Geeta Darshan #11

Because you are a monkey, there is no getting rid of the monkey within you without some jumping around. It’s not that jumping is needed for meditation; it’s needed because of your monkey-ness.

Whatever is hidden inside you—suppress it for lifetimes if you like—you won’t be free of it. It has to be shaken off, thrown out. Burying garbage brings no liberation; it must be swept out.

There are two ways to quiet the monkey. One is to force him to sit still with the fear of a stick: don’t move, don’t sway, don’t dance, don’t jump. On the surface the monkey will control himself—but what about the monkey within? Outwardly he may restrain himself, but inside even more energy will build up. And if you suppress the monkey like this, he will go mad. Many people have gone mad in just this way. The madhouses are full of them. The energy that was inside, they forced down; it became explosive.

The other way is to make the monkey dance, jump, run. The monkey will tire and then sit quietly. That peace is one kind; the peace that comes from being forced down from above is quite another.

Today psychology deeply acknowledges that repression of inner drives is dangerous. They merit expression.

But expression does not mean venting anger on someone, or committing violence on someone. Expression means offering the emotion to the open sky without reference to anyone. When an emotion is surrendered and the pent-up energy is released, a peace flowers within. In that peace, moving toward meditation becomes easy.

This jumping is not meditation. But through a little jumping, the inner restlessness is thrown out for a while; it moves aside. In that moment of silence, when the monkey is tired, it’s easy to go within.

Those familiar with modern psychology will understand this well. In the West a new therapy, a new psychotherapeutic method, has developed—scream therapy. The greatest psychologists have been astonished by its results. The basic discovery of this therapy is that from childhood each person has been repressing the impulse to cry. He hasn’t had the chance to cry. The first thing a newborn does is cry. You know, if you were to suppress even that, the child would die.

The first thing a child does is cry, because in the very process of crying his breathing begins. If we were to stop him right there with “don’t cry,” he would remain dead; he would not be able to live. So when a child is born and does not cry, the parents become anxious, the doctor becomes worried. Efforts are made to make him cry, because with crying his life process will begin. We don’t stop the newborn.

But as the child grows, we begin to stop his crying. We don’t realize that in this world there is nothing that exists without some use for life. If it had no use, it wouldn’t be.

Psychologists say a child’s art of crying is his mechanism for releasing tension. And the child has many tensions. He is hungry and the mother is away, or she is busy. The child too feels anger. If he cries, his anger flows out and he becomes lighter. But the mother will not let him cry.

Psychologists say: let him cry; give him love, but don’t try to stop the crying. What do we do? We hand the child a toy: “Don’t cry.” His mind is diverted; he grabs the toy. But the inner process of crying stops. The tears that should have flowed get stuck. The heart that would have been lightened of its burden is not lightened. He will play with the toy, but what about the crying that was halted? That poison starts accumulating.

Psychologists say the child accumulates so much poison, and that becomes the cause of his suffering in life. He remains sad. You look so sad; you don’t realize this sadness might not have been there—had you wept wholeheartedly in life, these tears would not be spread over your entire life; they would have gone out. All forms of crying are therapeutic. The heart grows light. In crying, not only tears flow; inner grief, inner anger, inner joy, inner emotions also pour out along with the tears. Nothing remains hoarded inside.

So the people of scream therapy say that whenever someone is mentally ill, he needs to cry so deeply that every hair of his body, every atom of his heart, each breath, every heartbeat is involved in the crying; a scream is needed that arises from his very life force, in which he becomes the scream.

Thousands of mental patients have been healed by screaming. Even a single scream has freed them from countless ailments. But to evoke that scream is very difficult. You have suppressed so much that even when you cry, your crying is false. Your whole being is not involved. Your weeping is contrived. You cry only on the surface. Tears flow from the eyes, not from the heart. But the scream must rise from your navel, and your whole body must be included in it. You should forget that you are separate from the scream; you become the scream.

