Jin Sutra #51

Goshalak certainly had a vision of life. It is not right to call it a “philosophy,” because he had no faith in weaving a system, codifying sutras, or building a scripture-bound scheme of living. His vision was that life is too vast a mystery to be contained in any philosophy; it is not possible that there be a philosophy “of” life.

Hence, all philosophies are, in one way or another, human imaginings forcibly imposed upon life. Life is immense; words are very small. Truth is vast; doctrines are tiny. Put truth into doctrines and you hang it. In the very effort to pour truth into words the vast dies.

So Makkhali Goshal is not a philosopher, nor is he a builder of tradition. But he has a vision of life. I would not call it philosophy; it is simply a way of seeing—and it is very precious, worthy of understanding.

Because he created no philosophy, no lineage could form around him. People crave security. People want a doctrine. Who cares for truth? People want a formula in hand by which to somehow “solve” life’s tangles. Whether it solves anything or not, if they can feel it is solved, they sleep easy.

People want relief from their anxiety. That is why a man like Goshalak does not appeal to the many—because he gives you no device to relieve your anxiety. He tells you instead: your anxiety itself is futile. He says: there is no solution, understand that anxiety is meaningless. That alone is enough.

We ask questions and expect answers. “Who created the world?”—the question pricks within like a thorn. Someone replies, “God created it.” Nothing is solved. What is solved by that? Nothing changes. You could then ask, “Who created God?” Yet there is a certain relief—as if the thorn that pricked within has been pulled: “God created it.”

Ask a man like Goshalak who created the world and he will shrug his shoulders. He’ll say, “We don’t know—and no one knows.” Understand the difference.

There are three kinds of people in the world:
1) Those who say, “God created it; we know.”
2) Those who say, “God did not create it; we know.”
3) Both claim to know.
Goshalak says, “Who knows? How could anyone know? If ever someone created it, we were not present then—we can only exist after creation. We are the created. We were not there when it was made. So how can we know who made it? And if someone did make it, then that maker existed prior to making—so something already was. The question remains. And then, who created the maker?”

Goshalak says, “There is no answer; the question is useless—drop it.” Look closely: you have asked a kind of question that will land you in trouble. You will either become theist or atheist. In both cases you will deny the vastness of life. In both, the mystery will be broken. In both, you will erect a wall of doctrine in the middle. In both, you will hide your ignorance.

Goshalak says, “Who knows—created, not created? The truth is, it is not even certain that it ‘is.’ It may all be a dream.”

So Goshalak does not give a philosophy; he gives a way of seeing. He does not give answers; he gives an understanding of how to look at questions. That is why no tradition formed. And how would followers gather behind such a man?

Yes, while he was alive a few did gather. That must have been the majesty of his presence. He had no answers. A few courageous people must have moved with him. It was the charisma of his being—what we call karishma—his fragrance.

Hence the Jain scriptures both oppose him and call him extraordinary. He was extraordinary. For if people were drawn without a doctrine and without answers, there was certainly a magic in the man. That magic was not intellectual; it was of the person, of the being.

The Jain scriptures are against him because the Jains “know that they know.” Keep in mind the Jains’ central insistence: by passing through the Jain discipline one who attains the ultimate state becomes omniscient. This is their most important doctrine—sarvajna, the all-knower.

Goshalak is precisely the opposite. He says: one who truly knows, knows that nothing can be known. He would have befriended Socrates. He would have befriended Sartre, Camus, and Kafka. Nietzsche too, sitting with Goshalak, would have felt kinship. But how could the Jains feel kinship? He is their exact opposite.

The Jains insist that when a person attains supreme awareness he becomes omniscient—knowing all three times: past, present, future. Nothing remains unknown to him.

That means that for the Jain’s enlightened one no mystery remains; the whole book is open; every page has been read.

Goshalak says: even reading the first line is impossible. The book won’t open. One cannot make out even the primer. The claim of omniscience is futile. Omniscience cannot be. Here we will call one a knower only if he has known that there is no way to know.

Because this vision is the very reverse of omniscience, the Jains were very angry. As angry with no one as with Goshalak.

This at least proves that, before Mahavira’s followers, Goshalak must have stood as the sharpest rival. Other great thinkers existed. Buddhist texts mention six:
- Ajita Kesakambala
- Purna Kashyapa
- Prabuddha Katyayana
- Sanjaya Belatthiputta
- Makkhali Goshalak
- Nigantha Nataputta (Mahavira)
Yet the Jain scriptures do not oppose any of these—only Goshalak.

So one thing is certain: Goshalak stood as the polar opposite to Mahavira. His claim is: nothing can be known. No one has ever so strongly championed unknowing. So the Jains must have suffered most from this man. They call him obstinate, quarrelsome, contentious—that is their description. He seemed quarrelsome to them because they were claiming, “Our master is omniscient,” and this man was saying, “Omniscient? Not even a little-knower is possible; even ‘being-knowing’ is not possible.”

And there is weight in his words, depth in his words. So he must have appeared contentious, insolent. Yet they had to concede his extraordinary genius.

He had genius. People were drawn without any doctrine. And the man had no “respectable” character either—that too is worth noting.

Goshalak had no socially approved “character” by which someone could say, “This man lives by discipline, by truth, by nonviolence, by yoga, by meditation.” There was no reason to say such a thing. In the conventional sense, he was “characterless.”

But understand: modern psychology has discovered something high and deep—that those we call the most “charactered” are, in the ordinary sense, characterless. Jesus too appeared characterless to people—hence the crucifixion. The same was Socrates’ crime: he himself is corrupt and he corrupts others. His words are influential; others listen and get corrupted.

