Jyun Macchali Bin Neer #8

Lotu C. Chhugani!
Though He was nearer than the vein of my life,
In the mist of tears, I failed to recognize Him.

He is not far. He is nearer than our very life-breath. He is the center of our consciousness.
In the mist of tears, I failed to recognize Him.

But our eyes are wrapped in many kinds of mists. There is the mist of tears, of course, because our life is sorrow. And life will remain sorrow. Without knowing Him, how can there be joy? Without recognizing Him, how can there be light? In His absence there is darkness.
Darkness is only the name of absence. Darkness has no substance of its own, no existence. It is only the nonpresence of light—just the lamp not being there. Light the lamp and the darkness is gone. Even to say “gone” is not quite right—it’s a fault of language; because it was never there, where would it go? To say it was “erased” isn’t right either; if it never existed, how could it be erased? Darkness is only absence. When light is present, darkness is not seen. When light becomes absent, darkness seems to appear again.

And our life is filled with much suffering. We live in sorrow; we grow in sorrow; we melt away and die in sorrow. And behind this sorrow is the conspiracy of the whole society. Society does not want any person to attain bliss. Society’s vested interests live off your misery. If you are unhappy, afflicted, troubled, you will go to the priest. Temple, mosque, church, gurudwara—why would a blissful person go? One who is blissful—wherever he is, that is the temple. Is there any temple greater than bliss, any mosque? For the blissful, every breath is a pilgrimage; why should he go to Kashi or to Kaaba? If the Ganga is flowing in his very being, why would he bathe in the outer Ganga? One who dives into the inner Ganga—why dirty himself in the polluted Ganga outside? There is no need.

Hence priests, pundits, pastors do not want man to be blissful. Their whole business depends on your pain. If you are miserable you will clutch at their feet. If your misery ends, their very necessity ends. A sick man will go to the doctor—has to go. And one who is healthy, why would he go? The doctor’s inner wish, inner prayer, is that not everyone become healthy—let diseases keep spreading. That’s why when illnesses spread, doctors say, “The season has come.” “Season!” The season for business, the time to earn has arrived. Here people die; there their profits rise.

One who is blissful will have so much light in his life, so much luminosity, that he will not follow two-bit politicians. Why would he follow anyone? In his own light he will find his path.
Buddha has said: Be a lamp unto yourself. And one who has his own lamp—why would he become another’s shadow? Why hand over his reins to someone else? It will become very clear to him that those into whose hands we have placed our reins are blinder than we are. Not only blind—fools as well. Their foolishness and blindness are what gave them the chance to sit on our chests. The blind are giving guidance to the blind. Kabir said: “The blind pushes the blind, both fall into the well.” They lead the blind, then both fall in. And here blind people are moving in queues, lined up.

Mulla Nasruddin went to the Eidgah to offer the Eid prayer. As he bent to pray, a corner of his shirt stayed lifted. The man behind thought it looked awkward—the shirt had caught in his pajama—so he pulled it and straightened it. Mulla had gone to the Eid prayer for the very first time. He thought perhaps this is the rule: pull the shirt of the one ahead. So he jerked the shirt of the man in front. The man in front thought maybe it is a rule; he, too, had come for the first time, so he tugged the shirt of the man ahead of him. That man was astonished and said, “Why are you pulling my shirt?”
He said, “Don’t ask me. Ask the one behind me.”
He asked him, and that man said, “Why ask me? The Mulla sitting behind pulled my shirt so hard!”
Mulla Nasruddin said, “What can I do? I myself was yanked! I thought it must be the custom, the tradition, the protocol. How would I know? I’ve come for the first time.”

Here you imitate. The politician does not want you to have your own eyes. And leave politicians and religious leaders aside; even those you consider your well-wishers—your parents, your family, your loved ones—they too do not want you to have your own eyes. If the son begins to see for himself, how will he imitate his father? The father wants his son to live exactly as he has lived; the daughter likewise. Even if the father’s life went to hell—it doesn’t matter—still he wants his son to carry the family tradition forward: “The Raghu clan’s custom has always continued!” The custom must be maintained. It’s a matter of the clan. A mother may have lived all her life in pain—but she too will want her daughter to imitate her. The ego finds great gratification: See, my daughter is imitating me exactly! My son is walking the very path I walked! Although you reached nowhere, your son will reach nowhere. But who cares about reaching! The point is: my son should walk my path! Whether the path leads anywhere or not—that question never even arises.

The ego wants to fire its gun from others’ shoulders. The father, as he departs, hands over all his illnesses, all his ailments, all his stupidities, all his superstitions to his sons. Then the sons will pass them on to their sons. Thus deadness never ends. The father, too, feels threatened: if the son has his own awareness, he will not be obedient. To be obedient it is necessary to be blind. There must be no self-awareness; only then does one become obedient.

That is why what we teach in the army to soldiers is to erase their awareness; if a little awareness is there, to make them stupid. We put them through processes that abolish their capacity to say “no.” Only then can one be a soldier—when the capacity to say “no” has ended. Then we say: This is obedience! Then we give him the Mahavir Chakra, we give him gold medals, prestige. And what is his prestige? That he has become like a machine. A machine does not say “no.” You press the button and an electric bulb cannot say, “I won’t light now; this is no time to burn.” A bulb has no capacity to think—press the switch and it lights, press it and it goes off. The day a soldier too starts and stops at the press of a button, that day we say obedience is complete. To produce this, for five to seven years we make him do foolish drills—left turn, right turn; forward march, about turn! Any intelligent person would ask: Why? Why should I turn left? Why forward, why back? But the one who asks will be punished. The question “why” is not allowed. Do as you are ordered.

When slowly, slowly it all becomes mechanical—so mechanical that, I’ve heard, a woman said to her psychiatrist: “I am very troubled. My husband is a colonel in the army. Sometimes he comes home—the only good fortune is that it’s only sometimes! But whenever he comes, my sleep is ruined; he snores so loudly! But there’s one thing: when he lies on his left side, he doesn’t snore; when he lies on his right, he snores.”
The psychiatrist said, “Do one thing: when he lies on his right and begins to snore, whisper in his ear—‘Left turn!’”
She said, “How will that help? He’s asleep.”
He said, “Don’t worry. If he’s a colonel, then even awake he’s asleep. By the time one becomes a colonel, what difference remains between sleeping and waking? Don’t worry. Just try.”
The wife didn’t really believe it, but what was the harm! That night, as soon as he began to snore, she softly whispered in his ear: “Left turn!” And she was astonished—he turned left! The command goes in even in sleep—left turn, right turn! For seven, eight, ten years he has only been turning—left, right; it has entered the blood, the flesh, the marrow.

This entire social arrangement is a conspiracy to prevent the arising of self-awareness within the individual. Here we erase and negate the person. We begin obliterating the small child, destroying him. By the time he comes of age, there is no soul left within. He had come with some outline; even that becomes blurred.

And then there is sorrow in life. Then sorrow is inevitable. The moon and stars are there, the sun is there, there is beauty. But what will you do with all the moons and stars?

Without you, what would I do with the moon and the stars?
What would I do with nature’s lovely scenes?
Without you, this moon...
Why does your memory return at every step?
Even if I forget you, what would I do with the memories?
Without you, this moon...
Every charm of the season has become a burden on the eyes;
Without you, what would I do with the colorful spring?
Without you, this moon!
When you are not, what joy is there in living?
My heart’s boat is sunk—what would I do with the shores?
Without you, this moon!

