Geeta Darshan #13

When the disciple is ready, the master appears. But if the disciple is not willing to be a disciple, then even if he meets a master, the meeting has no meaning, no essence.

Arjuna fell into despondency, and he became inquisitive—there arose in him a longing for liberation. He bowed at someone’s feet; he became eager to know from someone—so the shower of the master could fall upon him. There was thirst, so the lake drew near.

Nietzsche is filled with a despondency even greater than Arjuna’s; his despair is not less, it is more—his agony is terrible. In the end it led him into derangement. His last days were spent in an asylum. But he had no intention to learn, no desire to inquire; he was not prepared to ask anyone anything.

Not only was he unwilling to ask, he was not even ready to admit that anyone could tell, or that anyone knows. His doors were completely closed to the master. He had sent no invitation to the master; he had even bolted the doors. Even if a master were to stand at his threshold, he would not agree to receive him. The disposition to bow was not in him.

And one who does not know how to bow—how can he be a disciple? The whole art of being a disciple is the art of bowing. Certainly, I say that whenever a disciple is ready, masters become available. But do not forget discipleship. That preparation is primary.

Nietzsche was simply not ready to learn; lest someone, by some slip, should teach him, he had arranged everything to the contrary. Even when he signed his name he would write “Antichrist” after it—enemy of Jesus.

What was his reason for enmity toward Jesus? Only this: Jesus appeared to be someone before whom he might have to bow. And whomever he might have to bow before—toward that he was opposed.

He proclaimed everywhere that God is dead and that man is absolutely free. And whenever he was asked, “Why do you say God is dead?” he would say, “How can there be two Gods? Either God can be, or I can be. And if there is some other God, that is beyond my tolerance. Only I can sit on that throne.”

Where ego is, there can be no meeting with the master. Where there is such indomitable selfhood, such unbendingness, then even if the lake is nearby, your thirst will not be quenched. You must bend, gather the water in your cupped hands—only then can you take it to your throat. The lake will not leap up into your throat. And if you are obstinate, even if the lake were to leap, you would run away.

Nietzsche kept avoiding. And the natural consequence followed: he became deranged. So much ego leads into madness; humility leads into liberation. Ego leads into derangement.

Bow down, efface yourself, and all the joys of life shower upon you; you become the owner of life’s supreme treasure. Do not bow, and you go on drying up; your roots go on breaking. One day you are left worn-out, dilapidated—a mere ruin.

A master was found for Arjuna; for Nietzsche a master could not be found, because Nietzsche is in denial. Arjuna may have doubts, but he is not in rejection. Arjuna lays his doubts before Krishna. Arjuna is not a blind follower who simply believes whatever Krishna says. But fundamentally, whatever Krishna says must be right; it is my doubts that may be wrong, not Krishna’s utterance—this is his trust. There are doubts; they are to be resolved. But doubt is not a truth. One has to be free of doubts, not cling to them.

Nietzsche is exactly the opposite: it is not that he has doubts—he has the truth! He is ready to give others the truth to dispel their doubts. Nietzsche is ready to become a master, not to become a disciple.

And one who has not become a disciple can never become a master. His masterhood will be madness. One who has not learned—how will he give? One who has not attained—how will he distribute? One who does not have—how will he share?

No never arises out of totality; it cannot—it is not its nature.
Understand this a little; the matter is subtle.

Whenever you say no, you are broken off from the whole. The moment you say no to this vast existence, a gulf opens between you and it. Whatever you say no to, from that you are severed. Wherever you say no, there you become a small fragment; your link with the unbroken whole is cut. No is a crack.

And whenever you say no, it cannot be coming from the totality within you either—because in no there is opposition, resistance, conflict. Conflict can never arise from your wholeness; only relaxation can. From struggle, if not today then tomorrow, you will be exhausted. The one who keeps saying no, if not today then tomorrow, will break.

And when you say no, what does it mean? It means you place yourself above; you assume you know better. Only then do you say no. The theist says: this totality of life is the highest. I am only a wave in it. How can a wave say no to the ocean? And if it does, it will break. It will congeal into ice; only then can it say it.

To say no, distance is required; a gap is necessary. You will find that even when you merely use the word no, instantly a great distance is created. Whenever you say yes, a bridge appears; broken things join. The chasm is filled, closed doors open. You are no longer separate.