A great thinker of this century, Wilhelm Reich, died in an American prison; he was forcibly declared insane in America because he was saying things utterly against moralism. One of his basic points—which resonates with Goshalak—was: character belongs only to the dead.

Understand “character” rightly: it means a style of life born of habit. A man, by effort, starts rising at five every morning and makes it a habit so rigid that even if one day he wishes to lie in bed he cannot—the old habit kicks him up.

So character is only habit, conditioning. One who lives with awareness does not live by character; he lives by awareness. Not by habit; by spontaneity. If this morning wants to wake him, he wakes. If this morning is for sleep, he sleeps.

Moment to moment things change—health, illness; rain, cold, heat; youth, old age; the hour one fell asleep; how much one worked that day. One who lives by awareness decides each moment how to live. Living is decided moment to moment. One who lives by habit decided once and for all; he drew a line of character and now follows it. Reich says the so-called man of character is often a dead man—the man is dead; a rule goes on living. The soul is gone; the principle remains.

Goshalak had no character. Had Reich met him he would have bowed instantly.

The Jains are annoyed, for their whole base is character—habitual, measured to the inch. Watch every step lest a mistake occur; do not deviate from the rule; walk strictly on the track. That is why, in this world, you cannot find a more dead man than a Jain monk. He is utterly dead. He has no future—only a past. What he decided thirty years ago he is repeating. He is repetition. Nothing new arises within. Morning never comes. A mechanical repetition goes on: every day he does what he did yesterday and the day before. A line-follower.

Goshalak is utterly free—undisciplined, without habits, unpredictable. You cannot announce what he will do tomorrow. Tomorrow will decide. Let tomorrow come. He lives moment to moment.

For me, this is of great value. For me, Goshalak is a milestone in the history of humankind. That is why I take his name with respect. He is as valuable to me as Mahavira—not a jot less. But a follower of Mahavira is in difficulty.

So the Jain scriptures are filled with denunciation of Goshalak—with such abuse that sometimes one wonders how people who profess nonviolence could utter such things. How could those who talk of compassion, love, nonviolence descend to such pettiness? Even if Goshalak were bad, how could “good” people abuse so? If there was opposition, a principled opposition would have sufficed. But their opposition appears emotional, not doctrinal. In rivalry with Mahavira, his followers must have felt that only one person stood tall and spoke the exact opposite: “No character, no knowledge.”

Harder still—and very important—was Goshalak’s viewpoint: inactivism (akarmanyata). He said: nothing happens through doing. Neither sin nor merit is created by action. Doing is foolishness. Nothing has ever happened through doing. What happens is what must happen. What was to happen, happened. What will happen, will happen. He was a complete determinist, saying: everything is happening; our doing has no substance, so there is no point in struggle with life.

He was for flowing, not for swimming; not for struggle but for surrender. If anger arose, he would say, “Anger happened—what can I do?” If love arose, “Love happened—what can I do?” He accepted no “responsibility.” “In this vastness I am a tiny cog. Where this vastness is going, I don’t know. Whence it comes, I don’t know. Why anger arises in me—I don’t know.”

Understand carefully: for him, nothing results from man’s doing. There is no purushartha. This will even harmonize with Krishna’s Gita—but in another tone. Krishna says, “God is doing.” Goshalak does not even bring that in: “Who knows whether there is a God? I don’t know who is doing. I only know nothing happens by my doing. Krishna says, ‘Leave it to God.’ Goshalak says, ‘Leave it.’ Whether there is a God or not, I don’t know—but there is no need to carry the burden. All carrying is foolishness.”

If Goshalak is right, ego drops utterly; it cannot survive.

A follower of Krishna might still smuggle ego through the back door: “God is using me as an instrument; I am the chosen tool.” Even that can preserve vanity: “I was chosen; you were not. I am the medium, the instrument.” Hearing Krishna, Arjuna might understand, “I step aside,” but then think, “God chose me for the war of dharma.” Ego rises anew: “He did not choose Duryodhana or anyone else; he chose Arjuna. The hand of the Divine rests on Arjuna’s shoulder.”

That can be dangerous. It removes responsibility and gives divine sanction to whatever I want to do. Now God is in my pocket—I can take his name to justify my acts; and God remains silent, never announcing whom he chose.

Mahatma Gandhi believed God had chosen him as an instrument; he caught this from the Gita—reading it again and again, the idea possessed him. But who can prove that God did not choose Godse? Godse too thought, “What can I do? God chose me.” And do you think Jinnah did not feel similarly?

Who will decide who was actually chosen? In God’s name man simply stamps his own will.

Goshalak leaves not even that gap. “Whether God is or not, I don’t know. What is certain is that nothing happens by man’s effort. What is to be, is. Sometimes it happens and you think you won; sometimes it doesn’t and you think you lost. But what was to be, happens. When it happens, you strut; when it doesn’t, you shrink. You strut and shrink unnecessarily. You win and lose unnecessarily. What is to be, is.”

Understand: if this sinks in, that what is to be, is, then instantly you are free of tension. Meditation flowers. Ego falls away. If nothing happens by me, where can “I” stand? Krishna still says you can at least be an instrument. Goshalak says, not even an instrument—where are you?

It’s like this: a heavy elephant crosses an old, rickety bridge; the bridge trembles. A fly sits on the elephant. When they cross, the fly says, “Son!”—she says to the elephant—“Son, look how we shook that bridge!”

We are smaller than the fly. Think of the vastness! What difference does our being or not being make? Man is tiny even before the earth. The earth itself is tiny. The sun is tens of thousands of times bigger. And our sun is ordinary—there are vast suns visible as stars at night; distance makes them look small. There are suns millions of times bigger than ours. So far two billion suns are known—and there must be more. Our earth is nothing; and on this earth we are less than nothing.

