The knowable—that I shall declare; by knowing it, one savors immortality।
Beginningless, the Supreme Brahman: it is said to be neither being nor nonbeing।। 12।।
With hands and feet everywhere, with eyes, heads, and faces everywhere।
With ears everywhere in the world, it abides, pervading all।। 13।।
Shining through the functions of every sense, yet itself devoid of all senses।
Unattached, the sustainer of all; beyond qualities, yet the enjoyer of qualities।। 14।।
Geeta Darshan #5
Available in:
Read in Original Hindi (मूल हिन्दी)
Sutra (Original)
ज्ञेयं यत्तत्प्रवक्ष्यामि यज्ज्ञात्वामृतमश्नुते।
अनादिमत्परं ब्रह्म न सत्तन्नासदुच्यते।। 12।।
सर्वतः पाणिपादं तत्सर्वतोऽक्षिशिरोमुखम्।
सर्वतः श्रुतिमल्लोके सर्वमावृत्य तिष्ठति।। 13।।
सर्वेन्द्रियगुणाभासं सर्वेन्द्रियविवर्जितम्।
असक्तं सर्वभृच्चैव निर्गुणं गुणभोक्तृ च।। 14।।
अनादिमत्परं ब्रह्म न सत्तन्नासदुच्यते।। 12।।
सर्वतः पाणिपादं तत्सर्वतोऽक्षिशिरोमुखम्।
सर्वतः श्रुतिमल्लोके सर्वमावृत्य तिष्ठति।। 13।।
सर्वेन्द्रियगुणाभासं सर्वेन्द्रियविवर्जितम्।
असक्तं सर्वभृच्चैव निर्गुणं गुणभोक्तृ च।। 14।।
Transliteration:
jñeyaṃ yattatpravakṣyāmi yajjñātvāmṛtamaśnute|
anādimatparaṃ brahma na sattannāsaducyate|| 12||
sarvataḥ pāṇipādaṃ tatsarvato'kṣiśiromukham|
sarvataḥ śrutimalloke sarvamāvṛtya tiṣṭhati|| 13||
sarvendriyaguṇābhāsaṃ sarvendriyavivarjitam|
asaktaṃ sarvabhṛccaiva nirguṇaṃ guṇabhoktṛ ca|| 14||
jñeyaṃ yattatpravakṣyāmi yajjñātvāmṛtamaśnute|
anādimatparaṃ brahma na sattannāsaducyate|| 12||
sarvataḥ pāṇipādaṃ tatsarvato'kṣiśiromukham|
sarvataḥ śrutimalloke sarvamāvṛtya tiṣṭhati|| 13||
sarvendriyaguṇābhāsaṃ sarvendriyavivarjitam|
asaktaṃ sarvabhṛccaiva nirguṇaṃ guṇabhoktṛ ca|| 14||
Translation (Meaning)
Questions in this Discourse
A friend has asked: Osho, what is faith, and what is blind faith?
To understand this chapter of the Gita, this question will also be helpful.
By blind faith I mean that in truth there is no faith at all—only a veneer of faith has been put on. Inwardly you yourself know there is no faith, but out of some fear or some greed, or merely out of conditioning, out of society’s schooling, you have accepted it.
Such faith cannot have eyes. Eyes become available to faith only when the heart is with it. So blind faith belongs to the intellect. This needs to be understood a little.
Ordinarily people think blind faith belongs to the heart, not to the intellect. Blind faith is of the intellect; faith is of the heart. The intellect calculates profit and loss, benefit and harm, consequences—and according to those it manufactures a faith.
You have faith in God, but not because your heart has come into any harmony with the divine—rather because fear is felt. From childhood you were frightened that if you do not accept God, something harmful will happen. You were also taught that if you do accept God, heaven will be yours, you will gain merit, you will enjoy happiness in the future.
The mind is afraid. The mind is terror-stricken. The mind runs after greed. But deep within you know you have no relationship with God.
This outer faith, this forcibly imposed faith, will be blind. If the heart is not in tune, there can be no eyes. And such faith will always be afraid of reasoning—this is its hallmark. Such faith will always fear argument, because inside it is already known that there is no relationship with God. Whether he is or not is not known. Outwardly he has been acknowledged. If someone begins to refute, to argue, there will be fear within. The fear does not come from the other; it is hidden within oneself.
If my faith is superficial, blind, I will be afraid lest someone cut my faith down, lest someone speak contrary words. Contrary words do not create fear; because my faith is weak, there is fear that it may break. And my faith is only a surface—holes can appear. And if holes appear, I will catch sight of the disbelief hidden within me.
Remember, no one in the world can put you into doubt. He can do so only if doubt is already filled within you and only a thin layer of faith lies above. The layer can be broken, and your doubt will come out.
A theist who is afraid of an atheist is not a theist. And a theist who fears that if he hears something against God some danger will arise is not a theist; he has not yet attained faith. He is afraid of himself. He knows that if someone merely pokes a little, the doubt within him will come out. Lest that doubt come out, he fights like a madman to protect his belief.
The blind fight; they become perturbed and excited. They will be ready to break your head, but they will not be ready to hear you. They are announcing only one thing: they are not afraid of you; they are afraid of themselves. They fear you only lest you make them meet themselves.
Blind faith is born of greed and fear; faith is born of experience. And the person who falls into blind faith makes his faith barren forever; he will not even get a chance to become truly faithful. Hence I say again and again that it is better to be an atheist than a false theist. For in being an atheist there is at least one truth: you say, “I do not know. About what I do not know, I will not trust.” And there is a possibility for an atheist that if one day he begins to know, he will trust. But one who has cultivated false trust—how will he reach true trust? False trust gives him the notion that he already has attained faith.
The absence of religion on this earth is for this reason: people are false theists, and therefore true theism cannot become available. And as long as we cling to false theism, the ground will remain irreligious. Ask yourself: do you truly have any trust in God?
One of my teachers was an atheist. I was at his home on the day of his death. He was very ill; I had gone to visit him. Then his doctor said that beyond a day or two there was no hope, so I stayed. He had always been an atheist; he had never gone to a temple. He would be irritated even by the mention of God. If anyone spoke the name of religion, he would enter into debate. But just a little while before his death I saw him muttering “Ram-Ram, Ram-Ram.” His lips were moving softly.
I shook him and asked, “What are you doing at the last moment?” He looked at me with great helplessness, and his last words were: “At the last moment, fear is grabbing me. Who knows—if God exists, what is the harm in saying Ram-Ram! If he doesn’t, no matter; if he does, at least I’ll have remembered him at the final moment.”
This is a frightened mind. That is why old people often turn theistic. In temples, mosques, and churches you will see old men and women. And you see more women than men, because women are more fearful. And by and by everyone becomes effeminate in old age and begins to be afraid, to tremble. The confidence of youth is gone. Death approaches. As death draws near, the shadow of fear lengthens. As the shadow of fear lengthens, trust in God increases.
That trust is false. It has no relationship with reality. It is born of fear. And that which is born of fear can bring no revolution in life.
We frighten children into becoming religious—and thereby arrange that they will never become religious. Children can be frightened. Parents are powerful; society is powerful; the teacher is powerful. We bow children in temples on the basis of fear, make them offer namaz in mosques, make them pray. Children, out of compulsion, out of fear, bow and pray. And then that very fear keeps them bowed for life.
But through this, true faith never takes birth. The person who has mistaken counterfeit gems for real will never search for the real.
A religious person is not influenced by fear, nor is he agitated by greed. A religious person is in search of truth. And a different process is needed for that search. For that search there is no way to impose from above, and no benefit in it. For that search one needs to go within. The day you learn to descend within yourself, that very day right faith will begin to be available to you.
The deeper a person goes within, the deeper becomes his faith in the divine. The more a person wanders outside himself, however much he may talk of God, his faith will be false and blind.
There is only one staircase to reach God, and that is you yourself. Neither by going to any temple will faith be born, nor by going to any mosque. His temple, his mosque, his gurudwara is you. He is hidden within you. As you descend within, his taste, his savor, his experience will begin to arise. And the faith that is born out of that experience—that alone is faith. But one who becomes satisfied with counterfeit coins never goes within.
False faith is not needed at all. Because the One in whom we place trust sits within. There is no need to trust That; That can only be experienced. And that which can be experienced—what need is there to believe in it?
