My beloved Atman! On the new day of a new year, the first thing I would say is: a day is new every day. But because we fail to see the newness of each day, we try, once in a while in a year, to catch a glimpse of a new day. This too is one of the clever devices by which we deceive ourselves. No day ever returns old; each day is new. Every moment is fresh, every instant is new. And yet we have turned our whole life into something old. The craving for the new lingers in the mind—so we choose one or two days in the year, call them new, and pacify this longing. But think: if the entire year is old, how can a single day within it be new? If someone’s habit is to look at the world as old for a whole year, how will he see one day as new? If until yesterday I looked at each day, every morning, as old, how will I see this morning as new? I am the one who looks. And the mind that turns everything into the past will turn today old as well. Then, to manufacture the illusion of newness, there are new clothes, festivals, sweets, songs—we try to create a deception of the new. Yet neither new clothes nor new songs can make anything truly new. A new mind is needed! And the one who has a new mind—no day ever becomes old for him. The one who carries a fresh mind, a fresh inner climate, makes everything fresh and new. But we do not have a fresh mind—so we keep changing things: a new coat of paint on the house, a new car in place of the old, new clothes instead of the old. We keep renewing things, because we do not have a new mind. How long can new things fool you? How long does a new garment remain new? The moment you put it on, it is old. How long does a new car stay new? As soon as it reaches the porch, it becomes old. Have you ever looked at the distance between new and old? As long as it is not yours, it is new; the moment you get it, it becomes old. You bought a new car; until yesterday you thought, How to get a new car? From today you will start thinking: How to get an even newer one? How to get rid of this too? This habit of renewing things has made life difficult on all sides. For if cars must be renewed, then wives must be renewed too. Things ought to be new, should they not? The house is repainted and looks new, a new car is bought, the wife is happy, the husband is happy. But they do not notice that the person obsessed with renewing things cannot remain content with one wife for life; nor can that wife remain content with one husband for life. For when newness is defined as changing things, then in the West first houses changed, then cars changed, and now people have begun to change. That will happen here too. There is certainly a search for the new in the mind, and there should be. But there are two kinds of search for the new. One is the search to renew oneself. And the person who renews himself—nothing ever becomes old for him. The one who makes his mind new each day finds that all things are new each day, because he himself has become new. The one who cannot renew himself finds everything old. He can deceive himself with new things for a little while, but soon they too grow stale. There are only two kinds of people in the world—those who discover the secret of renewing themselves, and those who keep themselves old and occupy themselves with renewing things. The one rightly called a materialist is the person who seeks to make things new. Perhaps this definition of the materialist has never occurred to us. Between the materialist and the spiritual there is only this difference. The spiritual person is concerned, day after day, with renewing himself. He says: if I am new, then nothing in this world will remain old for me. For when I am new, the one who remembers the old is no more, the one who sees the old is gone; everything will be new. And the materialist says: make things new, because there is no way to make the self new. Build new houses, new roads, new factories, a whole new order. Make everything new—but if man is old, and within him the habit of turning things old persists, he will make all things old. Then we go on creating such deceptions. Our festivals are symptoms of our sorrowing minds. The mind is sad all year; for one or two days, we celebrate and pretend to be happy. That happiness is utterly imposed. How can a day make anyone happy? A day! If yesterday you were sad and I was sad, how will I be happy just because today is Diwali? Yes, I will manufacture an illusion of happiness. Lamps, firecrackers, sparklers and lights will create a deception that one has become happy. Remember, as long as there are unhappy people in the world, there will be Diwali. The day people are truly happy, there will be no Diwali, because life itself will be Diwali each day. As long as there are unhappy people, there will be means of entertainment. The day man is blissful, entertainment will disappear at once. Perhaps it has never occurred to you that only the unhappy go to entertain themselves. The more the world grows unhappy, the more entertainment we must invent. Twenty‑four hours we need entertainment—morning till night—because man is becoming more and more miserable. We ordinarily think that the one who seeks entertainment is a very cheerful man. Do not fall into such error. Only a miserable man seeks entertainment. Only a miserable man invents festivals. Only a mind gone stale, layered with dust, invents new days and new years. And for a little while it contrives a deception. How long does a new day last? Tomorrow again the old day begins. For one day we jerk ourselves, as if to shake off all the ash and all the dust. Nothing will come of it. These deceptions are intertwined. An old mind is tied to the search for the new. What is needed is that each day the mind be new. How can this be? Let me speak a little about that with you. Then there will be no new year, no new day; you will be new. And then nothing can become old. If someone begins to live in the new continuously, can you measure the joy of such a life? For whom the wife does not grow old, the husband does not grow old; for whom nothing grows old. The same path he walked yesterday—today walking again, he still sees new blossoms, new leaves on the same trees, a fresh sunrise in the same sun, new clouds in the same evening. The person who can create the new from within each day—of his joy we can make