Kano Suni So Juth Sab #4

On the path of religion, whichever method you choose, courage is indispensable. Without courage there is no religion. Whether it is devotion or meditation, there is no path for the weak and the timid. The timid cannot muster the courage for meditation, because meditation means the effort to become complete. Meditation means the endeavor to realize oneself. Meditation means an unprecedented resolve. Courage is needed; struggle is needed.

On the path of love, just as much courage is needed. Let no one think, “Why should courage be needed on the path of love or devotion?” In fact, perhaps a little more courage is required, because devotion is surrender. Devotion is dissolution. Meditation says: Become yourself. Devotion says: Efface yourself. Efface yourself utterly. To disappear demands even greater courage. The meditator still keeps a little hope that “I will remain.” The devotee cannot even keep that much hope. The meditator too disappears, but at the final stage. The devotee disappears at the very first step.

The meditator also surrenders, but in the last stage. From the beginning he purifies his ego. He removes whatever faults there are in life; he struggles with those faults. In the end what remains is a pure ego. That is the final moment. That too has to be dropped, because it is the last defect—the “I”-sense. Now there is no theft, no anger, no greed, no lust: all have gone. But in their place one identity remains—“I am.” Ultimately the knower drops that too. In that last moment the revolution happens.

But the devotee, the lover, lets go of it in the very first step. The difference is only this: the meditator first drops the other vices and drops the vice of ego at the end. The devotee drops the vice of ego first, and once that is dropped, the other vices fall away by themselves, because the root of all diseases is the ego. If you have ever been angry, it was because of ego; if you have ever been greedy, that too was because of ego. So the devotee strikes straight at the root. That needs even more courage. The knower cuts the branches; slowly, slowly, slowly, a time comes when the whole tree is cut down and only the roots remain. Then at last he cuts the roots. The knower’s process is very gradual—step by step. But the devotee’s process is non-gradual—a single leap. So the devotee needs even more courage.

So do not even by mistake think, “Courage is fine on the path of resolve, but Dariya is talking of love—how can he speak of being so doughty?” The devotee has to disappear. What greater courage could there be? The devotee has to lose himself. What greater audacity could there be? Therefore the symbol Dariya has chosen is apt, it is lovely: just as a moth comes to the flame and dies, so the devotee comes to the flame of the satguru and dies, is effaced. Only by dying in the satguru is one born into the divine.

It is possible. From wherever you are, entry into religion is possible. Because there is no place from which the path to the Divine does not exist. If such a place existed, it would mean there is somewhere God is not. So wherever you are, there is a way. But if you are inside a sect, then the meaning of the way is: leave the sect.

As with someone locked in a prison—is there no way to be free from prison? There is. Climb the wall and get out; break the door; cut through the bars; do something so that the wall ceases to be a barrier—make a breach and go out. There is a way even from prison; you will have to seek it. One who does not want to go will not go even if he sits free under the open sky. Then there is no way even there. You may sit under the open sky, the Ganga flowing before you, and if you do not want to drink, or there is no thirst in you, you will not even rise. The Ganga will just keep flowing. Either you have no thirst, or you believe this water will not quench it; you wait for some other water. Then the one sitting “free” under the sky does not necessarily reach the Divine. And the one locked in the prison of a sect does not necessarily remain locked. It depends on how intense your longing is to attain the Divine. No fetter can stop you if the longing is aflame. Chains do not stop anyone. One who is determined not to stop cannot be stopped by anyone. And one who wants to stop is stopped by anything, by the smallest of things.

People do get free from prisons. After all, everyone is born into some sect. Buddha was born in a Hindu home, Nanak in a Hindu home, Dariya in a Muslim home, but they were freed. If the search is alive, nothing in this world can bind you. A seeker has never been bound by anyone. If the search is not alive, then even without chains, even under the open sky, you will just sit—and there will be no journey.

What does “sect” mean? Only this: once there was a snake that passed; now the snake is gone; only the line in the dust remains. The snake once passed. Once there was Mahavira; now there is the Jain sect. The snake once moved along this path; a trace remains on the sand. Once Buddha passed; his footprints remain on the sands of time. Those footprints are what you call a sect.

Remember: in the footprints there are no feet, only the marks! Worship them as much as you like. Had you caught hold of Buddha’s living feet, your movement would have joined with his. He was movement, a flow—you would have flowed with him. But if you take hold of footprints, they go nowhere; they just lie where they are, forever. There is no motion in a footprint.

Had you caught hold of Buddha, he would have awakened you. If you clutch at Buddha’s statue, how will it awaken you? It is not awake itself. Had you had the good fortune to sit near Krishna, perhaps his sweet words would have filled your life with the longing for the Divine. But the Gita cannot do that. You need living eyes that can look into your eyes and shake you awake. You need living words not lifted from lips alone, not lifted from books. This cannot happen through the dust of scriptural knowledge. Behind the words there must throb some living heart, there must be a void seated behind the words; words must rise from that emptiness and enter your innermost being—then perhaps your life will tremble with wonder, perhaps you too will begin to dance, ankle-bells tied to your feet.

Meera sang her bhajans. Certainly Lata Mangeshkar sings those same bhajans with greater technique, but listening to Lata’s bhajan will not bring God into your life. Meera perhaps lacked refined technique, perhaps she did not know the full art of music—but that intoxication, that aliveness, cannot be in any singer’s voice. A singer’s voice will have melody, metre, measure, adherence to the rules of music—everything will be there, and yet something essential will be missing.

Like a corpse, well-adorned, jewelled, covered in beautiful clothes, face powdered, a blush applied, lipstick on the lips—and yet a corpse lying there. So is the song of the mere singer. It is not alive. This corpse will not get up. It will not speak. Call to it and it will not answer. And behind these jewels and ornaments and garments there is only a decaying body—soon a stench will rise. It is dead.

A sect is the name of a dead religion. As you love your mother, but when she dies do you keep her at home? You take her to the cremation ground. You weep, beat your chest, and bid her farewell. So it is with a sect. On the day the master is gone, on the day the living life has flown, the flame has merged, and only an extinguished lamp remains—then to keep worshipping it is to enthrone a corpse in your home. Therefore freedom does not come from a sect.

