Deepak Bara Naam Ka #9

Chaitanya Kirti!
Satyam param, param satyam.
Param does not mean “most excellent.” That translation is mistaken. “Most excellent” still belongs to the same series—call it the last rung of the ladder, but it is the same ladder. The first rung is of the ladder, and the topmost rung is also of the ladder. In “most excellent” there is no qualitative difference, only quantitative. Param does not mean “most excellent.”

Param means: that which transcends all series and gradations; for which there is no possibility of placing it in any category or class; which is, in its very nature, inexpressible. Whatever you say about it will be a mistake.

Lao Tzu has a famous saying: Speak the truth—and in the very speaking it becomes untrue. The very act of speaking. Because Truth is like the vast sky and words are very small, smaller even than a courtyard. How can the sky of Truth be contained in words?

And our categories are divisions of our own mind. This we call “matter,” this we call “consciousness”—but who decides? Who makes the distinctions? The process of distinguishing belongs to the mind, and Truth is beyond the mind, on the far side of mind. Therefore Truth cannot be placed in any category of the mind. Do not fall into the error of calling it “most excellent.” Even if something is the highest, it is still connected to the low. However high a tree rises into the sky, it remains connected to the very roots that have gone deep into the earth.

Friedrich Nietzsche has a famous line: if a tree wishes to touch the stars, it must send its roots down to the depths. And the tree is one. The roots that have gone to the nether regions and the branches touching heaven are not separate; one current of life unites both. Your feet and your head are not separate. This illusion of separateness has created great madness.

The Manusmriti says: the Brahmin was born from Brahma’s mouth. Why? Because the mouth is “most excellent.” And the Shudra was born from Brahma’s feet, because the feet are most base. The Vaishya from the thighs—a little above the Shudra, yet still a lower limb. They divided the human being into two halves: what is above the waist is superior, what is below the waist is inferior. What a joke! The same stream of blood flows; there is no division anywhere—bones the same, flesh the same, blood the same—everything connected, integrated. And even this they divided. Then there are Kshatriyas, born from the arms—somewhat higher. And then the Brahmin, born from the mouth.

But whether Shudra or Brahmin, if both are merely connected to feet and mouth, there can be no qualitative difference between them. There cannot be—because they are limbs of the same body.

In my definition, all are born as shudras. And the one who goes beyond all the chains of the mind, who enters that Unknown and Unknowable for which there is no word, no doctrine, no way to say it—before which the knower becomes mute, like the sweetness of jaggery in the mouth of a dumb man—that one is the Brahmin. A Brahmin is one who has known Brahman; the one who has known the supreme truth of life is a Brahmin. All are born shudras. Then someone, through the process of meditation reaching samadhi, going beyond the mind, becomes a Brahmin. To be a Brahmin is an attainment; no one is a Brahmin by birth.

This sutra is lovely:
Satyam param...
Truth is param. But let me remind you again: you have taken param to mean “most excellent.” No—that is the language of the ego. The most excellent! The very top! Then the one on top will be pressing someone down, standing on someone’s chest.

Just yesterday I saw a statement by Shri Morarji Desai. A journalist asked him in a press conference, “If people ask you to become prime minister again, will you agree?” He said, “Certainly! Why, if people ask me to sit on a donkey, I will agree to that too.” I fell into a little reflection. Who are these “people”? First ask the donkey! Will the donkey agree to carry him?

And then I remembered—Seth Chandulal’s son asked him, “Papa, why do they seat the bridegroom on a horse and not on a donkey?” Chandulal said, “Son, they seat him on a horse so that it remains clear who is the bridegroom and who is the horse. If they seat him on a donkey, how will one know who is the bridegroom and who is the donkey? On whose neck will the garland be placed? The bride will be in great difficulty, utterly bewildered: one donkey mounted on another! That is why they seat him on a horse.”

This Morarji Desai is ready to sit on a donkey. But is any donkey ready to seat him? And who are the “people” who will tell him to sit on a donkey? The right to a donkey belongs only to a donkey. But no donkey is such a donkey as to agree to seat him. And what an eagerness there is to sit on someone’s back! All right—if only on a donkey, but to sit above!

This craving to be “on top” is the ego. Truth has nothing to do with ego. Where ego falls, there is Truth. As long as you are, Truth is not. When you are not, Truth is. The fragrance of your emptiness is Truth. On your ashes the flower of Truth blooms. You become the manure. Only then does the experience of Truth begin. As long as you are, you can think about Truth, but you will not know it. And however much you may know about Truth, that is not knowing Truth. One may know everything about love, but if the music of love has not been struck in his very breath, even if he has read all the scriptures on love, he will still remain deprived of love. One may read everything about light, ponder it all, but if he has no eyes—or has eyes and keeps them closed—he will not know light. Keep this distinction in mind: to know light, and to know about light, are two different things. Knowing about is philosophy; knowing is religion.

About Truth one can know. One can know a great deal. The libraries of the whole world are filled to the brim. But that is not the arrangement for knowing Truth. The process of knowing Truth is just the opposite. All categories must be broken, all chains dissolved, all concepts must be saluted—one last salutation!—and then let go. The Hindu concept, the Muslim, the Christian, the Jain, the Buddhist, the Sikh, the Parsi—all concepts must be bid farewell. Because as long as you have concepts, as long as you have prejudices, as long as you proceed having assumed something in advance, you will not be able to know That-which-is. Your assumption will be superimposed upon it. If there are glasses on your eyes, their color will deceive you—its hue will dominate your entire vision. And what is it to be a Hindu, a Muslim, a Jain? Spectacles—of different colors. And through whatever color you look, that same color begins to appear in the whole of existence.

If existence is to be seen, the spectacles must be removed. It is necessary to be free of the burden of scriptures. And when no knowledge at all remains within you, innocence is born. Then within you the same heart is there with which you had come as a child—the same simplicity, the same wonder, the same inquiry, the same eagerness to know.

A pundit has no eagerness to know. He sits as if he already knows!

