Humility, freedom from pretense, non-violence; forbearance, straightforwardness।
Service of the teacher, purity, steadfastness, self-restraint।। 7।।
Dispassion toward sense-objects, and freedom from ego as well।
Steady discernment of the suffering and flaw in birth, death, old age, and disease।। 8।।
Geeta Darshan #3
Available in:
Read in Original Hindi (मूल हिन्दी)
Sutra (Original)
अमानित्वमदम्भित्वमहिंसा क्षान्तिरार्जवम्।
आचार्योपासनं शौचं स्थैर्यमात्मविनिग्रहः।। 7।।
इन्द्रियार्थेषु वैराग्यमनहंकार एव च।
जन्ममृत्युजराव्याधिदुःखदोषानुदर्शनम्।। 8।।
आचार्योपासनं शौचं स्थैर्यमात्मविनिग्रहः।। 7।।
इन्द्रियार्थेषु वैराग्यमनहंकार एव च।
जन्ममृत्युजराव्याधिदुःखदोषानुदर्शनम्।। 8।।
Transliteration:
amānitvamadambhitvamahiṃsā kṣāntirārjavam|
ācāryopāsanaṃ śaucaṃ sthairyamātmavinigrahaḥ|| 7||
indriyārtheṣu vairāgyamanahaṃkāra eva ca|
janmamṛtyujarāvyādhiduḥkhadoṣānudarśanam|| 8||
amānitvamadambhitvamahiṃsā kṣāntirārjavam|
ācāryopāsanaṃ śaucaṃ sthairyamātmavinigrahaḥ|| 7||
indriyārtheṣu vairāgyamanahaṃkāra eva ca|
janmamṛtyujarāvyādhiduḥkhadoṣānudarśanam|| 8||
Translation (Meaning)
Questions in this Discourse
A friend has asked: Osho, is the samadhi attained when consciousness is lost a state of swoon? Sri Ramakrishna Paramhansa would lie for days as if near death!
From the outside, when ordinary consciousness drops, it often appears like a faint. Many times, seen from the outside, Ramakrishna would seem fainted for days. The body would lie as if of an unconscious man. Even water or milk had to be given with effort, almost by force.
As far as the outer is concerned, he was unconscious; as far as the inner is concerned, he was not the least bit unconscious. Within, awareness was total. But that awareness, that consciousness, is not the same as what we call our consciousness.
Yesterday, in Krishna’s sutra, we understood that consciousness can be of two kinds. One is consciousness directed toward some object, produced by something outside—consciousness as a response to an object. You sit, someone makes a loud sound; your awareness is pulled there, your attention is attracted. You sit, a house catches fire; you forget the whole world. Your consciousness is drawn to the fire.
If your house is on fire, you become very alert; even sleep, if it was coming, disappears. You get a kind of concentration you may never otherwise have. You must have tried a thousand times to forget the whole world for a moment and contemplate the Divine; yet whenever you sat, a thousand things arose, a thousand thoughts came. Every thought but the one of God besieged the mind. But let the house catch fire and everything is forgotten; the whole world seems to vanish. The mind becomes concentrated solely on the fire.
That too is consciousness. But it is born of the outside; it is created by external impact; it depends on the outer. So Krishna said even that consciousness is part of the body, the field (kshetra).
Is there then a consciousness that does not depend on anything, that is not produced by anything, that is our very nature? By nature I mean it will not be produced by any cause; it is because we are; it is inherent in our being.
When someone makes a sound and your attention goes there, that going of attention is not inherent in your being. It is induced by the sound; it is a by-product; it is not your nature.
Imagine that no sensation at all comes from outside, no event occurs outwardly—and yet your wakefulness remains. That consciousness we call the soul, the Self. And the consciousness born of the outside is conception, attention, concentration—dharana, dhyan. Krishna counts that also as part of the body, the field.
When Ramakrishna would “lose consciousness,” their steadiness (dhriti), their attention, their focus—dharana—would drop. However loud the outer world might be, their awareness would not come outward. They were absorbed in their own nature; within, they were utterly conscious. When their samadhi would break, they would weep and cry out, “Mother, take me back there! Why have you sent me back into this suffering? Return me to that bliss.”
What we would call a faint was, for him, supreme bliss. Outwardly, all the senses had turned within; the attention that used to flow out had returned, as if the Ganges had turned back to Gangotri. That consciousness which used to come out to the door no longer came; it became absorbed in itself, still.
For us, Ramakrishna would seem fainted. Ask Western psychologists and they will say: hysterical; this is hysteria. Because Western psychology as yet has no clue of that second kind of consciousness.
Had Ramakrishna been born in the West, he would have been taken to an asylum. Surely psychiatrists would have treated him, trying to bring him back to “normal” consciousness—giving stimulants to make him more active, injections, a thousand bodily interventions to bring consciousness back. For Western psychology, outer consciousness is consciousness; if that outer consciousness is gone, the person is fainted, near death.
Romain Rolland wrote that it was fortunate Ramakrishna was born in the East; had he been born in the West, we would have cured him—meaning, we would have made him an ordinary man like everyone else. And that supreme realization—no one in the West would have recognized it.
There is a great Western thinker and psychiatrist, R. D. Laing. He says that not all who are called mad in the West are mad; some of them, in another age, might have been saints. But they lie in asylums, because Western understanding does not accept inner consciousness. If the outer consciousness is lost, the person is declared deranged.
We regard Ramakrishna as liberated. What is the difference? What is the difference between hysteria and Ramakrishna’s “faint”? As far as outward symptoms go, they are the same. Foam would come to Ramakrishna’s lips; hands and feet would stiffen like wood; he would lie like a corpse. First tremors came to the limbs, as happen in a hysterical patient; then he would become inert; outward awareness would be gone. Even if you cut his foot then, he would not know. The same happens to a hysterical patient—he falls into coma, unconsciousness. So what is the difference?
From above, in appearance, there is none. A clinician too would say this is a type of hysteria. But within, there is a great difference. The hysteric, when he returns from his swoon, is the same as before. Ramakrishna, returning from his “faint,” is not the same as before—the old man is gone.
If that man was angry before, now he is not. If he was restless, now he is not. If he was miserable, now he is not. Now he is supremely blissful.
A hysterical patient, after a hysterical blackout, is as he was, perhaps more distorted—the illness breaks him further. But one who has gone into samadhi returns new—reborn. A new breeze, a new fragrance, a new joy spreads through his life.
In the West they think from symptoms; we think from results. We say: what happens after the samadhi is the decisive thing—whether it was samadhi or swoon.
Ramakrishna would return as gold. And that swoon which burns away the dross and leaves the gold refined—calling that swoon would not be appropriate. The lust-laden personality that was Ramakrishna’s dissolves; an unprecedented, supremely luminous being is born. Such a “swoon,” from which a radiant being is born, we will not call illness; we will call it supreme good fortune. The criterion is the result.
Ramakrishna’s unconsciousness was not unconsciousness. If it were, that divine form could not have manifested. Divinity does not arise from unconsciousness; it arises from supreme awareness. To us he looks unconscious, but within he is utterly awake.
Understand it like this: the doors and windows—through which the rays of awareness used to come out—have all been closed. The senses are quiet; the inner lamp burns within; no ray comes out. Therefore we cannot recognize it. But this unconsciousness is not unconsciousness.
And if someone still insists on calling it unconsciousness, then it is a very spiritual unconsciousness—but even that word is not apt. We call it supreme awareness. Western psychology, if not today then tomorrow, will have to accept this distinction. Research in this direction has begun.
So far, under Freud’s influence, they lumped saints and madmen together. Books have been written by Western psychologists about Jesus trying to prove he was neurotic, deranged.
Naturally, someone who says, “I am the son of God,” appears mad to us. One who claims, “I am the son of God,” will seem either a rogue, a hypocrite, or mad. Who, in his senses, would claim to be the son of God! Jesus’ declarations sound like those of a madman.
But whoever experiences the inner consciousness—“son of God” is a small statement; he is God. When Mansoor or the Upanishadic rishis say “Aham Brahmasmi—I am Brahman,” the Western psychologist thinks something has gone wrong; the brain is damaged.
Their thinking too has grounds, because such madmen also exist. Go search an asylum today; many madmen are there. One says, “I am Adolf Hitler,” another “I am Benito Mussolini,” another “I am Stalin,” another “I am Napoleon.”
Bertrand Russell wrote that a man once wrote to him after he published a book in which he had said something about Julius Caesar. The man wrote: “Your book is absolutely correct; only one statement is wrong.” Russell was surprised. The book had many revolutionary ideas people would dislike. Who is this man who says everything is correct except one point! Russell invited him to dinner: “Come. I wish to know which point a man who agrees with my whole book finds wrong!” The man came in the evening. “The book is fine; I read all your books; all are fine. But one statement is utterly wrong.”
With great curiosity Russell asked: “Which?” He said: “You wrote that Julius Caesar died. That is wrong!” Julius Caesar has been dead for centuries. Russell was startled—what an error he has detected! “You wrote Julius Caesar is dead; that is wrong.” Russell asked: “Your proof?” He replied: “What proof is needed? I am Julius Caesar.”
