Jeevan Hi Hain Prabhu #3

First, there are very few people on this earth who truly want to be peaceful. Becoming peaceful is very difficult. In fact, what is truly difficult is to kindle the longing for peace. And the difficulty is not in peace itself. The difficulty lies in this: until a person becomes properly restless, the longing for peace does not arise. Without becoming totally restless, no one sets out on the journey toward peace. And we are not totally restless. If we were utterly restless, we would have to become peaceful. But we live so incompletely that, far from peace, even our unrest never becomes complete.

Even our illness is so slight that we do not set out in search of treatment. When the disease grows, the search for a physician begins. But from childhood we are brought up in such a way that we cannot do anything totally. We cannot be angry totally so that we become disturbed. We cannot worry totally so that the mind is tormented. We cannot feel malice totally, nor hatred totally, so that the mind catches fire and hell is created. We live so lukewarmly that the fire never really ignites—and therefore we do not go looking for the water that would extinguish it. Our lukewarm living—this lukewarm living—is our difficulty.

When someone asks me, “If becoming peaceful is so easy, why don’t many people become peaceful?” the first thing is: they have not yet become properly restless. They will have to become restless. Peace happens in a single instant; to become restless takes birth after birth—it is a long journey. This journey of so many lives is not a journey toward peace; peace happens in a flash. This long journey is our becoming thoroughly restless. When restlessness reaches its ultimate peak—its climax—then we begin to return.
Buddha once went to a village—and what you have asked me today, a man came and asked him too. That man said, “For forty years you have been roaming from village to village without a break. How many people have become peaceful? How many have attained moksha? How many have realized nirvana? Do you have any numbers, any accounts?” He must have been a very calculating fellow. He must have put Buddha in a fix, because people like Buddha don’t carry ledgers to keep accounts of who became peaceful and who didn’t. Buddha doesn’t run a shop to keep books. So Buddha must have been in difficulty. The man said, “Tell me—forty years you’ve been traveling: what’s the use of all this wandering?”

Buddha said, “Do one thing: come in the evening, and by then I’ll do the accounting. And bring me one small thing as well; do this one little task for me, and then I will give you an answer.”

The man said, “With great pleasure—what is it? I’ll do it. And I’ll be here by evening; keep your accounts ready. I really want to know how many have had a vision of liberation, how many have realized the Divine, how many have attained bliss. Because unless I know that at least some have arrived, I’m not even going to start out on the journey. I must be sure that it has happened to someone, otherwise why set out?”
Buddha said to him, “Take this paper and go ask every single person in the village what his heart’s desire is—what does he really want?” The man went. It was a small village—just a hundred, a hundred and fifty little huts. He went house to house and asked. Someone said, “I need a lot of money.” Someone said, “I have no son; I want a son.” Another said, “Everything else is fine, but I have no wife; I want a wife.” Someone else said, “Everything is fine, but my health doesn’t stay good—illness keeps catching hold of me. I want treatment; I want health.” An old man said, “My years are nearly spent—if I could have a little more time, that’s all; everything else is fine.”

Having gone through the whole village, as he started back at dusk he began to feel afraid: “What will I say to Buddha?” It dawned on him that perhaps Buddha had already given him the answer to his own question. In the entire village he hadn’t found a single person who said, “I want peace,” or “I want God,” or “I want bliss.”

He stood before Buddha. In the morning it had seemed Buddha was in difficulty; by evening, the man was the one in trouble.

Buddha said, “Have you brought it?”

He said, “I have.”

Buddha asked, “How many people want peace?”

The man said, “Not a single one in the village.”

Buddha asked, “Do you want peace? Then stay.”

He said, “But I’m still young—what would I do with peace now? When I grow a little older I’ll come to your feet. Right now is the time to live.”

Then Buddha said, “And you were asking that same question—how many have become peaceful?”

The man replied, “I won’t ask it anymore.”

No one can make another peaceful; but we can become peaceful—yet only if we have truly been unpeaceful. In fact, we don’t even manage to become fully unpeaceful—our unrest never reaches its peak, the point where it breaks down of its own accord. We have never done anything totally. So my accounting is different.

In my view the accounting is this: for the humanity to come we should teach every child how to be angry totally. We should not teach from childhood, “Anger is bad.” Because the only result of “anger is bad” is that anger does not disappear; it just hangs around half-finished. It is neither completed nor dissolved. Life becomes anger and anger and anger—and with it, repentance. We have put man in a terrible bind: the anger doesn’t go, and on top of it he must feel guilty about it. Anger is one illness; repentance is another. Get angry, then feel miserable, then repent—then get angry again. Again feel miserable, again repent. A vicious circle that goes on for a lifetime. In the morning you get angry; by evening you repent. All night you prepare again; in the morning you get angry once more; all day you repent. All night you prepare again—and so it goes your whole life. How many times have you repented? And what has repentance changed?

