao Tzu became a judge. The very first case came before him. A man had committed a theft, a large theft; the thief confessed. The rich man whose house was robbed was pleased. Then the judge announced his decision: six months in jail for the thief, and six months in jail for the moneylender. The man whose house was robbed will also go to jail for six months, and the one who stole will also go to jail for six months. The rich man said, Have you gone mad? Is your head on straight? My house was robbed, and I go to jail? The judge said, You hoarded so much wealth—that’s why the theft happened. Whenever anyone hoards wealth like that, what else will happen if not theft? You are culprit number two. And out of mercy I give you only six months; otherwise you deserved six years.
And as long as only the thief is punished, theft will not cease—because the thief is only half the culprit. Before him, someone amassed wealth; only then could theft occur.
The judge said, “The whole village is starving and only you have riches. And from these very people you have squeezed your wealth. They starve because your vault is full. Their stomachs are empty because you have filled your safe. Who is culpable?”
He was dismissed from his post, because the emperor could not digest this. And the emperor must also have been afraid: if today a rich man is sent to jail, tomorrow this judge might send me to jail. There is solidarity among criminals—the big criminals. Someone asked the emperor, “But this seems right. Was the judge truly wrong?” The emperor said, “It’s not a question of right and wrong. If he is right, then I too am a criminal. That cannot be allowed. Therefore this judge will have to be wrong.”
So there is a collusion among the wealthy. And because of their collusion theft is born. And when theft is born, theft is made the crime.
Lao Tzu said, “As long as there are the rich, theft cannot be eradicated from the world. And as long as there are saints in the world, the un-saintly will remain.”
We may understand the tie between the rich and the thief; but the link between the saint and the sinner doesn’t make sense to us. We’ll say, All right, it’s understandable that if you gather great wealth someone will come to steal it. But doesn’t this subtler truth apply to the saint as well? That if someone amasses too many virtues, he will inevitably leave some others deprived of them? For someone to climb so high in saintliness, someone else will have to sink into un-saintliness—because life is a balance. It needs a balance, or it will be lost.
You can’t even imagine how the story of Rama would stand without Ravana. So who is the protagonist in the Ramayana—Rama or Ravana? Anyone who says Rama is wrong. Anyone who says Ravana is wrong. Rama and Ravana are joint protagonists. They can only exist together. Without Ravana there can be no Rama; without Rama there can be no Ravana. The Ramayana would collapse, because it moves on the balance between Rama and Ravana. The whole play goes on, like a tightrope walker on a rope: sometimes leaning left, sometimes right. When he feels he’s leaning too far to the right, to bring balance he leans left. When he feels he’s about to fall left, he leans right to restore balance.
Society is a balance. There the saint and the sinner, the poor and the rich, the intelligent and the dull—each is balancing the other.
Gurdjieff had a unique idea: that there is a finite quantity of intelligence in the world. When one person becomes highly intelligent, many others are left unintelligent to compensate. Who is culpable then? There seems to be a bit of truth in Gurdjieff’s principle. On its basis, many things become clear.
The Jains say that only twenty-four tirthankaras can appear in a single kalpa—twenty-five cannot. But why twenty-four? The Hindus say that in one kalpa there can be only twenty-four avatars, not twenty-five. Why twenty-four? The Buddhists say that in one kalpa only twenty-four buddhas can arise, no more. Why twenty-four? What is the secret?
If Gurdjieff is right, the secret is clear. If there is a specific finite quantity of tirthankara-hood, then the limit is fixed. Only so many can be tirthankaras; the amount gets exhausted. If there is a finite amount of water, only some can quench their thirst; the rest will remain thirsty. And the point seems plausible, because intelligence is material; the brain is material. So there must be a quantity. Beyond a certain quantity, more tirthankaras cannot be.
This would mean that the tirthankaras too are culpable. For those who could not become tirthankaras, they are as much to blame as the wealthy are responsible for those who remain beggars.
So the wise are also partners in the ignorance of the unwise. In this story the Sufis are saying exactly that.
