Jin Khoja Tin Paiyan #11

There is a slight difference between the two, and also a certain similarity. In truth, their fields overlap each other. Shaktipat is the power of the Divine itself. In fact, apart from That, there is no other power at all. But in shaktipat a person functions as a medium. Ultimately, that too is the Divine—yet at the beginning a person functions as a medium.

It is like this: lightning flashes in the sky; electricity also burns in your house; they are the same energy. But the electricity that lights your house has entered through a medium—regulated, channeled. The human hand is clearly and directly involved in it. That too is of the Divine. The lightning in the rains is also of the Divine. But here, in one, man stands in between; in the other, no man stands in between. If humanity were erased from the world, the lightning in the sky would go on flashing, but the electricity in the house would go out.

Shaktipat is like the electricity in the house, in which a human being is the medium; and prasad, grace, is like the lightning in the sky, in which there is no human medium.

The person: a medium of the Divine power
One who has become available to such power—who in some sense has been joined to the Divine—can become a medium for you, because he is a better vehicle than you. For that power he is familiar; its pathways in him are known; through him it can enter very quickly. You are utterly unfamiliar, unshaped. He is shaped. And if it enters you through him, then, first, he is a refined vehicle, so it is very simple; and second, he is a narrow doorway through which you will receive only such power as your capacity can bear. You can read by the house’s electricity; you cannot read under the sky’s lightning. The house current is under control; the sky’s lightning is under no control.

So if an accidental state of prasad arises over someone—if, uninvited, such coincidences gather that there is a sudden descent of vast power upon him—there is great possibility that the person may go mad, become deranged, fall into frenzy. The power may be so immense that his receptivity is thrown into chaos.

Then even unknown, unfamiliar blissful experiences become painful. One who has lived for years in darkness—if suddenly the sun appears before him, he will not see light; he will see even more darkness—more than he could see in the dark. In darkness he had become somewhat accustomed to see; in light his eyes will simply close.

So it can happen that inner conditions arise in which, unawares, the vast power descends upon you. But it can cause you grave harm; you are not ready—you are caught off guard. It becomes an accident. Even grace can turn into an accident.

Controlled transmission of power
The other state, shaktipat, has very little possibility of accident—almost none—because a person is the medium. Through a narrow medium the channel becomes narrow; and that person can also regulate it; he can allow to reach you only as much as you can bear. But remember, even then he himself is not the owner of the power—only the carrier. Therefore if someone says, “I performed shaktipat,” he is speaking wrongly.

It is as if a bulb were to say, “I give light.” Then it speaks falsely—although the bulb may suffer this delusion. Day after day it gives light; the delusion can arise that “I am giving light.” Light does indeed manifest through the bulb, but it is not produced by the bulb; it is not the source, it is merely the medium of expression. So whoever claims, “I do shaktipat,” has fallen into delusion—the bulb’s delusion.

Shaktipat is always the Divine’s. But if a person becomes the medium, we call it shaktipat; if no person is the medium, it can sometimes happen suddenly—and it can harm. Yet if someone has waited endlessly, and has meditated with infinite patience, then the descent of power will also happen as prasad. There will be no medium then—but there will be no accident either. For his endless waiting, his infinite patience, his unbroken ardor, his unshakable resolve create in him the capacity to withstand the Infinite. So there is no accident.

Thus the event happens in both ways. But then it will not appear to him as shaktipat; it will be known as prasad, because there is no medium.

Only an egoless person can be a medium
There is similarity in both, and there is difference. I am in favor that, as far as possible, prasad be available; as far as possible, grace—so that no person stands in between as a medium. But in many situations this is impossible; for many people it is impossible. So, rather than wander for endless time, one can also take a person as a medium. But only that person can be a medium who is no longer a person. Then the danger becomes minimal. Only that person can be a medium in whom no selfhood, no ego remains. Then the danger is almost nil. Why? Because such a person will become a medium and yet will not become a guru; for there is no one left there to become a guru.

The true guru is the one who does not become a guru
Understand this distinction well. When someone becomes a guru, he becomes so in relation to you; when he becomes a medium, he becomes so in relation to the Divine; then he has nothing to do with you. In any state that is in relation to the Divine, ego cannot persist; but in any state that is in relation to you, ego will persist. So the one whom we should rightly call guru is precisely the one who does not become a guru. If we must define the true guru, this is the definition: he does not become a guru. Which means that all those who make themselves gurus lack the very qualification to be gurus. There is no greater disqualification than the claim to be a guru; for he is taking up an ego-position in relation to you—and it becomes dangerous.

If, uninvited, someone has become empty, the ego dissolved, and can become a vehicle—“can become” is perhaps wrong; we should say, has become a vehicle—then in his nearness too the event of shaktipat can happen. But then there is no possibility of accident: neither to your personality nor to the personality of the vehicle through which the power has reached you.

Even so, essentially I am in favor of grace. And when so many conditions are fulfilled that the person is not, the ego is not, then shaktipat comes very close to grace—very close. And if that person himself has no idea of it, then it has come closer still; then merely by his presence the event happens. Now what appears to you as a person has in truth become one with the Divine. One should say: he has become the Divine’s outstretched hand, close to you. Now he is purely instrumental, a mere means. And in such a state, even if he speaks the language of “I,” we often make a mistake; because in that state, when he says “I,” he means the Divine. But for us it is very difficult—because we only understand the language of the ego.

Therefore Krishna can say to Arjuna: “Mamekam sharanam vraja”—“Come to my refuge alone.” And for thousands of years we will wonder what kind of man this is who says, “Come to my refuge”—then surely the ego is fixed! But he could say it only because he is not there at all. It is the outstretched hand speaking: “Come to my refuge—my one.” This word is very precious: mamekam—“my one.” The “I” is never one; the “I” is many. He is speaking from a place where the “I” is one. But this is no longer the language of ego.

Yet we understand only the language of ego. So we will think Krishna is saying to Arjuna, “Come to my refuge.” Then we go astray. Thus every word of ours can be seen in two ways: from our side—where confusion will always be; and from the Divine side—where there can be no confusion. From someone like Krishna the event can happen; and in it Krishna’s personality has nothing to do.

Shaktipat and prasad should come so close that, as you say, my two statements appear contradictory. At their extremes the two events are very different, but at their center they are very near. And I am in favor of that place where it becomes difficult to make even a slight distinction between prasad and shaktipat. There the thing is meaningful; there it is precious.

