Diya Tale Andhera #1

A few fundamental laws of life need to be understood. First law: Whatever is already given to us is the easiest to forget. What we do not have stays in memory. Lack reveals itself. The empty spot is visible. If a tooth breaks, the tongue keeps going to the gap again and again. While the tooth was there, perhaps the tongue never went there; there was no need. Emptiness pricks. You have always been filled with the soul. There has never been a time when it was not. That tooth will never break. That place has never been empty. The soul has always been and will always be. And precisely therein lies the difficulty.

What is never absent does not come to mind. While you have wealth, who remembers wealth? In poverty, you remember money. While you are healthy, you don’t even notice the body. When illness comes, then it is the body and only the body that is seen. Illness means: the body is noticed. Health means: the body is not noticed at all. One who is perfectly healthy is as if there were no body. The body is sometimes sick, sometimes healthy. The soul is never sick, never healthy. As it is—one and the same—it remains. How will you notice it? How will you remember it? That is the first difficulty.

Hence lifetimes go by seeking that which is already within you. It sounds upside down to say you spend lives searching for that for which there was never any need to search, that which was always yours, which you never lost, which—no matter how hard you tried—you could not lose, for there is no way to lose it. For this reason, darkness gathers under the lamp; that is the first point.

Second point: Life is a struggle twenty-four hours a day. Wherever there is struggle, you have to stay alert; there is fear there. You stay alert because of fear. If all fear vanished, you would fall asleep. If there were no fear, you would stretch your legs and doze off. Fear keeps you awake. Fear makes you stand guard. You don’t sleep. On the plane of the soul there is no fear. Fearlessness is its nature. On the plane of the body, there are all kinds of fears. Fearlessness is not the body’s nature; fear is its intrinsic quality. If you doze even a little there, you will lose hold of the body. That wealth is not yours; it is yours only for a moment—comes and goes. There you must keep awake.

Look: those who have wealth sleep at night; the thief stays awake all night. I have heard of a thief who once accumulated a lot of money—as thieves often do. But he could not sleep at night. He would pace around and keep watch. His friends said, “Fool! You don’t need to patrol anymore. There is no need to stay up at night.” The thief said, “It’s an old habit. And besides, I’m afraid that if I stole, someone else might steal from me.”

The thief is always afraid. Only a non-thief can sleep. A thief will be fearful. He knows all too well how he used to steal when others slept; their sleep was the opening for theft.

There was a great wit, Oscar Wilde. A friend asked him, “I need to read a certain book. I can’t find it in the market or in libraries. I’ve heard you have it.” Wilde said, “Certainly. But I won’t give it.” The friend was shocked. “Our old friendship! I’m only asking to borrow it, and you won’t?” Wilde said, “There’s a reason. I collected all these books by borrowing them. They’re all stolen. The thousands of books you see in my library—I didn’t buy a single one. Don’t ask me for them now.”

The thief is always afraid. Whatever he has done to others can be done to him. So you stay vigilant about wealth. When the safe is full, you sit alert. If the house is big, you stand guard. Whatever you accumulate, you must guard it with your life. There’s a saying that when a rich man dies, he turns into a snake and sits on his wealth. It’s a fine saying. It simply means that while living you guard it, and even after death you guard it.

But the wealth of the soul you did not steal, nor did you grab it from anyone. It has always been yours. And there, no fear pervades; so why would you stay awake? Where there is no fear, why would you be alert? That’s why darkness gathers under the lamp.

Third point: For that which is eternal, which always is and will always be—what is the hurry? For the fleeting, which is here now and gone the next moment—there is hurry, haste, scramble. Look at the difference between East and West. In the West, people are in great haste. Every day they invent new systems to increase speed: how to get there faster, how to do things more quickly. They devise new methods, new tools, and live in terrible haste.

In the East, people are not so rushed. They move slowly. There is no great insistence on “arriving” somewhere. If you arrive, fine; if not, fine. East and West hardly understand each other. In the West, if someone says, “I’ll meet you at five,” he will come at five. In the East, if someone says, “I’ll come,” don’t be sure whether he’ll come today, tomorrow, the day after—or at all. Not because the East is untrustworthy, but because there is no urgency about time.

If you look deeper, you’ll find that Western religions—Christianity, Judaism, Islam—accept only one life. They say there is no life beyond. This creates hurry. Everything is slipping away. Enjoy—before it slips out of your hands. If you delay, you’ll miss it; time won’t return.

A Marwari once bought a million calendars—of the year 1950. They were going four for a paisa. Useless, unsold stock. Someone asked him, “Madman! Granted they were cheap, but what will you do with them?” He said, “1950 will come back someday; watch then!” By then millions of years will have passed.