It isn’t difficult to understand me; I speak in a very simple, straightforward language. But the “pandit” attached to Pramod—that scholar—has created the mischief. That pandit will not let you understand. Scholarship has never allowed anyone to understand. Who crucified Jesus? The pundits—the priests of the Jewish religion. Who cut Mansoor’s hands and feet, who severed his head? Muslim pundits—mullahs, imams, ayatollahs. They were their pundits. They missed Mansoor, they missed Jesus. Who denied Buddha in this very land? How did the wondrous fragrance of Buddha vanish from here? The net of pundits! It went beyond their tolerance.

And there is a reason they cannot tolerate: the pundit has a vested interest—a very deep one. His knowledge is endangered. If he listens to the enlightened ones, the very first thing he must do is gather the courage to drop his knowledge. And dropping knowledge feels as if one were being asked to drop one’s very life. That is his only wealth, his sole inheritance. His ego is ornamented by it; it is his jewelry. That is all he has—nothing else. The burden of scriptures alone gives him the illusion of knowing.

But knowing is one thing; the illusion of knowing is another. People don’t go astray so much because of ignorance as they do because of the illusion of knowledge. The ignorant at least feels, “I don’t know.” He has that much authenticity. The pundit doesn’t even have that. He does not know, yet he thinks he knows. He has accepted that he has known—without knowing. Now how will he ever really know? The wall of “knowing” stands in the way. Truth is not known through knowledge; truth is known through meditation. And meditation means: the transcendence of mind—going beyond mind.

Nanak called it the state of no-mind. High and low, this and that—all are games of the mind. Where the mind falls utterly silent, where a profound stillness prevails, there the descent of truth happens.

Satyam param—param satyam.
And then, for the first time, you know the vast. For the first time, you know That-which-is. It is certainly the ultimate. “Ultimate” means: in knowing it, all that is worth knowing has been known. “Ultimate” means: one who has drunk it has drunk the nectar. “Ultimate” means: one who has known the Divine has recognized the ultimate fragrance of the soul. The very moment that fragrance enters your life, a revolution happens—and that revolution is what is called heaven.

Heaven is not a geographical state.
One who has known the truth, one who lives the truth—he enters heaven; and from such a heaven there is no fall. No one ever falls from there.

The heaven you talk about—people fall from there. There the same fear exists; there the same politics runs. Your Puranas are full of such stories. They are false—for they speak of a geographical heaven. And that is not the heaven the Upanishad is speaking of. Otherwise, what fear could Indra have? A rishi, a muni starts meditating, comes close to samadhi—and Indra’s throne begins to shake: why should Indra be afraid? What panic can arise in him? The Puranas say he fears his throne might be snatched away. Truth is never snatched! And what can be snatched is not truth. What can be taken away is already worthless—two-penny stuff. You have clutched at a straw and think you will be saved. You will drown—and the straw will drown with you. Has anyone ever been saved by clinging to straw? But there is a proverb: to a drowning man, even a straw seems support. He starts hoping—clutching the straw, closing his eyes so he doesn’t have to see that it is only a straw.

Your Indras are your imaginations. Your gods and goddesses are your imaginations. Your heaven is a projection of your unfulfilled longings. What you could not fulfill here—you wanted to, but couldn’t. How can all desires be fulfilled in life? Desires are infinite and life is short. Seventy small years—and desires without end. A single desire is hard enough to fulfill; and there are endless desires. Much remains incomplete—everything remains incomplete. Everyone dies incomplete. For these incomplete longings you need a hope—that somewhere ahead they will be fulfilled. Your heaven stands upon the foundation stone of these unfulfilled desires.

Here you wanted beautiful women—couldn’t have them. Here you wanted beautiful men—couldn’t find them. Here beauty is a mirage. From a distance the woman seems beautiful, the man seems beautiful; come close and you cannot even understand how the flower turned into thorns! Sweet lips—how do they start speaking such harsh words? Lovely eyes—how do they become burning embers? Beautiful bodies—how do they become chains? You all know this. So man begins to string garlands of hope: in heaven there will be nymphs—Urvashi, Menaka—their bodies made of gold, voices like cuckoos, their lives all fragrance... and even their bodies never sweat! And apsaras never grow old.

Mulla Nasruddin was in love with a woman and kept saying, “I will love you forever.” Women don’t easily believe such talk. They listen—they don’t outright deny, because they don’t want to—but they don’t believe. After hearing it often, one day she said, “Tell me honestly—swear by God, hand on your heart—will you love me forever? When I grow old and decrepit, will you still love me? When I fall ill, when my flesh and bones begin to wither, will you still love me?” Nasruddin hesitated; he hadn’t thought things would go this far. He said, “Yes, yes, of course I will love you!” And then, thinking a bit, he added, “But tell me one thing: you won’t start looking like your mother, will you?”

She will start looking like her mother, of course! He saved that one condition—just keep in mind, don’t start looking like your mother!

What people say in love, later they regret. In this world wealth piles up, but poverty does not vanish. Palaces are built, but death snatches everything. So heaven is imagined. That heaven—and the heaven of the seers of the Upanishads—are worlds apart. Your Puranas are concoctions—trash. But the Upanishads are jewels.

This sutra is like the Kohinoor. It says: to live in truth is heaven. Now the question is no longer geographical. It is spiritual. It has nothing to do with the outside; it is all about the within. To live in truth is heaven. To live in samadhi is heaven. To go beyond mind is heaven. Your heaven, by contrast, is the mind’s longings, the mind’s cravings. It is the tired mind’s last hope: if not here, then after death; if not now, then ahead, somewhere. And on the strength of that hope man keeps going—bearing a thousand sorrows, carrying mountains of burdens. Hope remains: ahead.

You know the saying: an optimist sees, from within a tunnel bored through the mountains, a light far off at the other end, and he keeps walking—miles of dark tunnel—in the hope that the light he sees will be reached today, or tomorrow, or the day after...! And out of that very hope we have woven the story of many births. Because within one birth there is no confidence that this tunnel, this darkness will be crossed, we have imagined 8.4 million wombs. Think—84 million! It means: someday, somehow, the darkness will be crossed; the night will end; dawn will come—morning will arrive!

