Neither doership nor deeds does the Lord create for the world.
Nor the linking of action with its fruits; Nature alone is at work.
Geeta Darshan #7
Available in:
Read in Original Hindi (मूल हिन्दी)
Sutra (Original)
न कर्तृत्वं न कर्माणि लोकस्य सृजति प्रभुः।
न कर्मफलसंयोगं स्वभावस्तु प्रवर्तते।। 14।।
न कर्मफलसंयोगं स्वभावस्तु प्रवर्तते।। 14।।
Transliteration:
na kartṛtvaṃ na karmāṇi lokasya sṛjati prabhuḥ|
na karmaphalasaṃyogaṃ svabhāvastu pravartate|| 14||
na kartṛtvaṃ na karmāṇi lokasya sṛjati prabhuḥ|
na karmaphalasaṃyogaṃ svabhāvastu pravartate|| 14||
Translation (Meaning)
Questions in this Discourse
Osho, in an earlier talk you said that God—meaning Existence, the Whole, Totality—is one. But in this verse, how are beings and God, or nature and God, spoken of as two distinct categories? What is the reason?
The same, as I said: the dance and the dancer. If we look from the side of the dancer, the two are one. But if we look from the side of the dance, they are not one. Like the wave and the ocean—seen from the ocean they are one; seen from the wave they are not.
So, if we look from the side of the Divine, then nature isn’t there at all; only That is. But if we look from the side of nature, then nature is.
All these distinctions are manufactured by the human intellect—every distinction. Even if someone like Krishna has to explain—Krishna knows well the oneness; there is no division, it is all one. But to explain to someone, immediately one has to make two.
This is something to understand deeply. If you pass a sunbeam through a glass prism, it splits into seven. The beam is one, but the moment it passes through the prism, it becomes seven.
Or put a straight stick into water—it appears bent. Take it out, it is straight again. Put it in again, again it looks bent. What’s happening? The stick isn’t bent. In the medium of water the flow and direction of light rays shift slightly, so the stick appears bent. And even if you check it ten times outside and see it straight, the eleventh time you put it back in, it will still look bent. Don’t think that because you’ve verified it ten times, this time you won’t be deceived—the appearance will still be bent.
The intellect is a medium. We explain through the intellect and we also understand through the intellect. Truth is non-dual; understanding is always dual. Truth is one, but understanding is always in two. If you have to explain, you have to make two. In fact, the very moment someone explains to someone else, two have already arisen—the explainer and the one being explained to.
I remember a mystic. A man went to the Zen master Bankei and said, “Say something to me about Truth.” Bankei sat silently; he said nothing. The man thought, “Maybe he’s deaf.” He raised his voice, “Please say something about Truth!” Bankei still sat silently. The man felt he must be stone-deaf. He shook Bankei hard. Bankei moved. The man said, “I’m asking about Truth.” Bankei said, “I can hear.” The man asked, “Then why don’t you answer?” Bankei said, “If I answer, there will be duality. If I remain silent, you won’t understand. You have put me in a great difficulty.”
If Krishna were to point directly to nonduality, he would have to fall silent—but Arjuna would not understand that silence. And whenever language starts to think, the break begins. It has to divide. The intellect necessarily fragments, analyzes, makes pieces.
That is why the scientific method is analysis: break it, keep fragmenting, and go on breaking. Whatever has to be understood must be taken apart.
Fifty years ago the doctor was a doctor of the whole person. He treated the sick person more than the sickness. He knew you well, recognized the patient as a whole. Today everything has changed: if the left ear hurts, go to one doctor; if the right ear hurts, go to another. He has no concern with you—only with that piece of ear. The rest of the patient is irrelevant. He will examine that ear.
So today there is no treatment of the patient, only of the disease. And there is a big difference. To treat a disease and to treat a patient are very different things. When you have to treat the patient, compassion is needed. When you have to treat only the disease, a mechanical approach is enough. The specialist checks the ear and writes what’s wrong.
As science evolves, things will be broken into more and more fragments. The process of science is the process of intellect. As religion evolves, things will be joined, fragments will be gathered. Science’s method is analysis; religion’s method is synthesis—keep joining. That is why when religion attains the ultimate, only one remains; when science attains the ultimate, you end up with atoms in hand—innumerable atoms. And when religion matures, the innumerable becomes non-dual—only One remains in the hand.
Krishna’s difficulty—and it is the difficulty of all the Krishnas, whether born in Jerusalem, Mecca, China, or Tibet—is that the moment one speaks through intellect, one has to make two.
Therefore Krishna is making two—from Arjuna’s side—remember this—he is speaking from the wave’s side. He says, “Nature is, Arjuna! This whole functioning is nature at work. Understand this much and become a witness.” If Arjuna becomes a witness, one day he will find that there is neither nature nor God as two—there is only One. It is like telling a person, “These waves you see are not the ocean.”
Perhaps you haven’t noticed: you must have gone to the seashore many times, but you looked at the waves and came back thinking you saw the ocean. You have never seen the ocean—only waves. On the ocean’s breast there are only waves; the ocean itself doesn’t show. But you say, “I have seen the ocean.” You have only seen waves. The ocean is very deep; waves are very shallow. How shallow the waves, how profound the ocean! Yet we mistake the waves for the ocean.
If you come to me and say, “I have seen the ocean,” I will say, “Be mindful: the ocean and the waves are two things. You have seen the waves; do not mistake them for the ocean. The ocean is vast, hidden deep within. And if you want to see the ocean, see it when the waves are completely still—then you can peer into the ocean.”
You may object, “You are wrong. The ocean and the waves are one!” That is the experience of one who has known the ocean. It is not the experience of one who knows only the waves.
So Krishna’s difficulty is this: he stands knowing the ocean, while Arjuna lives among the waves. To him Krishna says, “What you know is nature. Do not mistake this turbulence of waves, this restlessness, for the ocean. This is not the heart of the ocean. In the ocean’s depths there is no awareness that waves are rising. In that depth no wave has ever arisen.” Therefore one has to speak in two.
In knowledge all duality is false; in ignorance nonduality is beyond understanding. In ignorance, nonduality is beyond and past comprehension. In knowledge, duality departs; it does not remain.
Then what to do? When the knower speaks to the unknowing, what should he do? Out of necessity he must use the language of the unknowing, in the hope that by using that very language, step by step, he can point—and at some moment give a push.
We teach a child. We say, “Ga is for Ganesh.” Now in a secular government we say, “Ga is for gadha (donkey)!” The state became secular; we cannot use Ganesh. Donkey is secular; Ganesh would be religious. So the books had to be changed. But what has ga to do with Ganesh or gadha? When the child grows up, will he still read “ga is for Ganesh” or “ga is for gadha”? He will forget both donkey and Ganesh; only the letter ga will remain, freed from the prop it was attached to. But at the time of teaching the prop was necessary.
If we tried to teach the child without any symbol, we could not teach. And if, once grown, the child still clings to the symbol, then a mistake has happened—he has gone mad. Both things are needed: begin with symbols, and a moment must come when the symbols are snatched away.
Na datte kasyacit pāpam na caiva sukritam vibhuh.
Ajñānenāvritam jñānam tena muhyanti jantavah. 15.
And the all-pervading Divine neither accepts anyone’s sin nor anyone’s virtuous act; rather, knowledge is veiled by ignorance (maya). Thus all beings are deluded.
So Krishna will speak of duality, and keep speaking of it. And when he feels Arjuna has come to the place where duality can be taken away, he will speak of nonduality. We must wait for that indication. But until then—so far—Arjuna cannot be relied upon. Therefore Krishna speaks of nature and the Divine as two.
Nor does that Supreme Power accept anyone’s sin or virtue, or inauspicious or auspicious deeds. That Supreme Power is unaffected by good and evil. But we—those weighed down by ignorance, lost in dreams—drown in that dream, ignorance, and maya, and keep wandering in the net of sin and virtue. There are two or three points to understand here.
First, sin and virtue are notions only in the life of one who believes, “I am the doer.” Understand this well. Whoever believes “I am the doer, the one who acts,” must also believe “I did good, I did bad.” If the Divine is not a doer, the question of good and bad does not arise. One who believes “I did,” cannot avoid the next thing: that what he did was right or wrong, auspicious or inauspicious.
If you accept “I performed the action,” then it is impossible to escape morality; ethics will enter. No action is merely an action—it is either good or bad. The moment you link yourself as the doer, you are linked with good and bad. Our relation with good and bad does not exist without the doer. The moment we think “I did,” our actions are split; the judgment of good or bad gets attached. Good and bad cannot reach the Divine, because there is no notion of doership there.
Understand it like this: we released water; wherever there is a pit, water collects. If there is no hollow, the water does not go there. Only if the pit of doership exists within, can good and bad actions accumulate in it. If not, they cannot. The doer functions like a hollow. The Divine has no such hollow in which actions can collect—no doer. Far from the Divine—even among us, if someone ceases to be a doer, nothing is good and nothing is bad—the matter ends. The idea of good and bad remains only so long as we hold the idea “I am the doer.”