Without the Divine, even the moon is not the moon; the full moon is a new moon; the day is a dark night. Wealth is not a blessing but a curse. Success is not success—only a new series of failures.

My whole effort here is to help you understand how to wipe the tears from your eyes. But if it were only tears, the matter would be easy; it’s a little more tangled. Tears—yes, they can be wiped. For everyone wants to wipe tears; who wants tears in the eyes! People swallow their tears; they hold them back, because tears are contrary to the ego. No one wants to show tear-filled eyes. Even with eyes brimming, people go on smiling. Tears—anyone wants to wipe them away. But the matter is more complex.

Your knowledge is all hollow and stale—bookish. That bookish knowledge is a great fog. It is deeper than the fog of tears. And the irony is: tears we want to wipe away; but this borrowed knowledge we absolutely do not want to wipe away. Tears hurt the ego, and this so-called knowledge nourishes it well. And this knowledge creates a thick fog. In some eyes there is the fog of the Vedas, in some the Koran, in some the Bible. People just go on repeating—without knowing, they repeat.

Become a Jesus—that is beautiful. To be a Christian—unbeautiful. Become a Krishna and the fountains of joy will burst in your life. But to be a Hindu—worth two pennies. Become a Mohammed so that the fragrance of the Koran rises from your very life-breath; so that verses descend into your words; when you speak—it is worship; when you do not speak—it is worship; sit—it is worship; rise—it is worship; walk—it is worship. But to be a Muslim has no value. Yet it is cheap to be a Muslim.

To be a Jain is cheap; to be a Jina is costly. Mahavira was a Jina, not a Jain. Jina means: one who has conquered oneself. Jain means: I have heard someone conquered himself; we are following behind. Someone may have conquered himself twenty-five hundred years ago—how much rubbish has mixed in these twenty-five hundred years! Where is Gangotri, and where is the filthy Ganga at Kashi! Corpses are floating. Mahavira is Gangotri. You too become Gangotri. The Ganga can spring from within you as well. But then being a Jain won’t do; you will have to be a Jina. And to be a Jain is totally cheap, absolutely free, accidental: you were born in a Jain home; your parents imposed Jainism on you. Someone was born in a Buddhist home; Buddhism was imposed on him. To be a Buddha requires labor. Therefore the tradition of Mahavira and Buddha is called the culture of the shramana—the culture of effort. You will have to strive; you will have to make an effort.

But it seems no one is willing to labor so much. If only people worked as hard to earn meditation as they do to earn money—God would not be the least bit far!

Though He was nearer than the vein of my life,
In the mist of tears, I failed to recognize Him.

For position, people run and scramble; with far less running around, God is found. But regarding God we have adopted paper flowers. Scriptures are paper flowers. What is not your own truth will be paper. What is your own truth alone is alive. And one’s own living truth alone brings liberation.

This is the very essence of meditation: “Do not resist.” It is the process of witnessing. There is only one way to be free of the mind—only one! No second method ever was, nor can there be. That one method may take many forms and colors, but it is one: witnessing. And witnessing means: do not resist. Because the moment you resist, the sense of doership arises and witnessing disappears.

Understand this a little.

In your mind there is a continuous procession of thoughts; a procession of desires; a crowd of memories passing by—fantasies, plans, expectations—what isn’t there! In this small mind of yours, such a jostling, such a throng—lines upon lines file by. Even when the body, tired, falls asleep, the mind does not tire; it keeps going. The road runs through the day, the road runs through the night. At night dreams run; by day thoughts run. And there’s no real difference between your thoughts and your dreams; both are of the same stuff. All are bubbles of water. But there are only bubbles—and you identify with them. You become one with them. With some thought you strike up a friendship, form an alliance—you even get married to it. You say, “I am a Hindu”—that is one kind of marriage. You say, “I am a Muslim”—another kind of marriage. The rites differ, but with some thought-form you have taken the seven rounds; you have identified yourself with some stream of thought. You became attached. What you were told is a “good thought,” you clutch to your chest. What you were told is a “bad thought,” you denounce, push away, throw out. Now the trouble begins. The thought you were told is bad—the more you shove it away, the more forcefully it returns. As when you throw a ball against a wall—throw hard and it comes back hard; throw softly and it returns softly; don’t throw at all and it doesn’t come back.

So the first meaning of “do not resist” is this: don’t throw the ball at the wall. The harder you hurl it, the more energy you have given it. The ball has no energy of its own. It gets power from you. As much force as you give it, to that extent it travels—and when it hits the wall, if some force still remains after the impact, it will return. The wall doesn’t send it back—the wall has nothing to send back. Toss it gently and the ball falls near the wall. Toss it very gently and it won’t move from the wall at all—perhaps won’t even reach the wall. It all depends on you.

Yet you resist, you oppose. You’ve been taught to fight with “bad thoughts.” And by fighting with bad thoughts you remain surrounded by them. The same thoughts torment you more and more. Somehow you push them aside by day; by night they return. In waking you conceal them; in sleep they are exposed.

Look at peoples’ dreams—what they are! What kinds of dreams!

Mulla Nasruddin was telling his wife, “Last night I had a very vulgar dream—you fell with a thud into a filthy pit full of excrement and urine. You fell headlong, and your whole body was covered with muck—God knows what all stuck to you! When you came out it was hard to recognize you. And I—I also fell, but I fell into a pool of honey. And what sweet honey it was!”

His wife said, “I too had a dream. I saw that you were licking my body, and I was licking yours.”

What else do husband and wife do—lick each other! They lick the body, lick the skull—whatever they can get to lick, they lick. The wife had quite the dream! She outwitted her husband. And when has a husband ever defeated his wife? This dream didn’t come for nothing either—these are intentions. The husband surely intends: “If only I could push this wretched woman into some ditch—she’s always on my back!” He couldn’t do it by day—by day she would have pushed him instead—so he made it happen in the dream. He thought he had been very clever—but the wife was cleverer.

One day Mulla Nasruddin saw his wife standing with his cricket bat. He felt a twinge of fear, but he pressed it down—as every husband must. Puffing out his chest, drawing a deep breath, he went in and asked, “Oh! Have you started playing cricket too? Do you know how to hit a six?”

She said, “I don’t know how to hit sixes—I know how to knock the sixes out of you. And today I will.”

Who ever wins against wives? But husbands and wives are dreaming like this—everyone is dreaming like this. The psychologist first asks you about your dreams, because in your waking you are dishonest. In waking you have built up such hypocrisy that your reality cannot be known from your waking. So the psychologist is compelled to search in your dreams—because in dreams you still can’t manage to be dishonest; the truth leaks out. In dreams you run off with the neighbor’s wife. In waking you say, “Sister! Mother!”—what all you say! In waking one has to speak fine words—religious, cultured, civilized. But in sleep the truth opens up; it becomes clear in sleep.

From your dreams the psychologist detects what you really are. See what a plight—that to know a person, we have to stalk his dreams! A person’s truth has become so false that even to get information about him we must inquire of his dreams. Man has become so hypocritical. And he has given hypocrisy very beautiful names. He has gilded it with gold and silver leaf. He has painted the chains so they look like ornaments.

So the first thing is this: whenever you fight with a thought, resist it, that thought will return again and again. You are feeding it. You are giving it strength, energy. You are feeding your enemy; you are nursing a snake in your sleeve.

Therefore the first aphorism of meditation, of witnessing, is: “Do not resist.”

Jesus said: Resist not. Do not resist. Even Christians have not understood this saying, nor have they applied it. It is a key—because whatever you do not resist, you are free of. Don’t fight! Don’t repress! Don’t push down! What you push down you will have to push down again and again. And however much you push it down—even a hundred thousand times—it will keep rising. Your life will become a futile tug-of-war between suppression and resurgence. In it you will break and be wasted.