It is a very amusing story, and therefore very sweet. A thief sneaks into a house. The window was crooked; he was hurt, his head split, his limbs fractured. He went and filed a case in court.
At first it seems thieves don’t usually file lawsuits. But you’re mistaken. Thieves are the first to file cases. Besides thieves, who else goes to court to file suits? And before some other thief files a case, the clever thief rushes to file one first.
Try to understand this bit of truth. If someone’s pocket gets picked right here, the man who picked the pocket will shout the loudest: “Pickpocketing is terrible! Who did it? Catch him! Beat him!” This is necessary if he is intelligent. If he is foolish, he will try to hide—and that is how he’ll get caught. If he has any skill, he will create an uproar. By raising a commotion he clears himself; no one even suspects that this man himself could be the thief.
Bertrand Russell said: whenever someone makes a big noise against theft, arrest him first.
Sinners talk a lot about virtue—because the talk of virtue becomes a smoke-screen to hide the sin. The unholy sing the praises of holiness. The promiscuous build great layers of discourse around celibacy—to hide their adultery. In fact, to hide anything, talk about the opposite. Whatever you don’t want revealed, display the reverse.
Thieves go to court and get the small thieves caught. The big thieves stay outside. Only the small sinners are caught, because the net of the law cannot catch the big sinners—the big sinners weave that net. The cords of the net are in their hands. So small sinners get trapped because the net is strong and they are weak. The big sinners are strong; they break the net and escape.
When you cast a net to catch fish, the fish stronger than your net won’t be caught; she will tear it and slip away. Only the weak fish are captured—those who cannot break the mesh. So small thieves get entangled in courts and rot in prisons. The big thieves… their histories are written.
What is Napoleon? What is Alexander? What are Tamerlane, Babur, Aurangzeb, Akbar, Ashoka? Whatever their outer style, they are master thieves. It’s hard to find greater plunderers than these. But their plunder is so vast it doesn’t look like plunder; they look like emperors. They are great bandits. It’s hard to find greater killers than they. H. G. Wells wrote: “If you commit a single murder, you’ll be in trouble. If you murder by the millions, history will sing your praises.” In this world, only the small get caught; the big escape.
So this thief must have reached the court—a clever man. Before anyone could ask, “Why did you go to steal?” he raised the question: “This man is a devil. He made such a window it could kill someone. This man is a murderer.”
There is another point to understand: even when you go to steal, you hold someone else responsible. This too is a simple rule of the mind. The thief also holds someone else guilty. We always lay blame on the other. It never even occurs to us that I might be at fault. There is always darkness under the lamp. All around, the light shows everything; only the ‘I’ is hidden.
This thief too never thought, “I went to steal.” With his head injured, his limbs broken, he thought, “The man who owns this place is malicious. He made this window in such a way that it could kill someone.” Then perhaps he reasoned, “I hadn’t even stolen yet; I was only entering. Nothing had actually happened, so how can I be at fault? It’s only theft once it is done.”
We call the act a fault, not the intention. If you actually murder someone, then you are guilty. If you only think of murdering, no court can catch you. This man hadn’t stolen; he was still at the window—he had only thought of it. Thinking doesn’t make one a thief. Our mind convinces us. Thinking doesn’t make one a murderer, or an adulterer. Every sin that any human being can commit—you commit them all, but in the mind! You were still at the window; you hadn’t gone in.
I’ve heard: A lady stormed to the manager of a grand hotel, furious. “I thought this was a respectable hotel. But just now I saw a waiter chasing a woman. It’s disgraceful.” The manager asked, “Did he catch her?” “No,” she said. He replied, “Then the hotel is still respectable. Until he actually catches her, there is no reason to complain. Why complain about what has not yet happened?”
This thief must have thought, “I hadn’t actually stolen. I went, I had the idea; the event had not taken place. And this man is vicious.”
