All these are indeed noble; yet the man of knowledge, in My view, is My very Self।
For he, with a disciplined and unified soul, has taken refuge in Me alone—the unsurpassed Goal।। 18।।
At the end of many births, the man of wisdom surrenders to Me।
“Vāsudeva is all”—so he knows; such a great-souled one is very rare।। 19।।
Geeta Darshan #7
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Read in Original Hindi (मूल हिन्दी)
Sutra (Original)
उदाराः सर्व एवैते ज्ञानी त्वात्मैव मे मतम्।
आस्थितः स हि युक्तात्मा मामेवानुत्तमां गतिम्।। 18।।
बहूनां जन्मनामन्ते ज्ञानवान्मां प्रपद्यते।
वासुदेवः सर्वमिति स महात्मा सुदुर्लभः।। 19।।
आस्थितः स हि युक्तात्मा मामेवानुत्तमां गतिम्।। 18।।
बहूनां जन्मनामन्ते ज्ञानवान्मां प्रपद्यते।
वासुदेवः सर्वमिति स महात्मा सुदुर्लभः।। 19।।
Transliteration:
udārāḥ sarva evaite jñānī tvātmaiva me matam|
āsthitaḥ sa hi yuktātmā māmevānuttamāṃ gatim|| 18||
bahūnāṃ janmanāmante jñānavānmāṃ prapadyate|
vāsudevaḥ sarvamiti sa mahātmā sudurlabhaḥ|| 19||
udārāḥ sarva evaite jñānī tvātmaiva me matam|
āsthitaḥ sa hi yuktātmā māmevānuttamāṃ gatim|| 18||
bahūnāṃ janmanāmante jñānavānmāṃ prapadyate|
vāsudevaḥ sarvamiti sa mahātmā sudurlabhaḥ|| 19||
Translation (Meaning)
Questions in this Discourse
Osho, in the previous verse Krishna speaks of four kinds of devotees: the artha-arthi—one who worships for worldly gains; the art—one who worships for relief from distress; the jijnasu—the inquisitive; and the jnani—the wise devotee. Please explain their meanings briefly, and also say why the first two are called devotees at all.
Krishna divides devotees into four.
Artha-arthi—those who are absorbed in prayer for wealth, for worldly objects. The majority. Most people pray out of greed, to get something.
Then the art—those who, troubled by sorrow, pain, fear, and difficulties, give themselves to prayer to the Divine.
Third, the jijnasu—the inquisitive: those who want to know; who have curiosity. Philosophers all over the world want to find out what is. What is the ultimate cause of the world? From where did this existence arise, where is it going? Why does it go on, why might it not? Such people are burdened with questions—but it is only curiosity. It is not a matter of transforming themselves; only of knowing.
And fourth, the jnani—the wise: those who are not content merely to know but are eager to become. Their urge to know God is not mere curiosity. Not curiosity like that of children—there’s a door, so open it to see what’s on the other side; no further purpose. A bug walks by, so break its leg and peer inside to see what makes it move. Such childish curiosity—that is the jijnasu.
But jnani means one who is driven not by curiosity but by the inspiration to transform life from its very roots. For whom knowing is not curiosity but a matter of life and death. Not for wealth, not because of suffering, not out of mere inquisitiveness, but a thirst—an inner cry of the very life-breath—to know the truth of life. Without that, he cannot live; only if he knows can he truly live. These are the four devotees Krishna speaks of.
A question may arise: why call the first two—or even the first three—devotees at all? A devotee should be the last one, the fourth, only.
No; the first three are called devotees merely because of the word. They too practice devotion. They are not devotees in essence—Krishna makes that clear—but they do perform acts of devotion.
Mahavira too classified meditators into four. Among them is the art-dhyani—the distressed meditator. When you are angry your attention concentrates; he called that one a meditator as well, an art-dhyani. In greed the mind concentrates; in lust the mind concentrates. So he said: he too is a meditator; he meditates on lust. But the final meditation, shukla dhyana—the pure, stainless attention—is the real meditation: when one meditates without purpose, without cause, without any desire to gain.
Hence Krishna speaks of four devotees.
I remember a story. There was a village in great trouble—famine, sickness, hardship. People had no medicine, no food, no clothes. The village priest had never once prayed to God to ask for anything. He was a seventy-year-old man. The entire village suffered, and the church was always full—hungry children and hungry old people gathered in rags. Seeing their tears, one night he could not sleep. He prayed: “I have never asked You for anything. I ask one thing now—not for myself: improve the plight of my villagers.”
Naturally, since he had never asked for anything, there was great power in his prayer. And naturally, because he did not ask for himself, there was even greater power.
The story says God heard his prayer. In the morning, when the town awoke, they were astonished. Where there had been huts, there were palaces. Where there had been illness, there was health. The trees were laden with fruit. The crops stood ripe. The whole village overflowed with prosperity.
That was a miracle; the whole village saw it. But the priest saw an even greater miracle: the church, once always crowded, was now empty; no one came. The priest sat outside all day; no one entered. No one bowed. No invitations came. No one came for prayer. The church began to crumble. Bricks slipped out, plaster fell away. One year, two years; the village forgot there was a church at all.
Two years later that old fakir prayed again one night: “O Lord, grant me one more prayer.” God said, “What is left for you to lack? I granted all you asked.” He said, “Only one more prayer: make my villagers as they were before.” God said, “What are you saying!”
He replied, “I had thought they came to church to pray to God; that proved to be my mistake. One came for wealth, another for relief from sorrow. Some for greed, some from fear. Now their greed is fulfilled; their fears are gone; their sorrows have vanished. I had not thought they would forget God so easily.”
So there are three types. The artha-arthi—give him wealth and he forgets. The distressed—lift his distress and he forgets. The inquisitive—answer his question and he is finished. The true devotee is the fourth alone. Whatever he gets, he will not be satisfied—until he himself becomes divine, there is no contentment.
The first three are called devotees only in name. And it is appropriate to count them, because these three are the devotees you will find on the ground; the fourth kind is born only now and then—rarely, if ever. If we were to speak only of the fourth, it would be useless, because the real crowd belongs to the first three. Those are the rule; the fourth is the exception. So Krishna counts them—though later it must be said that these three are only pseudo-devotees; they appear to be devotees, but are not.
And often the exact opposite occurs: the fourth may not be visible, yet he is; the other three may be visible and yet are not. Why should the fourth be visible? He won’t stand shouting on the street. It is not necessary that he be seen with folded hands in a temple. He may or may not stand there. For him the thing has entered into his very life-breath, merged into each breath.
There was a Muslim fakir. For seventy years he went to the mosque without missing a single day. Sick, troubled, in rain or burning sun—he offered the five prayers in the mosque. One morning he did not come for the dawn prayer. The people of the mosque thought, “He must have died.” There was no other possible explanation; under every circumstance he had come. In fifty years, everyone who knew him had seen his unfailing regularity. Whatever happened in the village, he came to the mosque five times a day; today he did not.
After the prayer, the whole mosque ran to the fakir’s house. He was sitting at his door, tapping a little tambourine! They said, “Have you lost your mind—or become an atheist at the end? What are you doing? You missed the prayer! You broke a seventy-year discipline. Why didn’t you come today?”
The fakir said, “As long as I did not know how to pray, I came to the mosque. Now I have learned. Now it happens while I sit here. There is no need to go anywhere. The truth is,” he said, “there is no need to do it either, because now there is no doer left; only prayer remains. Within, only prayer remains; there is no one left who prays.”
