Karuna Aur Kranti #6

Walking along a road you must have seen a bullock cart. The wheel turns, but the pin at the center remains still; it does not move. Did it ever strike you that the wheel’s motion depends on that unmoving pin? They seem opposed—the pin is stationary and the wheel is moving. And the paradox is: precisely because the pin is still, the wheel can turn. If the pin were to move, the wheel would not. The rotating wheel is anchored in the still pin.

Life is woven of opposites.

If you have ever seen a whirlwind, a storm, a ballooning column of dust rising into the sky—and have looked at the marks it leaves—you will be surprised to notice that all around, the circular trace is imprinted, yet at the very center there is a hollow, a space where there is no storm. In the heart of the rising gale there is a space where all is calm, where no storm is.

Peace is needed within the human being; revolution is needed in his outer life.

Peace will be the pin; revolution will be the turning wheel. And we keep thinking we can save one of the two. Either we imagine we will save only peace—the pin—let the wheel go; but then the pin becomes useless, because its very meaning is with the wheel.

India, the countries of the East, tried the experiment of saving peace alone, deciding there is no need of revolution. We became lifeless on the earth, like dead people. Our existence became like non-existence; we became as good as not being. And better it would have been not to be. Our being became more miserable than not-being: sick, infirm, impoverished, servile. We endured all the sufferings of life on the basis of one error—that we said, we will save the pin, we will not save the wheel, because the wheel is the pin’s opponent. We will save only peace; we have no need of revolution, of change.

The West made the opposite mistake. They saved the wheel and threw away the pin. Now they clutch the wheel, but without a pin the wheel is useless. They preserved revolution, preserved change, and gave up concern for peace. Their argument is the same as ours, only inverted: if you want revolution, what need is there of peace?

And notice: it appears East and West are opposites, but their logic is identical. The East argues, if peace is wanted, what need is there of revolution? The West argues, if revolution is wanted, what need is there of peace? The arguments are not different. Both rest on the decision to choose one aspect of life and discard its opposite. But life is made of opposition; the whole arrangement of life stands upon polarity.

Look at the door of a house—at an arched doorway. The mason has set opposing bricks: from one side they come this way, from the other side that way; the bricks lean against one another. Their mutual opposition holds up the whole structure. We could say, why not lay all the bricks in the same direction? You could lay them so—but then the building would not stand.

Strength is generated on the basis of two opposites; therefore life is erected upon all oppositions.

Woman and man are a kind of opposition. Negative and positive electricity are a kind of opposition. The negative and positive poles are a kind of opposition. If we search in life, everywhere we will find opposites; and upon opposites the edifice of life stands.

But the East did not understand this, nor did the West. The East built half a culture and said, we will merely live—peacefully. The West said, we will live through revolution; what has peace to do with it?

It is as if I were to say, I will only inhale, I will not exhale—because inhalation and exhalation are opposites. If breath must be taken in, why take it out? So take it in and hold it there; do not let it go out. But if you hold your breath in, you will die. Another person might say, since it has to go out, why take it in? We will keep it out. He too will die. One will die holding it in, the other holding it out—because life depends on the coming and going of opposites.

Life, continuously, depends on opposition.

But we never manage to accept this opposition; hence great difficulty. We say, we accept birth, but we do not accept death. This is sheer madness. Life stands on the opposition of birth and death. Life depends precisely on their polarity.

We say, birth is blissful and death is painful. We accept birth; we do not want death. Then we are speaking madness. The day we can accept birth and death together, the flavor of life will be entirely different. If we accept peace and revolution together, life will be something else again. Within, there will be a point where no change is; and without, the ever-turning wheel of change, change, and change. Within, a pin where nothing changes.

The divine abides where there is no change.

The world abides where there is constant change.

And that which is the divine—ever still, silent, mute, where nothing has ever changed—upon that very center the wheel of the whole world is turning.

Does the word “samsara” occur to you?
Samsara means the wheel; it means that which is turning—the wheel. The very meaning of samsara is “that which revolves,” and the meaning of the divine is “that which is unmoving.” But these two are not opposites in the sense that you can keep one and discard the other. They are “opposite” in the sense that each depends on the other. The breath that comes in depends on the breath that goes out. If there were no samsara, there would be no divine; and if there were no divine, there would be no samsara. Do not remain in the illusion that the divine can remain even a single moment without the world; nor fall into the illusion that the world can remain even a single moment without the divine. They are polar opposites holding each other. Therefore all opposites are acceptable to me.