So it takes psychologists about three months to teach you how to cry. For three months, through continuous experiments, they take you deeper.

What do these therapy people do? They lay you face down on the floor. And they tell you to lie there and not to hold back whatever sorrow comes up—let it out. If you feel like crying, cry; if you feel like shouting, shout.

For three months a person lies on the floor like a child, every day for an hour or two. One day the moment arrives when the hands and feet begin to shake as if with an electric current. The person closes his eyes, as if he is no longer in his senses, and a terrible scream begins to rise. Sometimes it continues for hours. The person seems absolutely mad. But after that scream, all his mental troubles vanish.

This meditation experiment I have given you—until your emotional drives, of crying, laughing, dancing, shouting, screaming, even going crazy, are resolved—you cannot enter meditation. These are the obstacles.

You are trying to be quiet while inside you are filled with forces that want to come out. Your condition is like a kettle of tea on the stove. The lid is shut. Stones are placed on top. The spout too is plugged, and the fire is burning below. The steam that is gathering will burst the kettle. There will be an explosion. Five or ten people could even be killed.

Let this steam be released. As soon as it escapes, you will be new—and then the experiment toward meditation can begin.

No; Lao Tzu, Buddha, and Mahavira did not teach this, because they were not teaching you; they were teaching a different kind of people. Had you been present, they would have had to teach the same to you as well.

The people Buddha and Mahavira addressed were villagers—straightforward, quiet, simple, innocent, natural. They had not repressed much. They hadn’t blocked anything. The more “civilized” a person becomes, the more repressed he is. Civilization is an experiment in repression. Freud even admits there can be no civilization without repression.

So observe a curious fact. Tribal people are simple but don’t become “civilized.” Across the world there are small tribes—so good-hearted, loving, simple, joyous—yet they do not become civilized. Do you see why?

Why is it that the finest tribes, pure and innocent, hidden away in forests, don’t become civilized? Why don’t they build cities like New York or Bombay? Why don’t they fly planes in the sky? Why don’t they reach the moon? Why don’t they discover the atom and hydrogen bombs? Why don’t they make radio and television?

These good and peaceful people dance, but they don’t reach the moon. They sing, but they don’t make atom bombs. They can barely arrange enough to eat; clothes are minimal, half-naked. Half hungry, yet innocent. They don’t steal, they don’t lie. If they give their word, they keep it even at the cost of their lives. But why don’t such people become civilized? Why don’t they become prosperous?

Freud says—and rightly—that they are so joyous and so simple that “steam” never accumulates within them, and that steam runs the engine of civilization. Their anger doesn’t pile up, their hate doesn’t collect, their sexuality doesn’t amass. If it did, that very steam could be diverted to other directions—for raising buildings from the ground to the sky. Civilization is the diversion of your repressed energies. Without that steam you cannot go from a hut to a skyscraper.

All of civilization is a redirection of your energies. Hence the obvious result: if a person is simple, quiet, natural, this web of civilization cannot be erected. And if you want to erect it, you must close all outlets for the turbulence within you and force it to flow through a single channel.

That is why our entire educational process collects all your various passions and pours them into ambition; it gathers your drives and makes them run in the direction of ego-fulfillment.

Freud also said that if we succeed in making man simple again, he will become uncivilized again. That creates a great difficulty. If you want civilization, man will be complex, ill, neurotic. If you want peace, joy, naturalness, you will lose civilization. Man will be poor but happy; he cannot be wealthy and peaceful at once.

So Freud concluded that man is an impossible disease. Either he will be poor—deprived of civilization’s amenities and riches—or he will be prosperous and go mad, neurotic, restless.

Buddha and Mahavira were addressing very simple people. They had little suppressed within. Therefore they could be taken straight into meditation. You cannot be taken straight into meditation. You are very complex—knots within knots.

First your tangles must be untied, your complexity reduced, your ailments eased. Even if only temporarily, your steam has to be vented a little—the steam that keeps you knotted. Then you can turn toward meditation; otherwise you cannot.

