Geeta Darshan #16

Certainly, the Gita’s hypothesis is as great as it is audacious. The world is easy—without sannyas. Sannyas too is easy—without the world. Keep them separate and the arithmetic is simple and clean. But separately, each is incomplete.

A sannyasin who becomes a sannyasin by renouncing the world is crippled, limping, half. If anything has to be abandoned, then the Supreme has not been accepted in totality. If anything has to be abandoned, surrender is not complete. If anything must be dropped, it proclaims that something was unworthy of existence; that the Divine was not worthy in His wholeness; that Existence as a whole has not been accepted.

One who renounces the world does not accept God in His entirety. He has placed his idea above God; he deems his own thinking superior even to God. By what authority does he decide to leave the world?

God has not renounced the world—yet! If He were to renounce it, the world would dissolve. He keeps creating. The so-called great men declare the world is futile, insubstantial; yet God goes on creating the world. He neither tires of the play nor withdraws from it!

One thing is certain: however many “great souls” may have taken sannyas by leaving the world, God has not taken sannyas from His creation. His relish is still flowing. He creates with the same delight now as He did in the past or will in the future. Not a single drop of His rasa has diminished. His stream of joy flows as it always has.

Even now, while making flowers, He is not doing it half-heartedly! Even now, while singing in the throats of birds, He is not singing indifferently! Even now, your heart beats with the same freshness, the same hope, the same dream, as it has always beat!

Gurdjieff has said—and significantly—that all religions are against God.

There is some truth in this. Because whoever teaches “renounce the world” is essentially saying, “Renounce half of God.” Accept the Creator, but deny what He has created. It is like praising the poet and condemning his poem.

Understand this a little. If you condemn the poem, how can you meaningfully praise the poet? The poet is a poet because of the poem. In his poetry, the majestic voice within him appears; the song of his very life arranges itself into lines. And those are the lines you reject!

It is like tossing Gitanjali into the trash and chanting the glories of Rabindranath. Absurd and inconsistent. For what is Rabindranath’s value apart from Gitanjali? His value shows itself through Gitanjali. True, Rabindranath does not fit entirely into Gitanjali; greater Gitanjalis can still be born. But in Gitanjali are his hands, his signature.

God is vaster than the world.

Naturally, a poet is always greater than any one poem, because the poem is only one among his infinite possibilities. Infinite poems can arise. His poetic dharma does not end with a single poem. In fact, with every poem his poetic nature is refined; the spring flows more freely; more rocks are removed from its mouth. The deeper the poet descends into poetry, the more pregnant and dignified the poetry becomes.

So no poet is exhausted by a poem. But if you reject a poet’s poem, the poet too loses meaning for you. Deny the statue and accept the sculptor—you have cleverly denied the sculptor as well.

A character in Dostoevsky’s great novel The Brothers Karamazov says to God, “You I accept; your world I do not.”

But what kind of acceptance is that! Why accept God if His world is not acceptable? Apart from the world, where have you seen God’s image? Apart from the world, where have you heard His footsteps, seen His feet? Apart from the world—if the world vanished altogether—could the very idea of God even arise in you?

It is in the world that you tasted His hint, saw His shadow, caught His reflection. The world is the mirror in which you first recognized Him—faint perhaps, not clear; but beyond it there is no recognition.

And whenever someone says, “You I accept, but not your world,” he is playing a very cunning game. He himself may not know what he is saying; the cunning may be unconscious. He might even be startled if we tell him, “Do you realize what you’re saying? You are cleverly rejecting God.” An outright atheist is better who says, “There is no God, this world is all.”

Consider this: one says, “I know nothing of the poet; this poem is sweet.” That too is a small praise of the poet.

That believer is worse who says, “Your world I reject; You I accept.” Then you place yourself above God. You are the arbiter, the judge. You decide what is right and what is wrong. You even issue God a certificate that He is okay, but His world doesn’t look right.

It is very easy to run away by leaving the world. Sannyas by abandoning the world is easy—easy because you have dropped the paradox. You have simply left the riddle aside; you have not solved it.

Remember, there is a great difference between discarding a riddle and solving it. Running away is not solving. It is evading the very effort of solution.