And I take the opposition of revolution and peace to be useful for life: for transforming life, changing it, and also joining it to that which is eternal, timeless, in which there is never any change. This is why there is difficulty with my words—someone says, here you speak of revolution; there you speak of peace. And I maintain precisely this: only the one who is peaceful can bring about revolution. One who is not peaceful—if he attempts revolution—will only create madness in the name of revolution; he can do nothing else. Only a silent person can wield the weapon of revolution. Otherwise that weapon has proved dangerous and will go on proving dangerous.

Therefore I say: compassion is the first sutra; revolution should follow it. Compassion first.

If we understand what is, nothing will remain in our consciousness except compassion. For what is has become so sorrowful; what is has become so diseased; what is, spread all around us, has become so sick and deranged that if we truly see it and understand it, no feeling other than compassion will arise. But you may say: anger may arise. Anger arises when we place ourselves outside the whole situation. Compassion arises when we know we are included in it—when we see ourselves as a part of it.

If today someone is stealing, we may feel anger and want to annihilate the thief. But if we come to know the whole situation and realize that we too are lending a hand in his thieving, that we too are partners in it; that even the magistrate sitting in court passing judgment on thieves is a partner in their thieving—if this occurs to us, then the magistrate will not feel anger, he will feel compassion. And while sentencing the thief he will know, “I am punishing myself.” Then giving punishment will become very difficult; bringing about change and revolution will become easy.

For how many ages have we been punishing thieves, yet we have not reduced the number of thieves by even one. On the earth, thieves increase every day. As punishments have increased, so have thieves. As prisons have multiplied, thieves have multiplied. Since time immemorial we have been punishing thieves, but we have not lessened them by even one. The reason is that while punishing the thief we keep ourselves outside. We think, “We are not thieves; the one who steals is the thief; we are punishing him.” But our hands are deeply involved; thus the thief gets punished, but thieving does not stop. For we, whose hands were in the very act of creating the thief, meanwhile create more thieves. In fact, the prisons in which we lock thieves become training colleges for thieves, nothing else. There they get the company of older, more qualified, more skilled thieves—nothing else. There they learn to steal even better and then return.

That is why, once a man has gone to jail, he starts going there regularly; he becomes a jail-bird—the prison becomes his home. He does not feel as good here as he begins to feel there. We have gathered all his companions and friends there. We have assembled all the thieves—the thieves of the whole province, the whole country—so that they may confer together and share tips on how not to get caught.

And we continue to produce thieves on all sides. We are not even meting out punishment in order to eliminate thieves—for we too are thieves. If the thief were eliminated, we too would have to disappear. We punish so that we, the punishers, may enjoy within ourselves the pleasure that we are not thieves—that someone else is the thief. We relish this; we take comfort in it.

This is anger toward the thief; no change will come of it. Punishment will not bring transformation.

I have heard that a hundred years ago in England, a person who stole was tied up at the crossroads and whipped, so that others might see and be warned that this is the fate and misfortune of a thief. But a hundred years ago that punishment had to be discontinued, because the results were utterly perverse. At a crossroads in London five or six thieves were being flogged; thousands had gathered to watch. Do not think they had come to see what becomes of thieves; in truth they had come to see how the skin peels when the whip falls, how the blood flows. In their own hearts too the desire to whip must have arisen many times and remained unfulfilled; they wanted to fulfill it vicariously. They did not return from there having learned, “One should not steal”; they returned with the thrill and titillation of how delicious it is to whip.

But that day in London one more astonishing thing happened. After four or five thieves had been flogged unconscious and the street was running with blood—and some ten thousand had gathered to watch—it was discovered that some people’s pockets had been picked. There was a crowd; while people were watching the thieves being beaten, some other thieves picked their pockets. Then it was understood that even while thieves are being flogged and their skin is being stripped, pockets can be picked at that very moment! So theft cannot be stopped by such means.

No punishment has ever been able to stop theft, because our punishment does not arise from compassion—it arises from our anger. No transformation ever comes from anger. And if, by anger, a change is forced, rebellion quickly begins, revolt erupts. And for how long can anger be imposed? If not today, then tomorrow, anger must slacken.