If your no tears you away from the whole, then it cannot belong to your inner wholeness either. Look within and you will find that even there the one who says no is standing apart. For no, the ego must stand separately; otherwise who will say it? The speaker and what is spoken become two.

When you say yes, in truth, no one says yes—yes happens. No is uttered; yes rises. Yes arises from you like the breath rises.

Try it as an experiment. Whenever you say no, watch what happens within: your breath is obstructed; you cannot take a full breath. The breath itself breaks. Something inside contracts; it does not expand. In that moment you become petty. When you say yes, something within expands. Your breath flows fully; the heart beats in its fullness. With yes there is a sense of lightness; with no a burden forms. Say no and tension tightens in the psyche; say yes and everything comes to rest.

It is a curious thing: in the languages of the world there are many different words for yes, but for no almost everywhere it is the same sound—no, nein, non, nu. It is striking. For yes there are many words; for no most languages use one basic sound. In no there is negation, refusal. In the very sound of no there is something that breaks.

Consider the words used for yes—yes, haan: there is no rejection in them, no opposition. You move forward to meet something; your hand extends; you are ready to embrace.

Take this as a sutra: that which joins you to the outer totality can only come from the totality within. That which separates you from the outer whole can never arise from your inner whole.

But the ego enjoys saying no. No is the ego’s security. The more you say no, the sharper the ego becomes. You even say no where there is no need.

A small child asks his mother, “May I go out to play?” “No!” There was no point to it. He would have gone without asking, he will go even after asking; even after being told no, he will still go. And what harm was there in playing outside? But no feels natural; it has become a habit.

A servant asks, “May I have my wages today?” “No!” It’s not that there is no money in the house or any difficulty in paying; but there is a certain convenience in saying no.

Go to the railway station: the booking clerk doesn’t even look at you. You stand there; he is busy with his work—perhaps there is no work at all, because when no one is there, he relaxes, stretches his legs, smokes. The moment someone appears at the window, he bends over the register. He is saying no. “Wait. Hold on. Who do you think you are!”

Give a person a tiny bit of authority—make him a clerk, a policeman—and watch how his no begins to parade itself! Become a father, get authority over a son, and see how the no starts appearing!

Observe it. In ninety-nine out of a hundred cases you will find there was no need for a no; it was purposeless. Yet it serves one purpose: it feeds your ego. If you say yes, you don’t feel powerful; it seems as if you have no strength to refuse. In saying no there is a feeling of power, strength, authority. Hence the ego is nourished by no. No is the food of the ego; yes is its death. And where the ego dissolves, there you can be whole—because the ego is not you. The ego is a knot, a disease. It is not your nature; it is a knot that has formed within your nature. However much you tie yourself to that knot, you are not the knot; therefore you can never be whole.

If, slowly, you stop saying no—become full of awareness, begin to recognize why you say no—and as the no keeps dropping away, you will find yourself joining within and without.

There comes a moment when only yes remains as the inner tone—that is supreme theism. Then even if death comes, no note of no arises. Right now it rises for the smallest things; where there is no need, it rises. It rises even toward life. But then, even when death comes, it is welcomed with yes. And the day you welcome death with yes—you have slain death, conquered it, attained the deathless.

The day you learn the secret of saying yes in pleasure and in pain, in defeat and in victory, every moment—that day you become a vehicle, an instrument of the Divine. Now you have no desire for fruits; now His will is your will. Wherever He takes you, you are willing to go; if He does not, you are willing not to go. If He makes you wander, you agree to wander; if He brings you to the goal, you agree to arrive. If in midstream He sinks your boat, that is the very shore. Even in that sinking moment no refusal will arise in your mind.

At the last moment, hanging on the cross, for a single instant Jesus was filled with no. The last line of the ego must have remained—he himself may not have known it; perhaps it was revealed only in that crucifixion moment. When the nails were hammered into his hands, for an instant he was shaken. Death stood at the door; and it was no ordinary death. It was not coming while lying peacefully in bed; it was the cross. Thousands hurled stones and insults; the sound of humiliation was all around, as if a heinous criminal were being killed. For a moment anyone’s life-breath would tremble.

I even like that Jesus’ life-breath trembled; it shows that Jesus is human and has come out of humanity—son of man who became son of God, but essentially son of man. The whole of humanity hung on the cross that day. And man is poor, weak, trembling, afraid; he falls, he rises—he has all the weaknesses.