In the East, people accept cyclical time. Everything returns. Nothing is lost forever. Lost today, found tomorrow, or the day after. Youth lost in this life? Don’t panic—it will come again and again. Hence no great haste, no mad rush.

In the West there’s the notion of a single life: seventy years from birth to death, then finished forever. So speed up production, save as much time as possible so man can enjoy life, and arrange things so he can enjoy up to his last breath. This entire mindset arose. I say this because where time seems short, you run hard and grab; where time is eternal, there’s no hurry—didn’t see today, no harm; didn’t see tomorrow either, still no harm; didn’t see for lifetimes—no harm; you’ll see someday.

The soul is eternal; the body is not. Therefore you hold, look after, search for the body. You worry about bodily pleasures. Hence darkness gathers under the lamp.

The body will die—whether you accept it or not. Deep down, the sting is lodged within that the body will die. The soul is immortal—whether you know it or not; its immortal tone is resounding within you—whether you recognize it or not. The immortal is easy to forget; the mortal is hard to forget. What is doomed to die—hurry to enjoy it. The arithmetic is simple. The soul is immortal, eternal—wealth that cannot be lost; no illness ever enters there. For all these reasons, there is darkness under the lamp.

No matter how much Buddha says, “Hurry up,” you don’t. Krishna may explain and you understand, yet you return to your world. So many explain, yet it doesn’t sink in. About the body, no one lectures you, yet you understand easily: enjoy it—this stream won’t last forever.

If you see all these reasons clearly, you will understand why consciousness flows outward and not inward—why you look outside and not within—why you seek money, status, the world, and not the soul, God, liberation. This darkness under the lamp is utterly natural—just like the darkness beneath an ordinary clay lamp. So too, beneath you, there is darkness.

How long will this darkness last? As long as you take yourself to be the body. As long as the lamp has its support, the darkness remains. If the flame were freed, alone in the sky, there would be light all around. But the flame is leaning on the lamp. The lamp is not the flame. The space occupied by the lamp remains in darkness. Hence a paradox: the lamp lights all, yet itself stays plunged in darkness. You see everyone—except yourself. You understand everyone—except the one who remains misunderstood: yourself. You help everyone—except the one helpless within. You heap up wealth everywhere—yet within, emptiness, poverty remain.

As long as the flame relies on the body, as long as you think “I am the body,” as long as the flame mistakenly thinks it is the clay lamp; until the flame clearly knows: the lamp is clay and I am not clay; the soul is of the nature of fire, the body of clay...

You’ve noticed fire has a nature: it always rises upward, upward. Turn the lamp upside down and the flame will still go up. You cannot make the flame go down. The nature of fire is upward movement. Hence all the enlightened ones have called the soul “fire-natured.” Zoroastrians keep lamps burning in their temples day and night as a reminder: fire is your nature. That is why fire is worshiped the world over. Hindus salute the sun—saluting not the ball of fire, but the upward thrust of fire.

The day Mahavira attained nirvana, the Jains celebrate Diwali. The night of great nirvana—millions of lamps are lit. Jain Diwali is more meaningful than the Hindu one. Hindus celebrate to worship Lakshmi—how upside down! You even press fire into the service of Lakshmi? That which rises upward, you harness toward the downward? Even when you light lamps, you do it to illuminate the marketplace.

The Jain Diwali is more significant: they celebrate the night Mahavira attained great nirvana. He chose the dark moon night—Amavasya. Buddha attained on the full moon; Mahavira chose better: the darkest night, darkness everywhere—and Mahavira became light. In that darkness, the light stood out sharply by contrast. Light a lamp on a full moon night—who notices? Light one on a dark new moon—its radiance is intense.

Jain Diwali is more meaningful—but Jains don’t celebrate it so. Most Jains celebrate the Hindu Diwali. Who knows when they too started worshiping Lakshmi? The mind is Hindu—there’s little difference. They too worship wealth. As man is, he directs everything toward clay. That’s why our consciousness looks outward. It’s natural.

When a child is born, naturally he first looks outside. He opens his eyes and sees the world outside. His ears open; the sounds of the outside are heard. He reaches out, touches the mother—his outer journey begins. Then there are moment-to-moment needs. Hunger will make him cry; hunger cannot be filled from within—it must be fulfilled from outside. Thirst—water must come from outside. Slowly he sinks into the outer. Slowly the outer becomes everything. The inner is forgotten. You even forget that you are.