That is why the old meditation methods have become ineffective for you. Today they hardly work. Out of a hundred, perhaps one rare person might benefit from the old methods in their old form; for ninety-nine, they don’t work.

The reason is not that the ancient methods are wrong. The simple reason is that man is new, while the methods were developed for men who have vanished from the earth. Man has changed. The treatment was not designed for you. In the meantime you have accrued new diseases.

The meditative experiments developed three, four, five thousand years ago were for the man who existed then. That man no longer exists. There isn’t a trace of him left on earth. If somewhere in remote forests a few of those people still exist, we rush to educate and civilize them—imagine we are doing them a favor, serving them.

A woman came to me. She had devoted her life to educating tribals. She asked me for guidance on how to civilize them. I asked her first to tell me: those who are civilized—at the very most your tribals will become like them—so what’s the hurry? And are you satisfied with the “civilized” people you see around you—that turning a few tribals into the same will increase the glory of the world or its peace and happiness?

She was shaken. She said, I’ve spent thirty years on this, but no one asked me that. When I think about it, I feel disturbed—after education, at most they will become like these civilized people. But what benefit have the educated gained?

Yet that woman had her own compulsion. She had repressed her sexuality—remained unmarried, never loved anyone, vowed celibacy. She doesn’t express anger—took a vow of non-anger. She doesn’t lie—took a vow to speak truth. In this way she has blocked herself from all sides. Now what to do with the steam that has built up? What to do with the life-energy amassed within?

So, like a madwoman, she is engaged in “serving” tribals, without caring what results that service will bring. Your steam is being released, but what will become of those upon whom it is being released? What good will it do?

Man as he is today has never existed on earth before. This is a new phenomenon. Considering this, it has become essential to add catharsis—rechana—to all meditative methods. Before you enter meditation, catharsis is necessary. The dust must be shaken off.

But our friend is “wise.” He writes, “You won’t be able to deceive us. No benefit can come from this jumping and prancing.”

One thing is certain—he didn’t jump. And the very jumping that remained suppressed has jumped out in his question. Had he done it, he would have felt light. And he certainly has a monkey within—and a deep one. He probably had no peace that night—restless all night, perhaps sleepless—because the question is written in great anger. There is less question and more abuse. Better he had thrown it out here; he’d have slept well, and the question would not have been laced with abuse.

And I am deceiving you! To what purpose? What gain do I get if you dance? Even if you leap about like a monkey, who is going to profit?

He writes, “You won’t be able to deceive us.”

But why would I need to deceive you? For what purpose? What he is really saying is, “We won’t be taken in.” He is saying, “We will remain as we are. We won’t give anyone a chance to change us.”

Don’t give it. It’s your choice. If you are happy with yourself, why come to listen to me at all? Remain as you are—it’s fine. Why trouble yourself here? Why bother with meditation? But if there is any need to come—if you go to a physician—you are announcing that you are ill.

I am a physician, nothing more. If you come to me, you are declaring you are sick. And if I prescribe some remedy to separate you from your illness, you say, “You won’t be able to deceive us.” Then there’s no need to come. Stay comfortable at home. If ever I need you, I’ll come to your house.

But you don’t come. Protect yourself. The more you protect yourself, the more “benefit” you will gain—meaning you will suffer more, be more tormented, more insane. And when things cross the limit, you may need electric shocks.

I say, jump now, so you won’t need electric shocks later. Jump now so you won’t have to be parked in a madhouse. Throw out your madness with your own hands, so no one else has to perform surgery on you to remove it. But you don’t think.

Let’s understand this in a few ways.

England is the only country where schoolchildren are not throwing stones; all over the world they are. England alone has schoolchildren who don’t pelt their teachers, don’t abuse them, don’t harass them. Thinkers worldwide have wondered: why not in England, when everywhere else it is widespread? One reason was found: in every school in England children are required to play at least two hours a day. That is the reason—no other.