Goshalak says: consider your ratio. Even what you think you “do,” nature is doing through you. A woman passes and desire arises in your mind. Did you create that desire? How could you? If it were not in you, how would it arise? Nature raised it. You were born with it.

So Goshalak’s vision is ultimate acceptance. What is, is. Bad is bad, good is good. There is neither a way to lose nor a way to win. He is a complete fatalist—and the amusing thing is, in his view there is no God. Marx too would have agreed with Goshalak, for he is a complete fatalist: no God, yet the world runs by a law—what Marx calls the law of history. Call it any name. What is certain is: man is not running it; it runs.

This inactivism is even more opposite to Mahavira, whose entire emphasis is purushartha; hence his very name, Mahavira—the great hero. Do, and you can attain. Fight, and you will win. If you drift, you’re lost. Swim—swim against the current. Inch by inch fight, only then one day will you arrive. Siddhi is not free; intense struggle is needed.

I don’t feel Mahavira himself was against Goshalak; he could not be. But a follower of Mahavira would be in a fix: if Mahavira is right, Goshalak must be wrong; if Goshalak is right, Mahavira is wrong.

A follower’s mind is small; he sees no bridge between opposites. One can arrive by Mahavira’s path; one can also arrive by Goshalak’s. On Mahavira’s path you make the ultimate effort of will—doing this, one day the will itself breaks and drops. Ego must be refined and purified; a moment comes when, purified, it evaporates like camphor. As at night when you light a lamp: first the flame consumes the oil; when the oil is gone, it burns the wick; when that too ends, the flame itself goes out. The flame burned the oil, then the wick, and when all was burned it could not continue—it was so pure it disappeared.

Mahavira’s path is the process of purifying the ego. The body drops first, then the mind; and one day suddenly you find the oil is gone, the wick is gone, and the flame dissolves into empty sky. Purified, the ego flies like camphor.

On Goshalak’s path there is no question of purification. The attempt to purify, he says, is futile. Why purify that which is not? Merely knowing that, is enough—right now the thing can happen.

So the Jains were troubled. Goshalak raised a deep controversy for the followers. Hence their anger. And because Goshalak left no scriptures, it became easier.

Imagine if all Hindu scriptures were lost and only Jain scriptures about Krishna remained—what would people conclude about Krishna? They would think he was a great hell-dweller, for it is written he went to the seventh hell. If Buddhist scriptures about Buddha were lost and only Hindu scriptures remained, what would they say? The Hindu scriptures say God created hell, but for ages no one sinned; no one went. The guards and managers of hell got bored: “Why did God make this? No sinners, and we are stuck here. Close the shop or send people.” God said, “Don’t worry, I will soon incarnate as Buddha and corrupt people’s minds.” He came as Buddha, corrupted people, and now hell is overcrowded—queues for centuries; no place inside.

All thanks to Buddha! The Hindus could not say Buddha was not divine; that would be too big a lie. So they accepted: he is divine—but came to induce sin, to corrupt. The device is clear: accept Buddha as divine, but add: “Don’t follow him, or you’ll go to hell. This is God’s prank, God’s trick.” Divine, yes—but beware.

The Jains too sent Krishna to the seventh hell—but their hands must have trembled. Such a brilliant, majestic, radiant being! To consign him to hell—one’s hand would shake. So they wrote: in the next creation, after dissolution and re-creation, Krishna will be the first Jain tirthankara. Relief—slap on one cheek, caress on the other.

If only the opponent’s scriptures remain, judgment is hard. That is Goshalak’s misfortune. He left no scripture. Why would one who does not believe in doing write anything? Some words must have circulated, some memories remained for a while, then faded.

Where there is mention—there is some in Buddhist texts—and there the tone is respectful. The reasons are political: their real conflict was with Mahavira, not with Goshalak who had died by then. Between Buddha and Mahavira there is a gap of about thirty years; Goshalak was older than Mahavira. When Mahavira was young and his ideas were spreading, Goshalak was already established. So Mahavira’s conflict was with the established Goshalak. One fights with the established.

Mahavira never said a word against Buddha; by the time Buddha’s fame arose, Mahavira was already fully acknowledged. He uttered not a word against Buddha. But Mahavira’s followers mention him—so mention that it seems Mahavira strongly opposed Goshalak. Buddhist texts oppose Mahavira; and when you oppose Mahavira, the enemy of your enemy becomes your friend—hence Goshalak is mentioned respectfully in Buddhist texts. They mock Mahavira a lot.

The Buddhists say: there was one who claimed omniscience—only one—who said he knew all three times. Yet sometimes, in the dark of morning, he stepped on a dog’s tail, and only when the dog barked did the omniscient one realize a dog was sleeping there—such is the knower of the three worlds! “Sometimes he stood begging at a door where no one lived; only when neighbors told him did he know. He knows past, present, future—but cannot tell whether anyone lives in the house before him!”

There are many such jokes about Mahavira in Buddhist texts. But they do not oppose Goshalak; they mention him with respect. Jain texts do not oppose Buddha, because Mahavira was already established and Buddha’s glory was recognized after Mahavira had departed.

But remember: it is unlikely that Mahavira himself said such things, or that Buddha mocked Mahavira. These are words put into their mouths by followers; scriptures were written long after. Buddhist scriptures were written five hundred years after Buddha’s death; Jain scriptures, four hundred years after Mahavira. For centuries the teachings lived in disciples’ memories—they must have edited heavily.

One section of Jains—the Digambaras—hold that all Jain scriptures are false, since in four hundred years everything got mixed up; those who remembered added their own accounts. This rings true. Some things of Mahavira remained, some were added, some lost.