You do not “believe” in the sun. If someone asks you, “Do you have faith in the sun?” you will laugh: “What a useless question! The sun is; where is the question of faith?” The question of faith arises only in regard to things you do not know.
No one asks you, “Do you have faith in the earth?” The earth is; where is the question of faith? But people ask, “Do you have faith in God? Do you have faith in the soul?” And you never think that these too are incongruent questions. Yet you say you have faith or you don’t. Because the things about which you are asked are not known to you by experience.
But religion insists that they too are as experiential as the earth and the sun—perhaps even more. Because it is possible that we are deluded about the sun. The sun is outside, and our meeting with it is never direct.
Scientists say that we cannot see anything directly. You have never seen the sun till today. How will you see it directly? Sun rays come and fall on your eyes. Those rays create chemical changes in your eyes. Those chemical changes produce electrical currents within you. Those electric impulses reach you—their impact is experienced. You have never seen the sun. There is no way to see the sun directly. Even now you are looking at me, but I am not actually appearing to you; what appears are chemical changes within. There is no way to experience matter directly; the senses are intermediaries.
Therefore it is possible that the sun may not be. The faith regarding the sun is provisional. But if the self is experienced, then the faith that arises is not provisional—it is ultimate. Then no doubt can remain. Only one experience can be called indubitable: the experience of one’s own soul; all other experiences are doubtful. Deception is possible in all.
In the last world war a soldier was admitted to a hospital in France. His leg had been terribly injured, and the pain was unbearable, and from the pain he had fallen unconscious. The doctors saw that it was impossible to save the leg, and if it was not cut off, poison could spread through the whole body. So they amputated the part below the knee. He was unconscious.
When he came to in the morning, the first thing he said to the nurse standing by his bed was, “My leg is hurting badly—there is unbearable pain in my foot.” There was no foot. So there could not be pain in the foot. The leg had been cut off. But he did not know; he had been unconscious. As soon as he became conscious, he said the first thing: “There is terrible pain in my foot.” It was lying wrapped in a blanket. He knew nothing.
The nurse laughed. She said, “Think again. Is the pain really in the foot?” The man said, “How could there be any question of falsehood here? I am in unbearable pain.” The nurse said, “But your leg has been amputated, so we cannot accept that there is pain in your foot. How can there be pain in a foot that is no longer there?”
The nurse pulled back the blanket. The man saw that his leg below the knee had been cut off. But he said, “I can see that my leg below the knee has been cut off, but still the pain is in my foot—what can I do!”
Doctors were called. They investigated deeply. It was the first time someone was speaking of pain in a limb that did not even exist. Your head is cut off and you say you have a headache! The leg no longer exists, so the foot cannot hurt. There could be pain in the knee, because it was cut from there. But the man said, “There is no pain in my knee; my pain is in the foot.”
They investigated at length and discovered that when you have pain in your foot, you do not meet it directly. From the foot a network of nerves spreads up to the brain. Those nerves vibrate; from their vibrations you come to know pain. The foot had been cut off. But the nerves that had begun vibrating in the pain of the foot were still vibrating. Therefore, because of them the man was receiving the message that pain was in the foot. The foot is not there, and the foot is hurting!
From that man’s case it was concluded that whatever events reach you from outside cannot be made certain. They are not definite; they are doubtful. There can be pain without a foot. A person can appear to you without being present. If within you the very same nerves are set vibrating that vibrate in the presence of a man, then a man will begin to appear to you.
Recently many experiments have been done on rats. Slater built a small device. When any person—man or woman, animal or bird—copulates, where does the pleasure arise? Copulation occurs near the sex center, but the pleasure arises in the brain; so surely some fibers in the brain must be vibrating by which delight is felt.
Slater searched out those fibers in rats. He made a small device and connected electrodes—wires—to the brain. As soon as he pressed the button, the rat would become as delighted as in orgasm. Then he made such an arrangement that the button was placed right in front of the rat. And the rat himself learned. When the rat saw Slater pressing the button again and again and felt delight within, the rat himself began to press the button.
Then Slater wrote that the rat stopped eating and drinking altogether. He went on pressing the button until he fell unconscious. One rat pressed the button six thousand times. He kept pressing. He would press and feel delight, then press again and feel delight again. He took the flavor of orgasm six thousand times. And copulation was not occurring at all; fibers in the brain were being stirred.
Slater says that if this device is ever developed, man could become free of sex. But this is a dangerous device. If a rat presses six thousand times, you will press sixty thousand times. If a rat gets so much delight—we do not know much about the sexuality of rats—but man seems highly sexual. He will go on pressing. The rat went on pressing until he collapsed, exhausted.
Whatever is happening outside reaches your brain through fibers. Therefore it is not certain whether it is truly happening outside, or only the fibers are reporting. You can be deceived.
There is only one experience that is indubitable, upon which faith can rest: the inner experience, which does not occur through the senses, which is a direct witnessing.
So the more a person descends within, the more his faith in the divine grows. Hence Mahavira said: do not talk of God at all. Just know the self, and you will become God. Mahavira even forbade talk of God, or having faith in him. Just know the self, and you will become God—because in knowing it you will attain that experience which is supreme and ultimate.
Faith means: grounded in experience. Blind faith means: grounded in greed and fear. Search within yourself to see whether your “faiths” are based on greed, based on fear, or based on experience. If they are based on greed and fear, you are living in blind faith.
And one who lives in blind faith is not religious—and he is in great danger. He will waste his life just so. The beginning of living in faith is the very beginning of becoming religious.
By blind faith I mean that in truth there is no faith at all—only a veneer of faith has been put on. Inwardly you yourself know there is no faith, but out of some fear or some greed, or merely out of conditioning, out of society’s schooling, you have accepted it.
Such faith cannot have eyes. Eyes become available to faith only when the heart is with it. So blind faith belongs to the intellect. This needs to be understood a little.
Ordinarily people think blind faith belongs to the heart, not to the intellect. Blind faith is of the intellect; faith is of the heart. The intellect calculates profit and loss, benefit and harm, consequences—and according to those it manufactures a faith.
You have faith in God, but not because your heart has come into any harmony with the divine—rather because fear is felt. From childhood you were frightened that if you do not accept God, something harmful will happen. You were also taught that if you do accept God, heaven will be yours, you will gain merit, you will enjoy happiness in the future.
The mind is afraid. The mind is terror-stricken. The mind runs after greed. But deep within you know you have no relationship with God.
This outer faith, this forcibly imposed faith, will be blind. If the heart is not in tune, there can be no eyes. And such faith will always be afraid of reasoning—this is its hallmark. Such faith will always fear argument, because inside it is already known that there is no relationship with God. Whether he is or not is not known. Outwardly he has been acknowledged. If someone begins to refute, to argue, there will be fear within. The fear does not come from the other; it is hidden within oneself.
If my faith is superficial, blind, I will be afraid lest someone cut my faith down, lest someone speak contrary words. Contrary words do not create fear; because my faith is weak, there is fear that it may break. And my faith is only a surface—holes can appear. And if holes appear, I will catch sight of the disbelief hidden within me.
Remember, no one in the world can put you into doubt. He can do so only if doubt is already filled within you and only a thin layer of faith lies above. The layer can be broken, and your doubt will come out.
A theist who is afraid of an atheist is not a theist. And a theist who fears that if he hears something against God some danger will arise is not a theist; he has not yet attained faith. He is afraid of himself. He knows that if someone merely pokes a little, the doubt within him will come out. Lest that doubt come out, he fights like a madman to protect his belief.
The blind fight; they become perturbed and excited. They will be ready to break your head, but they will not be ready to hear you. They are announcing only one thing: they are not afraid of you; they are afraid of themselves. They fear you only lest you make them meet themselves.
Blind faith is born of greed and fear; faith is born of experience. And the person who falls into blind faith makes his faith barren forever; he will not even get a chance to become truly faithful. Hence I say again and again that it is better to be an atheist than a false theist. For in being an atheist there is at least one truth: you say, “I do not know. About what I do not know, I will not trust.” And there is a possibility for an atheist that if one day he begins to know, he will trust. But one who has cultivated false trust—how will he reach true trust? False trust gives him the notion that he already has attained faith.
The absence of religion on this earth is for this reason: people are false theists, and therefore true theism cannot become available. And as long as we cling to false theism, the ground will remain irreligious. Ask yourself: do you truly have any trust in God?
