Geeta Darshan #8

Now let us take the sutra.

“But the Purusha, established in Prakriti, enjoys the objects born of Prakriti’s three gunas; and this association with the gunas is the cause of taking birth in good and bad wombs. Truly, though abiding in this body, that Purusha is other: as witness, he is the onlooker; as giver of true assent, he is the consenter; as the one who supports all, he is the sustainer; as the Jiva, he is the experiencer; and as the Lord of even the Brahmas, he is Maheshvara; being the pure mass of sat-chit-ananda, he is called Paramatma.”

“But the Purusha, established in Prakriti, enjoys the objects born of Prakriti...”

That inner consciousness, that Purusha within, is related to the spread of Prakriti and its three gunas surrounding him on all sides. The Purusha relates to Prakriti in every situation; Prakriti, in any situation, does not relate to Purusha. Take this in first.

You are in your house. You say, “My house.” The house never says, “You are mine.” And if you leave tomorrow, the house will not weep. If the house collapses, you will weep. Strange, isn’t it? The house has not a pebble’s worth of concern for you; you have great concern for it.

If your car breaks down, tears come to your eyes. The land for which you could shed blood, even give your life—that land has not a grain of concern for you. Long before you, others as mad as you have died for it. The land you call yours was there when you were not; someone else called it his. Who knows how many have claimed it? The claimants vanish, the claimed remains.

Prakriti does not establish any relation with you. You establish relation with Prakriti. You forge the relation and you break it. By making relation you obtain pleasure; by making relation you suffer pain. It depends wholly on you. Prakriti has no interest in giving you pain or pleasure. With your own hands you fashion your pleasure and pain.

Hence a curious fact: that from which you once derived pleasure—let your vision change and the same thing begins to give pain. The thing is the same. From that which gave you pain—let your vision change and the same thing becomes a source of joy. The thing is the same; only your outlook changes and the whole meaning changes. Your idea changes and the whole world changes.

You do not live in a world of objects; you live in a world of feelings and thoughts. Objects are far away; you have no direct relation to them. You stretch your feelings like bridges and get related to objects. You call someone wife, someone husband, someone friend. These are relationships you have constructed. In themselves they do not exist; they exist only in feeling.

Krishna is saying: This Prakriti all around you, and all the objects born of it—you enjoy them according to your feeling. And because of these feelings, you take birth in good and bad wombs.

You become what you feel. Feeling is the begetter. You become what you feel. And what you ask for—sadly enough—that is what you get. Whatever you are is the result of your own desires.

Reflect a little on how many desires you harbor! And the desires you nourish—slowly, slowly—you become capable of fulfilling them. Scientists say too—Darwin proposed—that the senses man possesses are born of man’s desires.

It is not right to say you see because you have eyes. You desired to see; therefore eyes evolved. The giraffe has a long neck. Darwin asks: why such a long neck? The camel too has a long neck. We see from above and conclude: “Because the camel has a long neck, he can reach high leaves.” But evolutionists say: it is the desire to reach high leaves that elongated the neck; otherwise it would not become long. And there is fierce competition in the forest. Low leaves any animal can eat. The higher the reach, the longer one can survive.

So Darwin and his followers say: survival of the fittest—the one capable of protecting himself develops the very senses his desires demand. The camel does not eat high leaves because he has a long neck; he has a long neck because he wanted to eat high leaves.

You do not see because of eyes; there is a desire within to see—therefore the eyes are there. And sometimes astonishing things happen.

In Russia a woman went blind. She had tasted the joy of seeing; she had seen for many years, then went blind. The desire to see became intense. Life without seeing turned drab and lusterless.

You cannot imagine: if you had eyes and they were taken away, life would be eighty percent gone—color gone, forms gone. Only a monotonous world of sounds remains—no color, no form.

Her urge to see became profound. She began to feel things with her hands. Slowly her fingers began to function like eyes. Later scientists conducted many experiments. She could bring her fingers near your face and, without touching, pass her hand and say whether the face was beautiful or ugly—without touching!

Scientists say the skin of her hands began to sense the rays emanating from your face. In truth the eye is also skin. The hand is skin. The skin of the eye has specialized in seeing. There is no reason why the skin of the hand cannot develop a similar specialty.

Some animals hear with their whole body. They have no ears; the whole body functions as ear. Look at the bat. Sometimes a bat blunders into a house by day. It cannot open its eyes in daylight. Yet, have you noticed? A bat comes right up to the edge of a wall—within four to six inches—and turns away, without colliding. It comes to the point of collision and veers off. The eye sees nothing.

Scientists studied it. The bat’s whole body senses the presence of the wall from six inches away. So it comes close, almost colliding, but doesn’t. Yes, if you frighten and confuse it, it may collide. Left to itself, it doesn’t. It turns away at the last moment. It has a radar that gives it a sense of touch at six inches. By day it lacks seeing eyes, but the facility for survival is still necessary. Its whole body has become sensitive.

The Purusha hidden within us—whatever he desires, the corresponding sense organ evolves. The senses are shadows of his wanting.

This will be a bit difficult, because we usually say: desires exist because of the senses. That is false. The senses exist because of desires. That is why the wise say: when desires end, you cannot be born again. Not being born means you will not be able to take up a body and senses again—because body and senses are not primary; desire is primary. The house in which you were born is also your desire. The womb in which you were born is also your desire.

Recently I came upon a very unique experience. I have been working with a few people on their past lives—guiding them into past-life memories. A surprising pattern appeared: men are often men in past lives too, but women frequently change sex—if someone was a woman in a past life, in this life she often becomes a man.

Perhaps, because of bondage and exploitation, women have a deep desire to be men. Their lifelong experience whispers: “It would have been better to be a man.” The urge becomes intense. In the West, women’s freedom is increasing. In fifty to a hundred years this pattern will fade; women will be able to take birth as women—the desire will weaken.

Often, a Brahmin is born again in a Brahmin household—again and again. A Brahmin’s son, having once tasted the pride and prestige of a Brahmin home, does not wish to be born elsewhere; that is his desire. But a Shudra often changes—born a Shudra in one life, he enters another varna in the next. His deep desire is to move out of the Shudra status. It is heavy, painful, a burden; it is not pleasant to be there.

We drift toward what we desire. Our desire walks ahead, and our life is dragged along behind it.

Krishna says: This world spread by Prakriti is enjoyed by the Purusha hidden within us, and association with the gunas becomes the cause of birth in good and bad wombs. And whatever things he develops a taste for, with which he forms attachment, into those very wombs he begins to enter.

If one cultivates such desires as could be better fulfilled by being a dog, then Prakriti will provide a dog’s body. Prakriti offers only an open invitation; it has no insistence. You become what you want to become. You choose your womb—knowingly or unknowingly. You choose your species—knowingly or unknowingly.