But often what happens is that the darkness does not end—and the light you see at the far end of the tunnel turns out to be the headlamp of a train. It does arrive—but it passes crushing you, breaking your bones and ribs.

All your hopes turn into delusions. Every hope ends in despair. Yet man gathers new hopes again, begins to think again, begins to dream again.

The heavens described in the Puranas—whether Hindu, Muslim, or Christian—are only expansions of human craving. But the heaven the Upanishad speaks of is altogether different: to live in truth is heaven. And once one has learned to live in truth, how can one fall from there? How can anyone fall from that light, that bliss, that rhythm? That music—once found—is found forever.

Buddha said: suffering has no beginning, but it has an end; bliss has a beginning, but it has no end. A very profound statement! Your suffering has no beginning—you have been suffering since beginningless time. If you go searching for its first cause, you won’t find it. The more you dig, the further back it recedes—its roots go ever further behind. Suffering has no beginning, Buddha says, but it has an end. If you will, it can end now—here—this very moment. Suffering ends because there is a way to go beyond mind.

Buddha uttered four noble truths. First: there is suffering. Most people don’t even accept this. They deny it—they hide it, suppress it. Ask anyone, “How are you?” and he says, “Wonderful!” Look into his eyes, at his face—do you see any joy? Everyone smiles and says, “By God’s grace, all is well!” You say it too. Nothing is well! The whole earth is filled with sadness, with suffering—it is a kind of hell—and everyone keeps saying, “All is fine! By God’s grace, it’s all bliss!” People are lying. It’s a show. There is a reason for the show: what is the point of exposing your wounds to others, of opening your pus before someone? Who will share it? So you keep it covered. There is pus and there are wounds—go buy some flowers from the market and deck them over the wounds. Let others see only flowers.

You smile on seeing people; they smile on seeing you. There is no smile within you, nor within them. Inside you there are tears; inside them, tears too. Yet a mask must be worn. They call this etiquette, civilization, culture. A hypocrisy must be maintained.

Buddha says: first accept that there is suffering. If you will not accept it, the journey cannot begin.

Second, says Buddha: try to understand that suffering has causes. Nothing happens without cause. Don’t shove it onto fate! Fate is an excuse—an escape from facing the causes. Don’t say the script was written by some god! Don’t say it is someone else’s responsibility. If there is a cause, you are the cause. The causes are within you—in your unconsciousness. If you rage, what will you have but suffering? If you are greedy, what will you have but suffering? If you cause pain to others, oppress others, do you think the lute of joy will play in your life? Whatever you give to existence returns to you. This world reflects. It multiplies what you give a thousandfold and returns it. Everything comes back. The pits you dig for others turn out, one day, to be your own graves.

So there are causes.

But we protect the causes as well. First, we are not ready to accept that we suffer—hiding it from others and from ourselves, maintaining the illusion that all is fine while inside a volcano seethes and outside we wear a mask. If someone does accept, “Yes, there is suffering,” then he will lay its causes upon others. The husband is suffering because of the wife, the wife because of the husband, the father because of the son, the son because of the father.

Mulla Nasruddin’s son, Fazlu, failed his exams and ran away from home. Advertisements were placed in newspapers: “Your mother is miserable, your father is miserable—son, come home! We will die without you.” But Fazlu didn’t return. At last his mother published a masterstroke of an ad: “Son, now come home at once! You ran away fearing you failed the exam. Don’t worry; you were afraid your papa would beat you—your papa too has failed his departmental exam. Now come home!” And Fazlu came back the same day.

We are all afraid of each other! We shift the blame onto each other!

And the person who leaves the cause with others has found a way to evade. He says, “What can I do! Society is evil, its structure is bad, the family framework is wrong, the economy is bad, the politics corrupt. I am a lone person drowning in this ocean of becoming! Where is the shore? Who is not ready to devour me?” This way you “save” yourself—but this is no saving. This is tying the noose with your own hands. The causes are within you.

So Buddha’s second noble truth: first, there is suffering; second, there are causes—and they are within you. Third, there are methods to cut the causes. Do not despair! There are ways to uproot them. Once you discover where the root is, you can dig, you can pull out the weeds and cut them. That very method is called religion, meditation, yoga, tantra. Different names; the process is one: somehow become the witness of the mind. The moment witnessing arises within you, transcendence happens. You attain the supreme state. And Buddha said: the fourth noble truth is that neither the causes are in vain nor the methods go in vain—there is a state in which suffering utterly ceases, becomes zero. There is that supreme bliss. I am a witness to it, Buddha said. I have known it; therefore I tell you.

Whoever lives in truth cannot fall from that life. One who lives in truth—how can he fall into untruth?

Satam hi satya.
And what is truth? The very nature of the true ones is truth. Satam hi satya—their being itself is truth. Truth is not a doctrine, not a conclusion. The aura within the enlightened ones, their very existence, their essential nature—the gurgling stream within them, the rays that spread around them, the fragrance that wafts from them—that is truth. Truth is not like the truths of mathematics—two and two make four. Not like the truths of science—found by experiments in laboratories. Truth is the ultimate experience of your own being. What you are—that experience is truth. What your essential nature is, your real is-ness—this truth cannot be obtained from the Vedas or the Qurans or the Bibles. To attain it you must dive into the innermost depth of your own being. Those who have sought have found.

“Those who sought, found—by diving into deep waters.” Kabir speaks rightly. But one must dive very deep, so that you can discover your ground, your own nature. And others have piled a lot of rubbish upon your nature—you will have to cut it away, remove it. Who knows how many stones have been placed upon you! Your nature is lost under them—stone upon stone. “You are a Hindu!” The child is born and immediately: his sacred thread! The child is born and immediately: his circumcision—make him a Muslim! The child is born and immediately: his baptism—make him a Christian! They start piling stones, heaping rocks upon you! They begin telling you, “You are a Christian.”

