Geeta Darshan #4

The person in whose mind the question has arisen, “How can I surrender? How can I pray?” and the person who is full of doubt, irreverence, and disbelief—these two cannot be the same. Because for one who is truly filled with doubt, the question of prayer will not arise at all. For one who is filled with doubt, the very idea of surrender will not arise.

And the one in whose mind the idea of surrender and prayer has begun to arise should understand: his doubts have turned into diseases; his irreverence is devouring him. With his disbelief he himself is rotting. His disbelief is a cancer for him.

And until this becomes visible to you, the journey of prayer cannot begin. No one else can take you on that journey. You will have to know for yourself what the pain of irreverence is. Only when the thorn of disbelief pricks you badly will you be ready to pull it out.

So if you ask me, “What should I do? I am full of irreverence,” then I say: be completely full of irreverence. Lukewarm irreverence is no good. Be totally filled with it, so that you can get fed up with it and be rid of it.

Ordinarily, you are neither full of faith nor full of faithlessness. You are a mishmash of both. That is the trouble. Because of that you can travel neither path. When you want to go toward irreverence, faith holds your foot back; and because of that you cannot travel toward faith either, because when you want to move toward faith, irreverence stops your foot.

Please, become completely irreverent. Do not be afraid. Do not be timid. If you must argue, then take it to the end. Do not hesitate even to go to the limits of sophistry. Enter your irreverence totally. That total descent will take you to hell. And without going to hell, there is no release from hell.

And do not listen to others. Half-baked talk from others will be of no help. When you are going toward hell, forget all talk of heaven and descend fully into hell. Once you have experienced it thoroughly, then no one will need to tell you what the nectar of faith is. The one who has seen the poison of irreverence begins by himself to move toward the nectar of faith.

The affliction of this age is not irreverence; the affliction of this age is incompleteness. Half of you is filled with faith and half with irreverence. No journey ever gets completed.

And remember, there is no way to be free of evil until evil is complete. And there is no way to rise beyond sin until you have drowned fully in sin.

That in which we drown totally, that of which we have a complete experience—then no one needs to tell us to come out of it. We begin to come out by ourselves.

Right now many people advise you to have faith—and faith does not come. Because one who has not even done irreverence properly—how can faith come to him? Faith is a stage after irreverence.

Only one who has been an atheist can be a theist. Before atheism, all theism is childish, worth two pennies. One who has not known atheism—how can he be a theist? One who has not yet learned to say No—his Yes has no value. There is no life in his acceptance. His acceptance is impotent.

There is nothing to fear. Say No—God does not get angry. But say No with your whole heart, and that No itself becomes a deliverance. And one who has said No totally, and has seen what the sorrow and anguish of No are, and has endured the anxiety and the flames of that fire—today or tomorrow he will move toward Yes. His Yes will have power. His Yes will carry the weight of his life’s experience.

So do not ask me: “My mind is full of irreverence—how should I go toward prayer?” Be completely filled with irreverence. For you, no path will remain except toward prayer.

But being half-and-half is not good. If you are praying and doubt is still inside, why are you praying? Stop that prayer. For now, do doubt properly. And when doubt no longer remains, then begin prayer. Learn to do anything completely. For, in completeness the personality becomes integral. You are no longer in fragments.

Within you there are twenty-five kinds of persons. You are a crowd. One part of the mind says one thing; another part says something else; a third says something else.

A lady came to me just this morning. She said she had been searching for God for twenty years. I told her, “Come to Chowpatty tomorrow morning at six for meditation.” She said, “Coming at six will be very difficult.”

Searching for God for twenty years! And coming at six in the morning to Chowpatty is difficult! This is called searching for God! People this incomplete reach nowhere. They remain suspended like Trishanku. There is not even the shame to notice, not even the thought occurs: I am saying I have been searching for God for twenty years, and coming at six in the morning is difficult! What is the price of this search?

Search like this for even twenty lifetimes and you will reach nowhere. This is not a search at all; it is simply self-deception. It does not even seem you have anything to do with God. It is like casually asking directions while walking along. It is as if—if God is lying around somewhere and there is some leisure time—then, just as we play cards, we will pick him up. If God were available like that—without spending anything, without effort, without leaving anything, without taking any trouble—then we would consider it; we would take him.

