Geeta Darshan #2

Having spoken of shraddha, it was to be expected that Krishna would begin something that reason would not consent to. This sutra is beyond logic, illogical. If one goes to understand it by mathematics, either the sutra must be wrong or the order of mathematics must be wrong. It will not sit within the consistency of logic. This sutra is mysterious, like a riddle.
There are riddles whose solution is hidden yet can be found; and there are riddles that have no solution at all, not even by searching. This sutra is of the second kind. In Japan, the Zen fakirs call such a thing a koan: a riddle that cannot be solved; a secret that becomes ever more secret the more you seek; a truth that makes you see, the more you know it, how you do not know. The more intimate the familiarity, the deeper the mystery goes. The closer you take it, the further away it is seen to be. You can leap into such a mystery, but you do not find any shore. As if one jumps into the ocean, and then there is no way to get to the other side.
So there is a door into the Divine, but none to come back out. Hence it is inaccessible as a riddle. That is why Krishna first spoke to Arjuna of shraddha: Now that you are endowed with shraddha, I shall tell you the most secret mysteries which cannot be spoken unless the mind is saturated with shraddha. Before entering this sutra, a few more things about shraddha need to be understood; only then will the sutra be clear.
In existence there are four kinds of attraction. Or say: one attraction with four expressions. Or say: there is one royalty, but four stairways; one truth, four dimensions. If we start from the very gross, it will be easy to understand.
Scientists say: in the organization of this world, the element at work we may call magnetism, a magnetic energy, a magnetic force by which matter clings to and attracts matter. In the language of electricity, it is negative and positive—rin and dhan, the minus and the plus—binding the world’s being. Even matter could not be organized if there were no energy of attraction.
A stone you see is a mesh of billions of atoms. They do not scatter, do not run away, do not fly apart; they are bound to some center, some attraction. The scientist searches—attraction itself is not visible; but since they are bound, there must be attraction. We throw a stone toward the sky; it returns to earth. For thousands of years man had no answer why. Then it dawned on Newton: the earth must be pulling. That pull has never been seen by anyone. Only the result we see—leaves falling to the ground, a man jumping from a mountain lands on the earth. Everything falls toward the earth—some strong attraction, some gravitation must be at work, though unseen.
Newton’s discovery proved precious; many tangles cleared. The earth has a pull, a magnetism, an attraction. On the plane of matter science accepts this pull, though no one has ever seen it. We only see its result—a magnet is placed and iron filings rush; the pull is unseen. The magnet is seen; the filings are seen; the force that draws is unseen—power itself is invisible.
Yet when the magnet draws, the scientist says the pull is at work. When the earth draws, the pull is at work. When the atoms of a stone do not disperse, it means they are centered somewhere, held by some center. That center is not seen; it is inferred. One thing has become clear: that center has two poles—call one positive, the other negative. Between them is attraction.
If we use human language at the level of matter, we may say matter also has feminine and masculine poles. Matter too is divided into female and male; from their mutual attraction the whole play of existence arises.
Rise above matter, and the second expression of the same attraction appears in man and woman. Rise further: life too seems bound by this energy. Within woman and man the energy of life attracts one another; that attraction is the flow of life.
If matter is held by attraction, so is life. In the world of woman and man that attraction manifests as sex. Sex is the living form of the electrical attraction. When magnetic energy becomes available to life, sex is born.
Go still higher: man is not influenced only by sex; there are influences with no relation to sex at all. We call those love.
Between physical objects the attraction is electricity; between two bodies it is sex; between two minds it is love. On love even psychologists may disagree, scientists may hesitate; but poets, writers, artists, painters—all those related to beauty—agree that love is a profound energy, and its results are evident.
But just as we cannot see the earth’s pull, and cannot see sexual attraction—we can only experience them—so too we cannot see the attraction of love; we can only experience it.
These are three common attractions. There is yet a fourth. I said: between two things, inert matter, the attraction is electrical or magnetic; between two bodies the biological gravitation is sex; between two minds the attraction is love. But between two souls the attraction is called shraddha. That is the fourth—and the supreme—attraction.
When two minds are attracted, love happens. When two bodies are attracted, sex arises. When two things attract, physical gravitation appears. But when two souls are attracted, shraddha flowers.