So most likely you will see only the first three kinds of devotees; the fourth may not be visible. But he alone is the devotee. The first three are devotees only for name’s sake. Krishna counted them so they would not feel offended, because the great crowd is theirs. The one is the exception; he is counted later.
kāmaistais tair hṛta-jñānāḥ prapadyante ’nya-devatāḥ.
taṁ taṁ niyamam āsthāya prakṛtyā niyatāḥ svayā. 20.
And, O Arjuna, those men who are attached to sense-objects, impelled by their own nature and deluded of wisdom by desire for those pleasures, adopt various disciplines and worship other deities.
Krishna also says: those who are lust-driven, sense-obsessed, filled with cravings for enjoyment—fascinated by pleasure—fall away from wisdom; they do not remember me, they remember other gods.
Two points here.
First: whoever becomes desire-ridden, sense-obsessed, falls from wisdom. The inner current of knowing—at the very moment the mind runs even slightly toward an object, that current is degraded, it slips. For even a moment if the mind is stirred by any object—“Let me get it, let it be mine, let me enjoy it”—the very instant the thought of enjoyment arises, the inner current of consciousness, the living voltage of awareness, totters and begins a descent. Every attachment to objects debases the current of awareness.
This is worth noting.
Even the slightest thought! You are walking down the road; something in a shop catches your eye and the thought flashes, “If only I could have it—it should be mine—I should own it.” Just that tiny glimmer, a thin ray of desire—and if you pause and watch, you will see that within you ignorance has thickened and knowing has dimmed. If you experience this, you will understand. A hair’s breath of desire—and suddenly a swoon settles, a faintness; unawareness floods in, and for a moment awareness seems to vanish.
But we are filled with craving twenty-four hours a day. Perhaps that is why we do not even notice that our current of knowing is sinking—because only those who sometimes live in that current would notice a fall. Those who have wealth notice bankruptcy. Beggars do not notice going broke. Those who have climbed a little notice the descent. But those who live in the valleys and have made those valleys their life—who never even raise their eyes toward the peaks—how will they sense a fall? If darkness is your home, how will you know the light has faded or the lamp’s flame has dipped?
Still, if you search a little with remembrance, whenever the mind is seized intensely by a desire, look within: has the quality of your awareness changed? Has it lowered? Has it fallen?
That is why every desire, even when fulfilled, leaves behind a subtle sadness. Because it degrades you. Every desire, even when you obtain it, leaves a bitter taste in the mouth. That bitterness is the taste of the inner current having fallen. What you gained was nothing; what you lost was much—at a very great cost. Krishna is saying: what will you really gain?
A man walks down the street and sees someone pass in fine clothes: “I want those clothes!” A small demand. But he does not know how instantly that demand drops his consciousness, as if the thermometer fell; the inner current of knowing sinks.
Hence the desire-ridden often behave like children, like simpletons. Have you noticed that when you are in desire your behavior is almost stupid?
If we overhear two lovers talking—aflame with passion—how would their words sound? Their behavior with each other—how would it appear? Stupid, utterly foolish. But they do not know; they are living in heaven! If they look back later, they too will see the foolishness. The moment we are fired by lust, by attachment to any object, the current of consciousness within drops.
I have heard of a fakir named Farid, Sheikh Farid. People would come to see him. Suppose someone arrived; before he even sat down, Farid would go over and shake his head strongly. Sometimes people would be startled. The man would say, “What are you doing?” Farid would laugh. Sometimes he would sit nearby and point a stick at the man’s belly. The fellow would jump: “What are you doing?” Farid would laugh.
Many times people asked, “What are you doing?” Farid said, “Once I was on a journey. Many mules with me, lots of goods—a big caravan. The muleteer was very clever. Whenever a mule balked and refused to move—
—and if a mule balks, it is very hard to make it go. If it goes, it is by its grace. If it balks, it’s difficult to move it. It fears no insult—it’s a mule. Abuses mean nothing to it.
“Yet that man was skillful. If a mule balked, not even a second was needed to get it going. I asked him, ‘What is your trick?’ He told me he would scoop a little dirt and put it in the mule’s mouth. The mule would spit out the dirt and move! I asked, ‘I don’t understand—what is the relation between putting dirt in its mouth and making it walk?’
“He said, ‘I don’t know much. I only see that the stream of its thoughts—the undercurrent—breaks. The mule is thinking, “We’ll stand here.” Put dirt in its mouth and it can’t reconnect the two—it hasn’t the intellect. It forgets its plan to stand; it gets busy spitting out dirt, and by then I’ve prodded it along—it goes. As far as I understand—though who knows what goes on inside a mule—its thought-current shatters, gets scrambled. That’s the trick; it sets it moving. Anyway, my remedy works.’”
People would say, “Do you take us for mules?” Farid would reply, “Exactly for mules. I just saw what was going on inside you as you came in.”
It isn’t hard to see what is going on inside another. Out of politeness many who can see it won’t say so. But knowing what is happening inside someone is simple. When you enter, the colors and scents and mental atmosphere of what is moving within you enter with you.
So Farid said, “The moment I see a desire moving within, I spring up and give his neck a good jolt—the mule-trick—hoping the current will snap. And often my experience is that it does. He startles and asks, ‘What are you doing?’ At least he is startled out of that track; he can be led on another journey.”
Many religious methods are devised to break, somehow, that habitual stream of desire toward which your mind keeps running.
You go to a temple. You see a bell hanging at the entrance. Ever wondered who it is rung for? If you think for God, you are mistaken. It is for your mule. That peal has nothing to do with God; it is to jar what is running in your skull. The great clang—spit out the dirt and enter the temple.
The inner current that was running—let it snap in an instant. It does, if there is understanding.
They say: bathe before going to the temple—don’t just walk in as you are. Whatever can break the inner current, they try. Leave your shoes outside—to break associations. Prostrate full length at the feet of the Lord, let every limb touch the earth; strike your head on the ground. That stiff head of yours stays rigid all day. Perhaps—the mule-trick—something may snap in that undercurrent within.
But there are very skillful mules; with such mules I do not know. Ring the bell as you like—inside, nothing rings!
Still, those eager to help human beings have created many arrangements.
Krishna says first: the mind racing in the stream of desire falls from wisdom.
Wisdom is your nature.
Understand it this way: we usually say, “Give up desire and you will attain wisdom.” More exact is: you have grasped desire, therefore you have lost wisdom. To say “give up desire and wisdom will be attained” suggests desire is our nature and if we drop it, we’ll achieve wisdom as some acquisition. The truth is the reverse. Wisdom is our nature; by clutching desire we have lost it. When desire drops, it is ours again.
That is why desire is never fulfilled—because desire is not our nature, it is our fall. However fast we run, we can never be content with our degradation. Fall brings sorrow, pain, torment—hell. And one day, weary of hell’s pain, we must turn back and look toward that peak which is the inner summit of our being—Kailash.
Kailash is not in the Himalayas. People go thinking it is there. Kailash is the name of the heart’s peak, the summit of knowing from which the God within never falls.
The day we reach that inner peak—leaving the valleys, leaving the desires of the valleys—it is not that we gain something new. What happens is that what has always been ours is unveiled, revealed. We come to know who we were. We see how we kept falling, kept wandering; at what price we lost ourselves and gathered trifles. We collected pebbles and sold our souls.
So Krishna says that. Second, he says: those artha-arthis, the distressed, the inquisitive—such people do not worship me but other deities. Why?
