Ek Ek Kadam #4

First, I do not have the slightest faith in violence. Second, I do not believe in Gandhi’s nonviolence either; because Gandhi’s nonviolence does not seem very nonviolent to me. It is flimsy, weak, half-baked. My trust is in total nonviolence.

If we set out to understand Gandhi’s nonviolence, it is astonishing. In Africa, Gandhi joined the Boer War as a volunteer. The Boers were fighting for their freedom, and Gandhi enrolled as a volunteer on the side of the imperial power trying to crush that struggle. In the First World War, Gandhi functioned in India like a British sergeant, recruiting people into the military. It is surprising that, in the First World War, Gandhi inspired people to enlist and to go to war!

In a village in Punjab, Muslims rose in rebellion. To suppress them, the British sent a Gorkha platoon. The British policy was: if a Hindu village rebels, send a Muslim unit; if a Muslim village rebels, send a Hindu unit—so that Hindus, by being Hindus, can roast Muslims in the fire.

The Gorkha platoon did something remarkable, historic. They refused to fire on the Muslim settlement. They grounded their rifles and said, “We will not shoot our brothers.” They risked their lives to refuse orders. Not only that, they took their guns to the police station, surrendered, and said, “Whatever punishment we get, we will not shoot our brothers.”

One would think Gandhi would praise these soldiers; instead, he condemned them. When he was asked in England, “Isn’t it strange that, being a man of nonviolence, you condemned soldiers who refused to fire?” do you know what Gandhi said? “I cannot teach disobedience to soldiers—because when the country becomes free and power comes into our hands, we will have to govern with the help of these very soldiers.”

What kind of nonviolence is this? It deserves reflection.

Those soldiers must have been stunned! Had Gandhi praised them, soldiers all over India might have found the courage to refuse to fire on Indians. But Gandhi condemned them—on the grounds of obedience and discipline. “A soldier’s duty is to obey.” Why? Because tomorrow, when Gandhi’s people hold power, they will have to rule with these very soldiers.

And we can see it: in twenty-two years of independence, under those who followed Gandhi, as many bullets have been fired in India as perhaps nowhere else in any comparable twenty-year span. The same soldiers are now used to shoot. Power is in Gandhian hands. Even the British never fired as many bullets in India as our so-called own governments have fired, nor with such ruthlessness, nor with so many killings!

It is astonishing. It is also necessary to understand that the “nonviolent” movements Gandhi organized were intended to exert pressure. In my view, wherever there is pressure, there is violence—whether the pressure is applied with a knife or by sitting in a fast at your doorstep and saying, “If you do not agree, I will die.” That, too, is violence. Pressure itself is violence.

The methods of pressure may be nonviolent, but pressure itself is violence. If I stake my life to get my way—“I will die”—then what we call satyagraha and fasting, what is it? It is a threat of suicide. A threat is violent, whether it is to kill another or to kill oneself. It makes no difference whether the threat is directed outward or inward. Often, if I threaten to kill you, you can resist me; but if I threaten to kill myself, I leave you utterly defenseless—you cannot even counter me. This violence is subtler, more inward, more hidden; it is hard to detect.

If one wants to undertake a truly nonviolent satyagraha, then there should be no announcement, no publicity, not even the person whose heart you hope to change should know. In silence and solitude, I should quiet myself, become meditative, enter samadhi; purify myself; pray—and from the heart send those thoughts that might transform the other. That would be nonviolence. But if the newspapers broadcast it, the crowds know, people get excited to save my life, and I sit at the other man’s door saying, “I will die”—this is not nonviolence. This is all violence, a transformation of violence, violence in its noblest guises.

I heard a joke. A young man was in love with a girl, madly, but he was so weak he could not muster the courage to marry, and the girl’s father was unwilling. Some clever wiseacres advised him, “Why don’t you do a nonviolent satyagraha?” The boy was a coward; the idea appealed to him.