Whenever a child is born he is neither Christian nor Hindu nor Jain. He is born as pure consciousness, like a blank page. But people sit ready with pens dipped in their own inks; no sooner is a child born than they start writing on his blank page—someone inscribes the Gita, someone the Quran, someone the Bible. They ruin the clean page! They never gave him a chance to know himself. Before he could discover who he is, they imposed beliefs: you are Indian, Chinese, German. They pile on more: you are Brahmin, Kshatriya, Vaishya, Shudra—and then sub-classes within classes. Even Shudras don’t see themselves as equal among themselves—there are higher and lower Shudras.

I once went to speak at a gathering of chamars. They were celebrating Raidas’s birth anniversary and invited me to speak. I went—and saw only a few chamars. I asked, “In this village there are so many Shudras—bhangis, potters—where are they?” The chamars said, “What are you saying! How can we sit with bhangis?” I said, “Then I made a mistake sitting with you. I didn’t know you had your own hierarchies. A chamar thinks himself higher than a bhangi. How can he sit with him? You invited Brahmins—but how could Brahmins come? I asked them, ‘Why did you call me?’ They said, ‘Because so many people listen to you—at least they will come.’ But they didn’t. How could they sit with you? When you won’t sit with bhangis! I had no idea that even among Shudras there are ranks—higher and lower.”

Man is just man. Why load him with geography? Why load him with history? Why heap upon him the muck of ages? Yet it has been piled on. And whoever wants to seek truth—his own nature—must cut away all this filth. He must separate this trash—set it on fire! Without that courage, no one can attain truth.

Satam hi satya. Your nature is truth. But many layers have settled upon it, much dust upon the mirror. The mirror must be cleaned.

It is arduous.
Say to someone, “Your being a Hindu is an obstacle to knowing your nature”—or Muslim, or Jain—and he is ready to quarrel, ready to kill and be killed. He does not think these are imposed things—not his nature but distortions; not religion. A religious person is simply religious—no adjectives. A religious person has no nationality. A religious person does not consider himself white or black—because he does not take himself to be the body. He knows himself as consciousness. A religious person does not think of himself as male or female—since when has consciousness had gender? When has the soul been male or female?

Yet what insanities we carry! The Jains even hold that from a woman’s body there is no liberation. Liberation of the body? The body remains here—whether male or female. Liberation—if it is—will be of the soul; and it happens in witnessing. The male soul will see a male body around it; the female soul will see a female body around it; but the soul is not female. The soul is the witness—of both—equally. The white man’s soul will see white skin around it, the black man’s soul black skin; but the soul is not skin. Yet we have lost the soul in countless distractions—amassed pebbles and stones, and lost our nature—loaded ourselves with scriptures. We have no sense of truth—but we are proficient in doctrines.

Satam hi satya.
And truth is your nature.

Tasmāt satye ramante.
Therefore, delight in truth. Live in truth. And the one who lives in truth—that one is the saint. So let me tell you: if a “saint” says, “I am a Hindu,” know he is not a saint. If he says, “I am a Jain,” know he is not a saint. A saint is only one who lives in truth. And truth is neither Hindu nor Muslim, neither Jain nor Christian. Truth is not in temples, nor in churches, nor in gurudwaras. Truth is within you. Truth is self-inquiry.

This sutra is lovely—this sutra is to be lived.

You wrote a little—I’ll understand much more; what you haven’t written, I’ve understood too.

First thing, you ask: How did you escape marriage? Arre, whom God protects, none can harm! And you say: I am trapped in marriage and suffering hell. No—you had to suffer hell, hence you got yourself trapped in marriage. Don’t turn things upside down! Don’t stand on your head! You are blaming marriage—as if marriage did you. You did the marriage! You were the one who climbed the horse, peacock-feather turban and all. Look, even Morarji Desai is ready to mount a donkey; surely you mounted a horse, became a groom-king for a day—and a slave for life, a slave to your wife! And what a deep slavery—so deep you won’t even write your name, because your wife is here.

I understand your trouble.

“Husband”—pati—means “one whose story is finished.” And patni—wife—means “always taut, drawn tight.” She must be sitting right beside you—taut. And don’t imagine that by not writing your name she won’t recognize you. If, when you’ve written a little, I can understand much more, won’t your wife recognize you without a name? She’ll recognize you anyway. She’s probably elbowing you right now: “Let’s go home—and then I’ll show you!”

I’ve heard: a couple died and reached heaven’s gate—many others had arrived, too. There’s always a crowd there. Two signboards were hung. One said: “Henpecked husbands, enter here.” The other said: “Those who are not henpecked, enter here.” The entire crowd stood under the “henpecked” sign. Only one scrawny little man—perhaps you—stood nervously, alone, at the door for “those who are not henpecked.” The guard on duty—probably like our saintly maharaj—shoved him and barked, “What are you doing here? You think you’re not henpecked? Get in the other queue with the big wrestlers! What are you doing here?” The man said, “What can I do? I can’t move from here.” “Why not?” “Because my wife told me to stand here! Even God couldn’t move me till my wife says so. She said, ‘Enter through this door.’ I’ll enter through this door. I never go against her orders.”

You say: I am trapped in marriage and suffering hell.
Why trapped? Because hell had to be suffered—so you got trapped. And you are suffering hell because you want to suffer. Look closely within and find the cause. Don’t throw the cause on the other! And you’re not the only one suffering hell; your wife is suffering too. Can anyone enjoy heaven with a hellish companion? If you are in hell, can your wife be in heaven? If such a distance existed, you’d escape. She’s sitting right beside you—here too! So you are both suffering together, making a hell for each other. Otherwise, one can step out of hell at any moment. No one is stopping you. What power does the poor wife have?

Why are husbands so afraid of their wives? The cause of fear lies within them. Try to find it in yourself! You will instantly recognize where the snag is. You present one persona before your wife that is not your real face. Hence your fear. Falsehood always brings fear. With untruth, fear will come.

