Es Dhammo Sanantano #24

Seeing drunkards, it is natural that the subject of wine should arise. I have nothing of my own to tell you—I tell you only yourself. I am a mirror; nothing more than that. I simply return your image to you.
The question has been asked in jest by Taru, but a joke too carries a great truth. Certainly she has caught something. Looking at her, I am reminded of wine.
If only Taru were the drunkard, there would be no problem; everyone is drunk. There are different taverns, different kinds of wine—but all are intoxicated. Some have drunk the wine of wealth, some the wine of position, yet all are unconscious.

The very way of being in the world is unconsciousness. Until you drink the divine wine, you will go on drinking the world’s wine; it is the substitute. And the divine wine is the one wine that gives awareness; it does not bring stupor. All other wines bring forgetfulness. You forget yourself. And forgetting yourself, can anyone find truth? One has to be erased, not made to forget. By erasing, truth is found. Forgetting is deception: you remain, only you don’t remember that you are.

So whether the wine of this world comes from taverns, or the wine of power from capital cities, or the wine of money from marketplaces, or even the wine of renunciation in temples and mosques—wherever you forget yourself—you do not dissolve—remember, you only forget; you continue to be. How long will the intoxication last? After a little while awareness returns, and you are back.

The one full draught of the divine is such that, once drunk, nobody ever comes “back to his senses” again. Not that awareness does not return—rather, there is no one left who could return. Other wines are momentary; the divine wine is eternal. Such is the eternal law.

One who has drunk it does not remain. He is erased. Seek the wine that erases. Then you will be amazed. You will come close to a paradox: awareness can erase; unconsciousness never erases—it preserves you.

All drink—but you have been drinking the wrong wine. You need the right wine poured into your cups. By drinking the wrong, you have become wrong. Because what you drink, you become; it begins to circulate in your veins and arteries. Yet until now religions have spoken little about drinking the right wine; they have mostly condemned the wrong.

I have no condemnation of wine. I have nothing to do with condemnation. Why condemn wine at all? For then some people begin drinking the wine of condemnation—and remain lost in condemning. Their only intoxication becomes sending others to hell and punishing them for sin. Then their wickedness and stupidity find new pathways.

I have no mind to condemn. It is the condemners who have filled wine with so much juice. There isn’t so much juice in wine; prohibition itself creates juice.

“Your insistence made me drink even more, sir—
Sheikh-ji, such heavy moralizing is itself a bad thing.”

If you keep telling people too much, “Don’t do it! Don’t do it!” the attraction to do it arises. If you write, “No peeking here,” people will start peeking right there.

When I was at the university, the urinal was quite near our department. In those student days I drew an arrow on the wall and wrote, “Do not look up.” I drew another arrow and wrote there, “Looking up strictly prohibited.” And one last line on the roof: “Sir! Look down at once.” By then most had already spoiled their pajamas. We would sit outside the department and watch who had read it. Almost everyone returned having read it.

“Your insistence made me drink even more, sir—
Sheikh-ji, such heavy moralizing is itself a bad thing.”

So I don’t tell you, “Don’t drink.” I say: if you must drink, drink the right wine. If you are determined to drink, and if what is available to drink is the divine, then why drink the world? Why drink trash? When such an ecstasy is available—one that remains forever—when the burden can be dropped forever, why give space in your heart to the fleeting oblivion of the moment?

I offer you the great wine. I am not eager to snatch away the small. I give you diamonds; once diamonds are found, pebbles drop away on their own. I want to turn your temple into the divine tavern—so that such a bliss overflows there that the taverns feel ashamed. Only then will religion live on earth.

Otherwise the religious appears dry and withered; the drunkard seems more festive. The religious looks like a thorn; in a drunkard, sometimes, a glimpse of a flower appears. Surely somewhere a mistake has been made. The temple too chose a wrong path—of prohibition, denial, renunciation.

I tell you: religion is the great rejoicing. If you feel the need to drink, it only means you are deprived of the great feast. The Vast could have descended upon you, but you did not find the right direction. The Vast could have become your courtyard, but you are hiding in the pursuit of your darkness. Hence the need arises.

Wine is a secret attempt to snatch a glimpse of the divine—secretly! Through the back door! When a thief slips into your house, have you noticed? He too gets a glimpse of your home, your drawing room. But is the thief’s glimpse any real glimpse? He is frightened, on the run, has come like a thief. A guest also comes to the house; you welcome him at the door. Wine is a furtive attempt to get a glimpse of God. And where a welcome is possible, where you can be a guest—honored, respected—why go as a thief?

So the drunk forgets for a moment. The drunkards I speak of forget forever. I don’t want to make you give up anything; my emphasis is not on renunciation. I want to teach you true enjoyment. Let the Vast descend in you. I want to place in your hand the bottle of the divine.

“You keep talking about wine looking at me—why?”
Looking at you, what else should I talk about?

“I am a siddha—do you have anything to say?”
Now it is not wise to quarrel with drunkards. It is better to agree. Why take on the hassle! When you come to your senses, you will understand on your own. I will keep working to bring awareness. I don’t bother about what you say.

A friend of my father’s, who knew me since childhood, a thorough drunkard, would sometimes come to see me. My family grew suspicious—what do they talk about for hours? One day he came, and my aunt hid behind the house where we were sitting, to listen. She was astonished. The drunk was saying he went to jail in 1932 in the freedom movement. I was one year old then. He was telling me, “When we were both imprisoned for three years… do you remember?” I said, “I remember everything—each detail.” He kept talking about jail, assuming we had been there together. My aunt was shocked. She could forgive the drunk—but what had happened to me?