Repentance does only one thing: by repenting you return to the same state you were in before the anger—so that now you can get angry again. Repentance just whitewashes anger. Repentance, contrition, atonement—it is our ego that has been hurt. I have abused someone in anger. My ego is wounded, because I believed I was a good man—someone who doesn’t abuse, who doesn’t get angry. Now I’ve been angry, I’ve abused. So by repenting I try to become a good man again. I say, “It was a mistake, some foolishness on my part. How could I do this? I must have been unconscious. The situation provoked it; otherwise how could it happen?” I even go and ask forgiveness with folded hands. In truth I am trying to patch together my tattered ego. When I am forgiven, when I have repented, when I have suffered and perhaps fasted a day in penance, the next day I am back in my old place: once again I am a good man—who neither abuses nor gets angry. Now I am ready to abuse again; now I can get angry again. I have become a good man so that I may again have the convenience to abuse when I wish.

We teach children: anger is bad, anger is a sin, don’t be angry. The result is not that they stop being angry—that cannot happen. The anger only remains incomplete, never allowed to run its full course; they never fully experience the pain of anger; they never pass through its fire. And then the question of non-anger does not arise; the search for peace does not begin. One who has not even been truly unpeaceful—how can he become peaceful? One who lacks even the capacity to be fully unpeaceful—how will he have the capacity to be peaceful? These things may sound upside-down, but I tell you: only the one who can be thoroughly unpeaceful can truly set out on the path to peace. One who, by getting angry, lives anger through and through—who is pierced by all its thorns, who is singed in its flames—one who drinks anger to the dregs becomes incapable of angering again. He sets out on the journey toward peace.

In my view children should be taught how to be angry rightly—strongly, totally, to completion—so that the full experience of anger shows them that to be angry is to burn oneself. Let them have a vision of anger; let them know it in its totality; let them see the worms of anger crawling; let its poisonous flames surround them on all sides, and let them see: “This is anger.” One who has seen anger once like this cannot muster the capacity to be angry again. Who is mad enough to throw himself into fire? But because we have never actually put ourselves into the fire, the question of coming out does not arise.

Our basic conditionings are all wrong. Because of them we cannot even become truly unpeaceful—so how will the question of becoming peaceful arise? Certainly, meditation can make peace available; but only those will be drawn toward meditation who have already become unpeaceful to the core. We haven’t reached the point where unrest makes us feel life itself is being destroyed. We haven’t reached the edge where one more step would plunge us into a bottomless abyss. Had we reached there, we would have turned back on our own. Who will step into an abyss where there is only death and nothing else in sight?

Have you ever experienced such unrest that one more step forward would leave nothing but death? If not, then you have not yet been unpeaceful. You are only halfway along the road to unrest. And teachers are found along this halfway stretch who say, “Come, we will show you the path to peace—be at peace.” So your feet continue toward unrest while you think, “If peace comes along the way, let’s take a swipe at that too.” You keep moving toward unrest, because you haven’t yet tasted it deeply enough to be free of it.

In truth, to be free of anything you must experience its full juice. If you would be free of evil, you must descend into its depths. In fact, no one ever became a saint without having been a sinner; it cannot be otherwise. One who wants to touch the heights of the sky must also touch the depths of the underworld. Have you seen trees that rise toward the sky, seeming to touch the moon and stars? Their roots go deep into the earth below; only then can they rise above. The tree that would touch the sky must also touch the netherworld. The deeper the root, the higher the crown.

We are such people that our roots never go deep; then where is the question of rising to the sky? And remember: the deeper the depth below, the greater the height above. There is no other way.

We have inherited a culture that is incomplete, impotent, emasculated—one that doesn’t teach us to do anything thoroughly; that doesn’t even teach how to be properly angry. Half-baked, half-burnt, neither here nor there—man gets stuck. I say: if you must be angry, then do it rightly—once and for all—so that there is no need to do it again. If you must worry, then worry totally. If you must hate, if you must be an enemy, then do it thoroughly. Because only totality is the way out. But we have done nothing totally. Therefore I say: we are not truly unpeaceful. Yes—those who are unpeaceful can become peaceful.

That is why I feel the waves of peace will keep rising every year in Western lands. People in the West have been unpeaceful with great openness. Today, the thirst for meditation in America is not matched by the thirst within us. In Europe, among the intelligent classes, the search for yoga and samadhi is stronger than it is among our own intelligent classes. The reason is: when they chose to be materialistic, they didn’t listen to idle talk; they became materialists thoroughly. And when a person becomes a thorough materialist, a boundary comes where spirituality begins. But in our country hardly anyone becomes a proper materialist; how then can one become spiritual? At least become a materialist first! We don’t manage even that. We build half-houses.

I have heard: someone went to a fakir and asked, “How did you realize the Divine?” The fakir said, “I never bothered about God. I concerned myself wholly with the world. But as I went deeper and deeper into the world, a limit came—and at the boundary, trouble arose; I had to turn back.”