Seth Chandulal, one night in his sleep, blurted out loudly, “Kamla! Dear Kamla!!” His wife’s name was Nirmala. And wives don’t sleep even in their sleep; they keep an ear out—who knows what mess the husband is getting into in his dreams. “Kamla! Who is this Kamla!” She shook him awake: “Who is Kamla? Who is this wretch?” He was stunned: “Where did Kamla come from suddenly?” He had no idea what he’d been mumbling. “I don’t understand. Let me wash my face—what’s this about Kamla?” She said, “Just now, twice in your sleep you said ‘Kamla, Kamla!’” By then he had worked out his account. “Oh, nothing—Kamla is the name of a mare at the racecourse. I had money on her. She must have come to mind.”

But you can’t fool a wife so easily. At noon, while Chandulal was at the shop, his wife telephoned: “Come home quickly—the mare has come to see you. And such a mare I’ve never seen—looks exactly like a woman!”

How far can you hide?

Where there’s a lie, where there’s untruth, fear comes. Truth brings fearlessness. You are so scared of your wife you can’t even write your name! This is the limit! Arre, O “lions,” O “immovable heads of orders,” O sovereigns of the Brotherhood of Henpecked Husbands—give yourself some respect at least! Keep a little self-regard! Why so utterly like a drenched cat? Find the cause of such fear. Why are you so scared?

Seth Chandulal’s little boy asked, “Papa, why does this goat go ‘maa-maa’?” Chandulal said, “Son, the butchers have caught it; it has a few hours to live. They’ll give it a jhatka and sell its meat.” The boy said, “Just that? I thought they were taking it to be married!”

The boy watches his father’s plight day and night; naturally he figures: the goat must be getting married. What is happening to our father is happening to it.

Your children know too.

In a certain house, to keep the peace among the children, their mother gathered them all—Indian family: a dozen and a half kids! We know how to produce only one thing: children! She dressed them all alike. Early on, when there were only three or four, she clothed them alike so they wouldn’t get lost; later, when there were ten or fifteen, people still asked, “Why now?” She said, “So no outsider slips in among them. Otherwise one wouldn’t know for a month or two—such a crowd!” You can imagine the state of the house.

She announced a new rule: every week there will be a prize for the most obedient. The children said, “We’re not interested.” “Why?” “Because we know who’ll get the prize—Father. Since the test is obedience, the prize will always go to Dad.”

Why are you so afraid? What is the cause? After all, a wife is not a wild animal. The causes lie within you.

Declare your authenticity simply before your wife. Lay yourself open as you are. There will be one upheaval. Even here you won’t write your name! And the wife will figure it out; she already has.

A judge asked a complainant woman: “Among hundreds of buffaloes, how did you recognize your buffalo?” She replied, “What’s the big deal, Your Honor? In your court stand hundreds of lawyers in black coats—they all look like buffaloes—yet I can recognize my lawyer, can’t I? The same way I recognized my buffalo.”

Your wife recognizes you. Who doesn’t recognize their own buffalo! Had you written your name, at least honesty would begin—begin here. Otherwise, you’ll sneak home like a thief—fearful, trembling. That is the cause of fear. When you are consistently authentic, the causes of fear are destroyed. If you remain fearful, sooner or later you’ll be caught—and by then things are worse.

In a swimming pool, Seth Chandulal was introduced to a beauty. After chatting a while, as he left he told her, “Please remember—don’t mention this meeting to anyone.” About a month later, at a party with his wife, he met the same beauty. She looked at him for a minute or two, then bowed and said, “Forgive me—since you’re wearing clothes today, it took me a moment to recognize you.”

Now he’s trapped! Thoroughly trapped! Of course—she’d seen him at the pool in a loincloth. If you see someone almost naked and then later in suit and tie, it makes quite a difference! If Mahavira himself showed up in pants, coat, and tie, I don’t think a single Jain monk would recognize him. Only I would. Those you saw naked—how will you recognize them in full attire? But he’s trapped now—no escape.

Search out the causes of your fear. Don’t dump them on your wife. What is her fault? You are scared; therefore she frightens. Drop all your masks once and for all—at worst she’ll swing the rolling pin; she swings it anyway! Let what has to happen, happen once—but lay all your cards on the table. Say: “This is the kind of man I am; this is my situation. If you can accept it, good; if not, that’s okay too.”

And my own understanding—after studying thousands of women—is that if they are not deceived, women are far more loving than men. But toward the one who deceives them, their hardness becomes deep. Women are taking on you the revenge of centuries. For centuries men have tormented women. You left them no options, closed all doors—no freedom, no dimensions for life. You won’t let them go out alone, meet anyone, make friends; you won’t let their interests develop; you shut them in every way. If their anger boils over—and you’re the only one they meet—on whom else should they throw it?

You are responsible for their slavery. Give them freedom.

Do not treat your wife as an object. The wife you objectify will also put you on the path—by turning you into an object. No person, man or woman, wants to be dependent. But men have made women dependent while wanting to stay free themselves. Impossible. That bargain cannot work. Its bad consequences are upon us.

Here in my ashram no male sannyasin is afraid of any woman. There is no cause. Things are clear and clean—and they should be. This is the beginning of an authentic life. Then perhaps someday you may attain the ultimate truth. If even in life’s small matters you are untrue, abandon hope of truth.

I asked Mulla Nasruddin: “Nasruddin, have your path and your wife’s ever been the same, even once?” Nasruddin said, “Yes—only once in life. When our house caught fire, we both thought of leaving by the front door.”

Cultivate a little friendship with your wife. I hardly see a husband who is friends with his wife—who shares his heart with her. Husbands and wives don’t talk. In fact, the husband fears talking—lest some other matter slip out. He sees his wife and at once opens the newspaper—the same one he has already read three times that day. He quickly switches on the radio. Or if he talks, it’s small talk—for which she has no interest, and neither does he. He talks just to pass time, carefully choosing topics that carry no risk of argument—repeating the same things every day. The wife grows bored hearing his prattle.