As soon as he left, she caught me: “What’s wrong with you? Have you also been drinking? In 1932 you were one year old. This man is old; he went to jail in 1932. And you were talking about prison together!” I said, “What is the point of opposing? Who would listen? If I argue, I too am not in my senses.”

So Taru, you are a siddha! If I oppose, then I am not in my senses.

But there is another wine. The wine you have called wine until now is not the real—borrowed, not cash. It is a cheat, self-deception. Drink the cash wine of the divine.

“We drank wine on credit, believing that, yes,
one day our ecstatic poverty would bear fruit.”

When you must drink, don’t drink on credit, don’t drink borrowed. All wines that come to you from outside are on credit. There is also a wine that is pressed from your own innermost core. Only that is cash, not credit. There are grapes that ripen in your inner being; there is wine that ferments in the sunlight of the soul; it is poured there within. There you yourself are the wine and you yourself the drinker. There you are the tavern, you the goblet, you the liquor. Then you have drunk cash. Whoever drinks from outside, drinks on credit.

And having drunk on credit, don’t imagine that someday color will come. The color will be stolen; you will grow pale. Life will become sad, diminished; dust will settle upon it. No colors will bloom, no flowers will blossom, no fragrance will arise. Your breath will carry the sour smell of wine.

In the breath of the buddhas there is the fragrance of another wine. Sit near a buddha and you will start swaying—without drinking you will sway. Return from a buddha and your steps will stagger a little; a certain intoxication will descend. It will take days to return to your old ways.

Drink satsang. Satsang is not a wine that comes from outside. The awakened ones don’t give you anything; they awaken what sleeps within you. They do not give you wealth, nor status, nor oblivion. They awaken what is hidden inside you. That becomes your wealth, your status, and it fills you with a bliss that is never lost.

What you have so far called your life is not even the shadow of life. Not even a distant echo of life. What you call life is a sickly notion. Under the weight of this life’s pain you try to forget yourself. Someone goes and sits in a cinema to forget himself for an hour, to forget in the pictures.

See how simple deception is! There is nothing on the screen. You know it—there is nothing on the screen. You know what appears is a play of light and shadow, yet you forget. You come to forget, therefore you forget. You want to forget—house, shop, children, wife, worries, burdens, duties—for a little while. For a little while you want to be weightless. For a little while, relief. You want to put the burden down for a while. The burden does not drop. After a little while it will all be there as before—perhaps heavier. For in this world nothing stands still. The burden too is growing, as trees grow, as your age grows, so your burden grows. Everything grows. During the very minutes you spent in the cinema, the burden grew silently. When you return, you will find yourself more tired, more defeated.

Some get lost in music. And some even get lost in bhajan-kirtan. Now this needs understanding. If your bhajan-kirtan arises from remembering the divine, from name-remembering, good. But if you are using bhajan-kirtan in the same way as the cinema, the music, the prostitute, then your bhajan-kirtan is bhajan-kirtan in name only; not the real. There too you are seeking wine—only of the religious kind.

Thus you go on forgetting yourself, going far from your true being; a gap widens between what you are and what you really are…

“Where has self-forgetfulness carried me?
I have long been waiting for my own arrival.”

Such is the condition—you wait for yourself. Who knows where you have been lost! You don’t even have your own address. You don’t know where your feet are falling, where your life is going, why you go on moving.

If you call such unaddressed wandering “life,” then what is death? If your life is life, nothing could be worse. This is not life. You have not yet got hold of life’s thread.

Life must be earned; it is not given. Life is a discipline, a sadhana. Life does not come with birth. With birth an opportunity comes. Practice—and life will be yours. Don’t practice—and it will never be yours. You have mistaken birth for life. That is why you are so harassed that you need wines to forget.

For centuries temples and mosques have opposed wine. Churches and gurdwaras have opposed wine. But wine does not go. Temples and mosques have been uprooted; taverns stand firm. Who goes now to temples and mosques? And those who go—do they really go? They only complete a formality. They go because they must. Even sitting there, where are they? Their mind is elsewhere.

This need to forget yourself exists because you do not know yourself. And what you have taken yourself to be pricks like a thorn.

I want to give you what you already have, from which you have become disconnected. To attain that is to become a siddha. One who is siddha has no need to forget.

What does siddha mean? It means that what was a seed within you has become a tree; it has flowered. It means: what you were meant to become, you have become; your destiny is fulfilled.

Where the Ganga falls into the ocean, she becomes siddha.
Where the seed becomes a flower, it is siddha.

Siddha means: nothing remains to be done, nothing remains to be gained, nowhere remains to go. No goal remains—you are the goal. No temple, no mosque, no pilgrimage remains. No journey remains. You are the temple; you are the mosque. The beginning has arrived at the end. The traveler who set out has arrived.

Then there is no need to forget. For being is so blissful… Have you ever noticed? Whenever you are happy, you do not want to forget yourself. Only when you are unhappy do you want to forget. A happy man does not drink—why should he? Who wants to forget happiness, drown it, lose it? A happy man will not drink. The unhappy man drinks—because sorrow has to be forgotten, otherwise it becomes unbearable. By forgetting, one bears it. By forgetting, one drags on, somehow hauling the load.

When you are operated on, anesthesia must be given. The pain would be too much to bear without unconsciousness. But when you are at a festival, in joy, there is no need.