The man said, “I don’t understand.” The fakir replied, “Come, I’ll take you to a nearby field. The owner of that field is like most of the people in this world.” He took him there. The owner was a remarkable fellow—just like you and me. He had dug eight pits in the field to make a well. He dug a little here and left it—“No water yet; let me try another place.” He dug there, then left it—“No water here either”—and started a third pit. He had dug eight pits; the whole field was ruined by holes, but no well had been dug. The fakir said, “Do you see this field’s owner? He will never dig a well—because he never completes the digging. If he dug one place through, water would come—he’d be through the soil. But he keeps digging half-way and then starts another pit, then a third. One well would have sufficed; even eight have not. A well never came—he came back in the middle. With the amount of digging he has done, a well would have been ready long ago. He did dig—but in different places, not in one.”

We are like that field’s owner. We go into life, but we never go all the way in anything, any dimension, any direction. If a man were to pursue wealth completely, he would become free of wealth. But here he earns money by day and reads a book that says money is sin by night. He visits a guru who condemns money, and all day he earns it; by evening he sits at the guru’s feet and listens to denunciations of wealth. He digs two opposite pits that can never meet; how can inverse pits ever be completed? He chases after women and reads sermons on celibacy. He digs contradictory holes; it never bears fruit. And so both things continue side by side.

This half-made man we have produced creates the difficulty. We are people oppressed by old cultures. We cannot become truly religious; we have even lost the courage to be irreligious—then how will we have the immense courage to be religious? Do you understand me? We lack even the courage to lie—truth is a very distant thing. To lie also takes courage; not everyone can. We are too weak even to lie, and we are seeking ways to tell the truth. Truth demands immense courage—nothing compares with it. Only one of total courage can tell the truth. But those who cannot muster the courage even to lie—we hail them as great truth-tellers. Those who cannot muster the courage to steal become “non-thieves.” Those who cannot muster the courage to be violent become worshippers of nonviolence. We have distorted and inverted everything—made it all incomplete and upside-down.

That is why what I say sounds so strange. I say: if you want to be religious, first travel the path of irreligion with total courage. Don’t stop—don’t stop because someone calls you, shouts at you. Say, “Wait—let me complete this journey first. Let me see what this charm of irreligion is.” You say lying is bad—let me see for myself whether lying is bad or not. You say wealth is bad—let me see for myself whether wealth is bad or not.

Certainly, a point comes where wealth turns to dust—but that point never comes to one who never set out on the path of wealth. The man who, from the start, restrains himself and stands still—his difficulty is great.

No one is more harassed than the self-restrained man. His mind wants to go that way; his ideas want to go this way. He is like a bullock cart with oxen yoked on both ends, pulling in opposite directions. That cart never goes anywhere. At times it moves two feet this way when one ox grows stronger and the other tires; then two feet that way when the first tires and the other pulls. Our cart goes on like this our whole life. A little irreligion here—then fear sets in, so a little religion there. Then the mind gets bored—so a little irreligion again. So it goes. Between religion and irreligion we never truly embarked on a journey.

My understanding is that the experience of irreligion leads into religion; the experience of unrest leads into peace; the experience of violence leads into nonviolence; the experience of materialism leads into spirituality. The experience of indulgence becomes the foundation of yoga. These things look upside-down; they are not. This is the law of life. So, in the context of your question, let me tell you the second rule of life’s arithmetic: whatever you do, do it totally. Other than doing things half-way, there is no sin. Other than incompleteness, there is no evil. And a delightful corollary follows: you can complete evil, but you can never complete good. Therefore you can be free of evil; you will never be free of good. Perhaps this never occurred to you—that evil is a small thing; it comes to an end quickly. Goodness is vast and endless; its end never comes. Therefore one can rise above the world, above materialism—but never above religion or spirituality. There is only entry there; there is no end.

In the Divine there is only entry; its end never comes. It never happens that a man says, “All right—now I have known God completely. What next?” No—this never happens. Evil is that which has an end, which has a small boundary.

Think on it a little. If you become an enemy to someone and you do it totally, what is the ultimate end? At most you kill him. What more can there be? If someone is utterly hostile to me and kills me—that’s all he can do, isn’t it? What else can he do? But if someone becomes a friend to me, it is a long, long journey. Its end never comes. He can go on doing and doing—what could “final friendship” even mean? There can be no finality to friendship. However much you do, more remains. However much you do, there is still something left. Enmity ends; friendship has no end.

Become unpeaceful—and then how long can you remain unpeaceful? If I tell a person, “Remain unpeaceful,” how long can he do it? You will find that in an hour, half an hour, his energy will slacken. What can he do? Unrest consumes so much energy that you cannot remain unpeaceful for long. Nor can you remain angry for long. But does peace have any end? You can remain peaceful for as long as you like; there is no end to it. It is endless.