no estimate. Such a person alone will never be bored; all others will be bored. The old bores. To escape boredom, we try little tricks, we flounder. Nothing comes of it. The old settles in again. After a day or two the old year will begin again. Then we will have to wait for the next year. A new day will come; we will wear slightly new clothes, smile a little, speak of happiness around us, and it will look as if everything is becoming new. And all is false—because this has become new many times, yet never truly new. Each year this day comes and each year the old returns. This reveals our longing, but not our wisdom. Our desire is that a new day be—if only once in the year, even that much. But why this helplessness? If one knows the art of making one day new, why not make every day new? A man went to a fakir and asked, For how long should I practice being silent? The fakir said, Be silent for a single moment. Do not worry about the rest. The man said, What will happen in a single moment? The fakir said, Whoever knows the knack of being silent for a single moment can remain silent for his whole life. For no man ever has more than one moment in his hand—never two. The moment alone comes when it comes. If I can work magic upon one moment—make it new, make it silent, fill it with bliss—my whole life will become blissful. For only one moment ever comes into my hand, always; and I know the art of how to make that one moment new. The one who knows how to make a single moment new—his entire life becomes new. But we know how to make a moment old; we do not know how to make it new. And life becomes exactly what we make of it. We know the tricks of making things old. We are so eager to look for the old in everything that it is beyond measure. For instance, as I am speaking here, someone among you may be thinking: Is this written in the Gita or not? This is his trick for making things old. He may think: Did that such‑and‑such sannyasi say this? Did Ramakrishna say it, did Ramana say it or not? Does Krishnamurti say such things or not? Which means: in what I am saying, he is busy hunting for the old. We search for the old in everything—and yet we yearn for the new while searching for the old. In fact, our insistence is that the old remain old. If yesterday your husband or your wife spoke to you with love in the evening, then today too you are waiting that again in the evening they should speak with love. You are looking for the old. And if this evening they do not speak lovingly, trouble will begin—because yesterday’s evening should have been repeated. You want the evening to be new, yet your demand is that yesterday evening be repeated. It may be that to avoid trouble the husband or the wife repeats yesterday’s evening. What was said with love yesterday, today is said again. Perhaps yesterday it arose from the heart; today it is merely being said. Then the deception of the old will be created; the new will not be born; and the old will grow heavier upon us, its dust gathering. We are continuously expecting the old, while also desiring the new. If yesterday you came to me and I greeted you with a smile, then today, as you come to my door, you arrive with the expectation that I should greet you with a smile. But the one who smiled yesterday—that man is gone; where is he? Who knows why he smiled then? Whether he will smile today or not—how can you know? But if he does not, pain arises within. Because we want to repeat yesterday. We do not wish to give the other a chance to be new. And we get bored with the old. We tire of the old, yet we do not give the new a chance—so if life becomes entangled and anxious within this contradiction, it is no surprise. So I am saying: we apply all our cleverness to making everything old; we seek no technique to make things new. I want to give you the technique of making things new. If you once grasp this secret—how to make things new—your life will fill with such joy that there will be no need to purchase flowers of celebration from outside. There will be no need to put on new clothes to feel new. No need to observe separate festivals, special days and years. Separate Diwalis and Holis should bid farewell. These are symptoms of the unhappy and troubled mind. What can be the method of the new? First, let our vision be to search, moment to moment, for the new: What is new? We ask: What is old? Let the question within be: What is new? If such a question lives within, there is no moment in which something new is not arriving. Watch the sun at dawn—the sunrise that happened today has never happened before. Sunrises happen every day, but this sunrise has never happened before. But you may say: Sunrises happen daily—what is new? Yet this sunrise—such clouds with such colors, neither before nor henceforth. The sun rising as it rose this morning—never before, nor can it be. Seek the new, look a little and ask: Has this sun ever risen before as it has today? You will stand amazed that you were living in the illusion that the same sun rises every day. The same sun does not rise every day. Nor is it the same wife each day, nor the same husband. What was yesterday departed yesterday. Keep searching a little, brush away the ash of the old, and look for the ember beneath: What is new? Learn to respect the new and it will reveal itself. If you do not respect it, only the ash will appear; the ember will hide within. Respect the new. And abandon the desire for mechanical repetition. If love visited me yesterday, it is not necessary that it visit today. Leave today open—see what comes. Do not demand that what came yesterday must come today. The moment this demand arises, you have begun to make things old. Allow life to be lived in a thrill, a tingling, in uncertainty. What will happen—cannot be said. Today love may come, it may not—nothing can be said. Accept this insecurity. But we arrange so much for safety that our whole life has gone stale. A man falls in love and immediately begins to petition for marriage. This petition for marriage is a device to make love stale. In a good world there would be love, people would live together, but marriage could not be. A thing as absurd as marriage should not even occur to the mind. Marriage means we make a solid, airtight arrangement that tomorrow too this love will continue. So that it may not happen that