Of action and of restraint the demonic do not know at all.
No purity, nor proper conduct, nor truth is found in them. ॥ 7 ॥
They say the world is unreal, groundless, without a Lord.
Born of mutual union—what else?—desire alone its cause. ॥ 8 ॥
Clinging to this view, self-lost and small of mind,
they erupt in savage acts, the world’s ill-wishers, for its ruin. ॥ 9 ॥
Geeta Darshan #4
Available in:
Read in Original Hindi (मूल हिन्दी)
Sutra (Original)
प्रवृत्तिं च निवृत्तिं च जना न विदुरासुराः।
न शौचं नापि चाचारो न सत्यं तेषु विद्यते।। 7।।
असत्यमप्रतिष्ठं ते जगदाहुरनीश्वरम्।
अपरस्परसंभूतं किमन्यत्कामहैतुकम्।। 8।।
एतां दृष्टिमवष्टभ्य नष्टात्मानोऽल्पबुद्धयः।
प्रभवन्त्युग्रकर्माणः क्षयाय जगतोऽहिताः।। 9।।
न शौचं नापि चाचारो न सत्यं तेषु विद्यते।। 7।।
असत्यमप्रतिष्ठं ते जगदाहुरनीश्वरम्।
अपरस्परसंभूतं किमन्यत्कामहैतुकम्।। 8।।
एतां दृष्टिमवष्टभ्य नष्टात्मानोऽल्पबुद्धयः।
प्रभवन्त्युग्रकर्माणः क्षयाय जगतोऽहिताः।। 9।।
Transliteration:
pravṛttiṃ ca nivṛttiṃ ca janā na vidurāsurāḥ|
na śaucaṃ nāpi cācāro na satyaṃ teṣu vidyate|| 7||
asatyamapratiṣṭhaṃ te jagadāhuranīśvaram|
aparasparasaṃbhūtaṃ kimanyatkāmahaitukam|| 8||
etāṃ dṛṣṭimavaṣṭabhya naṣṭātmāno'lpabuddhayaḥ|
prabhavantyugrakarmāṇaḥ kṣayāya jagato'hitāḥ|| 9||
pravṛttiṃ ca nivṛttiṃ ca janā na vidurāsurāḥ|
na śaucaṃ nāpi cācāro na satyaṃ teṣu vidyate|| 7||
asatyamapratiṣṭhaṃ te jagadāhuranīśvaram|
aparasparasaṃbhūtaṃ kimanyatkāmahaitukam|| 8||
etāṃ dṛṣṭimavaṣṭabhya naṣṭātmāno'lpabuddhayaḥ|
prabhavantyugrakarmāṇaḥ kṣayāya jagato'hitāḥ|| 9||
Translation (Meaning)
Questions in this Discourse
The first question: Osho, it is surprising that among animals there is hardly any hypocrisy or deceit, and among indigenous people it is also very little, whereas in the so-called educated and civilized society it is at its peak. Has humanity’s long and arduous journey from barbarism to civilization then gone in vain? And in that case, is the tribal order preferable?
Animals are without falseness, without hypocrisy—not because they have achieved something, but because they are incapable. They cannot be hypocrites; there is no way for them to be. They have no facility for being bad, no possibility of falling. But precisely because an animal cannot fall, it also cannot ascend to divinity. One who cannot fall cannot rise. And where there is no possibility of sin, there is no possibility of the divine either.
The animal is in a kind of stupor; it does as nature makes it do. Its journey is mechanical. It has no free will. Therefore an animal cannot do evil, but it cannot do good either. It simply does what nature impels. It has no individuality of its own. Hence an animal can be neither wicked nor virtuous, neither a great sinner nor a great saint. An animal remains an animal.
The animal is born complete. It has no freedom to change itself, to be transformed. By its very nature the animal is not a hypocrite; but it also cannot even remember that it is not a hypocrite. And the dignity that comes from renouncing hypocrisy cannot arise in an animal either.
Man’s dignity lies in this: he can sin—and if he chooses, he can renounce sin. The power to renounce exists because the power to do exists. Where you cannot do, renunciation has no meaning. There is nothing significant about an impotent man being celibate. Celibacy has significance only when there is the capacity to enter into sex.
So for man there is the possibility of falling, and for man there is the possibility of rising; both doors are open. Man is complete freedom. Therefore the responsibility is yours. If you fall, you cannot say nature made you fall. If you had wished, you need not have fallen. Had you wished, you could have stopped. If you had wished, the very energy with which you completed the journey into degeneration could have become the path to your heaven. Man is free—and at the same time responsible.
A great modern Western thinker, Sartre, uses two words for man: freedom and responsibility. One is complete freedom; the other, a profound responsibility. Whoever is free also bears responsibility. Whoever is not free has no responsibility.
We cannot call any animal good or bad. The animal’s state is also the state of small children. And similar to the animal’s condition is that of the tribal. However good they may be, there is not much glory in their goodness. Even if they are not thieves, we cannot yet call them “non-thieves.” They can be called “non-thieves” only when they have the capacity and the opportunity to steal, when the thought of stealing can arise!
The growth of life becomes possible through inner discipline. You walk on a flat road—no crowd gathers to watch, no drums are beaten in your honor, no applause. But tie a rope between two rooftops and walk upon it—then the whole village gathers.
There is no difference in walking itself. As you walked on the ground, with the same feet and in the same manner you will walk on the rope. Then why has the crowd gathered? Because now there is a possibility of falling. You can fall. Walking is difficult; falling is easy. And because there is the danger that your bones may break, that life might end—when you walk on the rope carrying this risk, a dignity and a grandeur enter your walk.
Man is on the rope twenty-four hours a day; the animal is always on level ground. The beauty of civilization is that it gives you the chance to fall as well as to rise. Tribals may be good, but a Buddha does not arise among them. Nor does a Ravana arise, nor a Rama. Neither is possible.
Civilization is a facility—a passage both toward hell and toward heaven. The more civilized a society, the greater the facility becomes. It is another matter that you may choose to use the facility only to go to hell. That is your decision.
Perhaps, to reach heaven, going through hell is also necessary. Without tasting the pain of hell, the remembrance of heaven’s bliss does not arise. Against the dark backdrop of hell, the white lines of heaven are drawn, emerge, and become visible. One who endures suffering begins to seek joy.
That is why those whom we ordinarily call “good people” have little salt in their lives; there is little flavor. Flavor enters the life of one who has known how to be bad, and then has known how to be good. There is a music in such a life, a depth, a height.
Ordinarily, a man who is good—who has never done anything bad, never sinned, never descended into crime, never strayed from the path—there is not much music in such a life. His life has a monotonous note. It has neither rasa, nor mystery, nor depth, nor height.
Novelists say that no story can be written about the life of an ordinary good man. The good man has no story at all. A story needs a bad man. And the story deepens if the bad man crosses over his badness and enters into goodness. Then the story becomes profoundly mysterious; a certain flavor arises in it—a challenge, a soaring height, a call from afar.
In the sinner’s life there is a story. And if a sinner becomes a saint, then no one’s life holds a tale more complex and mysterious than his.
Thomas Mann wrote a remarkable book called The Holy Sinner—The Sacred Sinner.
Where both holiness and sin meet, in that tension, a rope is stretched between two abysses; and the one who can maintain balance upon that rope is worthy of honor. Civilization gives the facility to fall; civilization gives the facility to rise.
No, tribalism is not to be preferred—civilization is to be preferred. But civilization offers options. Civilization is worthy, and within its options, the journey toward heaven is to be preferred.
If you are an ordinarily good man, do not think your life is becoming an attainment. You are living lukewarm. There is no extremity in your life. And without extremity there will be no thrill of joy, no ecstasy, no state of samadhi.