People are afraid: “If we don’t repress, we’ll begin to do wrong; immorality will spread; anarchy will spread.” This is their objection to me too, because I also say: do not resist. They say, “If we follow you, there will be license.” It seems like license only because you don’t realize that “do not resist” is one face of the coin; the other face is—be a witness. Do not resist—this is half the journey, half the key, the first step. The other half is—be a witness. When you do not resist, the doer disappears, because now you are not doing anything. Only seeing remains. Now see as a mirror reflects things. The mirror has nothing to do with what appears. A monkey peers in, and a monkey is reflected. The mirror will not even say, “This is Lord Hanuman!” What has the mirror to do with whether it’s Hanuman or not? A man looks in and a man appears. Whoever looks in will be seen. The mirror simply makes a reflection—no statement, no judgment. No praise, no condemnation. It neither extols nor despises; it says nothing. This is the second part. Do not resist, so that nothing is suppressed. Let everything arise. And the second part is: now look in the attitude of witnessing—be just a mirror; simply keep seeing!

And a magic happens—just by seeing! Because when you only see, you do not supply energy. In resistance you give energy. In mere seeing, you do not give energy. And in seeing an inconceivable thing occurs: as you look at something, it becomes clear that the seer is separate from the seen. The seer and the seen cannot be one. When you look at a rose, it is evident that the rose is the seen, you are the seer. When you watch the sun rising, you never fall into the error of thinking “I am the sun.” You know, “I am the watcher; the sun is there, far away.” As the sense of the seer deepens, the interval between you and the seen grows. The distance keeps increasing, and there comes a moment when the distance is so great that the objects disappear beyond the horizon—you don’t know where they go; only the seer remains. And where only the seer remains—pure seer, with no object—there is samadhi. In samadhi there is solution.

Lottu C. Chhugani, you say, “I have read only one word of yours—acceptance.”

But that word is very precious. Everything is contained in it. Only with the attitude of acceptance can you avoid resistance. If anywhere—even hidden in some corner—there is rejection, in some way you will resist. The fight will go on a little or a lot. And even a little fight continuing will keep you bound to the mind.

There is a lovely incident in Buddha’s life. He was traveling with his disciple Ananda through a forest. They had left a stream some four miles behind. Noon was intense, the sun fierce. Buddha sat under a shade. He was old now, around eighty. He said to Ananda, “Ananda, take my begging bowl and go back. Bring water from the stream we just crossed. I am very thirsty.”

In that blazing midday Ananda took the bowl and walked the four miles back. But when he arrived, he was dismayed. When they had crossed the stream, the water was crystal clear, like a crystal gem. But just as he arrived, he saw with his own eyes several bullock carts had passed through the stream. It was a small mountain stream. Their passing churned up all the mud that had settled at the bottom. Leaves of many years, rotted and sunk to the bed, all rose to the surface. It was nothing but debris. The water was no longer fit to drink; his four-mile walk was in vain. He returned and told Buddha, “That water is not fit to drink. As I reached, a line of bullock carts went through it. The oxen drank and the carts went on; everything got dirty. The stream has become quite filthy. But I know there is a river three or four miles further on. I’ll bring water from there.”

Buddha said, “No. Bring water from that same stream. Go again.” When Buddha says so, Ananda has to go. But he was puzzled—why this insistence? The river would have had even better water, and that was also three or four miles—no difference in the walking. Why send him to the very stream whose water had become so dirty? When he reached the stream, he was astonished—the purpose was now clear. In that time the leaves had settled again; the dust had settled or flowed away. The stream had become clear again. He filled the bowl and returned dancing. He said to Buddha, “You have done something wonderful. This was my problem too—I wanted to ask for days, but out of hesitation I wasn’t asking: so much filth runs in my mind—what should I do? You have answered without my asking. Now I understand. Now I know the secret: just sit on the bank and do nothing. I did nothing. When I arrived I saw the leaves had floated away; a few remained, and I said, ‘If so many have floated off, these too will go.’ The mud settled back. The stream grew clear. On the way I had been thinking, ‘If I have to bring water, I’ll step into the stream, push the leaves aside, filter the water through cloth.’ But when I came to the bank, I realized: if I step in, I’ll muddy it again. So I sat on the bank. I did nothing. I just watched, watched—and the water grew clear! Now I understand why you sent me back. This is my mental condition too. Now I will sit on the bank. I will not wade into the stream of the mind to clean it. I will not fight, not filter, not force it to flow. I will sit on the bank—detached.”

“Detached” literally means: sitting on the bank. That is why we call it the attitude of the bank—tatastha. Sit on the bank and keep watching the current. And if you sit as a witness, with acceptance—that whatever is happening is right, whatever is happening is what should happen; there is no wish for otherwise, no hankering for otherwise—then in that acceptance resistance will drop. And once resistance drops, becoming a witness is not difficult. Just keep looking. Be only the seer. And one day you will find that the mind, along with all its filth, has departed. In that stream, only leaves and mud went away; in this stream of the mind, when the leaves and mud go, the mind itself goes—because mind is only a heap of leaves and mud. Nothing remains behind. Leaves and mud gone, the mind is gone. The state of no-mind arises—Nanaka called it amani, the state of no-mind. Where the mind goes, the world goes. The mind is the world. And then what is experienced—you may call it truth, you may call it the self, you may call it God, call it samadhi, call it kaivalya, call it nirvana—these are all different names for the same experience. That experience is of the supreme light. With that light, the darkness is cut.

These dark, dark nights
longer than our delusions,
blacker than our sins—
they have not passed in sleep,
nor have they passed in tears,
these dark, dark nights.

Color was given to flowers,
laughter to buds,
and to these two eyes
a daily raining.
For the bees their haunts,
for us the nights of sorrow.
Thinking of you, we have only just now withdrawn—
they have not passed in sleep,
nor have they passed in tears,
these dark, dark nights.

You have gone; go also from my thoughts—then I will believe.
Do not come to my lips as a sigh—then I will believe.
O faithless one! Thinking of you with tears, we have only just now stepped away—
they have not passed in sleep,
nor have they passed in tears,
these dark, dark nights.

Our life, as yet, is a night of the new moon—amavas. It passes neither in sleep nor in weeping. It cannot be got through. See how people “get through” life! Someone is playing cards—ask him, “What are you doing?” He says, “Killing time.” Killing time means killing life. Time is life. And such a time he is killing as he will never get again—such an opportunity, earned by the merit of unknown lifetimes.

They have not passed in sleep,
nor have they passed in tears—

But wake up, and the night doesn’t need to pass—the day dawns, the morning arrives.

Color was given to flowers,
laughter to buds—
not only to flowers was color given; it has been given to you too. And not only to the buds was laughter given; laughter has been given to you too. But you have forgotten the language of laughter. You remember only the language of tears. You learned only arithmetic—you forgot love.

You will have to rise a little above business, become a little non-businesslike. Business belongs to the outside—of money, of position and prestige. This is an inner journey. It is not arithmetic; it is not business. It is the realm of love—of prayer, of meditation. Here an altogether different language is spoken. Here a different logic moves. If you try to go within while remaining a businessman, you will not be able to go. You will have to learn a slightly non-commercial attitude, because business always thinks in the language of profit and loss. And in meditation there is neither profit nor loss. In meditation is the experience of that which is already ours; only we have turned our backs on it. One has to turn around and face it. Right now we are averted; we must become oriented. Then there is color upon color. All the colors of the rainbow are your colors. Then the lotuses bloom—the inner lotuses, the thousand‑petaled lotus!