And I am not saying that the lamp of a sect never had a flame—no. Once it did; otherwise you would not worship it. You do not worship a lamp either; someone once saw the flame, and from that the worship began. The worship continues; the flame went out long ago. Those who saw it departed thousands of years back. Then their sons’ sons, and their sons’ sons, in the hope that what their ancestors saw was a flame, keep worshipping the extinguished lamp. Thus the Vedas are worshipped, the Quran is worshipped, the Bible is worshipped.

Dariya says: The dust of scriptural knowledge clings to the limbs.

All this is dust that clings to your being. Seek a master’s spring and plunge in it, so that this dust may be washed away. Seek the company of a master whose whirlwind will blow your dust away; so you become clean. Be cleansed of scriptures. Be freed from words. When the burden of doctrines and dogmas drops, your consciousness becomes pure. In that very purity the image of the Divine is formed.

But by worshipping corpses you yourselves have become corpses. This happens. Whatever you worship, that you become. So choose your worship very carefully. Do not begin to worship just anything. Worship stone and you will become stone. Whatever you worship, that you will become. Because your worship means you see something higher than yourself there. If you worship a corpse, you are not a devotee of life—you are a devotee of death. You will die soon.

Man has lost himself within his own borders
He has become like the Great Wall of China
He has bottled up solutions of a few faces in vials
By which he has washed away every trace of his own identity
Seashells hold drops of poison, eyes weep tears for tyranny
What pearl is where—man has lost the way
Even a scrap of shade is a calamity to obtain
Wearing patches of sunlight, man has fallen asleep
Daily he is broken upon the potter’s wheel of turning time
A toy in the hands of time, that is what man has become
It is centuries since body and mind were kept apart
The one who went has not returned till today—man is missing still
Which desire first became a tomb, who can tell?
Man has become a chain of tombs upon tombs

You have become like graves, like mausoleums. Worship mausoleums and you will become mausoleums. Beware of worshipping graves. A sect is the worship of the past, of what has gone—what once was and is no more. A sect assumes that truth can be found by a group. But whenever truth has been found, it has been found by an individual, not by a group.

Lions have no herds—lions are solitary. Kabir alone, Nanak alone, Dadu alone, Dariya alone. When they found, they found in aloneness. Whenever anyone has found, it has been in utter solitude, where not even the shadow of another falls. Mahavira found, Buddha found, Christ found, Mohammed found—in aloneness.

When the Quran first descended upon Mohammed, he was alone in the mountains; no one was there. When Mahavira realized, he had stood silent in the forests for twelve years; he had renounced even speech—for if you speak, the other arrives. He had dissolved the other so completely that he would not speak at all—how then could the other come? When Buddha attained, he was seated alone under the Bodhi tree. There was no other. He had five companions; even they had left.

That story is beautiful. It may be symbolic, for stories around such awakened ones turn symbolic. Those five companions had always been with Buddha. He had set out with them to seek truth. But when Buddha saw that even intense austerities led nowhere, that he had dried up his body in every way and nothing happened, he gave up asceticism. He had already left the world—one day he left asceticism too. The day he abandoned austerity, those five were angry. “This Gautam has become corrupt,” they said. “He used to practice such harsh austerities; now he accepts whatever comes. He even accepts alms. The old severity is gone.” They left. The very night they left, Buddha was enlightened.

Those five can also be symbols of the five senses—and should be. As long as Buddha searched together with these five, there was obstruction. Earlier he had sought through the indulgence of the five senses; later he sought through the renunciation of the five; but the company of the five remained. That night the company of the five fell away; he became suprasensory—and the event happened.

But they were also his five disciples; they left saying Gautam had fallen. The day they left, the happening occurred. It may well be that their presence was the obstacle. Such is my feeling. Their presence was a crowd, a congregation. There must have been talk, debate; there was no deep silence, no emptiness. Samadhi could not ripen. Whenever truth descends, it descends in utter solitude into the individual’s inner being.

A sect assumes that by standing amidst the crowd truth will be found—that by being a Hindu, or by being a Muslim, truth will be found. No. Neither by being Hindu nor by being Muslim has truth been found; it has been found by being alone. “Hindu” too is a crowd; “Muslim” too is a crowd. Crowds are politics. Therefore a sect is politics, not religion. It is subtle politics in the name of religion.

Without lighting your own little lamp there is no other way
No other way—under the illusion of that light
We extinguished our own lamps,
Put all doubts and questions to sleep—
That trust turned out false
False proved the belief
That the sun would show the way to all
That a fool would light his own small lamp
What need to stumble in the dark with tiny lamps,
To seek separate paths,
To try and fail again and again in the struggle to win?
When the sky glitters with the rays of a new sun,
When darkness has been washed away forever,
Millions march forward,
Shouting slogans,
Willingly snuffing out their own little lamps—
That belief proved false,
Was lost on the highway of the masses,
And light wrapped itself in a sheet of darkness and slept
Without lighting your own little lamp there is no way

Light is not collective. There is no sun of truth for all. Truth’s small lamp is lit within your own being, in your solitude, in your dense silence. In truth, only small lamps have to be lit; there are lamps of samadhi, not suns.

There are many of you here—if you all sit to meditate, the moment meditation happens you will be alone, and all others will be forgotten. Bodies may sit together; as soon as you go within, you are alone. Inside there is utter aloneness; you cannot take anyone there. Even if you wish, you cannot. Even your beloved, if you call, will not come. There is no possibility of another arriving there. There only you are enthroned.

You have to find that Supreme Presence where only you are enthroned. The knower calls it the Self; the devotee calls it God. It is your own intrinsic nature. But to attain it, you will have to leave the crowd. Crowds have their uses—but not religious ones. They have political uses: if you belong to a bigger crowd, you are powerful; to a smaller crowd, less powerful. These are matters of power. But if you are alone, you have become religious.

And once you know that aloneness, once your little lamp is lit, then you may live among crowds and in marketplaces—it makes no difference. For the one whose lamp is lit, there is no marketplace anywhere. For him, everywhere is the abode of God. Everywhere the Himalayas are spread. Everywhere silence is. And for one whose own light is lit, there is no darkness anywhere. You have seen it: with a tiny lamp in your hand, wherever you go, light surrounds you. Your small lamp is enough. At least for a few steps, the circle of light travels with you. For one whose inner lamp is lit, darkness does not exist. Wherever he goes, there is light. Sit in the bazaar—there is light. Sit on the mountain—there is light. Live in the family—there is light. Become a wanderer—there is light. The essential thing is that the inner light be lit. But this does not happen through a sect; for it you must act yourself.