Unrest comes to an end; peace has no end. You can remain peaceful indefinitely; you cannot remain unpeaceful indefinitely. Unrest is tension; tension is labor; labor expends energy. Peace is not tension; it is rest. In peace energy is not wasted. There is no strain; you can remain peaceful for as long as you like. Love has no end; hatred ends. But we have not even reached the end of hatred—the very thing that has an end; we have not reached the end of unrest—the thing that has a boundary. So we never set out in search of peace.

Therefore I do not tell you to set out in search of peace. I say: become thoroughly unpeaceful. Don’t walk faintly, don’t go slowly—go totally. Unrest itself will give you the push. No guru can push you—unrest itself will. That final shove that sets you on the journey to peace.

Meditation can indeed bring peace. But those who have become unpeaceful are the ones who come to it. If you have become truly unpeaceful, then you will have no other way—you will have to turn toward meditation. By one door or another you will begin the journey into meditation. There is no escape.

In the ocean a wave rises and falls. When it rises it is not away from the ocean, and when it falls it is not away from the ocean—yet it rises and it falls. The wave is one with the ocean, not separate in the least. Even if you wanted to separate the wave from the ocean you could not. The amusing thing is: the ocean can be without waves, but a wave cannot be without the ocean. The ocean has no difficulty being without waves; but a wave cannot be without the ocean.

Therefore three things are worth remembering—the first: a wave cannot be without the ocean. Therefore the ocean is the source; the wave is not. The wave comes and goes; the ocean is. The ocean neither comes nor goes. The wave is sometimes born and sometimes dies; the ocean is neither born nor does it die. The ocean is. For the ocean we cannot use past or future; we will have to use only the present tense. We cannot say “the ocean was.” We cannot say “the ocean will be.” We can only say “the ocean is.” “Was” can be said of that which is no more; “will be” of that which is not yet. Yes, of the wave we can say “was, is, will be”; of the ocean we cannot. The ocean always is. The ocean is eternally present.

Remember, of past, future, and present, the present is the time of the Divine; past and future are our time. The present is not our time. The present belongs to the Divine—God is always in the present. To say “God was” has no meaning. God is. To say “God will be” also has no meaning. God is.

Try to understand by the ocean. The wave is one with the ocean; even so it rises and falls. So with the Divine we are one, and we come and go. Where is the difficulty? What is the obstacle? Why should we not be able to come and go? Why should we not be able to rise and fall? But from coming and going we get the notion that it implies separation. When the wave rises, is it separate from the ocean? Is it one when it does not rise and separate when it does? No. When the wave rises it is still one; it is not separate then either. When we “come,” it only means that, like a wave, we arise in the ocean of consciousness. In that ocean—the sea of consciousness—we rise and we subside. But we do not become separate. Yet in rising and falling, the illusion of separateness can arise.

If a wave too had consciousness, as it rose it might think, “I am,” because it would not be able to look within itself; it would look outward and see waves—it would not see the ocean. Keep this also in mind. If a wave could see, it would never see the ocean; it would see waves. On the ocean’s bosom there are only waves; the ocean itself is not seen. And when one wave rises, waves rise all around, because no wave can rise alone.

Bear this in mind too: no wave can arise alone. I cannot be born alone, nor can you be born alone. Our being is among millions upon millions of waves. Your father was, therefore you are; his father was, therefore he was. His father too was, and so on—a long story in which billions and trillions of people have a hand in the coming-to-be of one person. Billions upon billions of waves have given pushes to raise the wave that you are. So never think you could be alone. Your being-alone has no meaning at all.

When a wave is born, it is never born alone; it is born in a mesh of millions upon millions of waves. It sees waves on every side; it does not see the ocean. If a wave could see, it would never see the ocean; it would see waves.

We too do not see God; we see creatures. Those waves are what surround us—human beings, plants, birds. Waves are visible everywhere; God does not become visible to us.

Now, here so many of us are sitting—so many waves. And when we look around, where will God be seen? Only waves upon waves will be seen. Some waves are rising—children, the young. Some waves are falling—old, departing. Some have already risen; some are close to going; some are just rising. Wherever we look we see waves; where will we see God? It is a dense net of waves.

So if a wave becomes filled with awareness, the first thing is that it will not see the ocean. We too do not see God.

The second thing is that it will see other waves from which it will appear different: “I am separate.” Naturally. A wave has risen on the ocean; it sees that the neighboring wave is falling, dissolving, while “I am still rising.” So how can we be one?

A man next door has died—how can I be one with him? If we were one, I too should have died. And if we were one, he should have remained alive. We cannot be one, because the neighbor died and I am alive. We cannot be one. One wave is falling; one is small and one large; one is old. To the waves it appears that the waves are different. I am separate; the surrounding waves are separate.

This is exactly how it appears to us: I am separate. The lives all around look like fragments broken off from the very source of life. And there is so much to see outside—why should the wave look within? If the wave were to look within, perhaps it would find the ocean, because on going within there are no waves. If a wave can descend within itself it will find the ocean; then it will not find waves, for below there is only the ocean. Therefore when someone goes within, he is able to experience God. On the outside only waves are seen.