the one who gave me love today, whose lap I found to rest my head upon today—tomorrow it is not there. We make tomorrow’s arrangement today. Tomorrow the lap must be available in the same way, the love must come in the same way. Then everything becomes inert, old, stale, dead. And we have done this everywhere. Life is uncertainty, and out of fear man tries to make everything certain. In making it certain, everything goes stale. Only those can be new who have the courage to live in the uncertain, the insecure. Who say: Whatever comes, we will see. We will not walk with anything fixed in advance. We will make no rules for tomorrow that must be fulfilled tomorrow. If today’s rules are fulfilled tomorrow, then tomorrow will be molded into today’s shape. Yet we are all anxious to mold the future. Not only the future—our anxiety extends even beyond death. We want to find out whether after death I will remain or not—will I remain with my name, my titles, my position? The wife wants to ask her husband: Will you meet me in the next birth too? You will meet me, won’t you? She is trying to mold even the next life into boredom. She has made this life boredom; she wants to make the next life boredom too. We do not welcome the new in life. We insist on the old. So everything turns old. I say to you: drop expectations of the old, and every day of the year will be new. Welcome the new, respect the new, and search for the new—What is new? Much depends on what we seek; what we seek, that we find. If a man goes to a rosebush to find thorns, he will find thorns. Thorns are there. If a man goes to find the flower, it may be that he does not notice the thorns at all—he finds the flower and returns. The flower is there as well. It all depends on what we go seeking. Everything is in life! There is the ash of the old; there is the ember of the new. Things are dying there, growing old; and there, the new is being born. There are the aged; there are the children. There is birth; there is death. Something is bidding farewell; something is arriving. It depends on what you have gone to seek. If you go to seek the dead, you will reach the cremation ground. Then you will see corpses everywhere, gravestones everywhere. And amidst graves and corpses, how will you remain alive? You will become a corpse before you die. When the dead surround you on all sides, you will die. Yet, elsewhere, life is being born every day—you are not going there—to the place where a new ray of the sun breaks, where a bud opens, where something new happens every day. For what is old could not have become old if the new were not being born. The one who has become old today—he is old because yesterday he was a child. The flower that withered and fell today, went stale—stale only because yesterday it was fresh. Now it is up to you whether you look for fresh happenings or stale ones. Who is telling you to watch falling flowers? Budding flowers can be seen as well. The one who wishes to be related to the new should look at the budding flowers. He should stop counting thorns. He should live in the expectation and reverence for the new. Within himself he should keep an opening, an open door for the unknown to enter. Then each day is new, each relationship is new, each friend is new; the wife is new, the husband is new, the son is new, the daughter is new; then life is wholly new. And for the one who lives among the new, it is no wonder if within him the flower of the new blossoms. For the one who lives among the old, everything within shrivels and dies. What we gather around us will decide what happens within us. The happening within will be of our own gathering. One way is the old way: in a year, one day is new and three hundred sixty‑four are old. I hold that this one day will be false, a deception. When three hundred sixty‑four days are old, how can one day be new? In such a crowd of the old, the new cannot be—the deception of the new alone can be. I tell you: all three hundred sixty‑five days can be new. Each moment can be new. There must be readiness for the new, reverence for the new, a mind open for the new. And the person who once opens the door of his mind to the new—if not today then tomorrow—finds that behind the new, Paramatma has entered. Because if Paramatma is anything, it is the ever‑new. But our scriptures, our gurus, our sannyasis say: God is that which is the most ancient. He who was first! The Sanatan, the Primal—when nothing else was, He was. So in our temples, worship is for the dead. In our mosques too, reverence is for the dead. Our scriptures and our gurus are engaged in honoring the ancient and the old. And life is new each day. Life reaches each day where it has never reached before. New flowers bloom there daily, new stars appear, new songs arise. All is new there. Nothing is old there. If Paramatma is, He is there—in the forever new. Paramatma is not the One who simply has always been; Paramatma is that which is arising each moment, happening moment to moment. Life is that which is continuously happening. Life is a current, a flow—new every day. If we grow old, we are left behind. If we too are new, we flow with life. Flow thus, and perhaps all days will become new, all days will be days of joy, and from whatever you encounter, bliss will begin to pour. For then you will have the knack, the technique, the craft, the art by which you will always find the new. I have heard of a certain thinker—filled each moment with hope for the new, eager to find joy each moment—who could find even in sorrow, in the darkest cloud, a flash of lightning. He lived on the hundredth floor in New York. Once he fell from the hundredth floor. How true the story is I do not know. But if such a man existed, it must be true. He fell from the hundredth floor. People leaned from their windows and asked, How are you? Only to see whether even at this moment he could find happiness. He shouted back, So far, so good. He was falling toward the ground, dropping moment by moment—yet at each window he cried, So far, so good! Meaning: until now nothing has gone wrong. Such a man is not looking at the approaching death, not even at the falling—he is looking at what is this very moment. He says, Right now, all is well. If such a mind arises, perhaps even death will become a flower. Perhaps for such a one death cannot bring the