So when I speak on Mahavira’s sutras, I do not speak on all. I set aside those unworthy of Mahavira and leave them. They do not befit him.

That Mahavira abused Goshalak is itself unseemly; so I leave such reports aside. Someone might say I am doing Mahavira an injustice by not speaking on all sutras. I reply: the earlier injustice was greater; I am dropping the wrong. What does not suit the mouth of one of Mahavira’s consciousness, I set aside. You would be shocked to hear how the Jain scriptures speak of Goshalak—condemnation, vile condemnation, and not even cultured condemnation—extremely low and dirty.

One such mention is notable. They say: when Goshalak was dying he realized his great mistake—opposing the tirthankara Mahavira all his life. Repentance dawned: “I opposed Mahavira, the tirthankara—my great sin.” And what did he say? To his few disciples—“two, four, ten,” for the Jains cannot admit he had more—he said, “Listen, what I taught all my life was wrong. What Mahavira says is one hundred percent right. He alone is the tirthankara. I was a deceiver. I am dying—remember this. All of you become Mahavira’s followers. And for my life’s sin, do this: when I die, do not carry my bier—drag my body on the road; spit on me; get dogs to urinate on me; drag my corpse through the city so the whole land knows Goshalak repented.”

That Jain scriptures speak like this is, at least, thought-provoking.

A man like Goshalak is lost to us. The mentions that remain are by opponents. Never take a final judgment from opponents. One thing is sure: what opponents say cannot be right. We must sift carefully. Looking through Buddhist and Jain sources, one thing emerges clearly: Goshalak’s doctrine of inaction.

“There is no cause of suffering among beings, nor any cause of purity. Effort and valor are of no use. Fate alone is everything. What happened had to happen. What will happen will happen. Only what is happening can happen. All is measured and fixed. Action, sin and merit make no difference.”

Taken negatively, this seems to grant people license to be irreligious: if sin and merit are irrelevant, do whatever you like.

But that would be to see him through opponents’ eyes. Look at him with sympathy—as I say, view Mahavira with sympathy, Buddha with sympathy, Krishna with sympathy, for there is no other way to understand; see Goshalak with the same sympathy. Not negatively, but constructively.

The constructive meaning is this: if nothing happens by my doing, where can worry survive? Worry arises from the idea that my doing can change things—then tension, restlessness, anxiety are born. Sometimes, by coincidence, your intention and the movement of the whole line up; then you are inflated with ego. Most often they do not; then you fill with sadness and despair.

If Goshalak is right, neither sorrow has a cause nor happiness a cause. What was to be, has been. What is, is what had to be. What will be, will be. You become quiet of yourself: no tension, no anxiety, no race, no struggle, no strutting, no losing, no gloom, no grief.

In that griefless state which you will taste, Goshalak calls that meditation. It is not something you do; when doing drops, what remains is meditation.

Even the word “meditation” he avoids, because it still smells of doing. We say, “We are going to meditate.” Goshalak says, “What will you gain by doing?” And if you have meditated you know: what does doing do? You can jump and shout, or sit with eyes closed—what happens? Yes, sometimes it happens that it happens—by coincidence it flowers while you are “doing.”

Goshalak says: that is only coincidence; even had you not been “meditating,” it would have happened at that moment. He is not saying, “Don’t meditate.” He is saying: lift your vision from doing to happening. When the burden of doing drops from a person, when he leaves everything to existence, his meditation happens.

For me, Goshalak is as precious as Mahavira. Goshalak is a tirthankara. His yoga is effortless samadhi. His discipline is effortless acceptance of life. No negation, no rejection, no opposition, no repression. However life comes, embrace it as it is, in welcome. That is his vision.

If you grasp Goshalak constructively, you will find much resonance with Krishnamurti. But the Jains could not see that constructive side.

We never look for the constructive side of an opponent. In our own we see only the good; in the opponent only the bad. As long as we cling to “our” philosophy, tradition, scripture, doctrine, we cannot see rightly.

A Jain friend came from Rajasthan. He said, “A Jain monk asked me, ‘Where are you going? That man is a Goshalak.’” I said, “He spoke rightly. In me, if one looks, he can find Goshalak easily.” The poor fellow was upset—being a Jain, to him “Goshalak” sounded like an abuse. He asked, “Won’t you say something? Give a statement?” I said, “He is not wrong. There is something of Goshalak in me. I too say: nothing happens by man’s doing. If I ask you to do, it is only so that by doing you discover that doing brings nothing. Without doing, a feeling might remain that perhaps, had I done, something would have happened. So I say, do—try it out. Scratch that itch too.”

So I tell you: meditate, pray, worship. Yet nothing ever happens by doing. Doing and doing, one day intelligence dawns—if there is intelligence it will—“What am I doing? Nothing happens by my doing.”

That day right knowledge descends. That day your samadhi ripens. That day the crop is ready to reap. The day you see “nothing happens by me,” surrender happens. Even now, when you “surrender,” you say, “I surrendered.” Can anyone “do” surrender? If you did it, it hasn’t happened; it is your act, and you can take it back any day: one day you said, “I surrender,” next day, “I’m taking it back.” What can anyone do?

People come to me and say, “We surrender to you.” I say, “As long as you are ‘doing’ it, keep it with you—because what is ‘done’ is a nuisance; you’ll return to ask for it back.”

What is done can be returned. What happens cannot be returned.

Love happens. You say, “I fell in love.” There is nothing of your doing in it. That is why Jesus is right to say God is like love—it happens; it is not done.

Meditation is like love—it happens; it is not done. But until you tire of doing, until you are thoroughly run and exhausted, you do not rest. When your legs give way, when ego falls of its own exhaustion—“Nothing happens by me”—you sit down, and in that very moment something happens.