What you ask for happens. Like water flowing down and filling a pit, you too flow and fill into a womb. Your desires carry you in a particular direction. Birth in good or bad wombs is the fruit of our own longings.

Our difficulty is that we forget what our longings are. By the time attainment comes, we have forgotten what we asked for. If we could remember our asking, we would see that, no matter the time gap between asking and receiving, we have been given exactly what we asked.

I see people unhappy with their own askings.

A young woman came to me and said, “I want a husband who is handsome, healthy, powerful, who bows to no one, who is dominant.” Fine—search, you will find him. Then she added, “One more thing: he should always obey me.”

I told her, “Decide between the two. If he is dominant, he will not submit to you. If you want to dominate him, then the man who submits to you will submit to anyone. Choose one of the two. The dominant one will be trouble for you too; you won’t be able to dominate him. And if your desire is to dominate him, he will no longer remain dominant. He will trail behind you in fear; if he fears you, he will fear everyone. So pick one.”

A few days later she returned and said, “All right then—he should submit to me, whatever else he may be.”

She is unaware of this desire of hers—but it will be fulfilled. The desire one truly holds, one fulfills; one finds its match. We get what is congruent with us; the incongruent never comes—whether we recognize it or not.

When she finds a man who submits to her, she will not be fulfilled. No woman can be fulfilled with a man who is submissive; a submissive man becomes effeminate. A woman can be pleased only by one who overwhelms her—though the way of overwhelming should be refined. Not with a stick on the head; rather, a presence, a personality that subdues without trying, and the woman yields in trust. Only there does fulfillment arise.

But she says, “He must submit to me.” She is looking for a woman—not a man. She will find him, because many men are woman-like; she will find such men, and they will trouble her. Then she will blame fate and God and whoever else—never pausing to see that what she asked for is exactly what she got.

Investigate your sorrows a little—you will find you got what you asked for.

Some say, “Our misery is because we did not get what we asked for.” They are wrong. They do not know what they asked. In truth, what you ask for is granted—and then you suffer. You think you suffer because your desire was not fulfilled. No; look closely and you will find: my desires were fulfilled—and that is why I suffer.

We do not know what we ask; what our desire is; what its consequences will be. We never keep accounts. We proceed blindly. The essence of all religions is: the wombs into which you sink and fill are those of the very desires with which you overflow. Into those personalities, those molds, those lives you enter.

“Truly, though abiding in this body, that Purusha is other...”

Now, this Purusha has many states. He is different from the body—but only when he knows himself as different. If he chooses, he can believe “I am the body” and fall into delusion.

Dwelling in the body, the Purusha is nonetheless other. That is his nature. Yet in this nature there is a capacity—identification. If he believes “I am the body,” he becomes the body. If you believe the stick in your hand is you, you become the stick. Whatever you assume becomes true. This is the inner capacity of Purusha: what he takes to be so becomes so.

“Truly, though abiding in this body, that Purusha is other. And as witness, he is the onlooker...”

These are his different stances. If, as a witness, he looks within, he becomes the onlooker, the drashta.

“As giver of true assent, he is the consenter...”

If you ask his consent, he becomes the consenter for you. But you never ask his consent. You never sit silent and still and seek the suggestion of the inner Purusha. You follow the suggestions of desire, of the senses, or the compulsions of circumstance—reacting to whatever moment arises.

Someone abuses you, and he takes the reins—you begin to act based on his abuse. Without even asking, “Who is this person who is making me his slave? Why should I move at the push of his abuse?” He is pressing your buttons. He hurls abuse, and something starts moving within you—you are enslaved.

Do not think that if you refrain from abusing back the issue is over. Inside you will think something—perhaps, “Forgive him, he is ignorant.” Even then he is making you move. You are not the master; he is the button-presser. He abuses, and something starts running within you. You are a slave.

If you pause for a moment, become a witness, and take counsel within—not from circumstances, not from reaction, not from the senses—take counsel of the witness, and the witness becomes the consenter.

“As the supporter of all, he is the sustainer; as Jiva, the experiencer; as the Lord of even the Brahmas, he is Maheshvara; and being the mass of sat-chit-ananda, he is called Paramatma.”

This inner Purusha appears in many forms. If you join him to the body, it seems “I am the body,” and you become worldly. If you separate through meditation and become the witness, you move toward samadhi. If you begin to seek his counsel, you become your own guru. If you penetrate further, you find him as the creator of all creation—and you become the Divine. And if you enter his ultimate, innermost point, beyond which there is nothing, you become the dense, pure sat-chit-ananda—the Supreme Brahman.

This Purusha is your everything: your sorrow, your joy; your restlessness, your world; your heaven, your hell; your Brahman, your moksha, your nirvana—this Purusha is all.

Remember: events are outside; feelings are inside. The final source of feeling is the Supreme Brahman, the dense mass of sat-chit-ananda—that too is you.

Therefore this land found no difficulty in declaring that every person is God. You may not know it—that is another matter. But God is present within you. And that you do not know it is also your own contrivance and cleverness. If you wish to know, you can know right now. Perhaps you simply do not wish to know.

People ask me questions. Even today someone asked, “If we go deep into meditation, what will happen to our household and worldly life?” Perhaps that is why they fear meditation: “What will happen to my set-up?” And yet they ask, “Still, please show a way to meditate!”

What will you do with the method of meditation? You are afraid—because the play of desires you have arranged may break. Better to remain forgetful.

Perhaps you do not want meditation; that is why you have not entered it. The day you truly want it, no power in the world can stop you.

People come and say, “We try hard, but meditation does not happen.” I tell them, “You neither try nor do you want it. Your taste is not in meditation; it is elsewhere. Tell me—what do you want from meditation?”

A man said, “I want a winning lottery number. I have come to you for that reason: hearing ‘meditation, meditation, meditation,’ I thought if I meditate once and the number appears, the matter is settled.”

He wants a lottery number from meditation! He did not tell me this at first, thinking, who knows whether I’m interested in such a thing or not. So he said, “I have a great longing for meditation; I am very restless.” The restlessness is not for meditation but for the lottery. He thinks, “If meditation happens, the mind will be quiet, the number will appear, and the job is done.”

You want something else even from meditation. And as long as no one wants meditation for its own sake, meditation cannot happen. You want something else even from God—He too is a means, not the end.

Consider this: if God appears—if you reach home from here and find God seated in your living room—what will you ask for? Think a moment. The mind will instantly make a list: number one, number two... And everything you ask will be petty. Not one thing will be worthy of asking from God.

Even if God appears, you will ask for the world. You ask for the world; that is why God does not appear. What you ask for is given. And you are not yet so weary of the world that you directly ask for God. Hence the delay. Otherwise He is hidden within you—not a hair’s breadth away. You are that.

“In this way, the one who knows the Purusha and his qualities, and the Prakriti along with the qualities—such a person, though acting in every way, is not born again, that is, does not obtain rebirth.”