A child who has been whacking a hockey ball for two hours loses enthusiasm for throwing stones; he has done his throwing. A child who has been kicking a football for two hours no longer feels like kicking anyone; the urge to kick has been released.

English psychologists suggest that if you want to stop children’s mischief globally, you must give them intense play—processes through which their violence is released. Children harbor great violence because they have great energy.

What do our schools do? They make a child sit still for five or six hours. No child is born with a built-in mechanism to sit in a classroom for six hours. To seat a child for six hours means six hours of energy that wanted to express itself is being blocked.

Watch children when school lets out. At the bell they look as if they’ve been released from hell. They fling their bags, toss their books, and become so joyous—as if life has been returned to them! Surely you committed some crime against them for five or six hours; otherwise they wouldn’t be so ecstatic at being released.

And this crime continues—often until twenty or twenty-five. Gradually they accept this pattern of suppression. Then their whole life goes awry. Energy that is suppressed and not given expression becomes anger, becomes violence, then searches for outlets in new ways. Then they create disturbances over the smallest pretext; their violence starts to spill out.

We are all people filled with violence. But if understood intelligently, and life is arranged rightly, even violence can become creative. From anger, flowers can bloom—if there is insight.

This meditative experiment I am proposing is to transform your violence, anger, sexuality, hatred in a creative way. It is a creative transformation—because your goal is meditation.

Even if you scream, your goal is meditation; the energy of your scream is flowing toward meditation. If you throw out your anger, your resentment, your tears and sorrow, still the goal is meditation; that energy is being redirected toward meditation.

If you are willing for a few days to let me “deceive” you—after all, you have been deceiving yourself for a long time!—this experiment is worth doing. In three months I won’t take anything from you, because you don’t have anything worth taking.

In my view you possess nothing of real value that could be stolen. If you have something, guard it and don’t come to people like me—because we will try to change you.

Try this experiment for three months. After three days you will start seeing the difference. And it isn’t only this one friend who wrote. Five or seven others wrote that even on the very first day results began to appear.

They are intelligent people—though this friend wrote, “You won’t be able to deceive us intelligent ones.” But the intelligent person is one who speaks after experiment; the unintelligent is the one who pronounces without trying. Without experiment your opinion has no value.

Five or seven friends wrote. One said, “I have never experienced such peace. But for twenty minutes sounds kept pouring out of me I could hardly believe were mine—where did they come from? I’ve never made such sounds.”

Perhaps you never did—but you wanted to. They were buried inside. And you had nowhere to express them; anywhere else you would be taken for mad. Here you felt you were moving into meditation, so you allowed yourself to open. In that openness what was suppressed came out—like pus draining from a wound. Inside, the wound felt lighter, ready to heal. That friend wrote, “Such peace I have never known in my life.”

Another wrote, “I am astonished—how could such dancing and jumping bring a feeling of joy!”

When you dance and jump wholeheartedly—if you do it fake, nothing much happens, it’s mere drill, a little exercise—but if you do it from the heart, you become a child again. You return to childhood. You become simple like a small child. And you glimpse the joy a child sees.

The sages have said: those who become childlike again in old age are the saints. You became like a little child. Even a child would feel shy to dance before so many people, and you danced and jumped. You dropped fear—the fear of others’ opinions, “What will people say?”

A child has no such fear. “What will others say?” does not concern him. He does what is joyful for him. As he grows up, he stops caring for his own joy and starts worrying about what others will say. That is the corruption of the child.

You became a child again and dropped all worry. You became alone again—free of society. The moment you dropped the anxiety of “What will they say?” that lightness which arose within—joy glimmers there so easily. One who becomes like a child again begins to experience the divine all around him, here and now. But the “clever,” the overly clever…

I have heard: Mulla Nasruddin won a lottery—five lakh rupees. The whole village was amazed, gathered around. People asked him, “How did you choose that number?” They told the village “wise man” to ask on everyone’s behalf. He asked, “The whole village has the same curiosity: how did you pick this number sixty-nine? What was your trick?”