So it was with Buddha. Perhaps the Buddhists’ respectful mention of Goshalak is also because of Buddha’s own enlightenment—he strove for six years as Mahavira strove for twelve, tried everything, found nothing, dropped it, and the very night he dropped, enlightenment happened.

So Goshalak’s point must have appealed to Buddha: what he says is right, though dangerous if taken negatively—“no need to do anything; let the thief steal, the murderer kill, the cheat cheat, the drunkard drink.” Then you have misunderstood. Ask a drunkard how many times he tried to quit—where does it quit? And if someone has quit, ask honestly: “Did it quit by your effort?” If honest, he will say, “I tried; it didn’t quit. When it was to quit, it quit.” Often effort makes it cling more. What you try to forget you remember more—in “forgetting,” you remember. What will you do?

You want to erase someone from your mind, but whenever you say “Let me not remember,” you remember. So remembrance grows. Yes, sometimes a day comes and it is gone—no longer comes.

Goshalak says only this: in life everything happens naturally; don’t bring effort in.

He is right. How many courts are there; how many thieves punished; what change has occurred? As laws have multiplied, thieves multiplied. Make laws and thieves and lawyers multiply. Make more laws—more thieves, more lawyers. Law does not stop crime. Build prisons; it makes no difference.

Western psychologists now say prisons are dangerous—they turn out more expert criminals. A novice pickpocket lands in jail for six months; there he meets grand masters doing fifteen, twenty years; six months of satsang with masters and he returns stronger, having learned where he slipped—now he won’t be caught there again. It rarely happens that someone who went to jail once never returns; he repeats, now with greater skill.

So psychologists say your prisons do not deter crime; they educate—universities of crime. And you think punishment works: flog them, starve them, lock them in darkness. You think perhaps that will stop crime.

In England a hundred years ago, pickpockets were flogged at crossroads so the whole town could see what happens to a thief. They had to stop the practice—because crowds gathered and pockets were picked there. A man is being flogged for theft—his skin ripped, blood flowing—and the crowd, entranced by violence (what Mahavira calls adharma-dhyana), becomes so absorbed that pickpockets go to work. People who never attained concentration achieve it there.

They realized such punishments are useless. You think people will learn; instead pickpockets seize the opportunity.

The systems of crime and punishment so far are futile. They may give society some pleasure in hurting the offender—some taste of violence—but they are foolish. A man murders and we sentence him to death: the very sin he committed we commit, and we say, “Because you killed, we will kill you.”

A schoolteacher asked children, “Do you torment animals? Have you ever protected one?” A boy raised his hand: “Yes, once. A boy was beating a dog, so I gave that boy a good beating.” He thinks he had compassion for the dog! Our courts do the same.

Punishment does not stop crime—nor will it. Who changes by effort? Reflect on your own life. You’ve lived forty or fifty years. How much effort have you made—what change has occurred? Or are you the same? Then you will understand Goshalak’s insight. In all this striving you have carried enormous anxiety and tension. Goshalak says: perhaps because of that very anxiety and tension you have been so busy trying to change yourself that, even if the energy of the whole had come to change you, it must have returned—you were not available.

Drop worry. Leave it to existence. Let what is happening, happen. Try Goshalak’s experiment once as well.

Mahavira, Buddha, Krishna, Patanjali are the accepted tirthankaras of the world. Goshalak is an unaccepted tirthankara. But the accepted ones have not made the world noticeably better.

So sometimes I think we must attend also to the rejected ones—perhaps they carry a key. Those we accepted we accepted because their remedy suited our disease. Our disease is the itch to be the doer.

Mahavira says, “Do meditation; do austerity.” That pleases. Goshalak says, “What will doing do?” That does not please. When Mahavira says “Do,” you feel, “Yes, something is in my hands.” Goshalak says nothing is in anyone’s hands; you want such a man to be quiet—for he exposes your reality, your helplessness. With Mahavira, ego can hide behind religion; with Goshalak, no cover works.

You will be surprised to know: Mahavira was naked; so was Goshalak. But the reasons differ. Mahavira’s nakedness: renounce what society gave—culture, civilization, all of it; even clothes are from the world, laden with meanings; drop all, go within—even the body will be dropped, then how much more the clothes. Become inward.

Goshalak’s nakedness: we come naked, we will go naked—so why this fuss in between? Why this effort? Babies are born naked—so fine; that’s acceptance.

In Mahavira’s nakedness, discipline; in Goshalak’s, spontaneity. If you meet Mahavira naked, you will bow—his nakedness smells of yoga, sadhana, tapas. If you meet Goshalak naked, you’ll say, “A hippie!” For he says: “We like being naked; you like clothes—fine. Let us be; you be you. We don’t command you; kindly do not command us.”

Goshalak says only this: each follow his own nature—be natural.

He neither speaks of heaven nor hell. He even joked—though no full doctrine survives. Mahavira says there are seven hells. Asked how many hells there are, Goshalak says, “Seven hundred.” He is only joking—saying, “Are you mad? There is neither hell nor heaven. There is only you and your consciousness; the rest is the net of doctrines.”

Tell that sermonizing moralist to drop talk of the hereafter—
What is there in this world, that that world will have any better?

Those simple-minded preachers—tell them: stop talking of the next life. If there is nothing to treasure here, what will be there?

Often those who promise much in the next world impress you because they inflame your greed. They say: nothing here; there, in heaven, everything. Why collect stones? Why gather potsherds? There is nothing in gold and women—there is joy in heaven! They arouse your greed and fear; they incite your illnesses.

Men like Goshalak arouse neither greed nor fear. They simply say: become yourself; be simple; move with nature; let the natural order become your order. Such teaching cannot generate many sects.