Sannyasins have been who left the world. A certain simplicity does come into their lives. I do not value that simplicity much, because it is not ripened by experience. It has not passed through the furnace of the world. It may be like a child’s simplicity, but not like a saint’s.

Children are simple; not because they have attained simplicity, but because life has not yet happened to them. Their simplicity will be lost. If not today, tomorrow the experience of life will snatch away their virginity. Their blank book will soon be written with life’s experiences, smudged. They will not be able to preserve their simplicity. They do not even know what simplicity is. Their simplicity is unconscious.

Those who left the world and fled to the mountains also gained a kind of simplicity—childlike. And then they too fear returning to the world, for they know well that if they enter the world, that simplicity will be lost.

Place a coin in front of Vinoba and he closes his eyes. What can be so frightening about money! Such fear of a weak thing like a coin? He will not touch money. If money is merely mud, you do not refuse to touch mud! If money is just metal, you do not refuse to touch other metals! Why such hostility only to money?

It is not hostility; it is fear. In money is the world. The world is hidden in the seed of money. The whole world comes trailing behind money. Give money a place and you have invited the whole world. Slowly, everything will arrive. Keep the seed and it becomes a tree. There is fear.

What is the point of going to the Himalayas? Fear. In the world you are tainted. In the world you forget simplicity; you become complex; you pick up dishonesty, deception, fraud.

If someone runs because he picks up dishonesty, deception and fraud, he has not been freed of them. Whenever he returns he will be caught again. In this life you may flee; then a womb will be found, and you will return again. Nothing is solved.

We must find a solution to life’s problem; flight is not a solution. It is easy—do not mistake ease for worth. Yes, when the ultimate solution flowers, a simplicity rains then too. But that simplicity is of another order—another quality, another beauty, another joy. What is the difference?

The difference is that it is experience-tempered. Krishna calls it firm dispassion—drudha vairagya. It is ripened. It is not an unripe fruit plucked off the tree; it is a ripe fruit that falls of its own accord. It has taken from the tree all there was to take; it has received what there was to receive. Now it is content, ready. Now it is ready to fall at every moment; a slight breeze—and even if there is no breeze—it will drop.

The sannyas that emerges ripened from the world is a ripe fruit. It is firm dispassion.

It will seem difficult, because one must pass through difficulty. But remember, nothing in life comes free. For everything a price must be paid. And if you seek real sannyas, you must pass through great difficulties.

Is flight a difficulty? It is a coward’s outlook. It solves nothing. It is the ostrich’s logic. The ostrich sees an attack coming, thrusts its head into the sand and stands there. The enemy is not visible; the ostrich rejoices, “Trouble is gone. If I don’t see it, it isn’t there.”

You can run to the jungle; the world will remain, it has not vanished. It will remain in seed form, in your desires, your ambitions, your fears. How far can you run? How long? Again and again you will have to return. Even in your mind, the world’s thoughts will churn, its winds will blow; you will wrestle with them and fight them.

You have read the lives of saints who ran from the world—how the world attacks them in imagination! In Christian hagiographies the devil assaults them in a thousand ways. That devil is no one but your own desires, left incomplete, perverted, monstrous—unripe wounds that fester and attack.

In the Buddha’s life it is told that when he sat in meditation, Mara, the god of desire, harassed him, came in a thousand forms, attempted to shake him.

There is no external Mara. Only if some desire remains incomplete will it haunt you. What remains incomplete becomes a nightmare. What ripens turns to gold. What remains unripe becomes a wound—oozing pus, harboring pain.

Yet flight always appears easy. Your wife is ill at home; she needs care, medicine; you flee to the cinema and forget for three hours—true enough. A child is dying; treatment is needed; you go to the temple, drown yourself in bhajans for a while, forget.

But nothing is solved. The child is dying, the wife is sick, the house is hungry—where will you keep running? The same escapee ends up in the tavern—he drinks to escape life’s problems!

Understand well: the way of the runaway sannyasin and the alcoholic is the same. Both are saying, “Escape somehow.” The sannyasin escapes geographically; the alcoholic escapes mentally; but both flee. Life’s situation is unnerving; close the eyes so it is not seen.