disturbance it brings to us. We die long before we die—because we become stale and old. This man, even after death—if we could ask him—might say, All is well, still all is well. Once the sense of the new awakens in life, everything becomes right. And when the sense of the old deepens, everything goes wrong. Friends ask me to say something for the new year. I will not say anything for the new year. For it is you who will live the new year—the very ones who made the last year old; you will make this new year old as well. Who knows how many years you have turned old! You are so skilled at making things old that the hope of this new year staying new is very slim. You will make it old too. And a year later you will gather again and again think: new year. How many times have you not thought this! But the new never arrived—because your way is to produce the old. Do not bother about the new year. Consider rather how the new can be born—and experiment a little in that direction. I have told you three things. First, do not look for the old. If you look, you will find it—because it is there. In every ember, both are present: that which has become ash, extinguished; and that which is still an ember, alive, not yet gone out. If you look for ash, you will get ash. Life is so astonishing—it gives to every seeker what he seeks. What you go to find, you find. And whatever you find—understand it well—it is because you sought it. There is no other reason for finding it. The new ember is there too—it can also be sought. So the first thing: do not look for the old. Tomorrow morning, on rising, make a small experiment—let us not search for the old. Look, startled, at your wife whom you have been seeing for thirty years. Maybe you have not seen her for thirty years at all. Perhaps the first day you brought her home you looked—and then the matter ended. You did not see after that. If I ask you now to close your eyes and draw her image within for five minutes, you will suddenly find the image wavers, does not form. For even her lines have never been truly traced. Although we shout that we love so much—such noise is only because we do not love; we make a racket to create an impression. We have been fabricating that impression. So tomorrow morning, begin a little search for the new. The new is everywhere, every day, each moment. Respect the new; do not demand the old. We demand the old. We want what happened yesterday to happen today as well. Then today will turn old. Let there be an open mind for what has never happened to happen today. It may lead into sorrow. But I tell you, even new sorrows are better than old pleasures—because they are new; there is a life, a flavor in them. Even old pleasures grow insipid, juiceless. Therefore it often happens that the man surrounded by old pleasures invents new pains for himself—he searches for them, just to have something new. Because the new happiness does not come, he settles for new unhappiness. A man drinks, goes to a prostitute—he is seeking new sorrows. The new joy does not come, so let new pain be. Let something at least be new. Such is the soul’s intense hunger for the new. Yet we are people who expect the old. Therefore the second sutra I give you: do not expect the old. And tomorrow morning, if the wife rises and starts to leave the house, do not say even once, But you promised. Who can promise for whom? Then let her go, in the same love with which you brought her home. Accept this farewell as well—there is always the possibility of the new. Must the wife remain for the entire life, twenty‑four hours a day? Paths meet and then separate. When meeting and when parting—what is there to be so troubled about? But no—it is very difficult to part. Because we say the old must be kept fixed, everything old must be made permanent. When the new comes, accept it; do not crave the old. And the third thing: no one can make the new happen for you; you will have to do it yourself. And it is not that you will make the whole day new, or the whole year new. No. One grain, one moment at a time you will make new; and eventually the whole day, the whole year will be new. Each moment is slipping from our hands—like grains of sand falling through an hourglass. Make one moment new; do not worry about the next. When the next moment comes, we will make it new then. Entering the temple of the new, even a little, brings you close to that Paramatma who is the primal source of life, the original stream. One who bathes in that source even once—then nothing remains old in this world. Then nothing is old. Then there is no such thing as death; nothing dies. Then there is no such matter as old age; nothing really grows old. Then even old age is a new state that comes after youth. Then even death is a new birth that comes after birth. Then all the doors of the new go on opening—endlessly. But we have made everything old, and raised false pillars of newness—a little plastered and painted: new day, new year. All this is deception which we have erected. Pleasant, yes—for it helps us endure so much oldness. It feels as if, now, something new has come, now something new will happen. It never happens. How many friends will offer one another greetings on the new year! They offered the same last year. We will receive and offer such greetings with a naïve heart—knowing full well it is futile, that it means nothing. So I will offer no greetings for the new year. I can only remind you: you have made so many years old—so on this new year, take care not to do again what you have been doing. Do not turn this one old again. Try to make it new. It can be new. And if it becomes new, each day becomes new; each day is the dawn of a new year. The old cannot remain, cannot endure; everything flows away. But we cling to the old so tightly that there is no space left for the new to be. If we search within our mind, we will find that on every side we grasp the old so hard that there is no room for the new. From where will the new enter your home? From where will a ray of the new enter your consciousness? You are clinging to the old, not letting it go, not leaving even an atom of space. But space is needed—room is needed—only then can the new enter. You have listened to my words with such love; I am very grateful. May something new be born within you—this is my prayer to Paramatma.