One of my teachers was an atheist. I was at his home on the day of his death. He was very ill; I had gone to visit him. Then his doctor said that beyond a day or two there was no hope, so I stayed. He had always been an atheist; he had never gone to a temple. He would be irritated even by the mention of God. If anyone spoke the name of religion, he would enter into debate. But just a little while before his death I saw him muttering “Ram-Ram, Ram-Ram.” His lips were moving softly.
I shook him and asked, “What are you doing at the last moment?” He looked at me with great helplessness, and his last words were: “At the last moment, fear is grabbing me. Who knows—if God exists, what is the harm in saying Ram-Ram! If he doesn’t, no matter; if he does, at least I’ll have remembered him at the final moment.”
This is a frightened mind. That is why old people often turn theistic. In temples, mosques, and churches you will see old men and women. And you see more women than men, because women are more fearful. And by and by everyone becomes effeminate in old age and begins to be afraid, to tremble. The confidence of youth is gone. Death approaches. As death draws near, the shadow of fear lengthens. As the shadow of fear lengthens, trust in God increases.
That trust is false. It has no relationship with reality. It is born of fear. And that which is born of fear can bring no revolution in life.
We frighten children into becoming religious—and thereby arrange that they will never become religious. Children can be frightened. Parents are powerful; society is powerful; the teacher is powerful. We bow children in temples on the basis of fear, make them offer namaz in mosques, make them pray. Children, out of compulsion, out of fear, bow and pray. And then that very fear keeps them bowed for life.
But through this, true faith never takes birth. The person who has mistaken counterfeit gems for real will never search for the real.
A religious person is not influenced by fear, nor is he agitated by greed. A religious person is in search of truth. And a different process is needed for that search. For that search there is no way to impose from above, and no benefit in it. For that search one needs to go within. The day you learn to descend within yourself, that very day right faith will begin to be available to you.
The deeper a person goes within, the deeper becomes his faith in the divine. The more a person wanders outside himself, however much he may talk of God, his faith will be false and blind.
There is only one staircase to reach God, and that is you yourself. Neither by going to any temple will faith be born, nor by going to any mosque. His temple, his mosque, his gurudwara is you. He is hidden within you. As you descend within, his taste, his savor, his experience will begin to arise. And the faith that is born out of that experience—that alone is faith. But one who becomes satisfied with counterfeit coins never goes within.
False faith is not needed at all. Because the One in whom we place trust sits within. There is no need to trust That; That can only be experienced. And that which can be experienced—what need is there to believe in it?
You do not “believe” in the sun. If someone asks you, “Do you have faith in the sun?” you will laugh: “What a useless question! The sun is; where is the question of faith?” The question of faith arises only in regard to things you do not know.
No one asks you, “Do you have faith in the earth?” The earth is; where is the question of faith? But people ask, “Do you have faith in God? Do you have faith in the soul?” And you never think that these too are incongruent questions. Yet you say you have faith or you don’t. Because the things about which you are asked are not known to you by experience.
But religion insists that they too are as experiential as the earth and the sun—perhaps even more. Because it is possible that we are deluded about the sun. The sun is outside, and our meeting with it is never direct.
Scientists say that we cannot see anything directly. You have never seen the sun till today. How will you see it directly? Sun rays come and fall on your eyes. Those rays create chemical changes in your eyes. Those chemical changes produce electrical currents within you. Those electric impulses reach you—their impact is experienced. You have never seen the sun. There is no way to see the sun directly. Even now you are looking at me, but I am not actually appearing to you; what appears are chemical changes within. There is no way to experience matter directly; the senses are intermediaries.
Therefore it is possible that the sun may not be. The faith regarding the sun is provisional. But if the self is experienced, then the faith that arises is not provisional—it is ultimate. Then no doubt can remain. Only one experience can be called indubitable: the experience of one’s own soul; all other experiences are doubtful. Deception is possible in all.
In the last world war a soldier was admitted to a hospital in France. His leg had been terribly injured, and the pain was unbearable, and from the pain he had fallen unconscious. The doctors saw that it was impossible to save the leg, and if it was not cut off, poison could spread through the whole body. So they amputated the part below the knee. He was unconscious.
When he came to in the morning, the first thing he said to the nurse standing by his bed was, “My leg is hurting badly—there is unbearable pain in my foot.” There was no foot. So there could not be pain in the foot. The leg had been cut off. But he did not know; he had been unconscious. As soon as he became conscious, he said the first thing: “There is terrible pain in my foot.” It was lying wrapped in a blanket. He knew nothing.
The nurse laughed. She said, “Think again. Is the pain really in the foot?” The man said, “How could there be any question of falsehood here? I am in unbearable pain.” The nurse said, “But your leg has been amputated, so we cannot accept that there is pain in your foot. How can there be pain in a foot that is no longer there?”
The nurse pulled back the blanket. The man saw that his leg below the knee had been cut off. But he said, “I can see that my leg below the knee has been cut off, but still the pain is in my foot—what can I do!”
Doctors were called. They investigated deeply. It was the first time someone was speaking of pain in a limb that did not even exist. Your head is cut off and you say you have a headache! The leg no longer exists, so the foot cannot hurt. There could be pain in the knee, because it was cut from there. But the man said, “There is no pain in my knee; my pain is in the foot.”
They investigated at length and discovered that when you have pain in your foot, you do not meet it directly. From the foot a network of nerves spreads up to the brain. Those nerves vibrate; from their vibrations you come to know pain. The foot had been cut off. But the nerves that had begun vibrating in the pain of the foot were still vibrating. Therefore, because of them the man was receiving the message that pain was in the foot. The foot is not there, and the foot is hurting!
From that man’s case it was concluded that whatever events reach you from outside cannot be made certain. They are not definite; they are doubtful. There can be pain without a foot. A person can appear to you without being present. If within you the very same nerves are set vibrating that vibrate in the presence of a man, then a man will begin to appear to you.
Recently many experiments have been done on rats. Slater built a small device. When any person—man or woman, animal or bird—copulates, where does the pleasure arise? Copulation occurs near the sex center, but the pleasure arises in the brain; so surely some fibers in the brain must be vibrating by which delight is felt.
Slater searched out those fibers in rats. He made a small device and connected electrodes—wires—to the brain. As soon as he pressed the button, the rat would become as delighted as in orgasm. Then he made such an arrangement that the button was placed right in front of the rat. And the rat himself learned. When the rat saw Slater pressing the button again and again and felt delight within, the rat himself began to press the button.
Then Slater wrote that the rat stopped eating and drinking altogether. He went on pressing the button until he fell unconscious. One rat pressed the button six thousand times. He kept pressing. He would press and feel delight, then press again and feel delight again. He took the flavor of orgasm six thousand times. And copulation was not occurring at all; fibers in the brain were being stirred.
Slater says that if this device is ever developed, man could become free of sex. But this is a dangerous device. If a rat presses six thousand times, you will press sixty thousand times. If a rat gets so much delight—we do not know much about the sexuality of rats—but man seems highly sexual. He will go on pressing. The rat went on pressing until he collapsed, exhausted.
Whatever is happening outside reaches your brain through fibers. Therefore it is not certain whether it is truly happening outside, or only the fibers are reporting. You can be deceived.
There is only one experience that is indubitable, upon which faith can rest: the inner experience, which does not occur through the senses, which is a direct witnessing.
So the more a person descends within, the more his faith in the divine grows. Hence Mahavira said: do not talk of God at all. Just know the self, and you will become God. Mahavira even forbade talk of God, or having faith in him. Just know the self, and you will become God—because in knowing it you will attain that experience which is supreme and ultimate.
Faith means: grounded in experience. Blind faith means: grounded in greed and fear. Search within yourself to see whether your “faiths” are based on greed, based on fear, or based on experience. If they are based on greed and fear, you are living in blind faith.
And one who lives in blind faith is not religious—and he is in great danger. He will waste his life just so. The beginning of living in faith is the very beginning of becoming religious.
Another friend has asked: Yesterday you said that exclusive love and reverence toward one is called avyabhicharini (chaste), and love and reverence toward many is called vyabhicharini (promiscuous). Ordinarily it seems the opposite. Love toward one turns into infatuation and attachment, while love toward many looks like liberation, the expansion of love, even prayer. And being able to love many appears to be the growth and widening of love, not a promiscuous mood. Please say something on this apparent contradiction.