It is not only thirst; there is also the one who thirsts. Not only hunger; there is the one who sees hunger. This hand that touches you is not all; you are not only the one who is touched; within this hand is hidden that without which the hand couldn’t move. That is slowly forgotten. You become habituated. And it is so quiet that you don’t notice it. Its voice is so soft that, in the great clamor outside, it gets lost—like someone softly singing in a noisy bazaar.

Two fakirs were walking. Suddenly one said, “Listen! It’s time for the call to prayer.” The adhan from the mosque at dusk. The other said, “You amaze me. In this market’s din, with thousands haggling and shouting, how did you hear the adhan?” The first replied, “What you attend to will be heard anywhere.” Then he said, “Let me give you proof.” He pulled a rupee from his pocket and threw it hard on the stone road—cling! Everyone—shopkeepers, customers—who had been shouting and busy—came running.

A rupee! Their attention—though their lips and ears were engaged elsewhere—was fixed on the rupee. For that is what their whole noise was about. They did not hear the adhan, which was louder than the coin’s clink. The coin’s sound they heard instantly. Their attention is fixed there. Inside, the mantra running is money; that is the great chant.

You see what your desire runs toward. You hear what your ears are tuned to. You grasp what you want.

A great painter spoke for two hours at a gathering on classical painting—its subtlest depths. People were spellbound. At the end he asked for questions. None—he had covered almost all that could be asked. People were silent, but an old woman stood up and said, “I have one question. What polish was used to clean this floor?” In the hall where the talk was held, what oil had been used to make the floor shine so?

The whole discourse on painting went to waste. She must have stared at the floor the whole time. She must have thought, “This man knows so much about colors, he will certainly know which oil made this floor shine.” She was probably a housewife obsessed with floors. Some women’s minds are worn out on such chores. They keep polishing floors; they never get a chance to polish themselves. They’re busy cleaning the house; they never have time to clean within.

Where attention is fixed, that is understood instantly. Since your attention is fixed outside, the outside is what you understand.

When will you fix attention within? How? Can Buddhas make you turn inward? If they could, it would have happened long ago. No one can make your attention turn inward until you get utterly weary of the outer—so impoverished, so agitated—until the outside looks so futile that you yourself ask, “Is there another journey? Is the outer journey finished?”

That moment hasn’t come yet—otherwise you would have looked within. People come to me and say, “It’s very difficult to meditate.” There is no difficulty at all; your outer longing hasn’t died yet—that is the difficulty. And society’s structure is such that the outer longing neither gets satisfied nor dies.

Understand this—it’s a bit subtle. Society’s structure prevents outer desire from being satisfied or extinguished. If satisfied, it would die—because all satisfactions eventually bore you. If you live where women wear veils, every woman who passes arouses curiosity. She may be ugly underneath, but the veil excites. In the West, people are not so curious about women; at the beach, women lie nude—people pass by without even looking. There is nothing left to hide—the truth is exposed.

Easterners were cunning: the veil makes even the ugly seem beautiful. The juice stays. Your society has put veils on everything. Wherever you go, nothing is open; everything is hidden. Because of that hiding, you keep banging your head lifelong but never get bored; the fascination remains. If you’re freed of one woman, the charm moves to another, then a third. The mind keeps whispering, “You haven’t yet found the woman who will satisfy you—but soon.”

Buddha got bored. His father made the mistake. Astrologers had said, “This boy will either become a Tirthankara—a Buddha—or a world-conqueror.” Naturally the father thought, “What’s the point of a mendicant sage? A universal emperor would be good for my ego.” He asked, “How do I prevent him from becoming a sage?”

There the mistake began. If he had asked me, I would have said, “Veil all the women. Make them all Muslim. Wherever he goes, let every door be closed. Wherever there’s a path, write: ‘No peeking inside.’ Don’t let him enjoy the world. Give him a little, withhold more. Don’t block him completely—he might commit suicide. Give him just enough to survive, but never let him be full. If he is full, he will get bored. Keep him dangling in halves.”

Then perhaps Buddha would not have left home. But the astrologers advised straight arithmetic. Life does not obey straight arithmetic; it is oblique, mysterious, not two-plus-two-equals-four. Sometimes two and two make three; sometimes five; sometimes no addition works. Life is a riddle.

They said, “Gather the most beautiful women in the palace. Leave him no lack. If there is no lack, he won’t go searching. Don’t let ordinary people near him. Don’t let him see the sick, the old, the dead—so that the question of death never arises. Remove wilting flowers before they dry. He might ask, ‘How did this flower wither?’ and then wonder, ‘Will I, who am in full bloom today, wither tomorrow?’ Build separate palaces: winter with warmth, summer with coolness, a special arrangement for the rains.”