In China a monk was celebrating a great festival—the birthday of his master. That kind of festival is observed only on a master’s birthday. People asked him, “But you used to say you have no master; then whose birthday are you celebrating? And you always said there is no need for a guru; then whose festival is this?” The man said, “Don’t put me in difficulty; better that I keep silent.” But the more he kept silent, the more they asked, “What is it you are celebrating? For this is the day of the guru; only the master’s festival is held on this day. So do you have a master?” Then the man said, “If you won’t accept it, I must say it: today I am remembering the man who refused to become my master; because had he become my master, I would have been lost forever. That day I was very angry, but today I feel like thanking him. He could have become a guru at once—I myself had gone to persuade him—but he would not agree to become a guru.”

They asked, “Then why are you giving thanks, if he refused to become a guru?”

The monk said, “Don’t put me into more difficulty; I have said enough. For that man did what no guru can do. Therefore the debt became double. If he too had become a guru, there would have been a transaction both ways: he would have given us something, and we would have given him something—respect, reverence, touching his feet—and the account would have been settled; we would also have done something. But he did not become a guru; he asked neither respect nor reverence; so the debt became double—entirely one-sided. He gave, and we could not even offer thanks, because he did not leave any place even for thanks.”

The purest shaktipat is near to grace
In such a situation there remains no difference between shaktipat and prasad. And the more the difference, the more one should avoid shaktipat; the less the difference, the better. Therefore I emphasize prasad, grace. And the day shaktipat too comes so close to prasad that you cannot distinguish between the two—on that day, know that the thing has gone right.

When the electricity in your house becomes, like the lightning in the sky, free, spontaneous, a part of the vast power—and when the bulb in your house drops the claim that “I am the source of power”—then understand that even if shaktipat occurs, it is grace. Keep my point in mind!

Explosion: the meeting of two energies

In truth, an explosion never happens from a single force; an explosion is always the meeting of two forces. If it could happen by one force, it would have happened long ago.

Your matchbox lies there, and the matchstick lies there too; even if they lie there for infinite lifetimes—an inch apart, half an inch apart—no fire will be born. For that explosion, the friction of the two is necessary; then fire is born. It is hidden in both, but there is no way for it to be born in either one alone. What we call explosion is a possibility that arises only when two energies meet.

So the energy that lies asleep within the person must rise and reach that point. The sahasrara is that point, prior to which union is almost impossible. It is as if your doors are shut and the sun stands outside; the light comes up to your door and stops. You may walk from inside toward the outside, come up to the door and stand there, yet you will not meet the sunlight. The door must open, and union happens.

The Divine Waiting at the Sahasrara
So the ultimate peak point of our kundalini, the sahasrara, is our doorway—where grace is always standing, the door at which God is continuously waiting for you. But you are not at your own door; you are somewhere far within, away from your own doorway. You have to come to that door; there the union will happen. And that union will be an explosion.

We call it an explosion because in that meeting you will dissolve at once; it is an explosion because after that union you will not remain. The matchstick will not survive that explosion; the matchbox remains, but the stick does not. The stick will burn to ash; it will vanish into the formless. In that event you will be erased, broken, scattered, lost—you will not survive. You, as you were before reaching the door, will not remain. All that you called yours will be lost; you will be no more. Only that which stands at the door will remain—you will become a part of it.

This event cannot happen by you alone. For this explosion you must go to that vast energy. To go to it, your energy must rise from where it sleeps and move to the place where that power is waiting for you. So the journey of kundalini is from your sleeping center to that place, to that frontier where you end—your boundary.

The Two Boundaries of Man
One boundary is of our body, which we have taken to be so. This is not a great boundary, because if my hand is cut off, nothing much changes; if my legs are cut off, still nothing essential changes; I still am. That is to say, by the lessening or increasing of these limits, I am not erased. My eyes may go, my ears may go—yet I am. Your real boundary is not the body’s boundary; your real boundary is the point of the sahasrara, beyond which you cannot remain. If that boundary is encroached upon, you are gone; you cannot remain.

Your kundalini is your sleeping energy. It marks your boundary near the sexual center and near the brain center. That is why we continually feel that though we might drop identification with the whole body, we cannot drop identification with our head, with our face. It is not very hard for me to consider that perhaps this hand is not me; but if I look into a mirror and try to think, “This face is not me,” it becomes very difficult—that is the frontier. Therefore a man may be ready to lose everything, but he is not ready to lose his intellect.
Someone asked Socrates, “Would you prefer to be a dissatisfied Socrates or a satisfied pig?” Because Socrates was speaking of contentment; he was saying: contentment is the supreme wealth. So someone asked him, “Would you prefer to be a satisfied pig or a dissatisfied Socrates?” And Socrates said, “Rather than be a satisfied pig, I would choose to be a dissatisfied Socrates; for a satisfied pig cannot even know what contentment is, whereas a dissatisfied Socrates at least knows what discontent is.”
Now this “dissatisfied Socrates” is saying, in effect: we are ready to lose everything, but we will not lose intelligence—even if intelligence remains dissatisfied. Intelligence is very close to our center.

If we understand rightly, we have two frontiers. One is sex—our boundary line, beyond which nature begins; below that, the world of nature starts. At the point of sex there is no difference between us, the animal, and the plant; because what is the last limit for the animal and the plant is our first limit; their boundary ends where ours begins. Therefore, at the point of sex there is no difference between the animal and us. That is the animal’s last boundary and our first. When we stand at that point we are animals.

Our second boundary is intelligence; it lies near our other frontier, beyond which is the divine. Passing that point, we are no longer; then we are God. These are our two boundary lines, and between them moves our energy.

Right now our entire energy is sleeping at the lower pool, near sex. That is why ninety-nine percent of a man’s thinking, ninety-nine percent of his dreams, ninety-nine percent of his actions, ninety-nine percent of his life is spent around that pool. However much civilization denies it, however much society claims otherwise, man lives there; he lives by sex. He earns money for it, builds a house for it, gains fame for it—whatever he does, if you search to the root, you will find sex.

Two goals, two means
Those who understood declared only two goals: kama and moksha—desire and liberation. And two means: artha and dharma. Artha—wealth—is the means to kama. So the more erotic the age, the more greedy for wealth it will be; the more an age longs for liberation, the more it will thirst for dharma. Dharma is a means just as wealth is a means. If you seek moksha, dharma becomes the means; if you seek the satisfaction of kama, wealth becomes the means.