Man has a great potential—the potential to become divine. And until man becomes divine, true contentment is not experienced. Until then, dissatisfaction persists; something always feels missing. When buddhahood manifests, then comes fulfillment and contentment. Only then, for the first time, does one realize what a great opportunity life was: it was not to be cut down but to be known, to be awakened; the seed was to be made a flower, the bud to be blossomed. And all this happens through one small key: witnessing.

Just for a few minutes, morning and evening—whenever there is an opportunity—sit silently. Relax, become quiet. Let the body be limp. Settle into a state of rest. And then keep watching the stream of the mind. Do nothing else—not any mantra, not any repetition of Rama’s name, not any recitation of the Hanuman Chalisa, not any Gayatri, not any Namokar. Just silently. Because all those are games of the mind. If you repeat them, you will remain stuck in the mind. Then you cannot be a witness.

You will be surprised to know that mantra and mind are forged from the same metal—both are words. A mantra is part of the mind; it is the mind’s own mechanism, its own system. No one goes beyond the mind through mantras. Yes, it can happen that many subtle powers of the mind get awakened through mantras. But that becomes a new entanglement. Outer wealth does not obstruct as much as the mind’s powers begin to obstruct.

An ascetic once came to Ramakrishna. Ramakrishna was sitting on the bank of the Ganga at Dakshineswar, just watching the current; there was nothing else to do. The ascetic said, “I have heard people call you a Paramahansa! Are you Ramakrishna Paramahansa?” He said it with swagger—because an ascetic will have swagger. Where there is austerity, there is stiffness. Not awakening—stiffness, ego. In austerities there is no witnessing; there is doing, the sense of the doer. One fasts. One stands on one’s head. Someone holds one arm up and stands for twelve years; some stand and never sit; some stand on their heads. From all this the sense of doership is born. And where doership is born, identity and ego become dense. Generally, not even wealth produces as much ego as asceticism does.

Therefore I am not a partisan of austerities. Renouncers only create ego—nothing else. Naturally it will be a subtle ego. The one who had a hundred thousand rupees had a certain swagger, a warmth in his pocket: “I have a lakh!” And when you drop that lakh of rupees, a new swagger is born, greater than the old. It says, “I kicked the lakh away!” Many have lakhs, but how many are there who kick them away? Those with lakhs are many; even if they strut, it cannot be much. Is there any shortage of lakhpatis in the world? There are plenty—you too are one among them. But those who kick a lakh away are very few; the swagger becomes denser, larger.

Look closely at the faces of your renouncers and ascetics. You will see ego perched right on their noses. They sit naked—and precisely because they sit naked there is more ego, more strut: “See, I sit nude!” Their eyes tell you that you are sinners, you will rot in hells. “I am the virtuous one! I am a claimant to heaven.”

Ramakrishna was a simple, straightforward man—not an ascetic, not a renouncer, not a vow‑taker—simple‑hearted. And the simple‑hearted, that is the real sadhu. The word sadhu means one who is simple. These ascetics of yours are not simple at all; they are very crooked. Their entire work is crooked. Can one become straight by starving oneself? One becomes crooked. Can one become straight by standing on one’s head? That is even more upside down. The head was muddled as it was; it will get more muddled.

That sadhu asked Ramakrishna with great swagger, “Are you Ramakrishna Paramahansa? Then come with me, let us cross the Ganga by walking. I can walk on water—can you?”
Ramakrishna began to laugh. He said, “No, I cannot walk on water. But may I ask one thing—if you don’t mind—how long did it take you to learn this art of walking on water?”
Naturally, he said with pride, “It took eighteen years!”
Ramakrishna said, “I am very astonished, because when I have to go to the other bank I give two coins and go across. The boatman ferries me over for two paise. For a two‑paise matter you wasted eighteen years—and still you strut! What is the profit? And I have to go across once or twice in a year. So in eighteen years the total expense would be about one rupee. A thing worth one rupee you have earned in eighteen years! And you feel no shame, no embarrassment—and you stand there puffed up!”

Through mantras the sleeping powers of the mind can awaken, but you will fall into further nets. If you start walking on water, you’ll be more entangled. If you learn to produce ash from your hand, you’ll be more entangled. If by touching someone you can remove illness, you’ll be more entangled.

One has to go beyond the mind. One has to be free of the mind. One has to transcend the mind.

This is the formula for transcending the mind: do not resist, keep an attitude of acceptance, and become a witness. Just keep watching.

I do not teach my sannyasins anything more than this—just keep watching. Life is a play, a lila. Become a spectator, a seer. As one watches a film or a play—just so. Look at your own life in the same way, as if this too is acting. This wife, these children, this family, this wealth—there is no need to run away from them; just know this much: it is acting. All right, you have to perform this role. This earth is a great stage; on it all are actors. And the one who took himself to be the doer—he missed. And the one who knew himself as an actor—he has attained. What is to be attained is not far.

Though He was nearer than the life‑vein itself,
yet, in the mist of tears, He went unrecognized.

Ranjan Bharti! Sadhus today have nothing to do with sadhana. So don’t, even by mistake, ask a traditional sadhu what his practice is. Now the sadhu is only hypocrisy; “practice” is an empty word. There is nothing of sadhana left, because sadhana begins with witnessing and ends in witnessing. Witnessing is the means, witnessing is the end. In the inner world, means and end are not separate. The path itself is the goal.

You asked them what their practice is—that is where you went wrong. Don’t ever ask a sadhu what sadhana is. If there were sadhana to be done, what need would there be to be a sadhu? He has become a sadhu precisely to avoid sadhana. Sadhana belongs to life. What sadhana does a sadhu have? They fled to the jungle—deserters, escapists—what sadhana do they have? Sadhana is where the flames surround you on all sides: where jealousy, enmity, insult and honor crowd in—there is sadhana. What sadhana has a man who ran away to a forest? A man who sits in a cave—what sadhana does he have? There’s no one there to abuse him, so anger doesn’t arise. In the absence of abuse, anger doesn’t arise; then the man sitting in the cave begins to fancy, “I have conquered anger.”

I have heard: a man lived thirty years in Himalayan caves. News reached the plains that he seems to have realized God—an image of supreme peace! People began to climb the mountain for his darshan. Then the Kumbh Mela was approaching; people said, “Now you must come to the Kumbh for darshan. Millions cannot come here. Bless them; show compassion. And if you have attained, your darshan will benefit them. ‘Sant samagam hari katha, Tulsi durlabh doye!’”

The sadhu agreed, came to the Mela. What didn’t show up in thirty years in a cave showed up the moment he entered the Kumbh. In the crowd someone stepped on his foot. He grabbed the man by the neck. In a single instant he forgot—thirty years vanished as if they had never been. The man he had been thirty years earlier returned in a flash. He said, “Do you know who I am?” But as he said it, he thought, “Arre! What happened to my thirty years of practice? Where did my peace go, my silence go? Where did my freedom from anger go?”

Still, he must have been a sensible man. He bowed, touched the man’s feet, asked forgiveness, and said, “What the Himalayas could not show me in thirty years, you showed me by merely stepping on my foot. I am indebted to you!” He never returned to the Himalayas. He said, “Now I will live in the marketplace, in the crowd, because only here is sadhana.”