The father built three palaces with all arrangements. Until youth, Buddha never saw an old man, a sick man, or a corpse. He didn’t even know people die. Flowers were removed before they withered, leaves plucked before they fell, the most beautiful girls assembled around him.

That caused the trouble; he got bored early. The mind gets bored of everything. We don’t get bored of the world because we never really get it—how will you get bored? The rich can get bored with wealth; how will the poor? The poor keep the taste alive. Society is structured to drip you tiny drops of life. You never get to drink your fill. If you did, you’d be free. And society brands as bad exactly those things in which there is taste. Even an insipid thing becomes intriguing if called sin. Where is the taste in virtue compared to sin?

A Catholic priest—alcohol forbidden—was tormented by the thought of liquor. There is taste in what hasn’t been experienced; its absence pricks. He had never drunk, so he kept thinking, “What fun people must be having! A drunk sways down the road; what must be swaying within? What delight? What joy spills out? Songs burst forth, dour faces laugh; even the lame seem to dance. Withered faces glow.” He wondered what liquor does inside. Finally he could not resist and secretly tasted it. Great delight. So he thought, “How long will I do this in hiding?” He switched from Catholic to Protestant—there it was allowed—and drank freely.

A few days later he wrote in his diary: “The fun of drinking as a Catholic is gone as a Protestant.” He wrote, “Now I understand: only what society calls sin can be truly delightful.”

Even a useless thing becomes delightful if labeled sin. Ask small children: the mangoes ripened at home aren’t as tasty as the neighbor’s raw mangoes stolen over the wall. The question is not sweetness or sourness—it’s prohibition. You say, “Here’s money, buy them at the market.” You don’t understand: market mangoes can be bought any day; but where is the joy of being Catholic and drinking? The child’s joy is in breaking the rule—declaring freedom—becoming master—you couldn’t stop him. The whole world tried to stop him and failed.

Mulla Nasruddin’s son was yanking at a sapling. He finally pulled it out. I said, “Amazing! You’re not that strong, yet you uprooted it!” He said, “Also see: the whole world was pulling the other way—the whole earth—and I alone, and still I pulled it out.”

The ego savors breaking control, going beyond limits. Ego is formed in opposition. The more prohibitions you make, the more ego is created. Wherever you say “don’t,” you invite. Every prohibition is a stronger invitation. Hence there is no freedom. You can’t go all the way either.

What is the ordinary mind’s trouble? You love a woman and you can’t go all the way. If you did, you’d get bored. You do love—can’t help it; life’s stream is charged with sexuality. If you don’t, you’ll keep thinking about it; visions will fill your dreams; poetry, painting—women will appear everywhere—even where they are not. Your mind will be obsessed, pushing you.

If you indulge, you won’t indulge fully—because when you do, all the Buddhas and Mahaviras will chase you. Their words will resound: What sin are you committing? What crime? Why wallow in the mud? Escape—be free! Your wisdom will visit precisely when a woman visits. Without a woman, you think of women; with a woman, you think of wisdom. You will indulge only half-way.

That lukewarm mind cannot be free. You are never whole anywhere. I say: indulge totally and you will be free. Then you will understand what Buddha meant—only then. You eat, but fearfully—because all the doctors’ warnings come to mind: “Not too much!” They stand as prohibitions.

Gurdjieff writes in his memoirs: there was a wild fruit he liked so much that he often fell ill—stomach aches; it was unripe and harsh. One day his grandfather brought a whole basket and said, “Today, eat as much as you can.” Gurdjieff asked, “As much as I can?” “Yes.” The grandfather sat beside him with a stick. When he had eaten and began to panic, Grandfather said, “You must finish the basket.” “But I feel like vomiting.” “Let it happen—but finish, or this stick!” The roles reversed. Usually the stick was for not eating; today the stick was for eating.

His mind wanted to flee. The fruit became tasteless, bitter; nausea arose. But the grandfather waved the stick until the basket was finished. Gurdjieff writes, “I lived seventy years after that. Never again—if I so much as see that fruit, my stomach hurts. I vomited, had diarrhea, fever for eight days—but I was free of that fruit.”

Gurdjieff’s grandfather was wiser than Buddha’s father’s astrologers.

You haven’t yet grown truly bored with life. The taste remains. Hope remains. You still think, “Happiness is there; I just didn’t try right; I have been too slow; others are clever—they are getting it. I am simple; I’m missing out.” You haven’t seen that there is no juice there—whether you move fast or slow, clever or not. Oil cannot be squeezed from sand. You are chasing sky-flowers; they don’t exist.

