Jyun Macchali Bin Neer #7

Anand Maitreya! This sutra is profoundly pregnant with meaning. Truth cannot be found through doubt. Even if, by some accident, truth were to come near you while you are doubting, you would still miss it. The eye of doubt never allows truth to enter within. Even if truth knocks at your door, you won’t open it; doubt will say, “It’s only a gust of wind.” Even if God himself were to stand before doubt, doubt would put a question mark upon him.

Where there is no problem, doubt creates one; it manufactures problems. Doubt has only one expertise: creating problems. It has no solutions. And even if you somehow cobble together a solution, your doubt will immediately spin out newer problems.

In doubt, problems sprout like leaves on a tree. Chop them a hundred times; they will grow back, and the foliage will only become denser.

Doubt means: I am not ready to accept; there is no attitude of acceptance within me—only refusal, rejection, denial. Doubt is negation—no. And the person who lives in “no” becomes closed—doors shut, windows shut. Not only that—if there are tiny cracks or little joints anywhere, a doubter will seal even those. He gets buried in his grave while alive. He dies while living. Doubt is death. You may walk, rise, work, but an invisible tomb will surround you; it won’t let you commune with the sun, with the winds, with the flowers, with the stars—it won’t let you connect at all. The function of doubt is to break your connectedness.

Doubt is a wall, not a bridge; it doesn’t join, it severs. Wherever doubt appears, the relationship is instantly cut off, broken. In the house of doubt, truth cannot be a guest; it’s impossible. Entry won’t be granted there. Doubt cannot be a host. That capacity belongs to shraddha.

Keep in mind: shraddha does not mean belief. That must be the very first thing to remember, or you will miss. Belief is the opposite of doubt; shraddha is beyond both belief and doubt. Shraddha is altogether a different dimension. Belief merely covers up doubt, hides it—like a wound covered with a beautiful garment. Others may not see it, but how will you forget? You are naked; you have put on clothes. For others you are no longer naked, but for yourself you remain naked. Everyone is naked inside their clothes. How can you forget that beneath the garment you are nude? That’s impossible. Yes, to others you are not naked because a piece of cloth has come between you and them. But for you the nakedness is closer; the garment is outside, far away.

Belief is like clothing. It will cover your doubts. Others will think, “What a devout soul!”

Those who ring temple bells, perform rituals, say their prayers in mosques, raise hallelujahs in churches and gurdwaras—these are believers. If only the earth were that full of shraddha! Then could such a deranged, diseased, rotten humanity have arisen? If there were true shraddha, the flowers of truth would bloom—endlessly. The earth would be filled with fragrance; it would be heaven.

But look: people go to the mosque for namaz, and you know the saying they then enact—“Ram on the lips, knife under the arm.” In the Eidgah at Moradabad, where recently Hindu–Muslim riots took place and some one hundred fifty people were killed, people had gone to pray. Why did they carry knives and guns? What kind of prayer is that—performed with knives and guns? That was preparation for rioting. What value remained in the namaz? The upper garment is very thin; the inner reality is deep. Hindus fight, burn mosques. Muslims fight, burn temples, break idols. Qurans burn, the Gita burns, the Bible burns. The earth suffers so much because of so-called religious people that you wonder when we will wake up and rethink.

In human history, more sin has been committed in the name of religion than in the name of anything else. Even politics lags behind; religion has outdone it there too.

Surely, these are believers—not people of shraddha! There can be no difference between a Hindu of shraddha and a Muslim of shraddha, a Christian of shraddha or a Jain of shraddha. Shraddha has one color, one form, one flavor. Shraddha is a single nectar. Whoever drinks of it—what does it matter who he is? Shraddha connects you to the One God, to the One Truth. Beliefs don’t join; they divide. I said doubt divides—and beliefs divide too. Belief is only the garment thrown over doubt. Belief is a deception. Do not mistake belief for shraddha.

That is the mistake we have made. We have taken belief to be shraddha. We teach every child belief. No sooner is a child born than religious conditioning begins. What does your “religious samskara” mean? It means: impose beliefs upon him—make him a Hindu, a Jain, a Buddhist. Make him into something. Whatever you are, make him that. And what a wonder—you never pause to ask what you yourself have gained by being a Hindu, a Jain, a Buddhist all your life! What do you have in your hands? What is in your life-breath? No lamp is seen lit within you. There is no celebration in your life. At least don’t ruin this child; warn him. Tell him: I lived as a believer and gained nothing. Don’t live as a believer. Seek shraddha. I could not find it; I wasted my life—do not waste yours.

But the opposite happens. Parents force their biases onto their children. They are eager for “religious education”—let it happen fast. A Muslim child is born, a Jewish child is born—“Perform the circumcision quickly!” Why quickly? Because he may grow up and refuse. And he will refuse when grown: “If God wanted me circumcised, he would have sent me circumcised. Would he leave such a thing to your hands? Whatever was necessary for the body, he has already done. What right have you to cut and carve the body?” So do it quickly; don’t delay. Quickly put on the sacred thread, perform the initiation. Because once he grows, he will begin to doubt, to question—then it will be hard to manage. Now, stuff it in. He has no awareness; no questions stand before him. He is helpless, dependent on you. If you keep him, he lives; if you kill him, he dies. He is in your fist. Once he stands on his own and says, “Why should I tie this cord? I won’t. I don’t see any meaning in it. Why should I bow in your temples? I see only stones.” Then you’ll be in trouble.

That’s why people are so eager: hurry up with religious education! And what does “religious education” mean? It means thrusting superstitions in so deeply that they mingle with his blood and bone. Let him grow with them, so that he does not even remember when they were planted. When he becomes an adult, he finds he has grown with these beliefs—as if he brought them from God’s house.

If the choice is only between belief and doubt, I say: choose doubt. Because doubt is natural; belief is unnatural. And my experience is that if someone honestly chooses doubt, then today or tomorrow he will have to seek shraddha—because living with doubt is impossible. Doubt is like an arrow lodged in your chest—you will have to pull it out. But belief puts on ointments and bandages. Belief is more dangerous than doubt. Beware of belief. With belief, the arrow remains embedded and the ointment is smeared over it. Belief is like chloroform: you go on rotting while you are kept unconscious. You’re reassured that all is well. In that illusion, you become accustomed even to what is wrong. Slowly you become used to your wounds; you take them as an inevitable part of life.