Sadhana means this: where there are opportunities, provocations; where someone will abuse, someone will insult, someone will honor; someone will praise, someone will blame; where there will be defeat and victory; where wealth will come, status will come—then be lost; today it is gained, tomorrow it is gone—where all these things keep happening. Amidst them, the one who remains unmoved—so unmoved as if nothing is happening, as if all this is happening in a play, and we have nothing to do with it; if we lose, fine; if we win, fine; where there is no distinction between loss and gain; where honor and insult make no difference; where defamation or fame—both are the same—only in such a state is sadhana.

These sadhus of yours are deserters. I tell my sannyasins: live in the world, do not run away. Those who run can never win; they have left the battlefield—what victory will they gain? They hide in caves. If someone runs from a battlefield, shows his back, we call him a coward. And if someone runs from the battlefield of life, we call him—Paramhans! What kind of arithmetic is this?

Life is a battle. This is Kurukshetra; this is Dharmakshetra. Dharmakshetre Kurukshetre! This is the place where Kauravas and Pandavas stand together; where the great clash is ready at every moment; where the conches now sound—they sound now; where bows are raised, swords clash—this is the opportunity. Krishna didn’t stop Arjuna in war for nothing. It is a symbolic tale, a very lovely tale, very suggestive. The Jains could not understand it, so they became angry with Krishna. In Jainism, no other scripture is treated with so little respect as the Gita, because the Jains thought Krishna persuaded Arjuna to violence. And the Jains’ maxim is: ahimsa paramo dharmah—nonviolence is the highest religion. So they say, “This man incited, confused. Arjuna was about to become a Jain muni, and Krishna dragged him into battle.” And how many arguments he gave! Arjuna tried in every way to avoid it, to run away; the entire Gita is evidence that he kept raising question upon question, doubt upon doubt. And Krishna was just one: wherever he tried to run, he stopped him there; he shut every door. In the end, in panic, Arjuna said, “Alright, brother, whatever you say is right. Now don’t pester me anymore.” Meaning: “I’ll fight. Come, better to fight than keep wrangling. Let’s get it over with.”

So the Jains feel Arjuna would have become a Jain, a Jain muni. But Krishna spoiled it. In my view, what Krishna did is worth deep thought, worth pondering. I am doing the same. I don’t want you to run away. Live this life right here on the battlefield—with an unshakable, witnessing mind—whatever happens, whatever the outcome. That’s why Krishna says: Don’t worry about the outcome. Don’t hanker after the fruit. Do what has come to your lot. Then whatever fruit comes—success or failure—that is in God’s hands. Karma is in our hands; fruit is in God’s hands. Meaning: whoever broods about the fruit will fall into worry. If the fruit is favorable, the ego swells; if the fruit goes against you, the ego breaks; in both cases harm is done. If the ego breaks, sorrow seizes you; if the ego swells, pride arises, arrogance appears, stiffness comes. Leave the fruit to God—then there is no question at all. Do your work fully, and then whatever the result—what have we to do with it? However it is, it is fine. From this arises a neutral state—free of expectation. From this, witnessing arises. Krishna’s entire initiation to Arjuna is to fight in a state of witnessing.

Ranjan, you say, “These sadhus came yesterday to see the ashram.”

It isn’t even right to call them “sadhu,” because sadhu means simplicity. Simplicity means: not entangling life in useless complexities, living in an ordinary way, considering oneself ordinary. Your sadhus cannot live simply; every moment they are trying to become extraordinary. Their whole effort is to accumulate merit, to obtain heaven, to reach moksha. These are desires; and the abode of one bound by desires will be in hell—even if the desire is for moksha, it makes no difference. Whether you want to go to Delhi or you want to go to heaven—what difference is there? It is the same thing. Your journey is outward. You have not yet tasted the inner nectar. The one who has tasted the inner is free here and now—this very moment! There is nowhere to go. Nothing to gain. No talk of attainment arises. What is, is already. It has always been ours. It is our eternal nature. Es dhammo sanantano! That is our dharma.

The sadhu becomes complex. He is called “sadhu,” but becomes very complicated, because he tiptoes through everything, keeps doing moral arithmetic: “If I do this, it will be sin; if I do that, it will be merit; this will be gain; that will be loss.” He is a businessman—the businessman of religion. But there is no difference in business. The same thing, the same madness. Not the slightest difference. The sadhu becomes complex. This is a great misfortune.

Rinzai, the Zen fakir, was a sadhu—I would call him a sadhu. Someone asked him, “What is your sadhana?” As, Ranjan, you asked Ramanand Paramhans Puri, “What is your sadhana?”—in the same way someone asked Rinzai. He said: “Sadhana? I have no sadhana at all. When I am hungry, I eat; when I am sleepy, I sleep. When sleep doesn’t come, I don’t sleep; when hunger doesn’t come, I don’t eat. I don’t eat more than hunger, nor less than hunger. I sleep as long as sleep is there—no more, no less. I live in accord with nature, with rhythm, with simplicity. What sadhana do I have? What sadhana can a poor fellow like me have?”

The listener was startled. He said, “What’s the specialness in that? We too eat when hungry; when sleepy, we too sleep. What is the difference between you and us then?”

Rinzai said, “I don’t see any other difference. There isn’t any. But let me tell you this much: when you eat, you do a thousand other things besides; I don’t do those thousand things. I am a straightforward, simple man. You eat, but you think of the shop. You sit at home, but you are in the bazaar. And when you are in the bazaar, you think of home. You are never where you are. I am where I am. ‘Jyun tha tyun thaharaya’—as I am, I remain as I am. I am where I am. You are scattered—who knows where-all you are! Wandering around the whole world. You sleep in your room, but in your dreams you have reached Timbuktu, or Constantinople—where don’t you go!”

Seth Chandu Lal, a Marwari, was telling his psychologist, “I am in great trouble.” Poor Chandu Lal is a slave to his wife—henpecked—as, stereotypically, Marwaris are. Or say this: whoever is henpecked is a Marwari—it comes to the same! A slave to his wife. The psychologist didn’t know this. He asked, “What is the problem?” He said, “My problem is that at night when I dream—this happens every night—now I am scared. Save me! What do I see? That I have twelve wives, each more beautiful than the other.”

The psychologist said, “Why be scared? What’s to be saved from? Enjoy it! Make merry! When twelve wives have come …”

Chandu Lal said, “You don’t understand. Have you ever had the chance to cook for twelve wives? I die cooking all night, washing the utensils all night. One is enough, brother—twelve are very difficult. Cook all night, wash utensils, clean. And do you think twelve wives would have how many children? One’s nose is running—wipe it. One is crying—rock his cradle. All night long! No chance to sleep. As tired as I am when I go to bed, when I wake up I am even more tired. And as soon as I get up, my wife is standing there—then the cycle starts again. In the day one torments me; at night twelve torment me. At least save me at night; I know you can’t save me in the day.”

This is what Rinzai meant: don’t claim that when you eat, you only eat; and when you sleep, you only sleep. That is not true. When you sleep, you do a thousand things. How many dreams you see! What all you do in dreams! You commit murders, you steal. While eating you think of who knows what all! Where-all you fly about! When I eat, I just eat; and when I sleep, I just sleep.

Once, another seeker came to meet Rinzai. He saw a man cutting wood in the garden. He couldn’t even think this could be Rinzai, because Rinzai was a great master, a famous fakir—the idea that he would be cutting wood seemed impossible. So he asked, “Brother, I’ve come to meet Rinzai; where can I meet him?” The ashram was big; about five hundred fakirs lived there. Rinzai said, “You want to meet Rinzai? Wait a bit, I’ll go call him.”