The weakness Jesus showed that day is endearing. For a moment he forgot all his theism, his entire attitude of acceptance. He lifted his head to the sky and said, “What is this You are showing me? What is this happening to me?” For a moment a complaint arose, a refusal arose. But he gathered himself—instantly he realized: this refusal, this rejection, this complaint shows that I am not yet fully in accord with God. His eyes lowered; perhaps they filled with tears; and he prayed, “O Father, not my will, but Thy will be done. What Thou doest is right.”

In that single moment a revolution happened. The one who was human became divine. What had been a body of bone, flesh and marrow was no longer that; the earthen realm was crossed. That body was now filled with consciousness; the light arose, the supreme light descended. In that moment of yes, Jesus, the carpenter Joseph’s son, was no more; Jesus was no more—he became the Christ. He attained the supreme.

This is the only distance between your poverty and the supreme wealth, between your state of sorrow and your bliss. Between your hell and your heaven lies the distance between no and yes. The bigger the no, the bigger the hell. No is hell. A small no, a small hell; a little no, a little hell. When there is no no at all and only yes remains, there is heaven and only heaven.

Krishna uses two words. Both need to be understood correctly. One is swadharma, and one is svakarma.
Swadharma means what you are in your ultimate innermostness—the fundamental tone of your nature. Where all thought has fallen away, all action has fallen away, and a deep emptiness remains—the intrinsic quality of that inner void is called swadharma.
This means that swadharma is, in truth, the same. My swadharma and your swadharma cannot be different, because when I reach that station, I find the same emptiness that you find. But that is the ultimate event, the last happening.
Krishna, Buddha, and Christ have all attained the same void, the same pure suchness. But there is no way to see that from the outside; it is an inner experience. There is no outer sign by which to recognize it. From the outside, what can be recognized is your svakarma. That is different for each.
Action is your circumference, and dharma is your center. No one but you can ever arrive at your center. So only you will know it—even though that center is the same in everyone. But you alone will reach your center, and I alone will reach mine. If you were to reach my center, it would no longer be my center. The lane is so narrow two cannot enter it together.
At the center I remain utterly alone. If even two points can form there, it is not yet the center. Where only a single point is possible, where only the needle-point of the compass can fit—that is it.
On the circumference, many points can be marked. Circumferences differ, with different colors; hence, svakarma.
This division—Kshatriya, Shudra, Vaishya, Brahmin—is a division of svakarma. It belongs to your circumference. In the depths of a Kshatriya you will find the same Brahman that you find in the depths of a Brahmin; the same in the depths of a Shudra. But karmas differ; circumferences differ.
Krishna often uses swadharma in the sense of svakarma as well; this may confuse you, but there is no reason for confusion—just understand it.
He tells the Shudra: Remain in your own svakarma; only so will you attain. He tells the Brahmin: Remain in your own svakarma; only so will you attain. In common speech this is called swadharma—makeshift, not very precise. One should really say svakarma.
Krishna’s point is that the karma, the family, the varna into which you are born cannot be without cause. You must have wanted it, earned it; in past lives you must have desired it in just that way. Now you have been born there.
Birth too is not without cause. You chose it yourself. No one lands in a Shudra’s house without cause, nor does anyone land in a Brahmin’s house without cause. In this world nothing happens without cause—nor can it.
The cravings, longings, urgings of many births bring you here. You have become a man or a woman; that is the outcome of long-accumulated desires. You preserved those desires, sowed them like seeds. Now you are harvesting the crop. Of course, when you sowed the seeds, all memory of them was lost; now as you reap, you don’t even remember having sown them. And today you may wonder, “Who would ever want to be a Shudra?”
It is not a question of wanting. Try to understand: even if you do not want to be a Shudra, the way you live, you are earning something by that very way.
If a man only eats, drinks, and sleeps—his life steeped in inertia—he may be a Brahmin in this birth, but if his life is only eating, drinking, sleeping, then he is preparing to be a Shudra in the next birth. Nature will send him toward being a Shudra, because the habits he is forming are Shudra habits.
And nature is always ready to cooperate with you. If this is where your pleasure lies, it is better you be made a Shudra. In fact, to live in a Brahmin’s house with such behavior will only bring you suffering.
If you live in a Kshatriya house and do not know how to take up the sword, you will suffer. If you live in a Kshatriya house and spend your days sunk in the Vedas and Upanishads, there will be much public censure. There you must have the capacity to wield a sword; that world is of struggle.
But if you remain immersed in the Vedas and Upanishads, you will become a Brahmin in your next birth. The journey of your life will bend in that direction. You will seek a home where your longings can be naturally fulfilled.
If a Brahmin roams about with a sword in his hand, it would be fitting for him to be born in a Kshatriya household so he grows from the first moment under the shadow of the sword—an environment, sanskaras, and air that support him, so the intoxication of sword-bearing within him can be fulfilled.
Whatever happens does not happen without cause.
So Krishna says: if you are born in a Shudra house, it is because you wanted it many times. Now you are born; now you are troubled. Do not spend this life in worry. Do not, in this life, try needlessly to enter the world of another varna and another karma. That will spend your time, waste your energy, ruin your life.
It is far more appropriate to continue with the karma you have received—the role you have earned until now and for which you are fit; keep playing it. And while fulfilling it, set about realizing the Divine. This will be easier.
If, while doing your karma, you begin to descend into meditation, you will be liberated from right where you are. There is no need to change your varna, no need to change your body, no need to change any outer circumference. From wherever one stands, one can slide into one’s own center.
Therefore Krishna says: Do not worry much about changing karma; live in your own svakarma so that you may attain your swadharma. But while living your svakarma, let the effort to realize swadharma go on; keep awareness steady; do not lose the thread.
Otherwise, you are a Shudra trying to become a Brahmin; a Kshatriya trying to become a Shudra; some Brahmin trying to become a Kshatriya. Life will be wasted like this.