There are two things: the One and the Infinite. Between the two lies the Many. Either love the Infinite and you will be free; or love the One and you will be free. The Many will entangle you. The Many is adultery; it is not the Infinite. Either love one, so that all your love pours onto one. Not because loving one, as such, liberates you; yesterday I also said, if you love one, you become one within.
Love is the art of transforming oneself. If you love one, you will become one; if you love the Infinite, you will become infinite.
But do not love the Many, or you will be torn to pieces.
Love for one can become infatuation; love for many will also become infatuation—only the pattern of infatuation will keep changing. Love for one can become attachment—and so will love for many. And when love for one gives such attachment and suffering, love for many will bring even more attachment and more suffering.
People think that by loving many, love will be set free. They are mistaken. Those who think so are actually sick—like Lord Byron, like the Don Juan types who keep wandering from loving one, to two, to three, and so on.
Earlier, even psychologists thought a Don Juan type is a great lover—he has so much love that it cannot be exhausted in one person, so he goes on loving many. But now clinicians agree he is neurotic. He does not have “too much” love—he has none. He doesn’t know how to love at all; therefore he only keeps changing persons.
And the more you change persons, the shallower love becomes. Depth needs time. Depth needs intimacy. Depth needs close companionship.
If a man changes his woman every day and goes on “loving,” his love will never go deeper than the body—because there will be no relationship beyond the body. Mind relates only when two people stay together through joy and sorrow. And the soul relates only when, slowly, even the presence of the other is not felt as “other.” When two people are in one room as if they are a single person—as if there are not two at all—then somewhere the inner souls are connected.
Love for one can become attachment; it is not necessary that it must. It depends on the lover. And the one who makes attachment with one will make attachment with many too. Love with one can also become prayer. That, too, depends on the lover.
If the person you love is not loved merely for the body, but you also love the humanity within and the soul within—and slowly the outer becomes secondary and the inner primary; and slowly you forget the shape and form and only the formless, attributeless presence remains in remembrance—then love has become prayer.
And it is good that this love-prayer happens with one; because depth is easier with one, not with many. Loving many is like a man digging one foot of earth here, two feet somewhere else, three feet at yet another place, and keeps digging like that all his life—and a well never happens. To make a well you must dig in one spot. Sixty feet, a hundred feet in one place, then perhaps you reach the water-table.
If two persons are in deep love, they go on digging at one place. Digging and digging, one day the layer of body breaks, the layer of mind also breaks, and the touch of consciousness begins. Husband and wife, if in deep love, can discover God in each other. Two lovers can discover God; their love will slowly become prayer.
If it seems there is danger in this, the danger is not because love toward one is dangerous. The danger arises from some fault within oneself.
Then there is the other way: love of the Infinite. Then drop even the idea of “one”; drop the idea of “many.” Drop the concern with form, with body. Be absorbed in love of the Infinite, the Eternal, the formless that surrounds you on all sides. Then love a stone, love a tree, love the cloud drifting in the sky. Then the question of persons disappears; love is with the Infinite. Even then, promiscuity does not arise.
With one there can be chastity, avyabhichar; with the Infinite there can be chastity. In between the two, promiscuity arises.
And man is very dishonest, very skillful in deceiving himself. Just now in the West this wind is very strong. Psychologists said: love with one becomes stagnation, repression, a block; love must be free; and free love will bring freedom. The outcome has been only deep immorality. Neither liberation is coming, nor love, nor prayer. People keep changing persons, and a kind of sport has begun with persons. That sacredness, that intimacy—there is no way to it.
Today one woman, tomorrow another; today one husband, tomorrow another. The very sense of husband-wife is collapsing. Between two persons it is like a momentary relationship. No responsibility, no deep attachment, no commitment. No—nothing. It is a meeting only on the surface. This meeting is dangerous. Its consequences have begun to appear in the West.
Today there is so much talk of love in the West—and there is no love at all. For love it was indispensable that there be deep companionship with one person, and such a feeling toward that one that, as if besides this person there is no one else in the world for you—only then can you descend deep into that person.
This is what Krishna means by avyabhicharini bhakti—chaste, non-adulterous devotion.
I know a friend who says: Quran is fine, Gita is fine, Bible is fine—everything is fine. Mosque is fine, temple is fine. But he has no relish for temple or mosque; not for Gita, not for Quran. Saying “all are fine” does not mean he knows they are all fine; it only means he has no concern at all. “Everything is fine” is indifference. There is no savor, no attachment—only a cool indifference.
No theism will arise out of this indifference; nothing can be done out of indifference. He bows neither in temple nor in mosque.
Yes, there are people who bow before both temple and mosque. But their bowing is formal. There is no exclusive feeling.
The man who says, “No—God is only in the mosque,” may sound pigheaded—and from the ultimate vision he is pigheaded. From the ultimate vision, God is in the temple, in the mosque, in the gurdwara too. But that is from the ultimate vision! He has not yet attained that. For now it is appropriate that his whole heart be toward one. Let him drown totally in the temple, or drown totally in the mosque.
The day he drowns totally in the mosque, that very day the temple will also be revealed in the mosque. But that is later. Right now he has not drowned in either—and he says, “All are fine.” He bows his head in temple and in mosque, but his heart will bow nowhere.
This is like a man falling in love with a woman: then it seems there is no other woman in the world as beautiful as she is. This is not a factual statement. You have not seen all women, weighed and measured them all. How can you say without knowing the women of the whole world that none is more beautiful than she?
But this is your feeling-state. If all the women of the world were standing there, even then it would seem to you that this woman is the most beautiful. Beauty is not in the woman; it is in your feeling of love. When your love-feeling is projected onto a woman, she alone is beautiful; the whole world becomes pale. In that moment, in that feeling-state, this is truth.
Don’t start talking “knowledge,” saying: “No, other women are beautiful too; this is beautiful and all are beautiful.” Of course all are beautiful—but saying that won’t do. With such arithmetic you will never fall in love. If you really fall in love, then in that moment one woman, one man, will appear supremely beautiful.
If in that you can be absorbed, slowly the woman’s personality will dissolve, and the beauty of the feminine principle will be seen. Go deeper still, and even the feminine will dissolve—only the beauty of consciousness will be experienced. The deeper you go, boundaries will break and the infinite will begin to appear. But in the primary moment the feeling will indeed be: no one is more beautiful than this.
Very often religious and social reformers cause great harm. They teach: “Allah-Ishwar tere naam, sabko sanmati de Bhagwan.” They are perfectly right—and yet wrong. Because the man who takes this to heart will gain the capacity to drown neither in Allah nor in Ram.
In the beginning one should feel: only Allah is true—Ram and the rest, all futile. Or: only Ram is true—all else futile. In the beginning this should be the feeling of love. In the final experience, upon reaching the peak, one discovers: all paths meet here.
But the man sitting at the base of the mountain, who has not climbed, says: “All paths go there.” Then how will he walk! One walks only on one path. You cannot walk on all paths. To walk there must be the feeling: this path alone goes; the rest do not. Only then do courage and enthusiasm arise. But the man who has not started yet, still sitting at the door of the journey, says: “All paths go there.” He will not be able to walk; he won’t take the first step.
So what is ultimately true need not be true at the beginning. And what seems true at the beginning need not remain at the end.
In the end, neither “Allah” is his name nor “Ram.” He has no name at all. But initially, hold onto one name—if you want to walk. If you want to sit, all names are equal. The man who does not want to walk can talk like this. The one who wants to walk must bow his head in one place. Without an exclusive feeling, total surrender cannot happen.
So when Krishna says “avyabhicharini bhakti,” he means toward one. Then it is not a question whether it is toward Allah, or Ram, or Buddha, or Mahavira. Toward anyone—but toward one.
In this context, understand this: the two ancient religions of the world are the Jewish and the Hindu; all the rest are branches. Islam and Christianity are branches of Judaism. Jain and Buddhist are branches of Hinduism. But the original two are Hindu and Jewish—and both are non-converting. Neither Jews liked to persuade and make someone a Jew, nor did Hindus like to persuade and make someone a Hindu. Their stance was: do not shake anyone from his exclusive faith. Let him proceed in that very faith. If a person is converted mid-life, his faith will never become exclusive.