Cowards take to nonviolence immediately—not because nonviolence is right, but because cowards are too weak to do anything else. The effect Gandhi’s nonviolence had on this country was not because people found nonviolence right; the people here have been cowards for thousands of years. Cowards thought, “Good—there’s no danger of killing or being killed. We can go ahead with this.”

Tilak could not become influential; Subhas could not. Bhagat Singh was hanged, and not a stone was thrown in protest across India! The root cause is that India has been nurtured in congenital cowardice. While Bhagat Singh was going to the gallows, Gandhi was bargaining with the Viceroy... and people hoped that perhaps Bhagat Singh would be saved. But Gandhi added a condition: under the pact, only those prisoners should be released who were imprisoned by nonviolent means. Bhagat Singh could not be saved, because the clause was that only “nonviolent prisoners” be released. Bhagat Singh was hanged. The day Bhagat Singh was hanged, the youth of India was hanged. With Gandhi’s victory, old age triumphed in India; with Bhagat Singh’s death, India’s youth died.

Those advisers told the boy, “You can do nothing else; do a nonviolent satyagraha.” He spread a bed in front of the girl’s house and declared, “I will starve to death; I begin a fast-unto-death—marry me.”

The family panicked. Had he given some other kind of threat, they could have called the police; but he had launched a nonviolent movement, and all the village boys began circling the house, saying, “It’s a nonviolent movement—this is no ordinary matter. For love, there should indeed be a nonviolent movement.”

The family was frantic. Someone advised the father, “Go to the village and consult some constructive worker, some Sarvodaya man, some wise one—what can be done in return?” Every village has such people, with nothing else to do, who engage in “constructive work.” The father asked, “What should we do? We are in great difficulty. If he had threatened us with a knife, we had arrangements; we have a gun. But he threatens to die—what now?” The man said, “Don’t worry; I will come at night and he will run.” That night he brought an old prostitute, who spread her bed before the boy and said, “I, too, begin a fast-unto-death—I want to marry you.” That very night, with his bedding under his arm, the boy fled, and was never seen again.

In the name of nonviolent movement and fasting, the process Gandhi started is ruining India. All kinds of foolishness trail behind it. Someone wants Andhra separated—he fasts. Whatever anyone wants to do, he can apply pressure by starving; India is being broken into pieces, everything destroyed. A lever has been found to coerce: “We will die; we will fast.”

This is only a violent stance; it is not nonviolence. So long as I want to change someone by force—whatever form that force takes—I am violent.

Do not take my disagreement with Gandhi’s nonviolence to mean I am against nonviolence. The newspapers report that I am against nonviolence. I am not in favor of Gandhi’s nonviolence because I am in favor of nonviolence. But I do not consider his to be nonviolence; therefore I cannot support it. Whether Gandhi knew it or not, what he called nonviolence is a form of violence. Violence has astonishing forms. Violence is subtle. Killing a man is violence, and molding a man to your own will is also violence. When a guru gathers a crowd of disciples and tries to shape them into his own image—“wear the clothes I wear; get up at brahmamuhurta when I rise; do what I do”—we fail to see that the mind is seeking very subtle pathways to violence.

In the attempt to change another, to make him like yourself, one commits violence. When a father tries to make his son like himself—it is violence. When a father says, “Become like me,” two things are at work: the father’s ego—“I am superior”—and his possessiveness—“you are my son; I will make you like me.” This is not love. Not love! All gurus, in their effort to make others like themselves, are engaged in violence. A truly nonviolent person does not want anyone to become like him. He says, “Become like yourself—that is enough. There is no need to become like me.”

No nonviolent person can make anyone his follower, because making followers is subtle violence. No nonviolent person can make anyone his disciple, because it is hard to find a greater violence than becoming a guru. These are subtle violences that are not obvious. And remember this too: when someone stops doing violence to others, the violent tendency is not destroyed; it turns back upon oneself. One begins to be violent with oneself. What we call tapascharya, austerity, renunciation—ninety-nine times out of a hundred these are merely other names for violence turned inward.

