Ek Omkar Satnam #9

Religion is an inner bath. When we travel, dust gathers on our bodies and clothes; it’s easy to wash that off. But as we travel through time, dust gathers on the mind. That is not as easy to cleanse as the body. The body is outside, the dust is outside, and water is readily available outside. The mind is within, the dust is within. You will have to find a water from within.

Even a single moment passes and dust is already collecting inside. Do nothing, sit empty, and still the dust gathers. Even if a person sits quietly, does no work at all, after twenty-four hours he will need a bath. The mind, though, is doing something or other twenty-four hours a day. The state in which the mind does nothing is very rare. So with every act of the mind, dust accumulates—and it accumulates inside. Then, no matter how much you bathe outside, outer water will not wash away inner dust. You must seek inner water.

These sutras are exactly about that water. And they are precious. If you understand them rightly and recognize the inner lake, the key to the transformation of life is in your hand. As for the keys you hold till now—none of them fits. Had any one of them fit, you would already have become a Nanak yourself. Then there would be nothing left to understand about Nanak. You carry many keys; none of them opens anything. And because of the ego, you can’t even admit that your keys don’t work.

Mulla Nasruddin was a servant in a house. One day he told his master, Enough is enough—give me a day off today. There’s a limit to everything! And you don’t trust me one bit. I can’t stand this constant suspicion any longer. The master said, What are you saying, Nasruddin! I don’t trust you? Even the keys to the safe lie here on the table. Nasruddin said, The keys do lie there, but not one of them fits.

You also have no shortage of keys—plenty of information. And when information fits, it becomes wisdom. Until it fits, it’s just a burden; you keep hauling keys around. The question you must ask is: Does any one of them open? Does the door of life open? Does light come? Is bliss born? Do you hear the resonance of the Other? Is there any moment at all when you can thank the Divine, Thank you for birthing me—your grace, your compassion!

Complaints are endless. Gratitude doesn’t rise even once. How could it? None of your keys fit. Throw them away. Nanak speaks of the key that fits. And not only Nanak—Buddha said the same, Mahavira said the same, Jesus said the same. It’s astonishing: the keys that do not fit—you carry them; and the one that does—and even saying “does” is not precise, because there is only one key, the master key, that opens every lock of life—that master key has been spoken of since time immemorial. You leave that one and lug around all the rest.

Why? Because with the keys you carry, you don’t have to undergo any inner change. They don’t fit. You continue just as you are. No danger. Nothing to lose, nothing to change. And there’s a separate pleasure in jingling keys and making them ring. You enjoy having keys—and you also avoid the hard process of transforming life.

You don’t really listen to Nanak, Buddha, Mahavira. Their key is dangerous. It fits. And once it fits, you cannot remain who you’ve been. You have invested a lot in being as you are. You have staked much on this identity. If you change, all your labor till now goes to waste. The houses you have built collapse like houses of cards. The boats you have launched sink. The hoardings of the mind, the dreams you have cherished—all will be proved false. The very moment the key fits, your entire past is shown to be false.

Your ego refuses to accept this. It says, Perhaps I am not a supreme knower—but I am a knower nonetheless. Perhaps I have made a few mistakes—but not everything I’ve done can be wrong. A few mistakes—who doesn’t make them? You console yourself in a thousand ways. To err is human—after all, error is human nature; errors happen.

But one thing you never admit: that you are ignorant. Mistakes are actions—but you, you insist, are not ignorant; you are knowledgeable. Even the wise err. The informed can get lost. Even the clever sometimes fall into a pit. A person with eyes may bump into a wall—but you are not blind.

Understand this properly. Whenever you do something wrong, you say, That was a bad act. You save the doer and blame the deed. You get angry and then say, It was bad that anger came. You don’t say, I am an angry person. You say anger is just an act that happened accidentally. The situation was such; it was necessary. Had I not done it, harm would have followed. It was necessary for the other’s good. You never say, I am angry by nature. You say, Sometimes anger happens, a mistake occurs. But you keep saving the doer. The deeds have mistakes here and there, but the doer—he’s perfectly fine.

That is your ego. And that’s why you avoid the real key. Because the instant the real key fits and the lock opens, the first thing to fall away from your life is the ego. You become, in a flash, a nobody. All that you had “earned” is shown to be trash. All you had gathered is revealed as hollow. Along with that, you collapse. For the key to fit is for you to disappear. Therefore you avoid the real key.