Meditation is the art of descending within, in which we drop concern with the outer waves and plunge into the very wave that I am. And the deeper we go, the more it becomes clear: there is no wave, there is the ocean; there is no wave, there is the ocean. And the further in we go, it is revealed that the wave never was; only the ocean was, the ocean is, the ocean will be. There is no wave. The one who goes within comes to know the ocean, comes to know God.

Don’t get into it, then! No one is coming to tell you that you must. But you are already in it. In fact, the very fact of being alive brings with it the question: What is life? It is part of being alive that we want to know what life is. No one tells you to go and know; yet you will not find a single person in the world who is not eager to know. If you did find someone who wasn’t eager to know, that would be a great miracle. You can’t find such a person. Even small children, as soon as they begin to speak, set out on the journey of knowing. They ask: Where did this tree come from? Their questions begin to arise. Who made this earth? Who lights the moon every night? The sun comes up in the morning—where does it go at night? Even little children ask.

Life asks; it wants to know—because only when we know fully can we live fully. This urge to know is part of the very search to live, so that we may live totally. If I come to know that I am not a wave, I am the ocean, then the very meaning of my living changes. For then I will have no fear of disappearing, because the ocean never disappears. Then no one will be able to frighten me with death, because I will laugh and say, “All right, let the wave be dissolved—because I am not the wave.” What you will dissolve is not me. And in truth you won’t be able to dissolve me at all; I will remain exactly where I have always been. If I come to know that I am the ocean and not the wave, then the wave’s anxieties will depart. The wave lives in great anxiety. Its greatest worry is that it will go, it will end, it will be destroyed.

Everyone is afraid of dying. We are afraid we might die. This fear arises because we do not know that there is something underneath that cannot die. If that is known, the fear departs.

When Alexander was returning from India, he wanted to take a fakir with him. His friends had told him, “When you return from India, bring back a sannyasin.” So he sent word to a village, “If there is a sannyasin, I will take him.” The villagers said, “It’s very difficult. There is a sannyasin, but taking him will be very difficult.” Alexander said, “Don’t worry about that. We have naked swords. We can take anyone.” The villagers said, “Then you do not know sannyasins. For at the sight of a naked sword the sannyasin will laugh, and nothing will happen.” Alexander said, “Don’t you worry—just tell me where he is.” He sent soldiers with naked swords and ordered them to bring him.

The soldiers went and said, “It is the command of the Great Alexander that you must come with us.” The sannyasin laughed heartily and said, “Who could be more foolish than one who calls himself ‘great’? Who could be more insane than that? Who calls himself great?” The soldiers were startled for a moment—someone would speak like this of their Great Alexander! A naked fakir stood there by the river, an old man. The soldiers said, “What are you saying? We will separate your head from your body if you speak like this!” The fakir replied, “I separated my head long ago. There is nothing left to separate. I have not left that work for others. Bring your Alexander. I will speak to your master himself.”

The soldiers told Alexander, “He is a very strange man. You will have no power over him, for at the most we can kill him—and he is not the least afraid of dying.” Alexander said, “Even so, I would like to go.” He went and placed his sword upon the man’s neck and said, “Will you come, or shall I cut off your head?” The fakir said, “Cut it off. It will be great fun. You will watch the head fall, and I too will watch it fall.” Alexander asked, “You too will see it?” The fakir said, “I too will see it. Because this head is not me. Since the day this was known, the matter finished. Now no Alexander can frighten me. Put your sword back. Put it in the sheath; your hand will tire for nothing.”

And for the first time Alexander put his sword back out of fear. Because in front of this man it seemed pointless; drawing a sword before him felt like stupidity itself. The fakir said, “Go on, cut it off—there will be some fun in it. If it falls, it will be wonderful!”

If the wave knows itself as the ocean, everything changes. The whole life changes. The very joy of living becomes different, because then we live not as a wave but as the ocean. Then we live not as a man, but as the divine. And to live as the divine—what a joy! Then we live in total aishvarya—true lordship, sovereignty. What is aishvarya?

Aishvarya does not mean a big house. A big house, however big, is still small. And however much wealth there is, it is still little. In truth, whatever can be counted will always be little. Aishvarya means that this whole universe has become your house; that all the moons and stars have begun to shed their light upon your home; that the winds serve your garden; that you have become the master of all life—master because you have experienced oneness with the Master. You know, the word Ishwar (the Lord) is formed from aishvarya (lordship). Ishwar and aishvarya are two transformations of the same truth. Ishwar means the Lord, the one to whom all aishvarya belongs; the one to whom the whole universe belongs.

A sannyasin is not one who has left a single house; a sannyasin is one to whom all houses have become his own. A sannyasin is not one who has left a wife, children, parents; a sannyasin is one whose family has become the whole—all.