So, if the only options are belief or doubt, I say choose doubt. At least doubt is God-given. Whatever you have brought with birth has some significance. You won’t find truth through doubt—but no one can live in doubt. Doubt is a noose around the neck—and who wouldn’t want to cut the noose? Break the noose, and shraddha appears. Shraddha lies buried beneath the doubt—while you are piling belief on top of the doubt. Remember, you go even farther from shraddha. There was already one rock of doubt; then you placed another rock—belief. Shraddha recedes even more. Now more digging will be needed.

A great musician, Wagner, whenever someone came to learn from him, would first ask, “Have you learned music anywhere else?” If the answer was yes, he would say, “Then my fee will be double. If you haven’t learned at all and we must start from ABC, it’s fine—my normal fee. But if you’ve learned elsewhere, it will be double.” Naturally, those who had practiced for eight or ten years would protest, “You are speaking the wrong way. We have worked for ten years! You should charge us less. Those who begin with ABC should pay more.”

Wagner would say, “My experience is otherwise. What you have learned, I will first have to unlearn for you. Only then can we begin. The work will begin from the ABC anyway. First I must clean your slate; only then can I write.”

That is my experience too. I agree with Wagner—he spoke to the point. The “believers” who come to me demand far more work. With doubters, less work is needed—only one rock to break. With believers there are two rocks. First break their belief—and they cling to belief, because belief comforts. Doubt offers no comfort. Everyone wants to be free of doubt. Doubt is natural; so is the desire to be free of it. Belief is unnatural, imposed; hence there is no deep desire to be free of belief—God never intended you to fall into belief. Belief is the invention of priests and pundits, the invention of exploiters who suck your blood.

Belief is counterfeit currency; it passes in the name of shraddha, but it is fake. Belief means borrowed, stale. Can truth ever be stale or borrowed? Belief is like the dried rose you sometimes find pressed in a book—dead, without fragrance or color. Shraddha is like a blossom on the bush right now—sap flowing, alive, breathing, sunbeams entering it, winds caressing it, a heartbeat within it. God resides in it now.

The difference between shraddha and belief is like the difference between paper flowers and living flowers; between counterfeit coins and real coins. Don’t fall into belief. That’s why I long for the day when we stop giving belief to our children. In fact, we should teach them how to keep an edge on doubt—sharpen the sword of doubt—so that no belief can capture them, keep doubt alert so they don’t get caught in the net of belief.

And doubt has one great quality: it will keep you restless, unquiet, disturbed. There is no consolation in it, no safety. It is like sleeping on thorns—you can’t even turn over.

Belief gives you a very comfortable bed. Sleep to your heart’s content; sell the horses and sleep! Waking up never arises. Belief narcotizes; doubt keeps you alert. Doubt does not give truth, but it does one great thing: it constantly prods you to be free of itself; it says, “Go beyond me.” You will have to go beyond doubt.

Just consider: you’ve assumed that the soul is immortal; you’ve not known it. This “assuming” that the soul is immortal—once you accept it, what need remains to experience the soul? Assumed—finished. Drop that belief, and a throbbing will arise in your being, a restlessness, a storm, a cyclone. Everything will tremble. Death is knocking at the door—any moment it can come. And whether there is a soul or not, even that is uncertain—let alone immortality. Is there anything after death? That’s not the only question—does it even exist now? How will you sit on such embers? You cannot sit long atop a smoldering volcano. This doubt will take you into inquiry; it will set you in motion in the search. And the final fruit of that search is shraddha.

Shraddha is knowing, not assuming. Shraddha is experience. Shraddha is meditation, not borrowed knowledge. Doubt is ignorance; belief is knowledge—borrowed, stale, secondhand, parroted. Shraddha is one’s own experience—seeing, union with truth.

Seek shraddha through doubt; shraddha will unite you with truth. This is a right sutra. Make doubt into a ladder to reach the temple of shraddha. Yes, you have to walk on the razor’s edge; there is no other way, no cheaper path. Only thus comes polish, movement, flow, energy. You wake under challenges. Doubt challenges you.

Learn to use doubt; don’t suppress it. I want you to be free of doubt, but no one ever became free by repression. What you repress must be repressed again and again—there is never freedom from it. It remains inside; given a chance, it sprouts again, like a seed pressed into the soil that sprouts with the rains. Keep pressing; shoots will come again. Doubt will stand up again.

Doubt cannot be suppressed; it can be dissolved. And the method is: live it—live doubt in its totality. What is the fear? Walk the entire staircase of doubt. You will be amazed: doubt leads to shraddha. People told you the opposite—that you will never reach shraddha through doubt. That is false. I have reached shraddha through doubt; from my experience I say this is fundamentally true. No one has ever reached shraddha except through doubt. Yes, it is true that doubt does not lead to truth; doubt leads to shraddha. And once you arrive at shraddha, the ground is ready. You don’t have to “go” to truth—truth comes on its own. Your task is to come from doubt to shraddha, and then wait—patiently. Truth itself will arrive.

Kabir says: I searched and searched for God, and did not find him. God is not found by your searching. Where will you search? In which direction? In Kaba, in Kashi, or on Kailash—where? He has no address. Will you wander in scriptures? That is wandering in trackless jungles; once lost there, it is hard to get out. You will search in the Gita, the Quran, the Bible—and get stuck. Truth cannot be “searched out.”

Kabir is right: I searched much, I did not find—but something happened while I searched: I was lost. I did not find him, but I got lost. And the day I was lost, an extraordinary thing happened: from that day, God began to chase me. Hari lāge pache phirat—kehat Kabir, Kabir! “God keeps following me, saying, ‘Kabir, Kabir—where are you going? Listen! Stop!’” Now I care for nothing, says Kabir. Now I know—I have disappeared. The ground is ready.

The day doubt disappears, the “I” disappears too. Doubt and ego go together. Shraddha and ego have no companionship. Where shraddha arrives, the ground is set—and God himself comes; truth itself comes.

Hence the Aitareya Brahmana’s sutra is lovely: “Shraddhā patnī satyam yajamānaḥ.”

Shraddha is called the woman—the wife. Rightly so. These are poetic symbols. Truth is male; shraddha is female. So truth is called the yajamāna—the sacrificer, the guest. And who can be a host but the feminine? Man lacks that capacity; he lacks that receptivity of love. Shraddha is the consummation of love. Shraddha is feminine. When it flowers even in a man, a feminine softness enters his being.