Rabindranath wrote a very sweet and meaningful poem. He wrote: For many, many births I was seeking God. Who knows how many paths and ways I trod, how many doors I knocked upon, how many gurus I served, how many austerities I performed. And then, one day, at last, I reached the Divine’s door—attained! Sometimes I had glimpses before, but only near some far-off star; by the time I reached there, he had already moved on. But today I reached his very house. I even read the nameplate: it was truly his. I climbed the steps, overjoyed that the journey was complete. I took the chain in my hand; I was just about to knock...

Suddenly a fear seized my heart: What if the door opens—then what? If I meet God—then what? My life’s only goal till now has been to find God. Then all goals will vanish. My only passion, my only occupation, will be destroyed. If I meet God—then what? Then there is nothing left to do, no future left, no journey, and no room left for the ego to obtain something.

Fear made me tremble. Quietly I released the chain—so softly it wouldn’t make a sound by accident. What if he opens the door! I even took off my shoes, because going down the steps with shoes might be dangerous—who knows, a slight sound and he might open the door! So, with shoes in my hands, I ran—and never looked back.

And the last lines of the poem: Even now I seek his house. You will find me searching for him along every road. And I know where his house is. Even now I ask people, What is his address? And I know his address. And still I search. Even now I catch a glimpse of him near the distant moon and stars. But now I am at ease: by the time I arrive, he will have gone elsewhere. I search everywhere—except one place: the place where his house is. That is the one place I “forget” to go. That is the one place I carefully avoid.

This is very important. And if you look honestly, this is your condition too. Don’t ever say you don’t know where God is. That cannot be. He is everywhere. How could you not know? Don’t say you don’t know the key and that’s why the lock is closed. The key has been given to you thousands of times. You always “forget” it. You leave it somewhere. Unconsciously you are trying to escape. And unless this duplicity is made clear, you will search with one hand and lose with the other. You will lift one foot towards him and the other in the opposite direction.

You want to keep up the pretense of seeking, because even that gives a deep satisfaction: I am seeking God. I am not an ordinary person. I am seeking Truth; I’m not petty. I am not like those who hunt for money in the marketplace. I am not like those who seek position in politics. I am seeking Truth. I am seeking religion. I am seeking God.

These words too have become decorations for your ego. You adorn yourself with them; you do not dissolve. They give your identity even more color. You are no longer a small man—you are a seeker, a pilgrim on the path to the Divine, while others are entangled in petty trifles: small houses, small trades, small potsherds. While others are tied to the trivial, you have tried to bind yourself to the Vast.

So you keep saying, I seek him—and inwardly you keep avoiding him. If you don’t understand this inner conflict, you will never find.

It is like a man who builds a house by day and demolishes it by night, then starts again in the morning. Or who lays a brick with one hand and pulls it out with the other. Or who hires two laborers—one to set bricks, one to remove them. When will such a house be completed? For endless births you have been building; your house is still not built. Surely there is some fundamental glitch by which you are doing two opposite things at once.

So you hang false keys at your waist—with which no locks open. You bathe at pilgrimage places—yet the mind isn’t washed. You perform worship in the temple—yet worship does not happen. You offer flowers—but not yourself. You give alms and donations. You do little religious acts—and hide behind them to save yourself.

Remember, only when you dissolve will you become pure. Therefore you need a water that dissolves you—not one that saves you. It is that water which is being discussed. Let us try to understand.

If dust fills the hands and feet and the limbs of the body, water can wash the grime away. If cloth is defiled with urine, it can be cleansed with soap. In the same way, if the intellect is filled with sin, it can be purified by the love of the Name—by being dyed in love.

“Filled are hands and feet and body with dust—water washes the dirt away.
If urine soils the cloth, take soap and cleanse it.
If the mind is filled with sin, it is washed in the dye of the Name.”

“In the dye of love...”

This word love is supremely important. After “God,” no word is more important than love. Let us understand love a little.

Nanak says: One who is dyed in the color of love has his inner sins washed away.

We all think we know the word “love.” We may say, Is this even a key? The word is familiar. But familiarity with a word from a dictionary does nothing. You have learned the term from a lexicon, not from the lexicon of life. A dictionary defines love—but those meanings have nothing to do with love. In the lexicon of life, love arises from your own experience—there it has a different aliveness, a different fire. A dictionary may define “fire,” but it won’t burn you. It may define “water,” but it won’t quench your thirst. In the same way, if you understand love as a dictionary entry, your inner sins will not be washed.