Shraddha is the noblest attraction in this world; magnetic attraction the lowest. Yet neither can the magnetic pull be seen nor the attraction between two souls. If such a gross thing as magnetism cannot be seen, shraddha certainly cannot be seen. But its results can be.
A young man comes to Buddha. He bows at his feet. He lifts his eyes to Buddha; then bows again. Buddha asks, For what have you come? The youth says, The very thing for which I came has happened. Now I have nothing to ask, nothing to say. Buddha says, Tell it to the others, for nothing has been visible to them.
There were ten thousand bhikshus gathered. To them, nothing of the happening was visible. They saw that the youth came; that he bowed; that Buddha’s hand went to his head; that he stood and looked into Buddha’s eyes; that he bowed again, perhaps in gratitude. They heard his words. But Buddha said, Tell them that which none has seen. What has happened to you?
The youth looked around and said, How can I say it? I came to be transformed—and I am transformed. I came for a revolution—I have entered another world. They asked, But how did it happen? No discipline, no effort—how?
He said, I do not know. I only know that some otherworldly love has happened between me and Buddha; shraddha has been born, a trust has arisen. On seeing Buddha, trust dawned in me. With that trust I was changed. Perhaps trust’s absence was the barrier. Seeing Buddha, I felt what has happened in him can happen in me; what has befallen Buddha can befall me. Buddha is my future—what I can be tomorrow, he is today. With that trust, I bowed—and rose a different man.
People did not believe, but they could see he had changed. And he was no ordinary man: a murderer, a bandit, a robber. The next day he went into the village for alms. People on their rooftops pelted him with stones, for they still saw the robber. What had happened could not be seen by them. He was now like Buddha—that is beyond the eye.
They stoned him, for he had tortured the village. Who would give him alms? He received nothing but stones. Crushed, he lay by the roadside. Buddha came on alms-round, placed a hand on his head, and asked, No pain?
That dying man said, Pain? The one to whom pain could happen died at your feet; the one to whom pain cannot happen remains.
Buddha said, But you are dying. He said, That which could die died at your feet; what cannot die is left.
Buddha told the bhikshus, See the result of what you could not trust.
Shraddha’s results can be seen. In life, powers are unseen; only their results are visible. Hence I tell you: if you think you have shraddha, that is not enough. There is one proof alone—your life begins to be transformed. If a theist says ‘I have shraddha’ and his life is no different from an atheist’s, he is deceiving himself. For shraddha is a pull, shraddha is revolution.
So the one who says ‘I have shraddha’ has one evidence—his life bears witness; his being becomes a witness, a sakshi to the presence of Paramatma.
If he says, ‘I do have shraddha, but there is no real difference between me and the atheist,’ know that the shraddha is false. And false shraddha is worse than true doubt. True doubt can one day become shraddha; false shraddha never can.
As I said: between two things the pull is physical; between two bodies it becomes living sex; between two minds it becomes conscious love; between two souls it becomes shraddha. If things do not attract, existence falls apart. If bodies do not come together, life scatters. If minds do not meet, beauty leaves the world. And if souls do not meet, there is no way left to know Paramatma.
Things attract things, and existence is organized. Whether moons and stars whirl, or the earth circles the sun, or electrons revolve—wherever there is matter, a binding energy is the cause.
Our century asks, Where is God? In truth we should ask, Where is shraddha? Without shraddha, there will be no experience of God; without shraddha, God will be as if not. The attraction needed for God to be revealed is shraddha.
And every attraction is creative. Matter attracts matter, and worlds are formed. Scientists have still not explained how the earth came to be, how the stars arose. There are many hypotheses; behind them all lies one base: some energy must have brought this organization to fruition.
If two bodies do not unite, the stream of life breaks—hence the strong pull of sex. But even as a man, if one does not rise above the first attraction, reaching the last is very difficult. Most of us live below even sex—you may find it hard to hear. Many are such that even sex is above them; they live under the attraction of matter.
Someone lives to hoard money; he has not even risen to the pull of sex. He is bound by the attraction of matter. The joy he feels handling money is the joy of that same attraction between two things.
So the one obsessed with wealth lives in the first pull. Hence greed is lower than sex; remember this. Many will sacrifice sex for money, imagining they are going higher. They are falling beneath sex into the coarsest attraction.