But how will you see this? If it could be seen just because I say so, it would be very easy. Life does not accept such easy shortcuts. You must see by experience. You must pass through the pain. You must go to the point where your pleasures turn into pain.

Remember: where all your pleasures turn into pain—there sannyas is born. There the darkness beneath the lamp begins to thin. Then the light starts returning inward. Then the outer journey is over: there is nothing outside. Knowing this with a full heart, you turn wholly within.

Go all the way outside. What is there to fear? You are not going outside because of fear. Not going outside keeps the taste alive; hope remains; with hope, you cannot turn within. You are half-and-half everywhere. You ride many boats. On the ladder you want to go up and down at once—one foot up, one foot down. Your life is stuck in a futile crisis.

I say to you: if sin is your taste, be a total sinner. Dive in utterly. For now, drop your worry about virtue. But you deceive yourself. You say, “Better to manage both—keep a bit of virtue, and a bit of sin. Go to the prostitute’s house—and also give to the temple. Drink—and also go to the temple and take vows. Resolve that next year you’ll set everything right—just this year more.” Mulla Nasruddin once swore off drinking. Passing by the tavern, he became very restless; but he said, “Come what may, I will not drink.” He went twenty steps ahead, then patted his back: “Brave Nasruddin! You walked past and didn’t go in. Let me treat you to a drink for that!” He went and drank twice as much.

All vow-takers end up like that. You vow celibacy in the temple—and that very moment women look more beautiful than they did before. Do your vows not simply sharpen the taste? When the taste for women is fading, you take a vow of celibacy—and the taste returns. When you start to tire of food, you fast—and taste returns. Opposites generate taste.

Psychologists say husband and wife should not live in the same room; it dulls the taste. They should have separate rooms and not be together twenty-four hours; or else the charm fades. So husband and wife get bored of each other. The wife should go to her mother’s place sometimes—then the taste returns. When you tire of something, do the opposite and the taste returns. Your life is like someone who eats sweets and then needs salty things; salt restores the tongue to taste sweets again.

I notice that those who eat excessively become keen on fasting. Those who have indulged sexually become keen on celibacy. When desire wanes, they panic; celibacy gives the taste back. Like a pendulum swings left to right and back: while going right, it’s gathering energy to go left. The longer the swing to the right, the longer to the left.

Your mind wanders in such dualities. If you live the world wholly, you are free that instant. The world is so futile that it’s a wonder the taste can persist at all; if it persists, the reason is only this: you have not opened your eyes fully.

A woman went to the police station to report an outrage: “A man grabbed me in broad daylight, in the busy bazaar, and kissed me.” The superintendent said, “What kind of man? Describe him. How tall? What clothes? What face?” She said, “I don’t know.” He said, “Strange! In broad daylight someone seized and kissed you and you don’t know what he looked like? What he wore? How tall?” She said, “The thing is, whenever someone kisses me, I close my eyes.” Women often do.

You are in the world with eyes closed—or half-open. You don’t recognize the world’s look, its color, its pattern. You are in it—but not wholly. And you think this is your religiosity—because you are never fully in anything. The day you are fully in it, you will laugh: “What stupidity! The world is not sin; it is ignorance.”

Understand this precisely. I don’t call the world sin, because those who called it sin only increased your taste for it. The world is not sin; it is dullness, unawareness. So don’t “renounce” the world—know it. The world will not disappear by your renunciation. Renunciation brings the taste back. The world goes by knowing, not by renouncing.

This is a revolutionary difference. If the world were sin, by leaving it your ego would inflate. And how would you be free of what inflates your ego? I say: the world is stupidity. There is no cause for ego here—only proof that you are dull. It only shows you have not looked with open eyes to see what the world is. You’ve come to the police station to file a report; you’ve gone to a Master asking to be freed from the world. No one can free you—except your own open eyes. Take a full look. Why do you close your eyes?

But there’s a trap behind closing the eyes: everyone has told you it’s useless, so the idea sits in your head—“the world is worthless; why indulge?” So when you indulge, you close your eyes. Thus you never experience completely. Complete enjoyment ripens into renunciation. Whatever you have a taste for—don’t listen to anyone; fulfill that taste completely. The day you do, you will see what a futility you were engaged in.

When the world drops as futile, the inner journey begins. Then the clay lamp is of no use. Then light falls everywhere. The darkness beneath the lamp thins. The sages have called this self-realization. But there is a prior condition: “world-knowledge.” The world is a university—an expanse of experience. Why take that experience raw? Let it ripen so it falls by itself. Raw fruits must be plucked—hurting the fruit and the tree. Ripe fruit falls silently. No plucking is needed.