A child is born among Hindus and grows in the Hindu sensibility for thirty years; then at thirty he is made a Jew. He may become a good Jew, but within he will remain a Hindu; on the surface he will be a Jew. Two layers will remain within. Because of those two layers he will never attain a single-hearted feeling and a single surrender.
Hence these two ancient religions were non-converting. They said: we will not change anyone. If someone insists on changing, even then we will consider deeply, think much—only then. As far as possible we will try to persuade him to drop the attempt to change. Wherever he is, in whichever direction he is moving, let him move with exclusiveness. Let him arrive from there.
There is much to understand here, much to think about. Because the more directions we hand to a person, the harder we make it for him to walk.
When Krishna says, “Surrender exclusively to one,” it has a purpose. Then you will become one and integrated within. And that inner oneness is what will carry you toward God.
If this doesn’t feel right, there is only one alternative, not many: the Infinite. Then surrender to the Infinite. Choose between these two. But the Many is dangerous: it is between the two, and it breeds promiscuity. You get fragmented, shattered. And a fragmented personality cannot succeed in any deep journey.
Love is the art of transforming oneself. If you love one, you will become one; if you love the Infinite, you will become infinite.
But do not love the Many, or you will be torn to pieces.
Love for one can become infatuation; love for many will also become infatuation—only the pattern of infatuation will keep changing. Love for one can become attachment—and so will love for many. And when love for one gives such attachment and suffering, love for many will bring even more attachment and more suffering.
People think that by loving many, love will be set free. They are mistaken. Those who think so are actually sick—like Lord Byron, like the Don Juan types who keep wandering from loving one, to two, to three, and so on.
Earlier, even psychologists thought a Don Juan type is a great lover—he has so much love that it cannot be exhausted in one person, so he goes on loving many. But now clinicians agree he is neurotic. He does not have “too much” love—he has none. He doesn’t know how to love at all; therefore he only keeps changing persons.
And the more you change persons, the shallower love becomes. Depth needs time. Depth needs intimacy. Depth needs close companionship.
If a man changes his woman every day and goes on “loving,” his love will never go deeper than the body—because there will be no relationship beyond the body. Mind relates only when two people stay together through joy and sorrow. And the soul relates only when, slowly, even the presence of the other is not felt as “other.” When two people are in one room as if they are a single person—as if there are not two at all—then somewhere the inner souls are connected.
Love for one can become attachment; it is not necessary that it must. It depends on the lover. And the one who makes attachment with one will make attachment with many too. Love with one can also become prayer. That, too, depends on the lover.
If the person you love is not loved merely for the body, but you also love the humanity within and the soul within—and slowly the outer becomes secondary and the inner primary; and slowly you forget the shape and form and only the formless, attributeless presence remains in remembrance—then love has become prayer.
And it is good that this love-prayer happens with one; because depth is easier with one, not with many. Loving many is like a man digging one foot of earth here, two feet somewhere else, three feet at yet another place, and keeps digging like that all his life—and a well never happens. To make a well you must dig in one spot. Sixty feet, a hundred feet in one place, then perhaps you reach the water-table.
If two persons are in deep love, they go on digging at one place. Digging and digging, one day the layer of body breaks, the layer of mind also breaks, and the touch of consciousness begins. Husband and wife, if in deep love, can discover God in each other. Two lovers can discover God; their love will slowly become prayer.
If it seems there is danger in this, the danger is not because love toward one is dangerous. The danger arises from some fault within oneself.
Then there is the other way: love of the Infinite. Then drop even the idea of “one”; drop the idea of “many.” Drop the concern with form, with body. Be absorbed in love of the Infinite, the Eternal, the formless that surrounds you on all sides. Then love a stone, love a tree, love the cloud drifting in the sky. Then the question of persons disappears; love is with the Infinite. Even then, promiscuity does not arise.
With one there can be chastity, avyabhichar; with the Infinite there can be chastity. In between the two, promiscuity arises.
And man is very dishonest, very skillful in deceiving himself. Just now in the West this wind is very strong. Psychologists said: love with one becomes stagnation, repression, a block; love must be free; and free love will bring freedom. The outcome has been only deep immorality. Neither liberation is coming, nor love, nor prayer. People keep changing persons, and a kind of sport has begun with persons. That sacredness, that intimacy—there is no way to it.
Today one woman, tomorrow another; today one husband, tomorrow another. The very sense of husband-wife is collapsing. Between two persons it is like a momentary relationship. No responsibility, no deep attachment, no commitment. No—nothing. It is a meeting only on the surface. This meeting is dangerous. Its consequences have begun to appear in the West.
Today there is so much talk of love in the West—and there is no love at all. For love it was indispensable that there be deep companionship with one person, and such a feeling toward that one that, as if besides this person there is no one else in the world for you—only then can you descend deep into that person.
This is what Krishna means by avyabhicharini bhakti—chaste, non-adulterous devotion.
I know a friend who says: Quran is fine, Gita is fine, Bible is fine—everything is fine. Mosque is fine, temple is fine. But he has no relish for temple or mosque; not for Gita, not for Quran. Saying “all are fine” does not mean he knows they are all fine; it only means he has no concern at all. “Everything is fine” is indifference. There is no savor, no attachment—only a cool indifference.
No theism will arise out of this indifference; nothing can be done out of indifference. He bows neither in temple nor in mosque.
Yes, there are people who bow before both temple and mosque. But their bowing is formal. There is no exclusive feeling.
The man who says, “No—God is only in the mosque,” may sound pigheaded—and from the ultimate vision he is pigheaded. From the ultimate vision, God is in the temple, in the mosque, in the gurdwara too. But that is from the ultimate vision! He has not yet attained that. For now it is appropriate that his whole heart be toward one. Let him drown totally in the temple, or drown totally in the mosque.
The day he drowns totally in the mosque, that very day the temple will also be revealed in the mosque. But that is later. Right now he has not drowned in either—and he says, “All are fine.” He bows his head in temple and in mosque, but his heart will bow nowhere.
This is like a man falling in love with a woman: then it seems there is no other woman in the world as beautiful as she is. This is not a factual statement. You have not seen all women, weighed and measured them all. How can you say without knowing the women of the whole world that none is more beautiful than she?
But this is your feeling-state. If all the women of the world were standing there, even then it would seem to you that this woman is the most beautiful. Beauty is not in the woman; it is in your feeling of love. When your love-feeling is projected onto a woman, she alone is beautiful; the whole world becomes pale. In that moment, in that feeling-state, this is truth.
Don’t start talking “knowledge,” saying: “No, other women are beautiful too; this is beautiful and all are beautiful.” Of course all are beautiful—but saying that won’t do. With such arithmetic you will never fall in love. If you really fall in love, then in that moment one woman, one man, will appear supremely beautiful.
If in that you can be absorbed, slowly the woman’s personality will dissolve, and the beauty of the feminine principle will be seen. Go deeper still, and even the feminine will dissolve—only the beauty of consciousness will be experienced. The deeper you go, boundaries will break and the infinite will begin to appear. But in the primary moment the feeling will indeed be: no one is more beautiful than this.
Very often religious and social reformers cause great harm. They teach: “Allah-Ishwar tere naam, sabko sanmati de Bhagwan.” They are perfectly right—and yet wrong. Because the man who takes this to heart will gain the capacity to drown neither in Allah nor in Ram.
In the beginning one should feel: only Allah is true—Ram and the rest, all futile. Or: only Ram is true—all else futile. In the beginning this should be the feeling of love. In the final experience, upon reaching the peak, one discovers: all paths meet here.
But the man sitting at the base of the mountain, who has not climbed, says: “All paths go there.” Then how will he walk! One walks only on one path. You cannot walk on all paths. To walk there must be the feeling: this path alone goes; the rest do not. Only then do courage and enthusiasm arise. But the man who has not started yet, still sitting at the door of the journey, says: “All paths go there.” He will not be able to walk; he won’t take the first step.
So what is ultimately true need not be true at the beginning. And what seems true at the beginning need not remain at the end.
In the end, neither “Allah” is his name nor “Ram.” He has no name at all. But initially, hold onto one name—if you want to walk. If you want to sit, all names are equal. The man who does not want to walk can talk like this. The one who wants to walk must bow his head in one place. Without an exclusive feeling, total surrender cannot happen.