I am always delighted by an incident. Long ago in a Calcutta neighborhood, a play was being staged. The great scholar Vidyasagar went to see it, seated in the front—respected, well-known in the city. The play’s plot had a character who kept tormenting a woman, harassing her; as the story progressed, her suffering grew and his attacks intensified. One day in a dark alley he finally seized her. That was beyond Vidyasagar’s tolerance. He leapt onto the stage, took off his shoe, and began to beat the man!
But the actor showed even greater intelligence than Vidyasagar. He bowed his head and received the blows. Shoe in hand, he turned to the audience and said, “I have never received such a great award. I never imagined that a wise man like Vidyasagar would take my acting to be real!”
So Krishna will speak of duality, and keep speaking of it. And when he feels Arjuna has come to the place where duality can be taken away, he will speak of nonduality. We must wait for that indication. But until then—so far—Arjuna cannot be relied upon. Therefore Krishna speaks of nature and the Divine as two.
Na datte kasyacit pāpam na caiva sukritam vibhuh.
Ajñānenāvritam jñānam tena muhyanti jantavah. 15.
And the all-pervading Divine neither accepts anyone’s sin nor anyone’s virtuous act; rather, knowledge is veiled by ignorance (maya). Thus all beings are deluded.
Nor does that Supreme Power accept anyone’s sin or virtue, or inauspicious or auspicious deeds. That Supreme Power is unaffected by good and evil. But we—those weighed down by ignorance, lost in dreams—drown in that dream, ignorance, and maya, and keep wandering in the net of sin and virtue. There are two or three points to understand here.
First, sin and virtue are notions only in the life of one who believes, “I am the doer.” Understand this well. Whoever believes “I am the doer, the one who acts,” must also believe “I did good, I did bad.” If the Divine is not a doer, the question of good and bad does not arise. One who believes “I did,” cannot avoid the next thing: that what he did was right or wrong, auspicious or inauspicious.
If you accept “I performed the action,” then it is impossible to escape morality; ethics will enter. No action is merely an action—it is either good or bad. The moment you link yourself as the doer, you are linked with good and bad. Our relation with good and bad does not exist without the doer. The moment we think “I did,” our actions are split; the judgment of good or bad gets attached. Good and bad cannot reach the Divine, because there is no notion of doership there.
Understand it like this: we released water; wherever there is a pit, water collects. If there is no hollow, the water does not go there. Only if the pit of doership exists within, can good and bad actions accumulate in it. If not, they cannot. The doer functions like a hollow. The Divine has no such hollow in which actions can collect—no doer. Far from the Divine—even among us, if someone ceases to be a doer, nothing is good and nothing is bad—the matter ends. The idea of good and bad remains only so long as we hold the idea “I am the doer.”
I am always delighted by an incident. Long ago in a Calcutta neighborhood, a play was being staged. The great scholar Vidyasagar went to see it, seated in the front—respected, well-known in the city. The play’s plot had a character who kept tormenting a woman, harassing her; as the story progressed, her suffering grew and his attacks intensified. One day in a dark alley he finally seized her. That was beyond Vidyasagar’s tolerance. He leapt onto the stage, took off his shoe, and began to beat the man!
But the actor showed even greater intelligence than Vidyasagar. He bowed his head and received the blows. Shoe in hand, he turned to the audience and said, “I have never received such a great award. I never imagined that a wise man like Vidyasagar would take my acting to be real!”
Vidyasagar broke into a sweat—he remembered he was watching a play! It was a play, but he became a doer. He could not remain a spectator. He forgot; he felt the woman’s honor was at stake and jumped in to save her. He pleaded, “Please give the shoe back. Forgive me.” The actor said, “This is my award. I will keep it safe at home. I never imagined my acting could be so effective that you would be deceived.”
What happened? The thought “I must save her” seized Vidyasagar. The doer arose—somewhere a pious ego. Not bad—pious egoism. Very pure it must have been. But no matter how pure the ego, poison is poison. Pure poison is even more dangerous—these days pure poison is hardly available!
I’ve heard of a man who swallowed poison and went to sleep. In the morning he found he was fine. He went back to the shop and said, “What sort of poison did you give me?” The seller said, “What can I do—adulteration! Where does one find pure poison now?”
But ego does come pure. Those we call good people carry pure ego; those we call bad people carry impure ego. Those who think themselves good have very subtle, sharp ego—needle-fine; you hardly notice where it pricks, but it keeps pricking.
Vidyasagar jumped in, feeling within, “Let me save her; the woman’s honor is being violated!” But the actor spoke rightly: those blows were not part of the acting—they were real in one sense. Tormenting the woman was acting. But Vidyasagar’s shoe-blows were real. Yet the actor included even that within the acting and said, “Thank you for the award.” Vidyasagar mistook acting for reality; the actor took reality as part of the act. Therefore the blows were neither bad nor good, and there was no need to judge Vidyasagar as having done right or wrong.
Where there is a doer, auspicious and inauspicious arise. Where there is no doer, they do not arise. Krishna says that none of our good or bad reaches the Divine. We are troubled in our own maya.
What is this maya in which we are troubled? We must understand this word scientifically.
In English there is a word: hypnosis. I take maya to mean hypnosis—not illusion. Maya means being hypnotized.
If you have ever seen a hypnotist—Max Colley or anyone—or even try a small experiment at home, you will understand what maya is.
If a person is induced into sleep by suggestions—and if he cooperates, he will go under. Try it at home. If your wife listens to you—which is unlikely—lie her down and suggest, “You are becoming drowsy.” Ask her to cooperate. If she won’t listen, then lie down yourself and ask her to suggest—which is more likely—and cooperate. In five to seven minutes you will be under. Induced sleep will happen. In that sleep the conscious mind is lost; the unconscious remains.
The mind has two parts. The conscious is very small—one-tenth. The unconscious is nine parts; one part is conscious. Like an iceberg: what is above water is the conscious; what is submerged is the unconscious. Nine parts lie in darkness; one small part is in awareness. Suggestion sinks that one part too; the whole ice sinks under water.
A feature of the unconscious is that it does not reason or think—it simply believes. Very faithful! Once the person is under, say anything. Tell him, “You are not a man, you are a horse. Neigh!” He will neigh. His mind believes he has become a horse; he is no longer aware he is a man. Put an onion in his mouth and tell him it is a very fragrant sweet—he will not smell the onion’s stench; he will find it aromatic and sweet, and relish it.
In the unconscious, in our stupefied mind, anything is possible—we can become whatever we are suggested to be. This is hypnosis by effort, but we are born carrying suggestions from countless lives. A deep hypnosis remains pressed in the unconscious. The impressions (samskaras) we collect over innumerable births pile up in the unconscious; they keep pushing from within: “Do this, be this, become this.” They go on impelling us.
When anger arises, you have often resolved, “I will not get angry again.” But when the moment comes, you forget the resolve—anger returns. Then again you resolve, “No more anger.” You don’t even feel ashamed that you shouldn’t resolve anymore—you’ve resolved so many times! Still you resolve, and next morning again!
Human memory is weak. He forgets how many times he has resolved. He should inquire, “If I resolve, yet I do it, what does it mean?” It means your anger comes from the unconscious; decisions are made in the conscious. The conscious decision doesn’t work. The decision is on the surface, but lifetimes of anger are stored within. When it bursts, all decisions are worthless—it surges out. That is hypnotic anger; that is maya.
How many times has one resolved to be celibate! But it all flows away. Over many births, lust has deepened within; it sits very deep; it is hypnotic.
I conducted an experiment on a young man. I hypnotized him and gave a post-hypnotic suggestion: “When you wake, this pillow next to you—you will not be able to resist holding it to your chest and kissing it. This is a most lovable pillow. There is no woman or man on earth more beautiful than this pillow.” He believed it. He stroked the pillow; I said, “See how delicate its skin is!” He said, “Yes, very delicate.” “How ticklish!” “Very ticklish.” I said, “Twenty minutes after you awaken, you won’t be able to hold back—you will press it to your chest and kiss it.”
He was brought back to waking. Five or ten friends sat watching. He came to and chatted; they tested that he was fully awake—went to the bathroom, returned; did a math sum; read a passage. He said, “What are you making me do?” He was fully awake. But at around eighteen minutes, as twenty approached, his restlessness grew, sweat appeared on his forehead—the very sweat a man feels when proposing to a woman. Now, in his unconscious, he was attached to the pillow.
We all sat there; the pillow was behind me, the gentleman at my side. But now he was interested in nothing and kept stealing glances at the pillow—just as someone in love sees no one else. Hypnosis—pure unconsciousness.
I moved the pillow farther away. When I touched it, he reacted as if someone had touched his beloved; it showed on his face. As twenty minutes approached, I picked the pillow up to lock it in a cupboard. He rushed over, and totally outside his conscious control, he snatched the pillow, kissed it, and hugged it.
Everyone burst out laughing. “What are you doing?” He began to cry, “I myself don’t understand what I’m doing. But now I feel such relief. A restlessness was building so that I just couldn’t stop myself—I had to hug and kiss this pillow. I am absolutely mad!”
He had no idea what had been said to him under hypnosis.
Isn’t the attraction between man and woman just like this? No one has hypnotized you—you are already hypnotized by the journey of lifetimes. It is nature’s hypnosis. The old word is maya; the new word is hypnosis.