A person may want to torment others. In English there is a word, “sadist,” for one who enjoys inflicting pain on others. Another word is “masochist,” for one who enjoys tormenting himself. We call the one who torments others violent, but we do not call the one who torments himself violent. That too is violence. And the irony is: when you torment others, the world can oppose you; when you torment yourself, no one can obstruct you. Everyone is free to torture himself. These ascetics who practice austerities—standing on thorns, in the sun, fasting for months—if you hear their full stories and study their inventions, you will see how they devise ways to harry themselves.

There have been “fakirs,” so-called sadhus—hard even to call them sadhus—who cut off their genitals; some gouged out their eyes and became “great souls.” Some studded nails into their shoes so their feet remained wounded; they strapped belts with spikes around their waists so the flesh stayed raw. There has been a long line of ascetics who flogged their bodies—up at dawn to lash themselves, and the more lashes, the greater the saint! All of them are violent people. They are not nonviolent. The only difference is that their violence, instead of going outward, has turned back upon themselves.

Nonviolence is a wondrous thing, but to be free of violence is very difficult. To transform violence is very easy; it reappears in new forms. The concern to change the other, the pressure to change the other, the effort to make the other like oneself—this is violence. All the gurus of the world, all those who gather followers, create sects and congregations, and produce people in their own image—I place them all in one line: violent. The nonviolent person is something very different.

What does nonviolent mean?

- Nonviolent means: from whose consciousness the urge to torment has dissolved—toward others and toward oneself.
- Nonviolent means: from whose mind the desire to exert pressure has vanished—whether by the knife or by a fast.
- Nonviolent means: one who is free of the desire to pressure anyone in any way. Because by exerting pressure we make ourselves superior to the other. And have you noticed? By showing a knife you do not become higher than the other, but by fasting you do.

Nietzsche, jokingly, said something against Jesus. Jesus says, “If someone slaps you on one cheek, turn the other.” Nietzsche said, “What greater insult to the other could there be? You did not even regard him as a man, as your equal. He slapped you; you offered the other cheek. In that instant you became a god, and he a worm of the earth.” Nietzsche joked that nothing could be a greater humiliation of the other. It may be that one offers the other cheek not out of love, but just to say, “See what you are—worms of the earth; and we are angels, we are gods.”

The techniques for becoming higher than the other are very subtle. One man can be higher by sitting on a throne; another can be higher by renunciation. But if the desire to be higher than the other persists within, that desire leads to violence, not to nonviolence. Whenever we put pressure on another, we are engaged in the attempt to be superior—whether we know it consciously or it is the unconscious mind at work.

I am fundamentally against all this. I hold that a person can pray, can meditate, can purify his inner being—and because of that inner purity, the air around him will begin to change. But that change is not a willed attempt of that person; it is not his effort or endeavor. Mahavira and Buddha are also nonviolent. I consider their nonviolence superior and purer than Gandhi’s. If you compare Gandhi with Mahavira and Buddha, some things will become clear: Mahavira and Buddha were not staging fasts or movements to change anyone, yet when the heart is pure, when compassion arises within, its rays want to flow—and without effort they begin to bring transformation all around.

The nonviolent have always given their rays to the world, but those rays were not delivered by intention or exertion. They are available. The sun rises and darkness begins to melt away; the sun makes no proclamation: “I have come to dispel darkness—darkness, beware!”

I have heard a story. Once darkness went to God and said, “Your sun is after me ruthlessly. Every morning he chases me. By evening I am exhausted from running. Where can I hide—on the moon, among the stars? Wherever I go, your sun reaches there. I cannot even sleep through the night before your sun is again at the door. What madness is this? What harm have I done him?”

God said, “This is too much. Why didn’t you come earlier?” He called the sun and said, “Why are you after darkness?” The sun replied, “Darkness? I have never once met him. How can I chase him? I don’t even know him. Where is he? I have never seen him. Please summon him before me so I can recognize him—lest unknowingly I err again—and I will ask forgiveness for any mistakes of the past.”