This sutra is worth taking to heart.

“In this way, the one who knows the Purusha, and the Prakriti along with the qualities—such a person, though acting in every way, is not born again, that is, does not obtain rebirth.”

The person who grasps that Prakriti is separate and I am separate—and who can remember this separateness effortlessly, always—even if he stays in a brothel, his inner purity is not destroyed. And you—even if you sit in a temple—return home having only defiled the temple. Where you are does not matter; what you are does.

If it dawns that “I am separate, distinct,” then life is no more than a play. In that play there is no bondage, no craving—only play and acting. And one who sees it as acting, Krishna says, is not born again, for he has no desire left. He is merely completing a task—with no relish in it—just a responsibility being fulfilled.

It is like a man playing Rama in a pageant. When his Sita is stolen, he weeps and asks the trees, “O trees, tell me where my Sita is!” But his tears are acting. Inside, nothing is happening. Sita is not lost; he is not truly asking trees; he has no personal stake—he is acting. He will ask the trees, shed tears, search for Sita—and then go behind the curtain and sip tea, gossiping. The matter is over; he has nothing at stake.

If the real Rama, too, could step behind the scenes like that and sip tea—he would be God. If you, too, can live the whole commotion of your life as a play, and know the art of stepping behind the scenes—what I call meditation, prayer, worship is precisely the art of going behind the curtain. You close the shop and go home—you step off the stage into meditation. To go into meditation means you say, “Enough—the play is off now.”

If you can truly remember the inner Purusha, you will be able to turn it off. For now, you cannot. You may draw curtains and close doors, but your shop comes in with you. It’s not a play for you—you clutch it tightly.

So you sit chanting “Rama, Rama,” while inside you count money. The lips chant Rama; inside something else runs—calculations about the black ledger you forgot to write up, or how to deceive the income-tax officer tomorrow. The inner is running, and the outer is chanting.

Remember, the outer “Rama, Rama” is false. The inner stream is the real one. You are too identified with that. You have become the shopkeeper; you have no inner part left that is not the shopkeeper.

As soon as a person begins to remember—even a little—this distance between Prakriti and Purusha, “This is not me...” Just this much remembrance: “This is not me.” Sitting in the shop: “I am doing shopkeeping; it is necessary, a duty, a task—I am getting it done.” But upon reaching home, bathing, and entering your meditation room—you have gone behind the curtain, stepped off the stage, left everything outside—and you sit for an hour in the peace that is beyond the world.

The deeper this practice grows, the more fitting and right it is. Then slowly, slowly, nothing will bind you. Even if chains are put on you and you are thrown into prison—you will remain free. For the chains go on that which is Prakriti; you remain outside.

The search within for such an element that cannot be bound, that cannot be enslaved, that is ever free—that is spirituality. This Purusha is the very name of that freedom. The goal of the entire spiritual journey is that you discover within you that element which no one in the world can limit, can chain, can imprison—whose very nature is freedom.

This does not mean you cannot put chains on Krishna; it does not mean Buddha cannot be imprisoned. We did crucify Jesus. And yet—you cannot crucify Jesus. Whom you nail to the cross is Prakriti. When you drive nails into the hands of Jesus, you drive them into the hands of Prakriti, not into the hands of Jesus.

There is no way to drive nails into the hands of Jesus. There is no way to crucify Jesus. Jesus is alive. You are only cutting and killing the body. If Jesus, too, were identified with the body, he would suffer; he would cry and scream, “Save me! Forgive me! I am at fault—let me go.” He would try some means. But he tries none. On the contrary, he prays to God, “Forgive them, for they know not what they do.”

For what did Jesus say, “They know not what they do”? For this: the one they are hanging on the cross cannot be hung; and the one they are hanging is not “I.” They do not know what they are doing. They are crucifying someone else in my place—that is the meaning. They think they are killing me, but how will they kill me? The one they are killing is not me. And that one would have died without their killing too—no need for so much arrangement. And I will not die even with all their arrangements.

As the awareness of the inner Purusha becomes clearer, Krishna says, then—even while acting in every way...

That is why Krishna’s life is complex—very complex. To logicians, moralists, those who live and think by rules, Krishna’s life appears very inconsistent.

On this, the first thing to understand is that even toward paths you are not meant to walk, a leaning can arise within you. And that leaning is dangerous. It can squander your life, your energy, your opportunity.

So Krishna speaks to Arjuna about all the paths toward which any human mind might feel inclined. He is speaking of every path a human being may be tempted to take.

There is an advantage in this. If Arjuna understands all these paths, it will no longer be difficult for him to see which path is most suitable for him. What you do not know is a danger; what you come to know ceases to threaten you.

After knowing about all the roads, the decision that arises will be more balanced. That is why Krishna speaks of all the roads. In this sense, Krishna’s utterance, his teaching, is very different from the utterances of Buddha, Mahavira, Mohammed, and Jesus.

Jesus speaks of a single path. Mahavira speaks of a single path. Buddha speaks of a single path. Krishna speaks of all the paths. And when, having understood them all, one makes a choice, that choice becomes more meaningful, more purposeful. Success on that path also becomes easier.

Very often a path looks attractive at the outset, but when you know the whole of it, its charm fades. Very often a path at first seems thorny and hard, yet when you understand it fully, it becomes easy.

Therefore Krishna lays everything open. Through Arjuna he is as if speaking to all of humanity.

All the ways by which a human being can reach the divine—Krishna lays them all before Arjuna. Arjuna will not walk all of them, nor is there any need. But by knowing them all, the path he does choose will be the most fitting for him.

Second, the relationship between Krishna and Arjuna is not that of guru and disciple but of two friends. The relationship of friends differs greatly from the guru–disciple bond. Hence Krishna does not speak in the language of a guru; he speaks as a friend. He says all these things to Arjuna as if persuading him, coaxing him, winning his consent. There is no command in it, no order. One friend is bringing another around, explaining. Krishna is not standing above Arjuna issuing injunctions; he stands beside him and converses. It is a dialogue between two deep friends.

Certainly, Krishna is a guru and Arjuna a disciple, but the relation between them is that of friends. Because of this friendship, the kind of exchange, the dialogue, you find in the Gita is not there in the Quran, nor in the Bible; not in the Dhammapada, nor in the Zend Avesta.

A dialogue, a conversation: two friends speaking intimately. Arjuna need not be afraid that he is addressing a guru, nor is the guru in a hurry to put Arjuna on a path. It is a discussion between friends. The cream that emerges from this friendly discourse is of great value.

Deep down Arjuna is a disciple, though he has no idea of it. He is asking, questioning, inquiring—these are the marks of a disciple. But in him they are unconscious.

Arjuna is asking the way one asks a friend for advice in trouble. He does not know that he has stepped onto the path of becoming a disciple. In truth, he never imagined that from his question would flow what Krishna went on to say.