There is a story of Surdas. I do not know how true it is. If true, Surdas becomes utterly futile. Only if it is untrue is there any sense. The story says he plucked out his eyes because his eyes saw beautiful women; seeing beauty, desire arose; desire corrupted the mind; a corrupted mind could not remember God. So he tore out his eyes!

Do you think tearing out one’s eyes removes desire? It will become even deeper. Close your eyes and see—does desire vanish by closing the eyes? Then how will it vanish by gouging them out?

Desire is not born because there are eyes; rather, because there is desire, eyes are born. Desire is deeper than the eyes. Cut the eyes, cut the hands—nothing will change. Make the ears deaf—nothing will change. Burn all the senses—but as long as you are, desire will be.

Desire is in you. The senses are instruments your inner desire has created to fulfill itself.

What will breaking the instruments do? You will create new ones. That is why in each birth you create instruments again.

So however easy it looks, escape as sannyas is not sannyas.

If among the runaways a few still attained, do not think they attained because of running. They attained despite running.

Understand me rightly: Buddha and Mahavira also “ran away.” And they attained—no doubt. But they did not attain because they ran; they attained in spite of it.

Suppose you walked here, and another rolled on the road to get here. He did not reach by rolling; he reached despite rolling. You walked; he rolled; someone else crawled; someone cut off his legs and dragged himself here. Do not imagine he reached because he crawled or cut his legs—he reached despite. It is a miracle he reached. It is an exception.

Those who left the world and attained truth through sannyas are exceptional; do not make them the rule. Some such people exist. They are of immense strength—perhaps that is why they reached even by the opposite path.

Suppose you want to come to me; you should walk east. Someone else, instead of walking east, walks west—and if he keeps walking, he too will arrive, after circling the entire earth. Do not conclude that walking west is the way to come here. What happens in ten steps by walking east, will take thousands of miles by walking west. If someone simply keeps going, he will arrive. A thousand will set out; one will arrive; nine hundred ninety-nine will fall and be lost.

Hence thousands followed Mahavira and Buddha, but very few arrived. Mahavira and Buddha arrived—they were extraordinary men. They kept going, however long the journey. I do not say they did not arrive; but do not make their arriving into a rule. It is an exception, a miracle. It should not have happened—and it did. You cannot make mathematics out of it. It does not give the common traveler a method.

Flight appears simple. In truth, it makes arriving extremely difficult. From the outside, it looks simple—do not be deceived by appearances. What is proper is to solve the problem. However difficult, solve it. For only by solving do you grow, evolve. Your inner wealth opens. You become lord of your own inner being.

Flight appears easy but leads to great difficulties later, and arriving becomes near-impossible.

So one easy-looking proposal is: take sannyas, leave the world. And often the wrong people leave. Those who are defeated here, disillusioned, whose expectations are not fulfilled; those full of ambition whose ambition is crushed; those reduced to ruins—they run. It is not that they renounce the world; rather, what they sought in the world they did not find, so they flee. They redirect the same desire. What they wanted to get in the world, they now want to get in God, in liberation. Their moksha is only the extension of the worldly, because they are unripe.

Moksha is possible only to a ripened consciousness. The unripe will continue to demand what it demanded in the world. Hence such people imagined a heaven where all the pleasures they missed here are arranged in abundance. Here they found no beautiful women—so in heaven they created apsaras. Here they could not drink—so in heaven streams of wine flow. Whatever was not found here, they placed in heaven.

Heaven is the longing of such unsuccessful minds. There is no heaven anywhere; it is the dream of defeated hearts. And such people invented hell for others—the winners, those who defeated them.

You were racing for power and did not reach Delhi; another reached. For yourself you contrive heaven—because you “renounced” the world. And for the one who reached Delhi you consign him to hell. You declare that worldly success leads to hell.

You will throw your opposite into hell’s flames, fry him in vats of oil. Yourself you will place in heaven, with apsaras dancing all around.

This is the language of a wounded mind, the unripe fruit.