A friend used to come to me. He said, “I’m afraid to come to you. I feel such a pull to come. I also want to meditate. But one block remains: today or tomorrow you will find out that I drink. Then you will certainly say, ‘Quit drinking.’ I won’t be able to do it. I’ve tried many times. I’ve lost many times. I’ve given up hope. This is now my lifelong companion. I cannot do it. And today or tomorrow you will know; then you will say, ‘If you want to meditate, first leave this.’”

I said, “Then you have not understood me at all. I say only this: since you have not meditated, therefore you drink. Meditation is supremely powerful. If you have to leave wine in order to meditate, then wine is more powerful than meditation. No—I say, meditate. The day meditation happens, we’ll see.”

He said, “So it’s not a condition? Not a prerequisite? What do you mean? All scriptures say: first make conduct right, then meditation.”

I said, “My scripture says: if meditation is right, conduct becomes right on its own. If prayer settles, love settles by itself. When a little fragrance of your own begins to arise, who wants to forget it? Don’t worry—drink if you must.” He said, “Then this friendship will work.”

But he meditated with great involvement, with great absorption. He was courageous. He worked hard—poured all he had into meditation. As he had squandered everything on wine, he squandered it on meditation.

I get along with gamblers, not shopkeepers. With businessmen I have trouble. These matters don’t fit into accounts. And when I told him, “Be fearless. I will never, with my own mouth, tell you to leave wine. Drink. My emphasis is on meditation. What do I have to do with wine?”—I kept my word, and he kept his. He meditated with great force. A year later he came and said, “You cheated me. The wine is going! It is becoming harder to drink—day by day harder.”

I said, “Don’t talk to me about wine. We already decided not to talk about it. That’s your affair. Now it’s your choice. If you want meditation, choose meditation; if you want wine, choose wine. Now you have the luxury of choice. Both tastes are in front of you. Choose. You decide. Don’t discuss it with me. My work was meditation; that is complete.” He said, “It is impossible to go back now. I cannot even think of dropping meditation. If wine has to go, it will go.”

And it went. Wine has to go. When the great wine arrives, who bothers with petty entanglements? When the Vast begins to be received, who clutches broken pots?

You cling to money because you have no news yet of real wealth. I don’t tell you to leave money; I tell you to seek the real wealth. Hold on to money if you like; nothing is made or marred by it. It is so useless—nothing is made by it, so how can anything be spoiled? Keep drinking wine; nothing is made or marred by it. Nothing is made by it—so how can anything be ruined?

Remember this: by that which truly makes something, something can also be marred. Yes, if you meditate wrongly, you will be harmed. If you meditate rightly, you will be made. Whether your dream is good or bad—what difference does it make? Dreams make no difference. If in a dream you become a saint, what is the gain? If in a dream you become a murderer, what is the loss? In the morning, washing your face, you will laugh. All the same—dream-saint and dream-murderer are equal.

But in wakefulness, if you do wrong, something is marred; if you do right, something is made. From that which brings benefit, harm is also possible.

Until the inner cash—wine distilled in your own soul—is available to you, drink if you must. Stand like a beggar at the taverns’ doors. But remember, you are wasting a vast opportunity. One day you will weep. Let it not happen that when awareness comes to you, time is no longer in your hands. Let it not be that when death knocks at the door, then you weep. If awareness comes before that—good fortune! It can. Otherwise why come to me at all? The search is on. Your steps reel, agreed. They will steady. It is a matter of a little practice. Again and again you slip into old molds and grooves, agreed. Long habit—natural. But that even for a moment you step out—this is no small thing.

If even a single ray of the beyond enters you, it is enough. It will dispel the darkness of lifetimes. I don’t talk much about the darkness; a single ray is enough. You will reach the sun by holding that ray’s thread.

I am giving you many threads. If you do not catch the first, I offer a second. If not the second, a third. One or another will be caught. That it does not come into your grip does not trouble me. That you try to grasp—that is enough. If it slips, I don’t even notice. You stretched out your hand—that is sufficient. Sooner or later you will catch hold. Let the effort continue, the sadhana continue—siddhahood is not far.

The moment they drink, all become realized! This is exactly how they become realized—and upon realization, wine drops by itself.

What you call wine—I am not calling only that wine; I call the whole world wine. It is all intoxication. Just look at a man caught in the race for wealth—you will find a certain ecstasy in his eyes. The jingle of money sends over him such a high that even if you emptied bottle after bottle you would not get such a rush. Look closely at a man chasing wealth—how possessed, how intoxicated! As if the goal were just around the corner, as if union with the Divine were about to happen.

Look at the office-seeker, the power-hungry, the politician—how intoxicated! Their feet don’t touch the ground. Even drunkards walk with a little caution; those who swig the wine of ego place their feet in the sky. The whole world—desire itself—is only unconsciousness.

So if someone says, “Give up all desire first, then you will be realized,” how will you give it up? That is like going to a physician and being told, “Only when you drop all your illnesses will I give you medicine.” Then what need would there be for medicine?

No. Granted, you are ill—no problem. Do you want to be healthy? That one condition suffices. Within you, something has become engaged in rising beyond disease; there is a readiness to climb the steps—to cross beyond this unhealth, this desire, this craving, this stupor. Granted, you fall again and again, slip back into the mud—fine! No harm in that. But each time, you try to get up.

Have you watched a small child learning to walk? How many times he falls! How many times the knees get scraped and bloody, the skin gets peeled. Yet he rises, again and again; one day he stands; one day he learns to walk.