The magistrate must have been a man of deep understanding. Because only deeply understanding people do such things—or lunatics. He said, “That seems right. Bring the owner; he is responsible, he is the culprit.” The owner was brought. He said, “Forgive me; it’s not my fault. The carpenter who made the window is to blame.” The carpenter was called and he said, “What can I do? The mason raised the wall crookedly. The fault isn’t mine.” The mason was called. He said, “What can I do? While I was building the wall, my mind went wobbly. A beautiful woman passed by. I became absorbed in looking at her. In that moment, mistakes happened. The fault is that woman’s.” The woman said, “No one even looks at me. But that day I had put on a scarf. The fault must be that scarf; it was gaudy, seven-colored, rainbow-like. It attracted everyone’s eyes. The dyer is to blame.”
There is something to grasp here: everyone shifts the blame to another. No judge asks, “What madness is this?” It is easy, convenient, to pass the buck. And life is interlinked, so blame can indeed be shifted—there will always be some cause to point toward. The mason is, in a way, speaking truth: “What can I do? A beautiful woman passed; my eyes got entangled, my mind wavered, desire filled me, and mistakes happened.”
The story seems mad, yet this is exactly what psychologists say. If a child goes insane, they say, “Arrest the mother. She must have mistreated him in childhood.” The mother says, “What can I do? Arrest my mother—someone must have mistreated me.” Whom will you catch?
Psychologists say, “Catch the teacher, catch the educationists, catch the parents, catch society—someone else is at fault.” If there is such a fierce youth rebellion in the West today, ninety percent of it is fueled by psychological doctrines. Psychology says, “Someone is culpable.” Fault cannot arise in you because the child is born pure. Someone distorts his mind; whoever distorts is culpable. But then, by that logic, no one except God can be culpable—because if you keep going back, removing each layer, only the Creator remains.
So the carpenter says, “The mason”; the mason says, “The woman”; the woman says, “The dyer.”
The story could end only because, by coincidence, the dyer turned out to be her husband—and not just that; he was the very man who had climbed in to steal and who had brought the lawsuit!
Hence the story has a unique dimension. If we go out into the world to catch the culprit, it will be impossible until we catch God. Whom will you hold at fault?
Mahavira denied God precisely because if there is a God, you cannot be culpable. How can you be guilty? The one who made you made you in such a way that you err; that you sin; that you are dishonest; that you steal. If there is something wrong in a painting, no one blames the painting; the painter is caught. If a sculpture is ugly, the sculptor is apprehended; punishing the statue is meaningless. If God is the Creator, then you are free of blame. That would be a straight, open highway to sin.
So Mahavira did a courageous thing: he said there is no God; only you are. Therefore you cannot pass the fault anywhere else. Your sin is yours, your virtue is yours. You alone are responsible. If there is heaven, it is yours; if there is hell, it is yours. Wherever you are, there is no other ground but you. In this sense Mahavira’s denial of God is deeply religious. The Hindus thought he was an atheist who denies God. But if you understand Mahavira rightly, he is the true theist—because his “theism” makes you responsible; and if you are responsible, change is possible. If God is responsible, what can you do?
In this story everyone keeps passing the blame on. The story could have gone on endlessly. For the sake of finishing it, the tale ends. Otherwise, finally God would be caught. But God cannot be caught.
Psychology opened a great mischief by saying, “You are not responsible—someone else is.” Then fine: if I am not responsible, whatever I am doing is all right. And I am doing it because of others. Then I cannot change until others change.
Marx and Freud—both have made today’s civilization diseased. Marx says circumstances are responsible; Freud says other persons are responsible. They agree on one thing: you are not responsible. If someone is a thief, it is because he is poor. If someone is promiscuous, it is because his upbringing, his conditioning, created promiscuity. Both absolve you—your responsibility becomes zero.
And the moment your responsibility becomes zero, your fall begins. Then there is no way to stop your decline. There is no way to prevent you from collapsing. Then there is a bottomless pit, and you will fall into it. The West is falling; every person is sinking to his lowest, and everyone says, “What can I do? It is beyond me. I am helpless.”