Because they do not meet the condition required for true prayer to the Supreme. The condition is: drop all desires and come. To attain Brahman, the condition is: come having left all cravings; then prayer is fulfilled. How will they come there?
So they fabricate minor gods and goddesses who place no such condition upon them. On the contrary, they lay down easy terms; they oblige. Some deity asks for a coconut. Some asks for flowers and leaves. Some demands a sacrifice, a yajna, a havan. There are cheap-goods gods; there are bargain shops too.
Krishna says: such people do not come to me, because my condition is not met by them. They themselves invent their gods.
It is quite amusing. We have invented many of our deities. We have fashioned them according to our needs. Whatever we need, we create.
All invention arises from need; the invention of gods also arises from need. Necessity is not only the mother of scientific discoveries; she is the mother of deities too. Hence so many gods! When India had thirty-three crores of people, there were thirty-three crores of gods. Now the people have increased—we should increase the gods too, otherwise it will be difficult; some will be left without gods.
Each sets up his own deity suited to his need, and begins to pray to that deity.
Krishna says: they go to other deities.
The Supreme is one, and we cannot fabricate Him.
When Mohammed had the three hundred and sixty-five idols removed from the Kaaba, it was only because they were idols of deities. Mohammed did not wish to remove the image of the Supreme from the human heart. A great misunderstanding arose. He did not wish to remove the inner image of God. Precisely so that the image of the One might be established in the heart, the so-called images of deities in the Kaaba—one for each day, three hundred and sixty-five in all, a different deity for each day’s worship—were removed and thrown out.
Because those who came for such deities would be of Krishna’s first three types—the distressed, the artha-arthi, the inquisitive. The fourth goes only toward the One Supreme. But to go toward the One, the condition must be met. That condition is costly, hard, formidable, difficult—because you must stake yourself, not a coconut.
Though have you ever noticed how clever man is? A coconut—have you ever noticed?—looks like a human skull. It has eyes, a nose, a skull! Slam it hard, and it cracks like a skull. Who discovered the coconut? It was found to resemble a human head.
At the door of the Divine you must offer yourself; you must cut off your own head. Symbolically, you must behead yourself and offer that. If you do not cut yourself, what will you offer? How will you find God?
But man is shrewd. He thought, “Necks and such are too expensive. A coconut costs a few coins and looks exactly like a skull. Eyes and all. And you don’t even need a fresh one; a stale one will do.”
Every temple has a shop in front. And I have heard that the shop by the temple manages with the very coconuts first bought long ago. They are offered inside; the priest sells them at night. In the morning they come back to the temple; at night they return to the shop. So even if coconut prices soar worldwide, the temple-shop can sell at the old price; no problem. Whether anything is left inside is doubtful—it has probably all rotted long ago.
See how clever man is! He found the coconut; he found sindoor. Sindoor is vermilion—the symbol of blood. One should smear one’s own life-blood; it symbolizes offering your blood. He thought: is there something in the market that looks like blood? Yes—sindoor. He smeared sindoor, offered a coconut, finished his business for a few coins, and went home.
Surely such worship does not reach the Supreme. It merely serves our desires. And let me tell you, results do come at times—hence the greater difficulty. Not that because it is hollow there are never results; there are. That is the nuisance. If there were no results at all, man would have tired long ago. Results do come.
Why? Because whenever you begin to worship some deity—or fabricate one—often deities are made like this: someone dies—a saint, a fakir, a great soul. A shrine is built, a statue installed. People around begin worship and prayer. A deity is born.
When such a deity comes to be, results also occur. Many good souls whose spirits hover nearby—disembodied—can assist your prayers. Their help flows from compassion. But as you receive help, you think the deity has helped; so you continue your prayers.
Around each of your deities there are such souls who can help you—benevolent spirits.
Suppose a troubled man comes: he cannot get his daughter married. No idol will help, no coconut will help. But some benevolent soul residing in the atmosphere of that statue and temple can help. Once you receive that help, your arithmetic is complete: “My wish was fulfilled, my prayer was answered, the deity is true. I must never leave this deity.” Then you cling.
Events occur from behind the deity, no doubt. But the cause is quite different: compassion of auspicious souls.
However, for the supreme attainment Krishna speaks of, going to deities will not do. No matter how auspicious a soul may be, no one can grant you the Supreme.
They can get you money—no great difficulty. They can get you a job. Arrange a marriage. Cure an illness. Those are not difficult. What a man can do, a good disembodied soul can often do more easily.
But no auspicious soul can introduce you to God. To meet the Supreme, you yourself must go. And you must go as the fourth type—the jnani. Only then will you arrive.
A mind withdrawn from desires, detached from attachments, stable in knowing, surrendered in single-pointedness—when it sings, runs, moves toward the Lord—in time the devotee becomes God.
Every devotee is God—whether he knows it or not. The difference is only in knowing and not knowing. No true devotee is deprived of God. Every devotee is divine.
That is all for today.
But do not get up for five minutes. This prayer is not out of distress. These sannyasins are not in sorrow. Nor are they praying out of greed or to ask for anything from the Divine. It is to offer thanks for their feeling of joy. You too join them. And the one who is stingy even in prayer—there is no more miserly man than that. Do not be stingy.
Artha-arthi—those who are absorbed in prayer for wealth, for worldly objects. The majority. Most people pray out of greed, to get something.
Then the art—those who, troubled by sorrow, pain, fear, and difficulties, give themselves to prayer to the Divine.
Third, the jijnasu—the inquisitive: those who want to know; who have curiosity. Philosophers all over the world want to find out what is. What is the ultimate cause of the world? From where did this existence arise, where is it going? Why does it go on, why might it not? Such people are burdened with questions—but it is only curiosity. It is not a matter of transforming themselves; only of knowing.
And fourth, the jnani—the wise: those who are not content merely to know but are eager to become. Their urge to know God is not mere curiosity. Not curiosity like that of children—there’s a door, so open it to see what’s on the other side; no further purpose. A bug walks by, so break its leg and peer inside to see what makes it move. Such childish curiosity—that is the jijnasu.
But jnani means one who is driven not by curiosity but by the inspiration to transform life from its very roots. For whom knowing is not curiosity but a matter of life and death. Not for wealth, not because of suffering, not out of mere inquisitiveness, but a thirst—an inner cry of the very life-breath—to know the truth of life. Without that, he cannot live; only if he knows can he truly live. These are the four devotees Krishna speaks of.
A question may arise: why call the first two—or even the first three—devotees at all? A devotee should be the last one, the fourth, only.
No; the first three are called devotees merely because of the word. They too practice devotion. They are not devotees in essence—Krishna makes that clear—but they do perform acts of devotion.
Mahavira too classified meditators into four. Among them is the art-dhyani—the distressed meditator. When you are angry your attention concentrates; he called that one a meditator as well, an art-dhyani. In greed the mind concentrates; in lust the mind concentrates. So he said: he too is a meditator; he meditates on lust. But the final meditation, shukla dhyana—the pure, stainless attention—is the real meditation: when one meditates without purpose, without cause, without any desire to gain.
Hence Krishna speaks of four devotees.
I remember a story. There was a village in great trouble—famine, sickness, hardship. People had no medicine, no food, no clothes. The village priest had never once prayed to God to ask for anything. He was a seventy-year-old man. The entire village suffered, and the church was always full—hungry children and hungry old people gathered in rags. Seeing their tears, one night he could not sleep. He prayed: “I have never asked You for anything. I ask one thing now—not for myself: improve the plight of my villagers.”