He quickly went inside, washed his hands and face, changed his clothes, came back and said, “I am Rinzai. Tell me, what do you need?”

The man said, “You are Rinzai? Oh, you think by changing clothes you can deceive me? Two minutes ago you left—granted you washed your face and changed your clothes—but I recognize you are the very same man who was cutting wood.”

He said, “Exactly right. I am that very man. But since you couldn’t recognize me then, I thought I’d wash my face and come—what else to do? Maybe because I was cutting wood and sweating, you couldn’t recognize me; so I put down the axe—maybe the axe was the reason you couldn’t recognize me. But I am Rinzai.”

The man said, “You cut wood!”

He said, “What else should I do? We need firewood for fuel, so I cut wood. And if you had come a little earlier in the morning, I was drawing water from the well, because for bathing there must be water, so I draw water from the well.”

So the man asked, “I ask you this: before you were enlightened, what did you do?”

He said, “The same—cut wood, draw water from the well.”

The man asked, “Then what difference did enlightenment make? Before you cut wood and drew water; now too you cut wood and draw water.”

He said, “The difference is this: before, while I cut wood, I also did other things—my mind kept going on. While I drew water, my mind kept filling with other things. Now I just draw water. Now I just cut wood. Now whatever I do, I only do that. Now I am only where I am.”

Sadhu means: so simple that one is where one is. Asadhu means: running, fragmented, broken into many pieces. Sadhu means: integrated. Do not ask your sadhus what their sadhana is. These are escapees. The world—samsara—is what God has given to practice in. God did not make mahatmas; God made worldly people. If God had wanted to make only mahatmas, he would have sent every child as a mahatma: some arriving with shaved heads as tridandi sadhus; some arriving doing yogasanas; some with their mouths bandaged; some with a kamandalu in hand; some carrying a peacock-feather whisk. One sadhu greater than the other! But God makes worldly people. God seems more interested in worldly folk than in sadhus. He doesn’t make a single sadhu.

A very great master of the West, George Gurdjieff, used to say: your mahatmas are against God. And I agree. Your mahatmas are teaching you something wrong. God’s will is otherwise. God wants you to live the struggle and challenge of this life. And your mahatmas teach you to run away. God gives opportunity; the mahatmas save you from the opportunity. Then you will have to return, because God is not going to leave you like that. Until you are ripened, until you are centered, you will have to come back. You are running away from the class; how will you pass? And until you pass, you will have to return to school. Better to pass quickly. Better to pass this very time. Why miss this opportunity?

For me, being in the world is sadhana, because here alone are all the difficulties, the challenges; and the one who lives these rightly, attentively, attains the supreme blessedness.

Now see the fun! “We chant the Name with every breath; we practice ajapa-japa!” They don’t even know what ajapa-japa means. Ajapa-japa means no japa. Ajapa means a state where no word remains—neither Ram, nor Om, nor Allah—no word at all. The very meaning of ajapa is that nothing is left to repeat. Beyond mantra means beyond mind.

This word “ajapa” is Nanak’s—very lovely! But look at the joke: those who follow Nanak keep rote-reciting the Japji! Nanak speaks of ajapa, and they are busy memorizing Japji. It turns the whole thing upside down. Where is ajapa, and where is Japji! And they even add a deferential “ji” to jap. What Punjabis they are! Jap would have been enough—at least spare it the “ji.” You’re giving it honorifics! And Nanak says, attain to ajapa.

Ajapa happens when there is emptiness within you. The breath goes on, and you remain a witness. The breath comes in—you see it; the breath goes out—you see it. You remain only the seer of the breath. This is what Buddha called “Vipassana.” What Nanak called ajapa, Buddha called Vipassana.

“Vipassana” is also a lovely word. It means seeing—pashyana, to see. It means witnessing. Simply keep watching the breath coming and going. But in this land we have become like parrots; we don’t even know what we are saying. We memorize words and keep repeating them. Now, in the very same breath they say two opposite things: “We chant the Name with every breath, we do ajapa-japa.” They have no idea what they’re saying.

And they added: “We want your darshan, because ‘Company of the saint and the tale of God—Tulsi says these two are rare.’ And as Arjuna asked Krishna, so I ask Osho: my mind is restless; how do I make it one-pointed?”

Then how are you doing ajapa-japa? Your mind is restless; it isn’t even concentrated yet. To be beyond mind is far away—your first step hasn’t even been taken, and you claim the destination.

I know people who have written big books on meditation and then come to ask me how to meditate. I ask them: When you wrote such a large book on meditation, did it not occur to you that, since you yourself don’t know how to meditate, at least have the decency not to write the book? Because who knows how many fools will start “meditating” based on your book. And you have no clue, no experience.

They say, “We wrote it by reading the scriptures.”

And I say: It’s possible those scriptures were also written by people like you—who knew nothing of meditation. For meditators have been very few, but scriptures are many. Obviously, many of those scriptures were composed by non-meditators.

You can write very fine things. What does writing cost? You can choose beautiful words. They too have quoted Tulsidas: “Company of the saint and the tale of God—Tulsi says these two are rare.”

But Tulsi himself seems not to have had the experience, because he refused to bow in Krishna’s temple. He said, “Tulsi’s head will bow only when you take bow and arrow in hand.” He said, “My head will bow when you become the archer Rama. I cannot bow before Krishna.”

What a joke! And in the Ramcharitmanas Tulsi has written countless lines that God pervades every particle; He alone is, there is none other. He who can see Him in every particle cannot see Him in Krishna’s image? What obstacle did Krishna’s image present? Such a statement cannot be of one with direct experience; it is the statement of a partisan. One who has recognized God bows—what difference does it make whether it’s a mosque, a church, or a gurdwara? He is already bowed. But Tulsi still has insistence—he cannot bow even before Krishna. He is still a partisan of Rama. It seems the bow-and-arrow are his trademark: until they are present, how can he bow? First the bow-and-arrow must appear. Meaning, the bow-and-arrow are more important than Rama himself. Even if he meets Rama without bow-and-arrow, he will not bow. He will say: “Tulsi’s head will bow only when you take bow and arrow in hand. Where is the bow-and-arrow, sir? First take them in hand, then my head will bow. This is no ordinary head—it is Tulsidas’s head! If you want it to bow, if you intend to enjoy this head bowing, then pick up the bow-and-arrow.”

Even here there’s a condition. Even the bowing is conditional. What kind of bowing is that? And see what story people have concocted: Krishna quickly put aside the flute, took up bow-and-arrow, and then Tulsidas bowed. What amusing people! They have no awareness of what they are doing, or making God do. They project themselves even onto God—as if Rama were worried that if Tulsidas’s head didn’t bow, something would be lacking in Rama. And if there were such a thing—that he takes so much pleasure in making Tulsidas bow—then such a Rama is a two-bit Rama. It is impossible that Krishna would fling away his flute to pick up a bow-and-arrow. Yes, a slap would be understandable: “Out you go! What will I do with your head bowing? Eat it? Drink it? Get lost! Don’t ever come this way again!”

But no—he hurriedly picked up a bow-and-arrow, and then Tulsidas’s head bowed. So the devotee was pleased and God was pleased. Both must have been delighted: “Wow, what a marvel!” Tulsidas happy his condition was met; and God happy that such a great head had been made to bow!