Osho's Commentary
On the new day of a new year, the first thing I would say is: a day is new every day. But because we fail to see the newness of each day, we try, once in a while in a year, to catch a glimpse of a new day. This too is one of the clever devices by which we deceive ourselves. No day ever returns old; each day is new. Every moment is fresh, every instant is new. And yet we have turned our whole life into something old. The craving for the new lingers in the mind—so we choose one or two days in the year, call them new, and pacify this longing.
But think: if the entire year is old, how can a single day within it be new? If someone’s habit is to look at the world as old for a whole year, how will he see one day as new? If until yesterday I looked at each day, every morning, as old, how will I see this morning as new? I am the one who looks. And the mind that turns everything into the past will turn today old as well. Then, to manufacture the illusion of newness, there are new clothes, festivals, sweets, songs—we try to create a deception of the new.
Yet neither new clothes nor new songs can make anything truly new. A new mind is needed! And the one who has a new mind—no day ever becomes old for him. The one who carries a fresh mind, a fresh inner climate, makes everything fresh and new. But we do not have a fresh mind—so we keep changing things: a new coat of paint on the house, a new car in place of the old, new clothes instead of the old. We keep renewing things, because we do not have a new mind.
How long can new things fool you? How long does a new garment remain new? The moment you put it on, it is old. How long does a new car stay new? As soon as it reaches the porch, it becomes old. Have you ever looked at the distance between new and old? As long as it is not yours, it is new; the moment you get it, it becomes old. You bought a new car; until yesterday you thought, How to get a new car? From today you will start thinking: How to get an even newer one? How to get rid of this too?
This habit of renewing things has made life difficult on all sides. For if cars must be renewed, then wives must be renewed too. Things ought to be new, should they not? The house is repainted and looks new, a new car is bought, the wife is happy, the husband is happy. But they do not notice that the person obsessed with renewing things cannot remain content with one wife for life; nor can that wife remain content with one husband for life. For when newness is defined as changing things, then in the West first houses changed, then cars changed, and now people have begun to change. That will happen here too.
There is certainly a search for the new in the mind, and there should be. But there are two kinds of search for the new. One is the search to renew oneself. And the person who renews himself—nothing ever becomes old for him. The one who makes his mind new each day finds that all things are new each day, because he himself has become new. The one who cannot renew himself finds everything old. He can deceive himself with new things for a little while, but soon they too grow stale.
There are only two kinds of people in the world—those who discover the secret of renewing themselves, and those who keep themselves old and occupy themselves with renewing things. The one rightly called a materialist is the person who seeks to make things new. Perhaps this definition of the materialist has never occurred to us. Between the materialist and the spiritual there is only this difference. The spiritual person is concerned, day after day, with renewing himself. He says: if I am new, then nothing in this world will remain old for me. For when I am new, the one who remembers the old is no more, the one who sees the old is gone; everything will be new. And the materialist says: make things new, because there is no way to make the self new. Build new houses, new roads, new factories, a whole new order. Make everything new—but if man is old, and within him the habit of turning things old persists, he will make all things old. Then we go on creating such deceptions.
Our festivals are symptoms of our sorrowing minds. The mind is sad all year; for one or two days, we celebrate and pretend to be happy. That happiness is utterly imposed. How can a day make anyone happy? A day! If yesterday you were sad and I was sad, how will I be happy just because today is Diwali? Yes, I will manufacture an illusion of happiness. Lamps, firecrackers, sparklers and lights will create a deception that one has become happy.
Remember, as long as there are unhappy people in the world, there will be Diwali. The day people are truly happy, there will be no Diwali, because life itself will be Diwali each day. As long as there are unhappy people, there will be means of entertainment. The day man is blissful, entertainment will disappear at once. Perhaps it has never occurred to you that only the unhappy go to entertain themselves. The more the world grows unhappy, the more entertainment we must invent. Twenty‑four hours we need entertainment—morning till night—because man is becoming more and more miserable.
We ordinarily think that the one who seeks entertainment is a very cheerful man. Do not fall into such error. Only a miserable man seeks entertainment. Only a miserable man invents festivals. Only a mind gone stale, layered with dust, invents new days and new years. And for a little while it contrives a deception. How long does a new day last? Tomorrow again the old day begins. For one day we jerk ourselves, as if to shake off all the ash and all the dust. Nothing will come of it. These deceptions are intertwined. An old mind is tied to the search for the new. What is needed is that each day the mind be new. How can this be? Let me speak a little about that with you.
Then there will be no new year, no new day; you will be new. And then nothing can become old. If someone begins to live in the new continuously, can you measure the joy of such a life? For whom the wife does not grow old, the husband does not grow old; for whom nothing grows old. The same path he walked yesterday—today walking again, he still sees new blossoms, new leaves on the same trees, a fresh sunrise in the same sun, new clouds in the same evening. The person who can create the new from within each day—of his joy we can make no estimate. Such a person alone will never be bored; all others will be bored.