They say the matter is still stuck in God’s file. He has not yet been able to bring darkness before the sun, nor is there any hope he can. How can darkness be brought where the sun is? Where there is sun, there is no darkness.

When nonviolence is born in the heart, the light of that nonviolence transforms the violence around; it does not have to be made to transform it. Take this distinction carefully: nonviolence brings transformation; it does not do transformation. Through nonviolence, change comes; the nonviolent person does not want to change anyone.

In Gandhi’s nonviolence, the desire to change is glaring; therefore I do not call it nonviolence. I have no reverence, no faith in Gandhi’s nonviolence, because I do not see nonviolence there. I am not a supporter of violence. It would be hard to find a greater enemy of violence than I am—for even where others see “nonviolence,” if I see violence hidden there, I cannot agree with it.

Any revolution that contains violence, I do not call a revolution. That is not revolution; it is only upheaval. There is a vast difference between upheaval and revolution. The moment violence is yoked to revolution, revolution ends—violence itself finishes it. For what is the ultimate meaning of revolution? Its ultimate meaning is inner transformation, transformation of the heart—the changing of people’s minds and consciousness. And when we cannot change people’s consciousness, when it does not change, we descend into violence. But can one who descends into violence change people’s consciousness?

Stalin had at least ten million people killed during his rule. Even after killing ten million, did transformation happen? Hitler killed about eight million people; did transformation happen? What happened? Which revolution happened? Goods were distributed, property ceased to be private—that could have happened without killing ten million people. And because those ten million were killed, the change that did occur is so tense that it can be maintained only so long as violence sits on the chest like a weight. The moment violence loosens, the change beneath begins dissolving.

After Stalin, Russia’s steps have surely moved toward capitalism. As the climate of violence relaxed, Russia moved toward capitalism again. Private property has returned. Today in Russia you can again own a car—unimaginable there only yesterday. Houses, too, can be privately owned. Wage differentials have reappeared.

As soon as violence is removed, the revolution brought by violence will evaporate. A revolution brought by violence is coercion. Can revolutions be brought by coercion? Force can restrain someone for a little while. And remember, whatever must be restrained by force begins to provoke rebellion in people’s hearts. Even a good thing—if it has to be imposed—becomes unbearable. You are sitting here of your own accord; if just now you were told you cannot go out for two hours, police are posted outside, sitting here would become impossible—rebellion would flare up.

Man has a soul, and the human soul refuses pressure—and it should. Even if pressure is applied “for your own good,” pressure is pressure. Even for his own good, man rebels when coerced.

You know this: “good” parents often become the basic cause of spoiling their children. Do you know why? Good parents try to make children good by force. No one has ever been made good by force. Parents who try to make their children good by compulsion become their children’s enemies and the cause of their ruin—because the children begin to rebel. Children also have their own souls; they want to refuse compulsion. And if compulsion is used in the name of the good, then they begin to reject the good as well. In rejecting compulsion, the good gets rejected too.

No good thing can ever be brought by force. To attempt it by force only proves that the bringers are very weak: they cannot persuade people, cannot win their hearts and minds. And if you cannot win people over—even for their own good—then your “good” is highly suspect.

No revolution has ever happened through violence, nor can it. Yes, violence has paraded in the name of revolution. But what revolution has the world yet seen? The world still awaits revolution: the revolution that will come naturally—beautifully, simply, from the heart. A revolution without repression, without bayonets pressing on chests; a revolution that will blossom from within like a flower and transform personality—humanity waits for that revolution.

The French Revolution failed because it stood on violence. The Russian Revolution could not succeed because it stood on violence. The revolution Mao is attempting in China will not succeed, for it stands on violence. Even Gandhi’s revolution, which in many ways appeared nonviolent, failed—because its very foundation contained violence.

We can see it in our country. Gandhi’s revolution—better by a hundred or a thousand degrees than Stalin’s or Mao’s, with a tilt toward nonviolence, an ideal, though not truly nonviolent at the base—has failed in India. The story of twenty-two years of independence tells that Gandhi’s revolution has failed.