You see it in the statues of Buddha, Mahavira, the twenty-four Jain tirthankaras, Rama, Krishna—have you ever seen a statue of any of them with beard and mustache? Do you think they were all eunuchs, that none sprouted whiskers? Perhaps one or two could be exceptions, but all twenty-four tirthankaras—Buddha, Rama, Krishna, all the avatars—what happened to their beards and mustaches? And it’s not as if those are childhood portraits. Buddha lived to eighty-two, Mahavira to eighty. At least by eighty, a beard should have grown! What happened? We simply did not carve facial hair into their images. We do not trust history that much. History is worth two pennies. We do not even trust time; why trust history? Our gaze is on the timeless. There is something greater than history: truth. History contains facts, not truth. Truth is found in poetry.

These are poetic images. We removed the beard-and-mustache. They surely had them—no doubt. But we removed them from the icons to indicate that when these beings attained ultimate shraddha, a feminine quality arose in them. How to symbolize that? How to write it in stone—that a feminine tenderness had blossomed, that shraddha had reached its peak? By removing the beard and mustache, we did it.

Among many sharp observations of Friedrich Nietzsche—though he spoke critically, being an atheist who popularized the dictum “God is dead”—there is one I affirm in praise. He said: Buddha and Jesus are “feminine,” and they have made humanity feminine. He meant it as abuse—like calling someone effeminate. For him, masculine hardness and aggressiveness were ideals.

He wrote: the most beautiful sight I have ever seen is not sunrise or sunset or the moon and stars, not a beautiful woman, not roses or lotuses—the most beautiful sight was one morning when a regiment of soldiers drilled with shining bayonets; the glitter of steel in the sun, the rhythmic clatter of boots, their taut bodies—that thrilled me like nothing else. Now, for a man whose sense of beauty is the gleam of bayonets and the beat of boots, whose first experience of rhythm is in marching, not in the veena, sitar, piano or flute—such a man will obviously call Jesus and Buddha feminine. He means: they have ruined manhood—teaching love, nonviolence, forgiveness, non-anger, nonpossessiveness—they have destroyed life-energy, broken the adventure.

Nietzsche intends insult, but there is a grain of truth: one does sense a feminine delicacy in Jesus and Buddha—a flower-like tenderness. That is inevitable. When shraddha is complete, maleness dissolves—harshness ends, aggression disappears. Receptivity is born. The “feminine” is symbolic.

Have you noticed? No woman chases after a man. If she did, the man would run for his life! No woman proposes love—history records none. Not because women don’t feel love; they feel it more, and more wholly. But proposing already contains an aggression: “I love you” imposes something, a subtle compulsion—man’s kind of act. So every wife is heard saying, “I didn’t chase you; you chased me. You wrote the love letters.” She keeps the letters safe to show them when needed: “Look what you wrote! You touched my father’s feet, you begged. You wanted it; I wasn’t after you.”

Mulla Nasruddin’s wife started in on him one morning over tea—the tea cup is “Shri Ganesh,” the auspicious beginning, and the story starts—he blurted, “You’ve ruined my life!” She flared up: “I didn’t come after you; I didn’t come to your house; I didn’t flatter your father. You came to my father, hands folded. You wrote the letters; you sent messages; you whistled under my window. Who sang those songs outside my window?”

Mulla said, “All right, I admit it. But it’s like the mousetrap—it doesn’t run after mice; it just sits and waits. The fools get caught. I got caught—that’s true.”

The mousetrap lies in wait, the bread and cheese are set, the sweets arranged. And you know, a mousetrap has a specialty: there is a way to get in, but none to get out. Once in, you are in—why did you come? The mouse thought there would be an exit; there isn’t.

Jokes aside: man is aggressive; even in love, his aggressiveness shows—this is his nature. The woman is nonaggressive, receptive, welcoming, embracing. But even her invitation is silent, wordless, gestural. Truly, she keeps saying “no.”

The experience of all lovers worldwide is: don’t trust a woman’s “no”—there is a “yes” hidden in it. Probe gently, and you’ll find the yes in the no.

Seth Chandulal, a Marwari, fell in love with a woman and one day sat dejected. His friend Mulla Nasruddin asked, “What’s wrong? Lost everything?” Chandulal said, “All my hopes have collapsed.” Mulla said, “Don’t decide so quickly. Even if she says no a hundred times, it means yes. Keep asking.” Chandulal said, “If she had said only ‘no,’ it would be fine. She didn’t say no.” “Then what did she say?” “She said: ‘Hey, you wretch, go look at your face in the mirror!’ Now what am I to make of that? If she had said no, I could take it as yes; if she had said yes, that’s yes. But this—go look at your face in the mirror—what to understand?”

A woman’s “no” too can be acceptance. Her nonaggressiveness is so deep that even saying “yes” seems a little improper; modesty, shyness won’t allow it. She will say “no,” but with gestures says yes. You can read it in her face, her expressions. Her lips say no; to say yes feels too forward.

Toward truth one must be feminine—receptive, welcoming. The doors are open; festoons hang; “Welcome” is written—“Hearty Welcome!” If truth comes, one is ready to take it into one’s breath. If it doesn’t, one is ready to wait—patiently, silently inviting.

Thus the Aitareya Brahmana is right: “Shraddhā patnī, satyam yajamānah.” In the life-yajna, shraddha is the wife, truth the sacrificer.

And this life is the yajna. This whole life is the sacrifice. Lighting a fire and tossing ghee, wheat, rice into it—that is madness—making a sham in place of the life-yajna. Life itself is the yajna. What should be cast into the fire? The ego. Throw the ego in, and shraddha arises instantly. When you go—when the doubter is gone—how will doubt remain? The root is cut. No bamboo, no flute. I call shraddha the consummation of love; at that peak, whether the personality is male or female, it becomes feminine—delicate as flowers, like butterfly wings, like a rainbow.

Truth is male. That is why the ancient symbol says: except for God, there is no “male.”

There is this story in Meera’s life. Meera went to Mathura, to Vrindavan. Mad in love with Krishna, every place where his feet had touched, where his flute had sounded—the banks of the Yamuna, the groves—those were great pilgrimage places to her; even the dust was gold. But there was a large Krishna temple in Vrindavan whose priest would not look upon women.