Arjuna had asked only this: My loved ones, my kinsmen, my friends, my relatives—on this side and on that—all are my own people. We stand divided, one great family. There are my teachers there, the venerable Bhishma. This whole conflict is familial; this killing feels pointless. Even if I gain such a kingdom, what would I do with it if all my kin and friends are destroyed? Such a kingdom seems fit to renounce.

A wave of dispassion arose in Arjuna’s mind. But it arose out of attachment. Had that dispassion not been born of attachment, there would have been no need for Krishna to speak the Gita—Arjuna would already have been a renunciate. The dispassion that is born from attachment is no dispassion at all; it merely speaks the language of renunciation. Out of this dilemma the Gita was born.

Arjuna claims, “Dispassion is arising in me; let me drop all this, it is all futile.” But the reason he gives is that his dear ones, his friends, his kinsmen, his teachers will die, will be cut down. The supposed cause of his renunciation is attachment.

This is impossible. No true dispassion can arise from attachment. Dispassion arises from freedom from attachment. It is because of this very difficulty, this dilemma in Arjuna, that the entire Gita came into being.

Arjuna does not even know that his renunciation is false. Its root is attachment. Where the root is attachment, the flower of dispassion cannot bloom. How could renunciation flower from the root of attachment? It is attachment that is troubling Arjuna.

Understand: if it were not his relatives being cut down, if it were others, Arjuna would not be bothered at all. He would mow them down like grass. He has cut people down many times before, fought, battled, but never did dispassion arise in him—because he had no relation with those he was killing. He is an old archer; the hunt is natural to him; war is a game.

Today’s pain is not because people will be slain—it is because his own will be slain. The suffering is due to possessiveness, to “mine-ness.” He sees his own family split on both sides—those with whom he grew up, played as friends, his own brothers, his own teachers who trained him. There stands Drona, from whom he learned all his skill. Today he must use that very skill to kill him. He must cut down those at whose feet he once bowed. That is the obstacle. If, in their place, it were anyone else, Arjuna would cut them down like grass.

No feeling of nonviolence is arising in him; he has not attained any true dispassion; only attachment is hurting. It is the prospect of slaying his own that pains him. Hence the Gita came to be. Arjuna’s renunciation is not real. If it were real, he would not even ask Krishna.

This too should be understood a little: when things are false within us, we go around asking others.

A young man once came to me and said, “I have come to ask you: should I take sannyas?” I asked him, “If I say, don’t take it, what will you do?” He said, “I won’t.” So I told him: that sannyas which depends on someone’s say-so—that if one person says, take it, and another says, don’t, and you obey—is not arising from any depth within you.

Buddha does not go to ask anyone. Mahavira does not go to ask anyone. Jesus does not go around asking, “Shall I do this? Dispassion is arising—now what should I do?”

Arjuna asks. There is no dispassion in him, only attachment and affection. His renunciation is false. Otherwise he would tell Krishna, “I am going; the matter is over. I see that all this is futile and meaningless.” Then Krishna would neither try to explain, nor would there be any point.

Arjuna is in a dilemma—one could even say schizophrenic—split. Half his mind is eager to fight, eager for wealth, eager for the kingdom. That too is attachment. And half his mind is frightened at the killing, at slaying his own. That too is attachment. From the combination of these two he starts talking the talk of renunciation—which is utterly false, for renunciation has nothing to do with either.

Understand this well. Many times you too speak of renunciation. But be alert that your “dispassion” is not being born out of attachment.

A man’s wife dies and he becomes dispassionate—and till yesterday there was no thought of renunciation in him. A man goes bankrupt and he becomes eager for sannyas—till yesterday he had not had a moment’s thought of it.

Consider how much value there can be in renunciation born of bankruptcy. And what worth is the dispassion that arises from a wife’s death? If someone becomes a sannyasin because he lost at gambling, the fragrance of that sannyas will be of gambling alone. That sannyas will be another form of the gamble, because the seed was gambling. Had this man won the bet? Had the wife not died? Had there been no bankruptcy? Then this man would have had nothing to do with renunciation.

So when a so-called dispassion arises in you whose root is attachment, understand that it is false, and on its basis you will not reach the divine.

But Arjuna has no idea what he is really asking.

Remember, when you ask a guru something, it is not necessary that what you ask is your fundamental inquiry. Your question is usually very superficial, because even finding the inner question is extremely difficult. But the guru uses your surface question as a peg, and then he begins to enter within you, to draw out what is hidden.

Arjuna is a disciple without knowing it. In his own knowing he is a friend. Krishna, knowingly, is a master. And the feeling of friendship Krishna shows toward Arjuna is only in response to Arjuna’s friendship.

Arjuna is an unknowing disciple and Krishna a knowing master. But Krishna also knows that if he were to speak in the language of a master, Arjuna would be hurt; his ego would be wounded. Arjuna has lived taking him as a friend. Had he not taken him as a friend, he would never have asked him to become his charioteer. It is an outrageous request—to say to him, “You hold my horses and be the charioteer of my chariot!” They are companions since childhood, friends. Their friendship is deep.

So that Arjuna’s mind is not hurt, Krishna speaks in the language of a friend. And slowly, within that very language of friendship, he keeps pouring in the message of the master. As Arjuna consents, as he opens, Krishna becomes more and more the master. The moment Arjuna closes and is afraid, Krishna becomes a friend. The moment Arjuna agrees, opens, becomes receptive, Krishna rises to great heights—to that height where he is the Divine; from there he begins to speak.

Therefore in Krishna’s words there are many layers. Sometimes he speaks exactly like a friend. Sometimes he speaks like a master. Sometimes he speaks exactly as the Divine. From the ultimate height down to the plane of ordinary life, Krishna is speaking. The Gita is on many levels. And it depends on Arjuna: at whatever height Arjuna can rise in that moment, from that very height Krishna speaks.

He has laid all the paths before Arjuna, so that Arjuna may choose easily. And Arjuna is not asking, “Give me a single path.” Had he asked that, Krishna could have given one path. Arjuna is in search. He does not yet even know clearly what he is seeking. He does not yet know what he wants. So Krishna opens all the paths. Perhaps, while speaking of these paths, some path will attract Arjuna, become a magnet, and Arjuna will be drawn.

And then, by this very device—by way of Arjuna—it becomes a message for the whole of humanity. For there is no path on which Krishna has not spoken the essential point in the Gita. So people of all paths can find what suits them in the Gita.

This has a gain and a loss. The gain has been less; the loss, more. Because man is such that he does not know how to take the benefit—he knows only how to take the loss.

Krishna has described all the paths in the Gita. And when he speaks of one path, he forgets the others, and he lifts that path to its full height. Therefore he has praised all paths. At times he has called devotion supreme; at times he has called knowledge supreme; at times he has called action supreme.