In Russia there was a revolution brought about by anger, not compassion. For thirty, thirty-five, forty years they tried to preserve the revolution by the whip, by the gun. It is estimated that after the revolution some six to ten million people were killed in Russia. These killings had to be done to save the revolution. No harm—if the revolution had been saved, one could have understood. But after so many killings, after giving so much suffering and pain to so many people, now there the revolution has begun to slacken. For how long can such a revolution be sustained by force? Russia has begun to think again of allocating private capital. Houses can now be private, and cars too can now be private. And it seems that in the coming fifty years it will be very difficult to distinguish between Russia and America—who is socialist and who capitalist.

Because in America too it is becoming difficult to impose capitalism by force; they are gradually nationalizing any number of things. Over there in Russia, imposing socialism by force is becoming more and more difficult; they are gradually giving scope to capitalism. In fifty years they will arrive at the same place by different journeys; they will reach a point where it will be hard to tell the difference between them. Only differences of name will remain—one “socialist,” one “capitalist”—but the distance will be gone.

Nothing can be held down by force for long. And there is a strange thing: whatever we keep down by force, very soon the pendulum swings back. If you sit on an enemy’s chest by force and press him down with all your strength, if he is clever and lies there quietly exerting no force, then in a little while you will tire, because you are the one exerting strength, while he will have gathered his. Very soon the time will come when you are lying below and he is sitting on your chest. For the one who exerts labors and tires, and the one pinned below rests. Thus the sides keep changing.

Revolutions do not come from anger and revenge; only society keeps changing sides. And a mere change of side means nothing.

By revolution I mean this: in the way we have fashioned man up to today, a mistake has been made. Because of that mistake we are bearing much sorrow, great suffering, great anxiety. Because of that mistake, the whole of humanity has come close to madness. When that mistake is understood, recognized, seen, compassion will naturally arise—for that mistake we ourselves have made together. Those wounds we ourselves have inflicted, whether in sleep or in unconsciousness. With our own hands we have cut our own feet, gouged out our own eyes, and crippled ourselves in every way. This crippled condition of man—paralyzed, stricken with palsy, dragging himself along the road, full of wounds—we ourselves are responsible for it. If this is seen, compassion will arise.

Compassion does not mean that it will be for someone else; compassion means we will be compassionate toward ourselves. Anger will become impossible. And if such compassion arises, change is inevitable. Once it is seen that something has gone wrong, there is no meaning in dragging that wrong along—it will fall of its own accord. A revolution born of compassion means that the issue is not so much to smash and break as to understand. If understanding becomes complete, perhaps things will drop of themselves, break away, separate. The point is to cultivate that much understanding. And that understanding can develop. If we inquire into the root causes of our suffering, there is no obstacle to the growth of understanding.

They do not mean the same. There is a very fundamental difference. In fact, in the truest sense there are no synonyms at all. However many words may look synonymous, there is always some basic difference; that's why two words had to be invented.

Take love and nonviolence, and compassion and pity. It is useful to understand them a little, because we are stuffed full of these words.

Ahimsa—nonviolence—means: do not cause suffering to another. It is purely negative. A person can be nonviolent without loving anyone, because ahimsa means only this much: do not harm anyone, do not inflict pain on anyone.

But love is positive. Love means: to bring happiness to someone. Love does not mean merely “do not cause pain.” Love means: bring joy to someone.

So love will come to bring someone joy, while the nonviolent person will shrink back, content that “at least I do not cause pain.” If there are thorns strewn on your path, love will come and pick them up. The nonviolent person will not scatter thorns on your path—that’s all. But he won’t come to remove the thorns already lying there, because for him it is enough to take care not to hurt you. And even that—why should he not hurt you? Is it because he loves you? No. He will avoid causing you pain lest, by hurting you, he increase the likelihood of his own descent into hell. If he hurts you, he may end up roasting in hell; if he refrains, it becomes a rung on the ladder to liberation. The nonviolent man has no concern with you; his concern is with himself. He is preoccupied with “How can I reach liberation, how can I avoid hell?”—therefore: do not hurt anyone, lest you end up in hell.