In the world, in the name of religion, the sect is like a counterfeit coin, a false coin. It tempts. It says, “Join—join this sect, or that sect—and you will attain what you seek.” But has anyone ever attained this way? Jesus was born in a Jewish home, but he did not find in the Jewish sect. He had to seek in solitude. Till today, all who have found have found in solitude.

And the same misfortune always occurs: when someone finds, seeing the light of his lamp thousands rush to him. Moths come. Moths die in his flame; they are absorbed into his light. Then, in time, his flame goes out. Nothing in this world is eternal. Even the true master appears and departs. For a moment the door opens, and then it closes. But people do not understand.

People are sticklers for old grooves. They hear that their fathers and grandfathers fell upon such and such a lamp and attained nirvana; they too keep falling upon that lamp—and do not even see that now the lamp is no longer lit. The moth remains a moth. He dashes himself upon the lamp, bangs his head—and is even more pleased, “How clever—saved from dying and enjoyed the pride of throwing oneself upon the lamp.” He avoids real lamps. Where a flame is burning now, he does not go. He says, “We have our own lamp; we will fall upon that. We have our own temple, our own gurdwara, our own mosque; we go there. Why go elsewhere?” But at least see this much: the temple from which you return as you went was not a temple. The mosque that does not annihilate you is no longer a mosque. The doorway from which you come back unchanged—how is it the Guru’s door? When the Guru is not, how can the Guru’s door remain? One who goes through the true door is gone; how can he return? If you fall into a real lamp, you are gone.

Thus, in the name of sect, a false process begins, a hollow net spreads. Even if some people, by patching and pounding, manage to calm themselves a little within a sect, that peace is the peace of a corpse, not of a living man. There is a difference between peace and peace—remember. There is the peace of a cremation ground, and the peace of the Himalayas. There is the peace of one sitting silently, and the peace of a dead body. From the outside both may seem alike. If you die in your room, there is silence. If you enter samadhi in your room, there is silence. But are these two silences the same? Are these two peaces the same? Will you not distinguish between the silence of a corpse and the silence of the one absorbed in samadhi? The silence of the meditator is alive, stirred by supreme energy. The silence of the dead is merely the absence of noise—negative. It has no creativity.

There is a kind of fire that does not burn others,
But, held within its own circumference,
Bound in its own dignity, it quietly, steadily glows
We do not want the peace of ashes
There is a kind of fire that does not crackle,
Does not make a noise,
Affirmed by its own dignity,
Satisfied in its own strength,
Unceasingly, serenely, blissfully burns
We do not want the peace of ashes

Seek the peace of such a fire, that quietly, steadily glows—satisfied in itself, content, unceasingly serene and blissfully burning. Seek the peace of fire, not of ash. Ash also has a peace—dead, cold; where life has gone. Yes, once there was fire even there.

A sect is ash. Once there was fire there, once live coals—no longer. In the search for religion you must always seek live embers; and here lies the difficulty. Because you are born amidst ash; the ember you must seek. You were born in a Hindu home by accident; you did nothing for it. In a Jain home—by accident. From childhood a sect is given to you; its conditioning is laid upon you. But if you want a true master, you must search. True masters are not inherited. For a true master you must open your eyes and wander; you must journey. A true master is found by pilgrimage. You must risk, take chances. Who knows—one you take for a true master may not be. You must become a gambler. You must stake yourself. You may miss.

In a sect there is no such risk. It comes from forefathers, on loan. You get it free—like a legacy; you do not have to earn it. Understand the difference. A sect is inherited free, like a bequest. Religion must be earned, sought, staked; therefore only a few become truly religious.

Those who chose Nanak—the living Nanak—their case was different. Those who are Sikhs now—their case is different. Those who chose the living Nanak had to choose with great difficulty; with great struggle. Someone was born in a Hindu home; there was no “house” of Nanak then. Someone was born in a Muslim home, someone in a Jain home, someone a Gorakhpanthi—there were a thousand sects. Then Nanak’s flame was lit—this ember flared forth. The songs of this ember were born. Those who chose him then must have been brave people—rare ones, not many. As Dariya says, in an army there are at best one or two true warriors; an army is not made of heroes—there are one or two heroic souls.

A few heard Nanak’s song. A few recognized. A few dared to stake their past. The past was secure. They staked the Gita for love of this man, for the pull of this man. “We leave the Gita,” they said—not because Krishna was or was not true; that was not the question. Where is Krishna now in the Gita? Ash remains. They left Mahavira, Buddha, Mohammed—and pledged themselves to this man, married themselves to him. This was risky. The Gita had an ancient reputation—thousands of years old. This man is new—who knows if he is true? He has no old credentials, no standing in the market. No one knows him yet. They bound themselves to an unknown. They were courageous. If Nanak called them “shishya”—disciples (from which Sikh comes)—he was right; they were disciples. One who seeks a master is a disciple.

But those who are Sikhs now are not disciples. They did not seek a master. They were born in Sikh homes. Now, if they have to seek a master, it will be trouble. Now they will have to leave Nanak to seek a master—that is troublesome. And it may surprise you to know: those who leave Nanak and seek a master—those are the true Sikhs. Because Sikh means one who seeks a guru, a living guru. Now the true Sikh will be outside the Sikh sect. The true Jain will be outside the Jain sect. The true Hindu will be outside the Hindu sect. For where is the “true” inside a sect? He will seek the true. The true always resides in the living breath of a living master. But there are prices to pay.

Leaving a sect is not easy. Along with sects come vested interests, formalities, systems, securities, conveniences. And the sect does not forgive you. It takes its revenge. When you leave a sect, you hurt the ego of the sect: “Who do you think you are? You imagine yourself intelligent? We are all wrong? We have believed for thousands of years—and are wrong? And you alone are wise?” The whole sect rises against you. Their crowd is theirs; they will obstruct you. This obstacle must be borne by the courageous one on the path of truth. Therefore Dariya is right to say only a few heroes walk the religious path.