Psychology will say: the man is mad. But when Mansoor says “I am the Truth,” when the Upanishadic seers say “We ourselves are the Divine,” when Swami Ram Tirtha says, “I created this cosmos; I move these moons and stars”—someone asked Ram Tirtha, “Who created the world?” He said, “Why ask— I did.”
Surely, that too sounds like madness. And outwardly the one who says “I am Julius Caesar” seems less mad than Ram Tirtha who says, “These moons and stars—I set them in motion with these very fingers. I created this creation.”
The statements look identical on the surface; within they are utterly different. What will be the proof of difference? That the man claiming to be Julius Caesar is miserable, afflicted, disturbed—no sleep, no peace, restless. But Ram Tirtha, saying “I created the world,” is in supreme bliss and peace.
It does not depend on what they say; we have to see what they are. And even if you do not claim to be Julius Caesar or Gandhi or Nehru, yet if you are not truly aware, you too are deranged. And Ram Tirtha, even after declaring “I created the world,” is not deranged. His statement springs from a very deep realization.
Ram Tirtha is saying that the supreme consciousness of this universe is within me. The day the universe was created, I was included in that. Without me this universe could not be, because I am a part of it. When God created the world, I was present within that. My presence is inevitable—because I am present.
In this universe nothing is destroyed; annihilation is impossible. Not even a grain of sand can be annihilated. It will remain; do what you will—erase, break, smash—it remains; its existence cannot be erased. What is, cannot go into nothingness.
How then can consciousness go into nothingness! That I am means I was, and it means I will be. Whatever the form or shape, my annihilation is impossible. There is no annihilation; only change. In this world nothing is created and nothing destroyed; things only transform, take new shapes, drop old ones. Destruction is impossible.
Science too concedes that annihilation is impossible. On this, religion and science agree.
So if Ram Tirtha says “I created it,” the statement is meaningful—it is not the utterance of a madman. In truth, it is the utterance of one who has gone beyond madness—who now sees the infinite chain of life and no longer regards himself as separate, but as a link in that endless chain.
From the outside, the sayings of madmen and saints often sound alike; but looked into from within, they could not be more different. That is why, if religion is losing prestige in the West, the biggest reason is the half-finished findings of psychology. What psychology says is half—and being half, it is dangerous.
The ordinary man is in the middle. Whoever falls below the ordinary becomes mad—he too is abnormal, extraordinary. Whoever rises above the ordinary—he too is abnormal, extraordinary. And the West takes both as the same. Fall below and you are a madman; rise above and you are a maharshi. Both are extraordinary; both are not ordinary. The West’s fundamental mistake is to equate the ordinary with healthy; therefore, whoever departs from the ordinary is unhealthy.
So Ramakrishna is unhealthy, ill, pathological. He should be treated. Those whom we worship, the West would like to treat.
But voices of dissent are arising in the West. A line of new psychologists is saying: there is a mistake in our understanding. We declare many people mad because we do not know what we are doing; many among them have extraordinary genius.
A strange fact: people of extraordinary genius often go mad. So there seems to be some relation between genius and madness. If you investigate the extraordinary persons of the last fifty years, fifty percent at some time went mad. And the very greatest among them almost surely spent time in an asylum: Nijinsky, Van Gogh, Mayakovsky—many Nobel laureates came close to madness at some point or went mad. Why? Perhaps our explanation of madness is flawed.
The man of extraordinary talent begins to see what the ordinary cannot; his connection with ordinary people breaks. He undergoes experiences that are not common; he becomes alone. If he tells you, you will not believe him.
Jesus says Satan stood beside me and whispered in my ear: Do this. I said: Get behind me, Satan.
If someone—your wife or your husband—comes and says: “I was alone on the road today; Satan came and whispered in my ear, do this,” you will at once be suspicious, pick up the phone, call the doctor—something has gone wrong.
The rishis say they converse with the gods. If your wife says: “This morning I spoke with Indra,” what will you do? Go to the office? You won’t. You’ll worry: what will happen to the children! This woman has gone mad.
And if this is your private view of your spouse, then whatever you say about the Upanishads and Vedas, you cannot truly believe such statements belong to the wise. However much reverence you show, it will be false; inwardly, you will think their brains are off. Gods and goddesses—what is all this?
Ramakrishna would talk with Kali—hours of conversation. If you had seen him, what would you think? You would not see Kali; you would only see Ramakrishna talking.
Go to an asylum: people sit talking alone, answering both sides. Naturally, the thought arises: derangement. There seems some relation between derangement and the extraordinary—or else our explanation is at fault.
The extraordinary person sees what the ordinary cannot, tastes experiences the ordinary never tastes. Then he says things beyond the ordinary mind. Then events occur in his life that break our logic, our rules, our order.
Our life is a highway, a paved road. Extraordinary people leave the road; they walk the footpaths and bring back news of lands unknown to us, not on our maps, not in our books, not in our experience. The first thought that arises is: this person’s mind is deranged.
Ramakrishna too will appear mad. In fact, anyone like Ramakrishna anywhere in the world will appear mad. But keep one difference in mind and the distinction will become clear:
- If some “madness” purifies you,
- If some “madness” makes you silent, peaceful, blissful,
- If some “madness” fills your life with celebration,
- If some “madness” frees your life from anxiety and craving,
- If some “madness” breaks the bondage, pain, chains of the world—
then such madness is good fortune, and we should pray to God for such madness.
And if some “sanity” fills your life with troubles, if some “sanity” surrounds your life with pain and tension, if some “sanity” makes your life a prison, if some “sanity” takes you nowhere but sorrow and hell—then pray to God to be freed from such sanity.
This is what I will also say about swoon. If any swoon brings a glimpse of bliss into your life, that swoon is more precious than your ordinary wakefulness. And if your so-called wakefulness only breaks you, fills you with tension, anxiety, torment, then that wakefulness is worse than swoon.
What is the touchstone? The ultimate fruit: what you become. Do not look at outward symptoms; look at the result. What flowers blossom in the end in your life!
The flowers that blossom in Ramakrishna’s life do not blossom in a madman’s life. The fragrance that comes from Ramakrishna’s life does not come from a person in swoon, coma, or hysteria. It is by that fragrance we call him Paramhansa. If you ignore that fragrance and see only the symptoms and ask a doctor, then he too is swooning, a hysteric, in need of treatment.
There are two kinds of consciousness. One is created by external pressure—reaction. Krishna says that is part of the field (kshetra) and is to be transcended. The other is not caused by anything; it is my nature, my essence, hidden within me—the spring I am born with; more rightly, I and that spring are two names for one reality. I am that spring itself.
But you will discover this spring only when you free yourself from the consciousness born of external blows. Otherwise your attention keeps going out and never reaches within. There is neither time nor opportunity.
We do two things in life. What we call waking is not waking; it is only our consciousness being aroused by outer blows. And what we call sleep is not sleep; it is merely that, from fatigue, the outer stimuli can no longer arouse us—we collapse. Our “sleep” is exhaustion, and our “waking” is our inner reaction to blows and challenges.
Krishna and Buddha and Christ wake and sleep in another way. Their sleep is not fatigue; it is rest. Their waking is not the impact of the outer; it is the inner effulgence. One who has not fallen asleep from exhaustion remains awake even in sleep. Therefore Krishna has said: the yogi is awake even when all others sleep.
This does not mean he sits all night with eyes open. Some mad people try that—sit all night with eyes open. Because they think a yogi does not sleep at night. The foolish begin to think: if we don’t sleep at night we will become yogis; or reduce sleep—four hours, three, two—the less you sleep, the more yogi you are.
Krishna does not mean that. A yogi sleeps fully—more than you, more deeply than you. But his sleep happens in the body, in the field; the knower of the field (kshetrajna) remains awake. The body is at rest; within, he is awake. If he turns over in the night, he is aware of turning. His night is not unconscious.
And note, his night is not unconscious—Krishna did not say this second part; I add it for you—your day is unconscious. The yogi is awake at night; the sensualist sleeps even by day. This does not mean you literally doze off by day; it means your inner consciousness never wakes—only impacts and blows keep you stirred.
Today psychologists say that with the noise of cities people are going deaf; if this continues, in a hundred years it will be hard to find a person with ears in the cities. The impact is so constant that the ears will become dull. Even now you hear very little—and it is good; if you heard everything happening around you, you would go mad.
That is why today’s youngsters like very loud radios. A low volume does not sufficiently strike consciousness; there must be a big noise. New music, new dances are full of din; the louder, the better—it feels a little good because small sounds do not deliver a blow; a powerful challenge, a strong impact is needed to feel a little juice. But how long can this go on?
In the West they have invented new ways: even blows are not enough; so they set up many lights, rapidly changing, deafening sound, assorted dances and songs; a completely deranged atmosphere is created. After an hour in that derangement one feels: ah, there is some life, some experience of living!