This experience of aishvarya is the sense that everything has become one’s own. How will this happen? It will happen when the wave goes within and comes to know. You cannot escape the search for the divine. You will have to search. You may do it wrongly or rightly—that is another matter.

A man seeks wealth thinking he will attain aishvarya. That is a wrong search. Because however much wealth you accumulate, it can still be counted. And whatever can be counted can never become infinite. And however much wealth you gather, it can be snatched—because what is gathered by snatching can be snatched away. After all, I too will have accumulated it by snatching in some way, so what I have snatched can be snatched from me, and will be.

Even in seeking wealth, a man is seeking Ishwar—I am saying this—only he is seeking in the wrong way. In seeking wealth he is seeking aishvarya—but he has gone astray. The wave has not gone inward; it has set out to seize other waves: “I will take possession of the waves.” The wave says, “I will become president; I will take possession of four hundred million waves.” The wave has gone mad. All presidents go mad. It is a race of madness. And if you want to look for the mad, don’t go to the madhouses; go to the capitals. There you will find them all assembled. But they too are in search of Ishwar; by mistake they have reached the capital. They are going by the wrong road to find God.

He who seeks position too is seeking Ishwar, because Ishwar is the supreme post; beyond it there is no other post. But he is seeking in the wrong way. He who seeks wealth is also seeking Ishwar; but in the wrong way. He who seeks in a wife, in a son, is also seeking in the wrong way—because he is seeking in what is too small for that which cannot be found there. The longing is so great, and the search so small. The longing is for the attainment of the entire universe, of the whole cosmos. With such a great longing, without seeking the divine, it will never be fulfilled.

There are two different paths. If the wave goes out to seize other waves, that is one path—the wrong one. And if the wave goes within and finds out who is underneath, then possession over all the waves is already obtained—because the waves no longer remain separate. There is no need to possess. They are we ourselves. The moment the wave goes within, the ocean is found, and it knows that all waves are of the ocean. Now there is no hassle. When we ourselves are the ocean, what is the point of possessing any other wave? Now we are within everyone.

So do not ask, “Why should we get into the hassle?” No one says you should. But you are already in it. There is no way to be outside of the hassle. Passing through it, you may come out of it. When you ask, “Why should we get into the hassle?” it sounds as if you are now deciding whether to get into it. No—you are already in it. To be in life is to be in the hassle. It is not that after hearing me you have set out in search of God. Rather, because you had already set out in search, you came to hear me. It is not that by hearing me questions will arise in your mind; it is because questions were already there that you came to listen. The search is on, it is going on. The search can be fulfilled. If we go inward, we will find. If we keep searching outward, we will lose even more—finding will be far away. There are people who are born beggars and die beggars. Whether there is wealth or not makes no difference; fame or not makes no difference; post or prestige makes no difference. Because all these are outer searches with limits, while the longing within is for the limitless. And the limited can never bring fulfillment. No one can be fulfilled by any human lover, because love’s ultimate search is for the Supreme Lover. Until the divine itself is found as the Beloved, there is no way to be satisfied. The search is already underway.

Ask that when you meet the divine, because only the divine can answer it. “Why is this at all?”—ask God when you meet him. Yet, so far, those who have met could not ask, because the moment they meet, they forget to ask. So the friend who has raised it—write it down very firmly so you don’t forget. But the danger remains: up to now, no one has managed to ask. The instant he is found, everything is found, and the very urge to question disappears.

I have heard: on the seashore a great fair was held. Many people went. Two dolls made of salt went there too. People began to argue: How deep is the ocean? The salt dolls got worked up. “We’ll jump in right now and find out.” One jumped. The people on the shore waited and watched. He didn’t return, didn’t return. Much unease arose. The second said, “I’ll go and find him.” He jumped too—and didn’t return either. The fair dispersed. Now, every year on that same day, the fair is held again at that seashore, in the hope that perhaps the salt dolls will have come back. They never return—because if a doll of salt goes into the sea, it dissolves, it flows away, it is gone. Who will come back to report? And the deeper it goes, the more it melts. By the time it reaches the true depth, who remains to ask, “How deep?” Who is left to ask, “How great is the depth?”

All these are the pleasures of the wave that is asking. The questions belong to the waves; the answers belong to the ocean. But it is the waves that ask, while the ocean holds all answers. And when a wave slips into the ocean, questions are lost—nothing remains to be asked.

What you ask—Why is this at all? Why this world? Why this nature? Why this being? Why life? Why are we made?—ask and ask as you will, there is no answer. And whoever pretends to answer is being dishonest. There is no answer; none has been given, none can be given. Yes, there is one who could answer—the one spread deep within all, who has seen everything: coming and going and being; who has witnessed the infinite play. He could answer. So go there, and ask him. But no one has yet managed to ask. Whoever goes, disappears. There is something such that when we stand before it, we vanish—and so long as we are, it does not stand before us. A straightforward face-to-face meeting does not occur so that we might stand there and ask, “Why is all this?”