Covered by maya, a man drowned in his own whirl goes on wandering in dreams. Each has built a personal dreamland, lost in his own dreams. Some are hypnotized by money. Watch how their life-breaths tremble at the sight of wealth. Leave aside the small people—even those who seem great renouncers of money, if you watch closely, are often hypnotized by it.
Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan—the Frontier Gandhi—recently visited India. He was Gandhi’s man. But a member of his committee, T. N. Singh, reported that when he received the donation bags during the day, he would act as though it was nothing; at night, with the door closed, he counted money till two a.m.! The man wrote, “When I first went to welcome him at the Delhi airport—being on the reception committee—seeing the small bundle in his hand, I felt deeply, ‘What a simple man!’ But when I saw him counting cash till late night, I was surprised!”
When he left, the same little bundle was in his hand as when he arrived. But T. N. Singh said, “I was not deceived that time—there were twenty-two suitcases at the airport following behind. His friends had promised eighty lakhs in India, but only forty lakhs came; he left quite annoyed that it was just forty!”
Human attachment is astonishing. Even someone who appears to renounce money is not necessarily outside hypnosis. Renunciation can be a counter-hypnosis—the opposite class of the same thing. Often it is so. Those who cling to money, those who reject money—both are hypnotized. Those who cling to the body, those who reject the body—both are hypnotized.
One who wakes from hypnosis—an awakening—fills with awareness: “This is all nature’s play; if I get so absorbed as to drown, I am mad.” He begins to awaken inch by inch. Then when he feels attracted to a woman or a man and touches their hand, he knows, “This is the body, a natural attraction of bodies. Let me stand aside and watch.”
Try an experiment sometime. Hold your beloved’s hand, close your eyes, and remain a witness: “It is not I holding a hand—just a hand placed upon a hand.” Soon there will be nothing but sweat in the hand. But if hypnosis remains, even sweat smells fragrant—ask the poets!
On earth it is hard to find people more hypnotized than poets. They find rose attar in sweat, lotuses in eyes—lotuses even in feet! There should be a limit to madness. Hypnotized, they see what isn’t there—projection begins.
If you’ve fallen in love, you know how projection begins. All day the name echoes. Any footstep sounds like that person’s. A knock at the door feels like their message; if the wind knocks, it seems the postman has brought a letter.
When disillusionment comes—love gone, hypnosis broken—then? Then that person’s face isn’t even worth looking at. If they appear on the road, you only think how to escape. What happened? It’s the same person. Yesterday their footsteps sounded like music; today they grate on the ears. Yesterday the words from their lips seemed soaked in nectar; today only poison seems to come. Yesterday, when their eyes fell upon you, it felt like blessings showered; today you see only contempt. What happened? Same eyes, same person. The inner hypnosis has been uprooted—broken, disconnected.
Krishna says, drowned in nature’s maya, nature’s hypnosis, a man keeps wandering in his own calculations of good and bad.
Understand: one night you dream you committed a theft. Another night you dream you became a saint. When you wake in the morning, do you call the theft-dream “bad” and the saint-dream “good”? Upon waking, both are dreams; nothing good remains, nothing bad remains—both are dreams.
A saint is one who has come out of both the dreams of good and of bad—who says, “That is a dream, this too is a dream; bad and good alike are hypnosis.”
Only one who awakens from this hypnosis—only then—does that supreme happening occur in life to which Krishna is pointing.
So, if we look from the side of the Divine, then nature isn’t there at all; only That is. But if we look from the side of nature, then nature is.
All these distinctions are manufactured by the human intellect—every distinction. Even if someone like Krishna has to explain—Krishna knows well the oneness; there is no division, it is all one. But to explain to someone, immediately one has to make two.
This is something to understand deeply. If you pass a sunbeam through a glass prism, it splits into seven. The beam is one, but the moment it passes through the prism, it becomes seven.
Or put a straight stick into water—it appears bent. Take it out, it is straight again. Put it in again, again it looks bent. What’s happening? The stick isn’t bent. In the medium of water the flow and direction of light rays shift slightly, so the stick appears bent. And even if you check it ten times outside and see it straight, the eleventh time you put it back in, it will still look bent. Don’t think that because you’ve verified it ten times, this time you won’t be deceived—the appearance will still be bent.
The intellect is a medium. We explain through the intellect and we also understand through the intellect. Truth is non-dual; understanding is always dual. Truth is one, but understanding is always in two. If you have to explain, you have to make two. In fact, the very moment someone explains to someone else, two have already arisen—the explainer and the one being explained to.
I remember a mystic. A man went to the Zen master Bankei and said, “Say something to me about Truth.” Bankei sat silently; he said nothing. The man thought, “Maybe he’s deaf.” He raised his voice, “Please say something about Truth!” Bankei still sat silently. The man felt he must be stone-deaf. He shook Bankei hard. Bankei moved. The man said, “I’m asking about Truth.” Bankei said, “I can hear.” The man asked, “Then why don’t you answer?” Bankei said, “If I answer, there will be duality. If I remain silent, you won’t understand. You have put me in a great difficulty.”
If Krishna were to point directly to nonduality, he would have to fall silent—but Arjuna would not understand that silence. And whenever language starts to think, the break begins. It has to divide. The intellect necessarily fragments, analyzes, makes pieces.
That is why the scientific method is analysis: break it, keep fragmenting, and go on breaking. Whatever has to be understood must be taken apart.
Fifty years ago the doctor was a doctor of the whole person. He treated the sick person more than the sickness. He knew you well, recognized the patient as a whole. Today everything has changed: if the left ear hurts, go to one doctor; if the right ear hurts, go to another. He has no concern with you—only with that piece of ear. The rest of the patient is irrelevant. He will examine that ear.
So today there is no treatment of the patient, only of the disease. And there is a big difference. To treat a disease and to treat a patient are very different things. When you have to treat the patient, compassion is needed. When you have to treat only the disease, a mechanical approach is enough. The specialist checks the ear and writes what’s wrong.
As science evolves, things will be broken into more and more fragments. The process of science is the process of intellect. As religion evolves, things will be joined, fragments will be gathered. Science’s method is analysis; religion’s method is synthesis—keep joining. That is why when religion attains the ultimate, only one remains; when science attains the ultimate, you end up with atoms in hand—innumerable atoms. And when religion matures, the innumerable becomes non-dual—only One remains in the hand.
Krishna’s difficulty—and it is the difficulty of all the Krishnas, whether born in Jerusalem, Mecca, China, or Tibet—is that the moment one speaks through intellect, one has to make two.
Therefore Krishna is making two—from Arjuna’s side—remember this—he is speaking from the wave’s side. He says, “Nature is, Arjuna! This whole functioning is nature at work. Understand this much and become a witness.” If Arjuna becomes a witness, one day he will find that there is neither nature nor God as two—there is only One. It is like telling a person, “These waves you see are not the ocean.”
Perhaps you haven’t noticed: you must have gone to the seashore many times, but you looked at the waves and came back thinking you saw the ocean. You have never seen the ocean—only waves. On the ocean’s breast there are only waves; the ocean itself doesn’t show. But you say, “I have seen the ocean.” You have only seen waves. The ocean is very deep; waves are very shallow. How shallow the waves, how profound the ocean! Yet we mistake the waves for the ocean.
If you come to me and say, “I have seen the ocean,” I will say, “Be mindful: the ocean and the waves are two things. You have seen the waves; do not mistake them for the ocean. The ocean is vast, hidden deep within. And if you want to see the ocean, see it when the waves are completely still—then you can peer into the ocean.”
You may object, “You are wrong. The ocean and the waves are one!” That is the experience of one who has known the ocean. It is not the experience of one who knows only the waves.
So Krishna’s difficulty is this: he stands knowing the ocean, while Arjuna lives among the waves. To him Krishna says, “What you know is nature. Do not mistake this turbulence of waves, this restlessness, for the ocean. This is not the heart of the ocean. In the ocean’s depths there is no awareness that waves are rising. In that depth no wave has ever arisen.” Therefore one has to speak in two.
In knowledge all duality is false; in ignorance nonduality is beyond understanding. In ignorance, nonduality is beyond and past comprehension. In knowledge, duality departs; it does not remain.
Then what to do? When the knower speaks to the unknowing, what should he do? Out of necessity he must use the language of the unknowing, in the hope that by using that very language, step by step, he can point—and at some moment give a push.
We teach a child. We say, “Ga is for Ganesh.” Now in a secular government we say, “Ga is for gadha (donkey)!” The state became secular; we cannot use Ganesh. Donkey is secular; Ganesh would be religious. So the books had to be changed. But what has ga to do with Ganesh or gadha? When the child grows up, will he still read “ga is for Ganesh” or “ga is for gadha”? He will forget both donkey and Ganesh; only the letter ga will remain, freed from the prop it was attached to. But at the time of teaching the prop was necessary.
If we tried to teach the child without any symbol, we could not teach. And if, once grown, the child still clings to the symbol, then a mistake has happened—he has gone mad. Both things are needed: begin with symbols, and a moment must come when the symbols are snatched away.