Mulla said, “Since you ask, I’ll tell you. The number was revealed to me in a dream. In the night I dreamt I was watching a play. On stage there were seven rows of dancers, and in each row seven dancers. They were all dancing. So seven sevens… I thought, sixty-nine. In the morning I bought ticket number sixty-nine.”

The man said, “Idiot! Seven sevens aren’t sixty-nine; they’re forty-nine!”

Mulla replied, “OK—so you be the mathematician. But I won the lottery.”

The one who dances and jumps will tell you, “So you be the wise man, you be the mathematician.” He won’t care for your opinion. Neither Meera nor Chaitanya cared. They danced—and they say to you, “You become clever; leave us to our madness. Because what we are getting in our madness, we don’t see you getting in your cleverness.”

There is only one proof of intelligence: what is it yielding? Who is intelligent? The only proof is—how much joy, how much juice, how much beauty, how much truth, how much of the divine your life contains. There is no other proof.

So I say: those who want to remain “clever,” let them remain so. But those who want to taste the juice of life must be saved from cheap cleverness.

No, I am not saying you should keep dancing and jumping just because I said so—that would not be intelligence. I say: do what I suggest and see. If you feel there is something in it, go further. If you feel there is nothing, drop it. Who stops you from dropping it?

But before dropping, test it. Before declaring that something contains nothing, first enter it. Whoever decides before experience is blind.

Human worries are truly astonishing! Still, the question is worth pondering. Certainly, nothing will be left for you to do. But it is like a sick person asking: suppose my TB is cured, my cancer is cured, all illnesses are gone—then what will I do? Illness keeps one busy: bringing medicines, visiting doctors, getting admitted to hospitals. And if all is cured, then what? What will we do?

But why must one do? And what is gained by doing? The state of non-doing is the ultimate goal. To arrive at a state where nothing remains to be done—that is supreme fulfillment. Fulfillment means precisely that nothing is left to do afterward. In unfulfillment, doing remains, because the lack pushes: do, so that I may be satisfied. But when one is truly fulfilled, nothing remains to be done.

So if you are afraid that nothing will be left to do—and you are not someone who can be without doing—then do not seek the Divine. In fact, avoid God. And if by chance he comes upon you on his own, run; don’t look back.

But what are you really getting by doing? And this does not mean that when diseases are gone, health is some kind of lack. Health has its own flavor. Only the process of doing changes. The sick person does things in order to get something. The healthy person does out of a fullness within, out of that joy, that “ah!” of wonder.

A child has nothing to gain, yet he dances in the sunlight. That too is action. But there is a difference between this action and that of a dancer performing on a stage. The performer dances in order to get something afterward, an award. The child dances because there is energy within; the energy longs to express itself. The child dances out of joy, not to obtain anything. Dancing is enough in itself.

As one comes near the Divine, actions born of the desire for results come to an end. But action itself does not end. Even after realizing God, the Buddha is seen walking, speaking, getting up, sitting down—doing many things. Only the fever of doing is gone. There is no feverishness now. On the day the Buddha dies, he does not beat his chest: “Now I will die, and my work will remain incomplete.” Nothing is incomplete. Whatever was happening out of joy was happening; if it is not happening, it is not happening.

Krishna does not just sit silently, nor Mahavira, nor Jesus. Even after attaining the Divine, action continues. Only it no longer belongs to you; it belongs to the Divine. Therefore the sorrow is no longer yours, the worry no longer yours—as if he has taken charge of everything.

Understand it this way. On a river two kinds of boats can run. One is moved by oars in the hands. Then we take up the labor, get tired, and struggle with the current.

Ramakrishna has said there is another kind of boat—the sailboat. There you do not row; you set the sail to the wind, and the wind carries it.