Love means something very different. Love means: bring happiness to another, and know that our own happiness lies in bringing happiness to another. Then a lover can even be ready to go to hell if it helps take you to heaven—he can be ready to go to hell to take you to heaven! But the nonviolent person cannot accept going to hell to give you joy. He refrains from causing pain so that his own passage to heaven may be readied.

Ahimsa is a negation, it is negative; love is positive, affirmative, creative.

But there is also a great difference between love and compassion.

Love means we want to bring happiness to someone and share in another’s joy. Compassion means: we share in everyone’s suffering; we see the suffering of all, and the heart is filled with compassion.

Understand the difference.

Love means: we want to share in everyone’s joy—bring happiness, be a friend to another’s joy.

Compassion means: we share in the suffering present in everyone’s life; we feel it, we sense it, we participate in that pain.

So in love there is a sweetness, a bliss; in compassion there is a pain. In love there is a nectar; in compassion there is a wound. Compassion is like an aching boil, a hurting wound. Love is a flower; compassion is a thornlike sting. Therefore love and compassion are not synonymous.

And compassion and pity are very different things.

Compassion means: the perception of everyone’s suffering—and the perception that I too am in some way responsible for it.

In pity? In pity there is the perception of another’s suffering, but also the perception that the other is responsible for his own suffering. And there is the ego-sense that “I am doing a bit to remove his suffering.” Therefore the one who “shows pity” stands above, and the one who receives stands below. The pitier gives alms; the pitier bestows “grace”; the pitier commits a very subtle insult upon the one he pities. The word “daya” (pity) is crude and ugly. It is not a beautiful word. So do not by mistake pity anyone—because whomever you pity, you will certainly insult.

Love is understandable, but there is a big difference. When love gives, it does not feel “I have given.” Love always feels: I could not give as much as should have been given. Ask a mother how much she has done for her son; her eyes will fill with tears: “I could do nothing. The clothes I should have given, I could not give; the food I ought to have fed him, I could not; the education I should have given, I could not.” A mother will recite a whole list of what she could not do. But go ask the secretary of a charitable trust what they have done for the poor; he will give you a whole list: we did this, we did that, we did that—and he will even add what they did not do: that too “we did.” The one who pities says, “We did this.” He is gratifying his ego. The one who loves says, “We could not do what should have been done.” His ego has been broken.

Love breaks the ego; pity strengthens it.

These words are all quite different. They are not synonyms. There are deep distinctions behind them.

Pity creates no revolution. That is why in India pity has been going on for five thousand years—but there has been no revolution. Pity is old. We are “dayavan”—pitiful—people. And as those who are “pitiful” are dangerous, we are dangerous. For five thousand years we have been showing pity, giving alms. We keep saying, “Have pity on the poor, pity the sick.” Why? Because by showing pity to the poor you will obtain the staircase to heaven.

Karpatri-ji has written a book—a very remarkable book; everyone should read it. In it he opposes socialism and says there are many reasons to oppose it. One reason is: in socialism there would be no poor and no rich—then who will show pity, who will give alms; who will receive pity, who will receive alms? And without alms, liberation is impossible. Therefore, under socialism liberation would no longer be possible. If you want moksha, don’t let socialism come. If you want moksha, keep the poor poor and the rich rich. Keep a beggar standing on the roadside, because by showing pity to him you will get to moksha—there is no other way.

Are these people of pity possessed of compassion? Hearing them it seems there is no trace of compassion in them. They say the poor must be kept, otherwise who will receive charity! Today in Russia no one will take your alms. And if you go to give someone alms, the police may haul you in for attempting to give alms—“He wants to insult us.” Today no one will stretch out a hand to beg in front of you. Today in Russia there is no way to become a “donor.”

So Karpatri-ji is right: the scriptures do say that without charity there is no liberation, because charity is the greatest virtue. In Russia, the root of the greatest virtue has been cut. He is right—according to the scriptures he is absolutely right. If you want to preserve moksha, preserve poverty, preserve beggary, preserve disease. Only if there is sickness can hospitals be built. Only if there are poor will the dharmashalas be of use. Only when beggars are on the roads will the charitable and the piteous have the pleasure of giving; otherwise everything will become difficult.