A popular couplet says:
“A little is fate—but the craft of effort is also there.
Beneath the garb of ruin there is construction as well.
Behind the veil of darkness there is illumination too.
O longed-for joys of tomorrow, turn your gaze this way as well!”

People live like this—on greed, trust, hope. With tirthankaras like Goshalak there is no medicine of hope. He tells you exactly as it is. He gives you not a shred of consolation.

You ask, “Is the soul immortal?” He says, “How to know until one dies? Ask me when I die. I’m living now. Or you die and find out. What is the point of knowing beforehand? And how could one know beforehand? For now, live; death will come—see then. If there is immortality, you will meet it; if not, you won’t. Why worry now?”

Goshalak must have shaken India hard. That is why the Jain scriptures are so disturbed. He must have uprooted the foundations of doctrines. He gave man such a message of naturalness that religion, scripture, tradition had no foothold left.

Yesterday I was reading a song:
“I am the spring wind, I am the wind!
I climbed the mahua tree and patted it soundly,
Fell with a thump and climbed the mango again,
Shook its ears and whispered,
Ran down to the green fields
And lashed the waving wheat
For hours and hours on end...”

Such men—like Goshalak—come like a gale. They slap human consciousness awake and shake it.

They shed the dust and grime from awareness. Such men do not found sects. Their religion is very pure. They are like pure gold. To make ornaments you must alloy gold; twenty-four carat cannot be shaped—gold is too soft. As sects are crafted—gold ornaments made—adulteration enters. The more organized a sect, the more deformed it becomes.

The Jain sect is highly organized: small, but planned, arranged; every boundary line clear—doors, thresholds, courtyards, fences all exact. The Jain sect is precise like mathematics. Men like Goshalak are like poetry—vague, misty, mysterious.

We are here seeking a path; we want someone to tell us the way. Goshalak meets us on the road and says, “There is no path—what are you seeking?” That gives us no peace. “Move aside,” we say, “we want to ask the way.” We are restless without a path. “What is the goal of life?” If we meet Goshalak, he says, “There is no goal. Life moves goal-less. There is nowhere to arrive.”

Life is like a dance, not a journey. There is no final halt. Yes, there are halts on the way, to rest; morning rises and you move again. It is an endless pilgrimage.

But that brings no reassurance. We want someone to tell us clearly where we are going, why we are going—so fear ends, accounts balance; what to do and not do; what keeps us on the path and what takes us off.

People come to me and ask: “Why don’t you give us a code, a clear discipline? Tell us exactly what to do and not do—then we will manage.” They want me to assure them: “If you strain your water before drinking, liberation is guaranteed. If you eat no meat, liberation is guaranteed. If you do not farm, liberation is guaranteed.” Then they can start doing these little things—easy enough.

But I tell them: liberation is not so cheap as to be had by straining water. If it were, all who strain water would be in moksha. Think a little: would you like to live in a heaven where all the water-strainers have gathered? It will be drab, dull—no celebration of life there.

Goshalak was a mast fakir—ecstatic, singing, dancing. Jain scriptures oppose him also because, at times, gatherings were held around him—people dancing. In one town a courtesan invited him; Goshalak went, dancing. In Jain scriptures, opposition is natural. They say he died in a prostitute’s house. Who knows if true? There is no reason to trust Jain accounts. Yet it could be true, for to a man like Goshalak there is no difference between sinner and saint; he sees the same divine in the harlot as in the holy—no distinction.

Distinctions belong to small minds, to the unwise. Goshalak lived in non-division. He was a paramahansa.

They look contradictory; they are not. And whoever has been a truly awakened being in this world will always appear paradoxical. Life is paradoxical, so whoever mirrors life in its suchness will also appear paradoxical.

Only the pundit is not paradoxical. The knower will always be paradoxical, because the knower does not prune life, he does not force a framework onto it. For him, life as it is, is accepted. He simply reflects life, and whatever is in life gets reflected in him. He functions as a mirror.

Now Mahavira says, asharan—seek no refuge. Do not go into anyone’s shelter. Yet disciples come to Mahavira and say, “Siddhe sharanam pavajjhami.” O perfected one! We come to your refuge. “Arihante sharanam pavajjhami.” O victorious, realized one! We come to your refuge.

Mahavira accepts them too. Then it seems all upside down: Mahavira says, “No refuge,” and yet those who seek refuge are accepted; he initiates them, ordains them into sannyas, points them to the path of truth.

So a contradiction appears—but it only appears. When Mahavira makes disciples he is saying only this: “I stand a little higher than you. You are under the tree; I am up in the tree. From here I can see a bit farther. So long as I am up in this tree, you can make use of my directions. You too can climb this tree.”

On the road you ask someone, “Which way is the river?” Someone points it out—does he thereby become your guru? Have you taken refuge in him? You thank him and walk toward the river. You don’t fall at his feet, vowing never to leave him because he showed you the way. He would say, “If I showed you the way to the river, I made no mistake—go to the river.”

We don’t make this mistake when asking the way to a river, but when asking the way to God we often do. That is why Mahavira says: listen, understand, contemplate what I say—then catch your own path. Walk your own road. Don’t cling to my feet and stop. I have committed no offense—why harass me? Go. I’ve told you what I know. If you can use it, use it.

So on one side Mahavira says, “No refuge,” because he knows man is very foolish.

Man is so foolish he clings to milestones and sits down. Though the milestone bears an arrow: “Go ahead. Delhi is far,” he hugs the stone to his chest and sits as if Delhi has been reached—because “Delhi” is written on the stone. Though it also says “1,000 miles” or “2,000 miles,” he pays no heed.