If we make it a condition that only when you stop falling, stop wobbling, will anything be possible, we would rob the child of all hope. No: even falling is a part of learning to walk. In falling and rising again, the effort continues, the discipline continues. We say to the child, “Don’t worry. Don’t give too much attention to the falls. They are stages on the path of walking.”

When you stray, don’t get overly upset. Straying, too, is a part of arriving. The world itself lies along the path to God. Fall! Only don’t lie there—keep the effort to rise alive. Then one day rising happens. Where the urge to rise has begun, the first step is already taken. And a journey of a thousand miles is completed from that small first step.

Lao Tzu has said: take one step. No one can take two steps at once. Step by step, a journey of a thousand miles is completed.

Granted, you are unconscious; but not so unconscious that you don’t know you are unconscious. That is where the whole possibility lies. There is the real key. Let me repeat it: you are unconscious; but not so unconscious that you don’t know you are unconscious. In that very knowing, in that tiny seed, all is hidden. Give it the right soil and the seed will sprout.

The real difficulty is for those who don’t even know—and those the Buddha called “deluded.” “Deluded” is not the same as “foolish.” There is a difference. The fool is one who does not know—this is not a great illness. The deluded is one who does not know and believes he knows. The deluded is lying in the mud and thinks he is in heaven. The fool is lying in the mud and knows he is lying in the mud.

Between the two stands the wise, the understanding one: he is lying in the mud, knows he is lying in the mud, and is making the effort to rise. He will fall again and again—naturally; it must be learned. But the effort continues. He wanders off and off, and then again finds the temple. He keeps returning to seize that one thread.

That thread is awareness. Call it meditation, call it prayer, but its essence is awareness. That is why when Siddhartha Gautama attained wisdom we called him Buddha—he attained the thread of bodh, of awakening. He awoke.

The unconscious too will arrive. If the unconscious could not arrive, no one would ever arrive—for even the Buddha was once unconscious. Buddhahood arises out of that very unconsciousness. So don’t treat unconsciousness as the enemy of Buddhahood; unconsciousness is the opportunity for Buddhahood. As the lotus arises out of mud, so Buddhahood arises out of unconsciousness. Although the lotus goes far away from the mud, it comes from the mud; it draws its sap from the mud and transforms that sap.

You eat food; from that food lust is generated in you. That is why monks and renunciates begin to fast; they get frightened of food, because the more they eat, the more desire surges.

A Buddha also eats; but from that same food now lust no longer arises—compassion arises. Now the mud begins to become lotus.

You sleep at night; monks become afraid of sleep. Somehow they managed through the day—how will they manage in sleep? Lust encircles in sleep—so they begin to fear sleep. For the awakened one, day or night, it is the same. One who has learned to be awake remains awake even at night. Sleep remains in the body, not in the self. The body is mud; the self is the lotus. He rises far beyond the body, yet his stream of nourishment remains linked with the mud. He draws sap from the mud, but transforms it.

In a Buddha, everything begins to become awareness. In you, everything becomes unconsciousness. When wealth comes, you become unconscious; when status comes, you become unconscious. Whatever you get is transformed into unconsciousness. Your inner mechanism turns everything into stupor. Even if you run away and become a renunciate, your renunciation will be soaked in unconsciousness.

I once went to meet a Jain muni—many years ago. When I arrived, he was telling a little story to his disciples. The story ended and there were exclamations of “bravo!” He looked at me and said, “How did you like it?” I said, “It would be better if I said nothing.”

First let me tell you the story. It is of the kind that will evoke a “bravo!” from you too. A rich man’s elderly mother said to her son, “You always talk of lakhs, but I have never seen a heap of a hundred thousand rupees. I am getting old; many a time I feel like building a platform and piling up a lakh upon it—how big would it be!”

The son said, “What is there to worry about? You could have said so anytime.” He had a lakh in coins brought and a platform made before her. The mother said, “Don’t be surprised—my heart has always wished to sit on it!” So she sat on it. Now, once the mother had sat upon the lakh, the son thought, Why put it back in the safe? He wished to donate it. He bowed at his mother’s feet; it was her desire—so he decided to give it away. A Brahmin was called. As the donation was about to be made, a little ego stirred in him and he said, “You must have seen many givers—but have you seen a giver like me? I am giving away a heap of a full lakh.”

The Jain muni said that the Brahmin was of a great renunciate disposition, a very humble man. His self-respect rose; he took out a rupee from his pocket, tossed it onto the heap, and said, “You too must have seen many Brahmins—have you seen one like me? I not only leave the lakh, I add a rupee more. Now take care of your money!”

The Jain muni asked me, “What do you say?”

I said, “The two were of the same kind—no difference. Both were egoistic. You are praising the second. In your mind there is great admiration, it seems, that the second did something marvelous. When the first one’s pride arose, you call it ego; when the second one’s pride arose, you call it self-respect. Both are pride. If the first was wrong, the second is not right. The first is the ego of the enjoyer; the second is the ego of the renouncer. The first is the ego of the rich; the second is the ego of the poor. But both are ego. And since you too consider yourself a renunciate, the second man’s ego gives you a certain relish. Those sitting before you share the same notion of renunciation.”

Even if you renounce, it will only become ego. Leave aside enjoyment—even your renunciation, the flavor you get from it, becomes ego. The real issue is not renunciation versus enjoyment; the real issue is changing the inner alchemy. Inside you is a mechanism that turns everything into ego, into desire, into unconsciousness—that has to be broken.