One who walks with this attitude—his faith is false, his irreverence is false. His search is false. His very personality is false.

Learn to be true. To be true it is not necessary to be religious. An atheist can also be true. But then atheism should be complete; then you have become a true atheist. And I have not yet heard of a true atheist who has managed to avoid becoming a theist. A true atheist has to become a theist. Because when there is truth even in his atheism, how long can he prevent himself from becoming a theist!

But your theism itself is false. And one whose theism is false—how can he reach God! Even religiosity is false—superficial. Scratch just a little and you will find an atheist inside everyone. There is only a thin layer of theism on the surface—skin-deep. Scratch the skin a little and the atheist comes out. And what is inside is the real. What is on the surface has no value.

So first, honestly inquire: if there is irreverence, if there is doubt—fine. Whatever is natural in my mind, I will follow that. I will complete my doubt until I am defeated. And until my doubt breaks, I will go wherever my doubt takes me.

Gather a little courage and walk the path of doubt. You will not be able to go very far. Where can doubt take you? What will be its final outcome? Where will you reach by doubting? What will you gain?

Till today no one has said that doubt has given him bliss. And till today no one has said that through doubt he attained the ultimate experience of life. Till today no one has said that by denial he entered the depths of existence.

If not today, then tomorrow, you will begin to see that you are wandering on the periphery, outside of existence. If not today, then tomorrow, you yourself will begin to see: your doubt is not destroying God, it is destroying you. And your doubt is not against religion; it is against you; it is cutting your legs and your roots.

Until you see that your doubt is your enemy, you cannot set out on the journey of prayer. You will not set out because I say so. You will not set out because anyone else says so. Only when your doubt begins to burn you like fire—then!

A man came to Buddha. He said, “Listening to your words feels good; but I still don’t feel like leaving the world. And you say the world is suffering—this too I understand; but still the world has its juice.” Buddha said, “How will you understand that the world is suffering just because I say so! And the day you yourself understand that the world is suffering, will you wait for me? You will leap out.

“Think like this: your house has caught fire. Will you come to ask me whether to go out or not? Will you stop to ask anyone? If I am a guest in your home, even then you will leave me inside and run out. First you will run out.

“But you must yourself experience that the house is on fire. If to you it seems that flowers are blooming all around your house and showers of joy are falling, and I tell you that your house is on fire, then you say, ‘Your point seems understandable’—only because you don’t even have the courage to say, ‘I don’t understand you.’ You don’t have the courage to say, ‘You are lying. This house is full of joy. Where is the fire!’ You are utterly weak. So you say, ‘It does make sense that the house is on fire, yet I don’t feel like leaving.’ These two statements are contradictory. If the house is on fire, there will be a mind to leave. Even saying ‘a mind to leave’ is not right. If the house is on fire, you don’t even realize it’s on fire—only after you are outside and breathing properly do you realize there was a fire. You don’t waste time thinking that there is a fire; first you run out.”

The day your doubt, skepticism, disbelief become flames for you, that very day you will run toward prayer—never before.

Therefore I say to you: do not set out on the path of prayer by listening to someone. Do not begin to seek God by accepting someone’s word that the world is suffering. Believe only yourself; because the moment you accept anyone other than yourself, you become false.

So it is good; nothing is wrong. Your irreverence too will bring refinement to your life. Your atheism will prepare you for theism. Your doubt will also sift you, cut you, chisel you, and make you worthy to enter the temple of God.

In my vision there is nothing that is opposite to God. There cannot be. So if someone says that the atheist is opposed to God, he is ignorant. He has no understanding of theism. The atheist too is preparing to become a theist. He too says, “There is no God.” Even within him the search has begun. Otherwise, what purpose is served by even saying that there is no God? What is the need to think whether he is or is not? What need is there that by irreverence we waste our energy?

He who practices irreverence is in truth in search of reverence. He wants there to be—God. But he does not find that there is; therefore he denies. And in denying, he experiences pain.

Let the denial be complete. Let this edge of the sword go deep and cleave the heart. You will come onto the path of prayer. Coming onto the path of prayer becomes natural.

And do not hurry. To slip out of anything without experience is dangerous. To run away without experience is dangerous. For wherever you run away from without experiencing it, that place will pursue you. A taste will remain in your mind. Your mind will keep running in that direction. You can run anywhere. But that from which you flee without experience will chase you; it will be with you like a shadow.