It’s quite a spectacle that Western atheism has landed at the same place where the East’s so-called theism had landed. Western atheism says you are not responsible—circumstances are. Eastern theism said God, fate, destiny are responsible—you are not. Both have set you free—from responsibility. The West is falling; the East has long since fallen badly.
Hindus possess the oldest scriptures—and the shabbiest ethics; the pettiest morality. The Upanishads have the loftiest heights, but the Hindu’s conduct? Paltry. Sometimes one is shocked: so much glorification of renunciation, and yet the way the Hindu clutches money, no one on earth clutches it so madly. Those whom we call materialists do not cling to money with this frenzy. It is hard to find a people more greedy than the Hindu. And there is so much talk against greed! Such heights of thought—and such meanness of behavior! What is the reason?
People from the West come to the East in search of truth, and when they see the people here, they are astonished. It’s hard for them to find more petty-minded folk anywhere. They talk of soul and God, but their behavior is utterly earth-bound and sick.
What is the reason? This is the reason: once it became clear that God, fate, destiny are responsible and nothing can be done, then you are as you are—and the abyss opens.
Whenever a person experiences “I am responsible,” his consciousness becomes alert. Then he wakes up. Then he makes effort, he tries, he holds himself together. Only by holding yourself together can you avoid falling into the pit. If you don’t, no one will hold you. Many may push you, but no one will hold you. Who is interested in your heights? Who draws juice from your purity? Who will toil to make you the ultimate peak of life? Everyone toils for themselves. The day your responsibility becomes zero, your foundations are gone. It is as if the ground has been pulled from under your feet.
If Mahavira and Buddha conducted the greatest experiment on earth and led thousands of consciousnesses to nirvana, its single foundation was this: they said there is no God, no fate—you are. If you are living in hell, you are the cause. There is no need to be despairing—because you went into hell yourself; you can come out yourself. No one sent you. It is your own decision. You went of your own free will. If you went by your own free will, you can come out by your own free will. There is no external pressure—neither circumstance, nor fate, nor God is pushing you. You are moving by your own motion; you are utterly free.
To make human freedom absolute, Mahavira had to deny God—because if God exists, your freedom cannot be absolute. Your free will would be false.
Your free will would be like this: I’ve heard that some schoolboys set the school on fire. They were angry at a teacher. The teacher was trapped in his room and was half burned. The case went to court. But the boys were minors. The magistrate said, “Whoever among the boys confesses his guilt will be pardoned. Those who do not confess will have to be punished.” So all the parents coaxed their children to confess. One mother brought her son to court and said, “Your honor, he has voluntarily confessed that he took part in setting the fire and seeks forgiveness.” The magistrate asked, “What do you mean by ‘voluntarily’?”
The woman said, “He confessed voluntarily. First I gave him a good thrashing—really fixed him. Then I locked him in the courtyard, took off all his clothes. It was a cold night. I gave him no food. I told him he would stay in the courtyard all night and in the morning he would be punished again—unless he voluntarily confessed. Within half an hour, your honor, he voluntarily confessed, ‘I have done wrong,’ and he seeks forgiveness.”
If there is a God, your free will will be exactly like this. If you are manufactured, what can your free will be? If there is a creator, what is your freedom? You are a puppet; the strings are in someone else’s hands. Someone makes you do; you do. This is why the Hindu society fell—because the sense of responsibility disappeared. Someone else is making us do; we are merely doing—puppets. Hindus say that God pulls the strings and we dance like puppets. He is the doer.
If He is the doer, how will you stop yourself while committing theft? How will you stop yourself while committing sin? Your free will is false. It cannot exist.
Mahavira offered a supreme insight: with God, there can be no freedom. This was not understood—even the Jains have not understood it. Because to the Jains, too, it seems frightening that freedom cannot coexist with God. If you understand Mahavira rightly, freedom itself is God. Freedom is the ultimate principle. Therefore moksha is the ultimate principle, not God. Liberation is the ultimate principle, not God.