And wherever you are born, where the very air of a certain way of life has surrounded you since birth, it is most effortless to live in that air; you are prepared for it. So do not raise needless uproar. Live the outer life as it has come to you; and within, search for that which is hidden in you.
Attaining swadharma while living in one’s own svakarma is easy. If you change your svakarma first in order to attain swadharma, it becomes difficult—because then a new commotion is added: the upheaval of changing your svakarma. And that is arduous.
It is like a man who has trained as a doctor. After completing all his education—he returns home an M.D.—then the fancy strikes him to become a musician! All those years are now wasted. Half his life spent becoming a doctor—gone, without essence. Now he throws himself into music.
But the training for music is altogether different from the training for medicine; there is no alignment between them. He will have to start from ABC. Half his life is gone, and now he begins again at ABC. And starting from ABC, when he is close to death, only then will he perhaps attain a little skill in music. Even then he will not be able to leave this world fulfilled; dissatisfaction will remain.
It would have been right that, if he wished to discover swadharma, he should have quietly searched for it while doing his svakarma—because svakarma is convenient.
Your swadharma is the same as mine—the same for all. For at the depth of the Self there is only One. But circumferences differ, bodies differ; the soul is one. The emptiness within you is one, but the garments covering that emptiness are different—different in color, form, and cut.
There is no need to change garments. The happening will occur within your own garments.
Therefore Krishna says: even if it seems another’s karma would be more convenient than your own, do not get entangled. Drums sound sweet from a distance. When you come near, you discover the difficulties. Of those near you, you see the difficulties; of those far from you, you see their pleasures.
So Krishna says: attain your own dharma while living in your own karma. Understand this deeply, because our purpose is not to perfect karma; our fundamental purpose is to realize dharma. Do not waste time in these futile pursuits; the time spent there is lost. That time could have been devoted to the search for life’s treasure.
So no harm—if you make shoes, keep making shoes. One has to do something anyway. Whether you make shoes or craft gold ornaments—something must be done. And if you were born in a cobbler’s house, no harm—be more skillful. You’ve known it since childhood; it has been happening all around you; the art has entered your very blood. One born in a goldsmith’s house has that art in his blood—he becomes skilled at melting and molding gold.
In this country we devised a way that, as far as possible, the outer life should not take too much time or too much energy. So we organized the varnas, so that each person quietly keeps doing his own work.
For the Shudra we said: whatever you do, do it in the spirit of service. That suffices for livelihood—enough. Let the remaining time be absorbed within.
For the Vaishya we said: carry on your business—but with truth. Only do business; just add truth to it. As the Shudra works but adds service, so for him service becomes the path to swadharma. For the Vaishya, truthful conduct itself becomes the path to the Self.
For the Kshatriya: non-escape. Do not run; do not show your back to life’s problems. That is for him. In the thick struggles of life, stand without fear—fearless. That becomes his path.
For the Brahmin? Let him not be a Brahmin in name only, but a proclamation of Brahman! Sleeping, waking, sitting, standing—let remembrance of Brahman, the feeling for Brahman, the inner mindfulness remain. Then let him do whatever is to be done; perform the duties that are his. But inside, let him go on practicing. Through remembrance of Brahman the Brahmin reaches where the Shudra arrives through the feeling of service.
Hence a curious thing: so many religions have arisen in the world, each with its own particular emphasis. If you observe, you will find the emphasis is for this very reason.
For example, Jesus’ emphasis is on service. Jesus comes from a Shudra household—the son of a carpenter; the emphasis is on service.
We discovered long ago that in the Shudra’s life, the emphasis will be on service. Hence Christianity spread widely—no other religion has spread so far; today half the world is Christian. It is natural.
Do not think Christian missionaries make people Christian by force; it is natural—because the Shudra is the largest group in the world.
Everyone is born like a Shudra; therefore the teaching of service appeals to all. And those in this country, too, who come from the Shudra class, their emphasis is also on service.
Vivekananda—he is a Shudra, from a Kayastha family. His emphasis is on service. Therefore the Ramakrishna Mission is entirely engaged in service—because of Vivekananda.
The Ramakrishna Mission is Ramakrishna Mission in name; it is Vivekananda’s mission. Vivekananda shaped the entire life-vision. Ramakrishna never even thought of all this service and such! But Vivekananda did. So the whole mission opens hospitals, runs schools, massages the limbs of the sick, treats them—it has become absorbed in service.
Whatever religions have arisen—wherever they come from—they bring their source along with them. This is entirely natural.
Among Vaishyas, the sages who have appeared—like Shrimad Rajchandra—the whole emphasis is on truth, truthful conduct, authenticity. That is part of the Vaishya’s life-stream; to him that will seem most important.
Religions that have issued from Brahmins place their whole emphasis on remembrance of the Lord, remembrance of Brahman.
Those that come from Kshatriyas—like the Jains—emphasize struggle, resolve, fighting. Mahavira cannot even conceive of surrender; a Kshatriya cannot—such language is not his. At whose feet should one surrender? There is no God; the self itself is God. Therefore no surrender—pure thought! And no fleeing from thought, no escape. Carry thought to its ultimate purity, and bring struggle to its final expression—struggle with oneself, so that whatever is false is cut away.
Mahavira is a warrior; that is why he is named Mahavira. His name was Vardhaman; we changed it, for the old name did not fit. His entire life-vision is that of a fighter—striving, non-escapist, combative. By fighting he has attained.
The Brahmin’s entire vision is of surrender—leaving everything at His feet. From there has arisen bhava, devotion, remembrance of Brahman.
Yet all lead to the same place. Swadharma is one; but svakarmas are many. Do not worry about running away from your own svakarma. There is no essence in that; you have been running for lifetimes anyway.
So Krishna says: even if your own svakarma seems a little painful and another’s seems a little pleasant, do not choose the other. By persisting in your own, even if painful, you attain. Choosing another’s brings disruption; it is dreadful. Svadharme nidhanam shreyah, paradharmo bhayavah. It is very fear-inducing; avoid it.
But here he is using paradharma and swadharma in the sense of parakarma and svakarma.