The old bores. To escape boredom, we try little tricks, we flounder. Nothing comes of it. The old settles in again. After a day or two the old year will begin again. Then we will have to wait for the next year. A new day will come; we will wear slightly new clothes, smile a little, speak of happiness around us, and it will look as if everything is becoming new. And all is false—because this has become new many times, yet never truly new. Each year this day comes and each year the old returns. This reveals our longing, but not our wisdom. Our desire is that a new day be—if only once in the year, even that much. But why this helplessness? If one knows the art of making one day new, why not make every day new?
A man went to a fakir and asked, For how long should I practice being silent? The fakir said, Be silent for a single moment. Do not worry about the rest. The man said, What will happen in a single moment? The fakir said, Whoever knows the knack of being silent for a single moment can remain silent for his whole life. For no man ever has more than one moment in his hand—never two. The moment alone comes when it comes. If I can work magic upon one moment—make it new, make it silent, fill it with bliss—my whole life will become blissful. For only one moment ever comes into my hand, always; and I know the art of how to make that one moment new.
The one who knows how to make a single moment new—his entire life becomes new.
But we know how to make a moment old; we do not know how to make it new. And life becomes exactly what we make of it. We know the tricks of making things old. We are so eager to look for the old in everything that it is beyond measure.
For instance, as I am speaking here, someone among you may be thinking: Is this written in the Gita or not? This is his trick for making things old. He may think: Did that such‑and‑such sannyasi say this? Did Ramakrishna say it, did Ramana say it or not? Does Krishnamurti say such things or not? Which means: in what I am saying, he is busy hunting for the old. We search for the old in everything—and yet we yearn for the new while searching for the old. In fact, our insistence is that the old remain old.
If yesterday your husband or your wife spoke to you with love in the evening, then today too you are waiting that again in the evening they should speak with love. You are looking for the old. And if this evening they do not speak lovingly, trouble will begin—because yesterday’s evening should have been repeated. You want the evening to be new, yet your demand is that yesterday evening be repeated. It may be that to avoid trouble the husband or the wife repeats yesterday’s evening. What was said with love yesterday, today is said again. Perhaps yesterday it arose from the heart; today it is merely being said. Then the deception of the old will be created; the new will not be born; and the old will grow heavier upon us, its dust gathering.
We are continuously expecting the old, while also desiring the new. If yesterday you came to me and I greeted you with a smile, then today, as you come to my door, you arrive with the expectation that I should greet you with a smile. But the one who smiled yesterday—that man is gone; where is he? Who knows why he smiled then? Whether he will smile today or not—how can you know? But if he does not, pain arises within. Because we want to repeat yesterday. We do not wish to give the other a chance to be new. And we get bored with the old. We tire of the old, yet we do not give the new a chance—so if life becomes entangled and anxious within this contradiction, it is no surprise.
So I am saying: we apply all our cleverness to making everything old; we seek no technique to make things new. I want to give you the technique of making things new. If you once grasp this secret—how to make things new—your life will fill with such joy that there will be no need to purchase flowers of celebration from outside. There will be no need to put on new clothes to feel new. No need to observe separate festivals, special days and years. Separate Diwalis and Holis should bid farewell. These are symptoms of the unhappy and troubled mind.
What can be the method of the new?
First, let our vision be to search, moment to moment, for the new: What is new? We ask: What is old? Let the question within be: What is new? If such a question lives within, there is no moment in which something new is not arriving. Watch the sun at dawn—the sunrise that happened today has never happened before. Sunrises happen every day, but this sunrise has never happened before. But you may say: Sunrises happen daily—what is new? Yet this sunrise—such clouds with such colors, neither before nor henceforth. The sun rising as it rose this morning—never before, nor can it be. Seek the new, look a little and ask: Has this sun ever risen before as it has today?
You will stand amazed that you were living in the illusion that the same sun rises every day. The same sun does not rise every day. Nor is it the same wife each day, nor the same husband. What was yesterday departed yesterday. Keep searching a little, brush away the ash of the old, and look for the ember beneath: What is new? Learn to respect the new and it will reveal itself. If you do not respect it, only the ash will appear; the ember will hide within. Respect the new. And abandon the desire for mechanical repetition.
If love visited me yesterday, it is not necessary that it visit today. Leave today open—see what comes. Do not demand that what came yesterday must come today. The moment this demand arises, you have begun to make things old. Allow life to be lived in a thrill, a tingling, in uncertainty. What will happen—cannot be said. Today love may come, it may not—nothing can be said. Accept this insecurity.
But we arrange so much for safety that our whole life has gone stale. A man falls in love and immediately begins to petition for marriage. This petition for marriage is a device to make love stale. In a good world there would be love, people would live together, but marriage could not be. A thing as absurd as marriage should not even occur to the mind. Marriage means we make a solid, airtight arrangement that tomorrow too this love will continue. So that it may not happen that the one who gave me love today, whose lap I found to rest my head upon today—tomorrow it is not there. We make tomorrow’s arrangement today. Tomorrow the lap must be available in the same way, the love must come in the same way. Then everything becomes inert, old, stale, dead. And we have done this everywhere.