Love is a fire. And as gold is refined by passing through fire—what is worthy remains, what is dross burns away—so by passing through the fire of love, all that is useless in you is burned. What is meaningful remains. Whatever is “sin” in you disappears; whatever is “virtue” remains. You become purified, refined virtue.

So understand love rightly. First: love and sin must be opposites; only then can love erase sin. Perhaps you have never seen it this way: love and sin are the deepest opposites in the world. Whenever you sin, it is precisely because love is absent—that is why you can do it. All sins arise from the absence of love. If there is love, sin is impossible.

Hence Mahavira says ahimsa—non-violence, which means love. Buddha says karuna—compassion, which means love. And Jesus says plainly: “Love is God.” He says, Forget about God—love itself is the Divine.

Someone asked Saint Augustine, Tell me in brief: What is the essence of religion? How can I be free of sin? There are so many sins, and life is short! The man asked well: Life is very short, sins are many; if I go on dropping them one by one, I’m not confident I’ll manage it—life will be over. Give me one key that opens all.

Augustine said: If you want just one key, then love. Love—and leave the rest to itself. For one who loves, sin cannot happen. That is why it is the “master key.” All locks open.

You can steal because you feel no love for the one you are stealing from. You can kill because you feel no love for the one you are killing. You can cheat, be dishonest—only because love is absent. All sins arise in the absence of love—just as, without light, a dark house invites snakes, scorpions, thieves, crooks, looters; spiders spin webs, bats take up residence. When light comes, they slowly depart.

Love is light. And there is no lamp of love lit in your life; hence, there is sin. Sin has no creative energy of its own—no positive energy. Sin is purely negative, only an absence. You can do it only because what ought to be present within you is not present.

Understand a little more. You get angry, and all the scriptures say, Don’t be angry. But if the flow of your life-energy is not moving toward love, what will you do? You will have to get angry. In truth, anger is the very same energy as love that has failed to find its path. The very energy that could not become a flower has become a thorn. Love is creativity. If creativity does not happen in your life, you will find your energy turning destructive.

The difference between your saints and your devils is simply this: in one, life-energy has become destructive; in the other, it has become creative. Anyone who can create cannot be a devil. And anyone who does not create—however much he convinces himself he is a saint—cannot be a saint. What will you do with the energy of life? It must become something. If you begin to love, you dig new channels for that very power. If there is no love anywhere in your life, what will your life-power do? It will break, smash, erase. If you do not set it to building, it will set itself to destroying. Virtue is the creative stance of life-energy; sin is negative. There is no need to fight sin directly.

People come to me and say, There is so much anger—what should we do? I tell them, Don’t think about anger at all. The more you think about anger, the more energy you give it. Energy flows where thought goes. Thought is the channel by which energy flows. Attend to something, and your life begins to stream in that direction. Dig a canal from a reservoir, and the water will flow into the fields. Attention is the canal for the energy of life. Where you place your attention, there your energy will flow. Wrong attention—energy flows wrongly. Right attention—energy flows rightly. Love is the name of right attention.

And Nanak says: The day your love flows toward the Name of the Divine, you are dyed. Then you will be washed. And not only washed of the sins of the past—you will be washed of the very possibility of future sin. Before you can even get dirty, you remain clean. You become freshly bathed, moment to moment.

That is why when you go to a sage, you feel a just-bathed freshness about him—as if he has just come out of the bath. That morning-dew freshness surrounds a saint. The reason is simply this: dust does not collect. In the absence of love, dust collects. With love, it can be washed.

So, first about love: that your life-energy must not become destructive. Destruction is sin. What is sin? When you break something—not for the sake of building something in the future, but simply for the pleasure of breaking. Breaking can be of two kinds. A man may demolish a house so that a new one can be built—that is not breaking; that is part of the process of building. But when you break simply for the sake of breaking—then there is sin.

Consider your little boy. Sometimes you slap him. That slap is not sin—if it is given in love. It is creative. It is not to destroy the child, but to help shape him. You hit him because you love him. If there were no love, you wouldn’t care at all. To hell with it—do what you want! There would be neglect: Fine, go wherever. Do whatever. There would be indifference. But in love, you cannot allow the child to go anywhere. If he tries to jump into the fire, you won’t let him. You will stop him. You may even hit him. But in that hitting there is no sin; there is virtue—because creation is happening. You want to make something of him.