So when Krishna says “avyabhicharini bhakti,” he means toward one. Then it is not a question whether it is toward Allah, or Ram, or Buddha, or Mahavira. Toward anyone—but toward one.
In this context, understand this: the two ancient religions of the world are the Jewish and the Hindu; all the rest are branches. Islam and Christianity are branches of Judaism. Jain and Buddhist are branches of Hinduism. But the original two are Hindu and Jewish—and both are non-converting. Neither Jews liked to persuade and make someone a Jew, nor did Hindus like to persuade and make someone a Hindu. Their stance was: do not shake anyone from his exclusive faith. Let him proceed in that very faith. If a person is converted mid-life, his faith will never become exclusive.
A child is born among Hindus and grows in the Hindu sensibility for thirty years; then at thirty he is made a Jew. He may become a good Jew, but within he will remain a Hindu; on the surface he will be a Jew. Two layers will remain within. Because of those two layers he will never attain a single-hearted feeling and a single surrender.
Hence these two ancient religions were non-converting. They said: we will not change anyone. If someone insists on changing, even then we will consider deeply, think much—only then. As far as possible we will try to persuade him to drop the attempt to change. Wherever he is, in whichever direction he is moving, let him move with exclusiveness. Let him arrive from there.
There is much to understand here, much to think about. Because the more directions we hand to a person, the harder we make it for him to walk.
When Krishna says, “Surrender exclusively to one,” it has a purpose. Then you will become one and integrated within. And that inner oneness is what will carry you toward God.
If this doesn’t feel right, there is only one alternative, not many: the Infinite. Then surrender to the Infinite. Choose between these two. But the Many is dangerous: it is between the two, and it breeds promiscuity. You get fragmented, shattered. And a fragmented personality cannot succeed in any deep journey.
Osho's Commentary
“And, O Arjuna, I will tell you well that which is worth knowing, and by knowing which man attains immortality and supreme bliss.”
“That which is worth knowing...”
Let us take this to heart: many things arouse the desire to know—curiosity arises, interest is piqued—but we never ask whether those things are truly worth knowing. Curiosity is not enough. Curiosity will not resolve; it will only waste time and energy.
We try to know many things without caring what we will do by knowing them. It is childish curiosity. Take children with you—they will ask anything, raise any question. And it is not that the questions matter to them. If you don’t answer, after two moments they will ask another; they won’t return to the first.
Leave children aside—elders come to me and I am amazed. They come to ask questions, saying they have great curiosity. I talk of something else for two minutes; then they sit for an hour and never return to the question. Then they leave. The question had no value; it was only curiosity.
Even Western scientists have begun to think we must restrain scientific curiosity. Science goes on asking anything, seeking anything, without caring about consequences. Even if we come to know—what then?
There is so much to know, but man has little time. There is an infinity to know, and man is limited. There are countless dimensions; if man keeps trying to know on all paths, he will end before he knows anything.
So Krishna says: “that which is worth knowing...”
Whatever you feel like knowing is not necessarily worth knowing. Then what is the definition of “worth knowing”? Curiosity arises about many things—“Let me know this too, and that too...”
Krishna—and the whole Indian tradition—say: Worth knowing is that, by knowing which nothing remains to be known. If knowing still leaves more to be known, it was not worth knowing. The question only moved a little ahead; nothing was resolved.
Bertrand Russell wrote in his memoirs: when I was a child and my interest first turned toward philosophy, I thought philosophy had the answers to all questions. Now, as a ninety-year-old, I can say my assumption was utterly wrong; the outcome has been the exact opposite. Philosophy has no answers at all—only questions. Earlier I thought inquiry would yield answers; after ninety years of effort I find that inquiry makes ten questions sprout from one; answers do not come.
The whole history of philosophy is the history of bringing new questions out of old ones. No answers. And those who try to answer—no one accepts their answers either; from their answers people raise ten more questions. One question gives birth to another; answers are nowhere in sight. There must be a reason. And the reason is this:
Religion asks the question worth asking, and wants to know what is worth knowing. Philosophy wants to know anything and everything that triggers curiosity.
Philosophy is like an itch—you feel like scratching without caring what will happen. While scratching, it even feels good—but soon blood comes and there is pain!
Religion says: before scratching, ask what the result will be. Knowing that raises more questions is futile. But there is a knowing by which the whole race of knowing comes to an end. When will that be? Understand: Why does man want to know at all?
Understand it this way: If there were no death, there would be no philosophy in the world. Because of death man asks, What is life? Because of death man asks, Is the body all, or is there a soul within? Because of death man asks, When the body falls, what will happen? Because of death man asks, Is there God or not?
Imagine a world where there is no death—life is eternal. There you would not ask about soul or God. There philosophy would never be born.
All philosophy is born out of death.
Therefore religion says: until the nectar of deathlessness is known, your questions will never end—because you are asking because of death. Until you know the immortal, you will keep asking and asking. Whatever answer is given will not resolve—until the immortal is experienced.
Hence Buddha would often ask those who came to him: Do you want an answer, or a resolution? The difference is not obvious at first. Someone would ask: “Does God exist or not?” Buddha would say: Do you want an answer or a resolution? The man would be startled—what is the difference? Buddha would say: If you want an answer, I can answer yes or no—God is or God is not. But you won’t “get” the answer. What will my saying do? I can give you an answer; the resolution you will have to find. Answers can be obtained for free; resolution will come from practice. Answers are superficial; resolution is inner. Do you want the answer “God is/not,” or do you want resolution? If you want an answer, you can find it in the scriptures too. If you want resolution, then you must prepare for practice. Resolution will come from your transformation.
So Krishna says: “that which is worth knowing—and by knowing which man attains immortality...”
Worth knowing is only that which, when known, gives the immortal. And immortal is supreme bliss; death is suffering.
Behind all our sufferings lurks death. If you inquire, you will find the shadow of death behind everything you call suffering. It may not appear on the surface, but look a little—you will find death hiding in all suffering. Wherever a glimpse of death appears, suffering comes.
Old age is suffering, illness is suffering, failure is suffering—these are all sufferings of death. If wealth is robbed, it is suffering—again the suffering of death. With wealth we feel we will secure this life. When wealth is gone, we feel vulnerable.
When the house burns, you suffer. But it is not for the walls. Inside the walls it felt, Everything is fine; I am safe. Standing under the open sky, death seems nearer.
With no money at hand, death feels close. With money, death seems a bit far—there is a wall in between. We can postpone death: no need to worry just now; we’ll see. We can make some arrangement: treatment, doctors. Something will be done. Whether it works or not is another matter—but in our minds we feel there is no hurry; something can be done. With no money, with no loved ones around, standing alone under the open sky, death will feel very close.
When a man is successful, death seems far away. When he fails, sadness comes; the mood of dying arises.
Wherever there is suffering, know that somewhere death is peeping through.
We can never attain bliss while knowing, and living within, death. We can deceive ourselves that death is far—but even from afar its dark shadow keeps falling. In all our pleasures death’s shadow comes and poisons them, however happy we are. In fact, even in the moment of happiness, death’s shadow is very clear—because it is immediately seen that the happiness is momentary. That glimpse of “momentary” is death’s shadow.
I was reading about Hermann Hesse. The day he received the Nobel Prize, he wrote to a friend: “For one moment I felt supremely joyous—but only for a moment! Immediately sadness fell: now what? Until now there was a hope—Nobel Prize. Now it has come—now? Thick darkness surrounded me. Life appeared futile, because there is no longer anything worth attaining. Death seemed nearer.”
Man keeps running until he gets the happiness; when it comes, suddenly the question arises: Now? What now? The woman you wanted—you got her. The house you wanted to build—you built it. The son you wanted—is born. Now?
In the moment of happiness, it is immediately experienced that happiness is fleeting. In the moment of happiness, sorrow is present.
Death encircles from every side. Therefore Krishna says: that knowledge which brings immortality and supreme bliss—that is knowledge. And such knowable things I will tell you well.
“That beginningless Supreme Brahman, being inexpressible, is called neither sat (is) nor asat (is-not).”
Very subtle—understand carefully.
That beginningless Supreme Brahman is inexpressible—neither sat nor asat can be said of it.
We cannot say of God either that “He is,” or that “He is not.” Difficult—because we feel either statement works: say “is” or say “is not.” Theists and atheists quarrel on just this.