A “religious leader” is not a true master; the religious leader is a counterfeit of the true master. The pandit, the priest, the mullah—these are deceptions. The fire within them does not burn. They themselves know nothing. They are as ignorant as you—sometimes more so. You at least know that you do not know; they believe they know everything—while knowing nothing. Their condition is worse than yours.

And what is their relation with religion? None. Their relation is with the hypocrisy of religion—because there is profit in it, a business in it. The religious leader does business in religion.

I have heard: A man went to Mulla Nasruddin, terrified. “Mulla, save me! I made a great mistake. I have not slept for seven days. I stole someone’s goat, and my friends and I ate and drank it. Now this sin torments me: my friends helped in eating and drinking, but on Judgment Day I alone will be caught. When the call comes, I will have to go. I stole the goat. They all ate; I got only a little. They ate and left; I am trapped. Mulla, show me some way out.”

Mulla shouted, scolded him. He painted the whole picture of hell: “You will rot in hell, be boiled in cauldrons, worms and insects will bite you; for births and births you will suffer.” He frightened the man thoroughly. The man was shaken. “Mulla, no more—I haven’t slept for seven days, and you are making me worse. Tell me what to do.” Mulla said, “If you want to do something, talk will not do; I need some cash proof.”

“Cash proof? What do you mean?”

“Don’t you understand ‘cash’?”

He understood and pulled out a five-rupee note and gave it to the Mulla. Mulla pocketed it and said, “Don’t worry; there is a way out of every tangle. On Judgment Day you will be called. God will ask, ‘Why did you steal the goat?’ You deny it flatly. Say, ‘I never stole it.’”

“Deny it?” the man asked.

“Is there any witness?” Mulla asked.

“Witness—no,” said the man.

“Did anyone see you steal it?”

“No one,” said the man.

“Then relax. When there is no witness, even a small court can do nothing—what of the great court? He too will ask for witnesses.”

The man said, “That’s true—but God is all-powerful; what is lacking for him? He could call the goat itself—‘Here is the goat.’ The goat saw it.”

Mulla said, “That is a snag. Another cash proof.” The man pulled out another five-rupee note. Pocketing it, Mulla said, “Listen—if he calls the goat, quickly catch the goat and hand it over to the man you stole it from. Say, ‘Now the matter is settled; accounts are squared; there is no case.’” The man was happy; the Mulla was pleased. The man felt it made sense.

Those you call religious leaders are doing business. Their bread and butter depends on it. They have nothing to do with you, nor with your future. They do not know their own future—what will they do with yours? But business there is, a sect there is. Very soon the business of pandits and priests forms around it.

Naturally, pandits and priests always stand opposed to the true master—and will. Because whenever a true master appears, whenever a fresh ember ignites in someone, all those who trade in ash become frightened. Call it holy ash, call it sacred ash—whatever you like—but those who trade in ash all panic. They unite in opposition. They say, “This ember is dangerous. Do not go—you will be burned, you will be in trouble. This ash is good—cool, soothing. Our forefathers worshipped it; you worship it too. Do not leave your forefathers. Do not betray your loyalty. Do not go astray. This path is safe; many have walked it. Do not get into the trouble of a new path. Who knows if anyone has ever gone that way? New things can be dangerous. Stay with old, tried and tested things.”

You ask: “Is it impossible to enter religion through a sect?”

It is possible—the method is to come out of the sect. Use the sect as a step. Climb it and go beyond. And what you were seeking while bound within the sect, living outside the sect you will one day find. The day you find, you will know—if you were a Hindu, you will know, “Now I have become a Hindu.” If you were a Muslim, you will know, “Now I have become a Muslim.” If you were a Jain, you will know, “Now I have become a Jain.” But no one becomes a Jain while remaining a Jain; no one becomes a Hindu while remaining a Hindu. This is the paradox. By being free of the sect, the person becomes religious. Rising beyond the petty words and the confines of scriptures, the open sky of truth becomes available.

No, there is not the slightest contradiction. When happiness is happening—while it is actually unfolding—it feels momentary. In the very moment happiness is happening, if you look, it will appear fleeting. Why? Because the mind wants happiness to go on forever. So however much happens, it feels too little.

You meet a beloved friend, and the night slips by in talk and laughter. Before you know it, dawn has arrived. It feels as if the clock sped up. The hands played a trick, whirled too fast. But the hands are moving in their own way, time is proceeding at its own pace. No change has occurred in time. The change is in your mind: having found the relish of the friend’s presence, you want that juice to flow on and on. Your demand is so vast that, compared to it, what you get feels so small—gone already, gone already! The friend just arrived and it is already time to part. Happiness had just sprouted, and it is gone.

So when happiness is passing, when you are in a happy hour, it seems to be going too quickly, evanescent.

Exactly the opposite happens with suffering. When you are in an hour of pain, it feels as if the clock has stopped. The hand is stuck. It won’t move.

Your loved one is dying, stretched on the deathbed, and you sit at the side. The night feels as if it will never pass. It seems to grow longer and longer. What is happening? Has the night of doom arrived? The last night? Today the morning doesn’t appear to be coming. Will there even be a morning? Will the sun rise? What is the reason? No difference has occurred in time. The clock is moving as it moves. Morning will come. Time’s pace is what it always is. But today your mind is laden with pain. You want the night to end quickly—let it pass, let it pass. In happiness you wish it wouldn’t pass; in suffering you wish it would. Somehow, let morning come, let the sun appear.

When you are in suffering you want to get across it quickly. Because of your hurry it seems delayed; the painful hour seems to crawl, as if it won’t move at all, as if time has stopped. In happiness you want time to stop, so it appears to sprint. All this happens because of your mind’s projections. Time itself moves as it moves—indifferent to your joys and sorrows.

That is the first point. Then, when you look back later at a happy hour or a painful hour, a different shift occurs. Looking back at a night when a beloved had come—when you sang, sat together gazing at the moon, danced, were absorbed, dived into each other—when you look back, that happiness will appear very long. While passing through it, it felt short; in memory it feels extended. And when you look back at suffering, it appears small. While living through it, it felt endless.