My vision is not of running away. My vision is of descending into the maturity of experience of anything. When a ripe leaf falls from the tree, its beauty is unique. Neither does the tree know when the leaf fell, nor does any wound remain in the tree from the leaf’s falling, nor is there any pain. Nor does the leaf know when it left the tree. A light puff of wind is enough.

But to pluck an unripe leaf—then a wound remains in the tree, and every vein of the unripe leaf is taut. The breaking of an unripe leaf is an accident. The falling of a ripe leaf is a pleasant, quiet, natural event.

Wherever you move away from, move away like a ripe leaf. Do not snap off like an unripe leaf, or wounds will remain. And you will be deprived of the beauty of the ripe leaf.

Do not be afraid. If there is doubt now, let it ripen. And do not listen to anyone. There are people all around eager to tell you things. There are people all around eager to correct you—be cautious. There are many who want to shape you—keep a little distance from them. Give your life-stream the chance to pass through the full experience of whatever it naturally wants. Otherwise, there is great upheaval. Throughout history there has been this upheaval.
What is our trouble? The friend who has asked must be carrying doubt in the mind, yet the lure of prayer does not leave. We have seen people who are joyful in prayer. Where does the difficulty arise?
Meera is dancing. You feel, If only I could dance like that! The dance is infectious. It makes your heart tingle; it creates temptation. That smile of Meera, the light in her eyes, the stream of nectar pouring from her face—you feel, let this too be in my life.

But Meera says, I am dancing on seeing Krishna. Doubt arises within. You cannot see Krishna anywhere. Meera seems mad. It is difficult to trust this Krishna.

It is hard to trust the One for whom Meera dances; and it is hard to escape Meera’s dance. Hence the difficulty arises. You feel, Ah, if only we too could dance like that! But the reason for which Meera dances yields no rational proof. The God for whom she dances is nowhere to be seen. The intellect raises a thousand doubts.

So we say, There is no God and all that. We console ourselves by declaring Meera mad, her mind deranged. Still, that melody of Meera, that dance, keeps following you. It will go with you into your dreams. You will rise and sit and some corner of the mind will whisper, If only Meera’s God were true, we too could have danced.

You want to dance; you want to be blissful. It is hard to find a person without the longing for joy. But doubt does not yield joy. Irreverence does not yield joy. Disbelief does not yield joy. The longing for joy is there, and the intellect raises doubts. Where joy could be found, the intellect raises questions. The heart asks for bliss, and the intellect cannot provide it. In this dilemma one’s very life-force becomes entangled.

So you too can perform a counterfeit dance. You can pick up the manjira and dance. But it will be superficial. In Meera’s dance it is not her feet that truly do the work; it is her faith at work. There are dancers better than Meera who can dance more skillfully. But the quality of Meera’s dance is different. However great a dancer may be, what is present in Meera’s dance cannot be present in theirs. Meera’s feet may be untrained; there may be no beat, no rhythm, no knowledge of music—but there is something else, greater than music. There is something else, greater than technique. Something has descended so deeply within that, because of that descent, the dance is happening. Behind this dance stands something transcendental.

If there is no trust in that transcendental, you too may dance, but no joy will arise in your soul. The dance will remain only on the outside. Within you will remain empty, vacant, sad, just the same as before.

Meera’s faith is the very center. You can dance from a center of doubt, but you will not taste Meera’s bliss.

And a great difficulty arises because we see only the outer life of awakened ones; we know nothing of their within.

We see Mahavira. We see his serene posture, the silence of his eyes. The mind fills with temptation: If only this could happen to us! Then we hear Mahavira’s words, and trust does not arise.

We see Buddha. The breeze of peace that flows around him touches us too. Near him a kind of bathing happens—as if every pore were filled with freshness—we feel that too. But on hearing Buddha’s words, faith does not arise.

We do not know what is within Buddha; what is outside we know. Thus a great reversal begins: we think that if we sit as Buddha sits, perhaps what has happened inside will happen to us too. If Mahavira walks a certain way, we start to walk that way. If Mahavira discarded clothes, we too discard clothes.

Thus many, seeing Mahavira, have stood naked! They are merely naked; they are not sky-clad. For before Mahavira’s nakedness, an inner sky had arisen. In that sky he left his garments. In these, that sky has not arisen; they have only dropped their clothes. Only their bodies have become bare.