This morning I was watching: leaves on the almond tree have ripened. A ripe leaf falls so quietly—neither the tree knows nor the leaf. No wound anywhere. The day the knowledge of the world ripens—ripe!—and the renunciation that comes is like that of a ripe leaf, a ripe tree: no announcement. You won’t go beating drums in the village: “I have renounced.” That is the sign of unripe, broken fruits. You won’t say, “Take out my procession; I have renounced. See, I have left the world.”

If you truly realize the world is futile, will you say, “I left it”? Will the sense of “I am a renunciate” be constructed inside? You throw your trash outside your house daily; do you go announce to the neighborhood, “I renounced garbage today—again!” If you do, they will think you insane—and that you still have a deep hold on garbage. Whenever you see a renunciant delighting in renunciation, know he is unripe; he will have to return. There is no way without ripening.

Nietzsche’s famous line is: “Ripeness is all.” I too say to you: ripeness is everything. Don’t waste time—ripen. Be mature. Not by borrowed words, but by your own experience, know what is futile; then there is no need to “leave” it—it slips away by itself. You won’t know when it started to drop. As the futile drops, the meaningful emerges. As the futile recedes, light returns within.

That is the intent of this saying.

Man’s greatest difficulty is his ignorance of himself. Just as there is darkness under a lamp, so too man is in the dark about that reality which is his soul. We don’t know ourselves. If our entire life goes in wrong directions, there is no point being surprised.

You try to change wrong actions, but you never look at the source from which wrong actions arise—you. You’ll change one wrong action; another will arise.

People come and say, “I want to quit smoking.” I say, the issue is you. I can help you drop cigarettes; tomorrow you’ll find a substitute—chew tobacco, sniff snuff—something you will do. Because smoking is not an isolated act; it is a fruit growing on you. Pluck it off and another fruit will appear. What will you accomplish by changing acts? Try to know your self. The day you know yourself, your actions will begin to change. But people focus on actions because that is easy—no great obstacle.

You get up at seven; you can get up at five. Two, four, eight days of effort and, if you are stubborn and headstrong, you’ll start rising at five. But it will still be you getting up. You used to rise at seven; at five it’s still you. What difference does it make? But you think it will.

Mulla Nasruddin was wooing a girl and, as all lovers do, praised his love: “I take your name first thing in the morning.” The girl said, “That’s what your brother says.” Nasruddin replied, “But note one thing: I get up before he does.”

Whether you take God’s name at five or seven—what difference? You are the one taking it. No difference at all. But that is easy: changing the act—like changing clothes. This shirt off, another on.

Changing oneself is the real question. The first condition for that is: the darkness beneath the lamp must lift. Where you are, there is darkness. All the scriptures say that entering within one experiences great light; but when you close your eyes, you see only darkness. I’m not being poetic in saying “there is darkness under the lamp.” The Vedas, Upanishads, Quran, Bible, Dhammapada—all agree on one thing: within is infinite light. Yet when you close your eyes—darkness.

What’s the matter? Were they all mistaken? Whenever you close your eyes there is darkness, and yet all these people, from different lands and times with no connection with each other, insist that within is the supreme light. Think a little: what could be the reason?

The supreme light is within; but where you stand right now, it is dark. Your entire radiance is flowing outwards. Nothing is left within. You are like the Ganges pouring into the ocean—nothing remains at Gangotri; it runs outward, farther and farther, away from itself. Inside, all becomes empty. Even if there is great light within you, if it keeps flowing out, darkness will remain.

Scientists say our sun will burn out in a few billion years. Light is flowing outward. Vast—sixty thousand times bigger than earth—immense capacity—yet it will exhaust. You are of greater capacity than the sun. Kabir said: “As if thousands of suns blaze at once—such is the light within.” But you too drain it—outwards, outwards—emptying yourself. As you empty, you grow impoverished. See the child—he arrives full of majesty, like an emperor. See the old—tired, broken.

Gibran tells a story: A fox rose in the morning, saw its shadow—morning sun makes the shadow long—and said, “Today only a camel will satisfy me.” All day it searched for a camel—where will a fox find a camel, and if found, what will it do? By noon it grew hungry and tired, looked again—now the sun overhead made the shadow small. It said, “Now even an ant will do.”