Now this is very perplexing. Because if devotion is supreme, the ordinary mind will say, then one should not call action supreme, one should not call knowledge supreme. And if knowledge is supreme, then one should not call devotion supreme. But Krishna does not bother about this. Whichever path he speaks of, he raises it to its utmost supremacy. Its height, its final glory, its Everest—its ultimate summit—he reveals. And when he speaks of another path, he reveals that path’s Everest. Then he quite forgets that a moment before he had called knowledge supreme; now he is calling devotion supreme.

This is so because Krishna wanted to make Arjuna aware of what is most supreme in each path, of the deepest depth of every path; then the choice is in Arjuna’s hands.

The statement that “knowledge is supreme,” the statement that “devotion is supreme,” is not comparative. It is like this: you saw a rose and you said, “Amazing! I have never seen anything more beautiful.” Then at night you saw the stars in the sky and you said, “Amazing! I have never seen anything more beautiful.” And then one morning you heard the roar of the ocean and saw the waves striking the rocks, and you said, “I have never seen anything more beautiful.”

These are not comparative statements. It is that, in that moment, your state of feeling was totally captured by the flower, and the flower became the utmost beauty of this world. And in another moment, in just the same way, the moon seized you. And in a third moment, the ocean seized you.

There is no contradiction in these three, and there is no comparison. They only indicate that there is a state of feeling in which, through a flower, the supreme experience of life happens. In that same state, sometimes through moon and stars, the supreme beauty of life is realized. And sometimes the flavor, the music of that same mood gets attuned to the ocean’s waves.

Kabir, in one way, reaches that very peak. Buddha, in another way, reaches that very peak. Mahavira, in a third way, reaches that very peak. The peak is one. The state of feeling is one.

Krishna is speaking in such a way that there is no comparison in it, no intent to belittle one another.

That seems absolutely right to you. But understand clearly what that seeming means; otherwise there will be harm—you will fall into confusion.

When I am speaking on Lao Tzu, for me in that moment there is no one but Lao Tzu. So when I say that Lao Tzu is unique, it does not mean that he is superior to Mahavira or superior to Buddha. It only means that he is a Mount Everest in his own right. He is incomparable. And Mahavira too is incomparable, and so is Buddha, and so is Krishna. But the ordinary mind compares, it indulges in comparison, and then gets itself into trouble.

The Gita has suffered great injustice. Shankara writes a commentary. That commentary too is unjust, because Shankara regards knowledge as supreme. That is his standpoint. There is no mistake in that standpoint. Knowledge is supreme—not in a comparative sense over something else, but supreme in itself. It has no relation to anything else. Shankara’s standpoint is that knowledge is supreme. This standpoint is perfectly right and valid. Then he imposes this very standpoint upon the whole Gita.

So some statements are indeed right, where Krishna calls knowledge supreme. There, Shankara has no difficulty. But where Krishna calls devotion supreme, and where he calls action supreme, Shankara runs into trouble. Yet Shankara is a very skillful logician. He finds a way out. He erects a labyrinth out of words. He gives new meanings to words. He spins such an interpretation that, in Shankara’s commentary, the entire Gita becomes a Gita of knowledge. That is injustice.

Ramanuja holds devotion to be supreme. Absolutely fine—no mistake in that. But then, on the basis of the sutras of devotion, he superimposes devotion upon the whole Gita. That is injustice.

Tilak considers action to be supreme, and then he superimposes action upon the entire Gita. That is injustice. In itself, however, the point is perfectly right.

Action is supreme—not over anything else, but supreme because through it too one can reach the Divine. Devotion is supreme—not over anything else, but supreme because it too is a door to the Divine. Knowledge is supreme—not over anything else; it too leads to the very place where devotion and action lead.

And the person who travels by a certain path will naturally find that path supreme. Because through it he walks, through it he attains, through it he has the experience. And of the other path he has no idea at all.

Krishna has spoken of all the paths.

There is a great difference. I have no sect. I don’t want to impose anything on the Gita. I don’t want to impose knowledge, nor devotion, nor action. I don’t want to impose anything at all on the whole Gita. Whoever tries to impose something on the whole Gita is being unjust to Krishna.

What I want is to simply reveal, inch by inch, what the Gita itself says—without worrying that elsewhere, sooner or later, it may also say the opposite. I don’t want to set up any system, any framework. But it will be confusing; there will be a great confusion in what I say—the same kind of confusion that is in Krishna’s discourse. Because sometimes I will say knowledge is supreme—when the Gita declares knowledge supreme, I will say so. And when the Gita declares devotion supreme, I will say so. I will flow with the Gita; I will not make the Gita flow with me.

I have no fixed notion to impose upon the Gita. If I had some preconception to impose on it, I would call that adultery. It is not right.

And that is why it is easy for me to speak on the Gita; I have no trouble. I have no trouble speaking on the Quran. I have no trouble speaking on the Bible. Because I have nothing to impose on anything.

I regard the Bible as such a wondrous flower that if I can simply unfold it before you, that is enough; if its fragrance reaches you, that is a lot. There is no need to thrust anything upon it.

That is why those who read many of my statements feel there is great contradiction in them. It will seem like opposition. Sometimes I have said this, sometimes that, sometimes something else. Certainly: sometimes I was praising the rose. Sometimes I was praising the moon and stars. Sometimes I was praising the waves of the ocean. There will be differences in those praises—because a rose is a rose, the moon and stars are the moon and stars, waves are waves, and existence is vast.

One who tries to reconcile all this will get into trouble, into difficulty. There is no need to reconcile. Whatever in all this feels right to you—walk with that. Leave the rest aside. The Gita will speak of knowledge, it will speak of action, it will speak of devotion. Drop the worry about which of the three is supreme. Whichever feels supreme to you, set out on that.

But there are people who do not walk; they sit and spend their lives in this discussion—Which is supreme? Is knowledge supreme? Is devotion supreme? Is action supreme? They spend their whole life. Their minds are deranged. They are not in their senses about what they are doing.

Krishna has opened all the paths before Arjuna. And he has proposed each path exactly as a follower of that path would propose it, in its full purity. In proposing that path he becomes one with it.

Krishna is a knowing Master. And very often you are not a knowing disciple. You cannot be—because the disciple does not have that much awareness even to discern what he is.

In the old scriptures of Egypt it is said that a disciple can never find the Master. How will the disciple search? What standard does he have? How will he test that “This is the Master”? And how will he test “This is the Master for me”? How will he know whether this person is right or wrong? What path, what compass does he have by which he will recognize, “If I follow this man I will arrive”? How will the disciple find the Master?

The old Egyptian books say: the disciple never finds the Master. This does not mean the disciple should give up the search and sit at home. He must seek—though he will not be able to find. But in the very act of seeking he becomes available to the Masters. Some Master will find him.