Naturally, since he had never asked for anything, there was great power in his prayer. And naturally, because he did not ask for himself, there was even greater power.
The story says God heard his prayer. In the morning, when the town awoke, they were astonished. Where there had been huts, there were palaces. Where there had been illness, there was health. The trees were laden with fruit. The crops stood ripe. The whole village overflowed with prosperity.
That was a miracle; the whole village saw it. But the priest saw an even greater miracle: the church, once always crowded, was now empty; no one came. The priest sat outside all day; no one entered. No one bowed. No invitations came. No one came for prayer. The church began to crumble. Bricks slipped out, plaster fell away. One year, two years; the village forgot there was a church at all.
Two years later that old fakir prayed again one night: “O Lord, grant me one more prayer.” God said, “What is left for you to lack? I granted all you asked.” He said, “Only one more prayer: make my villagers as they were before.” God said, “What are you saying!”
He replied, “I had thought they came to church to pray to God; that proved to be my mistake. One came for wealth, another for relief from sorrow. Some for greed, some from fear. Now their greed is fulfilled; their fears are gone; their sorrows have vanished. I had not thought they would forget God so easily.”
So there are three types. The artha-arthi—give him wealth and he forgets. The distressed—lift his distress and he forgets. The inquisitive—answer his question and he is finished. The true devotee is the fourth alone. Whatever he gets, he will not be satisfied—until he himself becomes divine, there is no contentment.
The first three are called devotees only in name. And it is appropriate to count them, because these three are the devotees you will find on the ground; the fourth kind is born only now and then—rarely, if ever. If we were to speak only of the fourth, it would be useless, because the real crowd belongs to the first three. Those are the rule; the fourth is the exception. So Krishna counts them—though later it must be said that these three are only pseudo-devotees; they appear to be devotees, but are not.
And often the exact opposite occurs: the fourth may not be visible, yet he is; the other three may be visible and yet are not. Why should the fourth be visible? He won’t stand shouting on the street. It is not necessary that he be seen with folded hands in a temple. He may or may not stand there. For him the thing has entered into his very life-breath, merged into each breath.
There was a Muslim fakir. For seventy years he went to the mosque without missing a single day. Sick, troubled, in rain or burning sun—he offered the five prayers in the mosque. One morning he did not come for the dawn prayer. The people of the mosque thought, “He must have died.” There was no other possible explanation; under every circumstance he had come. In fifty years, everyone who knew him had seen his unfailing regularity. Whatever happened in the village, he came to the mosque five times a day; today he did not.
After the prayer, the whole mosque ran to the fakir’s house. He was sitting at his door, tapping a little tambourine! They said, “Have you lost your mind—or become an atheist at the end? What are you doing? You missed the prayer! You broke a seventy-year discipline. Why didn’t you come today?”
The fakir said, “As long as I did not know how to pray, I came to the mosque. Now I have learned. Now it happens while I sit here. There is no need to go anywhere. The truth is,” he said, “there is no need to do it either, because now there is no doer left; only prayer remains. Within, only prayer remains; there is no one left who prays.”
So most likely you will see only the first three kinds of devotees; the fourth may not be visible. But he alone is the devotee. The first three are devotees only for name’s sake. Krishna counted them so they would not feel offended, because the great crowd is theirs. The one is the exception; he is counted later.
kāmaistais tair hṛta-jñānāḥ prapadyante ’nya-devatāḥ.
taṁ taṁ niyamam āsthāya prakṛtyā niyatāḥ svayā. 20.
And, O Arjuna, those men who are attached to sense-objects, impelled by their own nature and deluded of wisdom by desire for those pleasures, adopt various disciplines and worship other deities.
Krishna also says: those who are lust-driven, sense-obsessed, filled with cravings for enjoyment—fascinated by pleasure—fall away from wisdom; they do not remember me, they remember other gods.
Two points here.
First: whoever becomes desire-ridden, sense-obsessed, falls from wisdom. The inner current of knowing—at the very moment the mind runs even slightly toward an object, that current is degraded, it slips. For even a moment if the mind is stirred by any object—“Let me get it, let it be mine, let me enjoy it”—the very instant the thought of enjoyment arises, the inner current of consciousness, the living voltage of awareness, totters and begins a descent. Every attachment to objects debases the current of awareness.
This is worth noting.
Even the slightest thought! You are walking down the road; something in a shop catches your eye and the thought flashes, “If only I could have it—it should be mine—I should own it.” Just that tiny glimmer, a thin ray of desire—and if you pause and watch, you will see that within you ignorance has thickened and knowing has dimmed. If you experience this, you will understand. A hair’s breath of desire—and suddenly a swoon settles, a faintness; unawareness floods in, and for a moment awareness seems to vanish.
But we are filled with craving twenty-four hours a day. Perhaps that is why we do not even notice that our current of knowing is sinking—because only those who sometimes live in that current would notice a fall. Those who have wealth notice bankruptcy. Beggars do not notice going broke. Those who have climbed a little notice the descent. But those who live in the valleys and have made those valleys their life—who never even raise their eyes toward the peaks—how will they sense a fall? If darkness is your home, how will you know the light has faded or the lamp’s flame has dipped?
Still, if you search a little with remembrance, whenever the mind is seized intensely by a desire, look within: has the quality of your awareness changed? Has it lowered? Has it fallen?
That is why every desire, even when fulfilled, leaves behind a subtle sadness. Because it degrades you. Every desire, even when you obtain it, leaves a bitter taste in the mouth. That bitterness is the taste of the inner current having fallen. What you gained was nothing; what you lost was much—at a very great cost. Krishna is saying: what will you really gain?
A man walks down the street and sees someone pass in fine clothes: “I want those clothes!” A small demand. But he does not know how instantly that demand drops his consciousness, as if the thermometer fell; the inner current of knowing sinks.
Hence the desire-ridden often behave like children, like simpletons. Have you noticed that when you are in desire your behavior is almost stupid?
If we overhear two lovers talking—aflame with passion—how would their words sound? Their behavior with each other—how would it appear? Stupid, utterly foolish. But they do not know; they are living in heaven! If they look back later, they too will see the foolishness. The moment we are fired by lust, by attachment to any object, the current of consciousness within drops.
I have heard of a fakir named Farid, Sheikh Farid. People would come to see him. Suppose someone arrived; before he even sat down, Farid would go over and shake his head strongly. Sometimes people would be startled. The man would say, “What are you doing?” Farid would laugh. Sometimes he would sit nearby and point a stick at the man’s belly. The fellow would jump: “What are you doing?” Farid would laugh.
Many times people asked, “What are you doing?” Farid said, “Once I was on a journey. Many mules with me, lots of goods—a big caravan. The muleteer was very clever. Whenever a mule balked and refused to move—
—and if a mule balks, it is very hard to make it go. If it goes, it is by its grace. If it balks, it’s difficult to move it. It fears no insult—it’s a mule. Abuses mean nothing to it.
“Yet that man was skillful. If a mule balked, not even a second was needed to get it going. I asked him, ‘What is your trick?’ He told me he would scoop a little dirt and put it in the mule’s mouth. The mule would spit out the dirt and move! I asked, ‘I don’t understand—what is the relation between putting dirt in its mouth and making it walk?’
“He said, ‘I don’t know much. I only see that the stream of its thoughts—the undercurrent—breaks. The mule is thinking, “We’ll stand here.” Put dirt in its mouth and it can’t reconnect the two—it hasn’t the intellect. It forgets its plan to stand; it gets busy spitting out dirt, and by then I’ve prodded it along—it goes. As far as I understand—though who knows what goes on inside a mule—its thought-current shatters, gets scrambled. That’s the trick; it sets it moving. Anyway, my remedy works.’”