You are not to become God; you are to become free. You are to become absolutely free. But you can only be absolutely free if your bondage is of your own making. If someone else bound you, how will you be free? He could bind you again. Then even in liberation there is no guarantee; you could be hurled back into the world. Because it was He who hurled you here in the first place. Even if you were sitting in moksha, if God changed his mind, he would fling you back into the world—because earlier too he flung you. You would sit in moksha helplessly. Where were you before? He will send you to the world again; a new play, a new leela. He will say, “Get up! Go!” What will you do? The puppeteer loosens the string and seats you in the sky, then pulls it and drops you to the ground.
With God, you cannot be free. With God, the world is not a democracy; it is a dictatorship.
But Mahavira says freedom is the ultimate principle; that alone is God. The day you become absolutely free, know that you have realized God. There is no other God.
Our mind always wants to blame the other. This is what the story is saying. The court kept summoning people, and everyone said, “It’s not my affair—someone else…”
And if you consider it a little, they too seem to have a point. What can the mason do if a beautiful woman passes by? What will you do? If a beautiful woman passes before you, what is your fault in it? You didn’t make the beautiful woman. You didn’t invite her to pass by. The situation is beyond your control. You didn’t make this heart that wobbles when it sees beauty. You didn’t create lust; it is hidden within you; it is God’s gift. It is your nature. What is the mason’s fault that he had eyes and the capacity to perceive beauty, that form attracts? What can he do? Nothing is in his hands. He is moving in a trance, dragged by unconsciousness. It does seem true that man is not responsible. But if this idea settles deep in you, you will fall into the bottomless pit of sin—because only your awareness stops you. Only your wakefulness holds you. You will sink and fall. You can walk on the ground and stand on your feet only because there is a little awareness.
If this mason had even a little awareness, could a beautiful woman have pulled him? A beautiful woman can only pull you in unconsciousness. A beautiful woman can only arouse lust in a trance. If he were full of awareness—watchful of what was happening inside and outside—the woman would have passed by.
Some youths had brought a naked courtesan into a forest for their entertainment. When they got too drunk and stupefied, she ran away. At midnight, when the cold increased, their stupor lessened and some awareness returned, they discovered she had fled. They began to search—this happened twenty-five centuries ago. Under a tree they found Buddha sitting—no one else was in that forest. They shook him and asked, “A beautiful naked woman passed this way. You must have seen her. Which way did she go? Because two paths divide right here where you sit. Should we go left or right?”
Buddha said, “Someone did pass, but it is difficult to say whether it was a woman or a man. I certainly heard footsteps; the ears are open. But my eyes were closed. And curiosity no longer arises in me to open my eyes to see who it is. Someone did pass; whether woman or man—hard to say. A few years ago, if this had happened…” Buddha said, “I would surely have told you whether a man or a woman—because then my inner man was in a trance. The sleeping male is always seeking the female. Every footfall seems to be a woman’s. All I can say is that someone passed—a bundle of bones, flesh and pulp. Whether man or woman, hard to say. And as for beauty, beauty is interpretation—it is lust. Now nothing is beautiful to me, nothing ugly.”
What do you call “beautiful”? It is quite a joke. You think someone attracts you because they are beautiful. You are wrong. Someone seems beautiful because they attract you. Desire produces beauty; beauty does not beget desire. When desire disappears, beauty disappears. Desire within you gives birth to beauty. Beauty is your desire’s interpretation. Whatever your lust finds consumable, it calls beautiful. Whatever it does not find consumable, it starts calling ugly. Whatever you consume ceases to be beautiful—because when hunger is gone, how can the savor remain?
That is why a wife does not appear beautiful to her husband. If she does, then it means the relationship is not of lust but of love. Because when lust is satiated… When you are hungry, the aroma of food is alluring; how can it be so with a full belly? When hungry, what relish you feel at the plate! With a full belly, how can that be? Full belly means the taste is gone. If someone forces you to eat with a full stomach, not only is there no relish—there is revulsion; you feel like vomiting. The very food that attracted you so much begins to repel.