It is always the Master who seeks the disciple. And the Master does not set out looking for a Master; he sets out looking for a disciple. But as the seeker passes by many Masters, one of them will catch hold of him. Yet even then the Master must arrange things so the disciple feels that he himself has chosen. These are subtle intricacies.

The Master must arrange it so that it seems the disciple chose him. Because the disciple’s ego cannot tolerate that the Master chose him. He will run away. The moment he knows the Master has chosen him, he will flee. So the Master arranges things in such a way that the disciple feels, “I chose the Master.” And if someday the Master has to separate him, the Master will arrange it so that the disciple believes, “I left the Master.”

The Master’s work is complex, profound, esoteric. But it is always the Master who chooses you—because he has the vision. He knows. He can look within you. He can see your before and after. He has the distance, the capacity, the insight to see what you can do, what you can become. How will the disciple search?

People come to me. In the West there is a great rush; young men set out from the West in search of a Master; they comb the whole earth. Once there was such a quest in this land too. It has been lost. This land died long ago in the direction of the spirit. When Buddha was alive, there was such a quest here as well. People roamed from one corner to the other in search of a Master—hoping to find a magnet that would draw them. From all over the world people also came to India then.

Now again a search has begun in the West. Western young men and women are setting out, searching: Where is the Master!

Many come to me. I tell them: You will not be able to find the Master—but do not stop searching. Keep searching so that you remain available. Keep moving. Some Master will choose you. And if you have at least this much readiness—that you are willing to be chosen by a Master, and to flow in a Master’s current—if you have that much preparation, then transformation in your life is easy.

Krishna is laying out all the paths before Arjuna. This is not merely laying out the paths; in explaining the paths, Krishna’s consciousness is also peering into Arjuna. Which path fits him? On which path does he take more delight? With which path does he raise more questions? On which path do waves begin to arise within him? On which path does he listen as if in samadhi? With which path does he get bored, start yawning? With which path does resonance happen; with which does it not? He is seeing all this. Along with the whole discussion, an observation of Arjuna is going on. In one sense this is a psychoanalysis of Arjuna.

Freud, in this century, discovered the art of psychoanalysis.

Keep this a little in mind. And for those who are interested in psychology and those who have even a little curiosity for spiritual practice, it will be very useful.

Freud found a method. It is exactly the reverse of the method Masters have always used. Freud lays his patient down on a couch, sits behind a screen, and says to the patient, “Say whatever you want to say. Don’t worry at all about what you are saying. Whatever comes up within you, speak it. In free association, whatever arises inside, speak it.”

The patient starts talking. He says nonsensical things too. Sometimes meaningful things. Sometimes suddenly something utterly incongruous comes up, he says that too. And Freud supports him only in this: just keep saying whatever is within you. Freud sits behind the screen and listens.

He is entering the mind of this person. He is examining the talk that keeps running within, the thoughts, the words. Through these words he searches within him—how much inconsistency, how much disturbance, how much derangement. Between these words here and there he finds a seam, from which he gets a key; through which he comes to know.

For example, you lay a man down and he suddenly starts spewing filthy abuses, speaking obscenities—then it occurs to you: what is going on inside him? And outwardly he was a decent man. A good man. He went to church. Moral in every way. And inside this is going on!

So Freud works for years with a single patient—so that slowly, slowly, however much he tries to hide, he cannot; and from the trash and rubbish that keeps coming out, Freud can catch the route by which his soul might move toward health.

But this is a very long business. Sometimes it takes three years, and sometimes even thirty years, for a psychoanalysis to complete. And even after thirty years Freud cannot say it has really completed—because it just keeps coming. The trash is endless.

Your skull is so vast! Not as small as it looks. It is filled with millions of words; and millions of facts. If you keep opening them up, they keep opening. So this path becomes very long.

And now, even in the West, psychologists have begun to say that psychoanalysis cannot really solve much. If it takes thirty years—or even ten—to heal one madman, how many madmen will you heal? And the whole earth seems mad. Who will psychoanalyze whom!

And the amusing thing is that the psychoanalyst too has to get his own psychoanalysis done by someone else. He must. Because Freud’s condition is: until your own psychoanalysis is complete, how will you do another’s? So first the psychoanalyst undergoes years of analysis. Then he begins to analyze others. But however many psychoanalysts there may be, what will become of this earth?

India’s tradition was something else. We too discovered a device. In it the disciple did not speak; the Master spoke. Understand this small difference. It will come to mind in Krishna and Arjuna’s dialogue.

Here the disciple did not speak. And we do not call the disciple a patient—the word is not right. Although all disciples are patients. But the word itself is not right; it is crude. And now in the West too psychologists have begun to say that using the word “patient” is not right—because by calling the other a patient we become accomplices in making him a patient. Because whatever label we give has an effect.

Tell a man, “You are very beautiful”—and he blossoms instantly. He was not so beautiful before you said it; the moment you say it, he blossoms. Tell a man, “With a face like yours—who knows what God was doing when he made you; some error must have happened; what went wrong!”—and the man wilts that instant. He was not as ugly as he becomes the moment you say it.

To call a man a patient is also dangerous. Because you are making a statement that will enter within him. Even if he was not a patient, he will become one.

We do not say patient; we say disciple—one who is learning. And he is ill only because there has been a deficiency in his learning. There is no other illness. His knowing is thin, small; his ignorance is greater.

The disciple listened; the Master spoke.

In the West now, the Master is the one listening—the physician—and the disciple, who is the patient, is the one speaking. The disciple speaks, the Master listens!

The Master used to speak—and as he spoke he would keep examining the disciple: in which topic does relish arise! From that, news about you would be known.

Now, the one whose attention goes to breasts while kirtan is happening says he feels all the sannyasins are venting their lust! It doesn’t occur to him that what he is seeing is information about himself, not about anyone else. And he himself writes below that his attention goes to their breasts.

Certainly, this person must not have had a full chance to drink his fill of his mother’s milk. He is still stuck at the breast. He should do one thing: buy the baby’s milk bottle from the market, fill it with milk, and suck on it at night for ten or fifteen minutes before sleep. Within three months the breasts will stop appearing to him.

The very meaning of seeing only breasts is that the child’s juice for the breast has remained. The breast was never fully drunk. That’s why if you go among indigenous people, where children nurse completely at the mother’s breast, there is no curiosity about breasts there. Even if you were to put your hand on a tribal woman’s breast and ask, “What is this?” she would say, “It is the teat for feeding milk.” In our society, if you even lift your eyes toward a woman’s breasts, she is restless and you are restless. Even when you avert your eyes, you are restless; she is hiding her breasts and is restless. And while hiding, she is trying her best to reveal them, and in that too, she is restless.