You never sit by a milestone and say, “What a contradiction! ‘Delhi’ is written here and ‘2,000 miles’ is written too! If it’s Delhi, fine—the stone is Delhi. If it’s 2,000 miles away, why write ‘Delhi’ here? Then write ‘Delhi’ there, 2,000 miles away.”

Mahavira says: becoming a disciple is one thing; going into refuge is another. To become a disciple simply means: someone has arrived, someone has known, someone has awakened—take the benefit. Someone wandered long and then found the path—learn a little from him. But stand on your own feet. Bow before the one who knows, but bow so that you may rise and walk. Do not go on bowing, clutching his feet so you will never let go.

If you do that, you will not be able to walk, and you will also hinder a walker. Whether disciples reach through gurus or not I don’t know—but that many drown their gurus, this much is certain. They cling so hard that neither do they go, nor do they let him go.

So Mahavira says: learn from the awakened. He sits atop the tree; his view reaches farther. You stand below in the darkness of the valley; he stands on the mountain peak. His vision is vast. Listen to him, understand him. Think, reflect. If your intelligence concurs and your heart beats with his, then walk.

But remember: the walking will have to be done by you.

Hence he says asharan—no refuge. You cannot walk with someone else’s feet. The walking will have to be done by you. He keeps emphasizing: someone may show the path, someone may give you a map—but the walking will be yours.

In ordinary life we are always asking for support: husband’s support, wife’s support, father’s, son’s, friend’s. We have become addicted to crutches. So when we enter the life of dharma, the old habit says, “Support! A guru’s support.”

This incessant search for support will not let you become self-anchored. When will you become your own support? When will you stand on your own feet? When will you see with your own eyes, hear with your own ears? This search for support has crippled you.

A mother helps a small child to walk, holding his hand. But this is not a permanent arrangement, not a fixed order. She holds his hand so he gains confidence that he can walk. Then the child himself begins to pull his hand away.

Have you noticed? The child himself says, “Don’t hold my hand.” And the mother who keeps clutching the child’s hand tightly is not a true mother. And the child who, even after learning to walk, goes on clinging to his mother’s hem will never become mature.

So a contradiction appears: one day the mother says, “Take my hand, walk.” Then slowly she loosens her hold, then removes her hand. If the child tries to grab, she moves away: “Now you walk.” She goes a little distance and says, “Come.” The child starts coming toward her. Once the child gains confidence—“I have legs; they are my legs”—maturity begins.

It is the same in the realm of truth. The guru will hold your hand for a little while, because for lifetimes you have not walked. You have forgotten you have legs. For lifetimes you have not flown—you have forgotten you have wings. For a while he lets you fly; for a little while in the sky you remember your wings. Then he says, “Go. The infinite sky is before you—fly. The whole sky is yours. Claim it.”

I had thought my goal was hard to reach—
there is, after all, the support of a smiling silver arm.
I must, in the end, pass through the desert of darkness—
there is, after all, a shining, radiant star.

At first it is fine: when you begin to walk, the support of a silver arm—good; a gleaming star—good.

I must, in the end, pass through the desert of darkness—
But ultimately you must pass through the darkness yourself. Take hope from that distant star, take faith from it—but do not sit down exhausted because of it. Do not say, “Now what need have I to do anything? The star is there.” Do not say to Mahavira, “You are a Tirthankara, so what is there for me to do? You have arrived; now you will take me there.”

Therefore Mahavira says: do not seek refuge. Because of refuge-seeking, religion has been corrupted.

All these temples, mosques, gurdwaras, all this strife you see in the world—this is the strife of refuge-seeking.

O god of justice! When will you teach human beings
to protect themselves?
Deliverance has been given to them a hundred thousand times,
yet every time the savior has sold them out.
O god of justice! Keep the protectors confined in heaven;
O gods, send no more saviors for mankind.
People cry, “We have indeed received salvation,
but alas, we are dying of hunger.”
And he says:
“Many fritters of imagination are cooking
in my father’s house.
Be patient—then you shall eat your fill.”
People say:
“Can you not give us a piece of ordinary bread?”
He commands:
“No. Only upon reaching paradise will you be fed.
And why ordinary?
It will be wondrous, priceless, unparalleled.”
O god of justice! When will you teach human beings
that they themselves must protect themselves,
that they must protect themselves by their own hands?

Mahavira is a savior, but he does not want, on the basis of salvation, to destroy your very life. Every true guru will say the same.

Bow—without bowing, no one learns.
Become a disciple—without humility, no one learns.
Spread your begging bowl—but do not lose trust in your own legs. Do not imagine that since you have grasped the savior’s feet, salvation is done.

Christianity believes that Jesus has dissolved everyone’s sins. Could there be a bigger untruth? Two thousand years have passed since Jesus. If he ended everyone’s sins, what has been happening in the world for two thousand years? Are there no sins? In these two thousand years more sins have occurred than perhaps ever before. These have been years of human sorrow, pain, wounds—of sin, hatred, violence, wars. Man has become more and more ferocious. And still Christianity keeps repeating that Jesus has liberated all.

This is a great falsehood. But there is a logic behind it: Adam sinned for everyone; because of him all became sinners! How can one become a sinner because of another’s sin? Yet if Adam sinned and all became sinners, then Jesus did virtue for all and all became virtuous. Then all that is needed is that each person become a Christian—enough.

It becomes too cheap. Therefore Mahavira says: do not take refuge. Touch the feet, but do not take refuge. Bow, become a disciple, be initiated, learn—but the journey will have to be undertaken by you. Do not mistake the savior for salvation. From the savior come only pointers. You will have to walk.

Do not take the scripture to be truth itself, and do not take the teacher to be the destination.