There are reasons—reasons rooted in the very structure of karma.
As I have said, there are three gunas: tamas, rajas, sattva; and three fundamental varnas: Shudra, Kshatriya, Brahmin. The Vaishya is a mixture of all—he is a compromise, a crossroads, a crowd. He is not truly a varna, but a confluence of all the varnas. These three have three distinct streams of life.
The Shudra is utterly outward-turned—the extravert, as Jung called it. His gaze looks outward, not inward. Therefore service alone can be his religion. He can see the other. Either he plunders the other or he serves the other. If he plunders, it becomes adharma; if he serves, it becomes dharma. But his gaze is on the other. The Shudra is an extrovert; his eyes open only outward.
The Brahmin is inward-turned; his eyes do not open outward—he is an introvert. Hence remembrance, remembrance of the divine, devotion, meditation, samadhi—these are meaningful for him. Speak to a Brahmin about service, and he doesn’t understand what you are talking about—service of whom?
Tell a Shudra to cultivate feeling, to meditate, and he doesn’t understand—what to meditate on? what kind of meditation? For him, meditation means there must be some external support.
The Brahmin moves inward; his inner current is flowing. All his life-energy flows inward. The Shudra’s flows outward. The Kshatriya stands at the doorway.
Picture a Brahmin: eyes closed, immersed in inner feeling. That is why in the meditation methods the Brahmins discovered, the eyes are closed—close the senses, regulate the senses, shut all the gates of the senses and dive within; lose yourself in yourself; there everything is to be attained.
The Shudra’s eyes are fully open. Even when he has found religion, he has found it while serving at someone’s feet—whether those be real feet or the feet of God’s image. He has rejoiced seeing the face of an image. He has seen the lotus-face of the divine, touched his feet, danced. But his eyes have remained open. He has known through service, known through the other.
The Kshatriya stands in the middle. His eyes are half open, half closed. He is at the threshold. Close them a little and he can see within; open them a little and he can see without. He is a bridge between both—half extrovert, half introvert.
Now this needs a little understanding: to be a Tirthankara or an avatar, a Kshatriya alone can be truly suitable. Because the one who is extrovert never becomes available to himself; he surrenders at the other’s feet. From him no scripture of life-practice will be born. The introvert sinks into himself. He goes so deep that from him, too, no scripture of life arises. He does not even care to explain to others, to lift them up, to give support.
One is lost in himself; one is lost in others. The one who stands in the middle takes a dip within and a dip without. He knows himself and he knows others too. And when flowers bloom in his life, their fragrance begins to flow outward. And when the light of knowing arises in his life, he wants to share it. He does not live with the lamp hidden in his chest. He wants to distribute it. He is half extrovert. Therefore he can become a guru, a Tirthankara, an avatar.
An avatar or Tirthankara means one who has attained for himself and now becomes a path for thousands to attain. That is why the Jains say that an avatar can come neither from a Brahmin’s house nor from a Shudra’s house. There is great meaning in this, great psychology. This point is very deep and clear.
To become an avatar or a Tirthankara, both are needed: a deep plunge into oneself, and yet not to lose one’s feel for the other. So Mahavira and Buddha both say: let there be prajna and let there be karuna—only then can one be a Tirthankara.
If there is only prajna—if awakening happens but compassion does not—then the man will dissolve himself in the divine, but through him no ford will be made, no boat on which others may travel. If along with prajna compassion is born—“I have known; let me make others know”—only then can that man be of use to others.
So the one who has gone within will cross over in his own little dinghy. He will not build a great boat in which thousands can go. He will not be a Tirthankara. And the one who is immersed in serving others will also arrive through service, but the scripture of inner life will never be revealed to him. He will not be familiar with the inner geography so as to give a map to others.
Therefore a Shudra cannot be a Tirthankara—he can attain knowledge for himself. A Brahmin cannot be a Tirthankara—he can attain knowledge for himself. Only a Kshatriya can be a Tirthankara: the one who stands at the doorway; who takes a glimpse within and a glimpse without; who brings treasure from within and pours it outward. That is the reason.