And everyone’s eyes are fixed there. Whether you go to watch a film, read a novel, write poetry, or tell a story—breasts are indispensable! If someday a civilization from another planet were to come to this earth, they would say, “These people are a society sick with breasts.” For when they sculpt an image or paint a picture, the breast is the first thing; the woman is secondary.

But this is the child’s perspective. In fact, when the child first relates to the mother—and that is his first relationship; before that he has no relationship with anyone; it is his first entry into society, his first experience of the other—he does not relate to the whole mother; he relates only to her breast. The first experience is of the breast. First he recognizes the breast; the mother comes afterward. The breast is primary, the mother secondary. And if even in later years the breast is primary and the woman seems secondary to you, then you are childish and your intelligence has not matured. You should again go buy a fake nipple from the market and start sucking; that will bring relief.

The master spoke, the disciple listened. But in the disciple’s listening the master also watched: where is his relish? Where do his eyes begin to shine and where do they go dull? Where do his pupils open and dilate, and where do they contract? Where does his spine become straight, and where does he slump? He is observing. He is seeing what is happening outwardly and inwardly in the disciple’s consciousness. And through this he also chooses what will be necessary and useful for this disciple.

That is why Krishna has spoken of all the paths. Arjuna does not have to walk all those paths. Arjuna will have to walk only one path. But before walking, it is necessary to understand them all.

Another question.

By our very conditioning we cannot even imagine deceit and guile—how can a moral man employ them? And if he does, how can he be God? He had given his word that he would not take up arms, and then he broke his own word. How can one trust a man who could not keep his own assurance and himself rendered it false!

This troubles us. It creates a great hurdle. Krishna appears puzzling. Krishna seems difficult to understand. Mahavira is easy to understand; there is a consistency. Buddha is easy to understand; life is like mathematics with them—you cannot point out errors or lapses. If Mahavira says “ahimsa,” he lives it. He treads as if blowing on the ground, he drinks only filtered water, he even breathes with a kind of fear lest some microbe die. Mahavira’s whole life is a coherent calculus. No errors can be found in that arithmetic.

But Krishna’s life is baffling. As many inconsistencies as you wish—you will find them all. You cannot invent a contradiction that is not present in his life. All kinds of things are found together.

There is a reason. Krishna’s vision—his fundamental basis for thinking—is that as soon as it is seen that nature is one thing and I am another, then however one behaves, there is no bondage. Then there is no birth.

Therefore it seems to us that Krishna uses guile, that he gives assurances and then backs out. But Krishna lives moment to moment. When he gave an assurance, he gave it totally. It was the truth of that moment—the truth of the moment. There was no dishonesty in the mind then; there wasn’t even a thought that the promise would be broken—no such question. The assurance was given wholly. But in the next moment the entire situation changed. And for Krishna all this is nothing more than an enactment. If life were utterly real, Krishna too would think, “Fulfill the promise you gave.”

If life is taken as very real, the idea of keeping the promise arises. But for Krishna life is like a dream, in which even a promise has no absolute value. It too was a moment-truth. In that moment, to act in that way was the natural response. Today the whole situation has changed; a different response is natural. So in this new moment Krishna does something different. Between the two there is no inner contradiction. The contradiction appears to us because we take life to be real.

Understand it like this: you know dreams. Dreams have a peculiar quality. In a dream you turn from one thing into quite another, yet no anxiety arises within. You are walking; you see a friend approaching. When the friend stands before you, suddenly he becomes a horse; he is no longer a friend. Yet no doubt arises within you—“What is this mess! He was a friend; how did he become a horse?” No question arises. On waking you might feel a little perplexed, but then you say, “It was a dream—what of it!”

In a dream if a friend turns into a horse, no worry arises. But in waking life, if on the road your friend is coming toward you and suddenly becomes a horse, there would be no end to your distress. You would need to go to a madhouse. Why? Because you take this to be real. Krishna does not take even this to be more than a dream. Therefore in life Krishna has no fixed consistency. It is all play. All consistencies are momentary, and beyond the moment they have no value.

Krishna has no commitment, no binding. He is not bound to any moment. In that moment, whatever is, whatever arises naturally, he does. In the next moment, what arises then, he will do. He is like the current of a river. There is no binding, no track, no rail-line on which a train must move along one set path. He is like a river—whatever happens. If a rock appears, he slips around it. If sand appears, he flows straight through it.

You cannot say, “There, last time you detoured around; and now? Now there is sand and you are going straight—this is inconsistency!” No—you say nothing to a river. When there is a mountain, the river skirts it; you do not demand that it cut through the mountain. And when there is sand, the river cuts right through the middle; you do not call it dishonest: “One kind of behavior with a mountain, another with sand!”

Krishna is like a river. According to the circumstance, whatever enactment naturally manifests in him, he does it. And for him life is not ultimate reality; life is a story, a play, a psychodrama. Therefore there is no worry in it for him, no obstruction.

Until you understand this rightly, understanding Krishna’s life is very difficult. Because Krishna appears in many forms. And behind all of it the reason is this: Krishna’s fundamental insight is that the moment the distinction of Purusha and Prakriti is clear, then however a person behaves, he does not come into bondage; he does not come into births. Even the question of moral and immoral conduct does not arise for him. The question of moral and immoral persists only so long as life appears to be truth. When life becomes a dream, moral and immoral become the same.

But a question will arise: Did Buddha and Mahavira not see this? Did they not come to know that we are separate? And if they did, why did they still take such care? Why did they run their lives in a lined-up, regimented, orderly and consistent way—like mathematics?

There are reasons. They pertain to each person’s own uniqueness.

I have heard that a great master, Naropa, was explaining to his disciple that life is acting—and in life nothing is wrong and nothing is right. Naropa said: the very notion of right and wrong is the world. Someone says this is right and that is wrong; that little distinction makes one ignorant. Nothing is right, nothing is wrong—this is wisdom.

The disciple said, “You are saying something dangerous! Does that mean we may behave as we please?” Naropa replied, “You have not understood. So long as you say, ‘as I please,’ so long as there is desire, you cannot understand what I am saying. I am saying that when the self is experienced, it is seen that nothing is right and nothing is wrong—because it is all play.”

But the disciple again said, “Then it means we do whatever we want.” Naropa said again, “You are making a mistake. As long as you want, my point cannot enter your understanding. When all wanting is dropped, then this will occur to you. And if you take my words to mean ‘do whatever you want,’ then you have not understood me at all. Where desire persists, where craving persists, even if one wishes to cheat, the sense of right and wrong will remain. The sense of right and wrong is tied to craving.”

Understand this. Suppose I tell you there is nothing wrong and nothing right; behave as you wish. You immediately go and steal. “Nothing wrong, nothing right.” But why did stealing occur to you first of all? Still, let it be—do whatever you do. Suppose you declare yourself enlightened—then nothing hinders you. But if someone steals from you, you go to the police to file a report, weeping and saying how terrible it was.