Why? Because we don’t want to magnify suffering even in imagination. We prefer to minimize it there, at least. In actuality you cannot; the real pain will take the time it takes. We want it to pass quickly, so it seems slow; our expectation becomes an obstacle. But in retrospect, you are the master. You can tear through the calendar as fast as you like—let a day pass in a moment, a night in a moment, a year in a moment. It is in your hands. So you shrink the painful parts. You have always wished to make them small. You could not in reality; you do it in memory.

That is why people forget the painful chapters of life. A great deal of suffering has happened, yet it is forgotten. Happiness is never forgotten; it is cherished and stored, kept in a treasure chest. You lengthen it in memory as much as you please. Hence people look back and say, “Ah, the old days were so good.” Childhood was so sweet. On this psychological basis there is a worldwide tendency to proclaim that the Golden Age, the Age of Truth, was in the past. How lovely those days were! All that joy—gone.

The present always feels painful, and the past appears happy—because from the past you have edited out the pain. Memory is yours; you do what you like with it. You tore out the pages of sorrow or abridged them, left them as footnotes; and expanded the pages of happiness into full chapters. Footnotes became chapters, and chapters became footnotes. In retrospect you are the master. You cannot change existence, but you can change memory. And we all keep altering memory.

So, two points: While happiness is passing, it appears fleeting; while suffering is passing, it appears endless. And in hindsight, the situation reverses—happiness seems long, suffering seems small.

But both states belong to ignorance. To the wise, happiness and suffering appear equal—neither long nor short—because the wise one has no expectations. There is no demand, no insistence that the night be longer or shorter. As it is, that is fine. There is a sense of suchness, total acceptance. If a thorn pierces, it is accepted. If the fragrance of a flower fills the nostrils, it is accepted. If happiness rains, fine; if suffering rains, fine. In every condition there is consent. Because of this consent, suffering appears just as much as it is, and happiness just as much as it is.

And then a great wonder happens: for the first time you see that life is fifty-fifty—equal parts. There is as much suffering as there is happiness—half and half, in balance. The ignorant never discover this equality. While going through time, the ignorant say there is much suffering and little happiness; and after it passes, they say there was much happiness and little suffering. The scales of ignorance never balance. The wise have no expectations. They do not say, “It should be like this.” They say, “It is as it is.” There is nothing to be made otherwise.

When a person becomes steady in intelligence, a sthitaprajna—calm, even-minded, attaining right vision—seeing things as they are, suddenly an extraordinary event occurs: suffering and happiness are seen to be equal. This will puzzle you.

Therefore, as happiness increases, so does suffering. The rich man is more miserable than the poor. Prosperous nations are more miserable than deprived ones. Today the kind of misery found in America does not exist in India; it cannot. Why? Because of a precious law: as happiness grows, suffering grows in proportion. On one side the mountain rises, on the other the abyss deepens. We keep hankering for an impossibility—that there be no valley at all while the mountain soars high. That cannot be. If you don’t want the valley, you must level the mountain; then the land becomes flat.

In the world people keep devising ways to increase happiness, and alongside suffering increases—it must. From this, understand why all the great sages have said: don’t be anxious to reduce suffering and don’t be anxious to increase happiness. Accept both. Drop the very idea of increasing or decreasing. If you increase happiness, suffering will increase; as wealth piles up in the safe, ailments accumulate in the body. The bed becomes luxurious, and sleep vanishes. This happens every day; you know it from your own life. But the truth is so bitter you refuse to accept it. You keep it out of sight, you dismiss it: “How can this be? We’ll increase happiness and reduce suffering. We’ll fix it.”

Have you noticed? The greater the success, the greater the possibility of failure. The higher you climb, the greater the fear of falling; and if you fall, you fall from a height. Fall you must. Yet man goes on thinking otherwise; he never looks into the very law of life.

Here, everything is held in balance; otherwise life would fall apart. There is proportion. If there is day, there is night; if winter, summer; if birth, death; if happiness, suffering; if success, failure. That is why the sages have all said: equanimity. Regard both as equal. If you magnify one, the other grows too. Your desire has nothing to do with it; this is life’s law. If a tree is to rise high into the sky, its roots must go deep into the earth. The tree may wish for shallow roots and great height; it cannot be. The higher it grows, the deeper it must descend.

Nietzsche has a famous saying: Whoever wants to touch heaven must send his roots down to hell. No one touches heaven without touching hell.

So grasp a rare rule of life; it will serve you greatly. Do not strive to increase happiness; do not strive to decrease suffering. We waste our time in this. If you try to lessen suffering, happiness will lessen; if you try to increase happiness, suffering will increase. They move together. They are the two wheels of a cart. You cannot make one small and the other large, or the cart will collapse. They grow and shrink together—only then does the cart move.

Then what is one to do? Accept. Accept what is, as it is. Make no effort on your own to tinker. Instead of trying to change things, look into the secret of life. And the day you see that both are equal, you will be amazed. In the final reckoning the beggar has as much suffering and as much happiness as the emperor. The proportion is equal. If the beggar has two units of pain, he has two units of joy; if the emperor has two crore joys, he has two crore pains. The ratio remains equal. Increase the tally of suffering by one, and the tally of happiness rises by one.

If you see this, you will be astonished. There isn’t much difference between beggars and emperors. Granted, the emperor has a magnificent bed—but where is sleep? The beggar has no bed; he may lie down on the pavement, but he sleeps like he has sold his horses—though he has none. The emperor has many horses, but he cannot sleep like one who has sold them. Sleep eludes him. The emperor has every cuisine, yet his hunger is gone. The beggar may have nothing; if he gets a coarse morsel, he feels blessed—and the relish he experiences is not available to any emperor. Side by side, the proportion stays equal.

Everything in the world is in balance. Seeing this balance is right vision. Seeing it, one settles into equanimity. Then another shift occurs: neither happiness nor suffering is “more”; everything is equal. Choicelessness arises. One becomes free of alternatives. What is there to choose when everything balances out? Increase friends and enemies increase; what’s the gain? So, as it is, it is fine. In such a state the mind is quiet, untroubled; the inner flame begins to burn smokelessly.

To the wise, then, neither happiness nor suffering is in excess. And whoever sees that they are equal, having seen both rightly, discovers a third thing: I am beyond happiness and suffering. I am separate. Happiness comes and goes, suffering comes and goes—but I stand, merely witnessing. In that witnessing, bliss is born.