Meditation is the experiment for precisely that. It changes your entire inner mechanism. Tomorrow you will still be in the same mud you were in today—but now a lotus will arise from that very mud. You will stand in the same world you stood in yesterday—but now, being in the world, you will not be of it. You will live in the world, but the world will not live in you. Even standing in the midst, you will be beyond. That beyondness is what awareness means.

So yes, yesterday I said that poets and shayars sometimes speak great wisdom—indeed. They touch great heights. But those heights are like someone seeing the Himalayas in a dream—golden peaks in the radiant sun, but seen in a dream. That is one thing. And it is quite another to see those peaks directly—not in a dream, but awake.

The poet is a person just like you. The difference between you and him is only this: he is a dreamer. He knows how to see far-off dreams. He is more skilled at dreaming than you are. You too dream, but not so far.

I have heard: A disciple came to his master and said, “What bliss! I slipped into samadhi.” He had been sitting in meditation before the master. The master said, “What kind of samadhi? Because suddenly you hissed and opened your eyes.” He said, “Let me tell you the whole thing. Today I fixed my meditation on dal-bati. It went so well! I was utterly absorbed—never like this before. But I put too many chilies in the dal. The hiss escaped. I’ll do it again. I missed a bit.”

The master said, “If you had to meditate—if you had to dream—then dream of liberation, of God, you simpleton! You cooked dal-bati? If you had to cook, at least make kheer or halva—something decent! And even in that you put in too many chilies. You don’t even know how to dream—how will you learn to meditate? In the dream you made the same mistake you make in life—you over-spiced it.”

You keep burning from the chilies you yourself add; you create your own hell with your own spices—and you go on adding them.

The poet is such a person. You are adding chilies to your dreams; he is dreaming of kheer and halva—his dreams are of a finer kind than yours. He is more fluid than you, more adept at fetching what is far. Sometimes in his dreams very distant reflections are formed—like the moon rising in the sky and its image appearing in a lake. That image is not real. Toss a pebble into the lake and the reflection shatters. A small pebble breaks that moon apart.

Another has seen the moon itself—this is the difference between rishi and poet. The rishi sees the moon; the poet sees its reflection. When the rishi sings, he sings in praise of the moon; when the poet sings, he sings in praise of the moon’s reflection.

It can happen that the rishi’s words feel meaningless to you—because you have never seen truth. But the poet’s words you grasp a little, because you too have dreamed. Your dreams may not be so fine; you are not so skilled; your dreams are ordinary, and even in them you hiss. Yet you have dreamt; you know the language of dreams. So the poet you understand quickly; the rishi is a bit difficult.

The poet stands between you and the rishi. He is like you, yet not quite like you; he is more creative than you, richer in imagination. His imagination is sharper. You are a little puddle of water; he too is a puddle of water. In your puddle the mud is so stirred there is not even a reflection. In his, the mud has settled; reflections form, clean and clear. More than that—he catches the reflection and casts it into images, poems, sculptures; he pours it out.

Hence the impact of poetry, painting, sculpture. What you cannot do for yourself he does for you. What you could not sing, he sings. You wanted to sing, but you couldn’t find the right words. When you hear a poet, you feel, “Exactly this I wanted to say! I couldn’t say it—he said it.” Your “bravo,” your clapping—because where you failed, this man succeeded; he nailed it—just as you wished to.

The rishi’s words fall far away; very far. You may even hear them and yet not hear. It feels as if you both understand and don’t; something remains misty. Here is the amusing thing: the poet’s talk is itself misty, yet it feels clear to you; the rishi’s talk is utterly clear, yet it seems misty to you—because the language is different. The rishi speaks from another plane.

“Bring that too and set it aside on the night of union—
that thin, obstructing veil across our seeing.”

This is the difference between rishi and poet. The rishi has no viewpoint of his own. Not even the thinnest veil of an opinion remains with him. He has no mind of his own—not even its finest film. He has wiped himself utterly clean. Truth reveals itself as truth. The poet looks at truth through the fine veil of his mind; that thin veil overlays truth.

“Bring that too and set it aside on the night of union—
that thin, obstructing veil across our seeing.”

On this night of union, let even that be lifted away. The day a poet removes that veil, that very day he becomes a rishi.

All rishis are poets, but not all poets are rishis. Whether rishis speak in prose or verse, they are all poets. Whether they bind their speech in musical meter or not—whenever a rishi speaks, each word is metered. The meter is not of language; it is of inner experience.

When a rishi speaks, he does not merely speak—he sings. Whether or not his song fits your structures of song, your counts and meters; whether or not he follows your grammar and linguistic rules—whenever a rishi speaks, he sings, he does not speak. When he walks, he does not merely walk—he dances. Whether you can see it or not, for your eyes are still veiled by mind.

If the poet removes the mind—removing the mind means removing thought; removing thought means seeing truth through meditation, not through thought—then he becomes a rishi. Sometimes he takes such a leap; sometimes he gets a glimpse of the beyond. But still, it is a glimpse.

The rishi lives where the poet gets a glimpse now and then. The rishi dwells in the temple whose spires sometimes flash in the poet’s dreams. That is the rishi’s state. Poetry is a small fragment in a poet’s life; for a rishi, poetry is his very state of being.

Therefore, if you love a poet’s poems very much, don’t ever go to meet the poet—your love will be fractured. You will find the poet an ordinary man—perhaps worse than ordinary. Poetry is something else. Those were a few rare moments that descended into his life; he sang them out and was emptied. Again he is an ordinary man; sometimes you will find him lower than yourself.