We have died so much that unless the blow is enormous, there is no experience of life. Soft tones we cannot hear at all. Yet the natural tones of life are all soft. We cannot hear the night’s silence, nor the heart’s own beat.
Have you ever heard the sound of your blood’s flow? It is very soft; you cannot hear it; but there is a sound. Buckminster Fuller wrote that for the first time he went into a building—a scientific laboratory—completely soundproof, where no sound from outside could enter. Inside he began hearing two kinds of sounds. He asked the scientist with him: “What is this? You say it is absolutely soundproof, yet I hear two sounds!”
The scientist laughed. “They are not coming from outside,” he said, “they are your blood’s flow. Your heart is beating—you have never really heard it. Because there is no outside sound here, your heart’s beat is loud. And as your blood flows, the friction makes a sound. These two sounds are within you. You brought the ‘outside’ inside; nothing from outside can enter here.”
Have you ever heard your blood? You have not. And many sit trying to hear the inner Om! That is supremely subtle; you will not hear it.
Now the sound of blood is gross, like the sound of a waterfall; yet even that you have not heard, and you think you will hear the Om! That is the most profound, subtle, final sound. Only when a person becomes completely silent does it resound. Then the inner resonance begins; the Om that resounds within is not produced; therefore we call it the unstruck sound—anahata nada.
Ahata nada means sound produced by a blow; anahata nada means sound that arises by itself without any strike. That will be heard—but only when we free our consciousness from external impacts.
When Ramakrishna is “swooned,” he has closed the doors to the outer. Now he hears the inner unstruck sound; now the Om resounds within.
But swooning is not necessary for everyone. There are methods in which awareness can be maintained both outside and inside. Those are a little more difficult, because it is a double process.
Buddha never became outwardly unconscious. There is no mention that Buddha fell as Ramakrishna did. Nor do we hear of Krishna, Jesus, or Mohammed becoming unconscious. Ramakrishna’s life has such episodes; some other saints’ lives too.
So Buddha never became outwardly unconscious; Buddha’s process is more difficult than Ramakrishna’s. Buddha says you can keep awareness on both sides—inside and outside. There is no need to shut the outer; you can be aware outwardly and inwardly both. We can stand in the middle; that supreme consciousness can stand on the threshold between inside and outside and remain aware both ways.
But it is extremely subtle; therefore it is sensible to proceed the Ramakrishna way; the other will also come later. Ramakrishna split the work—let go of outer awareness and took all awareness within. Once inner awareness is established, outer awareness can also be mastered.
Ramakrishna’s experiment is simpler than Buddha’s; for the ordinary person, Ramakrishna’s way is easier. With Buddha, you must manage two things at once; it will take longer, be more difficult, with great obstacles. Ramakrishna’s method is very simple: once, leave the outer and dive within. Once the inner juice is tasted, it can be kept alive outside too.
As far as the outer is concerned, he was unconscious; as far as the inner is concerned, he was not the least bit unconscious. Within, awareness was total. But that awareness, that consciousness, is not the same as what we call our consciousness.
Yesterday, in Krishna’s sutra, we understood that consciousness can be of two kinds. One is consciousness directed toward some object, produced by something outside—consciousness as a response to an object. You sit, someone makes a loud sound; your awareness is pulled there, your attention is attracted. You sit, a house catches fire; you forget the whole world. Your consciousness is drawn to the fire.
If your house is on fire, you become very alert; even sleep, if it was coming, disappears. You get a kind of concentration you may never otherwise have. You must have tried a thousand times to forget the whole world for a moment and contemplate the Divine; yet whenever you sat, a thousand things arose, a thousand thoughts came. Every thought but the one of God besieged the mind. But let the house catch fire and everything is forgotten; the whole world seems to vanish. The mind becomes concentrated solely on the fire.
That too is consciousness. But it is born of the outside; it is created by external impact; it depends on the outer. So Krishna said even that consciousness is part of the body, the field (kshetra).
Is there then a consciousness that does not depend on anything, that is not produced by anything, that is our very nature? By nature I mean it will not be produced by any cause; it is because we are; it is inherent in our being.
When someone makes a sound and your attention goes there, that going of attention is not inherent in your being. It is induced by the sound; it is a by-product; it is not your nature.
Imagine that no sensation at all comes from outside, no event occurs outwardly—and yet your wakefulness remains. That consciousness we call the soul, the Self. And the consciousness born of the outside is conception, attention, concentration—dharana, dhyan. Krishna counts that also as part of the body, the field.
When Ramakrishna would “lose consciousness,” their steadiness (dhriti), their attention, their focus—dharana—would drop. However loud the outer world might be, their awareness would not come outward. They were absorbed in their own nature; within, they were utterly conscious. When their samadhi would break, they would weep and cry out, “Mother, take me back there! Why have you sent me back into this suffering? Return me to that bliss.”
What we would call a faint was, for him, supreme bliss. Outwardly, all the senses had turned within; the attention that used to flow out had returned, as if the Ganges had turned back to Gangotri. That consciousness which used to come out to the door no longer came; it became absorbed in itself, still.
For us, Ramakrishna would seem fainted. Ask Western psychologists and they will say: hysterical; this is hysteria. Because Western psychology as yet has no clue of that second kind of consciousness.
Had Ramakrishna been born in the West, he would have been taken to an asylum. Surely psychiatrists would have treated him, trying to bring him back to “normal” consciousness—giving stimulants to make him more active, injections, a thousand bodily interventions to bring consciousness back. For Western psychology, outer consciousness is consciousness; if that outer consciousness is gone, the person is fainted, near death.
Romain Rolland wrote that it was fortunate Ramakrishna was born in the East; had he been born in the West, we would have cured him—meaning, we would have made him an ordinary man like everyone else. And that supreme realization—no one in the West would have recognized it.
There is a great Western thinker and psychiatrist, R. D. Laing. He says that not all who are called mad in the West are mad; some of them, in another age, might have been saints. But they lie in asylums, because Western understanding does not accept inner consciousness. If the outer consciousness is lost, the person is declared deranged.
We regard Ramakrishna as liberated. What is the difference? What is the difference between hysteria and Ramakrishna’s “faint”? As far as outward symptoms go, they are the same. Foam would come to Ramakrishna’s lips; hands and feet would stiffen like wood; he would lie like a corpse. First tremors came to the limbs, as happen in a hysterical patient; then he would become inert; outward awareness would be gone. Even if you cut his foot then, he would not know. The same happens to a hysterical patient—he falls into coma, unconsciousness. So what is the difference?
From above, in appearance, there is none. A clinician too would say this is a type of hysteria. But within, there is a great difference. The hysteric, when he returns from his swoon, is the same as before. Ramakrishna, returning from his “faint,” is not the same as before—the old man is gone.
If that man was angry before, now he is not. If he was restless, now he is not. If he was miserable, now he is not. Now he is supremely blissful.
A hysterical patient, after a hysterical blackout, is as he was, perhaps more distorted—the illness breaks him further. But one who has gone into samadhi returns new—reborn. A new breeze, a new fragrance, a new joy spreads through his life.
In the West they think from symptoms; we think from results. We say: what happens after the samadhi is the decisive thing—whether it was samadhi or swoon.
Ramakrishna would return as gold. And that swoon which burns away the dross and leaves the gold refined—calling that swoon would not be appropriate. The lust-laden personality that was Ramakrishna’s dissolves; an unprecedented, supremely luminous being is born. Such a “swoon,” from which a radiant being is born, we will not call illness; we will call it supreme good fortune. The criterion is the result.
Ramakrishna’s unconsciousness was not unconsciousness. If it were, that divine form could not have manifested. Divinity does not arise from unconsciousness; it arises from supreme awareness. To us he looks unconscious, but within he is utterly awake.
Understand it like this: the doors and windows—through which the rays of awareness used to come out—have all been closed. The senses are quiet; the inner lamp burns within; no ray comes out. Therefore we cannot recognize it. But this unconsciousness is not unconsciousness.
And if someone still insists on calling it unconsciousness, then it is a very spiritual unconsciousness—but even that word is not apt. We call it supreme awareness. Western psychology, if not today then tomorrow, will have to accept this distinction. Research in this direction has begun.
So far, under Freud’s influence, they lumped saints and madmen together. Books have been written by Western psychologists about Jesus trying to prove he was neurotic, deranged.
Naturally, someone who says, “I am the son of God,” appears mad to us. One who claims, “I am the son of God,” will seem either a rogue, a hypocrite, or mad. Who, in his senses, would claim to be the son of God! Jesus’ declarations sound like those of a madman.
But whoever experiences the inner consciousness—“son of God” is a small statement; he is God. When Mansoor or the Upanishadic rishis say “Aham Brahmasmi—I am Brahman,” the Western psychologist thinks something has gone wrong; the brain is damaged.
Their thinking too has grounds, because such madmen also exist. Go search an asylum today; many madmen are there. One says, “I am Adolf Hitler,” another “I am Benito Mussolini,” another “I am Stalin,” another “I am Napoleon.”