Bliss is not happiness. It is as different from happiness as it is from suffering. Do not think bliss is super-happiness, that by adding up a lot of happiness you get bliss. Bliss has nothing to do with happiness. Bliss names the state of consciousness in which you have recognized the truth of both happiness and suffering and have become separate from both. Bliss is your nature. Happiness and suffering come and go; bliss is ever-present. The day you become balanced, the experience of bliss begins. Bliss already abides within you; you are entangled outside—sometimes in suffering, trying to avoid it; sometimes in happiness, trying to prolong it—so you never turn within.

And to the one who sees “I am bliss,” time disappears. In happiness it had seemed to vanish in a moment; in suffering it had seemed to drag on. In retrospect, the ignorant think there was much happiness and hardly any suffering. The wise see there is neither happiness nor suffering, nor time. A timeless, time-free state is attained. There is no past, no present, no future—everything is still, motionless. The day the inner immovability is known, time comes to a stop. To the wise, time itself dissolves.

The experience of sexual desire means your identification is still with the body. You think, “I am the body.” If I am the body, then the experience of sex arises. If I am the body, then I want another’s body. Body calls for body. So the experience of sex happens. Those who only believe “I am the body” do not even know the experience of love.

To the atheist, the materialist, the Charvaka, even love is not an experience. Freud says love is nothing at all—just a derivative of sex. There is no such distinct experience as love. One who believes man ends with the body, that beyond or within it there is nothing—how will he know love? Only sex can be experienced.

Charvaka has said: do not worry at all about sin or virtue; do not worry at all about the fruits of karma, because there is no soul. No one will return, no one will remain to reap any fruit. Rinang kritva ghritam pivet—“Even if you must go into debt, drink ghee.” If you can drink ghee on borrowed money, why leave it? Drink it. Don’t worry about repayment—what to repay, and to whom! And don’t fear that after death there will be some Day of Judgment or some God. There is no God, no one who will question you. Take loans and drink ghee. Steal if you must and satisfy your lust. By any means whatsoever—yen ken prakaren—by whatever method, accomplish your enjoyment. One who holds fast to “I am the body” will not even know love.

I tell you this so you may understand that your belief makes a difference. You have asked: there is the experience of sex and also the experience of love. That is because you accept two things: you accept “I am the body,” and you also accept “I am the mind.” Therefore love is experienced. If a third recognition arises in your life—“I am the soul”—then devotion will begin to be experienced; before that, it will not.

There are three planes—body means sex, mind means love, soul means devotion. So long as you take yourself to be the body, there will be only sex. When you rise a little above the body and accept the mind, then rays of love will arise. When you go beyond the mind too and accept the soul—only then will the taste of bhakti-rasa come.

Your question is honest. This is indeed how it is. Most people feel only sex, not even love. A few feel love. And the rare ones taste devotion. Devotion is the radical transformation of sexual energy. In love, sexual desire changes a little—only a little, not much; and again and again the energy falls back into sex. In devotion, transformation happens at the roots, fundamentally. Then there remains no way to fall back. One who has reached devotion, in his life sexual craving no longer remains. One who is in sex cannot have devotion. Love is the bridge between the two; it links them.

So do not be anxious: if the experience of love is happening, you are on the right path. You have reached the bridge. On one shore is sex; on the other, devotion. In between lies this bridge, this span of love. You are standing in the middle. Make a little effort and the current of devotion will begin to flow.

What effort should you make so that the current of devotion flows? Look: until fourteen years of age, a child grows, but the current of sex does not flow—the sex energy is not yet ripened. Around fourteen, suddenly the sexual energy ripens, and there is an explosion. Until fourteen, boys don’t even like playing with girls. If a boy does play with girls, others say, “Are you a girl or what?”

I have heard of an eight-year-old boy who got angry with his mother, went and locked himself in the bathroom from inside. The mother knocked, shouted, cried, scolded, explained, coaxed, even tried bribing him—but he stood inside, silent. He wouldn’t speak. Then the mother panicked. Her husband was out of town. In desperation she called the neighbors. When the boy saw the neighbors had come too, he must have enjoyed it even more. He became utterly silent, like a meditator. They banged on the door, but he wouldn’t speak. The anxiety grew: is he even breathing? Is he alive or has he fainted? Everyone started scolding the mother: “One shouldn’t behave like this with a child!” She said, “It was nothing special—just the usual. I got angry over something. I didn’t think he’d get so upset.”

Seeing no way out, someone suggested calling the fire brigade. They know how to break a door, or climb down from above, or go in through a window. The firemen came. Their chief asked, “Where is the fire?” The woman said, “There is no fire. Forgive me, but this is the matter: we can’t tell if the child inside is awake, unconscious, fainted—he doesn’t speak or answer.”

He said, “Don’t worry, I’ll see to it.” He went to the door, knocked, and said, “Girl, come out.” The boy spoke for the first time: “Who is calling me a girl?” Up till then he had not said a word. Quickly he opened the door and came out: “Who called me a girl? I am a boy.”

Until fourteen, boys fear and feel shy even to play with girls. It all seems pointless. Boys are interested in boys; girls in girls. The sex energy is not yet ripe.

If an eight-year-old child asks you, “What is sex like?” you will be in difficulty. How will you explain? You are asking me what the rasa of devotion is like—you are putting me in the same difficulty. How will you explain to an eight-year-old what the taste of intercourse is? Even if you try, you won’t be able to make him understand—and as you speak you yourself will feel, “I’m talking uselessly; this won’t reach him.” Only experience understands experience. You would tell him: wait a while, grow a bit—then you will know for yourself. It is a kind of fortunate coincidence that at fourteen everyone matures sexually—but with devotion very few become mature. Entire lifetimes pass. It shouldn’t be so; it is unfortunate.

At fourteen sexual energy matures, and for the first time sexual desire arises. Boys become curious about girls, girls about boys. Their earlier friendships loosen—boys’ with boys, girls’ with girls. A new rasa is born in the opposite, in what until yesterday had no charm and from which they kept away; today there is charm only there, and it seems all the happiness of life lies in it. That is why the friendships made before fourteen—if they formed, they last. After that, friendships don’t form in the same way. Childhood friendship endures. The friendships formed after fourteen are makeshift. Childhood friendship is quite another matter. It is so deep that if a childhood friend comes to your home, your wife becomes jealous—because he came into your life before her, and his roots run deeper. Wives don’t like childhood friends; husbands don’t like childhood girlfriends—because someone was there even before them; it hurts the ego a bit.