Those who truly ripen through the world know neither heaven nor hell. For them there are only two things: samsara and moksha.

Samsara is your blindness. Samsara is your closed eye. Moksha is your eye opening. Samsara is darkness; moksha is light.

Even to say there are two—samsara and moksha—may not be exact. Samsara and moksha are one; it is your way of seeing that is two. When you see from ignorance, that is samsara. When you see from knowing, that is moksha. Life is one.

That is why Zen masters say samsara and moksha are not two. Samsara itself is moksha.

There is another type—the one who clings to the world. One runs away; one clings tight. The clinger denies God.

Understand this. Both deny. The one who flees denies the world, accepts the Creator. The one who clings accepts the creation, denies the Creator. Both carry denial within; both accept only half.

The one who clings says, “What religion? What moksha? What sannyas? All fraud, all hypocrisy—consolations for defeated minds.” Marx said it is an opiate. “There is nothing; a way for the tired and beaten to forget themselves: liquor, opium, intoxication. There is no God.”

One who wants to cling to the world fears God. If God is, he cannot cling properly. If God is, the world is not enough. That will create restlessness. If God is, one must rise beyond. The journey must continue. Then the destination has not yet arrived.

The one who wants the world fears God; the one who wants God fears the world. Both are afraid.

Clinging to the world appears easy from the outside; you all know it is not. In the world, you know how easy it looks from the surface, how difficult it is within. We have created a facade of ease.

A wedding happens. Bands play; flowers, songs; as if the gates of heaven were opening. In truth, the gates of hell open. But once the wedding is over, people bless and depart. Those who bless know well, because the same sad event has happened to them—but still they smile and bless!

And our stories say: the young man and woman were married, and then they lived happily ever after. The story ends there. Films drop the curtain at that point; plays end there. Because what begins after that is the real thing, not fit to show. Too full of pain. Why tell it? Life will show you anyway.

So we keep the story sweet: the shehnai plays, garlands are exchanged, curtain falls—and “they lived happily ever after.”

It is after that that the real sorrow begins. Before that there may have been a little happiness—in hope, in imagination, in dreams. Then all dreams shatter.

The same style pervades life.

Someone becomes rich and we say, “How fortunate!” We offer congratulations. We never ask the rich man how many hells have opened within him, in what agony he lives.

He cannot eat, for in earning wealth his hunger died. He accumulated so much money that the very possibility of eating vanished from life. He became so busy in pursuit that who will care for the body? Who will eat properly? Who will sleep well?

He always thought: when I have money, when I am a millionaire, then I will sleep rightly, on a good bed, under fine sheets. But in the meantime he forgot how to sleep. Money is in hand, but sleep does not come. Money is in hand, but hunger is gone. Money is in hand—now what to do? The whole style of life has been deformed.

Ask the rich man his sorrow. He can neither sleep nor eat well; he cannot even laugh or weep wholeheartedly. You cannot comprehend his prison. You go with your good wishes, saying, “Blessed are you! The merits of your past life are bearing fruit.”

He is bearing the fruits of the sins of this life, while you tell him: your past good deeds are bearing fruit. He too puts on a face. What is the point of opening inner wounds? He smiles outside; within, the thorns keep growing. Above he keeps pinning on false flowers.

Ask the politician. He succeeds, reaches office. Ask Hitler, ask Mussolini—what did they gain?

Nothing but agony, nothing but derangement. Life becomes a great hell, a huge nightmare without end—and finally suicide is all that remains.

But history writes their stories to delude new children. History counts them among successful men, calls them victors. These madmen become “men of history,” whose very names should be erased so that in the future no one even remembers that people like Hitler and Mussolini ever existed.

But if you begin erasing such things from history, your whole history will be erased, because apart from wars, and winners and losers, your history has little. The whispers of the awakened barely appear; the clamor of the insane drowns them.

On the one side is the world. It appears easy to grab—but inside it is not easy at all.

Hence whoever is in the world feels the pull of sannyas. He thinks, “Here I suffer; perhaps there is joy.” The opposite attracts. This side is seen—suffering—so perhaps happiness lies on the other. Therefore you will see the wealthy, the worldly, the politicians sitting at the feet of sannyasins, going to listen to discourses, to satsang.