So there are two goals and two means—because we have two boundaries. And between them you cannot abide anywhere; you cannot settle in the middle. In between you will feel like a donkey that belongs neither to home nor to the ghat. Some people fall into this state and get into great trouble. Many do; and then they are in real difficulty. They have no longing for moksha, and if, for any reason, a condemnation of sex has arisen in them, they will be torn; they will drift away from the sexual point and not move toward the point of liberation. Then they will be caught in a very painful, infernal dilemma, and their whole life will be filled with inner conflict.

To stand at the midpoint is neither proper nor natural nor meaningful. Think of it as someone climbing a staircase and stopping in the middle. We would say: do something—either go back down or go up! A stair is not a house, not a dwelling; to stop midway has no meaning. If a man remains on a stair, you will find it hard to discover anyone more futile; for to do anything at all he must either return to the lower landing or reach the top.

Our spine is a stair. Truly, it is a stair. Each vertebra is a step. And kundalini is the energy that begins its journey from the lowest center and goes to the highest center. Reach the upper center and explosion is certain; explosion cannot be avoided. Reach the lower center and ejaculation is certain; ejaculation cannot be avoided.

Understand both these things well.

Ejaculation at the lower point and explosion at the highest
If kundalini is at the lower point, ejaculation is inevitable; if it reaches the upper point, explosion is inevitable. Both are explosions, and both require the Other. In sexual ejaculation, the other is needed—even if only in imagination, still the other is required. From that place your energy will radiate.

But from that place your entire energy cannot radiate. It cannot, because that point is your primary point; you are much more than it; you have already gone beyond it. The animal is fully satisfied there; that is why the animal does not seek moksha. If an animal wrote scripture, there would be only two purusharthas—kama and artha, desire and wealth.

And wealth in the animal world is animal wealth. The animal with more meat, more strength, has more wealth; he will win the competition for sex against other animals; he will gather ten females around him. That too is a kind of wealth he has amassed. His extra fat is his wealth. A man’s big strongbox is also fat—wealth that can be converted into fat at any time.

A king will collect a thousand queens. There was a time when a man’s wealth was measured by how many women he had. How can a poor man keep four wives! Just as today we measure education or bank balance, these are very late measures; the first measure was only one—how many women he possessed.

That is why, to make our great men appear great, we often had to count many women—falsely. Like Krishna’s sixteen thousand! There was no other way in those days to proclaim Krishna’s greatness: if Krishna is a great man, how many women does he have? Since that was the sole measurement, we were forced to do the counting: many! Sixteen thousand now sounds too few, because today we have very large numbers. In those days the numbers were not so big.

If you go to Africa, even now there are tribes whose counting ends at three. So if a man has four women, he will say, “Many!” Because beyond three, number ends for him; anything beyond three he cannot count, so he says, “Countless women.”

In both, the other is required
At that lower plane too the other is required. Even if the other is not physically present, he or she is required in imagination. Without the other, even the energy’s ejaculation cannot happen. But if the other is present in imagination, ejaculation can occur. From this came the notion that if God is present in imagination, explosion might happen. Hence a long tradition of devotion that tried to make imagination itself the basis for explosion. For if ejaculation can occur in imagination, then why not the crown-center’s explosion of energy? This thought strengthened the impulse to seat an imagined God firmly in the heart.

But that cannot be. Ejaculation can happen in imagination because, in reality, it has happened; therefore it can be imagined. But union with the divine has not happened; hence it cannot be imagined. We can imagine only what we have experienced. And then imagination can be put to use. A man who has tasted a certain pleasure can shut his eyes and dream it; but if he has never tasted it, he cannot dream it.

A deaf man, however hard he tries, cannot hear words even in a dream; he cannot even imagine them. A blind man, whatever he may do, cannot see light even in a dream. Yes, it can happen that a man once had eyes and lost them; he can still see light in dreams—indeed only in dreams now, because with no eyes he cannot see in reality.

So we can imagine only what we have experienced; what has never happened cannot even be imagined. And explosion is not our experience; therefore imagination cannot work there. One must go there in actuality, and only in actuality can the event occur.

Man: the bridge between the animal and the divine
The sahasrar—the crown center—is your final frontier, where you end. As I said, a stair. Man is just a stair. Nietzsche’s words are precious: man is only a bridge—man is a bridge between two eternities.

One eternity is nature’s—without boundary; and one is God’s—also without boundary. And man swings as a bridge between the two. Therefore man is not a resting place. Either go back or go forward; this bridge is not a place to build a house. Whoever builds on it will repent; a bridge is not a place to build, only to cross.

At Fatehpur Sikri, where Akbar dreamed of a temple of all faiths—Din-i-Ilahi—the saying he had inscribed on its gate is a saying of Jesus: This world is not a home, it is only a wayside inn. You may stay here a little while, but do not stop; this is not the end of the journey, only a halt to remove fatigue, a caravanserai—where we rest for the night and in the morning move on. And we rest only so that we can move in the morning; we do not rest for the sake of resting.

The pleasures of animal tendencies are always momentary
Man is a stair on which there is travel. Hence man is always tense. Strictly speaking, to say “man is tense” is not quite right; it is right to say: man is a tension. A bridge is tension—stretched taut between two banks, unsupported in the middle. Therefore man is a necessary tension. He can never be at peace. Either he is animal—then there is a little peace—or he is divine—then there is total peace. As animal, tension drops because he has returned from the stair to the ground—familiar ground, known ground, where he has lived through endless births; he is back, out of the problem. So man seeks release from tension in sex, or in experiences related to sex—wine, intoxicants—wherever there is unconsciousness, he seeks it.

But there you can stay only a little while; whatever you do, you cannot become an animal permanently. The worst of men can be animal only for moments. The man who murders does it in a moment. If he had lingered a moment longer, perhaps he could not have done it. Our becoming animal is like a man leaping in the air; he can hang for a second and must return to the ground. The worst man is not permanently bad, nor can he be; he is bad only in certain moments. And outside those moments he is like other men. Yet in that one moment he feels relief, because he reaches familiar ground where there was no tension.

In the animal you will not see tension; look into his eyes—no tension. The animal does not go mad, does not commit suicide, does not suffer heart attack. None of these things. Yes—if he gets entangled with man, it can happen; if he is yoked to a man’s cart he may have a heart attack; if he becomes man’s horse, he can be in trouble; if he is man’s dog, he can even go mad. That is another matter; because man drags him onto his bridge, he puts him into trouble.