After fourteen, true friendship no longer forms, because a new world begins. There will be makeshift friendships—club friendships, market friendships, shop-floor friendships. You ask why childhood friendship doesn’t happen again? Because a new experiment has begun in life. Now a woman’s friendship will form with a man, a man’s with a woman. Interest begins in the opposite sex. If this movement proceeds rightly, one day love is born—but only if it proceeds rightly. Often it does not.

If you go very deep in your love for a woman—very deep in your desire for her—then sooner or later, along with her body, a little glimpse of the consciousness within her will begin to appear. Slowly, sex transforms into love. Therefore all those who have tried to understand man have said: if sexual relationship with the same person persists for a long time, it is good; otherwise love will never be born. That is why love is being lost in the West. After two or three years you change the woman; after two or three years you change the man. Just as one changes a car when a new model arrives. Then the sapling of love cannot take root. For love to take root, it needs some time, a certain span. Love is not a seasonal flower. Sex is a seasonal flower: plant it and in six weeks it blossoms; and in the next six weeks it will wither away. Its life is three or four months. It comes quickly, it fades quickly. But if you want to plant a tree that touches the sky and converses with the moon and stars—such trees do not grow in six weeks. It takes years, even generations. Time must pass. A span is needed.

So if the sexual bond grows deep—so deep that your wife’s body no longer occupies your memory, and your body no longer occupies hers—then slowly glimmers of love begin to flash. If everything proceeds rightly, then in my understanding around the age of twenty-eight the first glimpse of love appears—just as at fourteen the first glimpse of sex appears. If for fourteen years sexual relating has proceeded with great devotion, as worship, in a tantric spirit—not merely as indulgence but as a profound life-experiment—then around twenty-eight the first glimmers of love begin. For the first time love descends. For the first time you feel the body is no longer valuable; the body has become secondary.

And if this does not happen around twenty-eight, then around twenty-eight divorce is certain—because you are done with the body. If a relationship of love has formed, fine—you are finished with the body. You have seen this body through for fourteen years; now there is no juice left in it. Only if a new bond forms at a deeper level will the marriage endure; otherwise you will seek a new wife, a new husband, so that once again the juice of the body begins. But that means that the day you found a new wife you fell back to fourteen. That is why you will find a lack of maturity in the American man. He seems childish, immature. Even if he becomes old, he seems childish—something is missing, as though wisdom never develops. Why?

A sixty-five-year-old woman asked me a few days ago: “I have been here three months, and not a single man here loves me. So I am going back.” Sixty-five! She was unhappy here because no man loved her. In the West she will find those who will “love” her; in the East it will be difficult. Because in the West, those who have reached sixty-five, seventy, even their mental age has not gone beyond fourteen. You will find them. In the West, in places made for the elderly—retirement homes and the like—there is plenty of “love.” Old men of eighty fall in love. They can’t do much now anyway.

I have heard: an old man married at ninety—an eighty-five-year-old woman and a ninety-year-old man. The first night, the nuptial night! The old man took the old woman’s hand and squeezed it hard. Then both, deeply pleased, fell asleep. The second night he didn’t squeeze so hard—just a little—and fell asleep. The third night, when he began to squeeze, the old woman said, “I have a headache,” and turned over to sleep. At ninety, if sexual desire is there, such foolishness will happen. It is natural—because the event itself is unnatural.

If life’s development proceeds rightly, then at twenty-eight the first tones of love will be heard. With the one with whom you have lived for fourteen years, with whose body your body has merged and become one, with whose body’s veena has become rhythmically attuned to your body’s veena—two bodies no longer remain two. A bridge has been built between them. Now, for the first time, you will understand that the other is a living mind. The body will become secondary; the mind will become important.

So if husband and wife are truly in love, they begin to understand each other’s mind. The husband does not say it, and the wife understands what is in his mind. The wife does not say it, and the husband understands what is in her mind. If such a thing does not happen, understand that you have not yet become husband and wife; the real thing has not happened. Something arises within one, and the other understands. A kind of special telepathy begins. The transmission of thoughts begins. If the husband is sad, he cannot deceive the wife. He can deceive the whole world—his smile will smooth things everywhere—but even if he smiles at the wife, she knows, “Today there is sadness in your smile. Something is there—tell me.” The wife cannot deceive the husband. The day husband and wife want to deceive each other, to hide something, and yet cannot hide it—the message reaches the other, the contagion happens—on that day, understand that love has happened.
So I don’t know whether the one who asked the question has known love or not. Since he says he has, I will take it that he has. But even to know love is difficult—indeed, it has become difficult. And if love then goes on for fourteen years, around the age of forty-two the rasa of devotion begins to arise. Fourteen years of a deep connection rooted in sexual desire raises the wave of love; fourteen years of a deep connection between two minds raises the wave of the soul—then the rasa of bhakti begins.
Don’t become a rigid literalist, thinking that when I say forty-two it must be exactly forty-two. I am speaking only for the sake of making it clear to you. If it happens at forty-five, fine; at forty-eight, fine. Even if the rasa of devotion happens a day before death, it is fine. But even that rarely happens. Most people remain entangled in lust. Some, who are fortunate enough to rise beyond lust, still remain stuck in love. In very few lives does Hari-bhakti arise.

“Now you ask me, ‘How is the rasa of bhakti experienced?’”
If you have known love—you say you have, and I accept that—then now go deeper into this experience of love. Live this love, live it in its totality. Do not raise obstacles in this love. Don’t create petty hassles, trivial issues, little disturbances. Remove all obstacles. Let this love surge completely. As this wave grows and grows... the wave of sex grows into love; the wave of love grows into devotion.

That is why I say, no one needs to run away from the world. God is hidden in this very world. Just as you culture milk into curd—curd was hidden in the milk. Then you churn curd and draw out butter—this butter too was hidden in the curd. It is the same here. Lust is the milk. Let it set and it becomes curd—love. Then churn the curd and you get navneet—bhakti.