I have heard of a man in court—tried for the ninth time. The judge asked, “You have already served eight sentences. Why do you keep getting caught?” He said, “The reason is clear: I have to steal alone. I have no partner. I must do everything myself—break the wall, the door, the safe, take the goods, wrap them, carry them. Without a collaborator, a partner, it is all trouble.”

The judge asked, “Then why don’t you find a partner, after being caught eight times?” He said, “Just see how bad the times are—no partner can be trusted.”

Even a thief looks for a trustworthy partner. In shopkeeping some cheating may pass; in theft it will not. In theft you need an absolutely honest man. Among thieves you will find an honesty you will not find among shopkeepers. Among bandits and killers you will find a kind of loyalty, fraternity, brotherhood that is hard to find among respectable people—because there is so much evil there that for that evil to survive, unless there is that brotherhood, it cannot continue.

Naropa said, “If desire remains within you, stop. First drop desire. And when no desire remains within you, then I say: behave as you will. Then there is no sin, then there is no virtue.”

Such an idea seems very strange to Western ethicists. They think the morality that arose in India is immoral; it is not ethical. We do not have anything like the Ten Commandments. In the whole Gita there are no Ten Commandments like the Bible—“Do not steal; do not do this; do not do that.” On the contrary, Krishna says: if you come to know that Purusha and Prakriti are separate, then be as you are. Whatever behavior occurs, there is no bondage for you, no sin.

A Christian finds it very difficult when he thinks this way; a Muslim finds it very problematic—“What kind of scripture is the Gita! This is dangerous.”

Just now Turkey has put controls on the Gita, banned it, that the Gita may not enter Turkey. Some friends wrote to me asking me to protest as well. “Why has Turkey banned a great book like the Gita?”

I said, you should be happy. Krishna died perhaps five thousand years ago, and still the Gita is so alive that a nation is afraid. You should be happy. It means the Gita still has life in it—still danger and fire. But what is the fire?

Here in our country protests erupted everywhere. Arya Samajis and others—those who take delight in protesting—everyone protested and passed resolutions. And in our land there is no shortage of resolution-passers. “This should not happen; it is very bad; it is great injustice.” But no one considered why Turkey made this rule!

Behind this rule are such aphorisms. There is a fear that if such things are propagated, people will become immoral. This fear is true to a certain extent, because the common man extracts what suits him. The Gita says: when the distinction of Purusha and Prakriti is clear, then do anything—no sin, no virtue, no bondage; no more births. But keep the first condition in mind. If we remove the condition, certainly anarchy and immorality can spread. And then if Turkey imposes a restriction that the Gita will not be allowed into the country, from the viewpoint of the danger to the common man, it is understandable.

But I was happy. I was happy because such ancient books are never banned—living books die in two, four, ten years; then no revolutions arise from them. Five thousand years! And still a nation can be concerned—this means there is some spark, some very explosive element in the Gita.

It is this element; it appears immoral. The Gita’s message is beyond morality—super-ethical. It is certainly not ethical in the ordinary sense; it is supra-ethical. And there is danger in understanding that supra-ethicalness. The higher one climbs, the greater the fear—if one falls, the pits are very deep.

Understand this aphorism properly. If some desire is lodged in your mind, and I say to you, “Do whatever you like; there is no sin,” and immediately ideas arise in you about what to do, then understand: this rule is not for you. If, upon hearing that there is no harm in doing anything, no idea of doing anything at all arises within you—if, upon hearing that whatever behavior occurs, there will be no birth, no suffering, no hell, and no impulse to do arises—then this aphorism can be understood by you.

But if instantly you feel, “Really? Anything? Then let’s run off with the neighbor’s wife!”—then this is not for you. I have heard it happened in an office. The staff were not working properly. The owner consulted a psychologist, who said, “Put up a board that says: Whatever you plan to do tomorrow, do today; whatever you plan to do today, do now. In a moment there may be a cataclysm—then when will you do it?” They put up the board.

The next day the psychologist came to ask about the results. The owner lay in bed with a bandage on his head. “Results? We are ruined!” The head clerk ran away with the typist, leaving a note: “I had long been thinking of when to elope. I saw the board: whatever you plan to do tomorrow, do today; whatever today, do now; in a moment there may be a cataclysm—then when will you do it? So I thought, now!” The office boy came and beat the owner with his shoes. He said, “I had been thinking for days of doing this—the board says do it now; who knows about tomorrow?” The cashier took all the money and fled. The office is shut. “Thank you very much,” the owner told the psychologist, “for this fine idea. You have ruined us.”

This aphorism is not for you. It applies only when, once the distinction of Purusha and Prakriti is clear, the bonds of morality have fallen.

Pause for five minutes. Join the kirtan, and then go.

This needs a little understanding. After the ultimate knowing, no one can return. There is no way back—because the destination and the traveler have become one. When the destination and the traveler are one, who would return, and how?

But before the ultimate knowing—just before arriving at the destination—one last step remains. We call that knowing. We call it the ultimate knowing when the destination and the traveler dissolve into one. The river has fallen into the ocean; now it cannot return. But a river that has reached the shore and is poised there can still fall into the ocean—or it can turn back. That is the moment of knowing: the seeker has arrived at the very door of fulfillment. From there the whole spread of the ocean is visible. And yet a small distance remains. The seeker has not yet become the siddha. He has come very close—almost equal to being accomplished. One moment more, and he will be absorbed.

But until duality remains, return is possible. As long as I still see, “There is the Divine and here am I,” I can turn back. As long as I feel, “Here am I and here is bliss; I know bliss,” I can still turn back. Duality persists; return is still possible. But when it is no longer possible to tell who is God and who is “I,” when both are one, then there is no return.

Ramakrishna Paramhansa returned from the state of knowing. The river had reached the very shore. Then he said, “Now let me walk along another river’s course and see whether that river also reaches the ocean or not.” So he walked along another river. Again he came to the shore and said, “Now let me follow a third river and see whether it too reaches the ocean.” In this way he practiced along many paths.

Having walked many paths he saw that all rivers reach the ocean. Those that flow to the east reach the ocean; those that flow to the west reach the ocean. Those that flow to the north reach the ocean; those that flow to the south reach the ocean. Those whose course is straight reach the ocean; those that meander and twist also reach the ocean. Those that are very calm and deep reach the ocean; those that are stormy and erratic also reach the ocean.

When Ramakrishna had seen all this, he fell into the ocean. After that there is no returning. That is the ultimate knowing.

Buddha too used two words: nirvana and parinirvana. By nirvana he means the final threshold from which one may, if one wishes, return—or, if one wishes, fall into that state from which there is no return. Nirvana is the threshold. And the falling beyond it is parinirvana.

So Ramakrishna returned from the state of nirvana, the state of knowing. From the state of ultimate knowing, no one can return.