Mahavira, even if there is an ant, places his feet with utmost care—not from fear that the ant may die. The one walking behind him too begins to place his feet carefully lest an ant should die. But he does not even know his own soul; how can he know the soul of an ant? He has no experience of the life within himself; how can he experience the life of an ant? His nonviolence becomes hollow, shallow, merely on the surface. Conduct happens on the outside; the inner core remains as it was.

Only when the inner core changes does the outer revolution become real. But this mistake has kept happening.

I have heard there was a Jewish fakir, Baal Shem—one of the few precious fakirs to have walked the earth. Someone asked him, Whenever you speak, you tell such apt, piercing stories. Where do you find them? Baal Shem said, I will explain with a story.

A general was passing through a small village. He was a master marksman; in those days none could match him. His shots hit a hundred out of a hundred. Suddenly, as he rode through the village, he saw on a garden’s wooden fence at least a hundred and fifty bullet holes—and each bullet hole was exactly at the center of a chalk-drawn circle. A hundred and fifty!
The general was astonished: Where is such a great marksman hiding in this little village! Each chalk ring had a bullet hole exactly at its center; the bullet had pierced the wood clean through. And it was not a case or two—there were a hundred and fifty marks!
He felt someone greater than himself had appeared. He asked a passerby, Brother, who is this man? Who made these marks? Who fired these shots? Give me some news—I would like to meet him.
The villager said, Don’t worry too much. It’s the village tanner’s son. His mind is a little off; a few nuts and bolts are loose.
The general said, I am not concerned about his mind. A man who can make a hundred and fifty shots with such infallibility, right in the middle of the circle—I do not worry about his mind. He is the greatest marksman; I want to see him.
The villager said, First understand: he shoots first and draws the chalk circle afterward.

Something like this has happened in the history of religion. We are all firing first and drawing the chalk mark afterward! But to the passerby it appears a marvel; to one who doesn’t know, it looks astonishing.

Life does not run in reverse from the outside to the inside. The current of life flows from within to without—that is the right current. The Gangotri is within. The Ganges flows toward the ocean; we keep trying to flow from the ocean toward the source.

If there is doubt within you, do not be frightened. Let the Ganges of doubt reach the ocean; do not obstruct it. Today or tomorrow you will find that doubt itself has brought you to surrender. The reverse has never happened.

All who doubt—who doubt rightly, who practice right doubt—have come to surrender. Irreverence itself becomes the doorway to reverence—but complete irreverence. Honest, authentic disbelief is the mother of faith.

Do not impose. Do not plaster things on from above. Do not worry about the surface. Do not ask, If the mind is full of disbelief, how should I pray? Let it be filled completely with disbelief. And I tell you, the seed of prayer is hidden within you. Let disbelief grow to its full. That very disbelief will become the soil for that seed. The sprout of prayer will arise within you.

Do not be afraid to be an atheist if you are to become a theist. And if someday you are to lay your whole head at God’s feet and say Yes, then so long as you feel He is not, deny honestly. Do not say Yes in haste. A hurried Yes is a miscarriage—an abortion. The child born of it is born dead.

Let the pregnancy of disbelief run at least nine months. And if this pregnancy comes to term, you will not need to ask me anything. If you truly become weary of your irreverence, you will drop it, throw it away. If you are not yet weary, then wait a little—get a little weary.

I have no fear, because irreverence never yields joy; you cannot be fulfilled through it. Sooner or later you will discard it. Joy comes only through faith. And how long can a person live without joy?

Religion cannot be erased from the earth so long as man asks for joy. The day man agrees to live without joy, that day religion can be erased—before that, never.

Religion is not the search for God; it is the search for joy. And those who seek joy find they must seek the Divine. The search for joy is the innate note within us.

It does seem very difficult to increase faith in God. But why increase it at all? Why get into such a hassle! What obstacle is there that you must increase your faith in God? Don’t increase it. Drop the very talk of God. What is the restlessness? Why do you want your faith in God to grow?

Look within. Without God you don’t feel peace, you don’t feel at ease—therefore you want to increase faith. First understand this within you: there is some uneasiness in me because of which I want to strengthen my faith in God. And if this restlessness is properly understood, you will not ask for proofs or evidence.