Churn love. Churn love well. Churn it day and night. And do not even by mistake think that God is opposed to your wife or husband. God will arrive through the very doorway of your love. That is why I am not at all against the world. I tell my sannyasins: don’t run away anywhere, or you will miss. It is here. Understand it rightly here. Don’t be frightened of the milk, or the curd will never set. And don’t throw away the curd because it is sour, or you won’t be able to extract the butter. The butter is hidden—seek it out.

- The relationship of two bodies—sex.
- The relationship of two minds—love.
- The relationship of two souls—devotion.

Naturally, the relationship of two bodies will be momentary. Bodies are so gross that even their coming close for a single moment is a miracle. The relationship of two minds will be somewhat more lasting—more lasting than the body, more delightful, more full of rasa, more fulfilling. Yet even then the two minds remain separate.

When two souls meet, a revolution happens—because in truth two souls are not two. There is only one soul in existence. It is not that my soul is separate and your soul is separate. My body is separate and your body is separate—true; but my soul and your soul are not separate. My body and your body are entirely distinct; my mind and your mind are quite mixed and overlapping; and my soul and your soul are one.

So if your devotional relationship becomes whole even with one soul—if in your wife you can see God, and in your husband you can see God... That was the meaning in the old days when it was said, “God in the husband.” The only mistake was that it was incomplete; it should be said of the wife as well. The day you see God in your beloved, that day you will open your eyes and see God everywhere—in plants, in birds, in animals, in mountains, everywhere. When the eyes have once tasted the rasa of bhakti, when the monsoon of devotion descends upon the eyes, then everywhere appears as monsoon.

If you want to understand, it will become impossible. The very desire to understand creates distance. Listen with love; drop the worry about understanding and the rest. Just listen with love and you will understand. If you set out to understand, you will miss.

Why? Because when you sit down to understand, you bring the intellect in between. All the while you are alertly examining: which point is right, which is not; which agrees with logic, which is against logic; which accords with my scriptures, which goes against them. You get caught in this whole tangle. The dust of scripture rises within you like a sandstorm. You forget me altogether. In that storm you catch only fragments; sometimes you hear something as something else. Then you interpret. Then with your own hands you create confusion.

These things are not for understanding. These things are for descending into love. Just listen. Why worry about understanding? If you understand, good; if you don’t, good. Keep the whole bookkeeping of understanding aside. Remove this shopkeeping of understanding. Just listen. Listen as one listens to the murmuring of a waterfall. You do not go there to understand. You don’t say, “This waterfall isn’t making sense. There is a gurgle-gurgle-gurgle, but nothing is making sense.” What is there to understand? There is the fall, there is the murmur—what more is there to understand? Immerse yourself in it. When birds hum, you do not understand, yet you say, “It gives such relish.” When someone plays the veena, what do you understand? Yet you begin to sway. These things are for swaying, not for understanding.

I have heard: a mad nawab of Lucknow—perhaps Wajid Ali, or someone else, but a thorough Lucknawi. A musician came to his court, a great veena player. The musician said, “I will play the veena, but I have one condition. Without this condition I never play: while listening, no head must move.” The nawab was mad. He said, “Don’t worry. If a head moves, it will be removed that very instant. Swords will be kept ready.”

A proclamation was made in Lucknow: those who come to listen should think carefully—if the head nods, the neck will be cut. The musician was renowned, and the connoisseurs of Lucknow had long awaited the auspicious moment to hear him. But now a great trouble had arisen. Otherwise hundreds of thousands would have come, people from far away; but scarcely a thousand came—because it was dangerous. And even among those thousand, only such people must have come who could keep themselves under absolute control—those who knew disciplines like yama, niyama, asana, who could sit in siddhasana with eyes closed, killing every movement: “If we don’t move at all, then what can happen?”

They came and sat, but sat fully prepared. They stiffened their bodies, thinking, “Even by mistake if we move—this nawab is mad. He won’t consider that a fly landed and the body twitched. Mad is mad. He will not listen.” And he had posted soldiers all around with naked swords. The veena player began to play. For ten or fifteen minutes no one moved; they sat like statues. Then five or seven people began to move, then ten or fifteen, then twenty-five, then about a hundred...

The nawab began to panic. He had not thought it would actually come to beheading. But now the matter was such that heads would have to roll; he had given his word. The nawab could not listen at all; again and again he kept looking: “How many more? How many have gone?” Even the soldiers grew afraid as they stood around: “This will be pointless killing. Good, decent people are moving. What has happened to these madmen?” But as more people began to sway, the musician went deeper and deeper. Then two or three hundred people began to dive within, to sway, like snakes swaying to the sound of a flute.

At midnight the musician stopped the veena. The monarch said, “Let those people be seized.” Some three, three hundred and fifty were caught. The musician said, “Let the rest go; keep these.” The rest departed. The nawab asked, “What to do with them? Shall we have them beheaded?” The musician said, “No. These are my listeners. Now I will play to them for real. The fake have gone. Those who sat with asanas and the like know nothing of music. These alone...”

But the monarch said, “Before you play anything further to them, I want to ask them: Fools, why did you move? Have you no attachment to life?” Those people said, “We did not move. We don’t know. As long as we were there, we sat utterly composed. Who wants to die? When we became lost—when only the veena remained, when we ourselves were no longer—then who was there to restrain and who to hold? The one who restrains had departed. So we do not say we moved. We did not move. As long as we were, we did not move. Then, when we were no more, movement happened. God moved. The music moved. We did not move. It is not our fault.” And the musician said, “They speak rightly. That is why I have chosen them. These are my listeners; these are my understanders.”

This is what I say to you. If you want to understand, put the intellect aside and you will understand. But if you bring the intellect in between and strain too hard to understand, you will miss. These are matters such that you will understand when you sway. Such matters that you will understand when you rock. Such matters that you will understand when you dance. These things do not come into the grasp of the intellect. They belong to the mad, to the lovers possessed. Join me in my madness; if you lend a hand to my divine madness, then surely it will be understood.

So let me repeat the paradox—if you try to understand, it will not be understood. If you have the courage to sway, no one can prevent you from understanding. It is bound to be understood. But this understanding is of the heart, of feeling, of the very life-breath; not of intellect, not of thought. It is of devotion. It arises as rasa, as aesthetic relish—not from logic. Sway. Let this mind-peacock dance; then surely you will understand.

That’s all for today.