Cultivate friendship. Love is a distant thing; at least cultivate friendship. If friendship is cultivated, perhaps love will come someday.

Do you ever sit and play cards with your wife? Ever play chess? Ever spread out a game of chaupar? Ever sit and chat with her? There is no friendly bond. Between husband and wife, friendship seems impossible; then only enmity remains. What else is left? Only the single tie of enmity.

And you say: “Woman is wealth.” You coin proverbs like—
- Gold, wife, and land: the three that bring quarrels home.
You have put wife alongside land and gold. Where should all this insult go, if not toward you? Hence the explosive situation.

Seth Chandulal said to his wife, “Listen, don’t quarrel at every little thing. Let there be a little peace at home. Please!” His wife Gulabo picked up the rolling pin and said, “Aren’t you ashamed to level such an accusation? Where do I quarrel? If you hurl such false charges, remember—I’ll thrash you so hard you’ll remember your granny!”

There is a tension between husband and wife. You try to deny it, to whitewash it, but you do not try to resolve it. Simply accept that your wife has her own free soul, her own personhood, her own privacy. Then she will also give you the chance to be free and to be yourself. For freedom one can sacrifice everything. Marriage is not so precious that you must sacrifice your life to it. And once your wife understands that you love freedom so much that even if the marriage were to end you wouldn’t worry or look back, she will reconsider the whole situation. But if you remain fearful, you will be frightened—and kept frightened.

Billu Guru was in the drawing room talking with friends. Their son, overhearing, ran to his mother: “Mom, Mom, Daddy is saying there is no difference between a husband and a donkey. Is he a donkey?” Mother said, “One should not distrust elders. What they say is true.”

Between husband and wife there must be a bond of friendship. Otherwise, what remains? The wife becomes your servant: cooking, raising the children, cleaning the house all day, washing your clothes—and then her body is there for your use at night. And what do you give in return? When your wife is scrubbing utensils, have you ever joined her and scrubbed with her? When she’s cleaning the house, have you ever said, “You sit, rest—I’m free; I’ll clean today”? Begin a little friendship, and this fear will dissolve of itself.

Only by giving respect can you receive respect. In response to insult, you get insult. Men have this view: what are women? Shoes on the feet. How will you receive respect? And not just common folk—even your revered Tulsidas had this “wisdom”: “Dhol, ganwar, shudra, pashu, nari.” He lumped women with drums, the unlettered, shudras, and animals. And he never paused to consider that because of his wife Rama entered his life. He should have thanked her. He never thanked her—he abused her. As if taking revenge.

He himself was lustful and blind—so blind that when his wife had gone to her parents’ home, he snuck there in the dead of a stormy monsoon night. He crossed a river clinging to a corpse, thinking a big log was floating by. That blind! Lust is always blind. He went by the back of the house—no way to go in from the front; what would her parents say? “She has been there only two days and you’ve arrived—at midnight! No message!” So he climbed up the back wall. A snake hung from the eaves in the rain; he grabbed it, thinking it a rope. Where was his awareness?

When his wife saw all this, when he climbed up, she said, “What are you doing? If you had such love for the Divine, you would have attained God. This blindness, this state possessed by infatuation, is not beautiful.”

That blow changed Tulsidas’s life. He should have thanked her. He should have dedicated the Ramcharitmanas to that woman. But far from dedication, he counted women among shudras, the unlettered, drums. And why add “drum” to the list? Because a drum sounds only when beaten. These are fit to be thrashed—their only right is to be oppressed. As a drum sounds when you beat it, so, they say, a woman will respect you if you torment her. This is sheer stupidity.

Honor woman. Respect her. You have insulted her greatly—not you alone; your so‑called saints have insulted her greatly. Woman has been called the gate of hell. The most despicable criticism has been hurled. Naturally it has accumulated within women. It has reached the point of explosion.

If we are to birth a better humanity, we must clear this rubbish. Respect woman; she is not your slave. If you make her a slave, she will make you one. And if you give her freedom, you may receive freedom too.

But it’s good you have come here. Perhaps something may happen. Try to understand my words patiently. And do this first: go and tell your wife that it was I who asked the question. Begin right there. Tell her plainly: I asked it. And these are my illusions and my fears—they are basic in me. Open your heart—guileless. If you have come, good. Even if late, still good. The one who strayed in the morning and returns by evening is not called lost.

It took you long to come…
It took you long to come—
thank God you came at last.
Hope did not leave the heart,
though we were anxious.
It took you long to come—
thank God you came at last.

Crimson dusk, rainbow, moonlit veils,
stars in the sky, lightning flowers—
how much there is in this hem,
if only it fall into our hands.
Crimson dusk, rainbow, moonlit veils,
stars in the sky, lightning flowers—
how much there is in this hem,
if only it fall into our hands.

False it is that history
always repeats itself—
it would be good if the dream of my youth
repeated just a little.

In exchange for love we would
sell even our own will—
if only someone came, a buyer for the heart,
someone to make us their own.
If only someone came, a buyer for the heart,
someone to make us their own.

It took you long to come—
thank God you came at last.
Hope did not leave the heart,
though we were anxious.
It took you long to come…

No worry. You married; you got entangled in the net. However late it may be, revolution can still happen. And it is good that you passed through this experience. Without it, it would have been difficult. Had you not married, you would imagine those who married are enjoying—just as now you imagine those who didn’t marry are enjoying. What one gets, one becomes dissatisfied with; what one doesn’t get, one keeps hoping for. It’s good that one nuisance has been settled; one disturbance in the mind has quieted. At least this much intelligence has come—marriage has given you this awareness: you feel trapped, in hell, though you fell in by your own hand, so you can climb out by your own hand. This can be a precious experience. And the woman you made your wife—get yourself out, and get her out too. That much is your duty! Just as you fell into hell and dragged her too, so come out yourself and bring her out. And I say: if you come out, she will too.