The one who shows pity has no compassion; he has a very deep hardness and cruelty. He even savors his pity. When he gives you two coins, he buys back a thousand rupees’ worth of ego. He gives his two coins loudly, he gives with a newspaper notice; he engraves his name in stone; he has plaques affixed on temples and rest-houses: “I have given!” His relish is not that someone’s suffering was relieved; his relish is that he has done a big deed, removed someone’s suffering.

Pity does not bring revolution; that is why revolution has not come to India. Pity rather blocks revolution. Because pity gives a beggar two coins, but it does not go in search of why beggars are produced in the first place. And when the beggar gets two coins, he too feels relief. He too does not reach that limit where he grabs the donor by the neck and says, “We will not take this charity. First you pick our pockets and then you give us alms. First you make us beggars and then you arrive to give us charity. First you suck our blood and then you build hospitals for us where ‘blood donation’ is conducted. What kind of net is this?”

No, pity does not allow even this to happen. Pity becomes a consolation. And the poor feel that the rich are so “pitiful.” Nothing has shielded the rich as effectively as pity; nothing has given them as much cover as dharmashalas and temples. It appears the rich are so compassionate—yet we do not see that the accumulation of wealth is cruelty. A man accumulates a hundred thousand through cruelty and donates ten thousand. He amasses ninety thousand in cruelty, and also amasses a ten-thousand-rupee donation. Then he becomes a great donor. And we bow to him: “He is the supreme benefactor.” But no one asks, “The money given in charity—where did it come from? How did it come?”

No, revolution cannot come through pity. Nor through ahimsa, because ahimsa is negative. No revolution can come from ahimsa because it says only: do not cause suffering to another. So a few people become nonviolent; they do not cause pain to others. But they do nothing to remove others’ suffering; they make no arrangements for others’ happiness. They simply withdraw their hands and step aside: “We will not walk on the path where others are hurt.” That’s all they do. They are negative people.

As if someone says, “Do not make others sick.” Fine—we won’t make anyone sick. But other people are sick; we will not do anything for them either, because that has nothing to do with us; we did not make them sick. “Do not put out someone’s eyes”—fine. But there are many whose eyes are already damaged, who are blind. Ahimsa offers no way to restore their sight.

The disposition of ahimsa is negative.

Ahimsa too has been going on in India for some twenty-five hundred years, but it has brought no solution—because it has shriveled people terribly. They have withdrawn their hands from everywhere. They walk blowing on each step lest an insect be crushed. They tie cloths over their mouths lest the warm breath kill an insect. They do not turn over at night lest some insect be killed. They strain their water lest some tiny life be swallowed. They do not eat green vegetables lest some life be killed. They have restrained themselves on all sides lest violence occur. But as for what is going on—suffering, violence—they go nowhere to change it. They fear that if they try to change it, violence may occur.

A man has a wound, and there are maggots in it. A nonviolent man cannot apply ointment and bandage it—because the maggots would die. He will say, “I did not cause the wound; you look after it yourself. I will not take on the entanglement of killing maggots.”

In Calcutta, Marwari Jains—if bedbugs infest their cots, they do not kill them. They are nonviolent—how can they kill bedbugs! But if no one sleeps on the cot, the bugs will die. So they hire a person for one or two rupees to sleep on that cot at night: “You sleep here; take your two rupees. Let the bedbugs not die; you have done your job and taken your pay. We have not made you work for free.” Their ahimsa is fulfilled: the bedbugs did not die, they were even fed blood—and the price of the blood was paid. They found a legal workaround—no hassle left in it!

A nonviolent person will not come to erase life’s suffering. His only effort is: I should not cause pain. But such an effort is incomplete; nothing real can come of it. There have always been people who loved; love has always been. Love wants to give happiness, to bring joy to another. Love is far above ahimsa. It seeks to bring happiness to others. But the search to bring happiness to another is not enough until we recognize that in the very basic causes of another’s suffering, our own hand is also present.

A husband wants to give his wife happiness. He loves her. But he will never see that his being a husband may itself be one part of his wife’s suffering. He wants to give his wife every kind of happiness—he brings her saris, he buys jewelry, he builds a house, purchases big cars; he pours his life into giving her happiness. Yet the wife is not able to be happy. He tries his best, but she is not able to be happy. If, instead of love, the husband had compassion, and could see what his wife’s suffering actually is, then perhaps he would see that his very being a husband is one of the causes of her suffering.