The truth is: this question is absurd. Why wrong? Because the ultimate why cannot be answered. Why cannot it be answered? Because whatever answer is given, you can always ask “why?” again. What difficulty is there in asking “why?” to any answer? Someone says, “God created the world,” and we ask, “Who created God?” Someone says, “A man named A created God,” and we ask, “Who created A?” If this goes on and on, how can it end? It cannot end, because the kind of question it is, it applies to every possible answer. However you answer, “why?” can still be asked. Therefore the truly wise have remained silent about the why. They say: the very question of why is futile. It leads to infinite regress; it becomes endless and meaningless.

You have read children’s stories. Little ones go on asking “why, why.” They keep asking, “And then?” If you tell them, “The king married the queen and they lived happily ever after”—though this is sheer untruth, for after marriage no one lives happily!—still all stories end there. To go beyond is dangerous; people find out for themselves what happens after. So stories, films, novels all end there. But children still insist, “Then what happened?” They keep asking.

I read a lovely children’s story you may know. An old woman used to tell stories to her grandchildren, who pestered her relentlessly: “And then? Then what happened?” Tired out, she invented a story: “There is a tree by the sea. On it sit infinite birds. One bird flew off—furr!” The children asked, “Then what happened?” She said, “A second bird flew—furr!” “Then what?” She kept answering the same. Slowly all the children got tired. “Is this all that kept happening? Then what?” The old woman said, “One bird flew—furr.” And she added, “There are infinite birds on that tree, so now I won’t get tired. This story will never end; it will go on and on.” At last the children were exhausted and fell asleep.

This is what our “why” does—endless, of no meaning. We ask, “Why did man come to be?” We are asking a pointless question. Whatever answer we give, we will ask again, “Why did that happen?” We fancy that we are asking a profoundly intelligent question. Many so‑called wise men have asked in this manner; scriptures are full of such questions. But they are children’s questions, not the questions of the wise. The wise understand that the why cannot be answered, because “why” can always be reapplied. So why bother answering it in the first place? It will just go on and on.

I do not give an answer. I say: life is. Arrival has happened; departure will happen. Why it is—I do not know. No one knows. But it is very hard to accept ignorance. All pundits feel they must know everything; the learned are under the illusion they must be omniscient. They want to leave nothing unknown for God to know; they want to know it all themselves. Yet however much they claim, the last why has never been answered—by any scripture, any Buddha, any Mahavira, any Krishna, any Christ. The ultimate why has not been answered—not because they did not know, but because it cannot be given. The very meaning of the ultimate question is that it has no answer. And if you go in search of it, the question will vanish—and you too will vanish—like the salt doll in the ocean.

Kabir has said: I searched and searched; searching and searching, I lost myself. I searched much; searching, I myself disappeared. And when I was gone, that which I was seeking was found. As long as I was seeking, it was not found—because as long as I am, he is not. The lane is very narrow, Kabir says—so narrow that two cannot pass. As long as we occupy it, he remains absent; when he arrives, we suddenly find that we are gone. A wave, as long as it knows itself as a wave, cannot know itself as the ocean. How could both knowings be together—that a wave knows itself as a wave and at the same time as the ocean? The moment it knows, “I am the ocean,” it knows, “I am no longer a wave.” And so long as it knows “I am a wave,” it knows, “I am not the ocean.” Therefore the wave and the ocean never meet. They do not have a meeting; they have a union. The wave disappears; it becomes the ocean. But there is no meeting—because for a meeting, the wave would still have to be.

Hence no dialogue, no conversation has ever really happened between man and God, sitting face‑to‑face. Yet if someday it should happen, anything is possible. Life is so mysterious—who knows what may be? If it ever does, write it down carefully so you don’t forget at the crucial moment. One can forget. Keep in mind: most of the questions that arise about life come from our sorrow, our restlessness, our anxiety, our distress.

A man falls into delirium with a high fever; the thermometer reaches its limit. He asks his family, “My cot is flying—is it flying east or west? I can’t tell. Tell me, is my cot flying east or west?” The family says, “Lie quietly; you’ll be fine soon.” But the man says, “Right and wrong is not the issue. Right now the question is: my cot is flying—is it to the east or to the west?” What are the family to do—answer him? Can there be a correct answer? If they say “east,” it’s wrong, because the cot is not flying. If they say “west,” it’s wrong. If they say, “It isn’t flying at all,” the delirious man laughs: “Are you mad? If it weren’t flying, would I be asking? That it is flying is certain; don’t raise that issue. The question is not whether it’s flying or not—the question is, east or west?” So they put cold compresses on his head and rush to get the doctor. They do not sit there answering him; they say, “Answering is dangerous—he is near death.” They run and say, “Just wait a bit; let the fever come down, then we’ll tell you.” They hope that when the fever subsides, he won’t ask. They still won’t be able to tell him—because the cot never flew. Do you think he will ask after the fever? When the fever is gone, the family will be the ones to tease him: “So, what do you think—was the cot flying east or west?” He will laugh: “Have you gone mad? The cot wasn’t flying at all.”