Bertrand Russell wrote that a man once wrote to him after he published a book in which he had said something about Julius Caesar. The man wrote: “Your book is absolutely correct; only one statement is wrong.” Russell was surprised. The book had many revolutionary ideas people would dislike. Who is this man who says everything is correct except one point! Russell invited him to dinner: “Come. I wish to know which point a man who agrees with my whole book finds wrong!” The man came in the evening. “The book is fine; I read all your books; all are fine. But one statement is utterly wrong.”
With great curiosity Russell asked: “Which?” He said: “You wrote that Julius Caesar died. That is wrong!” Julius Caesar has been dead for centuries. Russell was startled—what an error he has detected! “You wrote Julius Caesar is dead; that is wrong.” Russell asked: “Your proof?” He replied: “What proof is needed? I am Julius Caesar.”
Psychology will say: the man is mad. But when Mansoor says “I am the Truth,” when the Upanishadic seers say “We ourselves are the Divine,” when Swami Ram Tirtha says, “I created this cosmos; I move these moons and stars”—someone asked Ram Tirtha, “Who created the world?” He said, “Why ask— I did.”
Surely, that too sounds like madness. And outwardly the one who says “I am Julius Caesar” seems less mad than Ram Tirtha who says, “These moons and stars—I set them in motion with these very fingers. I created this creation.”
The statements look identical on the surface; within they are utterly different. What will be the proof of difference? That the man claiming to be Julius Caesar is miserable, afflicted, disturbed—no sleep, no peace, restless. But Ram Tirtha, saying “I created the world,” is in supreme bliss and peace.
It does not depend on what they say; we have to see what they are. And even if you do not claim to be Julius Caesar or Gandhi or Nehru, yet if you are not truly aware, you too are deranged. And Ram Tirtha, even after declaring “I created the world,” is not deranged. His statement springs from a very deep realization.
Ram Tirtha is saying that the supreme consciousness of this universe is within me. The day the universe was created, I was included in that. Without me this universe could not be, because I am a part of it. When God created the world, I was present within that. My presence is inevitable—because I am present.
In this universe nothing is destroyed; annihilation is impossible. Not even a grain of sand can be annihilated. It will remain; do what you will—erase, break, smash—it remains; its existence cannot be erased. What is, cannot go into nothingness.
How then can consciousness go into nothingness! That I am means I was, and it means I will be. Whatever the form or shape, my annihilation is impossible. There is no annihilation; only change. In this world nothing is created and nothing destroyed; things only transform, take new shapes, drop old ones. Destruction is impossible.
Science too concedes that annihilation is impossible. On this, religion and science agree.
So if Ram Tirtha says “I created it,” the statement is meaningful—it is not the utterance of a madman. In truth, it is the utterance of one who has gone beyond madness—who now sees the infinite chain of life and no longer regards himself as separate, but as a link in that endless chain.
From the outside, the sayings of madmen and saints often sound alike; but looked into from within, they could not be more different. That is why, if religion is losing prestige in the West, the biggest reason is the half-finished findings of psychology. What psychology says is half—and being half, it is dangerous.
The ordinary man is in the middle. Whoever falls below the ordinary becomes mad—he too is abnormal, extraordinary. Whoever rises above the ordinary—he too is abnormal, extraordinary. And the West takes both as the same. Fall below and you are a madman; rise above and you are a maharshi. Both are extraordinary; both are not ordinary. The West’s fundamental mistake is to equate the ordinary with healthy; therefore, whoever departs from the ordinary is unhealthy.
So Ramakrishna is unhealthy, ill, pathological. He should be treated. Those whom we worship, the West would like to treat.
But voices of dissent are arising in the West. A line of new psychologists is saying: there is a mistake in our understanding. We declare many people mad because we do not know what we are doing; many among them have extraordinary genius.
A strange fact: people of extraordinary genius often go mad. So there seems to be some relation between genius and madness. If you investigate the extraordinary persons of the last fifty years, fifty percent at some time went mad. And the very greatest among them almost surely spent time in an asylum: Nijinsky, Van Gogh, Mayakovsky—many Nobel laureates came close to madness at some point or went mad. Why? Perhaps our explanation of madness is flawed.
The man of extraordinary talent begins to see what the ordinary cannot; his connection with ordinary people breaks. He undergoes experiences that are not common; he becomes alone. If he tells you, you will not believe him.
Jesus says Satan stood beside me and whispered in my ear: Do this. I said: Get behind me, Satan.
If someone—your wife or your husband—comes and says: “I was alone on the road today; Satan came and whispered in my ear, do this,” you will at once be suspicious, pick up the phone, call the doctor—something has gone wrong.
The rishis say they converse with the gods. If your wife says: “This morning I spoke with Indra,” what will you do? Go to the office? You won’t. You’ll worry: what will happen to the children! This woman has gone mad.
And if this is your private view of your spouse, then whatever you say about the Upanishads and Vedas, you cannot truly believe such statements belong to the wise. However much reverence you show, it will be false; inwardly, you will think their brains are off. Gods and goddesses—what is all this?
Ramakrishna would talk with Kali—hours of conversation. If you had seen him, what would you think? You would not see Kali; you would only see Ramakrishna talking.
Go to an asylum: people sit talking alone, answering both sides. Naturally, the thought arises: derangement. There seems some relation between derangement and the extraordinary—or else our explanation is at fault.
The extraordinary person sees what the ordinary cannot, tastes experiences the ordinary never tastes. Then he says things beyond the ordinary mind. Then events occur in his life that break our logic, our rules, our order.
Our life is a highway, a paved road. Extraordinary people leave the road; they walk the footpaths and bring back news of lands unknown to us, not on our maps, not in our books, not in our experience. The first thought that arises is: this person’s mind is deranged.
Ramakrishna too will appear mad. In fact, anyone like Ramakrishna anywhere in the world will appear mad. But keep one difference in mind and the distinction will become clear:
- If some “madness” purifies you,
- If some “madness” makes you silent, peaceful, blissful,
- If some “madness” fills your life with celebration,
- If some “madness” frees your life from anxiety and craving,
- If some “madness” breaks the bondage, pain, chains of the world—
then such madness is good fortune, and we should pray to God for such madness.
And if some “sanity” fills your life with troubles, if some “sanity” surrounds your life with pain and tension, if some “sanity” makes your life a prison, if some “sanity” takes you nowhere but sorrow and hell—then pray to God to be freed from such sanity.
This is what I will also say about swoon. If any swoon brings a glimpse of bliss into your life, that swoon is more precious than your ordinary wakefulness. And if your so-called wakefulness only breaks you, fills you with tension, anxiety, torment, then that wakefulness is worse than swoon.
What is the touchstone? The ultimate fruit: what you become. Do not look at outward symptoms; look at the result. What flowers blossom in the end in your life!
The flowers that blossom in Ramakrishna’s life do not blossom in a madman’s life. The fragrance that comes from Ramakrishna’s life does not come from a person in swoon, coma, or hysteria. It is by that fragrance we call him Paramhansa. If you ignore that fragrance and see only the symptoms and ask a doctor, then he too is swooning, a hysteric, in need of treatment.
There are two kinds of consciousness. One is created by external pressure—reaction. Krishna says that is part of the field (kshetra) and is to be transcended. The other is not caused by anything; it is my nature, my essence, hidden within me—the spring I am born with; more rightly, I and that spring are two names for one reality. I am that spring itself.
But you will discover this spring only when you free yourself from the consciousness born of external blows. Otherwise your attention keeps going out and never reaches within. There is neither time nor opportunity.
We do two things in life. What we call waking is not waking; it is only our consciousness being aroused by outer blows. And what we call sleep is not sleep; it is merely that, from fatigue, the outer stimuli can no longer arouse us—we collapse. Our “sleep” is exhaustion, and our “waking” is our inner reaction to blows and challenges.
Krishna and Buddha and Christ wake and sleep in another way. Their sleep is not fatigue; it is rest. Their waking is not the impact of the outer; it is the inner effulgence. One who has not fallen asleep from exhaustion remains awake even in sleep. Therefore Krishna has said: the yogi is awake even when all others sleep.
This does not mean he sits all night with eyes open. Some mad people try that—sit all night with eyes open. Because they think a yogi does not sleep at night. The foolish begin to think: if we don’t sleep at night we will become yogis; or reduce sleep—four hours, three, two—the less you sleep, the more yogi you are.
Krishna does not mean that. A yogi sleeps fully—more than you, more deeply than you. But his sleep happens in the body, in the field; the knower of the field (kshetrajna) remains awake. The body is at rest; within, he is awake. If he turns over in the night, he is aware of turning. His night is not unconscious.
And note, his night is not unconscious—Krishna did not say this second part; I add it for you—your day is unconscious. The yogi is awake at night; the sensualist sleeps even by day. This does not mean you literally doze off by day; it means your inner consciousness never wakes—only impacts and blows keep you stirred.
Today psychologists say that with the noise of cities people are going deaf; if this continues, in a hundred years it will be hard to find a person with ears in the cities. The impact is so constant that the ears will become dull. Even now you hear very little—and it is good; if you heard everything happening around you, you would go mad.