This madness is not only in the Swaminarayan sect—this is ancient! Their head, Pramukhji Maharaj, does not look at women. Even in an airplane, a curtain is hung around his seat—like a burqa. He’s the only man on earth who goes about in a burqa! Processions on elephants are held for him, with a parasol arranged so his eyes remain in its shadow, lest a woman be seen. Such fear! Such panic about women!

The Vrindavan priest was like that—or perhaps Pramukhji Maharaj in his past life; such people keep wandering, for there’s no path to their liberation. If you avoid women, you will be born again from a woman’s womb—because your brain is full of women. No sooner do you die than you go seeking a woman’s womb.

When Meera reached that temple, her songs and veena had already sent a fragrance ahead; the priest was alert. For thirty years no woman had entered. He had posted guards at the gate: do not let Meera come in. But when Meera arrived and began to dance at the door, the guards were lost in her dance—who wouldn’t be? “Padd ghunghroo baandh Meera nache re!” Who wouldn’t be intoxicated by Meera’s dance! “I am mad with love!” She made others mad too. The guards began to sway; they forgot they were to stop her. At first she sang and danced outside, so there was no question of stopping her. When they were completely absorbed, Meera danced straight into the temple. By the time they regained their senses, it was over—she was inside. The priest was offering the arati. He saw a woman; the plate fell from his hands—thirty years of worship and arati! Standing before Krishna, he saw Meera; in those thirty years, had he ever seen Krishna? He was only going through drill. He shouted, “Woman! Didn’t the gatekeepers stop you? Don’t you know? All of Vrindavan knows—no woman may enter this temple. It’s written in big letters at the door. How did you enter? I do not look upon women. You have destroyed my thirty years of tapas!”

Meera listened and said, “I thought you were a devotee of Krishna—but I was mistaken. A devotee of Krishna knows there is only one man—God, Krishna. The rest of us are gopis. You think there are two men in the world—Krishna and you? What sort of ‘man’ are you? Krishna was not afraid of women. They danced all around him. With his arm around Radha’s waist, he played the flute. You the devotee of Krishna—and such fear of women? What devotion is this? Look at the idol—Radha is standing right there by Krishna! The flute plays and Radha dances. You, a devotee of Krishna—and afraid of women? Good that I came; now I see there are two ‘men’—God and you.”

The priest was pierced to the core. He fell at her feet and begged forgiveness: “Pardon me. It slipped my mind that there is only one male.”

This is the heart of the path of devotion: God is the male; he will come. We open the door and wait. He is the guest; we become the host. Prepare for hospitality; the Guest has always come—whenever a heart is ready for hosting, he comes.

So, as I said, shraddha is the consummation of love, the peak of the feminine; truth is the consummation of meditation. Shraddha is the peak of love; truth is the peak of meditation. Cultivate shraddha and truth, meditation, samadhi will descend.

This sutra is the scripture of bhakti. In it the whole of devotion is contained.

“The pairing of shraddha and truth is supreme.”
Nothing can surpass this union. The original Sanskrit is even more wondrous; in the Hindi translation something was lost—perhaps out of timidity. The Sanskrit says: “Shraddhā satyam tad ity uttamam mithunam.” Not merely “pair”—mithuna means sexual union. The translator omitted “union.” I have often seen priceless Sanskrit sutras become pale in Hindi because Hindi has become the language of the timid; Sanskrit was the language of the strong—they said truth boldly, as it is. “The union, the intercourse, of these two”—mithuna means union, consummation—“is supreme,” because that is samadhi. Where shraddha and truth unite, from their union is born moksha, kaivalya, nirvana.

But the Hindi reduces it to “a fine pair.” “Pair” lacks the juice; it becomes ordinary—like “a match made by Rama,” often one blind, one leprous! You say, “Rama makes the matches”—but it is astrologers who do it; poor Rama is not allowed. If Rama made them, no match would be wrong.

We fix matches by the rupee—life decisions for a rupee or two! When I lived in Jabalpur, an astrologer lived next door, always crowded. On morning walks we became acquainted. I asked, “So many clients—why you more than others?” He said, “Because I make the horoscopes match that no one else can match. Matching is in our hands. Those who can’t find a match elsewhere come to me. I do it cheaply—one rupee. Others charge ten or fifteen; I charge a fixed rupee—no bargaining. Put a rupee here, and I’ll match there—and I always match. I’ve never not matched. It’s in our hands—shift this house to that sign, that sign to this, and it’s done. For a rupee, what more do they expect? And the man who spends a rupee should get a rupee’s worth!”

You have astrologers arranging marriages, while love is not allowed to happen. Who knows why there is so much enmity toward love! People will weigh money, caste, status, religion, lineage, even the position of the stars at birth—but they will not ask the two hearts whether they want to unite. They ask the whole world—except the two concerned. If you want Rama to make the match, ask these two; Rama will speak from within their hearts.

When love happens, it is not because some astrologer told you, “Fall in love.” You can’t even say why—you shrug: “It happened.” That is Rama’s match.

The sutra says: the mithuna, the union of shraddha and truth. Truth is male; shraddha is female. Shraddha is the peak of femininity; truth is the peak of masculinity. Where the two unite—where their love becomes so total that duality dissolves—that is the meaning of mithuna: when duality ends and nonduality remains, when two beat as one heart—that is nirvana, the great paranirvana.

“Through the pairing of shraddha and truth, man attains the divine realms.”
Divine realms mean samadhi—solution—where no problems remain; life is sheer jubilation.

Again the Sanskrit is to be noted: “Shraddhayā satyena mithune na svargol lokān jayati iti.” It repeats “in their union”—lest you miss—“without their union, the light, the joy of heaven, cannot be attained.”

Prepare shraddha—and truth will come. Sow shraddha—and flowers of truth will bloom. Open the door of shraddha—and the sun of truth will enter you. And where shraddha and truth unite—“From Sex to Superconsciousness”—for that title I’ve been abused. People read only the title and are offended; they never read the book. I say to such fools: look into your scriptures. Those rishis were courageous. The Aitareya Brahmana’s seer must have been brave. He said plainly: from the union of shraddha and truth, samadhi is born; heaven, liberation, kaivalya.

There is a Vedic prayer:
Yatrānandāś ca ya modāś ca mudaḥ pramuda āste,
Kāmasya yatrāptāḥ kāmāḥ, tatra mām amṛtaṃ kuru.