Life is uncertainty, and out of fear man tries to make everything certain. In making it certain, everything goes stale. Only those can be new who have the courage to live in the uncertain, the insecure. Who say: Whatever comes, we will see. We will not walk with anything fixed in advance. We will make no rules for tomorrow that must be fulfilled tomorrow. If today’s rules are fulfilled tomorrow, then tomorrow will be molded into today’s shape.
Yet we are all anxious to mold the future. Not only the future—our anxiety extends even beyond death. We want to find out whether after death I will remain or not—will I remain with my name, my titles, my position? The wife wants to ask her husband: Will you meet me in the next birth too? You will meet me, won’t you? She is trying to mold even the next life into boredom. She has made this life boredom; she wants to make the next life boredom too.
We do not welcome the new in life. We insist on the old. So everything turns old. I say to you: drop expectations of the old, and every day of the year will be new. Welcome the new, respect the new, and search for the new—What is new? Much depends on what we seek; what we seek, that we find. If a man goes to a rosebush to find thorns, he will find thorns. Thorns are there. If a man goes to find the flower, it may be that he does not notice the thorns at all—he finds the flower and returns. The flower is there as well. It all depends on what we go seeking.
Everything is in life! There is the ash of the old; there is the ember of the new. Things are dying there, growing old; and there, the new is being born. There are the aged; there are the children. There is birth; there is death. Something is bidding farewell; something is arriving. It depends on what you have gone to seek. If you go to seek the dead, you will reach the cremation ground. Then you will see corpses everywhere, gravestones everywhere. And amidst graves and corpses, how will you remain alive? You will become a corpse before you die. When the dead surround you on all sides, you will die.
Yet, elsewhere, life is being born every day—you are not going there—to the place where a new ray of the sun breaks, where a bud opens, where something new happens every day. For what is old could not have become old if the new were not being born. The one who has become old today—he is old because yesterday he was a child. The flower that withered and fell today, went stale—stale only because yesterday it was fresh. Now it is up to you whether you look for fresh happenings or stale ones. Who is telling you to watch falling flowers? Budding flowers can be seen as well.
The one who wishes to be related to the new should look at the budding flowers. He should stop counting thorns. He should live in the expectation and reverence for the new. Within himself he should keep an opening, an open door for the unknown to enter. Then each day is new, each relationship is new, each friend is new; the wife is new, the husband is new, the son is new, the daughter is new; then life is wholly new. And for the one who lives among the new, it is no wonder if within him the flower of the new blossoms. For the one who lives among the old, everything within shrivels and dies. What we gather around us will decide what happens within us. The happening within will be of our own gathering.
One way is the old way: in a year, one day is new and three hundred sixty‑four are old. I hold that this one day will be false, a deception. When three hundred sixty‑four days are old, how can one day be new? In such a crowd of the old, the new cannot be—the deception of the new alone can be.
I tell you: all three hundred sixty‑five days can be new. Each moment can be new. There must be readiness for the new, reverence for the new, a mind open for the new. And the person who once opens the door of his mind to the new—if not today then tomorrow—finds that behind the new, Paramatma has entered. Because if Paramatma is anything, it is the ever‑new.
But our scriptures, our gurus, our sannyasis say: God is that which is the most ancient. He who was first! The Sanatan, the Primal—when nothing else was, He was. So in our temples, worship is for the dead. In our mosques too, reverence is for the dead. Our scriptures and our gurus are engaged in honoring the ancient and the old. And life is new each day. Life reaches each day where it has never reached before. New flowers bloom there daily, new stars appear, new songs arise. All is new there. Nothing is old there. If Paramatma is, He is there—in the forever new. Paramatma is not the One who simply has always been; Paramatma is that which is arising each moment, happening moment to moment.
Life is that which is continuously happening. Life is a current, a flow—new every day. If we grow old, we are left behind. If we too are new, we flow with life. Flow thus, and perhaps all days will become new, all days will be days of joy, and from whatever you encounter, bliss will begin to pour. For then you will have the knack, the technique, the craft, the art by which you will always find the new.
I have heard of a certain thinker—filled each moment with hope for the new, eager to find joy each moment—who could find even in sorrow, in the darkest cloud, a flash of lightning. He lived on the hundredth floor in New York. Once he fell from the hundredth floor. How true the story is I do not know. But if such a man existed, it must be true. He fell from the hundredth floor. People leaned from their windows and asked, How are you? Only to see whether even at this moment he could find happiness. He shouted back, So far, so good.
He was falling toward the ground, dropping moment by moment—yet at each window he cried, So far, so good! Meaning: until now nothing has gone wrong. Such a man is not looking at the approaching death, not even at the falling—he is looking at what is this very moment. He says, Right now, all is well.