That is why today’s youngsters like very loud radios. A low volume does not sufficiently strike consciousness; there must be a big noise. New music, new dances are full of din; the louder, the better—it feels a little good because small sounds do not deliver a blow; a powerful challenge, a strong impact is needed to feel a little juice. But how long can this go on?
In the West they have invented new ways: even blows are not enough; so they set up many lights, rapidly changing, deafening sound, assorted dances and songs; a completely deranged atmosphere is created. After an hour in that derangement one feels: ah, there is some life, some experience of living!
We have died so much that unless the blow is enormous, there is no experience of life. Soft tones we cannot hear at all. Yet the natural tones of life are all soft. We cannot hear the night’s silence, nor the heart’s own beat.
Have you ever heard the sound of your blood’s flow? It is very soft; you cannot hear it; but there is a sound. Buckminster Fuller wrote that for the first time he went into a building—a scientific laboratory—completely soundproof, where no sound from outside could enter. Inside he began hearing two kinds of sounds. He asked the scientist with him: “What is this? You say it is absolutely soundproof, yet I hear two sounds!”
The scientist laughed. “They are not coming from outside,” he said, “they are your blood’s flow. Your heart is beating—you have never really heard it. Because there is no outside sound here, your heart’s beat is loud. And as your blood flows, the friction makes a sound. These two sounds are within you. You brought the ‘outside’ inside; nothing from outside can enter here.”
Have you ever heard your blood? You have not. And many sit trying to hear the inner Om! That is supremely subtle; you will not hear it.
Now the sound of blood is gross, like the sound of a waterfall; yet even that you have not heard, and you think you will hear the Om! That is the most profound, subtle, final sound. Only when a person becomes completely silent does it resound. Then the inner resonance begins; the Om that resounds within is not produced; therefore we call it the unstruck sound—anahata nada.
Ahata nada means sound produced by a blow; anahata nada means sound that arises by itself without any strike. That will be heard—but only when we free our consciousness from external impacts.
When Ramakrishna is “swooned,” he has closed the doors to the outer. Now he hears the inner unstruck sound; now the Om resounds within.
But swooning is not necessary for everyone. There are methods in which awareness can be maintained both outside and inside. Those are a little more difficult, because it is a double process.
Buddha never became outwardly unconscious. There is no mention that Buddha fell as Ramakrishna did. Nor do we hear of Krishna, Jesus, or Mohammed becoming unconscious. Ramakrishna’s life has such episodes; some other saints’ lives too.
So Buddha never became outwardly unconscious; Buddha’s process is more difficult than Ramakrishna’s. Buddha says you can keep awareness on both sides—inside and outside. There is no need to shut the outer; you can be aware outwardly and inwardly both. We can stand in the middle; that supreme consciousness can stand on the threshold between inside and outside and remain aware both ways.
But it is extremely subtle; therefore it is sensible to proceed the Ramakrishna way; the other will also come later. Ramakrishna split the work—let go of outer awareness and took all awareness within. Once inner awareness is established, outer awareness can also be mastered.
Ramakrishna’s experiment is simpler than Buddha’s; for the ordinary person, Ramakrishna’s way is easier. With Buddha, you must manage two things at once; it will take longer, be more difficult, with great obstacles. Ramakrishna’s method is very simple: once, leave the outer and dive within. Once the inner juice is tasted, it can be kept alive outside too.
Another friend has asked: It is said that even the gods, if they desire liberation, must assume a human body. Is the breaking of identification between kshetra and kshetrajna not possible in the divine realm? Why is it necessary to be human? If supreme knowledge happens only when the bond between the field and the knower of the field is severed, why cannot the gods sever it? Why must one come into a human body for this?
It’s a bit technical, but worth understanding—and useful to you. The gods aren’t present here, but still it concerns you, because it will let you understand something essential.
Liberation is not possible from the deva-yoni, the divine birth; the reason is profound. Liberation is possible from the human birth; that, too, is a deep truth. Don’t take this to mean that there is some great glory in being human—don’t let this make you puff up as if you were higher than the gods just because liberation can happen only from the human birth.
No: it’s not a matter of higher or lower, so there’s no ground for pride. In fact—if you understand rightly—there is a little reason to be humble. The reason is that deva-yoni means a realm where there is nothing but pleasure. And where there is only pleasure, stupor thickens. Suffering breaks stupor; suffering is liberating. Pain gives rise to the urge to be free of it. Pleasure does not create the urge to be free of pleasure.
When you say you want to be free of the world, do you mean you want to be free of pleasure? No—you want to be free of pain. It is because you want freedom from pain that you wish to be free of the world. If someone taught you a knack for remaining in the world and yet being free of pain, you would never utter the word “moksha” again. You would tell Krishna and the rest, “Keep your liberation; I’ll stay here.” If pain can be dropped and pleasure kept, what need is there for liberation?
The very question of leaving the world arises because if we want to drop pain, we must also drop pleasure—they come together.
In the world, pleasure and pain are mixed. Every pleasure carries pain with it. Grab pleasure and pain is already in your grasp. You reach for pleasure and fall into the grip of pain. Desire pleasure and you open the door to pain.
Heaven, the deva-yoni, means a realm of nothing but pleasure. Where there is only pleasure, the very thought of dropping it will not arise. Therefore gods become slaves; the idea of renunciation does not occur.
Nor can one be liberated from hell, nor from heaven. Those who declared this had investigated deeply. In hell there is nothing but pain, and if there is only pain, a person becomes habituated to it. Understand this.
If life is nothing but pain and one has no experience of any pleasure at all, one becomes accustomed to pain; when there is no taste of pleasure, even the longing for pleasure gradually evaporates. Longing for pleasure arises only where there is hope.
That is why, in the world, the more the hope of pleasure rises, the more pain grows. Five hundred years ago a shudra was as pained as today—perhaps more. But he was not “unhappy” in the modern sense, because he had no notion that there could be a way to be anything other than a shudra. Now he knows; now hope has opened. Now he knows it isn’t necessary to remain a shudra; he could become a brahmin. Sweeping the village road is not an inevitability; he could become the president. The door of hope has opened.
Now he still sweeps the road, but with deep anguish. Five hundred years ago he swept the road too, but without anguish—because the wall of fate was so strong, there was no hope of going beyond it, no way out, and the matter ended there.
No one practices in hell, and no one practices in heaven either. In hell, suffering is so intense and there is no way out that one makes peace with it. When suffering feels ultimate, we resign. As long as hope remains, we fight.
Understand it: as long as there is hope, we fight—and only as far as hope extends do we fight. When hope collapses, we sit quietly; the fight is over.
No one practices in heaven because the thought of escaping pleasure never arises. There is no question of leaving pleasure.
The human being stands between the two. Human beings are both—hell and heaven. Man is half hell and half heaven, and the two are mixed. Here pain is intense, and so is hope for pleasure. And there is this lived experience: after every pleasure, pain comes. Therefore the human is a crossroads; below him is hell, above him is heaven. In heaven, a person resigns to pleasure; in hell, to pain; in the human condition one can never be at peace with anything. Man is dissatisfaction incarnate. Whatever happens, he is not content. Hence the birth of sadhana.
Where dissatisfaction is inevitable—whatever your situation—if you are in a hut, you’ll be unhappy; if you are in a palace, you’ll be unhappy. The very being of man is such that he cannot be sated. Unsatedness remains. The structure of his being itself is a trouble. He is a middle link; half of heaven peeks in, half of hell peeks in.
Man has no personality of his own. He is half-and-half, incomplete and dangling on the steps—like Trishanku. That’s why a human who does not enter into practice is out of the ordinary. One who does not embark on sadhana is extraordinary. In hell it is understandable not to do sadhana. In heaven, understandable. But if you do not enter practice as a human, you are miraculous—because your very being is dissatisfaction. If even out of this dissatisfaction no urge for practice arises in you, it is astonishing.
The greatest wonder in the world is that someone is a human being and yet not a seeker. That is the greatest wonder. To be a god in heaven and be a seeker would be a wonder; to be in hell and be a seeker would also be a wonder. But to be human and not be a seeker—that is the greatest wonder. Your very being is discontent—how can one be fulfilled through discontent? Sadhana simply means: as I am, I cannot be content; I must transform myself.
That is why the wise called the human state a crossroads. You will have to return even from heaven; when your merits are exhausted, you will have to return from pleasure. And when your sins are exhausted, you will have to return from hell.
From the human birth three paths open. One: accumulate suffering and fall into hell. Two: accumulate pleasure and go to heaven. But both are momentary—and both will be lost. Whatever is accumulated will be exhausted; all earnings get spent. There is no wealth that is not consumed; what is earned will be spent.
Hell will be exhausted, heaven will be exhausted—unless it dawns on you that there is a third way, not of earning or acquiring, but of uncovering what is already hidden within. Heaven is an earning, hell is too. But the divine within you is not an earning; it is your nature. It is already present. The day you stop going toward heaven and hell and begin going toward yourself, from that day there is no need to return.