One man is obsessed with the chair, with position, with the throne—he lives in the first pull. Thus a politician can often neglect his wife—not because he has become a Buddha who can leave his wife, but because he has fallen below even the wife; the chair is more valuable. Wife and children can be used to climb to the chair. It is the gross attraction.
Money and power are coarse pulls. They draw us as iron to a magnet. Remember: you are not the magnet. When you are pulled toward money, remember, money does not come toward you; you are pulled to it. Money becomes masculine; you become feminine.
Thus the lover of money looks at the rupee as at a beloved. It becomes his god. He touches it more tenderly than he has ever touched anything living; he turns it over and over.
We all know this. Women know it. They care less for their bodies than for their jewelry—because people around are attracted to matter; even the body’s attraction is far off. A woman can lose her body but not her diamond. Her hand seems less attractive to her than the ring. And her understanding is right in a way: ninety out of a hundred will look at the diamond ring, not the hand. If the hand be ugly but the ring be bright, the ugliness is not seen; the ring’s beauty covers it. Hence the ugly load themselves with ornaments; ugliness alone is attracted to ornaments—it is attraction to a still lower level.
Men know too that a big house, a bank balance, a big car can attract a woman. Hence they care less for their bodies than for their cars, their houses, their vaults. We live in a society attracted on the plane of matter; shraddha then becomes a very long journey.
Rise above matter; it will be great grace—rise above greed. At least be attracted to the living, not the dead. This too is a revolution. Some are attracted to living persons, but their attraction does not go beyond sex; bodies meet, minds never do. In lands where divorce is convenient, marriage cannot survive—because minds do not meet, only bodies do. Bodies soon grow stale and boring. How many times can one enjoy the same body? How long can it attract? Soon even that pull turns to boredom; and the minds never meet.
In the West, as divorce becomes easier, marriage keeps dissolving. In 1900, in America, one out of four marriages ended in divorce; now three out of four. In fifty years! And I assure you: within fifty more years divorce will disappear because marriage will disappear. Divorce cannot remain without marriage. The cause? The body’s attraction is sex; the mind’s attraction does not arise.
We do have minds; only when you are attracted to someone’s mind does love begin. Love is the body-free attraction between two minds. Love is friendship.
But we do not know love; friendship has become rare. If love is unknown, shraddha will be very difficult. Love of mind gives birth to friendship. The fourth attraction—shraddha—is the relation between guru and shishya. In it, a person’s very being becomes so attractive—his body is secondary, his mind is secondary, his possessions are valueless; his sheer presence, his is-ness becomes of supreme value. Here too there is a polarity.
On the plane of matter, negative and positive meet—male and female. On the plane of the body, sex unites—again male and female. You may find it odd that when two minds truly meet, one mind is feminine, the other masculine. Wherever union occurs, the elements of woman and man are present. When shraddha is born, even on the plane of the soul the feminine and the masculine are present.
The division into woman and man is not only bodily or biological; the whole existence is polarized. Hence the devotees who loved Krishna said: there is only one man in the world—Krishna. When Meera reached the Vrindavan temple, the goswamin had vowed no woman would enter. Doors were closed. People told her to return. Meera said, Carry this message to the priest: I always thought there is only one man in the world—Krishna. Is the goswamin also a man? Ask him.
The doors opened. The goswamin fell at Meera’s feet. He understood: being a bhakta of Krishna, how could he be the man? Spiritually, Krishna becomes the masculine; the devotee becomes feminine.
I use ‘feminine’ and ‘masculine’ symbolically. The masculine is that which pulls; the feminine that which surrenders. Between guru and shishya this surrender is the bond. After such surrender, things become possible that otherwise cannot.
Now Krishna is going to say something of profound seriousness; listening to it will make your head reel. He could not have said it earlier. Only now that Arjuna is filled with shraddha, surrendered, the heart’s doors open, walls of doubt fallen, all hesitations gone, now he is eager—just as a woman in a moment of love longs to receive the man within; longs to conceive, to give birth anew; becomes totally surrendered to the man. So a mind full of shraddha opens all doors to the guru that his energy may enter, transform life, and a new birth happen.