No; they come from bliss, not from the experience of bliss. The difference is subtle but significant.

To say “experience of bliss” implies you are separate and the experience is separate. You were thirsty and you drank water. When the throat was burning, there was an experience of pain, of thirst—but you were not that pain. The pain was in the throat; you were the knower. Then you drank, a cool stream went in, the throat was satisfied. Now there is an experience of satisfaction in the throat; still you remain the watcher.

Experience is one thing, the one who sees it is another. You are the witness. There is no witness to bliss—because whatever you can witness belongs to the world.

We have called bliss the very nature of the Divine. We have not said God is blissful; we have said God is bliss—sat-chit-ananda. It is his nature.

When someone attains to bliss, it is not as one attains other things, as if bliss too has come into your hands—no. Suddenly one comes to know: I am bliss. Then there is no experience of bliss; you are bliss.

Whatever can be experienced is other. It is here today and gone tomorrow. It is a bubble in water—arising and passing; the wave comes and goes. It will have its tide and its ebb.

When bliss is, it never departs. When bliss is, it never “is not.” Bliss is your nature; you are not even a hair’s breadth away from it. You do not see it; you do not experience it—you are that. There is not even an inch of distance between you and it.

Therefore I say there is no experience of bliss. Pain is experienced; pleasure is experienced; bliss is not experienced. Hence pleasure and pain are two sides of the coin of the world; bliss alone is the beyond.

The utterances of the enlightened do not arise from the experience of bliss; they arise from bliss itself—flow straight from bliss. The awakened one has disappeared; only bliss remains.