Na datte kasyacit pāpam na caiva sukritam vibhuh.
Ajñānenāvritam jñānam tena muhyanti jantavah. 15.
And the all-pervading Divine neither accepts anyone’s sin nor anyone’s virtuous act; rather, knowledge is veiled by ignorance (maya). Thus all beings are deluded.
So Krishna will speak of duality, and keep speaking of it. And when he feels Arjuna has come to the place where duality can be taken away, he will speak of nonduality. We must wait for that indication. But until then—so far—Arjuna cannot be relied upon. Therefore Krishna speaks of nature and the Divine as two.
Nor does that Supreme Power accept anyone’s sin or virtue, or inauspicious or auspicious deeds. That Supreme Power is unaffected by good and evil. But we—those weighed down by ignorance, lost in dreams—drown in that dream, ignorance, and maya, and keep wandering in the net of sin and virtue. There are two or three points to understand here.
First, sin and virtue are notions only in the life of one who believes, “I am the doer.” Understand this well. Whoever believes “I am the doer, the one who acts,” must also believe “I did good, I did bad.” If the Divine is not a doer, the question of good and bad does not arise. One who believes “I did,” cannot avoid the next thing: that what he did was right or wrong, auspicious or inauspicious.
If you accept “I performed the action,” then it is impossible to escape morality; ethics will enter. No action is merely an action—it is either good or bad. The moment you link yourself as the doer, you are linked with good and bad. Our relation with good and bad does not exist without the doer. The moment we think “I did,” our actions are split; the judgment of good or bad gets attached. Good and bad cannot reach the Divine, because there is no notion of doership there.
Understand it like this: we released water; wherever there is a pit, water collects. If there is no hollow, the water does not go there. Only if the pit of doership exists within, can good and bad actions accumulate in it. If not, they cannot. The doer functions like a hollow. The Divine has no such hollow in which actions can collect—no doer. Far from the Divine—even among us, if someone ceases to be a doer, nothing is good and nothing is bad—the matter ends. The idea of good and bad remains only so long as we hold the idea “I am the doer.”
I am always delighted by an incident. Long ago in a Calcutta neighborhood, a play was being staged. The great scholar Vidyasagar went to see it, seated in the front—respected, well-known in the city. The play’s plot had a character who kept tormenting a woman, harassing her; as the story progressed, her suffering grew and his attacks intensified. One day in a dark alley he finally seized her. That was beyond Vidyasagar’s tolerance. He leapt onto the stage, took off his shoe, and began to beat the man!
But the actor showed even greater intelligence than Vidyasagar. He bowed his head and received the blows. Shoe in hand, he turned to the audience and said, “I have never received such a great award. I never imagined that a wise man like Vidyasagar would take my acting to be real!”
So Krishna will speak of duality, and keep speaking of it. And when he feels Arjuna has come to the place where duality can be taken away, he will speak of nonduality. We must wait for that indication. But until then—so far—Arjuna cannot be relied upon. Therefore Krishna speaks of nature and the Divine as two.
Na datte kasyacit pāpam na caiva sukritam vibhuh.
Ajñānenāvritam jñānam tena muhyanti jantavah. 15.
And the all-pervading Divine neither accepts anyone’s sin nor anyone’s virtuous act; rather, knowledge is veiled by ignorance (maya). Thus all beings are deluded.
Nor does that Supreme Power accept anyone’s sin or virtue, or inauspicious or auspicious deeds. That Supreme Power is unaffected by good and evil. But we—those weighed down by ignorance, lost in dreams—drown in that dream, ignorance, and maya, and keep wandering in the net of sin and virtue. There are two or three points to understand here.
First, sin and virtue are notions only in the life of one who believes, “I am the doer.” Understand this well. Whoever believes “I am the doer, the one who acts,” must also believe “I did good, I did bad.” If the Divine is not a doer, the question of good and bad does not arise. One who believes “I did,” cannot avoid the next thing: that what he did was right or wrong, auspicious or inauspicious.
If you accept “I performed the action,” then it is impossible to escape morality; ethics will enter. No action is merely an action—it is either good or bad. The moment you link yourself as the doer, you are linked with good and bad. Our relation with good and bad does not exist without the doer. The moment we think “I did,” our actions are split; the judgment of good or bad gets attached. Good and bad cannot reach the Divine, because there is no notion of doership there.
Understand it like this: we released water; wherever there is a pit, water collects. If there is no hollow, the water does not go there. Only if the pit of doership exists within, can good and bad actions accumulate in it. If not, they cannot. The doer functions like a hollow. The Divine has no such hollow in which actions can collect—no doer. Far from the Divine—even among us, if someone ceases to be a doer, nothing is good and nothing is bad—the matter ends. The idea of good and bad remains only so long as we hold the idea “I am the doer.”
I am always delighted by an incident. Long ago in a Calcutta neighborhood, a play was being staged. The great scholar Vidyasagar went to see it, seated in the front—respected, well-known in the city. The play’s plot had a character who kept tormenting a woman, harassing her; as the story progressed, her suffering grew and his attacks intensified. One day in a dark alley he finally seized her. That was beyond Vidyasagar’s tolerance. He leapt onto the stage, took off his shoe, and began to beat the man!
But the actor showed even greater intelligence than Vidyasagar. He bowed his head and received the blows. Shoe in hand, he turned to the audience and said, “I have never received such a great award. I never imagined that a wise man like Vidyasagar would take my acting to be real!”
Vidyasagar broke into a sweat—he remembered he was watching a play! It was a play, but he became a doer. He could not remain a spectator. He forgot; he felt the woman’s honor was at stake and jumped in to save her. He pleaded, “Please give the shoe back. Forgive me.” The actor said, “This is my award. I will keep it safe at home. I never imagined my acting could be so effective that you would be deceived.”
What happened? The thought “I must save her” seized Vidyasagar. The doer arose—somewhere a pious ego. Not bad—pious egoism. Very pure it must have been. But no matter how pure the ego, poison is poison. Pure poison is even more dangerous—these days pure poison is hardly available!
I’ve heard of a man who swallowed poison and went to sleep. In the morning he found he was fine. He went back to the shop and said, “What sort of poison did you give me?” The seller said, “What can I do—adulteration! Where does one find pure poison now?”
But ego does come pure. Those we call good people carry pure ego; those we call bad people carry impure ego. Those who think themselves good have very subtle, sharp ego—needle-fine; you hardly notice where it pricks, but it keeps pricking.
Vidyasagar jumped in, feeling within, “Let me save her; the woman’s honor is being violated!” But the actor spoke rightly: those blows were not part of the acting—they were real in one sense. Tormenting the woman was acting. But Vidyasagar’s shoe-blows were real. Yet the actor included even that within the acting and said, “Thank you for the award.” Vidyasagar mistook acting for reality; the actor took reality as part of the act. Therefore the blows were neither bad nor good, and there was no need to judge Vidyasagar as having done right or wrong.
Where there is a doer, auspicious and inauspicious arise. Where there is no doer, they do not arise. Krishna says that none of our good or bad reaches the Divine. We are troubled in our own maya.
What is this maya in which we are troubled? We must understand this word scientifically.
In English there is a word: hypnosis. I take maya to mean hypnosis—not illusion. Maya means being hypnotized.
If you have ever seen a hypnotist—Max Colley or anyone—or even try a small experiment at home, you will understand what maya is.
If a person is induced into sleep by suggestions—and if he cooperates, he will go under. Try it at home. If your wife listens to you—which is unlikely—lie her down and suggest, “You are becoming drowsy.” Ask her to cooperate. If she won’t listen, then lie down yourself and ask her to suggest—which is more likely—and cooperate. In five to seven minutes you will be under. Induced sleep will happen. In that sleep the conscious mind is lost; the unconscious remains.
The mind has two parts. The conscious is very small—one-tenth. The unconscious is nine parts; one part is conscious. Like an iceberg: what is above water is the conscious; what is submerged is the unconscious. Nine parts lie in darkness; one small part is in awareness. Suggestion sinks that one part too; the whole ice sinks under water.
A feature of the unconscious is that it does not reason or think—it simply believes. Very faithful! Once the person is under, say anything. Tell him, “You are not a man, you are a horse. Neigh!” He will neigh. His mind believes he has become a horse; he is no longer aware he is a man. Put an onion in his mouth and tell him it is a very fragrant sweet—he will not smell the onion’s stench; he will find it aromatic and sweet, and relish it.
In the unconscious, in our stupefied mind, anything is possible—we can become whatever we are suggested to be. This is hypnosis by effort, but we are born carrying suggestions from countless lives. A deep hypnosis remains pressed in the unconscious. The impressions (samskaras) we collect over innumerable births pile up in the unconscious; they keep pushing from within: “Do this, be this, become this.” They go on impelling us.
When anger arises, you have often resolved, “I will not get angry again.” But when the moment comes, you forget the resolve—anger returns. Then again you resolve, “No more anger.” You don’t even feel ashamed that you shouldn’t resolve anymore—you’ve resolved so many times! Still you resolve, and next morning again!