When two things join, a new thing is born: oxygen and hydrogen meet, water is born. When man and woman meet, a third life is born. When two love-saturated minds meet, great flowers of beauty and joy bloom in the world; they themselves are transformed. If you have ever known the thrill of love, you will have seen—instantly you are a different person.
I read about Vincent van Gogh, the great Dutch painter. No woman ever loved him. He was ugly. And those who love the mind are hard to find. He was poor—and the lovers of wealth are everywhere. No one gave him love. He grew to manhood; his youth neared its end. No one ever looked at him with the eyes of love. He walked like a corpse, dragging his own weight; lifting his legs felt like lifting someone else’s. When he raised his eyes it seemed as if stones were tied to his eyelids.
His employer grew weary of his lethargy, his tamas. He thought, What need of so much sloth? He would sit and keep sitting, even to rise there was no impulse. He would sleep and keep sleeping. Why rise in the morning—what for?
One day the employer was astonished: van Gogh entered the shop bathing after God knows how many years, wearing fresh clothes after God knows how many months, humming a tune perhaps for the first time in his life. The owner asked, What happened? A miracle! You are singing? You have bathed? You have put on fresh clothes?
Van Gogh said, Yes—someone has looked at me with love today. I have become the recipient of someone’s love.
Now this is a different man. Passing through love, both are reborn.
What happens through shraddha is the ultimate revolution. In love, the old is transformed; in shraddha, the old dies and the new arrives. Love has continuity; shraddha has discontinuity. After shraddha you are not the same as before; you are wholly other. There is no connection, no line between them; the old ends, the new appears.
Shraddha is the greatest leap in this world. A leap means no bridge with the old remains. Thus whenever shraddha happens, the greatest revolution happens. All other revolutions are childish; only self-revolution is fundamental.
Seeing Arjuna at the very door of this revolution, Krishna says: O Arjuna, by my unmanifest form this whole world is pervaded.
Now these are upside-down sayings. You have heard of Kabir’s ulatbansi—his inverse couplets. Kabir speaks the impossible: the river caught fire; the fish panicked and climbed trees. He says this so you may see: what cannot happen, happens—here, before your eyes. What can happen does happen; that is not significant. Only the one who sees only that is blind. The impossible too is happening. That alone is God’s proof, the miracle.
So Krishna says a great impossibility: By my unmanifest form, this whole world is filled.
But this world is manifest. And Krishna says: through this manifest, my unmanifest is manifested. The manifest, the visible, the formed, the sagun—within it my formless, nirgun, unmanifest, invisible is flowing.
Our mathematics cannot hold both. The unmanifest means that which never manifests; then how through the world? And if it manifests through the world, why call it unmanifest? Logic will insist: choose one of the two. Either say what is manifest is me—or say I am not this manifest; I am unmanifest.
Krishna says: This that is manifest—I am spread through it; I fill it; I am complete in it. Within form is my formless; within shape is my shapeless; within the seen I am the unseen.
This puts us in difficulty. With shraddha it is instantly understood; without it, effort is needed. What purpose is served by saying such contrary things? And the inversion goes on and on.
The very categories of our thinking are flawed; thus what is happening eludes us. If I say, I am birth and I am death, logic says no—if I am birth, how can I be death? Birth and death are opposites. In thinking they are; in truth they are not. In existence, birth and death are joined, two ends of one. What do we do after birth except reach death? They are not two; they are ends of the one we call life.
Yet in our thinking birth is friend, death enemy. We welcome birth with drums; we bid death with tears. Perhaps you think laughing and crying are opposites; then you are mistaken. If you keep crying without stopping, in a little while crying will turn to laughter. Try it; it is not difficult. Keep laughing without stopping; soon laughter will dissolve and crying will begin.
Village women know—do not let the child laugh too much; if he laughs too much, he will cry. Our language makes all these pairs into opposites—birth and death, light and darkness, childhood and old age, cold and heat. It is language’s fault, not life’s. Have you seen any light not joined to darkness, any darkness not joined to light? Not companions even—two ends of the same. If this is seen, Krishna’s sutra ceases to be so senseless.