Nietzsche wrote a very significant statement: the tree that wants to touch the height of the sky must send its roots down to the depths of the underworld. If the tree is afraid—“How can I send my roots into that dark earth?”—then its branches will not be able to rise into the sky. The tree’s height above equals its depth below; they are the same. The roots must go just as deep as the tree wishes to rise. Those trees that soar four hundred feet high in their longing to touch the sky send their roots four hundred feet down into the earth.
This is also the law for man. To the extent there is a path downward, to that extent there is a means to rise. The path downward does not mean you must go down—but the possibility must remain. That you could fall—this very possibility gives you balance. You will guard yourself at every moment. In that guarding, your soul awakens. If you could not fall at all, you would go to sleep; then there is neither challenge nor awakening.
The animal is in a kind of stupor; it does as nature makes it do. Its journey is mechanical. It has no free will. Therefore an animal cannot do evil, but it cannot do good either. It simply does what nature impels. It has no individuality of its own. Hence an animal can be neither wicked nor virtuous, neither a great sinner nor a great saint. An animal remains an animal.
The animal is born complete. It has no freedom to change itself, to be transformed. By its very nature the animal is not a hypocrite; but it also cannot even remember that it is not a hypocrite. And the dignity that comes from renouncing hypocrisy cannot arise in an animal either.
Man’s dignity lies in this: he can sin—and if he chooses, he can renounce sin. The power to renounce exists because the power to do exists. Where you cannot do, renunciation has no meaning. There is nothing significant about an impotent man being celibate. Celibacy has significance only when there is the capacity to enter into sex.
So for man there is the possibility of falling, and for man there is the possibility of rising; both doors are open. Man is complete freedom. Therefore the responsibility is yours. If you fall, you cannot say nature made you fall. If you had wished, you need not have fallen. Had you wished, you could have stopped. If you had wished, the very energy with which you completed the journey into degeneration could have become the path to your heaven. Man is free—and at the same time responsible.
A great modern Western thinker, Sartre, uses two words for man: freedom and responsibility. One is complete freedom; the other, a profound responsibility. Whoever is free also bears responsibility. Whoever is not free has no responsibility.
We cannot call any animal good or bad. The animal’s state is also the state of small children. And similar to the animal’s condition is that of the tribal. However good they may be, there is not much glory in their goodness. Even if they are not thieves, we cannot yet call them “non-thieves.” They can be called “non-thieves” only when they have the capacity and the opportunity to steal, when the thought of stealing can arise!
The growth of life becomes possible through inner discipline. You walk on a flat road—no crowd gathers to watch, no drums are beaten in your honor, no applause. But tie a rope between two rooftops and walk upon it—then the whole village gathers.
There is no difference in walking itself. As you walked on the ground, with the same feet and in the same manner you will walk on the rope. Then why has the crowd gathered? Because now there is a possibility of falling. You can fall. Walking is difficult; falling is easy. And because there is the danger that your bones may break, that life might end—when you walk on the rope carrying this risk, a dignity and a grandeur enter your walk.
Man is on the rope twenty-four hours a day; the animal is always on level ground. The beauty of civilization is that it gives you the chance to fall as well as to rise. Tribals may be good, but a Buddha does not arise among them. Nor does a Ravana arise, nor a Rama. Neither is possible.
Civilization is a facility—a passage both toward hell and toward heaven. The more civilized a society, the greater the facility becomes. It is another matter that you may choose to use the facility only to go to hell. That is your decision.
Perhaps, to reach heaven, going through hell is also necessary. Without tasting the pain of hell, the remembrance of heaven’s bliss does not arise. Against the dark backdrop of hell, the white lines of heaven are drawn, emerge, and become visible. One who endures suffering begins to seek joy.
That is why those whom we ordinarily call “good people” have little salt in their lives; there is little flavor. Flavor enters the life of one who has known how to be bad, and then has known how to be good. There is a music in such a life, a depth, a height.
Ordinarily, a man who is good—who has never done anything bad, never sinned, never descended into crime, never strayed from the path—there is not much music in such a life. His life has a monotonous note. It has neither rasa, nor mystery, nor depth, nor height.
Novelists say that no story can be written about the life of an ordinary good man. The good man has no story at all. A story needs a bad man. And the story deepens if the bad man crosses over his badness and enters into goodness. Then the story becomes profoundly mysterious; a certain flavor arises in it—a challenge, a soaring height, a call from afar.
In the sinner’s life there is a story. And if a sinner becomes a saint, then no one’s life holds a tale more complex and mysterious than his.
Thomas Mann wrote a remarkable book called The Holy Sinner—The Sacred Sinner.
Where both holiness and sin meet, in that tension, a rope is stretched between two abysses; and the one who can maintain balance upon that rope is worthy of honor. Civilization gives the facility to fall; civilization gives the facility to rise.
No, tribalism is not to be preferred—civilization is to be preferred. But civilization offers options. Civilization is worthy, and within its options, the journey toward heaven is to be preferred.
If you are an ordinarily good man, do not think your life is becoming an attainment. You are living lukewarm. There is no extremity in your life. And without extremity there will be no thrill of joy, no ecstasy, no state of samadhi.
Nietzsche wrote a very significant statement: the tree that wants to touch the height of the sky must send its roots down to the depths of the underworld. If the tree is afraid—“How can I send my roots into that dark earth?”—then its branches will not be able to rise into the sky. The tree’s height above equals its depth below; they are the same. The roots must go just as deep as the tree wishes to rise. Those trees that soar four hundred feet high in their longing to touch the sky send their roots four hundred feet down into the earth.
This is also the law for man. To the extent there is a path downward, to that extent there is a means to rise. The path downward does not mean you must go down—but the possibility must remain. That you could fall—this very possibility gives you balance. You will guard yourself at every moment. In that guarding, your soul awakens. If you could not fall at all, you would go to sleep; then there is neither challenge nor awakening.
Second question: Osho, last night you said something very discouraging—that the world is perhaps doomed to live forever in ignorance, misery, and suffering. So is religion merely an invitation for a rare few to leave the world and dissolve into the Divine or into emptiness?
It may sound discouraging; it is not. If someone says that a hospital will always be full of the sick, what is discouraging in that? That is precisely what a hospital is for. It would be discouraging if we started filling hospitals with healthy people. And the moment a person becomes healthy, he has to be discharged. The very purpose of a hospital is that the sick be there. Where is the cause for despair in this? It is not a condemnation of the hospital. A hospital is a place of treatment. There is a place there for the ill; the healthy have no purpose there. And as soon as one is healthy, one goes out of the hospital.
The Indian vision does not consider the world different from a hospital; it is a place for the unwell mind. Our soul is sick there—hence we are there. As soon as the soul becomes healthy, we will have to go out of the world. So it is not a curse that the world will always be deranged. As long as there are deranged souls, the world will remain—that much is certain. As long as there are sick people, the hospital remains. If there are no sick, the hospital disappears.
This is not a curse upon the world; it is the nature of the world, its very destiny. We are at fault, that is why we are there. It is a great place of learning, a vast university. As we heal, we are thrown out of it. As saintliness arises, you will be in the world and yet not of it. And as saintliness reaches completion, you will find that being in the world has become dreamlike for you. If, having attained this completion, you die—the body falls—there will be no means to return.
Therefore a buddha, after Buddhahood, cannot return. The one life in which he attains Buddhahood will continue, but there is no device to take another body. To take a new body means a mechanism for returning to the world. The body is the vehicle by which we come back. It has no further purpose, because all that could be learned through the body has been learned; all that could be known in the world has been known; nothing remains to be gained here.