Human memory is weak. He forgets how many times he has resolved. He should inquire, “If I resolve, yet I do it, what does it mean?” It means your anger comes from the unconscious; decisions are made in the conscious. The conscious decision doesn’t work. The decision is on the surface, but lifetimes of anger are stored within. When it bursts, all decisions are worthless—it surges out. That is hypnotic anger; that is maya.
How many times has one resolved to be celibate! But it all flows away. Over many births, lust has deepened within; it sits very deep; it is hypnotic.
I conducted an experiment on a young man. I hypnotized him and gave a post-hypnotic suggestion: “When you wake, this pillow next to you—you will not be able to resist holding it to your chest and kissing it. This is a most lovable pillow. There is no woman or man on earth more beautiful than this pillow.” He believed it. He stroked the pillow; I said, “See how delicate its skin is!” He said, “Yes, very delicate.” “How ticklish!” “Very ticklish.” I said, “Twenty minutes after you awaken, you won’t be able to hold back—you will press it to your chest and kiss it.”
He was brought back to waking. Five or ten friends sat watching. He came to and chatted; they tested that he was fully awake—went to the bathroom, returned; did a math sum; read a passage. He said, “What are you making me do?” He was fully awake. But at around eighteen minutes, as twenty approached, his restlessness grew, sweat appeared on his forehead—the very sweat a man feels when proposing to a woman. Now, in his unconscious, he was attached to the pillow.
We all sat there; the pillow was behind me, the gentleman at my side. But now he was interested in nothing and kept stealing glances at the pillow—just as someone in love sees no one else. Hypnosis—pure unconsciousness.
I moved the pillow farther away. When I touched it, he reacted as if someone had touched his beloved; it showed on his face. As twenty minutes approached, I picked the pillow up to lock it in a cupboard. He rushed over, and totally outside his conscious control, he snatched the pillow, kissed it, and hugged it.
Everyone burst out laughing. “What are you doing?” He began to cry, “I myself don’t understand what I’m doing. But now I feel such relief. A restlessness was building so that I just couldn’t stop myself—I had to hug and kiss this pillow. I am absolutely mad!”
He had no idea what had been said to him under hypnosis.
Isn’t the attraction between man and woman just like this? No one has hypnotized you—you are already hypnotized by the journey of lifetimes. It is nature’s hypnosis. The old word is maya; the new word is hypnosis.
Covered by maya, a man drowned in his own whirl goes on wandering in dreams. Each has built a personal dreamland, lost in his own dreams. Some are hypnotized by money. Watch how their life-breaths tremble at the sight of wealth. Leave aside the small people—even those who seem great renouncers of money, if you watch closely, are often hypnotized by it.
Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan—the Frontier Gandhi—recently visited India. He was Gandhi’s man. But a member of his committee, T. N. Singh, reported that when he received the donation bags during the day, he would act as though it was nothing; at night, with the door closed, he counted money till two a.m.! The man wrote, “When I first went to welcome him at the Delhi airport—being on the reception committee—seeing the small bundle in his hand, I felt deeply, ‘What a simple man!’ But when I saw him counting cash till late night, I was surprised!”
When he left, the same little bundle was in his hand as when he arrived. But T. N. Singh said, “I was not deceived that time—there were twenty-two suitcases at the airport following behind. His friends had promised eighty lakhs in India, but only forty lakhs came; he left quite annoyed that it was just forty!”
Human attachment is astonishing. Even someone who appears to renounce money is not necessarily outside hypnosis. Renunciation can be a counter-hypnosis—the opposite class of the same thing. Often it is so. Those who cling to money, those who reject money—both are hypnotized. Those who cling to the body, those who reject the body—both are hypnotized.
One who wakes from hypnosis—an awakening—fills with awareness: “This is all nature’s play; if I get so absorbed as to drown, I am mad.” He begins to awaken inch by inch. Then when he feels attracted to a woman or a man and touches their hand, he knows, “This is the body, a natural attraction of bodies. Let me stand aside and watch.”
Try an experiment sometime. Hold your beloved’s hand, close your eyes, and remain a witness: “It is not I holding a hand—just a hand placed upon a hand.” Soon there will be nothing but sweat in the hand. But if hypnosis remains, even sweat smells fragrant—ask the poets!
On earth it is hard to find people more hypnotized than poets. They find rose attar in sweat, lotuses in eyes—lotuses even in feet! There should be a limit to madness. Hypnotized, they see what isn’t there—projection begins.
If you’ve fallen in love, you know how projection begins. All day the name echoes. Any footstep sounds like that person’s. A knock at the door feels like their message; if the wind knocks, it seems the postman has brought a letter.
When disillusionment comes—love gone, hypnosis broken—then? Then that person’s face isn’t even worth looking at. If they appear on the road, you only think how to escape. What happened? It’s the same person. Yesterday their footsteps sounded like music; today they grate on the ears. Yesterday the words from their lips seemed soaked in nectar; today only poison seems to come. Yesterday, when their eyes fell upon you, it felt like blessings showered; today you see only contempt. What happened? Same eyes, same person. The inner hypnosis has been uprooted—broken, disconnected.
Krishna says, drowned in nature’s maya, nature’s hypnosis, a man keeps wandering in his own calculations of good and bad.
Understand: one night you dream you committed a theft. Another night you dream you became a saint. When you wake in the morning, do you call the theft-dream “bad” and the saint-dream “good”? Upon waking, both are dreams; nothing good remains, nothing bad remains—both are dreams.
A saint is one who has come out of both the dreams of good and of bad—who says, “That is a dream, this too is a dream; bad and good alike are hypnosis.”
Only one who awakens from this hypnosis—only then—does that supreme happening occur in life to which Krishna is pointing.
Osho, what is the difference between maya and the Divine? How and why does maya veil knowing?
What is the difference between maya and the Divine? For those who are drowned in maya, the difference is immense. Just as for one immersed in a dream at night there seems a great difference between dreaming and waking. But for one who has awakened, there is no difference between dream and waking—because once awake, the dream is no more. Difference with respect to what? Understand this rightly.
A rope is lying there and I see a snake. As long as I am seeing a snake, there is a big difference between rope and snake. I will not run on seeing a rope; I will run on seeing a snake. I will not be frightened by a rope; I will be frightened by a snake. I won’t prepare to kill when I see a rope; I will when I see a snake. If a snake falls on my foot, I might even die. If a rope falls on my foot, there’s no question of dying.
To a person to whom a rope in the dark appears like a snake, if you say, “Rope and snake are one—walk on without worry,” he will say, “Forgive me. Rope and snake are not one!” Even if a rope appears as a snake, for him it is a snake.
Those who study snakes say that ninety-seven percent of snakes have no venom. Only three out of a hundred are poisonous. Yet people bitten by nonpoisonous snakes also die. It is a marvel. If there is no poison, why did the man die from the bite?
A person dies less from the snake’s poison than from the hypnosis, “A snake has bitten me.” That is why those who “draw out poison” can draw it out. No one is actually drawing out poison. If the snake was nonpoisonous, the mantra works. And since ninety-seven percent of snakes are without venom, it comes out easily. There’s no difficulty—only enough confidence has to be instilled that it has been removed. It was never there! So it is gone! But it is not necessary that if it isn’t “removed” the person will not die—he could die. So the work gets done; the man is saved.
Therefore I am not against mantras. As long as there are people who can die of a fake snake, there will be a need for fake mantras to bring them back. There is a need. Even if your foot falls on a rope, and you believe it to be a snake, death is possible. For you there is a difference.
I have heard: A fakir lived outside a village. A dark shadow was going into the village. The fakir asked, “Who are you?” She said, “I am Death.” “Why are you going into this village?” “Plague is coming to the village, and I have to take ten thousand lives.”
Within a month some fifty thousand people had died. The fakir said, “This is too much! Men lie—yes—but has Death also started lying? Then it is useless to trust even God; who knows, he too may have started lying!”
He kept watch to catch her on her return. One night Death was coming back. He said, “Stop! This is outrageous! Such a lie! You told me you would take ten thousand lives. Fifty thousand have died!” Death said, “I took ten thousand; the rest died on their own. The rest died of panic. I had no hand in it. They died just from thinking ‘Plague has come.’ I am leaving after taking ten thousand; the remaining forty thousand died by themselves. If more die, I am not responsible.”
Rope and snake are not one—for the person to whom a rope appears as a snake. To those for whom the world still appears, telling them that maya and the Divine are one is very hard to understand. How can they be one? They are not.
As long as the world appears, the Divine is not. Where is the question of oneness? Only maya is—deep sleep, that’s all. The day one awakens from sleep, only the Divine remains; the world does not.
Hence this is a very difficult riddle—very difficult because those who have known say: only the Divine is, the world is not. But we, who know that the world is, keep asking them to tell us something. Shankara says the world is maya—maya meaning, it is not. But we ask, “How can we accept it is maya? When a thorn pierces our foot, blood flows!”
In Europe there was a thinker in England, Berkeley. He too said, like Shankara, that the whole world is an illusion, an appearance, nothing really is. One morning he went walking with Dr. Johnson. He said to Johnson, “All this world is maya.” Johnson was a thorough realist. He picked up a stone and dropped it on Berkeley’s foot. The foot bled. Berkeley sat clutching his foot. Johnson stood beside him and said, “If all is maya, why are you holding your foot? There is no stone.”