In Delhi, every leader has a guru. Necessary. The guru is a crutch. It gives the feeling: “No worries; I am suffering now, but soon I too will set out on that journey.” And whenever a politician is defeated, he certainly goes in search of a guru. As long as he wins, he may not find time; the moment he loses, he has time. He runs to find some baba, to hold some feet. Now he wants to manage the “other truth.” This one did not pan out; here he found pain.

The worldly man carries the attraction to sannyas. Even emperors are drawn to the beggar’s ease. Those who live in palaces envy those who sleep in huts—for they sleep. Their sleep is beautiful to behold, its grace unique. They sleep “after selling their horses.”

They have no horses—that proverb applies to those who do. The poor sleep as if they have sold their horses; those who have horses cannot sleep—the horses neigh too much!

The poor man sleeps; the rich man envies.

Watch a poor man eat—the zest, the passion, the joy with which hunger takes hold of him. The rich man is filled with envy. He consults a thousand doctors, fasts, takes to naturopaths—somehow to get hunger back. Hunger does not come; it died. He watches the beggar with envy, with his coarse bread but a young stomach and a life-force that still digests.

Naturally, the opposite remains attractive. The beggar gazes longingly at the palace, “Surely bliss showers there!” Those in palaces look at the beggar: his freshness, his swagger, his abandon. He earns two or four loaves and the matter ends. His day’s world is over. Then he is a sannyasin, beating his little drum, singing into the night as if there were no tomorrow. Why worry? Tomorrow he will beg again; alms will come. The begging bowl is sufficient wealth. He uses it as a pillow and sleeps. It provokes envy.

So the one clinging to the world will always be tempted by sannyas; he will nurse the wish to be a sannyasin; he will always look for his opposite and think delight lies there. And the very same is true of sannyasins.

I have met very senior sannyasins; in private they have told me that sometimes they suspect they made a mistake leaving everything. They left all and gained nothing. Perhaps they erred in withdrawing from the world. Perhaps the world was everything; there is nothing else—mind’s self-deception.

The sannyasin looks and thinks the worldly seem happy—laughing, dancing, singing, celebrating. You cannot imagine how a sannyasin feels envy for you. Secretly he savors the thought that perhaps all happens there.

I have heard: a prostitute and a sannyasin lived opposite each other. They died the same day. Angels gathered, took the sannyasin to hell and the prostitute to heaven. The sannyasin protested, “What are you doing? There’s a mistake! Take me to heaven—I am a sannyasin. You are taking this harlot to heaven! None more sinful than she. We died together, the orders must have been issued together; some clerical error—take me to the right place.”

The journey was halted. The angels ran back. They too suspected a mistake. They returned and said, “There is no error. We inquired: the sannyasin was a sannyasin outwardly, but within—while he worshiped God in his little temple each morning—his bell rang for God, but the bell of his heart rang in the prostitute’s house. He did worship and prayer, but his relish was fixed on the prostitute. At night he chanted ‘Ram, Ram,’ but felt that those gathered at the prostitute’s house must be enjoying—song, dance. They must be delighted. ‘I chose this desert in vain—Ram-Ram and a desert! No oasis in sight, no Ram encountered. The prostitute revels.’ From her house drifted waves of laughter and joy—and he burned with envy.”

“And the prostitute—whenever the temple bell rang, whenever the sannyasin’s worship and prayer rose, his Ram-naam resounded—she wept, ‘I have wasted my life. If only I too had entered a temple! I remained with the body and never sought the soul. Blessed is that sannyasin!’ She dwelt, in her heart, in the sannyasin’s temple. Therefore there is no mistake. We verified. The prostitute goes to heaven—because where you are in your heart, there you truly are.”

What is the value of bodily presence! The body may be in the temple; if the mind is not there, what temple is that? Temple is where your mind is. That is why we call it a temple. If the mind is not there, a corpse lies there; and a corpse’s presence achieves nothing.

If the sannyasin goes half-baked, the world will keep pulling; attraction will persist—and rightly so. Simple.