If such a mind arises, perhaps even death will become a flower. Perhaps for such a one death cannot bring the disturbance it brings to us. We die long before we die—because we become stale and old. This man, even after death—if we could ask him—might say, All is well, still all is well.
Once the sense of the new awakens in life, everything becomes right. And when the sense of the old deepens, everything goes wrong.
Friends ask me to say something for the new year. I will not say anything for the new year. For it is you who will live the new year—the very ones who made the last year old; you will make this new year old as well. Who knows how many years you have turned old! You are so skilled at making things old that the hope of this new year staying new is very slim. You will make it old too. And a year later you will gather again and again think: new year. How many times have you not thought this! But the new never arrived—because your way is to produce the old.
Do not bother about the new year. Consider rather how the new can be born—and experiment a little in that direction. I have told you three things. First, do not look for the old. If you look, you will find it—because it is there. In every ember, both are present: that which has become ash, extinguished; and that which is still an ember, alive, not yet gone out. If you look for ash, you will get ash. Life is so astonishing—it gives to every seeker what he seeks. What you go to find, you find. And whatever you find—understand it well—it is because you sought it. There is no other reason for finding it. The new ember is there too—it can also be sought.
So the first thing: do not look for the old. Tomorrow morning, on rising, make a small experiment—let us not search for the old. Look, startled, at your wife whom you have been seeing for thirty years. Maybe you have not seen her for thirty years at all. Perhaps the first day you brought her home you looked—and then the matter ended. You did not see after that. If I ask you now to close your eyes and draw her image within for five minutes, you will suddenly find the image wavers, does not form. For even her lines have never been truly traced. Although we shout that we love so much—such noise is only because we do not love; we make a racket to create an impression. We have been fabricating that impression.
So tomorrow morning, begin a little search for the new. The new is everywhere, every day, each moment. Respect the new; do not demand the old. We demand the old. We want what happened yesterday to happen today as well. Then today will turn old. Let there be an open mind for what has never happened to happen today. It may lead into sorrow. But I tell you, even new sorrows are better than old pleasures—because they are new; there is a life, a flavor in them. Even old pleasures grow insipid, juiceless. Therefore it often happens that the man surrounded by old pleasures invents new pains for himself—he searches for them, just to have something new. Because the new happiness does not come, he settles for new unhappiness.
A man drinks, goes to a prostitute—he is seeking new sorrows. The new joy does not come, so let new pain be. Let something at least be new. Such is the soul’s intense hunger for the new. Yet we are people who expect the old.
Therefore the second sutra I give you: do not expect the old. And tomorrow morning, if the wife rises and starts to leave the house, do not say even once, But you promised. Who can promise for whom? Then let her go, in the same love with which you brought her home. Accept this farewell as well—there is always the possibility of the new. Must the wife remain for the entire life, twenty‑four hours a day? Paths meet and then separate. When meeting and when parting—what is there to be so troubled about?
But no—it is very difficult to part. Because we say the old must be kept fixed, everything old must be made permanent.
When the new comes, accept it; do not crave the old.
And the third thing: no one can make the new happen for you; you will have to do it yourself. And it is not that you will make the whole day new, or the whole year new. No. One grain, one moment at a time you will make new; and eventually the whole day, the whole year will be new. Each moment is slipping from our hands—like grains of sand falling through an hourglass. Make one moment new; do not worry about the next. When the next moment comes, we will make it new then.
Entering the temple of the new, even a little, brings you close to that Paramatma who is the primal source of life, the original stream. One who bathes in that source even once—then nothing remains old in this world. Then nothing is old. Then there is no such thing as death; nothing dies. Then there is no such matter as old age; nothing really grows old. Then even old age is a new state that comes after youth. Then even death is a new birth that comes after birth. Then all the doors of the new go on opening—endlessly.
But we have made everything old, and raised false pillars of newness—a little plastered and painted: new day, new year. All this is deception which we have erected. Pleasant, yes—for it helps us endure so much oldness. It feels as if, now, something new has come, now something new will happen. It never happens.
How many friends will offer one another greetings on the new year! They offered the same last year. We will receive and offer such greetings with a naïve heart—knowing full well it is futile, that it means nothing.
So I will offer no greetings for the new year. I can only remind you: you have made so many years old—so on this new year, take care not to do again what you have been doing. Do not turn this one old again. Try to make it new. It can be new. And if it becomes new, each day becomes new; each day is the dawn of a new year. The old cannot remain, cannot endure; everything flows away.
But we cling to the old so tightly that there is no space left for the new to be. If we search within our mind, we will find that on every side we grasp the old so hard that there is no room for the new. From where will the new enter your home? From where will a ray of the new enter your consciousness? You are clinging to the old, not letting it go, not leaving even an atom of space. But space is needed—room is needed—only then can the new enter.
You have listened to my words with such love; I am very grateful. May something new be born within you—this is my prayer to Paramatma.