People ask Shankara, “How can we believe the world is maya? You too beg alms. You feel hunger. You eat. You sleep. How can we accept it?” If Shankara had his way he would say, “The world is not.” But the people he must speak to say, “The world is. Your God is not—he is nowhere to be seen! The world is visible. You speak in reverse: what is, you call ‘not’; what is not, you call ‘is.’” So what is Shankara to say? He says, “The Divine is. This world is not, yet it appears to you.”
Maya means that which is not and yet appears. The day you know That which is, that which appeared but was not will vanish, be effaced. No relationship will need to be forged.
As long as the world is, the world is; the Divine is not. There is no question of relationship. The day the Divine is, only the Divine is; the world is not. There is no question of relationship.
Therefore between the Divine and maya there is no relationship; they are not related. How can there be a relation between truth and untruth? If we are to build a bridge across a river, one bank is real and the other bank is false—can you build a bridge? How will you place it? One span will rest on the real bank, but where will you place the other? And if a span can rest on the false as well, then even the real becomes suspect.
Brahman and maya never stand face to face in anyone’s experience; but such people do stand face to face—one whose experience is of Brahman, and one whose experience is of maya. They converse. Then the use of these two words becomes necessary. The one who knows Brahman is obliged to concede that the world is—because the other says it is. This discussion cannot proceed if he simply says, “It is not.” The other will still say, “That about which you so forcefully say ‘is not’ must be something; otherwise why such emphasis? When you say ‘it is not,’ what is it you are calling ‘not’? Suppose the world is not; but the one you are telling this to—he is! This is the difficulty.”
The world and truth—maya and Brahman—never meet face to face. They never meet at all. There is no relationship between them. Maya means that which is not, and yet appears.
A snake is appearing which isn’t there; there is a rope. Now the great difficulty: from where is that snake coming? Why does it appear? Krishna would say: it is your projection, your own maya. In a moment of fear, of dread, you took the rope to be a snake. It isn’t there anywhere.
What relation is there between rope and snake? None. The one who picks up the rope and sees it as rope, for him the snake is gone. How will he forge a relationship? And the one who cannot see the rope, only the snake, has no rope. How will he forge a relationship?
There is no relationship whatsoever between Brahman and maya. Maya is nothing but projection. The mind has the capacity to imagine and to project. It can spread out immensely—beyond measure. And we live in that spread.
One small story, and I will finish for today.
However often our dream breaks, we patch it up again. It breaks in the morning, in the afternoon, in the evening—we put patches on it again. We are very skilled craftsmen at patching our dream. One desire fails—we gain nothing—immediately we manufacture another desire. We find reasons: “That is why I failed. Next time it won’t happen.” One hope is shattered—immediately we manufacture another. Life daily, reality daily, breaks our projections—but we keep constructing, manufacturing!
I have heard: toward evening a wealthy man was about to close his door when his attendant came in once more and said, “Listen, through the day we have turned away twenty-four—two dozen—insurance agents. A twenty-fifth is present. He begs to be let in.” The wealthy man felt pity. He said, “All right, let the twenty-fifth come in. I’m just about to close the door.”
He came in. The wealthy man looked at him and said, “You are fortunate. Because twenty-four—two dozen—insurance agents I have driven away from the door today. You know? You are fortunate—I let you in.” The man said, “I know very well, sir—because I am them!” He knew very well, because those twenty-four were he himself.
He had come twenty-four times in the day—the same man. “I know well; I am they.” The owner was astonished. “You amaze me. You are not tired yet?” The insurance agent said, “Who ever gets tired?”
No one gets tired. However many hopes and disappointments, still it seems, “Perhaps one more chance! Once more!” We keep spreading our net. Even when death stands before us, we go on spreading our projections beyond death. The dying man thinks, “Donate a cow; arrangements for heaven will be made.” Still projecting. Death stands at the door, but the projector of their film is still running. It does not stop. They keep spreading! They think, “Give four annas to a brahmin—then we can tell God we gave four annas to a brahmin; a nice place, please! And if it could be in your own mansion, that would be best. Let me stay right there!”
In London, at the medical hospital of London University, an odd event occurs every three months. Every three months the trustees of that hospital hold a meeting.
If you ever see that meeting, you will be amazed—soon astonished. You will see that the man sitting in the president’s chair neither moves nor stirs, not even the pupils of his eyes move. You will wonder: is he alive or dead? If you go near, you will find he is a corpse. A body has been kept there for a hundred years.
A man named Jeremy Bentham founded that hospital. In his will he wrote: “Even after my death I cannot tolerate that I should build the hospital and someone else presides. Therefore keep my body here, and I will preside whenever the trustees meet. I will remain the president.”
So his body is still kept there. A plaque before him reads “President.” Every time the trustees finish their meeting and a vote is taken on some matter, they have to record: “The president is present, but not voting.” This has been going on for a hundred years.
Man’s madness! Such is our whole mind. We keep spreading it. Without awakening from this mind, no one has ever set out on the pilgrimage to the Lord.
Enough for today. But sit for five minutes. If a dead man can sit, then a living person should certainly sit. It matters not if you don’t vote—just sit! Makes no difference. But those who can vote, clap, and join in the bhajan.
A rope is lying there and I see a snake. As long as I am seeing a snake, there is a big difference between rope and snake. I will not run on seeing a rope; I will run on seeing a snake. I will not be frightened by a rope; I will be frightened by a snake. I won’t prepare to kill when I see a rope; I will when I see a snake. If a snake falls on my foot, I might even die. If a rope falls on my foot, there’s no question of dying.
To a person to whom a rope in the dark appears like a snake, if you say, “Rope and snake are one—walk on without worry,” he will say, “Forgive me. Rope and snake are not one!” Even if a rope appears as a snake, for him it is a snake.
Those who study snakes say that ninety-seven percent of snakes have no venom. Only three out of a hundred are poisonous. Yet people bitten by nonpoisonous snakes also die. It is a marvel. If there is no poison, why did the man die from the bite?
A person dies less from the snake’s poison than from the hypnosis, “A snake has bitten me.” That is why those who “draw out poison” can draw it out. No one is actually drawing out poison. If the snake was nonpoisonous, the mantra works. And since ninety-seven percent of snakes are without venom, it comes out easily. There’s no difficulty—only enough confidence has to be instilled that it has been removed. It was never there! So it is gone! But it is not necessary that if it isn’t “removed” the person will not die—he could die. So the work gets done; the man is saved.
Therefore I am not against mantras. As long as there are people who can die of a fake snake, there will be a need for fake mantras to bring them back. There is a need. Even if your foot falls on a rope, and you believe it to be a snake, death is possible. For you there is a difference.
I have heard: A fakir lived outside a village. A dark shadow was going into the village. The fakir asked, “Who are you?” She said, “I am Death.” “Why are you going into this village?” “Plague is coming to the village, and I have to take ten thousand lives.”
Within a month some fifty thousand people had died. The fakir said, “This is too much! Men lie—yes—but has Death also started lying? Then it is useless to trust even God; who knows, he too may have started lying!”
He kept watch to catch her on her return. One night Death was coming back. He said, “Stop! This is outrageous! Such a lie! You told me you would take ten thousand lives. Fifty thousand have died!” Death said, “I took ten thousand; the rest died on their own. The rest died of panic. I had no hand in it. They died just from thinking ‘Plague has come.’ I am leaving after taking ten thousand; the remaining forty thousand died by themselves. If more die, I am not responsible.”
Rope and snake are not one—for the person to whom a rope appears as a snake. To those for whom the world still appears, telling them that maya and the Divine are one is very hard to understand. How can they be one? They are not.
As long as the world appears, the Divine is not. Where is the question of oneness? Only maya is—deep sleep, that’s all. The day one awakens from sleep, only the Divine remains; the world does not.
Hence this is a very difficult riddle—very difficult because those who have known say: only the Divine is, the world is not. But we, who know that the world is, keep asking them to tell us something. Shankara says the world is maya—maya meaning, it is not. But we ask, “How can we accept it is maya? When a thorn pierces our foot, blood flows!”
In Europe there was a thinker in England, Berkeley. He too said, like Shankara, that the whole world is an illusion, an appearance, nothing really is. One morning he went walking with Dr. Johnson. He said to Johnson, “All this world is maya.” Johnson was a thorough realist. He picked up a stone and dropped it on Berkeley’s foot. The foot bled. Berkeley sat clutching his foot. Johnson stood beside him and said, “If all is maya, why are you holding your foot? There is no stone.”
People ask Shankara, “How can we believe the world is maya? You too beg alms. You feel hunger. You eat. You sleep. How can we accept it?” If Shankara had his way he would say, “The world is not.” But the people he must speak to say, “The world is. Your God is not—he is nowhere to be seen! The world is visible. You speak in reverse: what is, you call ‘not’; what is not, you call ‘is.’” So what is Shankara to say? He says, “The Divine is. This world is not, yet it appears to you.”
Maya means that which is not and yet appears. The day you know That which is, that which appeared but was not will vanish, be effaced. No relationship will need to be forged.