If the worldly, out of fear, denies God—“No religion, no moksha, no soul”—he will not be able to delude himself for long. Soon the arguments he has plastered from outside will peel off. Life will buffet him, shake him, and a deep longing for sannyas will arise.

These two types have always existed. Krishna envisioned a third: one who is in the world, yet a sannyasin; who is a sannyasin, yet in the world. One who accepts God as the Creator and as the creation. One who does not deny God in any form; who says, “In whatever form you come, I welcome you. Come as wife—welcome. Come as son—welcome. Come as customer—salutations. In any form you come, I accept. You cannot deceive me. Even in the opposite form I will recognize you.”

A Zen fakir was murdered. When the assassin plunged the knife into him, the monk bowed and, as he died, touched the murderer’s feet with trembling hands. The murderer panicked: “What are you doing?”

The fakir said, “Do not come in between. This has nothing to do with you. I am not touching your feet. I am telling Him: come in any form; you cannot deceive me. I shall recognize you. It is between me and Him—don’t be troubled. Do what you must. But let my last breath depart with this: in whatever form you came, I loved you. I placed no condition on your forms. I bound you to no rules that only if you come like this will I accept. However you come, I will see you—because there is nothing but You.”

“Samsara is moksha; creation is Creator.” This is Krishna’s great aphorism. It did not fructify. It should have, for it is perfectly right. But the perfectly right rarely manifests perfectly—because we are very wrong. We don’t harmonize with it.

What I am attempting is to bring Krishna’s aphorism to fruition.

People come and say, “What are you doing? You are corrupting sannyas—making householders into sannyasins!”

Whom else should I make? The world only has householders. Those you make sannyasins are also sons and daughters of householders. And what will happen by merely becoming a sannyasin?

But the old notion says sannyas means to run away—no shop, no office. I say we have tried that notion; it failed.

Sannyas proved a failed experiment. Sannyasins rotted as sannyasins because their lives had no energy, no flow. All streams were dammed. Can flight ever bring flow? Can running ever evoke energy? Can a fearful, cowardly journey yield life’s gifts?

He who turns his back on the world turns his back on God as well. He says, “I do not accept you in your entirety.” If God is accepted, He is accepted whole. Is there such a thing as a half-God?

That sannyas lost—and due to it the world too decayed. The worldly man thought, “We are worldly now, so let us live in a worldly way. We’ll take sannyas later; then we’ll think like sannyasins.”

The worldly concluded, “Religion is not for us; it is for sannyasins.” The sannyasin thought, “The world is not for us; it is for householders.” The connection between religion and the world broke.

Then the strange thing: sannyasins go on abusing people, “Why are you not religious!” It is they who broke the connection. People nod but know: “How can we? We are in the world—you understand! Family, children, business. How can we be religious now? We must live in lies.”

To make the world itself into sannyas is to make life itself into religion. Where you are, as you are, be of life there. Transform it. Do not go elsewhere to find religion; invite religion right where you are. Do not make pilgrimages; call the pilgrimage to you. Open, so that God may enter you. Let it not be that you have to go searching for Him.

Where will you go? He has no address. If you go to the old addresses, He no longer lives there. You go to the Himalayas—He does not live there. Soon you will meet Mao Zedong there, no one else.

Wherever you go, He has vacated the old houses. Now, if you can find Him anywhere, it is in your own house. He is you.

Thus Krishna’s conception is audacious: let the home become the temple; action become nonaction; even war become dharma-yuddha; struggle become surrender; let nothing need be renounced and yet renunciation blossom. Subtle, delicate, fine. It has not been fulfilled—but it should be.

Therefore I give you sannyas but do not tell you to run. I tell you to stay. Difficulties will come. Coordination will be hard. For a thousand years the opposites have been driven apart; a chasm has opened. Bridges must be built. Each person must construct his own bridge. But the day you build it, you will be blessed.

Take this as the seed-mantra: if you would accept God, then His creation is the doorway to accepting Him. Do not choose within it; accept it choicelessly. Then blessedness begins.

Live with this great vision: that samsara become moksha. Carry this unique formula: that action become nonaction. Seek Him in the very matter of life; find Him where you are. Let your heart beat with this great hope—and He is not far. He is near. Let your heart quicken with the hope of union.