Even Gandhi’s revolution fails, because in my view it too contained pressure and an intense urge to change others. Then how could Lenin’s, Stalin’s, and Mao’s revolutions succeed?

The world is waiting for a revolution that will be a revolution of consciousness and of nonviolence. But what is the greatest obstacle to preparing for such a revolution? The greatest obstacle is faith in violence. Those who have faith in violence do not even think in a nonviolent direction about changing the world’s psyche; they neither reflect nor care, nor do they work in that direction. We simply have no idea that if in a town of five hundred thousand people even a thousand become nonviolent, a fundamental transformation in the minds of the five hundred thousand will begin. We have no inkling of this.

Just now a certain Fadeyev, a Russian scientist and psychologist, has conducted an experiment in Russia; therefore it is important. The Indian yogi has been saying this for a long time, but no one listens. The Indian yogi says: thought has such immense power that if a thought is established in someone’s heart with total resolve, waves of that thought begin to spread in all directions and transform the hearts of thousands. The arising of a Buddha, the standing of a Mahavira, is a revolution of such magnitude we cannot measure it, we do not even recognize it—because the lotus of life in millions begins to blossom in their rays.

Fadeyev performed an experiment on thought-transmission, telepathy—sending thought to a distant place. Sitting in Moscow, he transmitted thought to a village in Tiflis, a thousand miles away. Fadeyev sat in his Moscow laboratory; a thousand miles away, in a public park in Tiflis, eight or ten of his friends were hiding behind a bush. They phoned him: a man has sat down on bench number ten; with your thought, make him fall asleep.

From a thousand miles away, Fadeyev wills in his mind: that man on bench number ten, a thousand miles away—sleep, sleep, sleep... With total resolve and one-pointed mind he suggests this. Within three minutes the man closes his eyes and falls asleep on the bench.

But perhaps this was a coincidence—a tired man in the afternoon dozing off. So the friends call: he did fall asleep, and you said three minutes; in three minutes he slept—but that could be coincidence. Wake him up in exactly five minutes and we’ll be convinced.

Fadeyev again sends the suggestion: get up, wake up, wake up—wake up in exactly five minutes... In five minutes the man opens his eyes and sits up.

The friends go to him and ask: did you feel anything strange? The man says: certainly something strange. When I sat down, suddenly I felt as if my whole being were saying, “Go to sleep.” I had slept well last night; I wasn’t tired; yet my whole personality was saying, “Sleep.” Then I slept. But just a moment ago, all at once a voice began within: “Get up, get up at once; in five minutes, get up.” I’m bewildered—what happened? A thought was transmitted a thousand miles.

In an American laboratory another astonishing experiment has been done; I want to tell you of it, for it is very valuable for the future. Compared to it, even journeys into space will prove less valuable; experiments with atom and hydrogen will be less valuable. It is extraordinary. For the first time, they photographed a thought—the photograph not of you, but of the thought that moves within you. A man was seated before a very sensitive camera with an extremely sensitive film, and he was told to concentrate his entire mind on a single image, think of only one picture. He did so. He concentrated inwardly on the image of a knife, kept seeing a knife—and the photographic film captured the knife. What does this mean? It means the inner image of thought radiates, its rays, its waves are thrown outward, and the film can catch them.

What is the meaning of a nonviolent revolution?
It means: nonviolent people. Even a few nonviolent people—through the rays of nonviolence, of love, of life-transformation that transpire from their very beings—can bring revolution to the lives of millions. We may never even know it.

My understanding is that mankind is waiting for a nonviolent revolution, and this waiting will continue until that nonviolent revolution happens.

No matter how many violent revolutions we stage, they will not bring transformation. What they do bring is like this: when you carry a corpse to the cremation ground, you bear the bier on your shoulder; on the way the shoulder gets tired, so you shift it to the other shoulder. That is the kind of difference revolutions have made. One shoulder began to ache; the load was shifted to the other shoulder. For a short distance there is relief; then the load begins again—now on the other shoulder.