A thirsty man does not ask, “Is there water or not?” A thirsty man asks, “Where is water?” If there is no thirst, a man may ask, “Who knows whether water exists or not?” No thirsty man has ever asked whether water exists; he asks, “Where is water? How do I find it?”

What need is there for proof of God? The uneasiness within you without God—this is sufficient thirst. And that itself is the proof. Understand this difference.

Someone asks for proof whether God exists or not. I do not give proofs. I say, drop the worry. If there is no proof, why fret about it? Let God be; leave Him alone. You go your way. God never comes to ask you, “Have you discovered my proof yet?” So why get into a mess? Why spoil your mind? Sleep peacefully. Why ruin your sleep and invite insomnia? What is the issue?

There is no peace inside. Somewhere within there is a thirst that cannot be quenched without God. Without God the thirst does not subside. That thirst keeps pushing from within: find out about God.

Understand your thirst; leave God aside. Water is not as important as thirst is. Water is secondary. If there is no thirst, what will you do with water? And if there is thirst, we will certainly find water.

There is a law of life: we thirst only for that which is. For what is not, there is no thirst. For what is not, there is no experience—not even the experience of thirst, not even the sense of its absence.

Man’s thirst itself is the proof. Which means that even if you get everything, you will not be fulfilled until you attain God. If you can be fulfilled without Him, then be fulfilled—God has no objection. Be perfectly fulfilled; He will not come to interfere with your fulfillment.

But you cannot be fulfilled. This difficulty is not God’s; it arises from the very mode of human being. Man is such that he cannot be fulfilled without God. And therefore, when God is taken away from man, he fabricates gods of all kinds.

In Russia a great experiment took place: the communists took away God. Do you know what happened? As soon as God was removed, people began to make the State their god. Jesus’ statue was removed from the church, but in the square at the Kremlin they laid out Lenin’s corpse. People began to offer flowers to it, to place their heads at its feet!

This is most amusing. Lenin was an atheist. He did not believe that anything remains after death. Yet his corpse lies in the Kremlin. Millions each year touch his feet. Whose feet are they touching? One who is no more? And one who is no more was never anything now—why touch this corpse?

There is a deep thirst—an urge to place one’s head at some feet; a longing to bow before the unknown. If there is no fulfillment, then one will lay one’s head even at Lenin’s feet. We have taken away God; then we cobble up something else. Man cannot live without reverence. Take away reverence for God and he will revere the State, the leader, even the actor! He needs something that can become the shelter for his reverence—something for which he feels, “I can live.”

But man cannot live without God. Without God man remains restless. A supreme refuge is needed.

So I do not tell you that there is any proof of Him. There is none—other than your thirst. Extinguish your thirst and you have extinguished God. Do not bother about extinguishing God; that is not in your power. Extinguish your thirst; God is gone.

And there is no way to extinguish your thirst. You yourself are that thirst. If thirst were something separate from you, we could remove it. You yourself are thirst. Man is a thirst of the Divine. If man were separate, we could cut out the thirst, do some surgery and separate man from it. But man himself is thirst.

Nietzsche has said: The day man stops going beyond himself, that day he will die. This urge to go beyond oneself is the thirst within man.

As a seed breaks and begins to rise toward the sky—the very longing to rise skyward becomes the tree. So too man constantly wants to rise above himself toward the sky. That very longing to go toward the sky is God.

You will remain merely a seed until the tree of God takes root within you. Until you become God, no contentment is possible. Nothing less than God can satisfy.

This thirst within you is the proof. Beyond this, there is no other proof. There is no mathematics of God by which one could prove—as one proves two and two are four. There is no logic by which one could demonstrate that He is.

And it is good that there is no logic. Because what is proved by logic—whether a mathematical theorem or a scientific formula—will never be a religious realization. It is good that He cannot be proved by logic; for however firmly something is proven by logic, it does not quench thirst.

Understand: thirst is quenched by water. But the formula H2O written on paper, perfectly arranged mathematically, does not quench thirst. If you dissolve and drink the formula H2O, your thirst will not be quenched. Thirst is quenched by water, because thirst demands an experience—a coolness that descends into your very life-breath, a sweetness that enters within and transforms you. A formula remains in a book.

God has no formula. And all the books written about God are merely pointers; they contain no formula of God.