Second question:
You keep calling out to us: “Hand over your burden, your sorrow, your worry to me, and live weightless and carefree.” And we still shy away from even that. Why are we so naive?

You are not naive; you are very clever. If you were naive, what would there be to say? If you were naive, you would not try to evade. How would the naive evade? The clever one evades.

The mind is logical, filled with thought. How to let go! You must protect yourself; you must defend yourself. And there is nothing to defend.

What do you have that you are protecting? Other than sorrow, what is there in your bundle that you guard so carefully? Kabir says, “Having found a diamond, tie up your bundle.” So what is it you are tying up? First find the diamond—then tie it tight. Then, even if I beg you to leave it to me, do not.

But for now you have nothing, yet you tighten the knot! If you tie it to deceive others so they think there is something in it—that’s one thing. The danger is that in deceiving others you deceive yourself; “If I am tying it so carefully, surely there must be something.” Then you set out to protect it.

Life has taught you logic. Society has taught you thinking. Experience has taught you: do not trust the other—lest you be cheated, robbed. Therefore whenever you hear the note of surrender, you become alert—danger.

If you were naive you would not start; you would agree. You are clever. Your cleverness is your stupidity. Your over-smartness is your lack of wisdom. Look into this carefully.

When I say “let go,” you immediately think I must be wanting to get something from you—hence I say “let go.” Naturally, fear arises.

When I say “let go,” forget about me. Look: do you have anything? There is nothing.

The day you realize there is nothing to let go, that very day it drops. In that realization the knot loosens. In that recognition you bow. There is nothing to save. Even if someone robs you—what is there to rob! And as soon as you learn to let go…

For all I am teaching you is to let go, so that you become ready for the ultimate letting go. Otherwise you will not be able to let go even unto God. Through the guru you learn God. The guru is only a rehearsal, a preparation, so that you learn the art of bowing—and someday when God appears, you do not stand stiff and proud.

The guru prepares you in two ways: that you learn to bow; and that you recognize a glimpse of the glory that has manifested in the guru. So that when the Supreme Glory manifests, when God stands before you, you recognize Him—pratyabhijna, recognition.

The taste you received from the guru, the drop you tasted—when the ocean appears you will recognize it. And the little practice of bowing before the guru will become the knack by which, before that Great Glory, you cast yourself down full-length, lay all your limbs before Him, bow your head. In that bowing is union—the great union.

If only you had remained naive—it would be good. You have become clever without becoming wise. You have become a pundit without becoming awakened. You have learned argument. And argument in the hands of the unwise is like a sword in a child’s hand—he cuts himself, harms his own limbs.

With your logic you are cutting yourself, harming yourself. Understand and recognize what you are doing. What have you done so far? Wherever you have gone, where has it brought you?

So if a new note reaches you, it is worth a try.

Marx, in the Communist Manifesto, wrote a unique last sentence: “Workers of the world, unite; you have nothing to lose but your chains.”

Perhaps this is not true of workers; but in the journey of religion it is true of every person. You have nothing to lose but your chains, your sorrow, your pain, your hell.

But I do not ask you to unite—that belongs to politics, to struggle, to war. I say: bow down. You have nothing to lose but your chains. You have everything to gain—the whole of God awaits.

Yet you stand stiff. The river flows by; you remain thirsty because you do not bend. You must bow, cup your hands, and then you can bring the water to your throat.

The distance between your throat and the river’s stream is not great. You must bend a little. Thirst and God are very close; only your unbending keeps them apart. Bow, and you are near; refuse, and you remain far.

Why worry about this too! And if you are the one worrying even about this—“First let me make sure how he wants to use me; only then will I let go”—then you are not letting go at all. Surrender means: in whatever way he wants to use you, he will use you; and if he does not want to use you, he will not. If he wants to throw you onto the rubbish heap, he will throw you. If he wants to install you somewhere, he will install you. Surrender means dropping your own cleverness.