So if someone asks: Is the Gita theistic or atheistic? I will say: neither. If someone asks: Are the Vedas theistic or atheistic? I will say: neither—they are religious, not theistic or atheistic. Because theism/atheism splits life in two halves. The theist says God is; the atheist says God is not. But both use the same language-game. The theist says with “is” we have said all; the atheist says with “is not” we have said all. The difference is only in words. Both claim to have said the whole about God.
The Gita says: no word can say Him whole. Words are small, He is vast. If we say “is,” we say only half, because “is-not” also occurs in existence—and that too occurs in God. If “is-not” were outside God, existence would split in two: something inside God, something outside Him. Then God would be two; the world split.
If we say God is only life, then where is death? If we say God is only happiness, where is sorrow? If we say God is only heaven, then where is hell? Then we must create hell apart from God—splitting existence in two. But existence is not split; it is one.
God is life and God is death—both. Therefore Krishna says: He is inexpressible. When something is both, it becomes unsayable. Saying is possible only so long as it is one, not its opposite too.
Aristotle said: if you utter two contraries together, the statement becomes meaningless.
If you ask me: Are you here or not? and I say: I am both here and not here—the statement becomes meaningless. A court asks: Did you commit the murder? and you say: I both did and did not—the statement is meaningless. Contraries cannot both be true.
Aristotle’s logic says: only one side can be true. And this is the basic difference between Indian and Greek thinking, between East and West.
The West says contraries cannot both be; either this or that. Therefore the West says: say either “God is,” or “God is not.” But the Gita says: “God is and is not—both.”
He is sat and asat; that is one way of saying. Another is: He is neither sat nor asat. And because both must be used together, He is inexpressible; He cannot be said. Saying, you will only say half—because language depends on duality, on division, on opposition. If in language you put the two opposites together, it becomes nonsense. Hence He is unsayable. But why can’t we say simply “God is”?
Understand a little. We can say: the table is; the chair is; the house is. But we cannot say in the same way that God “is.” Because the house will not be tomorrow; the chair will burn to ashes; the table will be gone. The house is today; yesterday it was not. When we say, “The house is,” many things are implied: yesterday it was not, tomorrow it won’t be. And when we say, “God is,” can we also say that yesterday God was not, and tomorrow He will not be?
Every “is” has “is-not” on both sides. The house wasn’t yesterday; tomorrow it will not be. In the middle, it “is.” Every “is” has “is-not” on both sides. Therefore to say “God is” is wrong—because He does not have “is-not” on either side. He was yesterday, He will be tomorrow. He is forever.
So for the Eternal, “is” is not appropriate—because we use “is” for the non-eternal. And for whom “is” is inappropriate, “is-not” becomes meaningless.
God is existence itself. “Is” and “is-not” are both included in Him. His one mode is “is”; His other mode is “is-not.” Sometimes He manifests, then He appears as “is.” Sometimes He becomes unmanifest, then He appears as “is-not.”
A seed: if I ask you, Is the tree in the seed or not? you will have to say both. The tree “is,” in the sense that it can be; if we plant it, it will be. And that which can be tomorrow must be hidden today—otherwise how will it be tomorrow? Yet not every seed becomes every tree. What is hidden will manifest. Plant a mango, you won’t get neem; plant neem, you won’t get mango. Neem gives neem; which clearly means that a neem tree was hidden in the neem seed. What can be tomorrow is there today—unmanifest.
Tomorrow the tree appears. If I ask: Where is the seed? Yesterday the seed was, the tree was hidden. Today the tree is, the seed is hidden. The seed still is, but hidden, unmanifest. We will say, “The seed is not.”
“Is-not” is the unmanifest form; “is” is the manifest form. God is both—sometimes manifest, sometimes unmanifest. The world is His “is” form; matter is His “is” form; and the Self is His “is-not” form.
This is a little intricate; hence Buddha called the Self “nothingness”—the “not.” What appears is God’s “is” form. What does not appear within is His “is-not” form. And until we know both, we cannot be free.
We know the “is”; we must also know the “is-not.” Therefore meditation is the method of dissolving—of becoming a no-thing. Love is the method of dissolving—of becoming a no-thing. Surrender, devotion, trust—all are methods of dissolving, so that you know the “not” dimension too.
That which is neither sat nor asat—or both—is inexpressible. It cannot be said. Therefore all scriptures, after saying much, conclude: nothing can be said.
All our saying is the attempt of a limited, weak being—like trying to hold the sky in your fist.
Certainly, inside your fist there is also sky. When you close your fist, what is within is also sky. But will you call that the sky? The sky is immense.
There is also sky in your fist, but not the whole—because your fist itself is in the sky; it cannot enclose the whole. The fist cannot be larger than the sky.
Human consciousness cannot take God wholly into its fist, because human consciousness itself is within God. Still, we try. In that trying a few glimpses can happen. But even glimpses happen only if one listens with sympathy. If there is even a little lack of sympathy, even the glimpse will be lost.
Words are inadequate. But if there is sympathy, some essence-information can be caught through the words.
“Yet He has hands and feet everywhere, eyes, heads and faces everywhere, and ears everywhere; for, pervading the world, He stands.”
Do not take this to mean: because He is inexpressible, formless, attributeless—neither sat nor asat—our whole relationship with Him is cut. Then one feels: a zero-like entity—what have we to do with it! Then whom are we crying before? To whom are we praying? Whom are we worshiping? To whom shall we surrender—One who is neither is nor is-not, who is inexpressible? If Krishna himself cannot utter Him, what is the point of speaking! Better to remain busy with worldly affairs; we will not get into the trouble of the inexpressible. For how can you relate with what cannot be said or understood!
Therefore immediately in the next line Krishna says: Yet He has hands and feet everywhere; eyes, heads, faces and ears everywhere—because, pervading all, He stands.
Just as He has manifest and unmanifest modes, He also has form and formless modes. Just as He is nirguna and saguna, He is both opposites together. So if one wishes, one can talk to Him. If one wishes, one can whisper into His ear. No ear will appear before you—but if with your whole heart you say something to Him, it will reach, because His ears are everywhere.
Krishna says: hands everywhere, ears everywhere...
If you wholeheartedly place your hand into His hand, with an undoubting mind, the empty sky will become His hand—and He will hold yours. But it depends on you. Because if the heart is total, this happens—because everything is He. Anywhere His hand can be raised. Any gust of wind can become His hand. But the art of making it so is within you. If the trust is whole, it will happen. If there is even a trace of doubt, it will not.
People say: Our doubt will go away when such a happening happens. They too are right: doubt will go only when it happens. But then a great difficulty arises: until doubt goes, it does not happen. A paradox!
I have heard: Mulla Nasruddin once went to learn swimming in the river. The first time he entered, he gulped water, nose flooded—he panicked and jumped out. “I swear by God,” he said, “until I learn to swim, I will not go into the water.”
The instructor said: “Nasruddin, if your oath is firm, how will you ever learn to swim? Until you enter the water, you cannot learn. And you have sworn not to enter until you know how. Now it’s impossible. Only by getting into water will you learn.”
A willingness to sink a little, to gulp a little water, is needed. A willingness to risk life a little—only then can one learn to swim. No one can learn sitting on the bank.
If you think: We will drop doubt when His hand holds ours—you are in trouble. His hand is present everywhere. But only the one whose doubt has gone can grasp it. You will grasp only when your doubt drops—even though His hand is present.
So you must do some experiments to drop doubt, to increase trust—so that the open sky transforms into His hands, His ears, His eyes.
One thing occurs to me: There is no need to believe in “yourself”—you already do. You are—that much is certain. There is no one who doubts “I am.”
Have you ever met anyone who doubts “I am not”? Even to doubt this, someone must be there. Who will doubt? One thing is indubitable: I am. Begin experiments with this indubitable “I am.”
As you enter this “I am,” doubts will end. And the day there is full realization of “I am,” stretch out your hand—and God’s hand will be in yours. Open your eyes—and His eyes will be before yours. Speak—and His ears will rest upon your lips.
Krishna says: He has hands and feet everywhere because, pervading all, He stands. And He is the knower of all sense-objects, yet in truth He is devoid of the senses.
He is not only outside you—He is within you. Our relationship with Him is like the relationship of fish and ocean.