“O Lord, grant me that immortality wherein delight and exultation abide; where desires are fulfilled of themselves.”

They were courageous—not like your timid, cowardly so-called saints. A straightforward prayer: “Give me the nectar that brings me to joy and exultation.” You deride those who rejoice as “worldly,” yet the rishi prays, “Grant me delight.”

My sannyasins are abused—people say they spread irreligion. They think a sannyasin must be austere, renouncing, fasting, mortifying the body, sleeping on thorns, standing in the sun, doing headstands—some such disturbances. “Joy and exultation”—they call that Charvaka’s creed: eat, drink, be merry. The so-called religious man abuses this. And I wonder: those who worship the Vedas—do they even open them? My sannyasins are closer to the heart of the Vedas and Upanishads than your tridandi monks or Shankaracharyas’ disciples or Jain munis. I teach celebration. Dance! Sing! Life is such a great gift of God—don’t waste it. Receive it with gratitude. There are higher joys—but only the one who knows this joy becomes eligible for the higher.

Umar Khayyam said—based on the Quran’s statement that in heaven there are streams of wine—“If in heaven there are streams of wine, let us drink here a little—let us get some practice! Otherwise, if we drink for the first time there, we might be swept away.” Umar Khayyam is a Sufi fakir, not a drunkard as people suppose. His symbols are Sufi: “wine” means bliss, ecstasy, intoxication of the divine. He’s not advocating alcohol; he’s saying: learn to rejoice. In heaven the streams of joy flow. And your saints—look at their faces: sad, dead. If they somehow reach heaven, what will they do? Where apsaras dance, what will Pramukhji Maharaj do? He’ll sit veiled! In heaven, too, under a burqa—what vision will he have? And if by chance God appears as female, what a crisis! Who knows? God is unpredictable. At least before Pramukhji, I am sure, he will appear as a woman—God too enjoys a joke! He will make him dance a little: beat the drum—“Dance, my clown!”

Heaven is bliss; bliss is heaven. My sannyasins will have no problem. They practice heaven here. For them, heaven will not be alien; yes, its quality will be vaster, the quantity greater—but drops have fallen on them here; there it will be a downpour. They have sipped from a cup here; there they will swim in the streams. They know how to be drunk with God.

Your so-called monks will be in great trouble. Their practice is gloom; indifference their austerity; self-torture on this defenseless body—suicidal tendencies. First, they are unlikely to be admitted to heaven. And if by mistake they slip in, they will be expelled—or, if not, heaven won’t suit them. They’ll think, “This is corrupt—these Rajneesh sannyasins are here too! The same dancing and singing! We thought only they were corrupt; they’ve corrupted the whole heaven.” Better hell—they can at least stand on their heads in peace. In heaven, an apsara will give them a nudge: “What are you doing? Is this any way to stand? You insult God.” They will sit sullen; Gandharvas will play the veena and flute; apsaras will tickle them: “Brother, smile a little, be joyful!”

Listen to the rishi’s word: “O Lord, grant me the nectar that brings delight and exultation.”

This was a living people then; there was no sense of irreligion in such language. Life was accepted; life itself was God.

“Where desires are fulfilled of themselves—grant me that nectar where all desires find satisfaction.”

In my view, in the last two and a half millennia, India’s psyche has become so distorted that it cannot understand its own sutras. What I am saying is the sanatan dharma—esa dhammo sanantano. Yet my words sound like poison to those who call themselves “sanatani.” They think I am corrupting religion, culture, civilization. They should open their Vedas, Upanishads, Brahmana texts—they will be startled. They will find many sutras supporting me; none supporting them. But they must travel back at least twenty-five centuries; then they will find support for me. There was joy then—the first flowering of religion in this land; things were fresh. Then they became stale; layers of dust—commentaries upon commentaries—accumulated, until the original sutras became unrecognizable. You wander among interpretations; each one suits its author’s convenience.

Krishna’s Gita is one—and must have one meaning; he was not mad. Yet there are thousands of commentaries, contradicting one another. If Krishna is right, at most one commentary can be right—not thousands. But people twist it as they wish. Shankaracharya finds jnana-yoga in the Gita; Ramanujacharya, bhakti-yoga; Bal Gangadhar Tilak, karma-yoga. The Gita becomes Bhanumati’s bag—put in a handkerchief, pull out a pigeon; put in a pigeon, pull out a handkerchief—whatever you like.

So much untruth has been spoken in these twenty-five centuries that my words seem troublesome to you because those walls stand in between. Otherwise, what I am saying is the eternal dharma, rita. My interpretation of these sutras is plain; it is not a pundit’s gloss, but my experience. I say: rejoice here, and you become worthy of heaven. Bloom here, and there too you will bloom. You will be there what you are here—on a vast scale. But you must become something here first. The courtyard will become the sky—but there must be a courtyard. If there is no courtyard, what sky?

So listen to these meanings with great attention. If the right sense of these sutras awakens in you, this country can be reborn—and with its rebirth, a dawn of good fortune may arise for the whole of humanity.

Melaram Asrani! I understand your difficulty. Your difficulty is the difficulty of many; therefore it is worth considering—worth considering seriously.

Certainly—because for me spirituality is so vast that everything is encompassed by it. What kind of spirituality would it be if it were one-eyed, one-dimensional? What kind of spirituality has no vision for society? What kind of spirituality cannot touch politics, bathe science in its color, give birth to music, poetry, literature, and unleash the springs of creativity?

For me, spirituality is the name of life’s totality. For me, it is wholeness. For you, spirituality is one-dimensional; for me, it is multidimensional. And your one-dimensional spirituality has long been dead—decayed. It had to decay, because nothing in existence can be one-dimensional. Look carefully at anything. A rose has bloomed. It draws sap from the earth and light from the sun. It receives life-breath from the sun; without the sun, it will wither. Don’t take my word—cover it in a veil and you will see it droop. The earth still gives it nourishment, but no sunlight reaches it. Without the sun’s warmth, its life ebbs away. Or uproot it and leave it in the sun—then it dries up. The sun alone is not enough. The earth must give sap, the sun must give prana, and the winds are also essential. Deprive it of air, keep it in a sealed vacuum where no air can enter— it will die. It breathes too. Air also gives it life. Withhold water and it will wilt, even if air, soil, and sun are present. And there are subtler dimensions as well.