If a dog enters this room, he wanders at his ease. But if he is a man’s pet dog, the man will say, “Sit in that corner!” The dog will sit. He has entered man’s world—out of the animal’s world. Now he is in trouble. He is a dog, but he has to sit like a man. You have put him in tension. He thinks, “When will the command be lifted so I can get out of here?”

Man can reach that animal plane for a moment or two. That is why we keep saying our pleasures are momentary. The reason is not that joy cannot be eternal; it can. But the state in which we seek joy is momentary; joy is not momentary. We seek it in becoming animal, and that can only be momentary, because we can be animal only for a fleeting instant. It is like trying to return to yesterday; you can close your eyes and, for a moment, in imagination, you may feel you have returned. But how long? Open your eyes and you are again where you were.

You cannot really go back; you can force a momentary regression. Then comes remorse. That is why every momentary pleasure is followed by regret, by repentance, by a sense of sorrow—“Useless effort; all went to waste.” But after a few days you forget and leap again.

At the animal plane you can have a moment of pleasure; at the divine plane you can drown in eternal bliss. But the journey must first be completed within you; from one end of your bridge you must reach the other; then the second event happens.

The kinship between sex and samadhi
That is why I consider sex and samadhi deeply equivalent. There is a reason. In truth they are the only two equivalent events; nothing else equals them. In sex we are at this end of the bridge, the lower end of the stair, where we meet nature. In samadhi we are at the other end, where we meet the divine. Both are unions, both are explosions in a sense; in both, in a certain way, you are lost—yes, in sex for a moment, in samadhi forever. That is the difference. But in both states you are effaced. Sex is a small, momentary explosion after which you recrystallize; because where you went was a state behind you, you cannot remain there. But in the divine you cannot recrystallize; you cannot be organized again as before. Having become one with the vast, you cannot return to the person. The person is now too small, too narrow; there is no way to enter it. You cannot even think how you could ever have been so small. That chapter is finished.

For that explosion both things are necessary: your inner journey must reach your final point—the sahasrar.

The blooming of the thousand-petaled lotus
And why we call it “sahasra,” a thousand—this too is worth noting. These words are not accidental.

Our ordinary language is accidental, born of use—like “door.” If we did not call it “door” but something else, it would not matter. There are a thousand languages, so there are a thousand words for door, and all work. Yet something non-accidental will agree in all: the sense of “that by which we go out and in”—space made for passage—because that belongs to experience.

“Sahasra”—a thousand—is a word of experience, not chance. As soon as you attain that experience, it feels as if thousands upon thousands of flowers have suddenly bloomed within—closed buds opening all at once. “A thousand” here means an event beyond number; and “lotus” means flowering—what was a bud opens. The word flower means “to open,” to blossom, to be radiant. Not one or two, but as if innumerable things open on every side.

Hence the image of the thousand-petaled lotus bursting into bloom is quite natural. If you have ever watched a lotus opening at dawn—if not, you should, very closely, sitting silently, watch it open completely and slowly—you will get a sense of how it might feel if a thousand lotuses of the brain bloomed at once.

There is another astonishing thing. Those who have had a deep experience of sexual union also know, for a split second, a sense of opening; something within flowers—only for an instant, then closes. But between that opening and this other opening there is a difference: as if a flower were blooming downward and a flower were blooming upward. You will be able to make that comparison only when the second experience dawns; then you will know: the flowers below were opening downward, and now they are blooming upward. Flowers that open downward naturally connect you to the lower world; flowers that open upward connect you to the upper world. Their opening makes you vulnerable, thrown open; you become a doorway for another world, through which something enters you; from that entry the explosion occurs within.

Therefore both are necessary: you will go up to that point, and there someone is waiting. It is not right to say “someone will come from there”; you will go up to there—someone is waiting, and the event happens.

Shaktipat is a double happening.

You’ll have to understand this a little. The essential thing is: in this world, in this life, no happening is so simple that you can look at it from one side and be done; it has to be seen from many sides.

Suppose I come to a door, strike it hard with a hammer, and the door opens. I could say the door opened because of my hammer. And in one sense that’s true: had I not struck, it wouldn’t have opened just then. But if I strike another door with the same hammer and the door doesn’t open—the hammer breaks instead—then? Then the other side becomes clear: when I hit one door and it opened, it didn’t open merely because of the hammer; the door itself was ready to open. Another door didn’t open; somewhere the hammer broke; somewhere neither opened nor broke; elsewhere we kept striking and grew tired—the door still didn’t open.

So where something happens through shaktipat, don’t fall into the illusion that it is only because of shaktipat. There too, the other person has reached a certain peak of inner preparedness where a small tap becomes a cooperative aid. If that tap had not come, perhaps it would have taken a little longer. What shaktipat does is not carry kundalini to the sahasrar; it only reduces the time element, the small obstacle of time—and nothing more. The person would have reached anyway.

Imagine I do not strike this dilapidated, time-worn door. It is about to fall; tomorrow a gust of wind would bring it down. Suppose even the wind doesn’t come—by the door’s fate, no breeze at all. Do you think the door would keep standing? A door that falls with a single blow, that is afraid even of a puff of wind—without any wind, one day it would collapse by itself. You would find it hard to say what made it fall; it had been gathering the readiness to fall.

So at most the difference brought is in the circumference of time—the time gap. If, in the case of Ramakrishna and Vivekananda, Ramakrishna alone were responsible, then it would have happened to many others as well—hundreds came near him. If Vivekananda alone were responsible, then it should have happened with those others he went to before Ramakrishna—it did not.

Do you see? Vivekananda had his own preparation; Ramakrishna had his own power. If that preparation and that power meet at a point, the time gap can shrink. Perhaps the event would have happened in Vivekananda’s next life, or a year later, or two years later, or after ten lives—that’s not the issue; if his inner preparation was maturing, the event would happen.

The time gap can be shortened. And understand this: time is highly fictitious, profoundly illusory; it has little intrinsic value. In truth, time is so dreamlike it hardly carries weight. You close your eyes for a moment, perhaps only a minute passes on the clock, and on waking you say, “I saw such a long dream—I was a child, I became young, I grew old; I had children, got them married; I earned money, lost it in speculation—so much happened!” Out here we say, “What are you talking about? Even to dream all that would take time!” But your eyes were shut for a second—a mere wink.

Dream-time travels differently. In a very short interval it can hold so much. Hence our confusion.