This sutra has created great difficulties: Is God sagun or nirgun? Endless disputes! The worshipers of sagun say, do not speak of the nirgun; the worshipers of the nirgun say, all talk of sagun is nonsense. Those who accept form make idols; those who accept the formless break idols. Muslims accept the formless—they destroyed so many idols! The makers did not work as hard forging them as the breakers did smashing them. Yet how will you wipe out idols? Makers keep making. In India we believe there are as many gods as people. Once there were thirty-three crores of people—so thirty-three crores of gods. People have increased; who knows what the gods are doing!
The makers keep making—saying God is sagun, sakar, with form. The breakers keep breaking. Such a costly mistake of language! What we call sagun is a pole of the nirgun; what we call nirgun is a pole of the sagun. They are not two events but two ends of one existence. Form is a fraction of the formless that our senses can grasp; and of form, what slips beyond our senses we call formless. Sargun is what we can measure; nirgun is what escapes our measuring.
There is a courtyard in my house; that courtyard has its own sky, bounded by walls. My sky seems separate from the neighbor’s sky. If the neighbor enters my sky, I will object—my sky! But is the sky divided? However many walls we erect, only our seeing is bounded; the sky is not broken by walls. The wall obstructs only my eyes, not the sky. For me, sky seems in two; sky is not in two. The sky of my courtyard is a piece of that sky outside; and the outside is an extension of my courtyard’s sky.
All our opposite words are ends of the same. So Krishna says: By my unmanifest, this world is filled. My formless hides in these forms; my nirgun is expressed in all these qualities; my Paramatma is the foundation of this matter. All beings abide in me. And this whole world that appears abides in me, rests in me. And then immediately he says something opposite—so it seems to us: All beings abide in me—but I do not abide in them.
How can it be? If all beings are established in God, and God is manifest in all, how can he say, I am not in them? For shraddha there is no difficulty: it does not raise questions; it is transparent—it sees straight through and says, Right.
A Zen fakir, Bokuju, was asked by a seeker, What is the path to reach God? Bokuju sat silently, glanced out the window and said, Look—the sun is setting, evening is near. No apparent relation! The question: What is the path? The answer: Look, the sun is setting. The man touched his feet and left. Another man sitting there was stunned. He thought: Bokuju is certainly mad; and that man must be utterly mad! The answer had no connection. He asked Bokuju, I too have a question, but please do not answer like that. I ask: what happened to that man’s question? Bokuju said, It was answered, and not only answered—it reached him. The man said, I do not understand. How can ‘the sun is setting’ answer him? Bokuju said, Better you go and ask him whether the answer has reached.
He went and found the man sitting in meditation under a tree near the gate. He shook him and asked, Did you get the answer? The man said, Yes. The sun is about to set; my life too is near setting. Bokuju has told me: if the whole futility of life has not become the path to God for you, what else will? If the experience of a lifetime has not brought you to his door, what other way is there? Death is near; do not waste time. He asked, What are you doing here then? The man said, I am preparing to drown. All my life I prepared to live; it was futile. Now I am preparing to drown. As the sun sets outside, so inside shall I sink—that is his indication. In the morning when the sun was rising, that man was still under the same tree. Bokuju came out; the third man had stayed all night, unable to make sense of anything. Bokuju asked the meditator for some news. He opened his eyes and said, The sun is rising; morning is near. Bokuju blessed him: Now you can go.
This is another kind of language, understood by shraddha. The man said, The sun is rising. The one that set I have left—what I was. The other is born; the way is found.
Krishna says: All these are established in me—yet I am not established in them. This is an indication—and it is crucial. Whatever is vaster, even if it enters the smaller, still it does not enter. Draw a small circle, then a large one around it. The large circle can say, The small is contained in me, yet I am not contained in it—because the small is wholly within the large, but the large spreads beyond the small.
It is an essential law: the lesser abides in the greater, but the greater does not abide in the lesser. An old man can say, The child is in me; yet I am beyond the child. Childhood and youth are hidden in the old; he has absorbed them; yet he is something more—his circumference is larger. Rivers can be said to be in the ocean; yet the ocean is not in the rivers.
This is the meaning, logically: the vast is beyond the small. Even if it manifests through the small, it is beyond. This transcendence, this beyondness, is the key.