What we call our “metaphysical questions,” our big philosophical questions, are not really deep. They arise from the unease and agitation of our minds. Have you ever, in a state of happiness, asked, “Why happiness?” Never. Not a single man has asked till today. When someone is truly happy, he does not ask, “Why happiness?” But in sorrow he asks, “Why suffering?” When someone is healthy, he does not ask, “Why health?” But in illness he asks, “Why disease?” When one loves and is living in love, he does not ask, “Why love?” But when love breaks and the mind shatters like a mirror, then he asks, “Why does love break?” When a mother’s son is alive, she never asks, “Why is my son alive?” But when he dies, she beats her chest: “Why did my son die?”

Have you noticed that this “why” rises only in suffering? Never in joy. In truth, our lives have so much suffering that we ask of life itself: Why life? This question is not metaphysical, not philosophical—it is psychological. And its answer is not in philosophy but in psychology. Psychology says: when a person asks “why” about something, do not answer—understand that his state has become disturbed. Treat him. A mother asks, “Why did my son die?” What answer can you give? She accepted the fact of his being without question, but she cannot accept his not-being. She is filled with sorrow, with pain.

When we ask about life as a whole, it means that our whole life has become filled with sorrow, anxiety, sadness, deep anguish. Hence the question arises. If it fills with bliss, the question vanishes. The day someone lives in utter joy, that day he does not ask. In fact all philosophies are born of suffering; they are offspring of a troubled mind. Why should the joyous ask “why”? The very idea does not arise. Joy is accepted; then “why” does not arise.

I am not saying, “Do not ask.” As long as the mind is unhappy, you will ask—you will go on asking. But remember: as long as the mind is unhappy, questions will continue and answers will not come, nor will your unhappiness end. Take this “why” as a symbol of a suffering mind, and instead of hunting for answers, set out to dissolve the suffering mind. The day the mind fills with bliss, questions bid farewell. They fall away so completely you scarcely realize they ever were.

We imagine that those who attained knowing received answers to all questions; we are very mistaken. Those who attained knowing are not people who got all the answers; they are people in whom all questions fell away—who were left with no question at all. A mind filled with ignorance asks questions. A mind filled with knowing does not. It is not that answers are obtained. As I said: when the delirium passes, does the man get an answer to whether the cot was flying east or west? No answer is found; only the question disappears.

Remember this: in knowing, questions drop; answers do not arrive. Only the questions fall away. And what I call meditation is the process of letting the questions fall. There all questions drop, and the mind enters that bliss which is questionless. It stands within, without asking, and we become so absorbed in it that we dare not interrupt it by questioning—because a question would become an obstacle. When the mind is so saturated with nectar, it does not question; it fears that questioning may break the flow of music. Even the thought “Shall I ask or not?” does not arise. Everything is lost; all is silent, all is still.

In that silence we know—not answers—but that all our questions were wrong, born of ignorance; that the very asking was the mistake. Then we feel like laughing at the gurus. We see that what we asked was madness—and those who gave answers were extraordinary madmen too!

Now the man who has come down from delirium knows the cot never flew; it only seemed so in fever. If someone in the house had told him, “Your cot was flying east,” he would say, “This fellow must be crazy. It is true that I was in delirium—but he tells me it was flying east!”

That is why I say: the day that revolution descends in life which is called union with the divine, that day all gurus appear utterly mad. Astonishment arises at the kinds of answers they gave. One said there are seven heavens; another, seven hells. One said three, another six. This one something, that one something else—thousands of answers, thousands of sects, innumerable teachers, innumerable paths, innumerable claims. And the marvel is: the question was asked in ignorance; it had no answer at all. The question itself was wrong. In ignorance, right questions cannot be asked. How can a blind man, who does not know light, ask the right questions about light? And the one with eyes, who knows light, does not ask—there is no need to.

This is the difficulty of life: the one with eyes does not ask about light—he would be the one worth hearing—and the blind are the ones who inquire, for whom inquiry is pointless. The lame strive to walk while those with legs lounge at ease. The blind seek the path while those with sight rest—they do not seek.

The wise is not one who has received answers to all questions; the wise is one who has reached that peace where he found all questions to be futile, and he became silent, and he did not ask—and he attained all.

Knowing is not the answering of questions; knowing is the absence of questions. Meditation is precisely this experiment where everything becomes absent, and the wave quietly slips down to become one with the ocean.

There are many more questions—I will speak of them tomorrow. In the morning we will sit here for meditation. Those who wish to reach that place from where one could ask the divine—the ocean—should come in the morning. But come only if you are eager to leave the wave and enter the ocean; only if you have become so troubled that now you long to move toward peace.

You have listened to my words so peacefully; I am deeply obliged. Finally, I bow to the divine seated within each of you. Please accept my pranam.