All children are born thus, shadows long in the morning. By old age, everything shrinks. They start with hopes for camels and end with: “An ant will do.” In the morning even a camel is not enough; by evening, an ant is hard to find. All children set out with great ambitions; all old people end with broken toys. Dreams trampled, rainbows shattered. The old person’s pain is not age or death—it is the collapse of all dreams. All ambitions proved futile. Whatever they sought—if gained, futile; if not, futile.

Life is unique: everyone loses here. Those who seem to win—also lose. Losers—of course. Death is the ultimate socialist—it makes all equal, wipes the slate clean. As life descends, it seems all was in vain. If only you awaken before then, realizing that this is the nature of outer life—to be futile; that whatever you seek, if the seeker is wrong inside, all your quests will go wrong. The question isn’t the paths; it’s the traveler.

People ask me, “What is the right path?” I say, “Forget the path. The right traveler reaches even by the wrong path; the wrong traveler, what will he do with the right path?” If there’s intoxication in your eyes, whatever you see—wherever you look—will be distorted.

Mulla Nasruddin and his twin brother had their birthday, so they went to a hotel to eat, drink, make merry. They dressed identically. An inebriated man across the room kept squinting at them. Nasruddin laughed and said, “Don’t worry. Don’t think you’re seeing double because of drink. We are twin brothers.” The drunk squinted again and said, “You four!” He saw four.

If there is delusion in your eyes, wherever you look there is the world. The world is not the problem; delusion is. Even if you see God, you will see the world. If delusion leaves your eyes, wherever you look you will find God. The real question is not what is outside, but who is inside. Which path—Hindu, Muslim, Christian, Buddhist, Jain—is irrelevant. The path is not the question; the traveler is.

You are the real question. You have two states: either light moving outward—dark within—or light returning inward—no darkness within. The day you are filled with inner light, wherever you go, there is light. Wherever you look, there is the Divine—break a piece of wood, said Jesus, and you will find me; lift a stone, I am there. But this applies to whom? Will you break wood and find God? You will find only more wood. Lift a stone and find God pressed beneath? Impossible.

Wherever you go, you will meet the echo of your state. The world is a mirror. You will see only yourself; there is no other way. Don’t waste time breaking mirrors; it won’t help. There was an ugly woman who broke any mirror she saw. People asked, “Why?” She said, “Because the mirrors make me ugly.”

Mirrors make no one ugly; they reflect what is. Your relationships—wife, husband, children, parents, friends, foes, society—reflect you. Wherever you see ugliness, you flee and break mirrors. What will that do? Change yourself. The thought of changing yourself arises only when light begins to turn inward.

There are two journeys of light: outward or inward. The deepest event occurs the moment light starts returning within. When will attention come within? When there is no desire outside. Desire attracts attention; desire is the object. Fast, and attention goes to food—which it never did before. Sit in the temple and attention goes to the shop. Why? Whatever you desire most attracts attention. When you renounce it, it attracts you more. Close your eyes—why doesn’t attention go within? Because the charms outside still persist. Without desirelessness, there is no meditation.

What to do? Preachers say, “Drop desire.” If only it were that easy! It’s like telling someone with fever, “Drop the fever.” Give medicine! He too wants to drop it—how? You can claim, “You’re holding the fever,” but he will say, “What to do? How to drop it?” Illness needs medicine.

What is the medicine that breaks the craving for the world? I know only one: enjoy the world very, very consciously. If you indulge unconsciously, the world will never leave you. Indulge with full awareness. Wherever the world says “Here is taste,” go there and bring your total attention. Forget God, soul, Master, scriptures—bring total attention there and experience it through and through.

Whatever you experience with total attention becomes futile. There is no substance there. Make the world tasteless; exhaust it; you will be filled with non-desire.

And when there is non-desire, what obstacle remains to turning attention within? None. Even without a method, attention goes in. Methods are needed only because you are in chaos. Close your eyes and attention goes within; open them and it goes out. Touch someone and the touch reaches the other; don’t touch—sit still—and the touch begins within yourself. It’s that simple—if craving drops. And the way craving drops, the medicine, is attentive indulgence.

Make love attentively, and you will be free of man and woman. Eat with attention, and you’ll be free of taste. See beauty with attention, and beauty evaporates. Watch pleasure carefully, and it disappears. Watch pain carefully, and it disappears. As outer things turn futile, the darkness under the lamp thins and light enters. And the day the darkness beneath the lamp is gone—self-realization.

Buddha’s last words, as he died, were: “Appa dīpo bhava.” Ananda asked, “What shall we do now? You were our lamp—by your light we walked. You were the light, so we were not in darkness. Now the night will be dark; we will wander. We could not reach even with your light—how will we without you? You are going out—what will become of us?” Buddha said, “Appa dīpo bhava—be a light unto yourself.”