Understand it like this: the university is for the uneducated. That is no curse. As soon as one is educated, one goes out of the university. Only the uneducated are in the university. The moment education is complete, the university loses its meaning. And if a student has to return to the university again and again, it simply means he is not passing.
It is not a discouraging statement; this is simply the fact of the world.
Second point: So is religion merely an invitation for a few rare individuals to leave the world and merge into the Divine or into emptiness? No, the invitation is for all; it is only that a few accept it. The invitation is public. Religion is for everyone. The possibility of becoming healthy is for everyone. But only those who go through the process of healing, who take the path of practice, will be the rare ones to become free.
Third point: Religion is not an escape, nor is it a losing oneself in emptiness by leaving the world. In the vision of religion, the world itself is empty—dreamlike, a bubble of water. The invitation is to leave this emptiness and enter into truth.
But if we tell a sick man, “Until you drop all your illnesses, we will not let you leave the hospital,” he will say, “You are forcing me to become nothing! If I have to drop all my diseases, what will be left with me? I will become a zero!”
A sick man has no wealth other than his diseases; he has never known health. Certainly, when the diseases drop, health is born.
The language of religion sounds nihilistic, because religion keeps saying: drop this, drop that, drop that too. Because we are clinging to diseases, so much emphasis is laid on letting go, on renunciation. But it does not mean that we will be lost in nothingness. The diseases will vanish into nothingness; we will attain the whole. And the day you drop all that was wrong, that day that which is right dawns within you. That day the lamp is lit.
On that day you will not say, “I gave up darkness and now I am nothing.” You left the darkness, and light was kindled. That lighting of the lamp is the attainment.
But one who has known only darkness may think: everything has been dropped, lost, destroyed, nothing remains. He had a stick in his hand and groped in the dark—that too is gone; the darkness also is gone. He used to stumble—people take that stumbling to be life—he used to bump into things everywhere. Now he does not stumble; he does not collide here and there. The stick is gone, the darkness gone—everything dropped.
The attainment of light will gradually be understood—that what was dropped was worth dropping, meant to be dropped, should have been dropped long ago. The only wonder is that you dragged it on for so long.
At first it will seem that religion leads into nothingness. It appears to snatch away what you have; hence it seems to lead into a void. But from that very emptiness of which you are unaware, the whole arises.
Religion empties you so that you can be filled with the Divine. It erases you so that only that element remains within you which cannot be erased. It burns you so that the rubbish is burned away and only the gold remains. In your dying is the birth of your God-nature.
And remember, this invitation is not for a select few! The invitation is for all, but few accept it because it is a difficult invitation. The journey is arduous, very long. To maintain continuity that long, to keep patience—that is within the capacity of very few.
People come to me and ask, “How many days should we meditate before the soul is attained?” How many days! And from the way they ask it seems they are doing a great favor. “How many days?” And if someone meditates for two or four days, he comes back and says, “I still haven’t had a vision of God!”
Few are able to accept because patience is lacking. Even to maintain continuity for a few days is difficult. Today you do it; tomorrow it is dropped. You do it for a couple of days and the mind finds a thousand excuses not to do it. And within two or four days the mind begins to say, “You are wasting so much time! Who knows how much you could have earned in this time, how many things you could have done.” Prayer, worship, meditation all begin to look like a waste of time.
Our condition is like that of little children who plant a mango pit in the ground and then, after an hour, go and dig it up to see whether the sprout has come. Then an hour later they dig again. If you keep digging up the seed every hour to look at it, the sprout will never come—because the pit is not being given the chance to become one with the earth, to crack open, to dissolve, to disappear. When the pit dissolves, the plant is born.
And the one who keeps digging it up every hour is not giving it a chance. The pit will remain a pit. Then his logic will say, “It is all nonsense. I’ve been watching it for months—burying the pit, uprooting it—and no plant ever comes. These things are false. What Krishna and Buddha and Christ say is all fabricated. This pit is a stone; there is no plant inside it; no plant can ever come from it.”
And then that logic even seems correct, because months of experience say: every day we look and there is not the slightest sign of a sprout appearing anywhere. The pit is just the same. It is a stone. There is no soul inside, no plant, no hidden flowers. Then we throw the pit away.
Patience is needed. And when even a mango seed requires months of waiting, your seed has become hard over lifetimes. It has turned to stone. It will take time to melt it; it will take effort; you will have to strike it continuously. Only then will you come to know that Krishna and Buddha are not speaking of imagination; they speak from experience. Their seed cracked open and they saw the tree growing. They experienced the fragrance of that tree; they found its flowers. Their life was fulfilled.
But because very few are willing to go so far, religion seems to remain for the rare ones. The invitation is for all.
There is a very ancient story in Tibet. A new monastery had been established, hidden deep in the mountains. From the main monastery to which it belonged, the lamasery chose a hundred people to go and take charge of it. A young disciple asked, “But a hundred aren’t needed there. Five would suffice.” The master said, “If you call a hundred, ten at least will come. If you send ten, five will be able to reach. And if even that many arrive, it will be enough.”
Religion calls everyone. But call a hundred, and ninety do not even hear the invitation—because we hear only what we are eager to hear. Not everything reaches our ears.
Right now I am speaking here. If you are eager for me, what I am saying is heard. But many other sounds are going on all around; you do not hear them. A tape recorder will catch them too, because it makes no selection. When you listen to the tape, you will be surprised that all those sounds—a bird calling, a dog barking, a plane passing, a train arriving—have been captured. It makes no choices. And if you too are catching everything, it means you also are not choosing.
What we choose is what we hear; what we choose is what we see. If you are a thief, as you pass along the road you will notice things a banker cannot. If you are a cobbler, walking along you will see people’s shoes; their caps will not be visible to you. If you are a tailor, you will see their clothes; their faces may not be seen. Whatever your inclination is, that is what appears.
Scientists say that out of a hundred events taking place, we catch only two; ninety-eight are left out. We have nothing to do with them, no purpose there.
You pass along a road lined with hundreds of trees. A painter passes by the same road and sees the greenness of each tree as different, because each tree is green in its own way. Green is not a single color; there are a thousand shades of green. But that is seen only by the painter, the one who has a feel for color, a leaning toward color, a taste for color. To you, all the trees are the same green.
You see only what you have gone to see. The call of what you are seeking is what reaches you.
A story: two fakirs were walking along a road. The church bells began to ring. It was a market, very noisy—goods were being bought and sold, loaded and unloaded from carts; there was great clamor. Hearing the church bell, one fakir said, “Let us hurry; it is time for prayer—the bell is ringing.” The other said, “You are amazing. In this din and commotion you heard the church bell! No one here can hear it.” He added, “Here other sounds can be heard.” He took a coin from his pocket and dropped it on the road. A clink was heard, and the whole marketplace turned to look.
They are all people eager to hear the sound of money. The church bell was ringing, but it struck no one’s ear. At the clink, everyone started, everyone looked around. They are all out in search of the coin. The sound of money will be heard; the church bell will be lost—even if it is ringing loudly.
A mother may be sleeping at night while a storm rages and thunder rolls—she will not hear it. But if her little baby whimpers even slightly, cries a little, she will awaken.
Call a hundred; ninety will not hear. Of the ten who do hear, perhaps five will not understand. They will hear, yet not grasp. They will hear, yet no resonance will be created within their souls, no echo. They will hear with the ears and the matter will be lost—no wound will be made that could transform them. Five will hear and understand. Perhaps one among them will also do what he has heard and understood. Four will hear and understand—and become scholars. Work with a hundred, and once in a while one sets out on the journey.