I’ve heard: A driver was stopped at a checkpoint at a state border. The officer wanted to see the car’s papers. Everything was in order. He asked, “Who is with you?” “My wife,” said the driver. The officer said, “All right—but do you have any proof that the woman you are carrying is your wife?” The driver leaned out the window and whispered in the officer’s ear, “If you can prove she is not my wife, I’ll pay you a thousand rupees cash!”
Every husband wants to be rid of his wife; the wife wants to be rid of the husband—because beauty is lost. Either lust has been fully fed, or constant proximity has bred repulsion; the belly is full. And beauty is created by desire. The farther the person, the more beautiful they seem.
Those who know say: because desire is within you, you interpret beauty and ugliness outside. When desire disappears from within, nothing is beautiful in this world and nothing is ugly—because nothing is consumable and nothing is non-consumable. But the unconscious mind thinks: a beautiful woman pulled me.
Even the woman said something excellent. She told the magistrate, “Forgive me; I am a very ordinary woman. No one ever looks at me. The fault is this scarf. It is very colorful, seven-hued, iridescent. The dyer did a marvelous job. Because of this scarf, this man must have been aroused.”
Women know this well—that there is not as much charm in the body as in the scarf. Hence clothes, jewelry, adornment. Wherever you see beauty in women, eighty percent of it is adornment, deception—it is scarves! The woman was right: “I am a very ordinary woman. The fault must be the scarf. No one ever looks at me. And this man became so full of juice that he blundered at his work. That cannot be unless the scarf did it.”
All such beauty is superficial—whether it is of the scarf or of the body. The body too is a scarf, richly dyed.
“Catch the dyer,” she said. “What can I do?”
They did catch the dyer—but the trouble was, he turned out to be the thief.
The meaning of this story is: if you keep tracing causes, in the end you will catch yourself. Blame whomever you like; if your inquiry continues, you will finally find yourself guilty. No matter how long the circle, no matter how far you shift the blame onto others, if you keep searching, you will discover that there is no culprit in this world other than you. You are the thief, and you are the dyer. You went to steal, and your head was broken through you. There is no one here but you. All your pains, your entanglements, chains and thorns—are of your own sowing. It is your crop you are harvesting.
That day in court there must have been quite a laugh—because the dyer had nothing left to say; hence the story ends. The same man had gone to steal, and because of him, his own scarf, his own wife—all the distraction was created.
There is a circle in life. That’s why the wise don’t blame the other; he accepts in advance: I am at fault. Why take such a long roundabout? In the end, I will be caught with my hands in the dye. My theft is mine, my scarf is dyed by me, and my head is broken by me.
In the story, the loop is very short because it is invented. In life it is huge, spanning many births—because life is not a fiction. It is a circle of endless births. In the end you yourself will be caught.
Christians and Muslims have a doctrine: the Day of Last Judgment—Qayamat. The day when, after all your circling, the decisive moment will come and you will be caught.
The Sufis say, Why wait for Qayamat? Then there will be nothing left to do. There will be no remedy. Why not decide today? When this decision happens in a person’s life, religion is born: I am responsible. However much the mind protests, if you take responsibility for every mistake, you will very quickly find your mistakes disappearing. If you declare yourself guilty for every fault, you will find faults slowly dissolving and you becoming innocent. Because if I am responsible, it is easy to cut at the root. If I am the cause, what is the hindrance? If my own crop is poisoning my life, I will stop sowing those seeds.
The doctrine of karma is the basis of this story. The meaning of karma is: whatever fruit you are getting is from your own deeds. The human mind is so astonishing and cunning! The doctrine of karma is the very opposite of fate, but Hindus have used it in such a way that it appears as fate. People say, “What can we do? It’s the wheel of karma,” as if karma is throwing them around! As if karma were a separate entity that is spinning them! People say, “What can be done? We are reaping the fruits of past lives.” They have made karma the synonym of fate, whereas karma is the very antithesis of fate. That is why Mahavira denied God, but he did not deny karma.