As long as the world is, the world is; the Divine is not. There is no question of relationship. The day the Divine is, only the Divine is; the world is not. There is no question of relationship.
Therefore between the Divine and maya there is no relationship; they are not related. How can there be a relation between truth and untruth? If we are to build a bridge across a river, one bank is real and the other bank is false—can you build a bridge? How will you place it? One span will rest on the real bank, but where will you place the other? And if a span can rest on the false as well, then even the real becomes suspect.
Brahman and maya never stand face to face in anyone’s experience; but such people do stand face to face—one whose experience is of Brahman, and one whose experience is of maya. They converse. Then the use of these two words becomes necessary. The one who knows Brahman is obliged to concede that the world is—because the other says it is. This discussion cannot proceed if he simply says, “It is not.” The other will still say, “That about which you so forcefully say ‘is not’ must be something; otherwise why such emphasis? When you say ‘it is not,’ what is it you are calling ‘not’? Suppose the world is not; but the one you are telling this to—he is! This is the difficulty.”
The world and truth—maya and Brahman—never meet face to face. They never meet at all. There is no relationship between them. Maya means that which is not, and yet appears.
A snake is appearing which isn’t there; there is a rope. Now the great difficulty: from where is that snake coming? Why does it appear? Krishna would say: it is your projection, your own maya. In a moment of fear, of dread, you took the rope to be a snake. It isn’t there anywhere.
What relation is there between rope and snake? None. The one who picks up the rope and sees it as rope, for him the snake is gone. How will he forge a relationship? And the one who cannot see the rope, only the snake, has no rope. How will he forge a relationship?
There is no relationship whatsoever between Brahman and maya. Maya is nothing but projection. The mind has the capacity to imagine and to project. It can spread out immensely—beyond measure. And we live in that spread.
One small story, and I will finish for today.
However often our dream breaks, we patch it up again. It breaks in the morning, in the afternoon, in the evening—we put patches on it again. We are very skilled craftsmen at patching our dream. One desire fails—we gain nothing—immediately we manufacture another desire. We find reasons: “That is why I failed. Next time it won’t happen.” One hope is shattered—immediately we manufacture another. Life daily, reality daily, breaks our projections—but we keep constructing, manufacturing!
I have heard: toward evening a wealthy man was about to close his door when his attendant came in once more and said, “Listen, through the day we have turned away twenty-four—two dozen—insurance agents. A twenty-fifth is present. He begs to be let in.” The wealthy man felt pity. He said, “All right, let the twenty-fifth come in. I’m just about to close the door.”
He came in. The wealthy man looked at him and said, “You are fortunate. Because twenty-four—two dozen—insurance agents I have driven away from the door today. You know? You are fortunate—I let you in.” The man said, “I know very well, sir—because I am them!” He knew very well, because those twenty-four were he himself.
He had come twenty-four times in the day—the same man. “I know well; I am they.” The owner was astonished. “You amaze me. You are not tired yet?” The insurance agent said, “Who ever gets tired?”
No one gets tired. However many hopes and disappointments, still it seems, “Perhaps one more chance! Once more!” We keep spreading our net. Even when death stands before us, we go on spreading our projections beyond death. The dying man thinks, “Donate a cow; arrangements for heaven will be made.” Still projecting. Death stands at the door, but the projector of their film is still running. It does not stop. They keep spreading! They think, “Give four annas to a brahmin—then we can tell God we gave four annas to a brahmin; a nice place, please! And if it could be in your own mansion, that would be best. Let me stay right there!”
In London, at the medical hospital of London University, an odd event occurs every three months. Every three months the trustees of that hospital hold a meeting.
If you ever see that meeting, you will be amazed—soon astonished. You will see that the man sitting in the president’s chair neither moves nor stirs, not even the pupils of his eyes move. You will wonder: is he alive or dead? If you go near, you will find he is a corpse. A body has been kept there for a hundred years.
A man named Jeremy Bentham founded that hospital. In his will he wrote: “Even after my death I cannot tolerate that I should build the hospital and someone else presides. Therefore keep my body here, and I will preside whenever the trustees meet. I will remain the president.”
So his body is still kept there. A plaque before him reads “President.” Every time the trustees finish their meeting and a vote is taken on some matter, they have to record: “The president is present, but not voting.” This has been going on for a hundred years.
Man’s madness! Such is our whole mind. We keep spreading it. Without awakening from this mind, no one has ever set out on the pilgrimage to the Lord.
Enough for today. But sit for five minutes. If a dead man can sit, then a living person should certainly sit. It matters not if you don’t vote—just sit! Makes no difference. But those who can vote, clap, and join in the bhajan.
Osho's Commentary
For the “I,” it is essential that a “thou” stand before it. Against the “thou,” in resistance to the “thou,” in cooperation with the “thou,” the “I” is constructed. There is no way for an “I,” an ego, to be formed in Paramatma. Therefore the notion of being a doer cannot occur to Paramatma. And yet he is the creator. By creator is meant that the whole stream of creativity in life flows from him; all life is born of him and dissolves back into him. But this idea of creator must be understood a little more deeply.
There can be many kinds of creators. A sculptor creates a statue. The statue takes form, and it goes on becoming separate from the sculptor. When the statue is finished, the sculptor is one thing, the statue another. Even if the sculptor dies, the statue need not die. What the sculptor creates is other than himself—separate, outside. He creates, yes, but he remains apart.
A dancer dances. A performer dances. He too creates—the dance. But the dance is not separate from the dancer. If the dancer goes, the dance goes. If the dancer dies, the dance dies. If the dancer stops, the dance stops. The dance is nowhere different from the dancer, and yet it is different. Not different in the way a statue is different from the sculptor. Still, different in this sense: the dancer can be without the dance, but the dance cannot be without the dancer. The dancer can be without the dance; the dance cannot be without the dancer.
The difference that exists between sculptor and statue does not exist between dancer and dance, but there is not total non-difference either. They are not exactly one. The dancer can be without the dance, but the dance cannot be. Just so, the ocean can be without waves, but a wave cannot be without the ocean. There is no difficulty for the ocean to be without waves; but a wave cannot be without the ocean. Therefore ocean and wave are both one and not-one.
Paramatma’s relationship with the world is like that of the dancer. Hence if the Hindus conceived of Nataraj, it is a priceless insight: the vision of the divine dancing. To think of Shiva as dancing is very profound. Perhaps nowhere else on earth, except in Hindu Dharma, has there been the vision of a dancing deity. Wherever people have thought of creation, they have thought in terms of statue and sculptor, not in terms of dance and dancer.
People give the example of the potter making a pot. No—Paramatma does not make the world in that way. Paramatma creates the world like the dancer creates the dance—one. Immersed through and through in the dance, and yet apart. For if he so wishes, he can drop the dance and stand aside. The dance will not remain without him. The dancer can remain without it. The dance depends on the dancer; the dancer does not depend on the dance.
Between Paramatma and Prakriti the relationship is like dancer and dance. Prakriti depends on Paramatma; Paramatma does not depend on Prakriti. If Paramatma were not, Prakriti would be lost, would become emptiness. But Paramatma can be even without Prakriti. There is difference and non-difference—duality and nonduality—both together.
In the midst of Prakriti, Paramatma is as the dancer is in the midst of the dance. But when the dancer dances, he uses the body. The limits of the body begin. The legs will tire; it is not necessary that the dancer be tired. The legs may even break; it is not necessary that the dancer break. The legs, by walking, will tire—there is a limit to the legs. It may be that the dancer is not yet tired. In the act of dancing the dancer is within the body like a catalytic agent. If you take this notion of a catalytic agent into your understanding, Krishna’s sutra will be clear.
In science, the catalytic agent has great significance. By catalytic agent is meant such an element that itself does not take part in a reaction, and yet without it the reaction cannot happen. For example: if we bring hydrogen and oxygen together, water will not be formed. It should be formed, because in water there is nothing other than hydrogen and oxygen. Even if hydrogen and oxygen are present, water will not form. It should form—because if we break water down, there is nothing in it except hydrogen and oxygen.
Then how will water form? If a spark of electricity is flashed between hydrogen and oxygen, water will be formed. What does the electricity do by flashing? Scientists say, electricity does nothing; only its presence does something. Mere presence! Electricity does nothing—only its presence does. Just its presence. Remember, electricity does not become the doer; it does nothing. Only presence; and in the shade of that presence hydrogen and oxygen meet and become water.
This is why if we break water apart, we will get hydrogen and oxygen, but we will not get electricity—because electricity does not enter the act. And yet the curious thing is: if electricity is not present, hydrogen and oxygen do not combine. For their union the presence of electricity is necessary. What shall we call this presence? It certainly did something, and yet did nothing—was not the doer.
In this sutra Krishna is calling Paramatma precisely a catalytic agent. He is saying that the whole of Prakriti functions; although without the presence of Paramatma, Prakriti could not function at all. Still, in the presence of Paramatma, it is Prakriti that functions—Paramatma does not function.