So it is better to know and love the poem—do not go searching for the poet. You will find him at a paan shop smoking a bidi; or standing at a fritter stall eating fritters; you won’t be able to reconcile it. Or lying in a gutter drunk.

The fragrance you found in his song—you will not find it in him. It is not the aroma of his life. It descended; it flashed. Think of it as lightning in a dark night—the brief glimpse it gave. That is one thing. And walking in the sunlight of day is something else altogether. He captured that flash in his words; once he captured it, he too stood where you stand. After binding it, he too becomes ordinary. There was a touch.

Hence poets say, “What I wrote, what I sang—I am not sure I wrote it. It is as if someone else sang through me.” The distance is so great that even they feel someone else sang through them—someone else descended and incarnated.

No one descended; they themselves took a leap—but it was a leap. When you stand on the ground and leap, for a moment you leave the ground—then you land back on it. That is one thing. And if you grow wings, that is another. The rishi flies in the sky; poets leap—they return again and again, and stand on the same earth.

Often it happens that the one who leapt cannot even stand when he returns—he has to sit down. A leap tires you. So often the poet, returning, sinks even lower than you. In the leap he rises above you; on returning he falls below you. In the leap he touches the peak; on returning he tumbles into the valley. The poet has to pay in the chasm the price for touching the peak by a leap. For everything, a price must be paid.

The rishi lives on the peak. To say “lives” is not quite right—the rishi becomes the peak. Even in “living” there is a slight distance; there is fear—what if he falls, what if he returns, what if the world calls again? No—he becomes the peak. To poets, God sometimes sends messages in dreams; rishis become God: Aham Brahmasmi! Ana’l-Haqq! They become one with that truth.

No—as long as there is duality, there is no soul. As long as there is duality, as long as there are two, there is no you. As long as there is conflict, there is the world.
Spiritual awakening is witnessing.
The world evolves dialectically. Here everything is linked with its opposite. If there is day, there is night. If morning has come, evening will come. However much you may delude and persuade yourself that now evening will never come—don’t fall into that madness. If morning has come, evening has already come. Morning has brought evening with it. It will take you twelve hours to see it—that delay is in your seeing. If birth has happened, death has happened. It will take you seventy years to recognize it—that delay is in recognition. With morning, evening has arrived. The opposite has arrived. In light, darkness has arrived. In happiness, sorrow has arrived. No sooner do you dance here than worry is waiting there. No sooner do you smile than tears begin to prepare. Your smile itself has brought the tears.
The day you become a witness to both—when you can see: here is the smile, here are the tears—and you neither identify with the smile nor with the tears; you become the third, standing a little apart and watching—from that day spiritual awakening has happened. Then the two are no longer two. Tears become visible in the smile, and the smile becomes visible in the tears. Duality is gone. You have attained the non-dual.
Our eyes are on a new morning, yet alas, there is also this fear:
that this dawn too, little by little, may end up at evening.
Our eyes are on a new morning, yet alas, there is also this fear:
that this dawn too, little by little, may end up at evening.
It will, inevitably. This morning too will become evening. Every morning becomes evening. In wealth, poverty is already hidden. That is why you find the wealthy so afraid: the fear of poverty comes along with wealth. In love, the seeds of hate are sown. That is why you always find lovers doubtful—“Is there really love?” That is why you always find lovers fighting, because hatred makes one fight.
If you want to make someone an enemy, first make him a friend—because without friendship how will enmity arise? In friendship the first step toward enmity is already taken. If you go on exactly as things go, enmity is bound to come.
There is no recourse but to go on burning,
to keep melting into the mold of annihilation.
O candle, what is your fleeting life
but to be buffeted by gusts and keep steadying yourself?
What you call life is just like the flame of a lamp taking the wind—now from this side to that, and from that side to this.
To be buffeted by gusts and keep steadying yourself—
O candle, what is your fleeting life?
Between being and non-being, life keeps wavering. What you call life is a vibration between being and non-being. But within you is the capacity to awaken, and you can be a witness to both being and non-being. That very witnessing is the spiritual key. From there the door of the soul opens.
Therefore when sorrow comes, don’t panic. Don’t assume that if morning has come, evening will not; or if evening has come, morning will not. When sorrow comes, know that joy is on its way, and remain untroubled. Don’t let anxiety seize you. This is the practice. When sorrow comes, know that happiness must also be coming; it will be standing somewhere in the queue. When happiness comes, know that somewhere sorrow will be standing behind, about to arrive.
So when happiness comes, don’t get too carried away. When happiness comes, don’t strut. When happiness comes, don’t walk with a swagger. And when sorrow comes, don’t be distressed, don’t be anxious. See both together. Whoever has learned this art has learned everything. For seeing both together, you will find that nothing is worth worrying over, and nothing is truly good fortune or misfortune. There is no boon, and no curse.
You will begin to go beyond both. You will be at peace in both. You will remain composed in both. You will establish balance between the two. You will become a witness to both.
Witnessing is spirituality.

Certainly. No tree or plant is foolish; they don’t have that capacity. To be foolish, one has to be human. And no tree or plant is a buddha either; that too is beyond their capacity. You cannot call a tree sinful, nor can you call it virtuous. No tree is virtuous or sinful. For that, one must be human.