All the revolutions so far have only changed the shoulder; they have not removed the burden. They have not transformed the social being of man; they have given the old structure a new arrangement. Then life returns to the same old story. The old diseases begin again, with new faces.

There was a revolution in Russia—perhaps the most important in the world. It happened so that classes would be abolished. The old classes were indeed abolished; there are no rich and no poor in Russia today. But a new class has arisen—the commissar, the officer, the man of the Communist Party; and the ordinary man who is not in the Party. Two classes have again come into being: the official, the power-holder—and the powerless. Yesterday it was the rich and the poor; today it is the powerful and the powerless. The distance between them is the same. Classes have reappeared in a new form.

In Russia, classes were not abolished; only their labels were changed. In the place of the capitalist stands the manager. It is a managerial revolution, a revolution of administrators. Administrators changed. Where the owner once sat, now sits the manager, the power-holder—in place of the wealthy. And remember, the wealthy never had as much power as the power-holder has. A rich man never had people’s necks so firmly in his hands as the Communist Party has in Russia. Stalin had a power Birla could not even dream of. Power changed; classes changed; new classes arose. The revolution died—no meaning remained beyond shifting the load to the other shoulder.

So far, in the name of revolution, the world has merely been changing shoulders. Shall we keep doing only that, or will we create a real revolution? If we want a real revolution, we must abandon our faith in violence. Violence only shifts the load. For the man who uses violence—when he becomes the ruler—will continue to use violence. And one who has used violence, in whose hands lies the instrument of violence—how can we hope he will abandon it? He will remain the same.

In Russia, those who gained power were good men; before a revolution, everyone looks good. After power comes into hand, then it is revealed who is truly good and who is not. There is even the possibility that Stalin poisoned Lenin. And there is the possibility that one by one, all who had led the revolution were eliminated. Trotsky was killed in Mexico. Those who made the revolution were picked off by Stalin, one after another—because now the game of power had begun.

In India, many fine, innocent-looking people made revolution with Gandhi—white as freshly washed garments they appeared. But once power came into their hands, we saw they had changed; they proved to be different men. Only their clothes were white; within, they were not.

What happened the moment power was in their grasp?
The real man inside showed himself. As long as there is no power, the real man remains hidden. If you have no money, how can it be known whether you are a spendthrift or not? Give you money and it will be known. Put a knife in your hand and the opportunity to kill, and then we will know if you are violent or not. Without power, everyone appears nonviolent. Nonviolence is known only when the opportunity for violence appears. Those who gained power in this country—only after power came did we discover their real picture.

So if such men come to power by means of violence, then their picture is already violent—what will they become afterward? If even those who call themselves nonviolent turn violent, what will happen to those who were violent from the start?

No, no revolution can come through violence. Only the burden changes; only the form, the name changes; society continues as it was.

After five thousand years of long experiments, we still do not see any revolution achieved by violence; none will be achieved in the future either. If man becomes disillusioned with violence, if he awakens to the fact that nothing can be done through violence, through pressure, through compulsion—then something is possible.

Man’s soul yearns for freedom; man’s soul longs for love; man’s soul wants to be transformed—but by those who are not eager or anxious to transform anyone, who have no insistence; who live in truth, who live in love, and whose way of living radiates waves through which transformation happens. Humanity is waiting for such transformation. Such a revolution can only be nonviolent.

Understand me very clearly: I am utterly against violence. Who could be in favor of violence? What intelligent, thoughtful person could support violence? To be on the side of violence means there is no intelligence inside. Only those who lack intelligence reach for the club. Those who have intelligence have no need to pick up the club. Whoever believes in the power of the fist and the sword has not yet risen to the true dignity of being human. The animal within believes in violence.

How can a human being believe in violence? Too often, power has been handed to the animal within, and man has suffered every time. Henceforth, power should not fall into violent, animalistic hands. Therefore the more alert a man is, the more he understands the essence and the mystery of nonviolence, the better.