All the scriptures have failed; till now they have not been able to say Him. They never will. But the scriptures have tried. Their attempt is like a pointer, like a milestone saying: further on, further on. It is to give courage: keep moving; two steps more; not far now; near at hand.

If one advances with courage, one day one descends into that experience. But do not seek proof. There is none. Or else everything is proof. Then what is there that is not His proof? Then cast your eyes around: the sun rising in the sky, and at night the sky filled with stars; a seed sprouting into a tree; a spring flowing toward the ocean; a song emerging from a bird’s throat. Look into a child’s eyes; look at a moss-laden stone; at the sand on the seashore and the waves of the sea—then everywhere there is His proof. Then only He is.

Once the thought arises within that He is, then everywhere there is His proof. And until that thought arises, there is no proof.

And where will that thought arise? Not first in the ocean. Not first in flowers. Not first in the stars. First you will have to bring the sense of Him within yourself. Because I am nearest to myself. If even there I do not catch a hint of Him, how will I hear it in a stone!

People are amusing. They bow before idols. How will those idols become God for them? However much they believe they are God, they will not be. One who has not felt even a touch of divinity in the consciousness within—how will he see the divinity hidden in a stone? It is there too; but the distance is great. And the language of stone is different; the language of man is different.

God does not appear in man—and He appears in stone! Man—whom we can understand, touch, enter within, whose consciousness we can contact—He does not appear there, and appears in stone! Then you are deceiving yourself. For the stone is very far. Let Him appear in man first; then someday He may appear even in stone. And then it happens that there is nothing in which He is not seen. Then the whole world is His proof.

So there are two ways: either there is no proof of Him—if you think in books, words, logic, there is no proof—or, if you think in terms of existence, then everything is His proof. There is nothing where His signature is not. On each grain of sand His signature is inscribed. But that is the language of existence.

You have no inkling even of your own existence. You go on living in such a way that it is hard to be sure whether you are living or you are dead.

I have heard that many come to know they were alive only when they die. After dying they realize, “Oh! What has happened? I am dead!”

We cannot catch even a glimpse of life itself. Existence flows within, while we are busy collecting things, hoarding furniture, building houses, entangled in the trivial. That involvement in trivia is so great that we get no opportunity, no chance to attend to this stream flowing within.

People come to me. An elderly friend, a college principal, came a few days ago. He must be around sixty. He said, “Now I am bored with the world. Now set my mind toward the Divine.” I said, “If you are truly bored, take a leap. Now let your whole life be devoted to meditation.”

He said, “The whole life! I can give an hour, half an hour a day. I am still on the job. Actually, I don’t need the job now; I have everything. But who knows, sometime there may be a need—so! As it is, the sons are settled, the daughters are married. But there is prestige, a bungalow, a car—so all that has to be maintained. So suggest some technique so that I can meditate half an hour daily. And two years from now—I assure you—two years from now I will devote my whole life to meditation.”

I said, “Granted; you assure me about two years. But is there any surety you will be alive two years from now? And you say you are bored with the world, yet the prestige of the bungalow cannot be dropped! You say you have nothing more to do with the world, yet you are dragging on with the job!”

What is man’s difficulty? He postpones to “two years later.” And believe me, even if he remains alive two years, he will push it further. Because this postponing mind will be there then too. It keeps postponing until death comes and cuts it off, declaring, “Now there is no place left to push; time is over.”

This state of mind entangled in the trivial is why you do not find His proof. When the mind is set on the trivial, only the trivial is proved.

Withdraw a little from the trivial, turn inward a little, and give the Vast a chance. Be silent so that His voice can be heard. Quiet your own noise a bit. His voice is very soft. Stop your running around and pause; be still. For only if you stop will you come upon That which has always been still within. As long as you run, you cannot relate to That which is still inside. Stop a little.

To search for the Divine there is no need to run. To search for the world, one has to run. To search for the Divine, one has to stop. To seek Him, there is no need to create noise and clamor; to seek Him, one needs to become quiet and silent. Then proofs will begin to appear.

And no one else can give you proof. Only you will be able to prove it to yourself. Understand your thirst and learn the art of looking within. Proof abounds. Everything is His proof. But eyes to see and ears to hear are needed.

Jesus has said again and again: If you have eyes, then see; if you have ears, then hear; if you have understanding, then understand.