Three great religions were born in India—and there is no parallel to them anywhere on earth. Compared to these, other religions are pale shadows. Hinduism, Jainism, Buddhism—these three great religions were born here. Among the three, there are thousands of differences and disputes; but one point is undisputed: the doctrine of karma.
Mahavira does not accept God. The entire Hindu edifice rests on God. Buddha accepts neither God nor soul. The Jains’ whole foundation is the soul. These are such deep oppositions that no bridge can be built between them. The Hindu accepts soul, God and world. The Jain accepts soul and world. And Buddha accepts none of the three—no soul, no God, no world: emptiness! But in one matter all three agree: karma. Surely the doctrine of karma is so deep that on this point there can be no dispute.
Perhaps the doctrine of karma is India’s deepest discovery—deeper than God, deeper than soul, deeper than nirvana—because on this Buddha, Mahavira and Krishna have no disagreement. On this they agree, of one mind. Think: when such opposite-seeming people agree, it cannot be merely a doctrine; it must be truth. It must be a law of life, not a mere interpretation. On interpretations there is bound to be quarrel.
The doctrine of karma means: you are responsible.
Where you are, you are there because of yourself.
What you are, you are because of yourself.
As you are, you are because of yourself.
You are the sum total of your own actions.
The day you recognize this, the story will end. On that day you will see: you yourself went to steal; you dyed the scarf; you beautified your wife; you distracted the mason’s eyes; you put the carpenter in trouble; you trapped the householder; you yourself went to steal. From beginning to end, you did it all. From first to last, throughout the story, you alone are responsible.
The day it becomes clear to a person that I am responsible, I am the creator of my life—at that very moment religion is born. The moment you stop holding others responsible, revolution begins. Because then there is no escape. If there is sorrow, it is mine; if there is joy, it is mine. There is no one, other than me, who is handing out even a grain of joy or sorrow. Then it is in my hands. If I want suffering, I may go on getting it—but there is no point in complaining. If I want joy, then I must stop sowing the seeds of misery. The matter becomes utterly straightforward—and scientific.
That is why I say, the story is sweet and very deep. Understand it rightly; don’t laugh it away. People have almost forgotten how to use such stories. They have even forgotten that this is a Sufi tale. It’s being printed in children’s books. Little children read it and giggle, as if it were some joke! It is not a joke; it is a fundamental truth. It is not the crazy quirk of a deranged magistrate; it is the tale of your life. It is the doctrine of karma. Sooner or later you will be caught and you will find that you are the thief and you are the dyer.
How long will you postpone it? Bring the two ends together quickly; complete the story. When the two ends meet, you can step out of the circle. This wheel of life—you can leap out of it. Until you understand this, you will keep wandering in the cycle of the world. To understand “I am the thief and I am the dyer” is to understand your freedom. It is to understand your power. It is to understand your strength.
Your strength is immense. It is by your strength that you have created so vast a hell around you. Therefore I do not say God created the world—I say you did. With one hand you are dyeing the scarf and with the other you are out stealing. With your left hand you dye the scarf; with your right hand you steal. And between your two hands, it is your head that is being smashed.
Understand this. Contemplate this story. Don’t take it as a joke. When such precious stories become jokes—perhaps that too is one of our strategies; perhaps by that strategy we avoid the pain. Their sting is taken out; the thorn is removed. We think it is a jest; we laugh, and the matter is finished. Little children read the story and are delighted. This story is for the old to understand. And the Sufis have created many such tales in which children can find flavor, and the old can find revolution—stories that children can grasp at one level, and at another level even the old will find it hard to understand.
Stories have many layers. One layer is on the surface—clear. Another layer is deeper—unclear. I am trying to show you that deeper layer. If that, too, becomes visible to you, this story can be your night of Judgment. After reading it, you can become another man. Then it becomes your path of practice.
Anything more?