There are certain insects born in the morning who die by evening. We say, “Poor things!” But we don’t know that their experience of time is just what ours is over seventy years. It makes no difference. In twelve hours they build homes, find mates, marry, quarrel—whatever needs doing, they do it—and by evening they die. Nothing is left undone: marriages, divorces, fights, renunciation even—all between dawn and dusk! Their sense of time is different. So to us they seem pitiable; perhaps they think about us, “What takes us twelve hours takes you seventy years—poor fellows! We finish so quickly; what’s wrong with these people? How dull they are to take seventy years!”

Time is entirely mind-dependent—a mental entity. According to our mind, the proportion of time keeps stretching and shrinking. In happiness, time becomes very short; in suffering, very long. When someone is dying at home and you sit by their bed, the night becomes endless. You feel the night may never end—perhaps the sun will never rise! Suffering lengthens time because in suffering you want it to pass quickly—your expectation is of haste. The stronger your expectation, the slower time seems, because the experience is relative. Your expectation is intense; time moves at its own pace, but you feel it is crawling—like a lover waiting for his beloved; he wants her to arrive at jet speed, but she is walking at human speed, so to him she seems so slow.

In suffering, your sense of time grows very long. With joy, a dear friend arrives, you chat through the night, and when morning comes you say, “How did the night pass in a moment? It was as if it never came!”

So time, being mind-dependent, can be altered; and because the mind can be touched, the ratio of time can be changed. If I hit you on the head with a stick, your head will split. What will you say—that someone else opened your head, and you became dependent? You did become dependent. Your body can be struck; your mind can be struck too. You, however, cannot be struck—for you are neither body nor mind. But as long as you are stationed in the mind, taking yourself to be the mind or the body, both can be impacted. And through such impact the interval of your time can be greatly reduced—aeons can be turned into moments, and moments into aeons.

Liberation is timeless.
Here’s the delightful thing: Buddha awoke twenty-five centuries ago, Jesus two thousand years ago, Krishna perhaps five thousand years ago, Zoroaster and Moses long ago—but the day you awaken you will suddenly find, “Ah! They too have just awakened—now!” The time gap collapses at once. These 2,500 years, 2,000 years, 5,000 years feel like a dream.

That is why, when one awakens, all awaken in the same instant—no difference of a moment is possible. Hard to conceive, I know. But the day you arrive, you become contemporaneous with Buddha, Mahavira, Krishna. They will seem to be standing all around you; all have just-now awakened—now! Not even a moment’s distance exists there; it cannot.

Imagine drawing a large circle, and from the circumference you draw a thousand lines meeting at the center. On the circumference, the distance between the lines is large. As you move toward the center, the distance shrinks. At the center, the distance is gone: the two lines are one.

On the day one reaches that center of intense realization, the distances on the periphery—two and a half thousand years, two thousand years—vanish. Hence the difficulty: speaking from there, mistakes easily happen, because those who hear understand the language of the periphery. Misunderstanding is bound to arise.

A man once came to me—a devotee of Jesus. He asked, “What is your opinion about Jesus?” I said, “It isn’t good to form opinions about oneself.” He looked startled and said, “Perhaps you didn’t hear—I’m asking your opinion about Jesus.” I said, “I too think you didn’t hear. I’m saying it isn’t appropriate to form opinions about oneself.” He looked perplexed. I told him, “An opinion about Jesus can be formed only so long as you don’t know Jesus. The day you know, what difference remains between you and Jesus? How will you form an opinion then?”

It so happened that a painter once brought a portrait to Ramakrishna. He said, “Look, I’ve painted your picture. How is it?” Ramakrishna touched his head to the feet in the painting and bowed. People present thought, “He’s made a mistake—touching his own picture’s feet! What is this?” The painter said, “Forgive me, this is your picture; and you are…?” Ramakrishna said, “Oh, I forgot. The picture is so soaked in samadhi—how could it be mine! I was bowing to samadhi. You reminded me in time, or people would laugh.” Of course, people had already laughed.

The languages of periphery and center are different. So if Krishna says, “I was Rama,” if Jesus says, “I came before and told you,” if Buddha says, “I will come again,” they are speaking the language of the center, which confuses us. Now Buddhist monks wait, “When will he come?” He has come many times. He could stand before them every day and they still wouldn’t recognize him, because he cannot come in the same form—the form was a dream-form; it is gone.

So there is no interval of time there. And that is why, within your temporal situation, intensity or reduction can indeed be brought about; very much so. To that extent, shaktipat can help.

There is no other.
The other part of your question is: then it comes from another… But the “other” appears only so long as we cling to our own limits. Vivekananda will feel, “It happened to me because of Ramakrishna.” For Ramakrishna, such thinking would be great unawareness. For him, it is like: my left hand is injured and my right hand applies balm. The left hand might think someone else is serving it; it may even say thank you—or refuse, “No, I’m self-reliant; I don’t take help from others.” But it doesn’t know that the same life that pervades the left pervades the right—they are one.

Whenever help arrives “from another,” truly there is no other; your own preparedness calls and summons that help from another aspect of yourself.

In Egypt there is a very ancient book that says: never go in search of a master, because the day you are ready, the master will appear at your door. Don’t go searching. And it also says: even if you go searching, how will you recognize him? If you are already capable of recognizing the master, then what is lacking in you! Hence always the master recognizes the disciple; the disciple cannot recognize the master—there is no way. Do you see? If you don’t yet recognize yourself, how will you recognize who the master is! You cannot. But the day you are ready, a hand of your own will be there to help you. It is another’s hand only until you know. The day you know, you won’t even pause to say thanks.

In Japan, in Zen monasteries, there is a custom: when someone comes to learn meditation, he brings his mat, spreads it, sits, practices, and leaves the mat there. He comes daily, sits on his mat, and goes. The day it happens, he rolls up his mat and goes; the master understands—done. What need is there even to say thanks? When he rolls up his mat, the master says, “All right, you’re going.” Whom would you thank? The master doesn’t even say, “It happened”; seeing the mat being rolled, he understands the time has come—good. Why the formality of gratitude? And if someone goes to offer thanks, the master might strike him with a stick: “Unroll your mat—yours hasn’t happened yet! Whom will you thank?”

This notion of “the other” is born of our ignorance; otherwise, who is the other! We are the same in many forms, the same on many journeys, the same in many mirrors. Of course, in all mirrors someone else seems to appear.