The worldly man is like the rowboat. The spiritual person is like the sailboat. He has surrendered to the winds of God—now they carry him. He need not row.

Of course, one possessed by the madness of rowing will certainly ask: If we hoist the sail and the winds begin to carry us, then what will we do? For we live by rowing; that is our life.

But he does not know with what peace the sailor of a sailboat is sleeping, or playing his flute, or gazing at the open sky, or engaged in a silent conversation with the sun.

When the burden of work is lifted, the joy of life is simple. It is under the burden of work that we are dying—yet friends ask, “Then what will we do?”

Another thing to remember: when the Divine is found, you will not be there. You will already have gone. So do not worry about what you will do. As long as you are, he will not be found.

But even this does not soothe their minds. It only troubles them more.

This is called the process of negative thinking. If someone were to tell you, “You will attain such fulfillment that nothing will remain to be done,” you start worrying about that very fulfillment: “If nothing remains to be done, then what will we do?” If someone says, “When you are erased, then God will be found,” you stop worrying about God as well: “If I myself am going to be erased, what is the point of meeting such a God?”

But tell me, what is the point of your present “being”? And what have you truly gained by “being” as you are? Even the few rays of joy that have ever visited your life came only when you were absent. In someone’s love, in friendship, seeing the beauty of a flower at dawn, or the night sky crowded with stars—if ever a slight glimpse of happiness came, it was because in that moment you were lost. You were not.

Whatever great descends into life, descends only when you are not. But this does not mean that you will truly cease to be.

Spiritual language can be hard to grasp because it uses words in a very original way. When it says “you will not be,” it means that only your false personality, the false self, the mask, will not be. Your deep center will remain, because that is the Divine itself.

Understand it this way. I have heard it told: A German spy was sent to England five years before the Second World War—sent early so that in those five years he could settle in. He was to live, rise, sit, speak exactly like the English; for the German stamp must vanish from his voice, tone, eyes, gait—each nation has its own personality. For five years he practiced until being “English” became second nature. The war ended, and after ten years in England he returned to Germany.

Born German, by habit he had become English. At home, problems began. The “Englishness” he had learned became a barrier in his German family. They told him, “Drop the fake! You are German—speak your mother tongue as you used to, sit and stand as you did; be as we knew you.” He said, “Wait; ten years of practice have made this imitation seem natural. I will remove it, but it will take time.”

What you take to be your personality—your “being”—is not your being. It is training, not your nature.

You were born into a house. At birth you were neither Hindu, Muslim, Christian, nor Jain—you simply were. Raised in a Muslim home, you become Muslim; in a Hindu home, Hindu; in a Jain home, Jain. Each has its distinct personality. Later you learn Hindi, Marathi, English; whatever language you learn becomes “your” language—but you were born in silence, with no language.

Then learning goes on, and by the time you are fifty a framework is built around you—of language, behavior, personality, nation, caste, conduct, religion. And that very framework you take to be “I am.”

It is this framework that breaks in the realization of God; you do not break. What you were born with does not break. That remains forever. No one can take it away. Not even God will take that away.

In truth, what you now call “my being” has robbed you of your real being. Religion is the process of removing this counterfeit. When it falls away and only the innate, the natural—what you had even before birth and will still have after death—remains in its purity, then you meet God.

Jesus said: Whoever seeks to save will lose; and whoever is willing to lose, he alone will be saved.

It is the false that is to be lost. There is no question of you being lost. But you do not yet know that “you” which cannot be lost; hence the anxiety, the fear.

It is like a blind man saying, “I’ll get my eyes cured, but what will happen to the stick I walk with?” And when told, “You will have to drop the stick,” he cries, “How can I drop it! This stick is my very life.” He does not know that once eyes are gained, there is no need for the stick.

The day God is found, the personality that served you in blindness is no longer needed. Do not be afraid. Only that which is not yours can be taken from you. What is yours cannot be taken.