I have heard: once a fish fell into great trouble. Some fishermen sitting by the river were saying, “Water is absolutely necessary for life; without water, life cannot be.” The fish heard this and thought, “But I am living without water. What is this water they talk about?” It concluded: “So far I have not known life at all—for they say without water there is no life.”
The fish went looking for knowledgeable fish. She asked big fish, “What is water?” They said, “We have never heard. We do not know. If you must know, drift down the river; in the ocean there are bigger, wiser fish—perhaps they can tell you.”
The fish journeyed to the ocean and asked there. One fish said, “Asking won’t help. Once I too was possessed by this madness to know water. I had read in scriptures and heard in stories—but had no clue. I came to know only when I was caught in a fisherman’s net and hauled out. The moment I was out, I knew what I had been living in—water. I began to gasp with thirst.”
“If you want to know water,” she said, “asking won’t do. Jump to the shore and gasp a while. Because we are born in water; water is outside and inside—so nothing is noticed. Water on both sides.”
Fish is water; born in water; and in water it will dissolve. Man and God are like fish and water. We are in Him. Hence we wander asking, “Where is God?” and searching—and He is nowhere found.
The fish has the advantage of leaping ashore for a moment; we do not. There is no shore where God is not. Hence living in God we remain thirsty for God. He is within and without.
Krishna says: He knows all the senses from within. It is He who looks out through your eyes; it is He who appears outside as the flower. He looks from within through the eyes—and though He knows through all senses, He is devoid of the senses.
Experiment a little—you will understand. This is not a logical conclusion; it is not mathematics. These statements are born of experience.
Try it: close your eyes and look within. You will be amazed—within a few days you will learn the art of inner seeing. Which means: when eyes are shut—not seeing—still you can see within.
Close your ears and, for some days, try to listen within. Sit for an hour with ears shut, and try to listen inside. At first you will hear the same outer babble you have stored up; the ears will release those recordings and a clamor will be heard. But slowly the clamor will subside, and a moment will come when you hear the inner sound. That sound is heard without ears. Even if someone were to destroy your ears completely, that sound would still be heard.
The blind can see the soul. The blind can descend into the inner experience. And the deaf can hear the sound of Om. But we do not labor in that direction. We denounce the deaf—“You are deaf; your life is futile.”
If the world ever becomes wiser, we will teach the deaf the art of hearing the inner sound—because the deaf can hear it more easily than we can. We are tangled in the noisy outside; the deaf will hear inside sooner.
And the blind can sooner see the inner vision. But we denounce them—our world is of outer eyes; whoever cannot see outside is blind and useless. Whoever cannot hear outside is useless. Whoever cannot speak is useless.
But for inner entry one must become mute, deaf, and blind.
And when someone, blind, sees within; deaf, hears within—then we know that the One who is hidden within knows through the senses, yet is free of them. He can know without the senses.
“And, unattached and beyond the gunas, He is nirguna; yet by His own yogamaya He sustains and nourishes all, and He enjoys the gunas.”
All these statements try to join opposites—so we do not divide God and say, “He is this, not that.” He is both: nirguna and the enjoyer of the gunas.
The mind’s greatest difficulty is joining opposites. We know how to split; we do not know how to join. We can break anything easily—because the intellect’s very mechanism is to divide. Intellect is like a prism: pass white light through it, and it breaks into seven colors.
You see a rainbow after rains because floating droplets in the air act like prisms. Sunlight passes and breaks into seven; hence you see the rainbow.
Man’s intellect is also a prism—it breaks things. As long as you do not learn to see with the intellect set aside, you will see the “rainbow”—things broken in many colors. Remove the prism and things become one color—white.
White is not a color; it is the sum of all colors. White hides all colors. In school we show children a spinning disk with seven colored petals; when spun fast, the seven disappear and the disk looks white. White is the total; the seven are the broken parts.
The world is a rainbow. Through the senses the rainbow of the world is created. Remove the senses, the mind, the intellect—and the whole becomes white, a single color. There all opposites meet; black, green, red, yellow—all are one.
What Krishna is saying erases the rainbow. He says: He is nirguna, He is saguna; all qualities are His—and yet no quality is His.
Reading this, Westerners begin to think India’s rishis and avatars are a bit deranged—they speak statements that make no sense.
Because Aristotle said: A is A and can never be not-A. On this, all modern education grew: opposites cannot be together. And what do the Vedas, Upanishads, Gita keep saying? “He is both!”
Understand why. These statements are to break your intellect, not to convince it. Krishna is not trying to explain to Arjuna’s intellect; he is trying to break it. Even if the intellect understands, it will not go beyond itself. Only when it breaks can Arjuna go beyond.
These are intellect-dissolving statements. They are methods to make the fragmenting mind futile. When both opposites are given together, thinking collapses—nothing is left to think.
Think a bit: “He is nirguna, He is saguna”—what will you think? Therefore we created two paths. The nirgunavadis said, “He is nirguna,” and made a separate path. The sagunavadis said, “He is saguna,” and made another. Both are intellectual, and therefore irreligious—because both accept the mind’s division; they do not go beyond it.
Religion joins the opposites. It says: He is both—and He is neither. The person who agrees to understand “both” will have to drop his understanding in the very effort to understand it.
An incident comes to mind. The Zen master Rinzai stood at the temple gate. The flag on the temple was fluttering in the wind. Two disciples passed by, looked up. Morning sun, wind, the flag trembling and making sound. One disciple said, “Tell me: is the wind moving or the flag?” The other said, “The wind is moving.” The first said, “Wrong—the flag is moving.” They argued.
When wind and flag move, who moves? It is easy to take a stand for one. But in truth, who moves? Rinzai, listening, came out and said, “Neither the flag moves nor the wind; your minds are moving.”
The disciples were not satisfied. Rinzai’s old master was still alive; they went to him. “This doesn’t settle it,” they said. “Our quarrel was between two; now there is a third: mind moves. Flag moves; wind moves; mind moves.” The old master said, “As long as you see ‘wind moves,’ ‘flag moves,’ ‘mind moves’—as long as you split into three—you will not understand. The world is movement. Everything moves. Not separately—but together. Wind moves; flag moves; mind moves; all are joined. The whole is a vibration.
But,” the master added, “Rinzai is closer than both of you. You cannot stop the flag’s moving or the wind’s, but you can stop the mind’s. If the mind’s movement stops, the flag will not move, the wind will not move—everything will stop. Your mind moves; hence you experience movement.”
Our intellect is split into opposites. It analyses and dissects. It says: this is birth; that is death. This is friend; that is foe. This is poison; that is nectar. This is good; that is bad. It splits everything.
Krishna’s entire effort is: do not split. See the world, existence, as one. Do not split. Nirguna is He; with qualities is also He.
If you make a little effort—close your eyes in your temple or mosque and tell yourself, “He is both”—and then ask, “Are you willing?” the mind will say, “No, both cannot be. Settle on one. Either nirguna or saguna.”
Try this experiment. The Muslim declared, “He is nirguna,” then went about breaking idols—because the saguna must not be allowed. He felt, “If He is nirguna, then we must destroy the saguna.”
One man worships an image: “God is saguna, hence we make images.” Another says, “He is nirguna, hence we break images.” But both are focused on the image—one to build, one to break.
More image-worshippers than the Muslims are hard to find—because breaking images is also being related to them. Why so much attention to the image! If He is nirguna and not saguna, what is the point of breaking? No meaning.
But the human mind, when it takes one side, begins to fight the other—only then can it keep its side safe. It fears the other side may be right; therefore it tries to erase it.
But nothing can be erased. Stone images can be broken, but these men are also images—how will you break them? Trees are images. Even a broken stone is an image—form. How will you erase form?
In existence both are included: formless and form. There is no need to build or to break. If there is any work of building and breaking to be done, do it inside: bring the mind to a state where it accepts both opposites together.
The moment both are accepted together, the mind falls and ends. A state of no-mind arises. That no-mind is samadhi.
Krishna’s whole purpose is that you consent to accept both at once. The moment you consent, you are transformed. As long as you refuse and pick one side, you cannot change; you will remain in duality.
Choosing one of two supports duality. Accepting both together is the realization of non-duality.
We will pause five minutes. Please let no one get up in between. Let the kirtan be completed, then go. After the kirtan there will be two minutes of music—do not rise even then. Sit full five minutes.