Sir Jagadish Chandra Bose discovered something some fifty–sixty years ago. The entire scientific world laughed at him then: “These Indians talk such nonsense!” What did Bose show? That plants too have life, sensitivity, a certain awareness. It took Western science sixty years to accept it; now it is fully acknowledged. And you will be astonished to know: soil, sun, air, water—these are the obvious dimensions. But there are also invisible ones. If the gardener loves the plant, it grows faster, with larger blossoms. If the gardener is indifferent, the plant stays stunted; its flowers are smaller and less fragrant. This has now been researched; it is a scientific fact.

At a university in Canada they planted two beds of the same plants in the same garden—same soil, same sun, same air, same water, same fertilizer. Gardeners were told to shower as much love as possible on one bed: caress the flowers, touch the leaves, be as loving as you can. With the other bed, show pure neglect—give water and fertilizer so nothing material is lacking, but no love. The only difference: on one side the plants are like a mother’s child; on the other, like a nurse’s case—milk given, medicine given, now sleep! Nothing more. The results were striking: the loved plants grew twice as tall; the neglected ones remained incomplete. Flowers, too, were twice as many and filled the air with fragrance; on the other side the blossoms were fewer, the scent faint, the colors pale. Repeated experiments proved the same: given love, plants grow more quickly. Meaning, love is also a dimension.

At another university, one row of plants was played Ravi Shankar’s sitar—on tape, daily, for hours; a similar row was given pop music—noise, din, racket. The results amazed everyone: the plants leaned toward the tape recorder that played Ravi Shankar, even covering it, as if eager to embrace. Where there was a noisy hullabaloo, the plants leaned away, as if covering their ears: “Spare us, brother, forgive us!” And again, the Ravi Shankar plants grew larger; the pop-music plants stayed stunted. So not only love—music, song are understood too.

If a plant’s life is not one-dimensional, how could a human being’s be? Human beings are even more evolved. On this earth, at least, the most developed consciousness is theirs. It will be multidimensional. A religion that has no vision for society, politics, literature, science, music is one-eyed, crippled, hollow, dead.

So, Melaram Asrani, I understand your discomfort, but please understand mine too. I want to give many dimensions to religion. There is no contradiction in anything I am saying. The contradiction arises from your assumptions. My sannyasins feel no contradiction. Ask those who hear me, understand me, who have drunk of me—they see a single thread running through it all, whether I have strung marigolds or roses, jasmine or champa. The flowers differ, but they glimpse the thread running within. And once the flowers are strung into a garland, the thread is no longer visible—only the flowers are seen. You get stuck: “How can marigold and rose be on the same garland? What is the harmony between them?” The harmony lies in the inner thread you do not see. It is seen through trust—when you come closer to me.

Sannyas means precisely to come close to me, nothing else. It is simply your way of saying you consent to walk with me. These ochre robes—no other value; they are just my eccentric device. But they are a touchstone. I say: at least change your clothes; then I know if someone won’t even change his clothes, how will he change his soul? Forget the soul—he will get stuck at the clothes. He asks, “Why change clothes?” Then I say, go your way; let me do my work. By changing your clothes I only take your finger; then I know I can hold your hand too. The robe is simply a sign of your consent: “Yes—even to this madness, yes.”

And it is a mad quest. The search for the Divine is the search of the intoxicated. If you insist on being so clever as to say, “I’ll keep wearing clothes of my own choosing,” you won’t be able to walk with me. The very thing is blocked. Changing clothes will not take you to liberation—I know that well. Look at my own clothes. Do you think you’ll go to heaven and I to hell? If ochre robes gave liberation, I would be deprived. I don’t wear ochre so that it remains clear: ochre has nothing to do with moksha. And I don’t prescribe white because there’s no friction in white—you already wear it. You’d say, “Fine, we’ll wear white.” That won’t do. In ochre, wherever you go, there is friction. I want to create that friction for you—so that whoever sees you says, “There goes a madman!” Be willing at least this much—if madness is with me, it is bliss.

The mala around your neck—there is no tradition in it. None at all. Traditionally, a mala means you turn the beads, muttering Ram-Ram. My sannyasins turn no beads; they just wear it. It’s only a symbol: these are my people; be a little alert. They are dangerous people—moths to the flame. Just information, nothing more.

Neither mala nor ochre robes are intrinsically related to sannyas. But how to win you over? You live on the outside; I must begin from the outside. You live in clothes; I must begin with clothes.

There is an episode from Mirza Ghalib’s life. Bahadur Shah Zafar, India’s last Mughal emperor—also a poet under the name “Zafar”—was celebrating his birthday. He invited courtiers, kings, and poets, including Ghalib. Ghalib was a great poet—few can match him even today. Friends warned him, “Don’t go dressed like this. The doorman will throw you out. These ragged shoes, that ancient cap—you’ll be tossed out; the court won’t seat you.” Ghalib said, “Are clothes to be seen or the man? I will go as I am. The invitation is for me, not my clothes. I have the card—if there’s trouble, I’ll show it.” Stubborn, he went—and exactly what was predicted happened. The guard pushed him away: “Get out! No place for beggars today—it’s the emperor’s birthday.” “Listen to me,” Ghalib pleaded. “Shut up, or I’ll throw you in jail,” the guard barked. “Here is the invitation,” Ghalib said. “You must have stolen it. Who would invite you?” Defeated, Ghalib returned. Perhaps his friends were right—this world recognizes clothes. He borrowed clothes—shoes, cap, a fine achkan—washed his face and returned. The same guard bowed low: “Huzoor, please come in!” Ghalib was astonished—“O clothes, what magic you have! I am the same man.”

The emperor seated him by his side—over princes and nobles—because he respected poetry. But even Zafar was bewildered by Ghalib’s antics: he would touch a sweet to his shoe—“Here, son, taste!”—to his achkan—“Taste it!”—to his cap—“Eat, enjoy!” He packed laddus into his coat pockets—“Eat, son; who knows if you’ll get more later!” Zafar tolerated it for a while out of courtesy, then could bear it no more. “What are you doing? Have you drunk too much?” “No,” said Ghalib, “not a drop today. I thought you would serve something grand, so I came sober. But I have a reason. I didn’t come in. I did come—but was thrown out at the door. Now only the clothes have been admitted. So this feast is not for me—it’s for the clothes, the shoes, the cap, the achkan, the churidar. I am feeding them.”