Religion’s invitation is for all, but only a few are able to hear it.
The Indian vision does not consider the world different from a hospital; it is a place for the unwell mind. Our soul is sick there—hence we are there. As soon as the soul becomes healthy, we will have to go out of the world. So it is not a curse that the world will always be deranged. As long as there are deranged souls, the world will remain—that much is certain. As long as there are sick people, the hospital remains. If there are no sick, the hospital disappears.
This is not a curse upon the world; it is the nature of the world, its very destiny. We are at fault, that is why we are there. It is a great place of learning, a vast university. As we heal, we are thrown out of it. As saintliness arises, you will be in the world and yet not of it. And as saintliness reaches completion, you will find that being in the world has become dreamlike for you. If, having attained this completion, you die—the body falls—there will be no means to return.
Therefore a buddha, after Buddhahood, cannot return. The one life in which he attains Buddhahood will continue, but there is no device to take another body. To take a new body means a mechanism for returning to the world. The body is the vehicle by which we come back. It has no further purpose, because all that could be learned through the body has been learned; all that could be known in the world has been known; nothing remains to be gained here.
Understand it like this: the university is for the uneducated. That is no curse. As soon as one is educated, one goes out of the university. Only the uneducated are in the university. The moment education is complete, the university loses its meaning. And if a student has to return to the university again and again, it simply means he is not passing.
It is not a discouraging statement; this is simply the fact of the world.
Second point: So is religion merely an invitation for a few rare individuals to leave the world and merge into the Divine or into emptiness? No, the invitation is for all; it is only that a few accept it. The invitation is public. Religion is for everyone. The possibility of becoming healthy is for everyone. But only those who go through the process of healing, who take the path of practice, will be the rare ones to become free.
Third point: Religion is not an escape, nor is it a losing oneself in emptiness by leaving the world. In the vision of religion, the world itself is empty—dreamlike, a bubble of water. The invitation is to leave this emptiness and enter into truth.
But if we tell a sick man, “Until you drop all your illnesses, we will not let you leave the hospital,” he will say, “You are forcing me to become nothing! If I have to drop all my diseases, what will be left with me? I will become a zero!”
A sick man has no wealth other than his diseases; he has never known health. Certainly, when the diseases drop, health is born.
The language of religion sounds nihilistic, because religion keeps saying: drop this, drop that, drop that too. Because we are clinging to diseases, so much emphasis is laid on letting go, on renunciation. But it does not mean that we will be lost in nothingness. The diseases will vanish into nothingness; we will attain the whole. And the day you drop all that was wrong, that day that which is right dawns within you. That day the lamp is lit.
On that day you will not say, “I gave up darkness and now I am nothing.” You left the darkness, and light was kindled. That lighting of the lamp is the attainment.
But one who has known only darkness may think: everything has been dropped, lost, destroyed, nothing remains. He had a stick in his hand and groped in the dark—that too is gone; the darkness also is gone. He used to stumble—people take that stumbling to be life—he used to bump into things everywhere. Now he does not stumble; he does not collide here and there. The stick is gone, the darkness gone—everything dropped.
The attainment of light will gradually be understood—that what was dropped was worth dropping, meant to be dropped, should have been dropped long ago. The only wonder is that you dragged it on for so long.
At first it will seem that religion leads into nothingness. It appears to snatch away what you have; hence it seems to lead into a void. But from that very emptiness of which you are unaware, the whole arises.
Religion empties you so that you can be filled with the Divine. It erases you so that only that element remains within you which cannot be erased. It burns you so that the rubbish is burned away and only the gold remains. In your dying is the birth of your God-nature.
And remember, this invitation is not for a select few! The invitation is for all, but few accept it because it is a difficult invitation. The journey is arduous, very long. To maintain continuity that long, to keep patience—that is within the capacity of very few.
People come to me and ask, “How many days should we meditate before the soul is attained?” How many days! And from the way they ask it seems they are doing a great favor. “How many days?” And if someone meditates for two or four days, he comes back and says, “I still haven’t had a vision of God!”
Few are able to accept because patience is lacking. Even to maintain continuity for a few days is difficult. Today you do it; tomorrow it is dropped. You do it for a couple of days and the mind finds a thousand excuses not to do it. And within two or four days the mind begins to say, “You are wasting so much time! Who knows how much you could have earned in this time, how many things you could have done.” Prayer, worship, meditation all begin to look like a waste of time.
Our condition is like that of little children who plant a mango pit in the ground and then, after an hour, go and dig it up to see whether the sprout has come. Then an hour later they dig again. If you keep digging up the seed every hour to look at it, the sprout will never come—because the pit is not being given the chance to become one with the earth, to crack open, to dissolve, to disappear. When the pit dissolves, the plant is born.
And the one who keeps digging it up every hour is not giving it a chance. The pit will remain a pit. Then his logic will say, “It is all nonsense. I’ve been watching it for months—burying the pit, uprooting it—and no plant ever comes. These things are false. What Krishna and Buddha and Christ say is all fabricated. This pit is a stone; there is no plant inside it; no plant can ever come from it.”
And then that logic even seems correct, because months of experience say: every day we look and there is not the slightest sign of a sprout appearing anywhere. The pit is just the same. It is a stone. There is no soul inside, no plant, no hidden flowers. Then we throw the pit away.
Patience is needed. And when even a mango seed requires months of waiting, your seed has become hard over lifetimes. It has turned to stone. It will take time to melt it; it will take effort; you will have to strike it continuously. Only then will you come to know that Krishna and Buddha are not speaking of imagination; they speak from experience. Their seed cracked open and they saw the tree growing. They experienced the fragrance of that tree; they found its flowers. Their life was fulfilled.
But because very few are willing to go so far, religion seems to remain for the rare ones. The invitation is for all.
There is a very ancient story in Tibet. A new monastery had been established, hidden deep in the mountains. From the main monastery to which it belonged, the lamasery chose a hundred people to go and take charge of it. A young disciple asked, “But a hundred aren’t needed there. Five would suffice.” The master said, “If you call a hundred, ten at least will come. If you send ten, five will be able to reach. And if even that many arrive, it will be enough.”
Religion calls everyone. But call a hundred, and ninety do not even hear the invitation—because we hear only what we are eager to hear. Not everything reaches our ears.
Right now I am speaking here. If you are eager for me, what I am saying is heard. But many other sounds are going on all around; you do not hear them. A tape recorder will catch them too, because it makes no selection. When you listen to the tape, you will be surprised that all those sounds—a bird calling, a dog barking, a plane passing, a train arriving—have been captured. It makes no choices. And if you too are catching everything, it means you also are not choosing.
What we choose is what we hear; what we choose is what we see. If you are a thief, as you pass along the road you will notice things a banker cannot. If you are a cobbler, walking along you will see people’s shoes; their caps will not be visible to you. If you are a tailor, you will see their clothes; their faces may not be seen. Whatever your inclination is, that is what appears.
Scientists say that out of a hundred events taking place, we catch only two; ninety-eight are left out. We have nothing to do with them, no purpose there.
You pass along a road lined with hundreds of trees. A painter passes by the same road and sees the greenness of each tree as different, because each tree is green in its own way. Green is not a single color; there are a thousand shades of green. But that is seen only by the painter, the one who has a feel for color, a leaning toward color, a taste for color. To you, all the trees are the same green.
You see only what you have gone to see. The call of what you are seeking is what reaches you.
A story: two fakirs were walking along a road. The church bells began to ring. It was a market, very noisy—goods were being bought and sold, loaded and unloaded from carts; there was great clamor. Hearing the church bell, one fakir said, “Let us hurry; it is time for prayer—the bell is ringing.” The other said, “You are amazing. In this din and commotion you heard the church bell! No one here can hear it.” He added, “Here other sounds can be heard.” He took a coin from his pocket and dropped it on the road. A clink was heard, and the whole marketplace turned to look.