I have always found that women have more clear-sightedness. They don’t think only with the intellect; they think with the heart. They don’t move merely by logic, but their love is sufficient to give them insight. If she sees your brightening being, your meditative fragrance, your rising light, your blossoming flower, she will not lag behind—she may go ahead of you.

Many have tried to be free alone—running away to the forests. I call them deserters, cowards. There is no need to flee. Be free where you are, and there help others toward freedom. Your freedom will open a path for them too. But if you are afraid—if you remain fearful—you will stay bound, and you will keep the other bound as well.

...Listen, Kachchh-Kesari, Achal Gacchadhipati! You got yourself trapped in marriage and came here asking how to get out of hell—and now listen to this question:
“I have come to you defeated in love. Thoughts of suicide arise. I no longer wish to live. What should I do, what should I not do?”
Avinash! There are only two ways. Either make an effort to understand—that requires a very deep intelligence. Hone the sword of your intelligence through meditation so you can see what those who “succeeded” in love actually got. Go meet Kachchh-Kesari! And there are Kachchh-Kesaris aplenty right here; you don’t have to meet only him. Meet any married man! Hear his story, hear his agony. Then you will say, “I am blessed—by God’s grace I have been spared.” Then you won’t be saying, “I have come to you defeated in love.” And the woman you were so eager to live with—at least find out what is happening to the man she is living with. Has he gone mad? Has he run off to become a tridandi sadhu, or a Jain monk? Find out what he is going through! Don’t drown only in your own tears—open your eyes!
You say you have come defeated in love, and thoughts of suicide arise.
Such thoughts arise in those defeated in love, and also in those who “won” in love—the same thought of suicide.
Mulla Nasruddin was hanging himself. Absent-minded, he had left the door ajar. Inside the room, he found nothing else at hand, only his tie; so he tied the tie around his neck, fastened it to the chandelier, and was just about to swing when his wife arrived. She cried, “What are you doing? Hey, that’s your most expensive tie! If you must die, I’ll bring you a rope—don’t ruin that tie; someone else could use it!” The moment he heard “someone else could use it,” he hopped down: “I’m not dying! Who is that ‘someone’ it would be useful to?”
What are these thoughts worth!
Another time he attempted suicide again. This time he locked the door, because the first time his wife had messed it up—she brought up the tie: “Don’t spoil the tie! If you want to die, then die already!” The arithmetic of women is different—she was worried about the tie: “We just bought it, brand-new! Men—what are men? You can find a thousand of them. But the tie! He’s ruining it for nothing!”
So he locked the door. She pounded on it for a long time. Mulla said, “I won’t open it. I have made a firm decision to die.” You have to decide to die! If someone truly wants to die, he just dies! Avinash, you came all the way here to ask! The very train you took— you could have lain down beneath it! Who knows from how far you traveled—mountains must have come, wells, trains, buses, and those masterful truck drivers barreling along—how many chances you skipped to get here! Thought accomplishes nothing, brother—you have to actually do something. Many people have thoughts.
Psychologists say it’s hard to find a person who hasn’t at least four times in life thought of dying. But thought is thought. A fine thought, a noble thought perhaps—but thought bears no fruit. People keep thinking—and the thinking itself gives them relief: “Ah, what a tremendous thought! We are defeated in love—look, we’ve outdone Majnun—we are thinking of suicide! See, we’ve slaked Farhad’s thirst—we are thinking of suicide; what more sacrifice!” Done nothing, yet they revel in the thought.
So Mulla Nasruddin—his wife pounded for three hours. He kept saying, “I’m thinking; I am going to die.” She came to me. I said, “You’re absolutely crazy! Does it take three hours to die—to think and ponder? You live on the seventh floor—just jump! Forget the worry!” But she said, “No, I saved him once; now he might actually do something! He’s at it again.”
So I went.
I knocked and said, “Open the door! It’s been four hours—you still haven’t figured out a method; let me tell you how to die!” He hadn’t imagined anyone would come to teach him a way to die. Whoever had come—neighbors, people from the lane—said, “Brother, don’t do it! Think of your wife and children!” And it is precisely because of wife and children that he is going to die—how can he think of them! They were only stoking his fire—sprinkling salt on the wound. I said, “You want to die—excellent. There’s nothing wrong in dying. Do die. But do it properly! You’ve been at it three or four hours—soon the police will arrive; suicide is a crime; you’ll get tangled up. Make a quick arrangement. I’ll tell you the method. Open the door!”
How could he tell me, “I won’t open—I’m going to die!” He could say that to others; but I was offering the method. He opened. I saw what he was doing: he had looped the rope over both shoulders. The ties his wife had already hidden away. I said, “With the rope over your shoulders, tied to the chandelier, and your feet on the floor—how will you die? Tie it around your neck, idiot!” He said, “I had tied it around my neck before—but that way I felt very suffocated.”
Of course you’ll feel suffocated—when you commit suicide, won’t you!
You ask, Avinash, “I have come defeated in love. Thoughts of suicide arise. I don’t want to live.”
And still you ask: “What should I do, what should I not do?”
Now, if you truly don’t want to live, what is there to ask! Let those who wish to live ask. Like these Kachchh-Kesaris—let them ask; they still want to live. You don’t want to live—what will you do with advice? And if you must ask, then after dying find someone to ask.
No—you’re not going to die. You are simply feeding your ego: “See, I am ready to die for love.” And if you have really come here to die, then I can certainly teach you a way of dying such that you need never be born again. Because otherwise, you die and you’ll have to be born again—more trouble. Birth is the beginning of trouble. Whether you fail in love or “succeed,” in either case the thought of death will arise. Money comes—you’ll hang; money doesn’t come—you’ll hang. Once birth happens, the commotion begins. That’s why this land, over centuries, distilled this essence: we need freedom from the coming-and-going. But note: you must first come—only then can you be free of going. As for going, anyone is eager; but you’ll be back again. There must be a method such that there is no return. That I call sannyas, meditation—the real dying: the death of the ego.
The soul cannot die. Try all you will—no one has ever killed the soul. Krishna is right: na hanyate hanyamane sharire. Destroy the body—it doesn’t die. Burn it—it doesn’t burn. Pierce it with weapons—it isn’t pierced. The soul is immortal; there’s no way to kill it. But the ego can be killed. It is the ego that is born and dies. That is the wheel of birth and death. That alone deludes you and keeps you wandering.
Even now you say, “I returned defeated in love”—but you are wrong. You have been defeated in your ego. What do you know of love! And whoever has known love has never been defeated—because love cannot be defeated. You loved someone—that was your right. Whether she accepts or not—that is her right. Where is the obstacle to your loving? If you love the moon, it doesn’t mean you must keep the moon in your pocket for your love to be real. If you love flowers, it doesn’t mean you must pluck them and make a bouquet for your love to be proven.
A friend once brought George Bernard Shaw a bouquet of flowers. Shaw said, “Forgive me, I will not accept it.” The friend said, “I thought you were a connoisseur of beauty, a great aesthete. You must have a taste for flowers. These are large, beautiful roses; I brought them to adorn your table.” Bernard Shaw said, “I also find little children lovable—does that mean I should cut off their heads and make a bouquet? If you love flowers, how could you cut them? First answer that! You don’t love at all. Had you loved, the flower was living on the plant—there could be no question of plucking it. And if you have loved a flower, what need is there that it bloom only in your garden for you to love it? Let it bloom in anyone’s garden. Let it bloom—that alone would be love’s longing.”
But what we call love wants possession, ownership. Ownership is not love; it is ego. Yes, if you like, you can spread a thin sugary coating called love over the poison of ego—that is another matter. But inside it is poison. The language of defeat is not love’s language. Love has never known defeat. Whoever has lived in love has lived in unbroken victory. It is the ego that loses—because the ego wants to win. Love does not want to win—how can it lose? Where there is no desire to win, how can loss be?
Love gives freedom to the one it loves. If you loved a woman and she loved someone else, and she is joyous with him, you would rejoice that she is joyous. You would not impose yourself on her. But we are strange people—always eager to impose. And it is not only lovers imposing on beloveds or beloveds on lovers—everyone is imposing on everyone. Parents impose on children. If your son falls in love with a girl—danger! You must choose the girl. The one you choose—your son must love her. If the boy chooses, or your daughter chooses—wound! Who is being wounded? Are you concerned for the boy’s and girl’s happiness, or for the journey of your own ego? Here everyone is busy adorning the ego. Call it what you will—the reality is something else. You don’t yet know love. If you had known love, the thought of suicide would never arise. Whoever has known love finds in his life the emergence of life’s deathlessness, life’s nectar-nature.
But in one sense you have come to the right place, because here I can teach you the real suicide: let the ego die—that is the true suicide. Then there is no coming back into this world. But you will find it difficult—you will agree with this poet:

My confidant, my companion in breath,
do not betray me in the guise of a friend.
I am scorched by the fire of love, life at my lips—
do not offer me a prayer for life.

The light in my life comes from the scars upon my heart,
and from this very light my life is lit.
I fear, O my healer,
that you yourself might snuff out this lamp.

I am exhausted by the world’s sorrows,
I am a complaint woven of pain and grief.
Whatever agonies are written in my fate—
O God, may You give them to no one.

At times you pressed the goblet to my lips,
at times you smiled and drew it away.
This teasing of yours, O cupbearer—
may it not extinguish my very thirst.

Leave me to my condition—
how can I trust you, O healer?
These brief favors of yours—
may they not increase my pain.

My resolve is so lofty
that I do not fear others’ flames.
I fear the fire within the flower—
lest it burn the whole garden.

They are rising, carrying flowers and fragrance—
hey, “Shakeel,” where are you?
In the gathering, to take your cup,
may no other hand reach out.

My confidant, my companion in breath—
do not betray me in the guise of a friend.
I am scorched by the fire of love, life at my lips—
do not offer me a prayer for life.

I can only bless you with deathless life. You are thinking of self-destruction—I can only give you the alchemy of nectar; I can show you the doorway to a life that is eternal, and the doorway to a love that knows no defeat. But you will have to be free of the futile notions you are clutching in your stupor.
First understand this: you have not loved. Loving is not a small thing. Only one who has first dropped the ego can love. Where there is ego, what love can be there? Along with ego, love is impossible. The two have never coexisted, nor can they. Want to love? First drop the ego. And the sword that drops the ego is meditation. With meditation, behead the ego. Then fountains of love will burst forth in your life. Those fountains are never defeated. They will not fill you with despair and desolation; they will fill you with a joy without limit; they will transform your life into a celebration.
If you are ready even for suicide, then at least have the courage for sannyas. If you are ready to die, then at least enter sannyas! One who is ready to die—what is there to fear? What won’t a dying man do! Do at least this much! Become a sannyasin, Avinash! And I can truly give you the path to becoming avinash—deathless.
But don’t fall into these petty notions: “I have been defeated in love; thoughts of suicide are arising; I want to die; I don’t want to live.” What have you known yet? You have not even recognized life. You have no acquaintance with love. For all this, one must learn something of the art of living; life has to be refined. Life is given to us like an unhewn stone. Then we must lift the chisel and cut away many useless parts; only then does the statue of Buddhahood appear in it.
We are all born like rough stones, but if we choose, we can depart as buddhas. Whoever departs as a buddha dissolves into the infinite. The Upanishadic formula is apt for that very buddhahood:
Satyam param, param satya.
Truth is the supreme; the supreme is truth.
Satyena na svargal-lokāc chyavante kadācana.
Whoever rises to that Supreme Truth attains the heaven from which falling is impossible.
Satāṁ hi satya.
Such a person’s very being is truth; his every breath is truth; his life is Bhagavat. If he speaks, it is the Bhagavad Gita; if he is silent, even his silence is music.
Tasmāt satye ramante.
He rises—truth; he sits—truth; he sleeps—truth. He delights only in truth.
That’s all for today.