Those he addressed had ears like yours, eyes like yours, minds like yours. Jesus’ words do not seem right; telling people with eyes, “If you have eyes, then see,” and to those with ears, “If you have ears, then hear,” and to the intelligent, “If you have understanding, then understand,” sounds insulting. Where would you find people so blind, so deaf, so foolish! Yet Jesus said this all his life.

He is speaking of other eyes. With these eyes you will not find proof of the Divine. With these eyes you will find only the proof of matter. With these ears you will not hear His voice. With these ears you will only hear the noise of the world. With this intellect you will not understand Him. With this intellect you will only manage the world of accounts, of money, of bank balances.

There is another eye. Krishna calls that eye shraddha—faith. Buddha calls it dhyana—meditation. Meera calls it kirtan, bhajan, prayer.

There is another ear—the ear of silence, of becoming quiet. When all the outer noises are left, the ever-sounding inner tone begins to be heard.

The nada is sounding within, but you are not empty, you are not turned toward it. You are turned away from that nada, standing with your back to it. There, continuously, a soft stroke falls; there someone is endlessly plucking the strings. And you say, “Where is the proof?”

Our condition is like this. I have heard: a musician was passing with his wife by a church. In the evening the church bells were ringing—very lovely and sweet. And in the hush of evening, when the road had grown deserted and the birds in the church’s trees had come to rest in silence, in that evening stillness the ringing of the bells began to create waves in the musician’s heart.

He said to his wife—softly; being a musician he must have felt that speaking loudly would be violence, would disturb such sweetness—he said softly, “Do you hear? How lovely the sound is! How sweet the bells are!”

Do you know what his wife said? She said, “If these foolish church people would stop ringing those bells, I could hear what you’re saying!”

The musician must not have spoken to her again; there was no way to say anything now. The bell is ringing outside; in it you can hear a din or you can hear music. If there is a heart that can catch music, music can be heard.

Otherwise—so I have heard—Mulla Nasruddin once went to hear a classical musician. Soon Mulla’s wife noticed he was very restless, shifting in his chair. She asked, “Why are you so disturbed?” Sweat was running down his forehead.

He said, “I’m disturbed because the kinds of sounds this man is making—our goat made those same sounds as it died. His condition is bad. He seems delirious. He’s going to die soon. Let’s get out of here. Otherwise we too might get entangled in the trouble of how he died! And die he will, for sure. Exactly this was our goat’s condition when it made these sounds and died.”

Understanding of music is not through the ear. The ear hears it even for him. Understanding of music comes when a harmony, a consonance is created within.

God is the vastest harmony; He is the greatest music. Make a heart worthy of Him and you will receive His proof. If you think you will first find proof and then change yourself, then for lifetimes you will get no news of Him. Change yourself, and you may receive His proof even today. There is no need to wait lifetimes.

But we are upside-down. We say, “First we need proof; only then will we set out to seek Him!” And the search for Him begins only when you make your heart worthy of receiving His proof. This is the obstacle.

If you are ready—without worrying whether He is or not—to quiet your heart, what harm will there be? Even if He is not, and your heart becomes quiet, what harm will there be? It will only benefit you. Even if He is not, and your heart fills with love, what is the loss? It will only benefit you. Even if He is not, and you become silent and enter meditation, what will you lose? You will only gain.

But whoever has gone into that meditation, whoever has entered that silence, has immediately said: the proof has been found—He is. But even they cannot give you the proof. Only they have received it.

All expressions of religion are private and personal. And all the witnesses of religion are private and personal. They cannot testify for another.

I can testify for myself that it has been found. But what would my testimony mean for you? You will still say, “Proof?” Then again I will say to you: You will have to taste, you will have to sip.

So be ready to taste, to savor. But if you say, “Until we accept that He is, how can we taste? We will taste later; first let there be certain proof that He is,” then you will have to wait. Then you are beyond anyone’s capacity. Then you are impossible. Nothing can be done with you.

So wait. Slowly, slowly you will get tired of yourself one day; then perhaps you will agree: “All right—let us taste first; we will look for proof later.” And the one who agrees to taste obtains the proof.

Last question.

There is a great difference between meditation and prayer, even if the dictionary doesn’t show it. For those who experiment, the difference is vast. The processes are opposite. When the result arrives, the difference disappears—but along the way, it matters greatly.