As I told you yesterday by way of example, let us look a little deeper. You feel hunger. I said to you: hunger does not come to you; it comes to the stomach. Certainly hunger does not come to you—it comes to the stomach. You only come to know that the stomach is hungry. But if you are outside the body, then can the stomach still be hungry or not? Suppose you are dead. The body is still there, the stomach is still there. Hunger ought still to come—because hunger used to come to the stomach, not to you. Now you are not there; now the stomach does not feel hunger. This does not mean that hunger used to come to you. Your presence was necessary for the stomach to feel hunger; otherwise even it would not feel hunger. Yet hunger did not come to you; it came only to the stomach.
The whole of Prakriti functions by its own properties, in the presence of Paramatma. Just his presence is enough. He is—and Prakriti goes on functioning. But no act of functioning makes Paramatma a doer. This is the difference I am making between doer and creator. Without him the creation cannot continue—therefore I call him creator. He does not run the creation day by day—therefore I do not call him the doer.
In this sutra Krishna says: those who know, know that Prakriti goes on working by its own intrinsic qualities.
Water keeps becoming vapor. Paramatma does not make water into vapor. But without the presence of Paramatma, water will not become vapor. Vapor becomes cloud. Clouds cool, and rain falls. Water falls on the mountains, flows as rivers, reaches the ocean. Again clouds form. This goes on. Seeds fall from the trees into the earth; then sprouts come. Paramatma does not make any seed into a sprout—but without Paramatma no seed can sprout. His presence! Now understand this idea of the catalytic agent from another side.
In the West there is a scientist, Jean Piaget. He studied what happens throughout life between mother and child. He arrived at some strange conclusions—I would like to tell you. They are conclusions akin to the catalytic agent. But a catalytic agent is a matter of substances. The relationship of mother and child is not a matter of substance—it is an event of consciousness.
Jean Piaget says: we know that the child receives milk from the mother. But the child also receives something else, which does not come within our grasp. For Piaget did many experiments in which the child was separated from the mother. Everything was given that would have come from the mother: milk, care, everything. Even so, the child separated from the mother—his growth stopped, his development ceased. A hindrance came into his unfolding. He remained sickly and ailing.
After forty years of continuous study Piaget says: the mother’s presence does something—just her presence. The child is playing outside; the mother is sitting inside the house. The mother is present within; the child is something else. Only presence—a milieu, an atmosphere—of the mother’s presence!
In Arabia there is a very ancient saying: since Paramatma could not be everywhere, he created mothers. A beautiful saying. Since Paramatma could not come everywhere, he created many mothers, so that the presence of Paramatma could flow through the mother.
Something flows from the mother that is immaterial, not material. It cannot be measured. Some warmth, some current of love, of affection—perhaps one day we shall know.
There are many things around us we have not yet been able to measure. There is gravitation in the earth—we know. If you throw a stone upward, it comes down. But gravitation has not yet been measured as to what it is! What is this pull of the earth? We have reached the moon, but in the matter of gravity we have reached nowhere. We still do not know what this attraction is with which the earth pulls.
Piaget says that between mother and child there is just such an attraction—some gravitation. If the child is deprived of it, we may not at once know it, but he will begin to dry up, to wither.
It is no surprise that in America, from the day the family loosened and the relationship between mother and child thinned, from that very day America has been going neurotic. In fifty years America has gone nearer and nearer to madness. And now psychologists say that the greatest cause of that madness is that the current of relationship between mother and child has grown feeble.
The American woman is not willing to nurse the child. Because scientists say the same milk can be given by the bottle. And it is no wonder if a breast better than the mother’s breast can be manufactured—there is no hindrance in that. But that unknown current which flowed from within her—that catalytic agent of motherhood—cannot be produced. It flowed with the milk. As yet we have no means to measure it.
But if not today, then tomorrow—day by day as our understanding grows—this becomes clearer: in human relationships too something flows. Whenever such a flow happens, we experience love. And when such a flow happens between Paramatma and us, we experience prayer. Both experiences are of an invisible presence.
But Krishna says: Paramatma does not do anything.
Remember, doing is required by the weak. Doing is a symptom of weakness. The powerful—his presence does it.
A teacher comes into the class and bangs his stick, saying to the students, “Look, I have come. I am your teacher. Keep quiet!” This teacher is weak. Truly, when a teacher enters a room, silence descends through his presence. If he has to say it, he is no teacher at all.
Hence the ancient sutras do not say, “Respect the guru.” They say: the one before whom respect arises of its own accord—that is what is called a guru.
The guru who has to ask to be respected is not a guru. The guru who says, “Respect me,” is worth two pennies. He is no guru at all. A guru is such that even if you do not want to bow, still you have to bow. His presence—and something begins to flow within you. No, he does not even wish it. No, he does not even say it. He does not even know that anyone is respecting him. But his presence—and reverence begins to flow.
Paramatma is the name of the supreme power. If even he had to do something by doing, he would be weak. Krishna says: he does nothing. He is—this much is enough. His being is sufficient—more than sufficient. And Prakriti goes on working. In his presence all work goes on happening.
But Prakriti functions by its own qualities, by its own laws. Therefore one who becomes available to true knowing—who understands this fundamental element and ground—he is freed from the delusion, “I am the doer.”
If such a vast existence is running without a doer, will my small household not run without a doer? So many moons and stars are traveling without a doer! Every morning the sun rises. Every year spring comes. For billions upon billions of years the earths have been revolving, being formed and dissolving. The net of infinite stars goes on. Without any doer all this is happening. But I say, how will my little shop run without a doer!
The person who understands this basic ground—that such immensity goes on moving—sees that in my petty affairs I am needlessly clinging to the doer. If the vast can move free of the doer, then I too can move. The person to whom this remembrance comes is a sannyasin. The person to whom this remembrance comes—that the vast moves without a doer—then I too will move without a doer. I will rise in the morning, go and sit in the shop. I will do the work. When hunger comes, I will eat. When sleep comes, I will sleep. But now I will not be the doer. Prakriti will do; I will keep watching. I will not even interfere—because the one who interferes becomes a doer.
Sleep is coming to you and you say, “I will not sleep”—you have become a doer. In the morning sleep is still on you and you force yourself, “I will get up in Brahmamuhurta”—you have again become a doer.
The one who leaves life to its spontaneity as it is, leaves it to Prakriti by dropping the doer—that person is a sannyasin. Krishna is speaking of that very nishkama karmayogi.
But in our mind there are big, big mistaken notions. Today at noon something very amusing occurred. A woman came to see me. As soon as she came she slapped me on my cheek. I asked her, “What more do you have to say?” She said, “Offer me the other cheek as well.” I offered her the other cheek too. She slapped that one as well. I asked, “What more do you have to say?” She said, “Nothing more. I had come to test you.” I said, “By slapping my body, how will you test me?” I did not say more to her, because when someone’s intelligence is stuck on the body, it is difficult to say anything at all.
How will you test me by hurting my body? Our trust is in the body. Even if you stab me, the body will do what it does. If you slap, a mark of your hand will appear on my cheek. The body will function by its own law. If within me the thought arises that I have been hit, then the disturbance will enter inside. Otherwise I will see that my body has been hit. The body was hit; whatever the body has to do, it will do of its own accord.
And the surprising thing is that the body quietly, functioning by its law, returns to its own balance. Prakriti very peacefully completes her work. A mark from her hand did appear; a little while later I saw it had vanished—the body had absorbed it. But if I become a doer—“I have been hit,” or “I will hit back,” or “I will do something”—then the turmoil begins. But we do not rise above the language of the body, the language of Prakriti.
If I had wanted to joke, I could have given her a slap too. If I had wanted to joke! But a poor, unknowing woman—it is not right to make jokes with her. Which language do we understand?
When she had gone, I remembered. There was a fakir, Nasruddin. He had a donkey on which he used to travel. One day a neighbor came to borrow his donkey and said to Nasruddin, “Lend me your donkey; I have urgent work.” Nasruddin said, “The donkey has already been borrowed by someone else.” But just then—being a donkey after all—the donkey brayed from the stable at the back. The man grew angry. He said, “You are deceiving me? The donkey seems to be tied inside.” Nasruddin said, “What do you mean? You do not trust my word—you trust the donkey’s? I tell you, and you don’t believe. The donkey brays and you believe him! What kind of language do you understand? Are you a man or a donkey?”
What I am saying will not be understood. Someone comes to test me by slapping my body. But the body is no more than a mount, no more than a donkey. Yet some people understand only its language.
We cannot rise above the language of Prakriti, hence we cannot get even a glimpse of Paramatma. If you want a glimpse of Paramatma, you will have to go a little beyond the language of Prakriti. All that appears around us is the play of Prakriti. Whatever is visible to our eyes, whatever is audible to our ears, whatever we touch with our hands—all this is the play of Prakriti. Prakriti is functioning by its own intrinsic nature. One who stops at this will never be able to attain even a glimpse of Paramatma.
Therefore Krishna says: if one is to be available to his glimpse, then understand this to be the work of Prakriti and allow it to be done by Prakriti alone in depth. You do not do. Do not remain a doer—be only a seer, a witness, that Prakriti is doing so. Only keep watching, like a spectator. And slowly, slowly, slowly that door will open from where the image of that Paramatma—who has never done anything, and yet without whom nothing has ever happened—will begin to flash.