A Sufi story: a dog wandered into a royal palace whose walls were all mirrors. The dog got into trouble—it saw dogs everywhere. Terrified, surrounded on all sides! No way out; the doors, too, were mirrored. It barked; at once all the dogs barked back and the echoes returned from the walls—now it was certain: danger, many other dogs! It barked more; the more it barked, the louder the others barked; the more it fought and ran, the more all the others fought and ran. Yet there was only one dog in that room. It barked all night long. In the morning the guard found it dead—exhausted from fighting and barking at the walls. When it died, the walls fell silent; the mirrors were quiet.

There are many mirrors; what we see of each other are our own images in countless mirrors. So the belief that there is an “other” is an illusion; that we help the other is also an illusion; that help comes to us from another is also an illusion. In truth, “the other” is the illusion. Then a simplicity enters life: you do nothing for another as “other,” and you get nothing done for yourself from another as “other.” Only you remain. If on the road you supported someone who was falling, you supported yourself; if someone supported you, he supported himself. But this will begin to be understood only after the ultimate experience; before that, certainly, there is the “other.”

In truth, it wasn’t shaktipat itself that harmed Vivekananda; the harm came from what followed in its wake, the other things that ensued. Even so, talk of harm and loss belongs only within the dream, not outside it. With Ramakrishna’s help he did receive a glimpse—one he might perhaps have attained on his own feet, though it would have taken time. But after that glimpse, because it came from the other, through the other… It is like this: I strike a door with a hammer, the door falls. With the same hammer I set it back up, drive in the nails, and make it right again. The hammer that can bring a door down can also drive nails in. In both cases the same kind of thing is happening—earlier time was shortened; now time will be prolonged again.

Ramakrishna had some difficulties for which he had to make use of Vivekananda. Ramakrishna was utterly rustic—unlettered, uneducated. His experience was deep, but he had no expression. And it was necessary that he find someone as an instrument, a vehicle for his expression; otherwise you would never even have heard of Ramakrishna. And what came to Ramakrishna—out of compassion he wanted it to reach you through someone.

Suppose I find a treasure at home, but my legs are broken. I place the treasure on someone’s shoulder and have it carried to your house. I do use that person’s shoulder; I cause him some strain, because he has to bear the weight. But the intention is not to trouble him; the intention is to bring you the treasure I have found. Because I am lame: the treasure would lie here, and I could not even take the news beyond my door.

So Ramakrishna had a difficulty. Buddha had no such difficulty. In Buddha’s very personality, Ramakrishna and Vivekananda were present together. What Buddha knew, he could also say; what Ramakrishna knew, he could not. To speak, he needed a man who would become his mouth. So he gave Vivekananda a glimpse, but immediately told him: Now I will keep the key in my hands; three days before I die I will return it. Vivekananda protested, What are you doing! Do not take away what I have received! Ramakrishna said, You still have other work to do; if you drown in this, you are lost. So for now I will keep your key; grant me this grace. Three days before my death I will return it to you. And until three days before my death, samadhi must not be available to you, because you have some work that can only be done prior to samadhi.

The reason was also this: Ramakrishna did not know that people have done such work even after samadhi. But how could he know—after samadhi he himself could do nothing. Naturally, we move according to our own experience. After his realization, Ramakrishna could not say anything; he simply could not speak. Speech was so difficult: someone would merely say “Ram,” and he would faint. That’s when another says it! Someone would come and say “Jai Ram ji”—and he would fall unconscious. For him, even hearing the word “Ram” was difficult—the memory of that realm would arise. Someone said “Allah”—off he went; a mosque appeared, and he fell unconscious standing there. Somewhere bhajan-kirtan is happening; he is walking along—he goes there and falls on the road. His difficulty had become this: let even a slight remembrance of that nectar arise from anywhere—he is gone. So for him it was very hard. And from his standpoint his experience was right: if Vivekananda attained this experience, what then! So he said to Vivekananda, You have a great work to complete; do that first, then…

Therefore Vivekananda’s whole life passed without samadhi—and so it passed in much anguish. But the anguish is of the dream—keep this in mind: the suffering is of the dream. A man sleeps and dreams of great pain. Three days before his death the key was returned; but until death there was much torment. Even in letters written five to seven days before dying, there is deep sorrow—What will become of me? I am writhing. And the anguish had grown greater: once you have seen, and the glimpse does not return…

Right now you do not yearn that much, because you do not know what can be. Let a single glimpse be had…

You were standing in the dark; there was no trouble. You had pebbles and stones in your hand—there was great joy too, because it was “property.” Then lightning flashed: you saw that what you hold are pebbles; you saw a path ahead; you saw a mine of diamonds ahead. But the lightning vanished. And the lightning said: You still have another work to do—tell those who are gathering stones here that there is a mine ahead. Therefore, for you, the lightning will not flash again just now. Now go explain this to the others collecting stones.

So a task was taken from Vivekananda which was supplementary for Ramakrishna—necessary. What was absent in his personality had to be taken from another person. This has happened many times, it happens often: when something cannot be accomplished through one person, two or four must be found; sometimes even ten or five people are needed for a single work. With the support of all of them, the message can be conveyed. There is compassion in it—but for Vivekananda…

Therefore I say: as far as possible, avoid shaktipat; as far as possible, look to prasad—grace. And only that shaktipat is useful which is like grace: which carries no conditioning, no terms; which does not say, Now we will keep the key. Do you follow me? Which does not say there is any clause with it; which is unconditional. Which, once it happens to you, the person never even comes to ask what happened. If you want to offer thanks, you would find it hard to locate him to thank him. That much would make it easier for you. But sometimes, for a person like Ramakrishna, the need arises. Then there was no other way. Otherwise what Ramakrishna knew would have been lost; he could not have said it. He needed a tongue he did not have; he got that tongue through Vivekananda.

Therefore Vivekananda always said: Whatever I am saying is not mine. And when he was honored greatly in America, he said: I feel great sorrow and difficulty, because the honor being given to me should go to that other man you do not even know. And when someone called him a great soul, he would say: The one at whose feet I have sat—I am not even the dust of his feet.

But had Ramakrishna gone to America, he would have been admitted to a madhouse and treated; no one would have listened to him. He would have been judged outright insane. He was mad. We have not yet clarified that there is a secular madness and a non-secular madness too—that there is worldly madness, and there is another madness as well, divine. We have not yet learned the difference.

So in America both madmen would be locked in the same asylum; both would receive the same treatment. Ramakrishna would be treated; Vivekananda would be honored. For what Vivekananda was saying is sayable; he himself was not a God-intoxicated madman; he was a messenger, a postman. He took someone’s letter and went and read it aloud. But he could read it out very well.