But if you ask, “What use will he make of me? Let that be made certain first, then I will consider surrendering. How will he use me?”—you are not surrendering at all. Then you will surrender only to those uses that suit your mind. You will not have surrendered to God; rather, it will be truer to say you have made God conform to your mind’s preferences.

And often it happens that even those who think they are surrendering are not surrendering.

I have heard a story—who knows how true it is. I fear it may well be true. It is said that Tulsidas went to Mathura. He was taken to Krishna’s temple. He refused to bow. He said, “Until you take a bow and arrows in your hands, I will not bow.” There Krishna stands with a flute. But Tulsidas is a devotee of Rama. So he said, “Until you take up bow and arrows and become Rama, I will not bow. I bow only to Rama—the archer Rama is my lord.”

Is that bowing? If in the flute-player you cannot recognize the archer, what kind of eyes are those? That is not your bowing; that is an arrangement to make God bow to you. That is a big trick. That is a feminine kind of politics.

Women have a politics. They say, “I am your maidservant,” and in the same breath they grab your neck. That is their way. It is a feminine psychology. They do not say, “I am your master.” No woman says that. But every woman knows she is the master. She holds the feet and says, “I am your maidservant,” and turns the man into a slave.

This Tulsidas is a dyed-in-the-wool slave. He says, “As soon as you take bow and arrows, know that I am already prostrate before you. Now you please come in my chosen form. Accept the form I have selected.”

I don’t know how true this story is. But I am afraid it is, because so-called religious people are often seen doing such things.

I was on a journey, and a Jain woman was traveling with me. She would not eat until she had gone to a temple and bowed. One day it so happened that in that village there was no Jain temple at all, so she could not eat. I too felt disturbed.

We reached the next village. Before entering I inquired whether there was a Jain temple there. There was. But I made a mistake. We went in, and I told her, “Now be completely at ease—bathe and go to the temple.” She went and came back. She said, “That is a Shvetambara Jain temple. I need a Digambara Jain temple.”

Now in both the Digambara and Shvetambara temples it is the same image of Mahavira. There is just a tiny difference—and such a difference that it is hardly a difference. The Shvetambaras keep the eyes of Mahavira’s image open; the Digambaras keep them closed. That’s all.

And Mahavira must have done both. Sometimes he would have closed his eyes; sometimes he would have opened them. If he had kept his eyes open twenty-four hours a day, he would have gone mad. If he had kept them closed twenty-four hours a day, he would also have gone off the deep end.

That Shvetambara Mahavira sits with his eyes open twenty-four hours! His mind would surely get deranged.

But this woman could not bow there. She went in, looked, and returned. I asked, “Did you bow?” She said, “How could I? He is not our Mahavira.”

Don’t ask at all how someone is to know. Drop knowing too. How will you know? How can a part ever know? He is the Whole; let him know.

“How can one know in what form God wants to use me?”
Leave it to him—let him know. And however he wants to use you, go on playing your part.

You have not understood. You imagine perhaps he wants to make some very great use of you, so it should be made crystal clear. The whole key is this: do not take any worry upon yourself. If he wants to do, let him do; if he does not want to, let him not. If he forgets—his will. You remain just as you are. And if he never uses you at all, that too is his will.

The real key is to remove your ego. Let “I” not be. Let him flow in me; let him move, let him rise, let him speak. I am finished. Then if his will is to make me fight in a war, let him fight. If his will is to make me a sannyasin, to send me to the Himalayas, let him send me. But you keep moving as a puppet dances, tied by strings.

The dance is his, the fruit is his, the destiny is his, the responsibility is his. You remove yourself from the middle entirely. Become a cipher. Become a zero.

Have you ever noticed? Zero by itself has no value; but place digits before it and its value keeps changing. Put a one, the zero becomes ten. Put a two, the zero becomes twenty.

Become zero, become a cipher; and say to him, “Place whatever digit you wish; and if you do not wish to place any, that too is your will. We will remain zero. If you want to make us ten, make us ten. If you want to make us a thousand, a thousand. A hundred thousand, then a hundred thousand. If you wish to make nothing of us, we are delighted. Our delight is in having left it to you. You have taken charge; you have taken the reins into your hands—why should we worry!”