If a human being rises, he can become divine; if he falls, he can become demonic. Trees and plants can neither rise to become divine nor fall to become demonic. They are fixed. That is their inertia; they lack freedom. There is no freedom to go from this shore to that, or from that shore back to this; they are bound.

Look closely: a rock just lies there. It is even more dependent than a plant. It cannot make even a single flower bloom, not even a single leaf sprout. It simply lies as it is.

Then come the trees--a little freedom appears. Flowers bloom, fruits grow, there is a certain current of life. There is a longing to rise toward the sky. The search for the sun has begun. That very search for the sun, when it comes to you, will become the search for the divine--the search for light.

That’s why in the forests of Africa trees shoot up hundreds of feet. Because the jungles are dense, and if they are to reach the sun, they have to rise very high. The denser the forest, the taller the trees. Plant the same trees in an open field and they won’t grow so tall; they will remain stunted. There is no need, no competition, no struggle. The sun is available cheaply; no price needs to be paid. Then who would bother to rise so high?

So trees and plants do have a certain freedom. In a dense jungle they reach higher; outside it they remain stunted. They search, but their roots bind them to the soil. They cannot move; they are fixed in one place, helpless.

Then there are animals and birds--freer than trees and plants. They are not rooted; they are not tied anywhere; they are free. They can move. At least on earth they can travel anywhere. If winter comes, they can sit in the sun; if the sun is too strong, they can seek shade. A tree stands there; it cannot move. Whether sun or cold comes, it has to endure. There isn’t much freedom.

Then comes man; his freedom is greater still. There is no greater freedom than his. That is his glory--and also his misfortune. Because when the capacity to rise comes, the capacity to fall comes along with it--in the same proportion. You can become a Buddha; you can also become a Genghis Khan. Both possibilities open simultaneously. It is natural. Only the one who climbs can fall; the one who cannot climb cannot fall either. So it is only man who can be foolish.

What does it mean to be foolish? It means you have become stubborn that you will use your freedom only to fall, not to rise. That is all folly is: a stubborn insistence that you will use your freedom to go down. Consider: some people use their capacity to create; others use their capacity to destroy. One person carves a statue; another goes and breaks it.

An extraordinary statue of Jesus was smashed in Rome two years ago--a statue by Michelangelo. Jesus has been taken down from the cross, and his head rests in Mary’s lap--in his mother’s lap. They say there was no more beautiful statue on earth. Michelangelo had labored for years to make it. Its value cannot even be reckoned. There had never been a deeper experiment on marble. And a man went and broke it with a hammer. He was caught and asked why he did it. He said, “It always irked me. I too want my name to be immortal in history. Michelangelo created it; I broke it.”

Hitler killed so many people. There is a relish in breaking; not in making. Folly means we have insisted on using our freedom to go downward. Then no one can lift you up. If you have decided to use your freedom only to descend, you can go all the way to hell.

Man is a ladder. Its first rung rests in hell; its last rung rests in heaven. It depends on you.

I have heard an ancient story. In the last days of his life a psychologist who was also a painter wanted to paint the face of the lowest, most degraded man. He made a portrait of a man in prison who had committed seven murders. As he painted, he was puzzled. The face seemed familiar. The more he drew, the clearer it became. As the features emerged, the face looked more and more known.

Finally he could not contain himself. He asked, “Have I ever seen you?” The man suddenly began to weep. Tears flowed from his eyes. “Why are you crying?” asked the painter. “Did I touch some wound?” The man said, “I was afraid that today or tomorrow you would ask. Twenty years ago you painted my portrait.” Then the painter remembered that twenty years earlier he had made a painting when he was seeking the purest, simplest, most innocent face in the world. And he had painted this very man. Twenty years later he went out to paint the face of the worst man in the world--and by coincidence, it was the same man. If he did not weep, what else could he do?

Both portraits are within everyone. They are within you as well. It is up to you which one you bring forth. If you try to bring forth the distorted, the destructive, that is folly. If you try to bring forth within you the noble, the true, the beautiful, you are wise. You can do both. Both paths are open. No one has placed any obstacle in your way. Your freedom is absolute.

Remember, if you choose destruction, if you choose folly, you will die in regret. When a whole life goes to waste, regret is natural. Most people, when dying, do not weep because of death. As I see it, no one weeps because of death. They weep because life went in vain and death has arrived. Those whose lives have become meaningful depart laughing. For them death is a consummation. For them death is the highest peak of life--the final crest of life’s rhythm, the last link in life’s song.

“Still the binding of my imagination lies torn as before;
the state of my fading feelings is the same.
The same lifeless resolves, the same colorless questions;
the same soulless struggle, the same restless thoughts.”

Let it not happen that at the time of dying those same lifeless resolves and colorless questions surround you. Let it not be that the same soulless struggle, the same restless thoughts encircle your innermost being. Let it not be that--

“Still the binding of my imagination lies torn as before...”

That you discover you are exactly the same--as you came, so you go. You earned nothing, you refined nothing. You could become nothing.

“The state of my fading feelings is the same”--let it not be that in the dimming moments, as the lamp’s last flame flickers out, you feel you remained just the same. No movement in life, no growth. Life did not rise; no wings grew.

If you are foolish, this will be the state of your life-breath. If you use even a little understanding in life, you will find even death to be a festival. On your lips there will be a verse of fulfillment; in your being a fragrance of having arrived. Around you there will be a breeze, an aura, that you have been accepted--existence has given you recognition. This is what it means to be fulfilled.