But then you hit an enemy. The slap is the same, the hand is the same, the energy is the same. But when you strike from enmity, you are not striking to make anything—you are striking to erase. That is sin. Acts are not sins. If the vision within you is creative, no act is sin. If your vision is destructive, all acts are sin.

A Sufi story. A Sufi came to a village. He had to travel to a small temple hidden in the mountains; he was seeking it. He asked the villagers at a tea stall, Who is the most truthful man in this village? And who is the most deceitful? In a small village everyone knows who’s who.

He first went to the most truthful man and asked, I wish to go to that hidden shrine spoken of in the scriptures. If you know, tell me the easiest route. The man said, The easiest route goes through the mountains. Go in this way and that—but you must cross the mountains.

Then the Sufi went to the most deceitful man—and was surprised. He asked him the same, and he too said, The easiest route is through the mountains. This and this way—you must go through the mountains. Both answers were the same. The Sufi was puzzled. He wondered, Is there a Sufi here in this village? Some realized fakir?

Remember, “truthful” and “deceitful” are two poles. When someone attains sainthood, he goes beyond both. The Sufi was in a fix: Whom should I believe? He had expected the liar to say the opposite. Sinner and saint had spoken the same—who was right?

He found a Sufi fakir in the village and asked. The fakir said, Both gave the same reply—but their visions were different. The truthful man told you to go over the mountains because—there is another route that goes by the river, and he knows it—but you have no boat, no means to make the river crossing, and you have this donkey you ride; it will be helpful on a mountain path but a nuisance in a boat. Considering your whole situation, he said, Go by the mountains. The easiest route in itself is by river—but considering you, the easier route is over the mountains.

The deceitful man also told you to take the mountains—so you would suffer. The easier path is by the river, and the liar said mountains to land you in trouble. He wants to hurt you. The answers are identical, the intention differs.

Acts can be identical, so nothing is decided by the act. The inner intent decides. That is why when a father strikes his son there is no accounting of it. A mother may hit her son—no one keeps a record. In fact, psychologists say: A mother who has never slapped her child will never form a deep bond with him; intimacy never grows. If you’re afraid to hit your son, you don’t really claim him as your own—there’s distance. A father who bows before every whim of the child will never be forgiven by him; he will discover that the father ruined him. The child is inexperienced; his demands are not deeply meaningful. The father must consider what is right and wrong. He is more experienced; if he loves, he will decide from his experience, not from the child’s demand. A father who gives total freedom will never be forgiven.

This is why, in the West, sons cannot forgive their fathers. And the West has given children more freedom than any civilization ever did. For the last hundred years, thinkers have preached: give children complete freedom. The result: a gulf between fathers and sons so wide it is hard to bridge. In the old days sons feared their fathers; in the West now, fathers fear their sons. In the past, sons held reverence till the end; in the modern West there is hardly a grain of reverence or love. Why? Because one day the son realizes: My father ruined me. He should have stopped me. If I was doing wrong, he should have stopped me. If I was straying, he should have stopped me. He had experience; I had none. Why did he listen to me? He should not have yielded. This is what the son feels.

Mark this well. Love cares. Love is concerned that the other’s life be auspicious, beautiful, true, radiant. Indifference means there is no intimacy: Whatever happens, happens—we have no purpose together. By a mere accident you are a son, and I, by accident, a father—otherwise we have nothing to do with each other. Thus inner relationships have collapsed in the West.

Love can also strike, because love is strong. Love is so full of trust it can bring creation even out of destruction. But keep one thing clear: creation must always be the goal; destruction, if it is used at all, is only a method.

A Master utterly kills the disciple—truly kills him. No father can strike so deep. The father’s blows are on the surface, on the body. As water washes the body’s dirt, the father cares for the outer life; his blows are on the surface. The Master strikes within, makes the deepest wound. Wherever he finds you, he pierces. He will melt your ego and won’t stop till he does. Unless you find such a Master, know that whoever you’ve found, you will not be able to forgive him; sooner or later you will feel he wasted your life and time.

The aim of love is creation—remember this. And when you are creative in relationships, you cannot sin. How can I sin if I love? As love spreads, you discover: I am hidden within all. Whom shall I steal from? Whom shall I deceive? Whose pocket shall I pick? The more your love grows, the more you find all pockets are your own. The harm I do to another returns, finally, to me.