Now, what sort of “company of a saint” will they manage? One who even makes demands of Krishna—“Take up bow-and-arrow”—will he recognize saints? If Tulsidas had met Jesus, could he have recognized him? Impossible! If he couldn’t recognize Krishna, how would he recognize Jesus? And Jesus rode a donkey. In those Jewish lands, a donkey was the only transport. If Tulsidas met Jesus on a donkey, the donkey itself would block the bowing: “First get off the donkey; otherwise the donkey will think I’m bowing to him.” As for donkeys—who knows what they understand! Donkeys can misunderstand anything! Tulsidas’s head bow to a donkey? Never! “First get down from the donkey—and take up a bow-and-arrow!”

If he met Lao Tzu, it would be very difficult. Lao Tzu rode a water buffalo. If it were Mother Cow, alright—but a buffalo! That’s the vehicle of Yama, the god of death. He would think the messenger of death is coming and start chanting Ram-Ram loudly: death has arrived! And Lao Tzu was a marvel; even on the buffalo he wouldn’t sit facing forward—he sat backwards. In China they did ride buffaloes—but backwards!

Once, people asked Lao Tzu why he sat backwards on the buffalo. He was passing through a marketplace with his disciples—Chuang Tzu and others like Lieh Tzu were with him. He said, “There is a secret. If I sit forward, my back turns to my disciples—that is an insult to them. If I ask them to walk in front so my back is not to them, they refuse: ‘That would put our backs to you—that’s an insult.’ So I found this device: I sit backwards. My face is toward my disciples; their faces toward me. No one is insulted.”

So he sat backwards—and there is meaning in it. But Tulsidas would have thought: “This is a big mess—Yama’s messenger is coming, and a mad one at that! He’ll drag me off! He’s riding a buffalo backwards! Shout quickly: get down from the buffalo; then we’ll have a saint’s company.”

Tulsidas said fine words, but they don’t seem born of experience. “Company of the saint and the tale of God.” True enough—but borrowed, heard. Yes, saintly company is difficult, because it’s hard to find a saint. Among a thousand, perhaps one is a saint; nine hundred and ninety-nine are the wrong sort. And because of those nine hundred and ninety-nine, it becomes hard to recognize the one. The crowd is theirs; the votes are theirs. The nine hundred and ninety-nine stand on one side, and the poor one is left alone. The saint stands alone. The wrong sorts are a crowd. And if things are decided by votes and crowds, the saint is already defeated. Thus Buddha lost, thus Mahavira lost; trash won.

The crowd is pleased by the wrong people, because they fit with you. The wrong people go according to you. If you say, “Tie a bandage over your mouth, then we’ll regard you as a saint,” then you see—Krishna sets aside the flute. If you bandage your mouth, the Terapanthi Sthanakvasi Jains will call you a saint. Just a mouth-cloth.

I was in Hyderabad. A Jain muni listened to me. He was young. He gathered courage, got excited, and threw away his mouth-cloth. The next day, when I went to speak, he came with me and sat on the stage. There was an immediate uproar among the Jains: “Where is the mouth-cloth?” Letters came to me: “Please remove this man from the stage; he has abandoned the mouth-cloth, so he is no longer a Jain monk.”

I said, “Were you bowing to the mouth-cloth or to this man? You used to touch his feet. Until yesterday you served him. Today he has set aside a mouth-cloth—what has really been lost? Only the cloth, nothing else. Is the mouth-cloth of such value? Then leave people aside; hang mouth-cloths in your homes, worship them, serve them. It is the mouth-cloth you relish.”

But I understand—if even Baba Tulsidas can err, what of these poor fellows? These Hyderabadis—how much can they understand? Still, they clung to their insistence. It became a commotion. People stood up in the crowd: “Throw him off the stage.” I said, “Look, I too am sitting on the stage. I’m not wearing a mouth-cloth either. Then what harm in his sitting? Look at that lizard—she’s sitting above even me, and she has no mouth-cloth. What’s the quarrel? Mosquitoes are flying, none with mouth-cloths, and no one stops them. Let this poor man sit.”

But they did not let him. It went so far they climbed the stage to drag him. Then I told him, “You step down yourself. This is a crowd of madmen. If you want their respect, put your mouth-cloth back on. They are enamored of the mouth-cloth.” Only fools can fulfill such conditions.

But whatever your condition, you will find fools to fulfill it. Let them meet your condition, and they become “saints.” One in a thousand may be a true saint—and the true saint will not fulfill any of your conditions. He will live in his own way. Why should he care whether you call him saint or not? What does your acceptance or rejection matter? He lives in his own uniqueness, in his own joy. Your respect makes no difference to him; your insult makes no difference. Your abuse or your praise are the same to him.

First, it is hard to find a saint, because your mind is filled with the wrong sort. You have ready-made ideas of what a saint must be. But no notion can be applied to a saint. Truth accepts no condition. Truth is freedom, is free. You cannot impose notions upon it. Impose notions, and truth will die; dead words will remain.

So, first, finding a saint is difficult. And even if you find one, communion is still difficult. Meeting a saint and having communion are not the same, because communion requires discipleship. The saint is one half; that is only half the story. There is light—but your eyes must also be open. Without open eyes, how will there be meeting? You can sit before a lamp and remain in darkness with your eyes closed. Even before the sun, darkness remains. Open your eyes.

Disciple means: open your eyes.

Even if by accident you reach a saint—by accident you will! The wrong ones search for you; they chase you: “Brother, where are you going? We’re over here. Come here!” Each shopkeeper pulling: “The real goods are here.”

An Italian opened a shop and put up a sign: “Everything here at the lowest prices.” A Greek opened a shop, saw that sign, and put up his: “We don’t sell junk, so price isn’t a question. We sell only genuine goods and charge exactly what they’re worth—no more, no less. If you want trash, go elsewhere.” Between them a Jew opened a shop and put up: “The entrance to the two shops next door is here.” Whatever you want—cheap is here, expensive is here. The main entrance to both next-door shops is here.

That is the kind of squabble. Saints do not run after you. A saint is settled within himself. You have to seek him, search him out. Those who run after you are not saints. They have some vested interest. They are keen to exploit you. Hence they will fulfill your conditions too.

So first it is hard to find a saint; and if, by the river-and-boat of chance, you do find one, the next difficulty arises—that you must be a disciple, otherwise communion will not happen. The saint has to give, but your bowl must be ready to receive. The saint is ready to share, but your doors are shut. You stand there frightened. The saint is ready to drown you, but you are not willing to drown. You are nervous. You calculate. You weigh profit and loss: How far should I go? How far not? And is this person even a saint?

And how will you test? Your notions are all stale; nothing will be decided by them. A Jain has notions derived from Jain scriptures; he measures by them. By those scriptures neither Krishna is a saint, nor Jesus, nor Mohammed, nor Zarathustra, nor Lao Tzu. He has his own yardsticks; by them they cannot measure up.

A Jain muni told me, “Don’t call Jesus a saint—he was crucified. The mark of a Tirthankara is that even a thorn lying straight on the road turns aside when he comes—even a thorn! Because for one whose sins are all burnt, no suffering can befall him. But Jesus was crucified—leave aside thorns, the cross! It must be the result of some great sin.”

I said, “Think also: Jesus was crucified—but did Jesus suffer? That is the question. The cross in itself decides nothing. Did suffering arise in him or not? If it had, Jesus could not have left the world saying, ‘Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.’ Christians call Jesus a saint because even on the cross he did not become angry. You call Mahavira a saint because a thorn turned aside. That would make the thorn the saint—how does Mahavira become the saint? The thorn is obviously the accomplished one—it instantly turned aside so as not to prick the poor man! But what is the test of Mahavira there? The real test is on the cross.”

He said, “What are you saying! You are refuting all scriptures.”