Only then did Zafar understand what had happened.

Melaram Asrani, you still live in clothes. I must begin with clothes. You live on the outside; I must begin where you are. If you are in Amritsar and I start the journey from Delhi, how will you catch the train? It must start from Amritsar. From there I must call out: Bole so nihal! Sat Sri Akal! Waheguru ji ka Khalsa, Waheguru ji ki Fateh! Only then will the train move. So, to get the “gaddi” going, I begin with clothes.

You say: ‘Sometimes you support the scriptures and sometimes you talk of burning them.’

Certainly—because your scriptures were not composed by a single person! In your Vedas are the utterances of thousands, the hymns of hundreds of rishis. Among them were complete donkeys as well as enlightened ones. What am I to do? It is not my fault. I cannot accept the Vedas wholesale. Those who accept them entire, and those who reject them entire—both are wrong. Traditional Hindus—pandits and sannyasins—accept the whole Veda. When they stumble upon donkey-bray in it, they ignore it or whitewash it, concocting new meanings, grafting fresh interpretations, trying somehow to hide it. But despite all efforts, ninety-nine percent of the Vedas is rubbish. This is natural, because that is roughly the ratio of fools to the intelligent in society. What else could it be? The Vedas are a reflection, a mirror, a compendium of their time—like an Encyclopedia Britannica today with thousands of contributors. The Vedas are the encyclopedias of that era—everything available then, good and bad, collected. A snapshot of the age.

One camp says, “We accept the entire Veda.” Then they face obstacles and must twist meanings that are not there, force things, commit violence upon the text. Another camp—Jains, Buddhists, Charvakas—rejects the Vedas completely. Because of the ninety-nine percent, they throw away the one percent that is precious—diamonds and jewels. I call both extremes exaggerations. Hence my “difficulty”: one day I will praise the Veda, the next day I will condemn it. It depends on the sutra in question. If the aphorism is false, what can I do? I have neither faith nor unfaith in the Veda; my only faith is in truth. If a statement is true, I will support it—whether it is in the Veda, the Quran, the Bible, the Dhammapada—anywhere; it makes no difference to me. My commitment is to truth. Wherever it shimmers—sea, river, lake, pond, even a roadside rain puddle—I stand with it. I owe nothing to scriptures; I owe everything to truth. I am slave to no scripture.

So when you bring a sutra—like the one Anand Maitreya quoted from the Aitareya Brahmana—how can I deny it? It is the voice of my very being. But you can also bring utterly foolish sutras; then I will not hesitate to say, even if they are Vedic, “Burn them on the Holi fire.”

You will find it hard to categorize me because you know only two kinds: Vedic or anti-Vedic. I am neither. What have I to do with such labels? I have my own experience. That is my touchstone. What proves true on it I call gold. What does not—however worshipped for centuries—is not gold to me. How can I call it gold? I can go against the whole world, but not against my own realization.

You must grant me this freedom—hence your difficulty. The same holds for the Quran. Some sayings are exquisitely beautiful, layer after layer of mystery unfolding. But most of it is garbage. What am I to do? Let Muslims be upset, Hindus be upset, Jains be upset—should I worry over their anger, or simply speak the truth as it is?

So yes, sometimes I support scriptures; sometimes I say burn them. It all depends on what, in my experience, is true and worth saving.

There is an English proverb: When you bathe the baby, don’t throw the baby out with the dirty bathwater. In the world there are two types: those who, when the baby is bathed, also want to save the dirty water; and those who, if the water is being thrown out, say, “Why save the baby—let it go too!” I say, brother, save the baby and throw the dirty water away. You find difficulty in my stance but not in these two extremes! Your problem should be with extremes.

Shankaracharya blindly defends everything, and to do so he must perform great contortions—because there are statements that cannot be defended. He is forced to extract meanings that aren’t there, to shove them in, to commit violence on language. I am not willing to do this to any scripture. It is adultery. What Shankaracharya did is adultery; I do not accept it. I will call a diamond a diamond and dirt dirt.

Buddha and Mahavira rejected the Vedas outright—I do not agree with that either, because there are diamonds in them, and my reverence for those diamonds is immense. I care for the jewels, not the mine they came from. Do we want to suck the mango or count its stones? Wherever I find a mango, what do I care which tree it grew on? If it is full of juice, I will praise it. If it is poisonous, I will warn you to toss it away.

So your difficulty arises from you, not from me.

You say: ‘This creates many contradictions.’

You create them. My statements are quite plain. Your contradictions arise because you are willing either to accept the Vedas wholesale or to reject them wholesale. If you are Hindu, you accept; if Jain, you reject. I am neither Hindu nor Jain. If you wish to sit with me and understand me, loosen your prejudices a little, become fluid, learn to flow. Then contradictions will vanish and things will become clear—clear as daylight.

That is why I have spoken on Lao Tzu’s scriptures, on Buddha’s, on the Jains’, on the Hindus’, on the Muslims’, on the Jews’, on the Christians’—almost all religions, including the Sikhs. So I can show you: every religion has diamonds, and every religion has rubbish. Beware of the rubbish. And wherever you find a diamond, it is yours. And wherever there is trash—even in your own scripture—burn it. The sooner the better. The fear is that diamonds get lost in the garbage—they have been lost.

Melaram Asrani, you say: ‘Therefore it becomes difficult to understand you.’

No, not for that reason—because of your fixed, rigid assumptions.

You say: ‘You seem revolutionary, yet then you look traditional.’

Of course. Truth is neither new nor old. It is oldest of the old and newest of the new. What can I do? Truth is eternal—therefore ancient; and it is ever-fresh—therefore new. So both faces are mine. I stand with truth. If you must fault someone, fault truth—what can I do? Truth being ancient, I see its glimmers even in the Rigveda. For instance, yesterday we discussed the sutra on rita—that is Rigvedic. How could I deny it? Perhaps it is five thousand years old, perhaps older. Bal Gangadhar Tilak dated it at ninety thousand years—maybe. Truth is not the property of any time. There have always been knowers of truth; there are today. But the quarrel persists.

Some say the knowers existed only in the Satya Yuga; in the Kali Yuga, how could there be any? They are traditionalists, frightened of revolution. Others say in the past man was primitive—how could he know truth? Only now, as man develops, do we know. They are revolutionaries, irritated with tradition, eager to reject it entirely.