Imagine drawing a large circle with a center, and from the circumference draw lines toward the center. If you draw two lines from the circumference, there will be distance between them. As they approach the center, the distance keeps shrinking. When they meet at the exact center, the gap vanishes—both lines become one point. On the circumference there is distance; at the center there is none.

All paths go from the circumference of the world to the divine center. On the paths there are great differences—even oppositions. But on reaching the center, all oppositions dissolve; they become one.

The way of love means: the other is primary, not me. First, I must diminish, and the other must be magnified—whosoever that other may be: Christ, Krishna, any symbol; the master, a form, a feeling. The other is significant; I am not. I prune myself away and let the other become vast. I come to a place where I am utterly empty, and only the other remains. I have no sense of myself—I am erased, as a line drawn on water disappears. Let Thou remain, and I be lost. Only Thou be known; I be not. This is the process of love—this is prayer.

The process of meditation is exactly the reverse: the whole world disappears, and only I remain. Everything drops from the mind: those I love are forgotten; those I have desired are forgotten; even God does not remain as a thought. No other remains—no sense of the Other at all. I wipe the Other out completely. Let nothing remain but a pure, solitary I. No thought, no feeling, no object—nothing. Empty, alone, only I remain; the whole world fades away. This is meditation.

If Thou is erased completely and the pure I remains—that is meditation. If I is erased completely and the pure Thou remains—that is love. They move in opposite directions; therefore the roads are utterly different.

So the meditator may mock the lover: “What madness is this! Drop the other—because the other is bondage.” And the lover may mock the meditator: “What are you doing? Trying to save yourself? It’s this saving of oneself that is the calamity. One has to dissolve; the ‘I’ is the disease—and you are protecting it! Surrender it. Lay it at the feet of Thou.”

Thus, while on the path, the lover and the meditator rarely understand each other. They will misunderstand—because they walk in reverse. It can confuse you even more. But when both reach the point, a wondrous happening occurs.

The wonder is this: whether I erase Thou and keep the I—meditation’s way—or I erase the I and keep Thou—prayer’s way—at the very moment the I is dissolved, the Thou cannot remain; and the moment Thou is dissolved, the I cannot remain. They subsist together.

Understand this; it pertains to the final point.

As I dissolve my I and only Thou remains, notice: I can know that Thou only so long as, subtilely, I still have some sense of I. Otherwise, how would Thou be known? Against what? To see a white line, a black background is needed. If I vanish utterly, how will Thou remain? A little of me must remain for me to know Thou. It is the I that knows Thou. So I can forget the I, but I cannot absolutely annihilate it—because if the I is completely extinguished, in the same instant Thou too disappears. What remains is one—neither I nor Thou.

Exactly so on the path of meditation. When only I alone remains—how will I know that I am? Even the feeling “I am” arises through the Other. On the circumference, the Other is needed for the sense of I to arise. If the Other disappears completely—if the whole world is lost—the I cannot remain either. I too was part of that world and will go with it. As soon as Thou vanishes utterly, I also is annihilated. What remains is neither I nor Thou.

These paths are opposite; where they lead is one. You can arrive from either side. Erase one of the pair, and the other will vanish by itself. Which one you choose to erase depends on your personal inclination.

It is the art of erasing one of a pair. The other will vanish because it was the inevitable counterpart. If from existence we remove light itself, darkness will also be gone. It sounds difficult only because in your house, if you blow out a lamp, darkness doesn’t disappear—it increases. But you haven’t removed light from existence. If light were eradicated from existence, darkness would vanish. If darkness were erased, light would vanish.

If we remove death from the world, life will disappear that very day. We think the opposite: that death destroys life. You do not know; they are two parts of one thing. Without death there can be no life; without life, how could there be death? Erase one, the other disappears instantly.

It is amusing: if we eliminate sorrow from the world, happiness will vanish. If we erase enemies, friends will vanish. If we erase hatred, love will disappear. You cannot save one without the other. They are inseparable pairs.

Meditation and prayer use this very science. Erase one and the other will go on its own. Don’t worry about the second; attend to erasing the one. Then follow your own temperament.

If you are ready to erase yourself, move on the path of prayer. If erasing yourself frightens you, then erase the entire “other”—all that is “out there”: feelings, thoughts—remove everything, and remain alone. Either way you will arrive at that where neither remains.