They are all people eager to hear the sound of money. The church bell was ringing, but it struck no one’s ear. At the clink, everyone started, everyone looked around. They are all out in search of the coin. The sound of money will be heard; the church bell will be lost—even if it is ringing loudly.
A mother may be sleeping at night while a storm rages and thunder rolls—she will not hear it. But if her little baby whimpers even slightly, cries a little, she will awaken.
Call a hundred; ninety will not hear. Of the ten who do hear, perhaps five will not understand. They will hear, yet not grasp. They will hear, yet no resonance will be created within their souls, no echo. They will hear with the ears and the matter will be lost—no wound will be made that could transform them. Five will hear and understand. Perhaps one among them will also do what he has heard and understood. Four will hear and understand—and become scholars. Work with a hundred, and once in a while one sets out on the journey.
Religion’s invitation is for all, but only a few are able to hear it.
Third question:
Osho, the Gita says that divine wealth frees and demonic wealth binds. In this context, what are bondage and liberation?
Osho, the Gita says that divine wealth frees and demonic wealth binds. In this context, what are bondage and liberation?
A state of consciousness where there is no affliction, no sense of boundary, where no edge ever comes into view; a state as open as the sky—no walls hemming you in from all sides, no lines of pain, for all lines of pain encircle and close you; bliss opens, expands, makes you vast—wherever consciousness is expanding, that is the direction. Our ancient word for the supreme condition is Brahman. Brahman means that which goes on expanding, infinitely expanding—whose very nature is expansion.
Throw a pebble into water: waves arise and spread. If the water were boundless, the ripples would spread without end; if there is a shore, they will break there. If there is no shore, they will keep spreading. Bliss has no shore, because existence has no boundary.
This sky we see is not truly there as a container; it is only that the reach of our eyes is limited. Wherever the eyes can reach, we feel the sky is closed; otherwise there is no “sky” anywhere—only an endless openness. When consciousness is in such a state that the waves of bliss rising within it spread without end, with no shore anywhere, that is a free moment—that is liberation. And when consciousness writhes and not a single wave can spread, walls rise up on all sides; wherever you move, bondage blocks the way, you feel shackles on your feet, you cannot go forward—that condition is bondage.
We experience bondage in many ways. However happy we may be, the body is bounded. Sometimes the body is healthy, sometimes ill; sometimes young, sometimes old; sometimes buoyant, sometimes depressed. Its limit is imposed upon you. Pour alcohol into the body, and your consciousness is benumbed with it. Drain the blood, and your consciousness becomes feeble along with it. When the body becomes worn and old, you too bend and break within. The boundary of the body stands there.
Look a little farther ahead and the boundary of death stands there. One day you will have to die, to be dissolved. And every moment there are a thousand kinds of limits—of anger, hatred, attachment, greed. We are tied from all sides. This is the state called bondage.
Krishna says: asuri sampada—demonic wealth—means accumulating exactly those possessions that bind us, in which we do not open but get increasingly entangled. Daivi sampada—divine wealth—means those qualities that break these bonds.
Consider: if you are filled with greed, you will feel a boundary everywhere. However much wealth you have, it will seem too little. A greedy mind can never feel “I have more than enough.” Reflect on it: a greedy mind can never feel “I have more than enough”; it will always feel “I have less.” Whatever the amount, greed becomes a boundary. You may have a billion, yet it will feel little, for there could have been ten.
Non-greed has no limit. The non-greedy person always feels, “Whatever I have is already more than enough; even if I had nothing, nothing essential would be lost.” If non-greed becomes complete, your boundary dissolves. So greed is demonic wealth; non-greed is divine wealth.
A wrathful person encounters a boundary every moment; wherever he looks, anger catches him; wherever he acts, disturbance, quarrel, conflict arise. For the non-angered there is no boundary; wherever he passes, friendship flowers. Thus anger is demonic; non-anger is divine.
The fearful person lives in danger every instant. I once lived in a village; opposite me dwelt a goldsmith, extremely fearful. I often sat at my doorway, which troubled him terribly. In the evening he would go out; being alone, he would lock his door and then shake the lock two or four times. Because I sat there, he felt embarrassed; I would close my eyes. He would rattle it; then he would walk ten steps, return, drenched in sweat, thinking I was watching; rattle the lock again.
I asked him, “Why don’t you check it properly once and go, instead of twice or thrice?” He said, “Doubt comes. I go ten steps and wonder if I really checked it properly or not!”
Such a fearful man may set out for the market, but he never reaches it; his mind remains stuck at the lock. One who returns four times to shake it will have to check it countless times, for the doubt that arises once will arise again and again. Such a frightened mind can neither sleep at night nor be truly awake by day. It trembles twenty-four hours a day; the whole world seems an enemy. Fear is demonic wealth; it binds. Fearlessness frees; it is divine wealth.
To free means only this: that which does not impose a limit on you, that in which you can fly like a bird in the open sky.
Wherever anything lays a boundary on your consciousness, your prison is being built. And we are so mad that we water the roots of those very things; we strengthen them—because perhaps we think our chains are ornaments. We protect them. If someone tries to break them, we get angry; if someone tries to remove our chains, we take him to be an enemy—because we never saw them as chains; to us they are precious ornaments earned with great difficulty.
So long as a person takes his chains for ornaments, the gate of his freedom will remain shut. The day you begin to see even your ornaments as bondage, the first blow falls on the door to liberation.
Therefore each person should keep inspecting, rising and sitting, morning and evening: What is becoming my boundary? Except for boundary there is no enemy, and except for the boundless there is no friend. The effort to make oneself infinite is meditation; the effort to make oneself infinite is prayer; the effort to make oneself infinite is sadhana.
The body binds, so the seeker disengages himself from the body. He keeps inquiring: Am I the body? Am I really the body, or am I different from it? Slowly, with constant hammering, the realization dawns: I am not the body. The day this is seen, whether the body is young or old, alive or dead, healthy or ill, it no longer binds. That which I am not cannot bind me. And the moment this remembrance arises, “I am not the body,” your soul becomes one with the open sky—no veil remains.
The mind binds. So the seeker asks: Am I the mind? He remains engaged in a single search: how to break identification with mind! That bond breaks—because the witness within us is neither body, nor mind, nor feeling. We can be a witness to all of these. We can see the body as separate; we can see the mind; we can see thought. And whatsoever we can see is other than us; we are the seer.
Whatever I can see—this is simple mathematics—I am not that. I can never see myself; I will always remain the seer. There is no way to become an object; my nature is to be the subject, the witness. Therefore I cannot place myself before myself to look at me. I can see everything else, only my being remains behind. When I drop everything that can be seen and only that remains which sees, in that moment I have no boundary; in that moment I am free.
The bound mind ties itself to everything. It says, “This body is me”—a boundary is raised. It says, “This wealth is me”—a boundary of wealth rises. Not only the rich, even beggars are bound by wealth.
Once I was passing along a road when a beggar’s words reached my ears. I stopped—what he said was worth hearing. A gentleman was passing; the beggar was pleading, “Give something, even two paise.” The gentleman, a decent man, put his hand in his pocket; but he was out for an evening walk and had no money. He said, “Forgive me, I don’t have any change; when I come again I’ll surely bring some.” The beggar retorted, “Go on, you too—swallow my money! People have already swallowed millions of my rupees on such promises.”
A beggar! Saying millions have been swallowed from him through promises like “I’ll come again,” “I don’t have small change.” Those millions that were never his become his grief—people have robbed him!