People would say, “Do you take us for mules?” Farid would reply, “Exactly for mules. I just saw what was going on inside you as you came in.”
It isn’t hard to see what is going on inside another. Out of politeness many who can see it won’t say so. But knowing what is happening inside someone is simple. When you enter, the colors and scents and mental atmosphere of what is moving within you enter with you.
So Farid said, “The moment I see a desire moving within, I spring up and give his neck a good jolt—the mule-trick—hoping the current will snap. And often my experience is that it does. He startles and asks, ‘What are you doing?’ At least he is startled out of that track; he can be led on another journey.”
Many religious methods are devised to break, somehow, that habitual stream of desire toward which your mind keeps running.
You go to a temple. You see a bell hanging at the entrance. Ever wondered who it is rung for? If you think for God, you are mistaken. It is for your mule. That peal has nothing to do with God; it is to jar what is running in your skull. The great clang—spit out the dirt and enter the temple.
The inner current that was running—let it snap in an instant. It does, if there is understanding.
They say: bathe before going to the temple—don’t just walk in as you are. Whatever can break the inner current, they try. Leave your shoes outside—to break associations. Prostrate full length at the feet of the Lord, let every limb touch the earth; strike your head on the ground. That stiff head of yours stays rigid all day. Perhaps—the mule-trick—something may snap in that undercurrent within.
But there are very skillful mules; with such mules I do not know. Ring the bell as you like—inside, nothing rings!
Still, those eager to help human beings have created many arrangements.
Krishna says first: the mind racing in the stream of desire falls from wisdom.
Wisdom is your nature.
Understand it this way: we usually say, “Give up desire and you will attain wisdom.” More exact is: you have grasped desire, therefore you have lost wisdom. To say “give up desire and wisdom will be attained” suggests desire is our nature and if we drop it, we’ll achieve wisdom as some acquisition. The truth is the reverse. Wisdom is our nature; by clutching desire we have lost it. When desire drops, it is ours again.
That is why desire is never fulfilled—because desire is not our nature, it is our fall. However fast we run, we can never be content with our degradation. Fall brings sorrow, pain, torment—hell. And one day, weary of hell’s pain, we must turn back and look toward that peak which is the inner summit of our being—Kailash.
Kailash is not in the Himalayas. People go thinking it is there. Kailash is the name of the heart’s peak, the summit of knowing from which the God within never falls.
The day we reach that inner peak—leaving the valleys, leaving the desires of the valleys—it is not that we gain something new. What happens is that what has always been ours is unveiled, revealed. We come to know who we were. We see how we kept falling, kept wandering; at what price we lost ourselves and gathered trifles. We collected pebbles and sold our souls.
So Krishna says that. Second, he says: those artha-arthis, the distressed, the inquisitive—such people do not worship me but other deities. Why?
Because they do not meet the condition required for true prayer to the Supreme. The condition is: drop all desires and come. To attain Brahman, the condition is: come having left all cravings; then prayer is fulfilled. How will they come there?
So they fabricate minor gods and goddesses who place no such condition upon them. On the contrary, they lay down easy terms; they oblige. Some deity asks for a coconut. Some asks for flowers and leaves. Some demands a sacrifice, a yajna, a havan. There are cheap-goods gods; there are bargain shops too.
Krishna says: such people do not come to me, because my condition is not met by them. They themselves invent their gods.
It is quite amusing. We have invented many of our deities. We have fashioned them according to our needs. Whatever we need, we create.
All invention arises from need; the invention of gods also arises from need. Necessity is not only the mother of scientific discoveries; she is the mother of deities too. Hence so many gods! When India had thirty-three crores of people, there were thirty-three crores of gods. Now the people have increased—we should increase the gods too, otherwise it will be difficult; some will be left without gods.
Each sets up his own deity suited to his need, and begins to pray to that deity.
Krishna says: they go to other deities.
The Supreme is one, and we cannot fabricate Him.
When Mohammed had the three hundred and sixty-five idols removed from the Kaaba, it was only because they were idols of deities. Mohammed did not wish to remove the image of the Supreme from the human heart. A great misunderstanding arose. He did not wish to remove the inner image of God. Precisely so that the image of the One might be established in the heart, the so-called images of deities in the Kaaba—one for each day, three hundred and sixty-five in all, a different deity for each day’s worship—were removed and thrown out.
Because those who came for such deities would be of Krishna’s first three types—the distressed, the artha-arthi, the inquisitive. The fourth goes only toward the One Supreme. But to go toward the One, the condition must be met. That condition is costly, hard, formidable, difficult—because you must stake yourself, not a coconut.
Though have you ever noticed how clever man is? A coconut—have you ever noticed?—looks like a human skull. It has eyes, a nose, a skull! Slam it hard, and it cracks like a skull. Who discovered the coconut? It was found to resemble a human head.
At the door of the Divine you must offer yourself; you must cut off your own head. Symbolically, you must behead yourself and offer that. If you do not cut yourself, what will you offer? How will you find God?
But man is shrewd. He thought, “Necks and such are too expensive. A coconut costs a few coins and looks exactly like a skull. Eyes and all. And you don’t even need a fresh one; a stale one will do.”
Every temple has a shop in front. And I have heard that the shop by the temple manages with the very coconuts first bought long ago. They are offered inside; the priest sells them at night. In the morning they come back to the temple; at night they return to the shop. So even if coconut prices soar worldwide, the temple-shop can sell at the old price; no problem. Whether anything is left inside is doubtful—it has probably all rotted long ago.
See how clever man is! He found the coconut; he found sindoor. Sindoor is vermilion—the symbol of blood. One should smear one’s own life-blood; it symbolizes offering your blood. He thought: is there something in the market that looks like blood? Yes—sindoor. He smeared sindoor, offered a coconut, finished his business for a few coins, and went home.
Surely such worship does not reach the Supreme. It merely serves our desires. And let me tell you, results do come at times—hence the greater difficulty. Not that because it is hollow there are never results; there are. That is the nuisance. If there were no results at all, man would have tired long ago. Results do come.
Why? Because whenever you begin to worship some deity—or fabricate one—often deities are made like this: someone dies—a saint, a fakir, a great soul. A shrine is built, a statue installed. People around begin worship and prayer. A deity is born.
When such a deity comes to be, results also occur. Many good souls whose spirits hover nearby—disembodied—can assist your prayers. Their help flows from compassion. But as you receive help, you think the deity has helped; so you continue your prayers.
Around each of your deities there are such souls who can help you—benevolent spirits.
Suppose a troubled man comes: he cannot get his daughter married. No idol will help, no coconut will help. But some benevolent soul residing in the atmosphere of that statue and temple can help. Once you receive that help, your arithmetic is complete: “My wish was fulfilled, my prayer was answered, the deity is true. I must never leave this deity.” Then you cling.
Events occur from behind the deity, no doubt. But the cause is quite different: compassion of auspicious souls.
However, for the supreme attainment Krishna speaks of, going to deities will not do. No matter how auspicious a soul may be, no one can grant you the Supreme.
They can get you money—no great difficulty. They can get you a job. Arrange a marriage. Cure an illness. Those are not difficult. What a man can do, a good disembodied soul can often do more easily.
But no auspicious soul can introduce you to God. To meet the Supreme, you yourself must go. And you must go as the fourth type—the jnani. Only then will you arrive.