What is the essence of nonviolence?
In a single word: love.
The word “nonviolence” is unfortunate; it is negative—“no violence.” The real word is love; it is positive, creative.

When we say “nonviolence,” we mean: do not be violent. But “do not be violent” does not prove that you must love.

India has a long tradition of Jains. They all uphold nonviolence. For them, nonviolence means: filter water before drinking; do not eat at night; do not hurt anyone. But such nonviolence is impotent: it only avoids causing pain to others.

Real nonviolence will be that which wants to bring happiness to others. Not harming others is not enough—that is a feeble, half-baked nonviolence. One must create joy in others. And why? So that you may attain liberation? So that you may reach heaven? The man who refrains from hurting others so that he may go to heaven or attain moksha is utterly dishonest—utterly selfish. He has no concern with the other; he is using the other and his “nonviolence” as a ladder to climb to his own heaven.

I have heard: in a village in China, a great fair was being held. Near the fair there was a well without a cover. A man carelessly fell into it and began shouting. There was a great crowd; who would listen? A Buddhist monk stopped by the well to drink water. The man below cried, “Monk, save me!”

The monk said, “Fool! Who can save whom? The whole world is in a well. Life itself is suffering—has the Blessed One not said so? Have you not read that life is the root of suffering? We are all in suffering—who can save whom?”

The man said, “Give me your wisdom after you pull me out. Scripture-talk does not sound good to a man who has fallen into a well. Please, save me first.”

The monk said, “Fool! Who can pull whom out? It is enough if one saves oneself; the Blessed One has said, ‘Be a light unto yourself; there is no other refuge.’ God help you!” And the monk went away. People who cling to scripture can be that dangerous: to them scripture is more important than a dying man.

Right after him came a follower of Confucius. He also peeped down. The man cried, “Save me! I am about to die; my breath is failing!”

The Confucian said, “Look—your fall proves Confucius was right: every well should have a cover. Where wells have no covers, the ruler is not good. Don’t worry—we will start an agitation and get covers put on every well.”

The man said, “Covers will be put one day, but I am gone today!”

Agitators have no concern with the man; their concern is with agitation. He went off and mounted the platform and began to address the crowd: “See, Confucius was right, and the proof is that well. Every well should have a cover. Until then, the state is not rightly governed.”

After him a Christian missionary came. He looked in. The man could scarcely cry out. The missionary took a rope out of his bag, lowered it, jumped down, and pulled the man out.

The man said, “You seem to be the only good man—but I am surprised you were already carrying a rope in your bag!”

He said, “We set out prepared. Service is our work. We know beforehand that someone is bound to fall into a well. And Jesus has said: if you wish to attain the kingdom of God, serve people. Without service, no one reaches God. We seek salvation. You were kind to fall in. Explain this to your children too: they should keep falling into wells so that our children may keep pulling them out.”

These people who wait for someone to fall into a well so that they can find salvation through service—such people are supremely selfish. They have no real concern with lepers, the sick, the poor; they turn everyone into a rung to climb toward their own salvation. Those who have been talking of nonviolence so far—often their nonviolence is also a ladder.

No—any “nonviolence” that serves as a ladder is not nonviolence. Even the word is not right. The right word is love—blazing love. And love means: the wish to make the other happy. But why? Not so that you may attain moksha; not even so that you may gain merit; but simply because the more joy you can give to another, the more, instantly, you yourself become joyful—instantly, not in some future. The more pain you give to another, the more, instantly, you become miserable. In life, whatever we do to others returns to us. Life has a great echo-point.

I once went up a mountain with some friends. There was an echo-point where a call would return seven times, reverberating from the valleys. One friend began barking like a dog. The whole mountain rang with dogs’ barking. I said, “Stop! If you must call, call like a cuckoo—or sing a song. What use is barking?” So he began to sing a love song, called like a cuckoo. The hills resounded with the cuckoo’s call. As we returned he grew thoughtful, sad. On the way he asked, “Did you perhaps mean to hint that this echo-point is a picture of life itself?”