It is understandable that the rich man is bound by wealth. But the poor too are bound. We cling to money as if it were our soul. In the same way we get tied to all sorts of things, forming identifications—“this is me.” Whatever we identify with becomes our boundary.
The more things one ties oneself to, the more bound one becomes; the more one unties oneself, the freer one becomes. And the day only this remains: “I am bound to nothing; nothing is mine; only I am, and my nature is simply to be”—that day is liberation.
Divine wealth takes you to the place where only you remain. Demonic wealth takes you to the place where everything remains except you.
Throw a pebble into water: waves arise and spread. If the water were boundless, the ripples would spread without end; if there is a shore, they will break there. If there is no shore, they will keep spreading. Bliss has no shore, because existence has no boundary.
This sky we see is not truly there as a container; it is only that the reach of our eyes is limited. Wherever the eyes can reach, we feel the sky is closed; otherwise there is no “sky” anywhere—only an endless openness. When consciousness is in such a state that the waves of bliss rising within it spread without end, with no shore anywhere, that is a free moment—that is liberation. And when consciousness writhes and not a single wave can spread, walls rise up on all sides; wherever you move, bondage blocks the way, you feel shackles on your feet, you cannot go forward—that condition is bondage.
We experience bondage in many ways. However happy we may be, the body is bounded. Sometimes the body is healthy, sometimes ill; sometimes young, sometimes old; sometimes buoyant, sometimes depressed. Its limit is imposed upon you. Pour alcohol into the body, and your consciousness is benumbed with it. Drain the blood, and your consciousness becomes feeble along with it. When the body becomes worn and old, you too bend and break within. The boundary of the body stands there.
Look a little farther ahead and the boundary of death stands there. One day you will have to die, to be dissolved. And every moment there are a thousand kinds of limits—of anger, hatred, attachment, greed. We are tied from all sides. This is the state called bondage.
Krishna says: asuri sampada—demonic wealth—means accumulating exactly those possessions that bind us, in which we do not open but get increasingly entangled. Daivi sampada—divine wealth—means those qualities that break these bonds.
Consider: if you are filled with greed, you will feel a boundary everywhere. However much wealth you have, it will seem too little. A greedy mind can never feel “I have more than enough.” Reflect on it: a greedy mind can never feel “I have more than enough”; it will always feel “I have less.” Whatever the amount, greed becomes a boundary. You may have a billion, yet it will feel little, for there could have been ten.
Non-greed has no limit. The non-greedy person always feels, “Whatever I have is already more than enough; even if I had nothing, nothing essential would be lost.” If non-greed becomes complete, your boundary dissolves. So greed is demonic wealth; non-greed is divine wealth.
A wrathful person encounters a boundary every moment; wherever he looks, anger catches him; wherever he acts, disturbance, quarrel, conflict arise. For the non-angered there is no boundary; wherever he passes, friendship flowers. Thus anger is demonic; non-anger is divine.
The fearful person lives in danger every instant. I once lived in a village; opposite me dwelt a goldsmith, extremely fearful. I often sat at my doorway, which troubled him terribly. In the evening he would go out; being alone, he would lock his door and then shake the lock two or four times. Because I sat there, he felt embarrassed; I would close my eyes. He would rattle it; then he would walk ten steps, return, drenched in sweat, thinking I was watching; rattle the lock again.
I asked him, “Why don’t you check it properly once and go, instead of twice or thrice?” He said, “Doubt comes. I go ten steps and wonder if I really checked it properly or not!”
Such a fearful man may set out for the market, but he never reaches it; his mind remains stuck at the lock. One who returns four times to shake it will have to check it countless times, for the doubt that arises once will arise again and again. Such a frightened mind can neither sleep at night nor be truly awake by day. It trembles twenty-four hours a day; the whole world seems an enemy. Fear is demonic wealth; it binds. Fearlessness frees; it is divine wealth.
To free means only this: that which does not impose a limit on you, that in which you can fly like a bird in the open sky.
Wherever anything lays a boundary on your consciousness, your prison is being built. And we are so mad that we water the roots of those very things; we strengthen them—because perhaps we think our chains are ornaments. We protect them. If someone tries to break them, we get angry; if someone tries to remove our chains, we take him to be an enemy—because we never saw them as chains; to us they are precious ornaments earned with great difficulty.
So long as a person takes his chains for ornaments, the gate of his freedom will remain shut. The day you begin to see even your ornaments as bondage, the first blow falls on the door to liberation.
Therefore each person should keep inspecting, rising and sitting, morning and evening: What is becoming my boundary? Except for boundary there is no enemy, and except for the boundless there is no friend. The effort to make oneself infinite is meditation; the effort to make oneself infinite is prayer; the effort to make oneself infinite is sadhana.
The body binds, so the seeker disengages himself from the body. He keeps inquiring: Am I the body? Am I really the body, or am I different from it? Slowly, with constant hammering, the realization dawns: I am not the body. The day this is seen, whether the body is young or old, alive or dead, healthy or ill, it no longer binds. That which I am not cannot bind me. And the moment this remembrance arises, “I am not the body,” your soul becomes one with the open sky—no veil remains.
The mind binds. So the seeker asks: Am I the mind? He remains engaged in a single search: how to break identification with mind! That bond breaks—because the witness within us is neither body, nor mind, nor feeling. We can be a witness to all of these. We can see the body as separate; we can see the mind; we can see thought. And whatsoever we can see is other than us; we are the seer.
Whatever I can see—this is simple mathematics—I am not that. I can never see myself; I will always remain the seer. There is no way to become an object; my nature is to be the subject, the witness. Therefore I cannot place myself before myself to look at me. I can see everything else, only my being remains behind. When I drop everything that can be seen and only that remains which sees, in that moment I have no boundary; in that moment I am free.
The bound mind ties itself to everything. It says, “This body is me”—a boundary is raised. It says, “This wealth is me”—a boundary of wealth rises. Not only the rich, even beggars are bound by wealth.
Once I was passing along a road when a beggar’s words reached my ears. I stopped—what he said was worth hearing. A gentleman was passing; the beggar was pleading, “Give something, even two paise.” The gentleman, a decent man, put his hand in his pocket; but he was out for an evening walk and had no money. He said, “Forgive me, I don’t have any change; when I come again I’ll surely bring some.” The beggar retorted, “Go on, you too—swallow my money! People have already swallowed millions of my rupees on such promises.”
A beggar! Saying millions have been swallowed from him through promises like “I’ll come again,” “I don’t have small change.” Those millions that were never his become his grief—people have robbed him!
It is understandable that the rich man is bound by wealth. But the poor too are bound. We cling to money as if it were our soul. In the same way we get tied to all sorts of things, forming identifications—“this is me.” Whatever we identify with becomes our boundary.
The more things one ties oneself to, the more bound one becomes; the more one unties oneself, the freer one becomes. And the day only this remains: “I am bound to nothing; nothing is mine; only I am, and my nature is simply to be”—that day is liberation.
Divine wealth takes you to the place where only you remain. Demonic wealth takes you to the place where everything remains except you.
Osho's Commentary
“And, O Arjuna, those of demonic nature do not know what ought to be done and what ought not to be done. Therefore in them there is neither inner nor outer purity, nor noble conduct, nor even truthfulness.
“Moreover, people of demonic nature say: ‘The world is without wonder and wholly false, and without God, born of the union of male and female. Therefore the world exists only for enjoyment—what else is there?’
“Thus, taking refuge in this false knowledge, whose nature is ruined and whose understanding is dull, these men, cruel in deeds and harmful to all, are born only for the destruction of the world.”