A mind withdrawn from desires, detached from attachments, stable in knowing, surrendered in single-pointedness—when it sings, runs, moves toward the Lord—in time the devotee becomes God.
Every devotee is God—whether he knows it or not. The difference is only in knowing and not knowing. No true devotee is deprived of God. Every devotee is divine.
That is all for today.
But do not get up for five minutes. This prayer is not out of distress. These sannyasins are not in sorrow. Nor are they praying out of greed or to ask for anything from the Divine. It is to offer thanks for their feeling of joy. You too join them. And the one who is stingy even in prayer—there is no more miserly man than that. Do not be stingy.
Osho's Commentary
Therefore Krishna says: whoever comes to know me, that jnani has become Vasudeva; he has become God; he has become Krishna; he has become me.
But what kind of jnani comes to know Krishna? Two things are said. First: yukt atma — whose Atman has become yoked, integrated.
Our Atman is in fragments, unyoked, broken into pieces. We are not one person; we are many persons together. Our name is one — and that creates a confusion. Behind a single name label, many residents dwell. Moment to moment, different people are changing within us. Each person is a crowd, a composite — because there are so many fragments. Not merely fragments, even opposing fragments. What we do with one hand, we erase with the other.
One moment we are filled with love; the next moment we are filled with hate. The temple we built in love is leveled to dust in hate. One moment we burn with anger, and then we are filled with forgiveness. The fire we lit in our very life-breath, we douse with the waters of our own life-breath. Moment to moment everything within keeps changing. We are a flux.
The yukt person is the very opposite. Yukt purusha means one who is one within. Taste him from anywhere — the flavor is one. Strike him from anywhere — the sound is one. Seek him from anywhere, in any condition, through any door — the same one is found.
Here, if a little sunlight shifts and a patch of shade appears, we change. Here, if the situation alters a little, the person inside us becomes another. If there is more money in the pocket, the heartbeat is one way; if the money falls short, the heartbeat is another. To say we are — perhaps even that is not right.
Someone would go to Gurdjieff and say, “I want to seek the soul.” Gurdjieff would ask, “Do you have a soul?” A strange question. He would ask, “Do you exist?” Anyone would say, “Of course I am — who else came here!” Gurdjieff would say, “Is the one who left home the same one who has arrived here, or did you change on the way?”
Many could not understand him. Whatever is truly worth understanding, very few understand. What is not worth understanding, everyone understands. Only non-sense is universally understood.
Gurdjieff would say, “First, think and search and come to me having found whether you are — otherwise I will work hard on you and you will change! What is the point of painting on a canvas that keeps changing so that neither can we complete the picture nor does the canvas remain! What is the use of carving a statue in a stone that changes before we can bring the statue out!”
With man, nearly all effort goes to waste like this. Those who work with people know how badly it goes to waste. The one you worked with in the morning, by evening you cannot find where he has gone. Faces — only faces.
And there is a strange thing: even if we had one face, it would be okay. False even — but one would be okay. But we have many false faces. And we change them with such skill that we never even notice we have changed a face. In a split second it changes.
I have heard that in Mulla Nasruddin’s village the emperor of that land was to visit. There was no one in the village as clever as Nasruddin. People said, “You meet him on behalf of the village, because we know nothing of courtly etiquette.” Nasruddin said, “Nor do I!” The officials said, “Do not worry. We will even teach the king what to ask you, and we will teach you what to answer — then there will be no problem.” Nasruddin said, “Perfect.”
All was a staged play. The emperor was told: it is a poor village, illiterate people. Only this Nasruddin can read and write a little. Ask only these questions, because only for these have his answers been prepared. Ask nothing else.
But a big mix-up happened. The emperor was to ask, “How old are you?” Nasruddin had memorized the truth — sixty years. The emperor was then to ask, “For how long have you been engaged in religious study and sadhana?” Nasruddin had memorized fifteen years. But everything got jumbled.
The emperor asked, “How old are you?” Nasruddin said, “Fifteen years.” The emperor was a bit surprised. A sixty-year-old old man saying fifteen! Then he asked, “And how long have you been in religious practice?” Nasruddin said, “Sixty years.” The emperor said, “Are you mad?” Nasruddin said, “That is exactly what I am wondering — are you mad? Because the order in which I was instructed, it seems you have been instructed in another. You are asking memorized questions; I am giving memorized answers. The middleman has muddled it.”
A great difficulty arose. The whole village had gathered. Courtiers were gathered. What to do now? Nasruddin said, “Let us do this: you take off your mask of being a king, and I will take off my mask of being wise. Then let us sit and open our hearts; perhaps some joy will be there. You put aside this face of emperor, and I will put aside this face of the wise. The trouble lies with these faces.”
Who knows whether the emperor understood or not. Nasruddin was joking — yet he was truly among the wise. He said, “Would it not be good that we sit man to man and talk? Put these faces aside.” It must have been hard for the emperor. To remove the face of an emperor is very difficult. Far from an emperor’s face, even a beggar finds it difficult to remove his own face — everything gets fixed, bound.
In America there was a great billionaire, Rothschild. One day a beggar slipped into his mansion and started clamoring loudly, “I must get something. I will not leave empty-handed.” The more the guards tried to remove him, the more he created a scene. His voice reached Rothschild. He came out, gave him five dollars and said, “Listen, had you not created such a ruckus, I was going to give you twenty.”
Do you know what that beggar said? “Sir, keep your advice to yourself. You are a banker — I do not advise you on banking. I am a born beggar; please do not advise me on begging.”
Rothschild writes in his autobiography: that day I saw for the first time that a beggar too has his own face. He says, “I am a born beggar! I am no cheap novice who has just learned the art. Born! And you are a great banker — I do not advise you in banking. Kindly do not advise me in begging. I know my art well.”
Rothschild writes: that day I looked closely at that beggar and found that not only emperors have faces; beggars too have their own faces.
But even a beggar does not carry a single face. When he reaches his wife, his face changes. When he goes to his son, another face. When he passes by the rich, one face; near the poor, another. Near those from whom he can get something, a certain face; from those he cannot, another. He too has a flexible, elastic personality in which he keeps changing faces.
We have to change faces because within we have no face of our own — no original face.
Krishna says: yukt atma, one whose buddhi has become steady — only such a person can know me.
You cannot go to the Supreme with false faces. Yes, one may go without any face — but not with false faces. And one can go without a face only if within there is a yukt atma. Then the bodily faces are no longer needed.
But the great joke is: we all live wearing false faces. We know it very well — that we live life behind false faces. And we have many faces; we have no single personality, no single Atman.
Mahavira has said: man is multi-psychic, bahu-chittavan — he has many minds within. This term “multi-psychic” Jung developed recently, but Mahavira used the exact thing twenty-five centuries ago — bahu-chittavan: many-chitted is man.
Krishna too says: only when he becomes one-chitted can he come to me; before that he will not know me.
We deceive others — and the real fun is: it never occurs to us that others are wearing faces and deceiving us in the same way. We live in a marketplace of faces, where it is very difficult to find a man. When we extend a hand, it is one of our faces that extends a hand; and the hand that comes from the other side is also the hand of a face. Only images meet — not men. Meetings happen as performance; not as meetings of life-breath. Conversation occurs between two mechanisms — polished, prepared questions and answers. The spontaneous emergence of the inner soul does not happen. But we have deceived ourselves so long that we are drowned in deception and never think that others are doing the same.