There is a very strange incident in Nasruddin’s life. In his village he is the only literate man—and where there is only one literate man, he is never very literate! So if anyone needs a letter written, he must go to him. A man came to have a letter written. Nasruddin said, I won’t write; my legs are hurting badly. The man said, Who is asking you to write with your legs! Write with your hand. Nasruddin said, You do not understand: when I write the letter, I am the one who also reads it; I have to go to the other village to read it out. My legs are in great pain; I will not get into the bother of writing letters now. I can write it—who will read it? I myself have to go to the other village, don’t I! So until my legs are better, I have stopped writing letters.

Those like Ramakrishna—if they write the letter, they can only read it themselves. They have forgotten your language; they have no idea of it. They speak an altogether different tongue which is utterly meaningless to you. We will call them mad. So from among us they must find a postman who can write in our language. Certainly, he will be a postman. Therefore be a little cautious with Vivekananda. He does not have a very deep experience of his own. What he is saying belongs to someone else. Yes, he is skillful, clever in saying it; the one to whom it belonged could not have said it so skillfully. Even so, it is not Vivekananda’s own.

The hesitation of the wise and the overconfidence of the ignorant
Therefore in Vivekananda’s talk you will sense overconfidence—he stresses more than is needed. That emphasis is to make up for a lack. He himself knows that what he is saying is not his own experience. Therefore the knower hesitates a little; he is a little afraid. In his mind arise many thoughts—Should I say this, or that? Might it be wrong? One who knows nothing blurts out whatever he has to say—he has no difficulty, no hesitation; he simply says, All right.

A wise one like Buddha faced great difficulty. He would refuse to answer many questions. He would say, I will not answer—because to say it is very difficult. Some would say, There are better men in our village—they at least give answers; they are wiser than you! Ask them anything, they answer. Is there God or not? They will say either there is or there isn’t. They seem to know. Don’t you know? Why don’t you say yes or no? Now Buddha’s difficulty is immense. If he says “is,” it is a problem; if he says “is not,” it is a problem. So he hesitates; he says, No, let us not talk on this—let us talk of something else. Naturally we say, Then admit you don’t know—say that much. This too Buddha cannot say, because he does know—but none of our languages work.

Very often, many like Ramakrishna have passed from the earth without uttering their truth. They cannot say it, because it is a very rare combination that a man both knows and can say. When such an event happens, we begin to use words like tirthankara, avatar, prophet. The reason is not that there are no other such people—there are—but they cannot speak.

Someone asked Buddha: You have ten thousand monks; for forty years you have been explaining—how many among them have attained your state? Buddha said, There are many. The man said, We don’t see anyone like you. Buddha said, The only difference is that I can speak; they cannot. There is no other difference. If I too did not speak, you would not recognize me either—because you recognize speech; you do not recognize knowing. It is mere coincidence that I both know and can speak—a sheer coincidence.

So that small difficulty which arose for Vivekananda will have to be completed in his future births, but the difficulty was necessary. Ramakrishna was compelled to take it; he had to. And yet the harm is of the dream. Still I say: even in a dream, why suffer harm? If you must dream, why not dream something good, why dream something bad?

I have heard—an Aesop fable—that a cat sat under a tree and was dreaming. A dog too came there to rest. The cat was utterly delighted in her dream. Seeing her joy, the dog was amazed—What is she seeing! When she awoke he asked, Before you go, tell me—what was the matter that you were so happy? She said, It was sheer delight—mice were raining from the sky! The dog said, Fool! Mice never rain. We too dream—bones always rain. Our scriptures also say that mice never rain; when anything rains, bones rain. Foolish cat, if you had to dream, you should have dreamt of bones raining! For a dog, bones have meaning; why would dogs rain mice? For a cat, bones are utterly useless. So the dog tells her: If you had to dream, at least dream of bones! Meaning: dreaming is useless anyway—and then to dream of mice is even more useless.

So I say to you: if you must dream, why dream of sorrow? And if you intend to awaken, then—as far as possible, as far as possible—bring your own capacity, your power, your resolve to its fullest use; and do not wait even a little for someone else to come and help. Help will come—this is another matter; do not wait for it. The more you wait, the thinner your resolve will grow. Drop even the concern that there is anyone to help; put in your whole strength as if you are alone. Yes, assistance will come in many ways, but that is an entirely different matter.

Becoming self-reliant in sadhana is always beneficial
Therefore my emphasis is constantly on your total willpower—so that no one else becomes even a slight obstruction for you. And when something comes from another, it should not be something you asked or expected; it should come the way a breeze comes—and passes.

For this reason I said harm occurred. And as long as he lived, he remained in much pain; because what he was saying—he could see from others’ eyes that there was a glimmer there, they were startled and delighted—but he himself knew it was not happening to him. This is a great difficulty: I bring you news of sweets, but I have no taste myself! Once in a dream I had seen a little; then the dream broke, and I was told, You will not dream again. Now take the news to the people.

So Vivekananda’s suffering is his own. But he was a strong person; he endured it. That too is part of compassion. But this is not a reason for you to endure it.

Vivekananda’s mental glimpse of samadhi

Call it preliminary. The question is not so much authenticity—rather, it was primary, extremely primary, where a glimpse becomes available. And that glimpse, certainly, cannot be very deep, nor truly of the Self; it cannot be very deep. It happens right on the boundary where our mind ends and the soul begins. At depth it remains merely psychic, and therefore it was lost. And it was not allowed to go deeper. Ramakrishna was afraid that if it went deeper, this man might cease to be useful for the work. He was so concerned with the work that he did not consider that it is not necessary that the man become useless! Buddha spoke for forty years, Jesus spoke, Mahavira spoke—no difficulty comes from that. But Ramakrishna’s fear was natural; he had his difficulty. So whatever difficulty one has, that is what fills one’s mind. Therefore he received only a very small glimpse. It is authentic; to the extent it goes, it is authentic. But it is preliminary, not very deep—otherwise returning would have become difficult.

Not partial; preliminary. There is a difference between the two. It is not a partial experience. And the experience of samadhi cannot be partial at all. But there can be a mental glimpse of it. The experience would be spiritual; the glimpse can be mental.

For example, I climb a mountain and see the ocean. Certainly I have seen the ocean—but the ocean is very far away. I have not reached the shore; I have not touched the ocean; I have not tasted its water; I have not entered it; I have not bathed in it, drowned in it. I saw the ocean from the peak, and from that very peak I was pulled back.