I am not refuting anything; I am only reminding you—do not impose your notions on others. What is the value of your notions? You cannot press your notions upon everyone.

And saints have appeared in endless forms, not in one single form. If you go with fixed notions, then certainly the Jain will recognize only a Jain sadhu as a saint; the Hindu only a Hindu; the Muslim only a Muslim. The joke is that you set the yardstick first. Have the experience of a saint first; then set a yardstick.

And I tell you: those who truly had the company of saints never again set yardsticks. Because once they recognized one saint, they understood that saintliness can take infinite forms, with infinite ways of living.

That is why I have spoken—and am speaking—on Zarathustra, Lao Tzu, Jesus, Buddha, Mahavira, Krishna, Mohammed, all of them, to keep reminding you—do not forget—that saintliness is as infinite as God, because it is God’s own flowering. A mind bound by notions cannot have communion; the notions will intrude.

So they say, “Company of the saint and the tale of God,” but they won’t be able to have saintly company. Their notions are fixed; those very notions will become the barrier. Their mind is still restless. The mind is restless, and the name is—Ramananda Paramhans Puri! A paramhansa is one who has gone beyond mind. Man is thought; hansa is the symbol of discrimination. The hansa is a poetic symbol—it is said that if milk mixed with water is given, it will take the milk and leave the water. This is poetic fancy, not fact. Don’t fall into the illusion that it’s a scientific truth. If it were scientific, then I say it could not drink milk either, because milk itself is ninety percent water—without any mixing. The cow already mixes it. Later the milkman may add more. Ninety percent is water. Then the hansa would drink nothing.

And nowadays times are worse. People don’t only add water. When I go to Ahmedabad I never drink milk—some idiot Amdavadi might add “life-water.” The disciples of Morarji-bhai live in Ahmedabad—idiots! One bigger idiot than another. Add water—fine; let it be water. But they add “life-water,” out of compassion: whoever drinks it will live longer, even become Prime Minister! Compassion! Why add water when “life-water” is available—add that. It’s an upgrade over milk!

No hansa could separate the water from the milk. But it is a poetic symbol: the hansa separates the essential from the nonessential. Paramhansa means one who has attained such discrimination—who has dropped the inessential and taken the essential; who has left the peripheral and become steady at the center. Only then can someone be called a paramhansa.

And here the mind is still restless. The mind is still a crow, not a swan. It caws and fusses. And they come asking how to make the mind one-pointed!

You don’t have to make the mind one-pointed. You have to be free of mind. Why make it one-pointed? Fragmented, it already torments you; gathered, it will sit on your chest like a stone. Then removing it will be even harder. You can’t overcome it while scattered—make it concentrated and you will sink your remaining little raft too. What little modesty remains will be stripped. It’s already exposed; the last loincloth will go. What will you gain by concentration? Do not concentrate.

Meditation is not concentration. Concentration is an effort of mind. To fix the mind at one point is concentration; to be free of mind is meditation. Concentration is not the point. It is a trivial thing—and very easy. There is no difficulty in it. Look at a beautiful woman, and the whole marketplace vanishes; the mind becomes concentrated. Is that a big deal? You go to a movie—you forget the shop, the home, everything; the mind becomes concentrated in the film.

Tell this Ramananda “Paramhans”: go watch movies—your mind will become concentrated! A street juggler beats his drum and the minds of many become concentrated. They forget everything, leaning their bicycles, on the way to buy medicine for the wife—forgot even the wife! The juggler beat his drum; the monkey began to dance. Nothing special is happening—only the hope that maybe something will. The mind becomes focused. Time stops; space is forgotten.

Concentration is not difficult. A scientist at his research becomes concentrated. A surgeon at surgery becomes concentrated. A painter at his canvas becomes concentrated. A musician at his veena becomes concentrated. Concentration is no great achievement. The difficulty arises when you try to concentrate the mind where it does not wish to be. Then trouble begins. Hema Malini is coming down the street, and you are trying to concentrate on Hanuman—how will that work? What can even Hanuman do? The mind is ready to concentrate—but it wants to on Hema Malini. It finds nothing attractive in Hanuman; why concentrate on him? And what’s the hurry? If it has to be Hanuman, we’ll do it later—at the time of death! Right now there are a few days of moonlight—let’s look here. For an eternity afterward there will be Hanuman alone; what else will we do? It will be just us and Hanuman! But this brief window—let’s not miss it!

The mind is perfectly ready to concentrate—but you want to force it on the wrong things. So trouble arises. The mind says, “We will not concentrate! We want to concentrate here; you want us there. Who are you? What right do you have?” And the mind drags you where it wants. If you force too much, the result will be that you’ll start seeing Hema Malini in Hanuman. Blink as you will—whenever you open your eyes, Hema Malini is standing there! Poor Hanuman disappears behind her.

Concentrating the mind is not hard; the trouble comes only when you try to force it. If each person were allowed to live in his own nature, concentration would be a very ordinary matter.

When I was a student, I had a teacher of history. Now, I had no interest in history—that Henry the Seventh existed. What have I to do with that? He existed—let him. Had he not existed, nothing would have been lost. He has nothing to do with me, nor I with him. We’re never going to meet. He lived long ago. “Forget what is past; take care of what’s ahead!” So I would write on his blackboard: “Forget what is past.” He would get angry: “You wrote that again!” I’d say, “What’s the point in all this?”

Outside, in the mango grove near our school, the cuckoo’s cooing would rise. He would say, “Concentrate your mind.” I’d say, “My mind is concentrated—but on the cuckoo’s cooing, not on your chatter.”

He’d say, “Get out of the room!”

I’d say, “That is what I want.”

So I stood outside—and learned history from outside. Therefore my history is in poor shape. If I say anything on history, don’t believe it. I learned it standing outside. He would keep me out. The principal would make his rounds; whenever he saw me I was standing outside. He asked, “What’s the matter? Whenever I see you, you’re outside.”

I said, “I study history standing outside.”

He said, “I don’t understand.”

I said, “My mind is concentrated; he doesn’t let me inside. Ask him.”

He asked the teacher, “Chhotelalji, this student says his mind is concentrated—why do you keep him outside?” The teacher said, “His mind is concentrated on the cuckoo’s cooing. I want it concentrated on history.”

The principal returned and said, “Why didn’t you tell me the whole story?” I said, “There is no whole story. I have no interest in history. Genghis Khan, Tamerlane—finished! What have I to do with lame Tamerlane? And the song the cuckoo is singing right now—should I not listen to that, and instead listen to the song of lame Tamerlane that Chhotelalji is singing? I have no interest.”

I have never experienced in my life that concentration is a problem. I have always found my mind concentrated. But it concentrates where it wants. If you tug and force, there is no point—only sadness will come of it.

Go beyond mind. And the method to go beyond mind is witnessing, not concentration. If you remain tangled in concentration, this night will never end.

The night is still left
The heart has found no ease
Strike up, Beloved, that song which you have not yet sung
You dwell in every vein, you are gathered in my eyes
Tell me yourself, O cruel one, why you came so late
All around, the paraphernalia of joy sways
The night is still left
The heart has found no ease
Strike up, O tyrant, that melody which you have not yet played
In dew-lit eyes a heart trembles,
There is a fear—and in your embrace life becomes a song,
Becomes a song and comes into your embrace
What I have yet to tell you—
That word is still unsaid
The night is still left
The heart has found no ease
Strike up, O tyrant, that melody which you have not yet played

Until you hear God’s song, the night will remain, and the word will remain unsaid. And that song can be struck even now. Witnessing awakens that music within you.

That’s all for today.