I have heard: a village fell into hard unemployment. There was famine; people were in great difficulty. A circus was passing by. A schoolteacher had been dismissed. He begged the circus folk for a job. They said, “You have no circus experience.” He said, “I have much experience. A school is nothing but a circus. Give me a place.” There was no position, but they found one for him. His body was fitted with a lion’s skin, head to toe; he had to play a lion, walking a rope like a lion.
He could walk — no difficulty. But on the very first day, when he was midway on the rope, he saw ten or fifteen of his students in the audience, watching him closely. He got nervous. Teachers become instantly nervous on seeing their students. He panicked and fell. He fell into the pit where four or eight other lions were prowling, growling, roaring. Falling amidst the lions, he got terrified. He forgot he was a lion; he remembered he was a teacher. He raised both hands and cried, “I’m done for! It’s impossible to be saved now!”
The crowd had not been as astonished by his rope-walking as they were by this miracle: a lion raising both hands and speaking like a man!
One of the lions nearby growled softly, “Master, don’t panic. Do you think you alone are unemployed in the village? Don’t worry. You are not the only one. Those four lions pacing down here — they too are men!”
We are all in the same state. It is not only you who roam with a false face. The one you talk to is also roaming. The one you meet — roaming. The one you fear — roaming. The one you frighten — roaming.
You are not alone; the whole society is a society of faces. So many faces are needed because we have no trust in ourselves. We are not there within. If we drop these faces, we will not even be able to raise a foot, nor utter a word. Because there is no one standing firm within — no crystallized being, no yukt atma. So we must prepare everything in advance.
We prepare everything in advance. Not only in theater is there rehearsal; our whole life is rehearsal. The husband returns home prepared: what the wife will ask and what he will answer. The wife too prepares how to tangle his answers. Everything is ready. Day after day this happens — and will happen again.
Rehearsal in life as well! We must prepare beforehand what we will say. What will be asked, what will we reply; what defense we will devise. It is late at night returning home — what problems are coming are obvious. All is prepared.
Have we no such consciousness within that can be spontaneous? That when a question arises, the answer can arise then? When difficulty comes, an answer can well up from within? When an event happens, an act can be born from within? When suchness is needed, our life-breath can respond so?
But we have no trust that someone is there within. We have to prepare; we have to prepare in the mind itself.
Krishna says: yukt atma — whose awareness has become steady, whose flame of consciousness has become still — only he becomes available to me. The one who becomes one within, who becomes uni-psychic and not multi-psychic — no longer many-minds, a single consciousness is born; a vast consciousness encircles him from all sides — such a person can come to me. Such a person Krishna calls a jnani. Such a person, he says, takes many, many births to attain, Arjuna!
Who knows after how many lives of journeying a person comes to this insight: how long will I keep deceiving? When shall I become authentic? When will I declare before the world that which I am? How long will I hide? How long will I practice fraud? And whom am I deceiving? All deception is self-deception; all cheating is self-cheating.
And even if after infinite births this remembrance dawns, it has dawned early. After infinite births, if it comes — it has come early. Because infinite births we all have had; yet the remembrance has not come. No inner peal breaks forth from within, telling us: throw off this whole trickery you have made into life. Take off these counterfeit faces you have worn. Remove this web of dishonesty around you by which we keep deceiving others about being what we are not — and they keep deceiving us too.
The religious man is one who, in a single leap, steps out of this whole commotion and announces a simple acceptance of life as it is. With that acceptance the Atman within becomes yukt. Whoever has owned his being, accepted himself as he is — as he is, good or bad, accepted.
This does not mean that if a bad man accepts himself, he will remain bad. A wondrous event happens: the very moment one accepts oneself as one is, immediately a revolution occurs in which all evils burn away.
Evils survive behind the cover of faces; in nakedness no evil can survive. When a man reveals himself, simple as he is, dropping all fear — for it is fear why we wear faces; fear of what others will say — then the faces fall away.
I call that one a sannyasin who declares to life: now I will not deceive with a face; I will wear no mask. As I am, I am — I will make it known. I prepare to be as I am. Such a person one day attains to a yukt atma.
The yukt atma becomes one with Paramatma. This is the second thing to be understood here. One who is one with himself becomes one with the All. Whoever bonds in oneness with this inner one — his oneness with the vast outer expanse of energy is also established. He who is broken within remains broken from God as well.
Therefore when the bhakta knows God, he does not remain a bhakta — he becomes God. No pact remains between; not even the tiniest bridge remains. Everything breaks. No distance remains. The distance never was. We created the distance, hence it appears. A false distance — of our own making.
Krishna says: he becomes Vasudeva.
They were people of great courage — to speak so simply of making man into God! A man worships the Lord and becomes the Lord! Only those who know can say such a thing. Our mind refuses to agree — because we have seen nothing within but our own pettiness. The seed of the vast hidden within us lies hidden. So whenever we think that man can become God, we cannot trust it. For the man we know within could become a devil, but not God.
We know ourselves well. We are certain: if someone says “man is a devil,” it makes sense to us. But if someone says “man is God,” we cannot understand. Because our measure is only ourselves — and when we look within, we find nothing but devilry.
But I tell you — and all religions say the same — that what you see within as devilry is not you. It is there only because you do not know who you are. The moment you know your real being, that very day you will find: where has devilry gone? Did it ever exist — or was I just dreaming?
When Buddha became enlightened, and someone asked him, “Now what do you say — how did you wander in ignorance so long?” Buddha said, “Today it is hard to decide whether that wandering of infinite births truly happened — or I merely saw a long dream! A long dream! For now I cannot even admit it could happen. Seeing what I have come to know within today, I cannot accept that such a thing could ever be.”
The moment we know the vast within, all pettiness dissolves into it and is purified — as many filthy rivers pour into the ocean and are purified. The ocean does not scream, “Do not pour dirty rivers into me; I will be corrupted.” The instant they merge, where is the filth, where is the river? No trace. When the diseases of our petty mind fall into the vast energy, they disappear just as rivers disappear in the sea.
The greater power has the capacity to sanctify the lesser. But we have no clue to the great. We live in the small. We make do with tiny capital. The truth is: we take the little life-energy needed to run the body as our soul. For the body, only a very small portion of life-energy is enough. To run a body, a needle is enough; a sword is not needed. And with the amount of energy the body runs on, we identify and say, “This is my soul.” Then the devil is born.
Relationship with the small creates the devil; relationship with the vast creates God. It depends on relation — who you are. If you bind yourself to the small, the devil; if to the vast, God. You become that with which you bond; you become that with which you join.
Krishna says: whoever knows me becomes Vasudeva; he becomes me. Whoever knows Brahman becomes Brahman.
This knowing is very wondrous — in which, by knowing, one becomes one with the known.
We have known many things. You have known mathematics — but you did not become mathematics. You have studied geography — but you did not become geography. You may see the Himalayas and come to know them — but you do not become the Himalayas. If someone comes and says, “I saw the Himalayas and I became the Himalayas,” you will lock him in a madhouse.
Whatever we know in life, our knowing remains apart; we never become one with the known. Hence we will find it very difficult to understand Krishna’s utterance. Because nowhere in our experience does it happen that we become one with what we know. All our knowing is knowing in duality. We stand at a distance.
So if we ask Krishna, he will say: what you call knowing is not knowing — it is only acquaintance. It is not knowing; it is only acquaintance. All our knowing is mere acquaintance — superficial, exterior.
As if from outside we walk around someone’s house and think we have known the house, without ever entering within. As if we stand on the shore and think we have known the ocean, without ever entering it. This is not knowing; it is acquaintance — thin, superficial, outer.