I am bound by no circle—neither tradition’s nor revolution’s. I am free. The free are bound by none. I am like a honeybee.

Buddha told his monks: beg like the honeybee. Hence Buddhist alms are called madhukari—honeybee-begging. Take a little here, a little there. The bee comes to the rose, hums her song, sips a little nectar, and flies away. She sips from champa and jasmine too. Free. And the bee has another grace: whatever flower she drinks from, she does not destroy it. In fact, the flower rejoices—being recognized by the bee is no small honor. Bees don’t come to paper flowers; only real ones. The flower they don’t visit stands forlorn.

I am a honeybee. I will sip nectar from the Rigveda too—wherever there is rasa. Raso vai sah—the Divine is essence, sap. I will draw from tradition and from revolution both. I have no denials. For me time has no boundaries. I don’t praise the past against the present, nor the present against the past. Whenever and wherever truth has blossomed, I recognize it. Since knowing my truth, I recognize all truths—however, wherever, in whatever language they are said.

A Christian missionary once went to the Zen master Rinzai—hoping to convert him. Rinzai had thousands of disciples; if he became Christian, thousands would follow. The missionary opened the Bible and read one of Jesus’ wondrous sayings: “Blessed are the meek, for theirs is the kingdom of God.” Rinzai said, “Enough—no more. Whoever said this was an enlightened one.” Rinzai did not know who said it, nor that it was the Bible; he had never read it, did not know who Jesus was. Yet he said, “Enough. Whoever said this was a Buddha. My salutations.”

The missionary said, “You didn’t even ask the name!” Rinzai replied, “What do I do with the name? When a bee sips the rose, does she ask its name? She recognizes the nectar. Does she ask for certificates—are you really champa, where is your government seal, aren’t you fake, show your character reference? The bee needs none of that—she knows by herself. In truth, whichever flower the bee sits upon receives the certificate.”

I am not a follower of scriptures. When I support a scripture, I am giving it the certificate. When I support a sutra, I am reviving it. It doesn’t matter who said it. I don’t know who spoke that Aitareya Brahmana line—what difference does it make? Whoever spoke it was an enlightened one—he spoke knowing, for that is my knowing too. Time holds no monopoly.

These notions that Satya Yuga came first and now is Kali Yuga—these are foolish beliefs. For those who know truth, it is always Satya Yuga; for those who don’t, it is always Kali Yuga. That is my definition.

You ask: ‘You also look traditional because you insist on ochre robes and the mala.’

There are reasons behind this insistence. The ochre robe has been much maligned—though it is a beautiful symbol. I want to restore it to its true dignity. It fell into the hands of the foolish; they robbed it of its grace and meaning.

Ochre symbolizes many things. It is the color of sunrise. When the inner sun rises, the horizon of your inner sky flushes with that ochre glow. The ochre robe marks initiation: you have set out to seek the dawn; the night’s end is at hand; you are preparing to break the night; you are inviting the sun. Ochre is also the color of spring—vasanti—hence one of its names is vasanti. It is the color of flowers. And sannyas is springtime, the honeyed season. Sannyas means living life in its wholeness—so that all the flowers within bloom.

Ochre is the color of life—of flowing blood, the life-stream in your veins. But for centuries it has been in the hands of the wrong people—ritualists and bigots. I want to free this beautiful symbol from them. I am freeing beautiful sutras; I also want to free beautiful symbols. I want to create so many ochre-clad sannyasins on this earth that the old-style renunciates are lost in this ocean. I want to make so many of my kind—new—in ochre that the old types become afraid to wear it, lest someone mistake them for members of the same mad tribe.

Understand me: already there are a hundred and fifty to two hundred thousand sannyasins of mine around the world in ochre. Soon their number will grow. For a while there is friction—but wait a little. I will create a difficulty for your Karpatri Maharaj and the Shankaracharya of Puri—people will ask them, “Why are you wearing ochre? Have you gone astray?” Give me time.

When I was a university professor and travelled to speak, people often asked, “Why have you grown a beard and moustache?” I had never imagined that could even be a question. Once in a Sikh gathering in Amritsar, after I spoke on Nanak, a Sardar, tears in his eyes, asked, “Sardarji, why did you cut your hair?” I had my answer ready for why I had grown a beard—never dreamt someone would ask why I had cut my hair! For a moment, I too paused—who would have thought? He assumed, “He must be a Sikh—otherwise who could speak of Nanak like this?”

Soon you will see people asking the Puri Shankaracharya and Karpatri Maharaj, “Why are you in ochre? Have you also gone wrong?” Let my sannyasins multiply. Behind this is revolution—to free tradition. Only revolution can reawaken tradition; and when tradition is renewed, it is new, not old.

Now you ask: ‘Can a person not be healthy without the label of sannyas?’

Why ask me? Can you not be healthy without asking me? Melaram Asrani, think—can you not? If you cannot be healthy without asking me, then what is sannyas but this very asking, this willingness to be with me, to inquire?

Don’t take sannyas too solemnly. For me sannyas is no more than a role, an enactment—a declaration of a change of attitude. You can be healthy without sannyas—I have no objection. I love health. Become healthy without it—fine. But that you have come to ask shows that by yourself you may not be able to. If you cannot solve even your questions alone, how will you find yourself? To be healthy means to be established in oneself—and to be established in oneself it helps to link with one who is already established.

That is the only difference between guru and disciple. Guru means one who is established in himself. Shishya means one who longs to be established. One lamp is lit; one is unlit. The unlit lamp asks, “Can I be lit without coming near the lit lamp?” If you can, do it—why ask? Just be lit. But when the unlit lamp draws near the lit one, a moment of closeness arrives—and the flame leaps. Nothing is lost from the lit lamp, and the unlit receives everything. One loses nothing, the other gains all.

Sannyas means nothing more than this: the unlit lamp draws near the lit one. It is the proclamation of discipleship.

If you can be healthy without it, I have no objection—by all means, be so.

You say: ‘Is being merely human not enough—just human?’

No, not enough. Because beyond man there is much more—there is godliness. Being human is not enough. Yes, it is better than being an animal. Better than being Christian, Hindu, Muslim, Jain is to be simply human. But that is not the end. Being human is only a step; the destination is godliness. Until you become divine, do not stop. Before that, how will you be healthy? Before that, there is no true health.

To cause an uproar.
That's all for today.