There was a Muslim mystic, a woman, Rabia. One day people saw her running through the market. In one hand she carried a pitcher of water, in the other a lit torch. They said, “Rabia, have you gone mad? We often suspected as much hearing your words—but what is this? What play, what drama is this? Where are you rushing? And what are this water and torch for?”
Rabia said, “With this water I want to drown your hell; with this torch I want to burn your heaven. Until you are free of heaven and hell, there can be no meeting with God.”
Liberation is not possible from the deva-yoni, the divine birth; the reason is profound. Liberation is possible from the human birth; that, too, is a deep truth. Don’t take this to mean that there is some great glory in being human—don’t let this make you puff up as if you were higher than the gods just because liberation can happen only from the human birth.
No: it’s not a matter of higher or lower, so there’s no ground for pride. In fact—if you understand rightly—there is a little reason to be humble. The reason is that deva-yoni means a realm where there is nothing but pleasure. And where there is only pleasure, stupor thickens. Suffering breaks stupor; suffering is liberating. Pain gives rise to the urge to be free of it. Pleasure does not create the urge to be free of pleasure.
When you say you want to be free of the world, do you mean you want to be free of pleasure? No—you want to be free of pain. It is because you want freedom from pain that you wish to be free of the world. If someone taught you a knack for remaining in the world and yet being free of pain, you would never utter the word “moksha” again. You would tell Krishna and the rest, “Keep your liberation; I’ll stay here.” If pain can be dropped and pleasure kept, what need is there for liberation?
The very question of leaving the world arises because if we want to drop pain, we must also drop pleasure—they come together.
In the world, pleasure and pain are mixed. Every pleasure carries pain with it. Grab pleasure and pain is already in your grasp. You reach for pleasure and fall into the grip of pain. Desire pleasure and you open the door to pain.
Heaven, the deva-yoni, means a realm of nothing but pleasure. Where there is only pleasure, the very thought of dropping it will not arise. Therefore gods become slaves; the idea of renunciation does not occur.
Nor can one be liberated from hell, nor from heaven. Those who declared this had investigated deeply. In hell there is nothing but pain, and if there is only pain, a person becomes habituated to it. Understand this.
If life is nothing but pain and one has no experience of any pleasure at all, one becomes accustomed to pain; when there is no taste of pleasure, even the longing for pleasure gradually evaporates. Longing for pleasure arises only where there is hope.
That is why, in the world, the more the hope of pleasure rises, the more pain grows. Five hundred years ago a shudra was as pained as today—perhaps more. But he was not “unhappy” in the modern sense, because he had no notion that there could be a way to be anything other than a shudra. Now he knows; now hope has opened. Now he knows it isn’t necessary to remain a shudra; he could become a brahmin. Sweeping the village road is not an inevitability; he could become the president. The door of hope has opened.
Now he still sweeps the road, but with deep anguish. Five hundred years ago he swept the road too, but without anguish—because the wall of fate was so strong, there was no hope of going beyond it, no way out, and the matter ended there.
No one practices in hell, and no one practices in heaven either. In hell, suffering is so intense and there is no way out that one makes peace with it. When suffering feels ultimate, we resign. As long as hope remains, we fight.
Understand it: as long as there is hope, we fight—and only as far as hope extends do we fight. When hope collapses, we sit quietly; the fight is over.
No one practices in heaven because the thought of escaping pleasure never arises. There is no question of leaving pleasure.
The human being stands between the two. Human beings are both—hell and heaven. Man is half hell and half heaven, and the two are mixed. Here pain is intense, and so is hope for pleasure. And there is this lived experience: after every pleasure, pain comes. Therefore the human is a crossroads; below him is hell, above him is heaven. In heaven, a person resigns to pleasure; in hell, to pain; in the human condition one can never be at peace with anything. Man is dissatisfaction incarnate. Whatever happens, he is not content. Hence the birth of sadhana.
Where dissatisfaction is inevitable—whatever your situation—if you are in a hut, you’ll be unhappy; if you are in a palace, you’ll be unhappy. The very being of man is such that he cannot be sated. Unsatedness remains. The structure of his being itself is a trouble. He is a middle link; half of heaven peeks in, half of hell peeks in.
Man has no personality of his own. He is half-and-half, incomplete and dangling on the steps—like Trishanku. That’s why a human who does not enter into practice is out of the ordinary. One who does not embark on sadhana is extraordinary. In hell it is understandable not to do sadhana. In heaven, understandable. But if you do not enter practice as a human, you are miraculous—because your very being is dissatisfaction. If even out of this dissatisfaction no urge for practice arises in you, it is astonishing.
The greatest wonder in the world is that someone is a human being and yet not a seeker. That is the greatest wonder. To be a god in heaven and be a seeker would be a wonder; to be in hell and be a seeker would also be a wonder. But to be human and not be a seeker—that is the greatest wonder. Your very being is discontent—how can one be fulfilled through discontent? Sadhana simply means: as I am, I cannot be content; I must transform myself.
That is why the wise called the human state a crossroads. You will have to return even from heaven; when your merits are exhausted, you will have to return from pleasure. And when your sins are exhausted, you will have to return from hell.
From the human birth three paths open. One: accumulate suffering and fall into hell. Two: accumulate pleasure and go to heaven. But both are momentary—and both will be lost. Whatever is accumulated will be exhausted; all earnings get spent. There is no wealth that is not consumed; what is earned will be spent.
Hell will be exhausted, heaven will be exhausted—unless it dawns on you that there is a third way, not of earning or acquiring, but of uncovering what is already hidden within. Heaven is an earning, hell is too. But the divine within you is not an earning; it is your nature. It is already present. The day you stop going toward heaven and hell and begin going toward yourself, from that day there is no need to return.
There was a Muslim mystic, a woman, Rabia. One day people saw her running through the market. In one hand she carried a pitcher of water, in the other a lit torch. They said, “Rabia, have you gone mad? We often suspected as much hearing your words—but what is this? What play, what drama is this? Where are you rushing? And what are this water and torch for?”
Rabia said, “With this water I want to drown your hell; with this torch I want to burn your heaven. Until you are free of heaven and hell, there can be no meeting with God.”
Osho's Commentary
“And, O Arjuna: absence of the pride of superiority; absence of ostentatious conduct; not harming any living being in any way; forgiveness; simplicity of mind and speech; devoted service to the guru with faith and love; purity within and without; steadiness of the heart; restraint of the body along with mind and senses; dispassion toward the enjoyments of this world and the next; absence of ego; and again and again seeing the suffering and faults in birth, death, old age and disease—these are the marks of knowledge.”
Who is a knower? Yesterday Krishna said that the knower knows in essence that kshetra and kshetrajna are separate. So now it is necessary to understand who a knower is. Who will be able to know this distinction? Who, knowing the distinction, will realize the non-dual? Here are the traits of the knower. Consider each carefully.
Absence of the pride of superiority—this to begin with, because knowledge instantly breeds a feeling of superiority: I am superior, others are inferior; I know, others don’t; I am a knower, others are ignorant. The very first disease that comes with knowledge, which must be avoided, is the ego of superiority.
We have seen the swagger of the brahmin. It is fading now, assaulted from all sides. Otherwise the brahmin’s swagger was unmistakable. One could tell by his face. The set of his nose, the look in his eyes, the aura on his face! Even if he begged for alms, he could be recognized as a brahmin. His eyes—his sense of superiority—an aristocracy, a deep nobility within: I am superior! He might be a naked fakir, his clothes torn, a begging bowl in hand—no matter; inside a flame of superiority burned.
A curious event occurred in human history: in India we placed the brahmin above the kshatriya; we placed knowledge above the sword. Therefore India never had a revolution. Wherever social upheaval occurs, behind it is always a brahmin—someone thinking, someone plotting. The unintelligent only follow behind. If in the West revolutions have taken place…
I call Marx a brahmin. I call Lenin and Trotsky brahmins—“brahmin” meaning the intelligentsia, those who think, who reflect. If you hurt the superiority of such thinkers even a little, they create upheaval; they incite people immediately.
Only India is the land where, in five thousand years, there has been no revolution. What is the secret? The whole world has had revolutions; India has not. The secret is that we enthroned the brahmin—the one who could create upheaval—right from the start. We told him, “You are superior.”
Then another curious thing happened: the brahmin continued to starve, to be poor, to suffer—but he never spoke of rebellion, because his inner superiority was secured. And when one is superior, what is there to fight?
Russia is following this again—hard to imagine, but it is. Today Russia has abolished all classes, but has seated the brahmin on top—the “Academicians.” All the intellectuals—writers, poets, scientists, doctors, lawyers—those from whom upheaval might come—have been made an aristocratic class.
In Russia a writer is honored as nowhere on earth; a poet is honored as nowhere else; a scientist, a thinking person, is honored. They have been set above—put again in the class of the brahmin. Now there can be no revolution in Russia until this brahmin aristocracy is broken.