There is no knowledge in our life. And if there is any knowledge in your life, then you will understand Krishna’s word. Let me tell you two or three things; perhaps someone’s life may have such knowledge, and a glimpse may be had.
Van Gogh, a great painter, was painting in a field near Arles — brush in hand at the canvas. It was noon; the sun burning overhead. He was painting the blaze of noon. His life had a longing: to paint as many suns as he could. No one painted the sun as he did, as many times as he did.
A farmer passed and asked, “Who are you?” Van Gogh said, “Who am I? I am the sun.” He was painting the sun. The farmer beat his head and went off, thinking, “He must be mad.” And not only a farmer would think so. For a whole year Van Gogh painted the sun. Then people put him in a madhouse — because he had become absorbed into the sun. They began treating him. Friends worried. For a year they kept him in the asylum to cure him.
If only his friends had known Krishna’s saying — or if Van Gogh had — this accident could have been avoided. Of course, mad — he says, “I am the sun!” But if for a year, like Van Gogh, someone has watched the sun, known it, recognized it, entered into its rays, danced in its rays, drunk its light — it is not a surprise if such an identification arises that Van Gogh feels, “I am the sun.”
If you have ever loved someone, in certain moments you feel you have become the one you loved. And if you never felt so, you have never loved. In certain moments you feel you have become the beloved. If it has not happened, you know only acquaintance in the name of love; the knowing of love has not yet occurred.
In our world of knowing, acquaintance passes for knowledge. Krishna points to that realm where to be is to know — to be is to know. Beyond that there is no knowledge.
I have told a story again and again. A Japanese painter, a Zen monk, was painting a grove of bamboos — a banshi-vat. But sometimes the master would pass and say, “Worthless.” The poor fellow would tear up his work. One day he went to the master and said, “However beautifully I paint, you always say lousy, and I have to rip it up. What shall I do?”
The master said, “First, become bamboo; then you will paint bamboo.” He said, “How can I become bamboo?” The master said, “Go. Leave the world of men. Enter the world of bamboos. Sit among them, sleep among them; talk to them, confide in them, love them; imbibe them, drink them in; let them dissolve into your blood and heart.” He said, “I can converse — but bamboos?” The master said, “Do not worry. If man only speaks, trees are always ready to respond; they are so well-mannered they never break the silence on their own. Go.”
He went. One year passed. Two. Three. The master sent word: go and see what has happened to him; it seems he must have become bamboo. Disciples went to search. In a grove of bamboos he stood. Winds blew; bamboos swayed — he swayed too. His face had become so simple, as if it were bamboo. In his movement was the same pliancy as in the bamboos. When a fierce gust came and the bamboos bent, he bent. No resistance, no opposition, no stiffness — the very mark of human life — remained. When a storm toppled the bamboos to the ground, he too lay on the ground. Clouds rained from the sky and the bamboos rejoiced and received the water; he too rejoiced and received it.
They caught him and said, “Come back. The master has remembered you. When will you now paint the bamboos?”
He said, “Now there is no need to paint. I myself have become bamboo.” They brought him and the master said, “Now even if you draw a line with eyes closed, bamboos will appear.” He closed his eyes and drew lines — and bamboos emerged. The master said, “Open your eyes and see. Earlier what you made had much effort in it — but it was false, for there was no knowing. Now bamboos arise from you like shoots arise from the root of bamboo itself.”
There is a kind of knowing in which we know only by becoming one.
I told you this as example. Even this example is not exact. Because for what Krishna speaks of, no example will suffice. It is its own example. Yet if the idea arises that there is a knowing where being and knowing are one, then you will be able to understand Brahma-tattva.
Krishna says: then that jnani, that one who worships me, that one whose chitta is yoked, whose buddhi is steady — that bhakta becomes Vasudeva. He no longer remains a devotee — he becomes God.
And if even for a single instant you remember your Godhood, your entire life — your infinite lives — will become dream-like.
You can also approach it from the other end. In the life you live now, if you begin to live as if it were a dream, the journey can begin from the opposite shore. Either set out upon the path of becoming one with the Supreme — then life becomes dream-like. Or start living this life as dream-like — and suddenly you will find you have become one with the Supreme.
But if you try to understand this only by the intellect, you will understand — but that understanding will be no better than non-understanding. You will understand — but you will not become one. And until you become one, do not accept that it is understanding.
On the first day I told you the story of Shvetaketu. The father said, “Go and know that by knowing which everything is known.” Shvetaketu went back. After years he returned, having known. He was returning an entirely different man. The father peeped through the hut’s window and saw Shvetaketu approaching.
He said to his wife, Shvetaketu’s mother, “I will slip out the back door now, because Shvetaketu is returning having known Brahman.” The wife said, “Why do you run? You yourself sent him to know that by knowing which all is known. Now he comes.”
“The first time he came,” the father said, “he was full of stiffness — intoxicated with scriptures, with ego, with the pride of knowledge. I saw from afar — he walked stiffly.”
“Now he is coming like a gust of breeze. He will enter quietly and no one will notice — no footfall. Like a small white cloud drifting silently. Or like an eagle sometimes that hangs in the sky, poised; neither flapping nor really flying — simply gliding. Thus he comes, peaceful. His feet have no tread left, because when ego is gone, the feet lose their sound.”
The father said, “I will slip out the back; you receive your son.” She asked, “Why will you go?” He said — marvelous were such fathers — “Because I have not yet known Brahman; and if Shvetaketu comes and has to bow at my feet, it would not be right. I shall go. Until I too have known, it is not proper to stand before him. For, being a son, he will bow — yet now he has become Brahman, for he returns knowing Brahman.”
The father fled. “Until I have known, I have no face left to stand before my son.”
When the ray of knowledge descends, the knower within does not remain — only knowledge remains. When the vision of the Supreme happens, the seer does not remain — only the Supreme remains. The one who set out seeking dissolves; only the sought remains.
But scriptures, information, acquaintance — none of these erases anything. Rather, they make you denser, more rigid.
I have heard: one night some friends sat drinking in a house. Some liquor spilled on the floor. In the night a mouse came out; the aroma of the wine caught him. He tasted a little. Then he liked it and drank more. In a short while he was full of intoxication. He stood on his hind legs and shouted, “Bring that kitten — where is she?”
A mouse — but wine! For days it must have been in his heart to teach that kitten a lesson. The time had come. He must have thought himself something extraordinary. That is intoxication.
I have heard: someone gifted Khrushchev, when he was prime minister, a piece of expensive cloth. He summoned the best tailors in Moscow. They said, “A full suit cannot be made; either make trousers or a coat — but not both.” The donor had calculated well. Khrushchev kept it safe; costly fabric — it would be useless if not a full suit.
Later, when Khrushchev came to England, he brought the cloth along. He called a London tailor and said, “Make a suit.” The tailor said, “It will be ready in eight days.” Khrushchev said, “Strange! In Moscow no tailor agreed to make a full suit; they said only trousers or a coat could be done. How will you make it?” The tailor said, “In Moscow you are a very big man; in London you are not so big — size! In Moscow your size is too great; there, even trousers would be difficult. Here it will be done. If you like, I can even make one or two more for your friends.”
That intoxication within us takes many forms: of position, of knowledge, of renunciation — all becomes wine. The man within stands stiff with it. If that stiffness is there, union with God will not be. If union with God happens, that stiffness washes away. In its place only God remains. The waves vanish; only the ocean remains.