So would you call my experience a partial experience of the ocean?
No, you cannot call it even partial, because I did not touch it—not even a little, not an inch, not a drop, I did not taste a single drop.

But would you call my experience unauthentic?
No, I did see it! There is no lack in my seeing; I saw the ocean. I did not see it by becoming the ocean, by drowning in it; I saw it from afar, from some distant peak.

In the same way, sometimes you see your own soul while standing on the heights of the body. The body too has heights; the body too has peak experiences. If some bodily sensation becomes very deep, you get a glimpse of the soul. For example, if there is a profound sense of well-being in the body—you are perfectly healthy, your body is brimming with health—you arrive at such a height of the body from where a glimpse of the soul becomes visible. Then you can experience, “No, I am not the body; I am something more.” But you have not known the soul; you have merely climbed a height of the body.

The mind too has heights. For instance, very deep love—not sex; sex belongs to the body. And even if sex becomes very deep and reaches a peak, from there too a glimpse of the soul may be had—but it is a very distant glimpse, from the very opposite shore. But if you have the experience of the great depth of love, and with the one you love you sit silently for a moment—everything is still, only love remains, hovering between the two of you, no words, no language, no transaction, no expectations—only waves of love begin to pass from here to there, then in that moment of love you will climb such a summit from where a glimpse of the soul is obtained. Lovers too have received glimpses of the soul.

A painter is making a painting, and he becomes so absorbed in creating it that for a moment he becomes God, becomes the creator. When a painter paints, he reaches the very feeling that, if God ever created the world, he must have reached in that moment. At that peak. But that is a height of the mind. From that place he is, for a moment, a creator; he gets a glimpse of the soul. Therefore he sometimes mistakes it for being enough. That becomes the error.

It may come through music, through poetry, through the beauty of nature, and in many other ways—but all these are far-off peaks. In samadhi it is obtained by diving in. From the outside there are many summits you can climb and peep from.

So this experience of Vivekananda is also on the plane of mind; because I told you, another can reach only as far as your mind—he can stir a movement there. He has been made to climb a peak!

Even the mental glimpse of samadhi is very significant.

Think of it like this: there is a small child, I lift him onto my shoulders, he sees, and then I set him down again. Because my body cannot become his body. His legs are only as long as they are. He will see with his own legs when he grows up himself. But by seating him on my shoulders, I did show him something. He can go and say, “I saw.” Still, people may not believe him. They may say, “How could you have seen? You are not tall enough to see!” But for a moment, sitting on someone’s shoulders, it can be seen.

Yet all that is within the scope of mind; hence it is not spiritual. Therefore I do not call it unauthentic—I call it preliminary. And a preliminary apprehension can occur via the body, or via the mind. It is not partial; it is whole—but it is the mind’s whole. It is not the soul’s whole. When the soul’s fullness happens, there is no returning from there; no one can keep a key to you from there. And no one can say, “When we return the key, then it will happen.” From there, no one’s control remains. Therefore, if someone wants to make use of you, he has to stop you before you get there; he must not let you go that far—otherwise it will become difficult.

It is authentic, but its authenticity is psychic, not spiritual. Nor is it a small happening, because it does not happen to everyone; even for that, the mind has to be very powerful. It too is not for all.

There is no difficulty in saying it. But the word itself is not merely a pointer; it carries condemnation within it. Therefore it should not be said. In the word “exploitation” there is denunciation, a deep condemnation. He did not exploit him—because Ramakrishna had nothing to take from Vivekananda. But there was the idea that through Vivekananda something could reach others. In that sense, yes, he used him—he certainly used him. But there is a great difference between use and exploitation. “Exploitation” is where I, ego-centered, am pulling something toward my own ego and using it; there it becomes exploitation. But where I am doing something for the world, for the whole, for all, there is no reason to call it exploitation.

And you also haven’t considered that if Ramakrishna had not shown that glimpse, it is not at all certain that Vivekananda would still have attained it. That it would have happened in this very lifetime is not at all certain. Those who know can make such an assessment. For example, it may be—as my understanding is, yes, it is so! But no proofs can be marshaled for it. Ramakrishna’s statement—“Three days before your death I will return the key to you”—may simply mean that, in Ramakrishna’s understanding, had Vivekananda proceeded entirely on his own, he would have attained samadhi three days before his death. So, on that day, the key would be returned. How would Ramakrishna return the key—because Ramakrishna would be dead! The one who returns the key would also be dead. Yet the key was returned three days before. So this is very likely. For someone who has gone to depths can know you deeper than you know yourself; and can also know that if you keep walking by your own momentum…

Naturally, if I have gone on a journey and climbed a mountain, I know the trail, I know the steps, how much time it takes, what the difficulties are. Watching you climb, I know it will take you three months—you follow me? I can see the pace at which you move, the way you wander, waver; it will take that long. So even deep down, there is no exploitation there. Rather, I come midway, lift you up, give you a glimpse of what is on the summit, leave you there, and say, “Three months from now the path will appear; for these three months it won’t.”

So much inside is so subtle, and so complex, that from the surface you don’t see it; it doesn’t occur to you. For example, just yesterday Nirmal went back there, and someone had told her she would die at the age of fifty-three; so I took the guarantee that she will not die at fifty-three. Now, I will not fulfill this guarantee, but it will be fulfilled. And if she survives beyond fifty-three, she will say that I fulfilled the guarantee.

Vivekananda will say, “The key was returned three days before.” Otherwise, who is there to return the key!

Never think in terms of ‘it could be so,’ because there is no end to it. Thinking ‘it could be so’ has no meaning. If you think like that, you can keep thinking anything, and it won’t mean a thing. So never think, ‘it could be so, it could be so, it could be so.’ Think only as far as you actually know. Do not think in ‘as if’ terms. As far as possible, do not think. It has no point, because those are utterly meaningless paths: we can go on thinking anything, and nothing will come of it. And there will be one harm: it will take a very long time to find out ‘what is.’

So always be concerned with: how is it? And if you want to know what is, then cut out from your mind completely the ‘it could be so, it could be so, it could be so.’ Do not give them any space. If you don’t know, understand that you don’t know how it is. But do not cover this state of ignorance—‘I don’t know’—with the pseudo-knowledge that ‘it could also be like this.’ We have covered many things in this way. All of us keep thinking like this. It is better to avoid it.

Now we will talk tomorrow!