No one has ever reached by another’s light; for another’s light can only fall outside you. Only your own light can illumine within. I may radiate however much; it will be around you. It cannot enter you. I may explain however much; that understanding will surround you, create an aura—but not penetrate within. Within, only your own knowing will flare; your own lamp must be lit—and it is already lit; only beneath it there is darkness.

I have told you the reasons for the darkness. Break them one by one. The greatest reason is that your taste for the world still persists. Therefore I will not tell you to turn within while the taste persists—you will never be able to. Make this taste tasteless. And my experiment for making it tasteless is completely different from what others have told you. Others have said: “Make it tasteless” by thinking “there is no taste in it.” I don’t say: think. I say: attend. Don’t think there is no taste—root your attention and see. If there is taste, you will get it; if there is none, you will know. All who have looked at the world attentively—looked outward with awareness—found it unsubstantial.

This sense of unsubstantiality becomes the doorway to your inner journey. When light returns within, you become a circular glow of light; then nothing you do is wrong. People say: a saint is one who does what is right. I don’t say that. I say: whatever a saint does is right. No one becomes a saint by correct behavior; behavior is born of sainthood. You can mimic perfect conduct like Rama, but you won’t become Rama—you’ll be Rama of the pageant at best. That is the tragedy: so many “saints” around—mostly actors. Their stage is large—the world itself—but they are in a theater. Outwardly all is in order; inwardly they are troubled. They have mastered things like a parrot reciting by rote.

A man took a parrot to sell at a circus. He told the manager, “Just twenty rupees. This parrot is extraordinary—no parrot has ever spoken like it.” The manager said, “If that’s true, why sell it for twenty? Take it away.” The parrot leapt in its cage and said, “Sir, don’t be hasty. I truly am such a parrot. And this man—my owner—is the worst man you will find. He has earned thousands because of me. Hitler, Mussolini, Churchill, Roosevelt—all sent me letters of praise. I have gold medals from everywhere—he sold them all. He doesn’t feed me properly or give me water. Please have mercy and buy me.”

The manager was astonished—such pure diction, like a learned pundit from Kashi! He said to the owner, “You’re mad—this parrot is worth lakhs, and you’re selling it for twenty? Why?” The man replied, “Everything else is fine; I’m fed up with its lies. It never stops blabbering. And I know—it’s only a parrot. It only babbles; there’s nothing inside. Whoever hears it repeats its words. It has never seen Hitler, Mussolini. I’m tired of it. I want to be rid of it. Twenty rupees is just a pretext—take it for free.”

Have you ever looked at your mind? Is it more than this parrot? It has known nothing. It has memorized the Vedas and Upanishads; can repeat Kabir, Kundakunda, anyone—but is it more than a parrot? And no matter how skilled the parrot, who would buy it for even twenty rupees?

Surprising that you are not yet bored—and not bored with its lies. It has collected a lifetime of gold medals. It lies to you nonstop—and you go on believing. It chatters day and night; it doesn’t even sleep. At night it runs dreams; by day, thoughts. And nothing of substance.

Your mind is a lie you borrowed. Your conduct is a lie you borrowed. You have neither inner voice nor conscience of your own. Conduct you learned from others. Born in a Jain home, you don’t eat at night. In a Hindu home, you eat happily. In a Muslim home, meat poses no problem. You learn from those around you. There is no real difference—Hindu, Muslim, Jain. Each picks up what he is told. There is no difference between parrots—each repeats what was taught.

Have you used your own awareness in choosing? Have you fashioned your life from your own side? Or do you just follow blindly what you’ve heard? You are entirely borrowed—and because of this borrowing, there is great darkness within. Don’t worry about conduct, behavior, or thoughts—worry only about awareness. By attaining that one, everything is attained. As a thread runs through a mala, so awareness runs through your conduct, behavior, thoughts. It is the thread. Hold that one thread—everything will be in your grasp.

Where to hold it? Where you are. You are outside—start there. Make eating your meditation, make indulgence your meditation, make money your meditation, make anger your meditation. Whatever it is, wherever you are—join awareness to it. You will be amazed: connect awareness to anger—anger disappears, only awareness remains. Connect awareness to greed—greed vanishes, awareness remains.

By practicing awareness in the world, you’ll find the world fades and awareness remains. As soon as awareness remains, the inner journey begins. The darkness under the lamp dissolves. You arrive at the place where thousands of suns rise together—and never set. The supreme sunrise is hidden within you.

Enough for today.