Two experiments have been done. India did it five thousand years ago; Russia is imitating it knowingly or unknowingly. Seat the brahmin on top and there will be no upheaval. Keep his superiority intact and nothing else matters. He can beg, but his inner swagger must remain. Seat him on a throne and ask him to be humble, to drop his inner pride—he will kick the throne. Such a throne has no value for him; he wants the inner throne.
As soon as a person gets a slight taste of knowledge, an inner superiority begins. His gait changes, his swagger changes.
Krishna says: the first mark of knowledge is absence of the pride of superiority.
A brahmin should be humble—this is the first mark. It does not happen; precisely because it does not happen, it has been stated first. What does not happen needs attention first; what is most difficult needs care first.
When knowledge comes, humility should grow alongside. If humility does not grow with knowledge, knowledge turns poisonous. If humility increases in proportion to knowledge, knowledge cannot become poison; it becomes nectar.
Absence of the pride of superiority; absence of ostentatious conduct…
There are two kinds of conduct. One is spontaneous, natural; the other is contrived for show. You are walking; a hungry man extends his hand. You put a couple of coins in it—out of simple compassion, because he is hungry.
But if no one is on the road and a hungry man extends his hand, you pass without looking. If there are onlookers, you give two coins. If your friends are with you—or suppose your daughter’s suitor has come to see her and is walking with you—and a beggar extends his hand, instead of two coins you give two rupees.
Those two rupees you are giving to your prospective son-in-law. You are performing ostentatious conduct. You are showing him who you are. This has nothing to do with the beggar. You have not given the beggar anything; there is no compassion in you, no tenderness. You are staging a display. Through ostentatious conduct you can seem a good person.
Remember, even a spontaneously bad person is better—at least he is spontaneous. And the spontaneous can become good someday—because evil brings suffering, and no one wants suffering; sooner or later he will seek joy and drop the evil. But we are bogus “good” people; that is dangerous. Bogus goodness means we are not good at all, and on the outside we have pasted on goodness—respectability.
Parents tell their children: “Don’t lose our honor; remember whose son you are.” They are not saying, “Do good because goodness is good.” They are saying, “Do good because it feeds the ego. Preserve the family’s honor.” They never say, “Being good should give you joy.” They say, “It’s a question of prestige, of lineage.”
They are teaching ego. “Remember whose son you are.” They are teaching falsehood. That boy will act from ostentation. Even when he is “good,” the lust behind his goodness will be for respect.
Respectability is ostentatious conduct—the hunt for honor. We have erected our entire conduct on honor. We teach one another this in our education and culture: if you are bad, you’ll be dishonored; fearing dishonor, one avoids wrongdoing.
You will know the truth only if you could tell people: “No worry—be as bad as you like; there will be no dishonor.” If we built a society in which there were no dishonor in being bad, you would then see how many are truly good. Right now dishonor follows wrongdoing, the ego gets hurt, so one tries to be good. Even in the longing to be good, there is no intention to be good—there is only feeding the ego.
Krishna says, among the signs of a knower: absence of ostentatious conduct. He will act spontaneously—do what feels true, what is joyous. He will not do anything simply because “What will people say?” Whether people praise or blame will not be part of his thinking.
We are forever thinking: “What will people say?” Our concern for others is so great that if I told you, “You will die tomorrow morning,” your first thought would be: “Who will carry my bier? Will so-and-so come? Will the minister come? The governor? Will there be news about me in the papers? What will people say?”
Many people secretly wish they could somehow know what people will say about them after they die. Some have even tried it.
One man, Robert Ripley, spread the news that he had died—just so he could read the newspapers and see what people would say about him. He was close to death; the doctors had said he had 24–36 hours. He called his secretary and said, “Do this—announce that I have died. I want to read my news and see what’s said.”
The next day he read glowing tributes—because after a person dies, people say good things out of etiquette, and perhaps hoping the same will be said of them. And after reading, Ripley felt satisfied and said, “Now tell the press to print my photo reading the news of my death. I’m the first person in human history to have read his own obituary.” Then he had them run a second story.
Indeed, he was the first man to read his own death notice and the messages written about him.
Concern for others is so great that even at death we don’t think of ourselves. Life is one thing; even with death upon us, we fret about others.
As long as you live with this concern for others, your conduct will be ostentatious.
A knower lives simply; he lives from within as he is—whatever the result. If sorrow comes, he is ready to bear it; if joy comes, he is ready to bear it—equanimously, he will endure whatever follows. But he will live with simplicity; he will not live by looking at you. He won’t wear masks or costumes for your eyes. He will do what feels true to him, what brings inner joy.
Absence of ostentatious conduct; not harming any living being in any way…
This too is a sign of knowledge. Why? Because the more we harm others, the more we are harmed. This is not about pity for others—it is the knower’s intelligence, his direct perception: when I hurt another, I prepare the arrangement for my own hurting.
Only an ignorant person can harm another; it means he does not know what he is doing—sowing thorns for himself. The ignorant alone can do that.
A knower sees life’s interrelationships: what I do returns to me. The world is an echo. Whatever I utter rains back upon me. If I hurl abuse, abuses return; if I offer a smile, a thousand smiles return to me. The world hands back exactly what we give it. This is the knower’s experience, not a doctrine. He knows: if I give suffering, I am inviting people to give me suffering.
Try it: when someone causes you pain, what arises in you? The first impulse is: how can I give him double the pain? You begin to scheme. This is a simple law. Therefore the knower does not wish to hurt any being in any way.
Forgiveness…
People think forgiveness means pity for another. No, not that—because pity, too, carries ego. Forgiveness is subtler.
Forgiveness means understanding human weakness and knowing that I am weak too, the other is weak too. The knower feels his own weakness; he comes to know his limits—and by knowing his own limits, he becomes forgiving toward all. He understands that everyone is weak. A knower who is not forgiving toward your weakness—know that he has not analyzed himself.
I have heard: a Jewish mystic, Baal Shem, was visited by a young man. The youth said, “I am a great sinner. Any beautiful woman I see, I want to possess. Then I am tormented. Whenever I see something good, I want to steal it. Maybe I don’t do it—but the desire arises. If someone hurts me a little, the urge to kill him arises. I am a great sinner. Give me a harsh punishment.”
Baal Shem said, “That you have confessed is enough. Just remember this: whatever happens in you happens in others too. So if you hear tomorrow that someone looked lustfully at another’s wife, don’t fill with condemnation. Understand that man is weak—because you are weak. Give birth to forgiveness.”
But the youth said, “No—punish me, give me a penalty.” Baal Shem said, “If I punish you, you will want to punish others, and forgiveness will never be born. If I say, ‘I punish you because you looked lustfully at another’s wife,’ you will bear the punishment—but your ego will be strengthened. Tomorrow, hearing of someone else’s lust, you will demand he be punished. You will not be forgiving. I give you this punishment: I give you none. Just remember when you see a fault in another that all those faults, in bigger measure, live in you. The other is forgivable.”
The knower analyzes himself. From that analysis he comes into kinship with all humanity. It is an essential trait of the knower: he does not condemn, he does not punish; he does not say, “You are a great sinner and will rot in hell.” He will not stand above you to make you small. He has analyzed himself and known his own condition; knowing his, he becomes acquainted with the condition of all.
But the youth insisted: “Unless you punish me, I will not go. I am such a great sinner!” Baal Shem said, “You are nothing—you are small; I have been greater. I too once went to a master and asked for punishment.”
Ego is very subtle; it is pleased even with great punishments. If no punishment is given, it feels, “He has not understood me—thinks I am some ordinary sinner. I keep saying I am a great sinner; give me a great penalty.” Even a great punishment tastes sweet: “I am not some run-of-the-mill sinner; I am special.”
So Baal Shem said, “I too went to a master and said, ‘I am a great sinner; give me a great punishment.’ My master said, ‘I will not punish you. And remember, you too must never punish anyone—give only the feeling of forgiveness.’”
Krishna says: forgiveness is a mark of the knower.
He knows man is weak, in trouble, in deep dilemmas, complex as he is. How to declare him guilty?
If you make mistakes, it’s no surprise—it seems natural. In fact, if you never made mistakes, that would seem unnatural. Man is so frail, so pressed upon by forces, so complex, in so many troubles—amid them all he somehow manages to hold himself together.
Krishna says: forgiveness; simplicity of mind and speech…
Take care to understand what simplicity means. It means without guile; straight; without making plans or calculations.
A small child is simple. If anger arises, he blazes like fire; the next moment he smiles like a flower. The one he was ready to destroy a moment before, he now plays with. He simply brings out what is inside; he doesn’t think what people will think, what the world will say, whether this leads to heaven or hell. He doesn’t think—he expresses.
Hence the child can cry now and laugh now. Adults are amazed: what kind of creatures are these children! Just crying, now laughing—are they hypocrites? How can it change so fast? If you cry, it will take two–four days to laugh—because your crying keeps seeping within. Do you know why?