The last question:
You say each person is unique and incomparable; and you also say that the individual is inseparable from the whole, that in truth the individual is only the particularization of the whole. Would you kindly shed some light on this?

Understand two words clearly: society and the whole.

Society means the weave humanity has spun out of its stupidity, ignorance, and ego. The crowd of people, the mind of the crowd, the sum of everyone’s ignorance and everyone’s ego--that is society.

By the whole I mean the divine, existence. It is not just about man; trees are included, rocks too, the moon and stars--everything is included. The whole means what is--the entirety. If you become one with what is, that is what Buddha calls dharma, dhamma. If your struggle with what is ceases, if you become one with it, absorbed, drowned in it, intoxicated with its ecstasy, if you drink it in, you will attain supreme peace, supreme bliss.

There is another crowd of humans--another gang--that has dropped caring for existence and made its own rules. The human crowd has made its own scripture, its own customs and traditions. It is the ignorant imposing themselves upon existence.

So when I say the individual is unique, I mean there is no other person like that person in society. Each person is unique. And each must have the courage to be unique. Enough courage that the crowd does not drown you; otherwise you will never find your soul. You need the courage to be free of society. Because society lives at the lowest level--it is the sum of all. The number of fools is large; they too are included. It is their crowd; their majority. If you stand with the crowd you will have to stand with the lowest. If you go along with the crowd, you will find you cannot hear the call of your highest; you will have to listen to the call of the lowest.

To be incomparable means only this: know that you are not a part of the crowd. Live among the crowd, but maintain your distance too--keep a gap. Do not let the crowd drown you. Preserve your uniqueness.

But if it were only this, that uniqueness would turn into ego. Separate from the crowd, yes--and dissolve into the whole. Be free of society, and be immersed in the whole.

“Success of the destination is with him at every step
who has become free of the conventions of the caravan.”

The one who is free of traveling with the tourist-party finds his goal with each step. If you insist on walking with the crowd, you will never arrive anywhere. This crowd never seems to arrive. It just keeps moving. People change, the crowd goes on. You weren’t there; someone else was. One leaves, ten arrive; the crowd keeps moving.

The crowd never arrives. Individuals arrive; the crowd never arrives. Have you ever heard of a crowd attaining buddhahood? That a crowd became a Buddha, became a Mohammed, a Kabir, a Nanak?

When someone becomes, it is an individual who becomes. The crowd never becomes anything; it never reaches anywhere. Its destination never comes; it is only a traveling party--it only travels.

So it is necessary to be a little free of it. Do not keep time with its pace. This does not mean you should needlessly get entangled with it, fighting and quarreling. If you start to fight and quarrel, you will remain entangled in the crowd. I am not asking you to pick a quarrel--that if the crowd goes east, you go west; if the crowd walks on its feet, you should do a headstand; that whatever the crowd does, you do the opposite. Because by doing the opposite you remain bound to the crowd.

Drop caring about the crowd. Become gradually neutral, indifferent toward it. The crowd is fine; let it do what it wants to do. It’s their fun! If they have decided, let them do it. Do not get into unnecessary conflict with the crowd; otherwise that too will hold you back. You must stay close to those you fight with. Make friends--you are caught; make enemies--you are caught.

Make neither friends nor enemies. Let no one even notice. Then standing in the crowd you are outside it. Quietly separate yourself from it. Link yourself to the whole--to the total. To the vast. Follow its law.

Then you will be surprised: the crowd teaches wrongly and makes you do wrong. All the formulas of the crowd are of the ego. Even if it tells you to be humble, it does so so that you may be honored. It tells you to be humble so that people will respect you. It’s a great joke: even humility is taught for the sake of prestige. That is a search for ego. If it tells you to renounce wealth, it is because renunciation brings great respect. Renunciation is a great possession.

If the crowd teaches you anything, it is for wrong reasons. Even if it teaches the right thing, it does so for wrong reasons. Therefore withdraw from the crowd gradually. Do learn humility, but do not drink that water from society’s dirty well; poison has been mixed there. The pure water of the whole is available; drink from there. Learn humility there; then it will not be poisoned. Learn renunciation there; then it will not be poisoned.

And then you will be astonished. Things are very simple. They have been made needlessly difficult. The crowd delights in difficulty. Unless something is difficult, the crowd finds no relish, because only the difficult offers the ego a challenge. Life is simple. Life is utterly plain. There is not the slightest entanglement in life; it is completely natural, simple, easy.

So turn your attention toward the whole. Keep your gaze on the moon and the stars. Turn your back a little on man. Listen to the sound of waterfalls and oceans. Let your ears be a little deaf toward man. Do not get too entangled in the scriptures made by man. When God’s scripture is present all around, read that. Soon you will find you have begun to grasp the principle that Buddha calls the eternal law--eso dhammo sanantano.

Keep holy company with nature. Sit by the waterfalls. Make a little friendship with flowers. Glance into the sky--and the sky will glance into you. Come closer to flowers--and the flowers within you will begin to bloom. The more you search for your nature and the whole, the more your nature and the whole will begin to seek you.

This entire creation is the temple of the divine. We have worshiped long enough in the temples made by man. They have only made you fight, quarrel, divide, cut each other. Temples have fought with mosques; mosques have fought with temples. Enough. Now seek such a temple that has no quarrel with any other temple. This vastness is His temple. The sky is the canopy of that temple. And the divine is installed everywhere. There is no need to make any separate idol.

All these forms are of that formless.
All these images are of that imageless.
All these names are of that nameless.

Enough for today.