In life too, whoever barks finds dogs barking all around. In life too, whoever sings finds shehnais sounding all around. In life, whatever we throw toward life begins to return to us—thousandfold. Thousandfold it pours back on us.

The more one shares love, the more love gathers and showers back upon him.

One small story, and I will finish.

Rabindranath has written a song, a very lovely song. In it he tells: one morning a beggar got up to beg. He took his alms bag, slung it over his shoulder—today was a festival, hopes were high. It seems festivals must have been invented by beggars—their discovery. He asked his wife for a little grain, a few rice kernels, and tossed them into his bag. Wise beggars do this when they leave home, so that when they open their bags before someone, it looks as if others have already given; it becomes a bit awkward to refuse when others have given—one’s ego is pricked if someone else donates and we don’t. So beggars set out with coins jingling in hand—brought from home. No one has given anything.

He stepped onto the main road and had barely begun to decide which way to go when he saw the sun rising and, in its light, the king’s golden chariot approaching. The king himself was riding. The chariot glittered. The beggar’s luck had opened. He had never begged from a king—hard to beg from kings: guards at the gate never let you in. Today the king is on the road; today I will spread my bag before him—perhaps I will receive enough for many lives, perhaps never again will I have to beg. In such dreams—beggars live on dreams; those who have nothing find a way to live in dreams—he built palaces from the king’s alms, he took up residence in them. Just then the chariot stopped. All his dreams shattered. Astonished, the beggar saw the king step down—and stretch out his own bag before the beggar!

The beggar said, “What are you doing?”
The king said, “Forgive me, it is unseemly, but the astrologers say the realm is under enemy threat, and they have said if today, on the festival day, I beg alms from the first person I meet, the danger will pass. You are the first. I am distressed, because you are a beggar; you have probably never given; it will be very hard for you. But give something, even a little—do not refuse! The fate of the whole kingdom is at stake.”

What trouble for the beggar! He had always asked; he had never given. He had no habit of giving. He put his hand in the bag; each time he opened his fist, it would not close on anything. He could not refuse—the king stood before him; the fate of the whole realm was in question; and he himself felt a greater crisis than the realm. He reached in; the fist would not clench.

The king said, “Do not refuse—if the first man refuses, danger is certain. Give even a single grain, but give something.” With great difficulty the beggar took out one grain of rice and dropped it into the king’s bag. The king climbed into his chariot and departed. Dust rose; the beggar’s dreams turned to dust. He received nothing—instead, something left his hand. You know his sorrow?

All day he begged; that day he got a lot—more than ever before. But his heart was not happy, because the mind is not pleased by what it receives; it suffers over what is lost. That one grain pricked him. This is the symptom of the beggar’s mind—we are all small beggars. What comes does not register; what slips away keeps aching. He reached home dejected and flung down his bag. His wife went mad with joy—never had so much come! She began to open the bag, then seeing her husband’s face asked, “Why are you sad?”

He said, “You don’t know, fool—there is a little less in the bag today. Today I even had to give a little—something I have never done in my life.”

She opened the bag; the grains spilled. He beat his chest and began to weep—tears flowing.

She asked, “What happened?”
He picked up a grain from the floor—one grain had turned to gold. He cried, “I made a mistake! The chance is gone! If only I had given all the grains, they would all have turned to gold. But where shall I find that king now? Where will I find that chariot? How will I persuade the emperor to beg again? The opportunity is lost.”

I do not know how far this story is true. But I do know this: at the end of life, only what you have given returns to you as gold. What you give becomes gold; what you hold back turns to dust.

Love means giving. Love means sharing.
The more the personality, the soul, is shared, the more it turns to gold. The more it is withheld, the more it turns to clay.

These were a few things I wished to say.
I am grateful for the love with which you have listened. Finally, I bow to the Divine seated within all. Please accept my salutations.