There is much here to be pondered and taken deeply.
Those of demonic disposition do not know how to incline to what is to be done and turn away from what is not to be done. What is to be done? How shall we define duty? What should we call worthy of doing?
Yoga defines duty thus: whatever increases bliss is duty. And the wonder is, that which increases our joy increases the joy of those around us; and that which increases the joy of those around us increases our own joy. Joy is a joint event.
Sorrow too is a joint event. Whatever increases our sorrow increases sorrow around us. Whatever increases sorrow around us increases ours. You cannot be happy by making another unhappy. At most, you may deceive yourself for a moment, but it is impossible as a law. You can only become unhappy by making others unhappy.
It can happen that you try to make someone unhappy and he does not become unhappy—if he is wise, awakened, a Buddha. But your very attempt to make him unhappy will certainly make you unhappy. The world is an echo; what we send out returns upon us—sometimes sooner, sometimes later. Because of this delay we fall into the delusion that there is no connection.
People come and say, “We are doing nothing wrong, yet we are unhappy.” They are mistaken. That is impossible. They are doing something; perhaps they think what they do is not wrong.
A father came to me distressed by his son. He said, “I am doing everything for my son’s good, and yet he causes me sorrow.” I heard the whole story. The father was right that his intention was his son’s good. But the manner of doing it was such that it would be better if he stopped doing this “good.” His way was full of pride; he saw himself as a god and his son as a devil. His manner was so egoistic that it hurt the son’s ego. He wished to do good, but harm was being done.
When anyone tries to change another with such conceit, it strikes the other a blow; that blow breeds vengeance. And the pleasure this father was getting was not in doing good to his son; it was the pleasure of “I am a good father sacrificing everything”—the pleasure of ego.
I told him, “Have you ever thought that if your son truly became good, you would become unhappy?” He said, “What are you saying! Never.” I said, “Close your eyes and look. Your life’s meaning would be lost. You have only one meaning: to fix the son. You are unoccupied; without that, nothing will remain to do except die. Your son is giving you occupation, juice. You are after him twenty-four hours, telling his story everywhere, proclaiming how much you are doing and how he causes you pain. If he really became good today, tomorrow you would have nothing to do but die.” He started, was shocked, then pondered—and said, “Perhaps you are right.”
If you receive sorrow, know that you are giving sorrow. If even a ray of joy comes to you, know that knowingly or unknowingly you have given and shared some joy. What we distribute is what returns to us.
What is duty? Duty depends on the goal. The goal is one for all—that life be filled with bliss. Whatever increases bliss is duty; whatever diminishes it is non-duty. Let bliss be the touchstone. As gold is tested on the stone, keep testing your actions on the stone of joy.
That action which increases joy—know it as duty; water it, grow it, put your life’s energy there. That which brings sorrow—drop it, withdraw your energy toward it.
But Krishna says: one of demonic wealth does not know what is worth doing and what is not; there is in him no inclination to duty, no turning away from non-duty. He does things like a blind man, raising a whole commotion, running sometimes left, sometimes right, sometimes straight, sometimes backwards.
I have heard a southern tale. There was a poet in the South, Tenali Rama—perhaps a man with an upside-down head; poets often are, though he had devotion too. He worshipped Kali with great austerity. After years Kali appeared—countless hands, countless faces. After years of effort, Tenali asked only this: “Just one thing—when a man with one nose catches a cold, he gets tired of wiping. What must be your condition?” Kali must have been startled. She said, “From today you will be called Vikat Kavi—a grotesque poet. That is my answer.” Tenali said, “Perfect! It fits me. Read ‘Vikat Kavi’ backward or forward—it’s the same. Whether I stand upside down or upright—it’s the same.” Thus years of austerity ended in this exchange!
If the mind is entangled and blind to what is worth doing and not, even if God stands before you, it will not help. You could reach heaven and still create trouble. The question is not where you are; the question is whether your vision is sharp, clear, discriminating—able to separate the essential from the nonessential, duty from non-duty.
Most people run all their lives without being clear where they are going and why. If before taking a step they paused to decide where to go and then invested all their energy there, life could bear fruit. Most die fruitless—not because they labor little; they labor much. Those of demonic wealth often labor more than those of divine wealth. How much did Buddha labor compared with Hitler, Tamerlane, Genghis Khan? Tamerlane—lame—tried to conquer the whole earth and half-conquered it; he slew millions. His labor was immense; but what was the fruit? No one can call Hitler’s labor small—what was the fruit?
If it is not clear what duty is, what to do and why, and what will be the end, a person does much and gains nothing. Those of demonic tendency undertake great toil, but their entire austerity is fruitless.
Therefore in them there is neither outer nor inner purity, nor noble conduct, nor truthfulness.
The demonic person never even considers purity; it never occurs to him that purity has its own flavor, its own joy. His life is a jumble. He will be praying while thinking of his shop; he will sit in the temple and plan to hurry to the brothel. In his life there is no purity; everything is mixed like garbage—no single tone, many tones, discordant tones.
Purity means this much: that the current of life has one tone—a single accord. Whatever I am doing, my commitment to it is so total that no second tone wobbles between. If a person’s life begins to be pure even for a single moment like this, the temple of God is not far. But whatever you do, you never do one thing—you do a thousand at once. Whatever you think, it is never a single thought—a thousand thoughts race within like a mad crowd. You are a marketplace, a mob—mad. This is impurity.
Krishna says: in them is neither outer nor inner purity, nor noble conduct, nor truth-speaking. And people of demonic nature say: the world is without wonder.
This is a revolutionary statement. The demonic person believes there is no mystery in the world; the world is a mere set of facts, with no wonder, no mystery. If we think, many things become clear.
This is the difference between the religious and the irreligious. The religious person experiences life as a mystery. What is manifest is only the surface; behind it the unmanifest is hidden—and however much of it becomes manifest, there will always remain more.
Mystery means: we can never fully know it; its innermost core will remain unknown. However much we know, our knowing will remain outer; the inner soul will remain unknown.
If we take this rightly to heart, science begins to look demonic—because science (at least it used to) believes everything can be known. After Einstein, some scientists have abandoned this stance. But science’s view was: all can be known. What we know is known; what we don’t know is not unknowable—only unknown; we will know it tomorrow or the day after. Given time, we will know everything. If everything can be known, there remains no place for God. The day you can know “God” in the laboratory as you know oxygen and hydrogen—analyze, combine, and bottle “God”—then nothing remains to be known.
Krishna says: the demonic person admits no mystery. The divine person experiences the world as an infinite mystery, a riddle we can never solve. That which forever remains outside the solution—that remainder is God. That which, after all our effort, remains unknowable, before which we fall dumb, our heart stops with a thud, our chain of thought breaks, our wits are lost, and yet a drunken joy arises while information vanishes—that element is called God. The mysterium.
So the demonic person says: no mystery; the world is a sum of facts; everything can be known. Therefore he sees no poetry, no beauty, no love—because these are all realms of mystery. He measures life with mathematics, weighs and measures everything, treats everything as matter. He sees no personhood—only a heap of clay, of matter; and all that happens is merely accidental.
Diderot, the great Western atheist, wrote that the world has no maker, no process of creation; it is an accident. Events upon events, endlessly colliding, and this is what has come of it; there is no secret behind it. If Diderot is right, then by throwing bricks randomly one day a house fit to live in might be formed by accident; or if a press is kept running, the Gita might get printed by chance.
The divine person sees a process of creation; behind the world a consciousness is hidden; behind each event there is some secret. And the secret is such that we can never reach its bottom, because we too are part of it; we are a wave of it, so we can neither see its first nor its last. We lack the stance to stand apart; we are immersed in it. As a fish, though living in the ocean, knows nothing of the ocean’s secret, so is man’s condition.