If the awakened one still remains and bliss also remains, then the awakened one has not yet been born, and bliss has not yet arisen. Where the awakened one himself is lost and only bliss remains—no knower remains within to know that bliss is happening; only bliss is, bliss alone is—then what flows! Whether it flows as peace, as silence, as speech, whether it becomes Meera’s song or Chaitanya’s dance—nothing can be said.

These are all actions, their own actions; they differ. Meera will dance; Buddha will sit silently. Chaitanya will become intoxicated, roaming from village to village. Mahavira will stand naked, speaking to no one. Their ways are different; what has happened is one.

In some it becomes silence; in some it becomes expression. In some it makes one dance; in some it makes one a silent stone statue. But what has happened is one. The peripheries are different.

Certainly, Ravana was a knower of Brahman. And a great injustice has been done to Ravana. In the South, the renewed feeling of respect for Ravana—if it takes the right direction—could correct the mistake we made in the past. But that movement too seems to be taking a wrong turn. They have begun to honor Ravana and to dishonor Rama.

There is no end to human stupidity; it sways to extremes. It never seems able to be balanced. Here you have been burning Ravana’s effigy; there they have started burning Rama. You made one mistake; now they are making another.

Ravana was a knower of Brahman. It was also God’s will that he play that part. He performed it well. And it is said that when he was felled by Rama’s arrow he said, “My longing of lifetimes is fulfilled. To be slain by Rama—what greater fulfillment could there be? For whoever is slain by the hands of the Guru goes straight to liberation. Where else would he go?”

And just as Krishna told the Pandavas to go and learn the law of righteousness from the dying Bhishma, in the same way Rama sent Lakshmana to Ravana before he died: “He is supremely wise; go and bring back a few sutras of wisdom from him. Drink a little water from that flowing Ganges.”

But what is our difficulty? Our difficulty is that our understanding is based on choosing. If we choose Rama, then Ravana becomes the enemy. If we choose Ravana, then Rama becomes the enemy. And we feel we cannot choose both, because they seem such great opponents—how could we choose them both?

The one who can choose both has understood the essence of Ramlila. For Ramlila is not Rama’s play alone; it cannot be without Ravana. Remove Ravana from the Ramlila and the whole play collapses. Every prop is pulled out. Rama cannot stand without Ravana; Rama is supported by Ravana. Light cannot be without darkness; darkness is a great support to light. Life cannot be without death; life rests upon the hands of death. Life proceeds through the opposite.

Rama and Ravana—death and life—are not truly opponents; they are collaborators. The one who sees this has understood what Ramlila means. Then enmity remains only as drama. Within, there is no hostility—neither in Rama’s heart nor in Ravana’s. And that is why we have called this story religious. If there is enmity, it is no longer a tale—it becomes history.

Understand this distinction well. This is the difference between Purana and Itihasa (history). History recounts the life-events of ordinary people: there is struggle, opposition, enmity, hostility. Purana—Purana is drama, lila, play. There the enmity is not real; it is appearance, a game. The role one has been given must be fulfilled.

The story goes that Valmiki wrote the Ramayana even before Rama happened. Once it was written, Rama had to complete it—what else could he do? When a seer like Valmiki has written it, what will you do then? It had to be fulfilled.

This is a very sweet point. The seer speaks, and then it must be brought to completion. It simply means this: in a play the script is written first; later the play fulfills the script. The story is not created on stage; it is created first, and then the staging follows it. Who will say what—everything is decided.

The whole game of life is decided. What is to happen is decided. You are needlessly carrying a burden. If you understand that life is only a play, your life becomes Ramlila; you become a man of the Purana; you have no link with history anymore. You are no longer under the illusion that you are the doer. You know that what He has said is what is happening. We are fulfilling His will. If He says become Ravana—fine.

You don’t kill Ravana! The man who plays Ravana’s part in the Ramlila—you don’t kill him for playing Ravana. The moment he steps off the stage, it’s over. If he has acted well, you give him a medal too.

The real question is to play the part well. Whether it is Rama’s or Ravana’s is immaterial. Let it be fulfilled skillfully, completely. If the acting is total, you become a man of the Purana. Fight without hostility, struggle without any private will; flow where life takes you. Then lila enters your life.

With lila, the mind becomes weightless. With lila, the knots of the heart are cut. If it is a play, what worry remains? Then it all becomes like a dream.

In this sense we have called the world maya. Maya simply means: take it as maya, as appearance. If you can take it so, within you will find Brahman. If you take it as ultimate truth, you will lose the Brahman within.