And then Krishna says: And these beings are not established in me. First he said they are; then immediately, they are not. But see my yoga, see my maya: while sustaining and nourishing all beings, I am not established in them. As the wind, born of the sky, moves everywhere yet ever abides in the sky, so know all beings abide in me.
One line seems to cancel another. It is utterly beyond logic. Why? Perhaps just to say: I am beyond logic. Understand this—the essence of this utterance is: You will not grasp me by understanding; not by knowing; not by recognizing. Drop understanding, recognition, calculation, logic—then you can know me, for I am beyond logic.
Beyond logic means: I am a mystery. No theory, no rule can encompass me. I am like quicksilver: the moment you close your fist of logic, I will slip and scatter. Until you do not close your fist, you may feel I am there; the moment you clutch, I am gone. The intellect wants to grasp truth; truth slips away like mercury. Do not try to bind me.
Krishna has seen that Arjuna keeps trying to bind him—because if Arjuna can bind Krishna in logic, he can escape the war. If Krishna says, All is maya, Arjuna says: Then why entangle me? If Krishna says, No one dies by killing, Arjuna says: Then why kill? If Krishna says: Fight for fame and honor, Arjuna says: Fame and honor are ego—you yourself say ego is the obstacle! If Krishna says: Fight for dharma, Arjuna says: Will dharma be established by me? You are here; that is enough. If Krishna says: Life is futile, Arjuna wants to be freed to go into samadhi.
Whatever Krishna says, Arjuna tries to trap him—for in that trap he sees his release. If the debate were purely logical, Krishna would certainly lose; Arjuna would win. Krishna has answered all arguments, cut each one. Now Arjuna is at a place where he will not raise more. So Krishna reveals his beyond-logic. He says: Now I tell you as I am. What you asked till now—I played the chess game with you; I replied as needed. Now hear what I am. In all that is seen, I am hidden as the not-seen. This entire world is held in me, and I am not in it; and yet I tell you this world is not held in me; and yet I tell you I am pervading it.
Arjuna’s head would spin. Anyone moving by thought will be dizzy. Shraddha will not be shaken; shraddha is so powerful that even Krishna cannot shake it. Had Krishna said this earlier, Arjuna would have raised a thousand questions. Now he is silent. He is not trying to understand Krishna; he is drinking Krishna. What Krishna says is no longer so important—who says it is. He opens his being and lets Krishna in.
Remember, not seeing contradiction can have two causes. I have seen many who recite the Gita constantly; they too do not see contradictions—not because their shraddha is deep, but because they do not use enough intelligence. Habit dulls the eye. Do not mistake poverty of intellect for profundity of shraddha. The depth of shraddha is freedom from intellect, not its shallowness.
Read this. First try to see every contradiction. When the intellect tires, you will glimpse something. In the mid-twentieth century science stumbled upon a new truth: with the discovery of the atom it became clear electrons behave strangely. Some scientists reported they are particles; others, that they are waves; others still, that they are both simultaneously. But a particle cannot be a wave; a wave cannot be a particle. If I say I have drawn a point on your wall, it is both a point and a line—you will say, What are you saying! Euclid will collapse; geometry will die. Yet the electron cares nothing for Euclid; it behaves both ways simultaneously. No words we had. Finally, Euclid had to be left; fact had to be accepted.
Someone asked Einstein, This is against the rule! He said, What can we do? We should say: the rule is against the fact. Rules can change—they are ours. Facts will not—they are not ours. Euclid will have to lose; this is the fact.
Opposites exist together in life. Physicists found it in matter; psychologists found it in man: Freud, at life’s end, saw that man desires life and death both. All his life he had said libido—the will to live—is man’s basic drive. In old age he realized: this is half; man also desires to die. Now great difficulty: are both urges present together? He was troubled, trusting logic. Today, going deeper, people see they are not two urges—one urge expressing as both. When things go well you say, I want to live; when they go ill, the same urge says, I want to die. The old man prays, God, take me now—not because a revolution has happened in him; the same desire, defeated and weary, now speaks the language of death. Let someone arrive with a machine: enter this door and emerge young! The old man will say, God, wait a little; let me pass through once. The wish to die is gone. They are not two.