Life is an echo. One who loves discovers this: life is an echo. Whatever you do showers back upon you. The more love grows, the clearer it becomes: there is no “other” here. The person you love ceases to be alien.

You won’t want to hurt your wife, because her suffering becomes your suffering. You will want her to be happy, because her happiness increases the possibility of your own happiness. Then you see: pain given to another makes you suffer; joy given to another brings you joy.

Yet we think in exactly the opposite language: Give ourselves pleasure, give others pain—maybe that will increase our pleasure. In the end you find yourself filled only with pain. What you give is what returns. Sow thorns for others, and in the end you find your whole life bristling with thorns. Pay no mind to what others are doing—just keep sowing flowers, and finally you will reap what you sowed. What others have sown—they will harvest. But we go the other way.

A woman came to ask me something—she wanted to divorce her husband. What she asked, I’ve never forgotten: Is there any way to arrange the divorce so that my husband doesn’t get any happiness out of it? She knew well that divorce would make him happy—she had tormented him long. Now she wanted to make sure that even in divorce he wouldn’t get the satisfaction.

Together we want to inflict pain; apart we want to inflict pain. Connected, we want to hurt; separated, we still want to hurt. But remember: when you are so eager to make another suffer, when your attention is so fixed on pain, gradually you will find that this very attention creates a wound of pain within you.

This is what we call the law of karma, the law of life. Karma means only this: whatever you do eventually comes back to you. There may be a delay. Therefore do only that which you wish to receive. If you are standing in hell today, it is not because of anyone else; it is the fruit of what you have done over many lives.

People come to me and say, Give me your blessing so that happiness may come into my life.

If happiness could come by blessings alone, one person could make everyone happy. Why be stingy with blessings? But it isn’t so easy. You have sown misery; how will my blessing reap a different harvest? Understand from me—don’t ask for blessings. Blessings, the way you ask them, are a form of dishonesty. You have caused suffering to who knows how many; you have sown pain everywhere. Now, when it’s time to harvest, you come asking for blessings! And your tone implies that if you are suffering, it’s because I’m not blessing you. No one’s blessing will erase your suffering. If someone’s blessing can increase your understanding, that’s enough. If someone’s blessing can plant a seed of love in you, that’s enough. Sin is cut by love. And your suffering will end when you begin to sow happiness for others.

Nanak says: If the intellect is filled with sin, only the love of the Name can purify it.

And when you love one person, it becomes difficult to hurt them, because their joy is your joy and their pain your pain—the boundary between your life and theirs is broken. You flow into one another. When such a happening occurs between a person and the Divine, that is called prayer, worship, devotion—bhakti. That is love in its final form.

If loving one person makes you so happy, and hurting one person makes you so unhappy, then you can have two relationships with God as well: one of love—and you enter heaven; one of non-love—and you fall into hell.

God means the Whole, the Totality. To love this vastness as though it were a person. In that love, all your sins are washed away—because that love will immerse you in love for all. Whom will you deceive? Wherever you go to deceive, you will find him peering back at you. In every eye you look into, you will see God sitting there.

Bhakti is a revolutionary process. Bhakti means: Now, other than him, there is no one. Then your life becomes effortlessly simple. There is no one left to destroy, no one left to cheat, no one left to snatch from.

So don’t mistake bhakti for going to a temple and doing a puja; or for going to the gurdwara and reciting the Japji; don’t think that repeating the Japji loudly every morning mechanically, or reading namaz, will do anything. With all that, nothing happens—because then you’ve made a false key. The real key means: I have fallen in love with the Infinite. Now every grain of this world is my beloved. Every inch is my lover or my beloved. On every leaf is his Name; in every eye his glimpse. Everything is his; everywhere I find him.

Now, however you live—if you find God everywhere—that way of living is called bhakti. It changes the entire style of your life. You will rise differently. You will sit differently—because he is everywhere. You will speak differently—because whomever you speak to is he. How will you be able to abuse? How will you slander? How will you insult anyone? How will you excuse yourself from serving another? For he is hidden in all feet.

If this awareness deepens in you, Nanak calls it being dyed in the color of the Name. A divine intoxication will descend upon you. You may have nothing—and yet you will feel you have everything. You may be utterly alone—and the whole universe will be with you. A harmony comes between existence and you. A tuning happens between existence and you. A connection is forged between existence and you.

Nanak says: Only such love can cut through sin.