A friend came: a year ago his wife passed. He still cannot laugh. “Free me from this crying,” he said. I told him, “If you trust my sense of it, you have not wept rightly; otherwise how could you cry for a year? You are crying lukewarmly—keeping a long face—without letting it out. Beat your chest, dance, shout—weep rightly. Take a day off and weep for twenty-four hours—instead of twenty-four years. Then laughter will come of itself. When weeping is complete, laughter arrives.”
The child cries one moment and laughs the next—not because he deceives, nor because the laughter is false, but because his crying was so true it finished. Now he laughs.
Your crying is false, your laughing is false—pasted on the surface. Life runs in falseness. Both wheels of your cart are painted imitations; no wonder life doesn’t go anywhere—then you ask, “What is the purpose? Where is the goal?” How can it be? The wheels are fake.
Simplicity means: whatever is inside appears outside. It will be difficult. You say, “You are inviting trouble.” Yes—that is why few can be simple. We become complex precisely to avoid difficulties.
You meet a man in the morning and think, “What a wretch—I saw his face first thing; the day is spoiled.” But you fold your hands and say, “What a blessing to see you! Such grace! For days I longed to see you.” Inside you’re saying, “What a scoundrel!”
If you said it straight—“Sir, where did you come from? The day is ruined”—you’d face trouble. He won’t let you go; he’ll create a scene. So you put a false veil on top. The necessities of life make you false.
But Krishna says: for the knower, let there be difficulty—he must have simplicity of mind and speech. He will say it as it is. Not to hurt or insult anyone, but so that people may know him as he is. Whatever difficulty it brings, he will bear it, but he will not make himself false.
There are two ways: either, to avoid outer difficulty, become complex within; or, if you are ready to face outer difficulty, become simple within.
The greatest austerity of saintliness is simplicity. Standing in the sun is not saintliness. Standing on one’s head will not make a saint. These are drills, not of great value. The real struggle of saintliness is simplicity—because then you must bear many troubles. You have woven a net of lies all around; you have given assurances you cannot fulfill; you have made statements that are untrue; you have kept everyone deceived; a false world has grown around you. Simplicity means that world will fall, become a ruin.
You keep telling your wife, “I love you.” She doesn’t quite believe; she asks every day, “Do you love me?” in a thousand ways. Husband and wife keep asking, because neither truly trusts—how can they, when both are deceiving? The wife knows, “I don’t love him; how can I trust his love?” The husband knows the same. So they test each other with secret glances and open questions—and when asked, they embrace and assure, “Apart from you, in lifetimes upon lifetimes, there has been no one, and there never will be.” They speak of many lifetimes, while inside they think, “If only I could be free of you in this very life!”
The greatest austerity is to become simple. At first there will be much difficulty. But only at the beginning; soon difficulties will subside. Soon you will find you have risen above them. And there is a delight: difficulty borne in simplicity yields joy, and the pleasure gained in complexity becomes suffering. We become so knotted inside that joy cannot enter; so restless that no ray of peace can penetrate.
So Krishna says: simplicity of mind and speech; service and worship of the guru with faith and devotion…
Why so many qualifiers—“with faith and devotion”? Because for a human being, accepting anyone as guru is extremely difficult. Among the hardest things in the world is to accept a guru—because accepting a guru means admitting, “I am ignorant.” Our deep belief is that we already know.
To become a disciple is very difficult—perhaps the most difficult—becoming ready to learn by dropping the ego completely.
To accept someone as higher than oneself is complex; the mind whispers, “No one is above me; all are beneath me.” Every person imagines himself at the peak—this is the mind’s natural condition.
So to accept anyone above oneself is hard. That is why it is easy to accept a teacher, difficult to accept a guru. There is a difference between a teacher and a guru. The teacher is a pragmatic relationship: we learn from you, we pay you, transaction done. You take a fee, give us information—finished. That is not the guru’s relationship.
The teacher-student relationship is like asking a passerby for directions to the station. He points the way; you thank him and go. No more connection. It is a utilitarian relationship.
The guru-disciple relationship is non-utilitarian; nothing about it is transactional. The disciple can give the guru nothing in return—no money.
In the old days the arrangement was that the guru even fed the student, gave him lodging in the ashram, cared for him as a father would his son—gave knowledge, and took nothing in return.
You will find it difficult to be with someone who takes nothing in return. If he takes something, the relationship feels equal; if he takes nothing, equality never arises—he is above, you are below.
Therefore Krishna insists: service and worship of the guru, with faith and devotion.
Faith and devotion are needed—and there is a psychological reason. Psychologists say: whenever we receive something from someone and cannot give back, enmity arises toward that person—because he has, in a sense, humiliated us.
I have a friend—very wealthy, very proud, and a very good man. Whenever anyone around him is in trouble, he helps—at least among his relatives, friends, acquaintances. One day he said to me, “All my life I have done nothing but help others—yet no one acknowledges my help. On the contrary, they speak ill of me. Those I help become my enemies. Why? What is happening?”
I asked, “Do you ever allow them to give you anything in return?” He said, “There is no need. I have money; I help.” I said, “There is the difficulty. They feel insulted at having to take help—and since you don’t let them return anything, they will become your enemies. They will repay you somehow. Either you accept something from them sometime and allow them to be ‘above’ for a moment—or your help was false, and to console themselves they will spread the word that you are a bad man. Then they can feel, ‘How could I be below such a man? I am above him.’ They are seeking consolation.”
The human mind is complex.
From the guru you receive knowledge; you can give nothing back—how to return knowledge? What you receive has no equivalent return. Hence in India it was insisted that the disciple must have deep faith and devotion; only then can he avoid turning against the guru. Otherwise he will become an enemy—if not today, tomorrow. He will find some excuse, some cause for enmity; only then will he feel relief—free of the burden.
So, with much inquiry, faith and devotion were made essential conditions—only then can the disciple walk the path with the guru and avoid becoming his enemy. Otherwise the guru’s disciple will surely become his foe.
You can see this in another way: sons become enemies of fathers. Therefore we created rituals to cultivate deep reverence for the father; otherwise sons would turn against them—because everything is received from the father, and what can be returned?
What is received from the father can still be repaid, being external things. What is received from the guru cannot be repaid at all. It is an event of such a kind that it can be returned only in one way: by making a disciple of someone else. That’s the only way—there is no other. What you received from the guru you pass on to another—that is the way. There is no way to return it to the guru.
Therefore: worship of the guru with faith and devotion. Purity within and without; steadiness of the heart; restraint of the body along with mind and senses…
I have spoken on these at length earlier.
Dispassion toward all enjoyments of this world and the next; absence of ego; and again and again seeing the suffering and faults in birth, death, old age and disease—these are the marks of knowledge.
One last point we haven’t discussed: again and again seeing the faults in birth, death, old age, disease, sorrow—these are marks of knowledge.
When illness comes upon you, suffering, failure, anguish—what do you do? Instantly you think that some other people’s mischief or conspiracy has caused your pain. That is a mark of ignorance.
The mark of the knower is: whenever he suffers, he thinks, “Surely I have erred—I have sinned, I have made a mistake—and I am reaping its fruit.” The mark of knowledge is: whenever suffering comes, search for your own fault. Surely somewhere I must have sown, hence I reap.
The ignorant blames others; the knower always blames himself. Therefore the ignorant is never free of fault; the knower becomes free. If a deep conviction grows—and it will—that in every suffering, every pain, every illness, every death, my own mistake is at work, then it will become difficult to repeat those mistakes. One cannot commit the same faults that produce such suffering. The mind will be conditioned; a memory will sink deep, like an arrow.
If all my sufferings are born of me, then future sufferings will become difficult—because I will remove my own causes. But the ignorant thinks his pains are caused by others—so he has no power in his hands. He can do nothing. He will be happy only when everyone else changes, when the whole world changes—then he will be happy! That will never happen.
The knower can be happy now—this very moment—because he holds that suffering is due to his own fault.
A Muslim fakir, Ibrahim, was walking with his disciples. They revered him greatly. He was indeed a pure man. Suddenly his foot struck a stone; he fell, and his foot bled.
The disciples were shocked. “This seems someone’s mischief,” they said. “When we came by last evening, this stone was not here. You pass here in the dark for morning prayers—someone must have placed this stone deliberately. Enemies are at work.”
Ibrahim said, “Fools—don’t wander into such nonsense. Wait.” He knelt and offered thanks to God. After the prayer he said, “O God, your grace is great. For sins like mine I should have been hanged today; with only a stone’s blow you have let me off. Your compassion is boundless.”
The mark of the knower is: whenever any pain arrives, he searches—what mistake of mine, what fault of mine has brought this?
These are the traits Krishna calls the marks of knowledge. Whoever begins to fulfill them moves, step by step, toward the temple of knowledge.
And the temple is not far. From where you stand it is very near. But the way you stand makes it very far—because your back is to it. You are doing everything opposite to these marks. Your back is toward the temple. So if you keep moving into deeper darkness, deeper ignorance, deeper suffering, it is no wonder.
Let us pause for five minutes. No one should get up in the middle—rising midway creates disturbance. Take part in five minutes of kirtan, and then go.