That is why he seems to speak contradictory things: on the one hand he gives initiation; on the other he says, “Remain without refuge.”

There is similarity, and there is difference. To be refuge-less means to stand on your own feet. To be helpless means you had hoped to stand on someone else’s feet, that hope has slipped away, and the strength to stand on your own has not arisen. Helplessness means you still yearn for a prop, but it is not forthcoming. Helplessness is negative. Refuge-lessness is affirmative.

Understand it as I often say. A man is sitting alone in his room and feels lonely. Loneliness means he wishes someone were there: someone comes to mind, he wants someone’s presence; the absence hurts—so loneliness.

And then a man sits alone absorbed in meditation. You cannot call it loneliness—it is aloneness. No one comes to his mind; he is brimming with his own pulsation, immersed in his own joy.

Both are alone to an outside observer. But one is filled with the memory of the other, and the other is awake to the remembrance of himself. They are vastly different.

So it is with refuge-less and helpless. Helpless means there is a need for support, a habit of support—and the support is not found. Then a person seems helpless: now he’ll drown, any moment he’ll drown. What to do, what not to do? Where to go?

Shall I stop on the way and catch my breath? That is not my habit.
Shall I turn back? That is not my nature.
And that some companion might appear—such is not my fate.
O grief of the heart, what shall I do?
O wildness of the heart, what shall I do?
A flame has leapt up in my heart—what shall I do?
My goblet has overflowed—what shall I do?
The wound in my chest has begun to give off fragrance—what shall I do?
O grief of the heart, what shall I do? O wildness of the heart, what shall I do?
Shall I turn back? That is not my nature.
Shall I stop on the way to catch my breath? That is not my habit.
And that some companion might appear—such is not my fate.

He cannot go back; there is no way to go. To stop—such is not his habit. To find a comrade—such is not his fortune.

O grief of the heart, what shall I do?
O wildness of the heart, what shall I do?

Then a person appears very helpless—like someone drowning in the ocean. Not even a straw to cling to. A boat is far off; not even a straw.

So the helpless state is negative. The refuge-less state is affirmative. Refuge-less means: I have my own legs. Refuge-less means: I will swim; I don’t need a boat—let alone a straw.

One who has attained the refuge-less feeling—if you offer him a boat he will say, “No, forgive me. Thank you! Very kind of you to think of me. But I’ll swim across. Why take any outside support? When one can swim, why sit in a boat? Thank you—much obliged—but I’ll swim.”

Refuge-less means reliance on one’s own swimming.

Helpless means: I searched for a boat; not even a straw is found. Not even an illusion left to hold on to. In helplessness a person weeps, screams, calls out. Often in helplessness one begins to pray, to worship, to remember God. Such a God is based only on fear.

In the refuge-less feeling, meditation awakens. In the refuge-less feeling one becomes so assured of one’s own strength, self-confidence becomes so alert, faith in oneself so deep, that no matter how vast the ocean, these two hands feel bigger than the ocean. No matter how vast the sky, these two wings will cross it—one is filled with such trust.

One who has attained refuge-lessness you will find cheerful, dancing. The helpless you will find sad, disturbed, searching—hoping for another dream, another prop.

Mahavira says: do not become helpless; become refuge-less.

Helpless is what we already are. That is why we search for supports everywhere—temple, mosque, scripture, Purana, Quran, guru. Someone who will tell us, “Don’t be afraid.” If only we could get some amulet or charm to tie on and be at ease.

Mahavira says: truth is not so cheap. It must be sought. The price must be paid.

You will have to swim in this vast, storm-tossed ocean. There are waves; there is the danger of drowning. But without passing through that danger and risk, no one reaches the ultimate shore. So—refuge-less.

Now the only fear is that you may take refuge-less to mean “learn nothing from anyone.” You do have to learn to swim. Learn it from someone who knows how to swim—from one you have seen swimming in the ocean. Then go only by swimming. Do not ask for the swimmer’s shoulder to be your support.

Therefore Mahavira says: be a disciple, but do not take refuge. No taking refuge. Keep yourself ready to learn; do not close your mind. Once you have learned, use what you have known. Walk by the support of what you have known. Ask for no other support. One who walks by his own support, slowly becomes stronger. Slowly, fear drops from within, insecurity drops away, doubts fall off. And what Gurdjieff has called inner centering, crystallization, is attained.

Self-trust ultimately becomes the doorway to realizing the Self. To emphasize self-trust, Mahavira speaks of the refuge-less feeling. But there is much to learn from those who have realized the Self. In truth, those who take their refuge learn nothing—because they say, “What is the point of learning? Now we have you.”

I have heard of a man who was blind. He had eight sons and eight daughters-in-law. The doctors said, “Your eyes can be cured—you will need an operation.” He said, “What will I do with it? What is the use? My wife has two eyes, my eight sons have sixteen eyes, my eight daughters-in-law have sixteen eyes. I have thirty-four eyes available to me. If I don’t have two, what difference does it make?”

But as fate would have it, the very night he refused, the house caught fire. Those thirty-four eyes ran out. The blind man kept shouting, groping for the way. He fell amid the flames and died, burnt to ashes. At the time of death there was only one feeling in his mind: if only I had my own eyes today! Those who ran out—wife, sons, daughters-in-law—remembered him, but they remembered only after they had reached outside. When your own life is in danger, who remembers whom?

Therefore Mahavira says: your own eyes. Learn from the seeing, but do not make another’s eyes your support.

Until you get your own eyes, keep learning, keep practicing—but keep your effort directed toward getting your own eyes. Only with your own eyes can anyone behold truth.

For the direct seeing of truth there is no means other than one’s own eyes.

That’s all for today.