Remember this great maxim: you can lose only what was never yours. What is truly yours cannot be taken. This is the meaning of svabhava—your intrinsic nature: that which cannot be taken from you. What can be taken, even if you cling to it, was never yours.

A man clutches wealth, fearing it will be snatched. It will be, because it is not you. The wise do not cling even to the body, for death will take it. They do not cling to the mind, for meditation will take that too. The wise hold only to that which cannot be taken—neither meditation nor death nor samadhi can take it. Who is it within you that cannot be taken? That is you.

Do not be frightened. Be ready to let go of the superficial, so that the inner may be found.

One more question. A friend has been asking again and again—postponed till the last day. He asks: a friend, Shri Suryoday Gaud, prints pamphlets against you. Why don’t you reply? Why is nothing done against him?

First, he is doing my work; therefore nothing should be done against him. Work has very unique ways. Often I thought, if no one opposes me, I should ask a friend to oppose me—because many people will not come to me directly; some will come only through opposition. Opposition creates curiosity: “Let us see what this is.” They come, sometimes stay, and their life changes.

So I thought to tell a friend: write against me, stir discussion, so those who do not come straight—whose eyes are slanted—will come through opposition. Then Suryoday Gaud began doing it on his own; inwardly I rejoiced. Had I told someone, even with effort his opposition would lack life. The right man presented himself. This world is such: what you need appears—you need only to wish.

There is no reason to be angry. I am pleased. He labors all day, seems a poor man, has left his trade and devoted himself to this. His life is now dedicated to me. So I do not oppose him. And his opposition does no harm.

Truth suffers no harm; it is polished by opposition, made clear. If truth fears opposition, know it is not truth.

Another friend came two or three days ago with a similar question. He said: I went to Shrimati Nirmala Devi Srivastava; she speaks strongly against you. She used to come to you, was your disciple, and now speaks so!

I have been silent, because she is doing great work—of a different kind. As I said, some people come to me because of opposition; some unfit persons also come whom it is necessary to keep away. Some arrive for wrong reasons, waste time and energy, and in this very valuable life nothing can be done with them. I send them to Shrimati Nirmala Devi Srivastava; she keeps freeing me from them. She does not know she is doing my work. If she finds out what I am saying, she will oppose me even more—and that too will be my work; so let her.

My process has two aspects: whoever is eager for a revolution in life, I want them to come by any excuse. But among those who come, many come for wrong reasons without knowing it; they waste my time and energy. I distance them by various devices.

A group of Jains had gathered; I got troubled—only talk, nothing to do. I made a statement, and they fell away.

Then Gandhian workers gathered—they want service, not sadhana. I am not interested in service as such. Only one who enters sadhana can truly serve; without sadhana, service is false and futile. So I criticized Gandhi; they ran. The ground was cleared; new space opened for new people.

My manner of speaking creates another confusion: it sounds logical, rational; so rationalists collect around me. My style is logical, but what I am pointing to lies beyond logic. My approach seems intellectual, yet it is hard to find someone more non-intellectual than I.

Those people had to be removed, for they only waste time—discussion, discussion—words, words. I said, “Come, start kirtan.” As soon as kirtan began, they fled. They no longer come.

So I must gain freedom from the wrong people and invite the right ones.

One thing is certain: wherever truth is, all things cooperate with it. Oppose, deny, speak against—whatever you do, if it is truth, your doing will fall on the side of truth. Truth uses everything—even the opposite, even the enemy.

Therefore there is no need to get entangled, to waste time answering. Things make their own path.

Keep only this in mind: if what we are doing is truth, truth will use all. And in the final moment, whatever benefit I have given you will not be mine alone; the opponents will have an equal hand. In the end all things are united—if it is truth. At the goal, all becomes true. Then you will thank not only me but also Suryoday Gaud and Nirmala Devi Srivastava.

The day you experience truth, you will thank both, for they too worked and labored.