Psychologists have reached a third and more startling fact: we both love and hate the very person we love. Tell a mother she both loves and hates her child—no mother will agree. Freud says her refusal only shows her fear; deep down she knows it. Tell a lover: the beloved for whom you would fetch nectar, you could also buy poison for. Not tomorrow—now, at the same moment, both love and hate are present. That is why love can turn into hate in a moment, hate into love. Attraction turns to repulsion, repulsion to attraction. They are exchangeable, liquid—because they are one.
Krishna is saying: I am both. Wherever you see opposites, both are me.
In this, Hindu reflection is unique. No other religion has assimilated duality so deeply. Therefore I say: Einstein or Freud can be assimilated with ease by Hindu thought, not by Christian thought. Christianity and Islam move by duality. Yesterday I said there are two main streams: Jewish and Hindu. Others are branches. The Jewish stream breaks life into polar enemies: God and Satan; good and evil; sin and virtue; hell and heaven. Only Hindu thought assimilates the dual. So we created wondrous images; as understanding grows, their glory will be seen. We are the only people who did not raise a satan against God. There is no place for Satan in our reflection. It is hard. Christian and Muslim are simple in a way: they put all evil on Satan and all good on God—so their God is purely good. God is good; the evil is Satan. But what shall we do? Our God must be both at once—creator and destroyer. Christianity will say: God creates, Satan destroys. We say: He does both—he creates, he destroys.
We made the image of Ardhanarishvara—Shiva half man, half woman. No other world can imagine this. One person both? Yet both at once.
So Krishna can also say: The whole world is contained in me, yet I am not in it. If someone asks Krishna, What of sin? Krishna will say: All sinners are in me—and I am not in them. All sins happen within me—and I am not in them.
This transcendence that accepts both and yet goes beyond them is India’s most secret key. Therefore our conception of God appears strange to others—even to many in our own land. Krishna’s personality itself is unintelligible to a Jain: How is this man? He can play the flute and stand on a battlefield; he can preach supreme ahimsa and urge Arjuna into a bloody war—and not merely urge, but entice with such skill no salesman ever matched: Go, fight, utterly carefree! And he gives a unique aphorism: Kill without care, for the Atman never dies.
This capacity to transcend duality is the profoundest discovery. In this sutra Krishna says: Do not divide my form into contraries. In both I am: in form and formless; in idol and invisible; in matter and Paramatma. And still I say: being in all, I remain outside; standing among all, I do not drown in them.
You can taste this. Sitting in a crowd, completely immersed, if you have a little capacity for dhyana—close your eyes and turn within—you can say: I am in the crowd, yet I am not in the crowd. Go to a forest with no one around; sit under a tree. With no capacity for meditation, close your eyes—the crowd will be there. There you must say: Though no crowd is here, I am in a crowd.
Even here, sitting in the crowd, you can be outside it. Then you will know a complex truth: I am in the crowd; yet I am not. This is the transcendence beyond duality—non-dual transcendence—of which Krishna speaks.
He says: I fight and make fight; I flee and make flee; and yet I am not in any of this.
But this is known only in the highest state of dhyana or shraddha, of samadhi.
A Sufi fakir was near death. Physicians gave medicine; he drank. The doctor, looking into his eyes, suspected he was not really drinking. He said, You are drinking—but your eyes show no concern. The fakir said, I drink for your sake; I am not drinking. If someone had seen a sword in Mohammed’s hand and asked, Why carry a sword? Perhaps he would have said, For your sake. In my hand there is no sword. Therefore Mohammed had engraved on his sword: Peace is my message. It seems mad: on a sword—Peace is my message! The word Islam itself means peace. But Mohammed was right: the sword was not in his hand for the sword’s sake. This is difficult; only deep experience makes it clear.
Do a few small experiments. Sitting here in the crowd: for a moment shift your attention, forget the crowd—suddenly you are alone. The crowd remains; you are alone. While eating, know clearly: food goes into the body, not into me. Food will go into the body; you stand outside. If someone slaps you, understand: matter struck matter; a hand touched a face; I stood aside—untouched. The sound of the slap will be heard; the mark will appear; the striker will be satisfied—and within you remain unstained. A few experiments, and this riddle becomes clear.
Enough for today.
But do not get up yet. Sit for five minutes. There will be kirtan. Participate for five minutes. Do not merely sit—join in. Repeat together in joy, and then return.