The more one leans toward divine wealth, the less one relies on logic; the more one trusts poetry; the more everywhere one hears the footfall of mystery. When a flower blooms, he sees a gesture of God.
A flower blooms before the scientist too; he searches for facts, looks for causes, analyzes sap and chemistry, frames a law: “Therefore it bloomed.” The religious, the divinely endowed, does not analyze the flower; he catches the hint, the beauty, the blossoming—the manifestation of life—and the flower becomes a symbol of God. Then even a small leaf trembling in the breeze becomes God’s vibration; the whole world becomes God’s dance.
By “God” do not think of an old man in the sky. God means: this world is mysterious. And the moment life is mysterious, a new throb begins in our hearts.
If the world today is so bored, so depressed, so weary, the cause is the influence of a demonic worldview. Where there is no mystery, there is no juice. When everything is a pile of mud and stone… If two people fall in love, ask the biologist: “Nothing special—only hormones. Chemical processes inside create attraction; love is just an idea, the real thing is hormonal attraction.” Science explains everything. You’ll be surprised: in this land we used to call science avidya—non-knowledge. The ancient seers divided knowledge into two: vidya and avidya. Vidya is that knowing which leads toward divine wealth; avidya, that which leads toward demonic wealth. Science is avidya. Much is known there, yet the ultimate aim of knowing is missed.
Tell a scientist there is a soul within man; he is ready to cut the body and look. But when you cut, you don’t find the soul. It is like taking a beautiful Picasso and saying, “Beautiful!” The scientist cuts it up in the lab, separates the colors, and declares, “These are pigments; beauty is nowhere.” Beauty cannot be found by dissecting a painting, because beauty is in the wholeness—the harmony of colors. Break it and beauty is lost.
The soul cannot be caught by dissecting the limbs; it abides in the totality, as beauty does. When the wholeness remains unbroken, the soul can be recognized; in fragmentation, it is lost. This world is a wholeness; hidden in it is a mystery called God.
“People of demonic nature say the world is without wonder and utterly false, arisen of male–female union without God; therefore it is only for enjoyment. What else is there?” If there is no mystery, then no destination; if no hidden destiny, then reaching anywhere has no meaning. Then, whatever yields pleasure in this moment is proper. The Charvakas said: borrow and drink ghee; no worry about debt, for after death neither debtor nor creditor remains. Then theft is no sin if it yields pleasure; snatching another’s goods is fine if it brings pleasure—because life has no ultimate goal, no ultimate control, no meaning to draw you forward. What seems enjoyable now must be devoured like a madman—that becomes the style of the demonic person.
Behind the divine person’s life runs a thread, like the string in a garland holding beads. The string is unseen; the beads are seen. Each act is a bead; he threads each bead onto an inner purpose, a goal, a direction, a sense of fulfillment. Life is going somewhere—destiny is the thread. The demonic person has no thread; every act is a loose bead; there is no connection between two beads. Therefore he lives almost like a deranged man—no direction, no destination. Each moment he rushes wherever the winds blow, wherever lust suggests, wherever circumstances push, wherever greed attracts.
It is like striking a sitar without any knowledge of music—tightening strings, knocking at random. You will make noise, not music; music is born only when all the notes are strung on a single thread into a flow.
The divinely endowed strives to create music in life. Whatever he does, he asks: Where will this sit in my whole life? What color will it give to my whole life? By this act, at what turn will my life bend? What new meaning or expression will this add to my whole life? Thus every act aligns with a meaning, an intention, a purpose, a destiny.
The demonic person does whatever occurs to him in the moment. His action is broken, atomic; his goal only this: enjoy today—who knows about tomorrow!
Omar Khayyam’s Rubaiyat—if you do not know its deep Sufi sense—seems like an invitation to indulgence. He reaches the tavern door at dawn before anyone is awake; servants exhausted from the night lie asleep. At Brahmamuhurta, even before sunrise, he knocks. From inside a voice says, “It is too early; the tavern will open later.” He answers, “It is not possible to wait; there is no assurance of the next moment. If I miss drinking now, who guarantees the next moment I will be alive and able? So open the door; do not delay. The sun is about to rise; when it throws its net of rays upon the world, evening is not far away.”
For the demonic person, death looms—“just arriving.” He rushes to squeeze the moment dry. Bhoga becomes the goal; yoga is lost.
Remember: yoga means joining beads. When all the beads of life are joined, you are a yogi. When there is only a heap of beads with no thread, you are a bhogi—an indulger. Both have beads; but the yogi has woven a harmony—his letters have become a poem. The bhogi sits with a lexicon, a heap of letters; he has not joined even two, so no poem is born.
And at life’s end, only the thread we have woven goes with us; the beads are left behind—every bead remains here.
“Thus, taking refuge in this false knowledge—that bhoga is everything; there is no such thing as yoga, no sadhana, nowhere to arrive; life has no destination, it is a mere accident without meaning; a crowd of words with no coherent poem—whose nature is ruined and whose intellect is dull—such men, cruel and harmful to all, are born only for the destruction of the world.”
By living on such notions, one destroys one’s own nature—because our swabhava, our true nature, is hidden in attaining the supreme music, in realizing the supreme destiny, in becoming one with the ultimate mystery of existence. I will come to my nature only when, becoming utterly empty and silent, I merge with the whole. Swabhava means God. In false notions swabhava is lost.
“And whose intellect has become dull.” This does not mean their argument weakens; often the demonic person is highly argumentative, his logic very sharp. Yet Krishna says their buddhi is dull—because in this land we have never taken mere logic to be intelligence. We have called argument a child’s game. By buddhi we mean the capacity that sees life through and through, that descends into its hidden layers, that touches its inner core.
In modern times we call “intelligent” one who can argue, dispute, debate. Turgenev wrote a short story: in a village there was a lout, a complete bumpkin, laughed at by all. A fakir came; the bumpkin said, “Everyone laughs at me. Give me some way—give me some intelligence.” The fakir said, “Hard to give you intelligence, but I can give you a trick to become ‘wise’.” He whispered a mantra: “Wherever anyone declares anything—‘The Bible is great,’ ‘This picture is beautiful’—you simply deny: ‘Who says so? It is worthless. Where is the beauty? Show me, prove it!’ Shout and deny. Don’t bother to prove anything yourself; just demand proof from others.”
Within a week news spread to the capital that the man had become “wise.” He refuted everything. Say, “The moon is beautiful”—he says, “Prove it!” How will you prove the moon is beautiful? To this day no one has proved it. We just listen quietly when people say so. If you refuse to listen, the task is impossible. Such a person made everyone wrong, and people thought him a great intellectual. But Krishna would not call him wise. He calls wise the one who has found, in his own consciousness, the way into the supreme mystery—who has made his awareness the path.
Seek this within yourself. Wherever you find even a slight tilt toward demonic wealth, uproot it and throw it out.
The strange thing is: when you plant a lawn at home, weeds grow of their own; you must keep uprooting them. The grass needs care; the weeds come uninvited, and if you don’t protect the grass it will die, while the weeds—without effort—will spread and smother it. So too, demonic wealth grows easily. Why? Because water flows downward of itself; to take it upward you need a pump and effort. Demonic qualities are a downhill slope; no labor is needed. We all slide into them unless we are alert. Be alert.
So remember: whenever you feel the pull to go downward, stop yourself. Even if effort is required, step toward divine wealth. It is an uphill climb; there will be sweat and fatigue—but its fruits are sweet. The final fruit is the sweetness of moksha.
Enough for today.