Whenever someone becomes someone’s owner, suffering is given. A master always gives suffering. When someone binds another, he becomes a giver of suffering. When someone becomes another’s dependency, suffering is given. When someone possesses and claims ownership over another, suffering is given. He does not know this.

I love a flower, I love it very much—so much that I fear the sunlight may wither it; I fear a strong wind may blow off its petals; I fear some animal may come and eat it; I fear the neighbors’ children might uproot it. So I lock the plant, pot and all, in a strongbox and put a lock on it. My love is great, but I have no compassion at all. My love is great—I have done everything to protect the plant: saved it from the sun, from the wind, from children and animals. I bought a strong safe and locked the plant inside. But now the plant will die; my love will not be able to save it. And it will die quickly. Outside, the winds might have taken a while; perhaps the neighbors’ children would not have come so soon; the sun’s rays would not have withered it so quickly—but locked in a safe, the plant will die very soon. Love was complete, but compassion was not there at all.

In the world there has been love, ahimsa, and pity—but not compassion. The experience of compassion has been absent. If the experience of compassion arises, we will change life. And if pity arises from compassion, it will not remain pity—because there will be no gratification of ego in it. And if ahimsa arises from compassion, it will not remain merely negative: it will not only say “do not cause pain,” it will also say “remove pain, protect from pain, free from pain, bring happiness.” And if love arises from compassion, love will become liberating; it will not remain binding.

Up to now, almost all love has proved to bring slavery. Love has put chains on us. Yes, a poor man binds with iron chains; a rich man binds with golden chains. But love has bound. If love arises from compassion, it will bring freedom. Whom I love, I will set free—if my compassion accompanies my love. Whom I love, I will understand their crises, their troubles, their pains, their inner condition; I will become a true companion. If the one I love becomes happy by loving someone else, I will be happy—because the one I love I want to see happy.

But what we call “love” cannot tolerate this. If the one I love so much merely looks toward someone else with loving eyes, I will grab their throat. And I will say, “I love you—how could you look toward another with loving eyes?” This is not compassion; this is extreme hardness, and under the name of love, a very deep violence. That is why when lovers become violent toward each other, no one can be more violent than they. And when they fill with violence and jealousy toward each other, the amount of suffering they create in the world is unmatched.

No—if love arises from compassion, it will be liberating. And if pity arises from compassion, it will be egoless. And if ahimsa arises from compassion, it will be constructive, not merely prohibitive. Therefore I have emphasized compassion. It is not just a matter of different words; there is an inner vision at stake. That is why I say: revolution is the shadow of compassion—not of ahimsa, not of so-called love, not of so-called pity.

What we call God—this too is worth understanding a little. Because the revolution we have to bring in human life cannot go very deep if the presence of the Lord is not there. If we want to deepen that revolution and take it to its very roots, then the hand and presence of the Divine is essential. Godless revolutions have happened. In fact, the revolutions I call those born of anger are godless revolutions. And the revolution I call the one that comes out of compassion is the revolution that arises by accepting the presence of God.

There have been revolutions in which we did not accept God; indeed, revolutionaries have often denied God. It has seemed to them that God too is an obstacle to revolution. They wanted to demolish God as well. They even became angry with God. They felt: there is so much poverty in the world—so where is God? What kind of God is this? There is so much suffering—there cannot be a God! They wanted to wipe God away.

But suffering and poverty and trouble are not because of God. They are because of us. And God’s compassion is such that he has made us free in every way. He has made us free even to go astray. He has made us free even to sin. And freedom has no meaning if God were to write us a letter before we take birth and tell us: “You have complete freedom to do good deeds, but absolutely no freedom to do bad; you have absolute freedom to love as much as you wish, but absolutely no freedom to hate.” Would that be freedom? If it were said, “You have full freedom to become a saint—but no freedom to become unvirtuous,” then even the freedom to be a saint would be cancelled. Because the freedom to be a saint can exist only together with the freedom to be a sinner—otherwise it cannot.

If it were said, “You have complete freedom to be awake, but not to sleep,” then the freedom to be awake would immediately be lost. Because the freedom to be awake exists only together with the freedom to sleep. They cannot be separate. Man has the freedom to do the auspicious precisely because he also has the freedom to do the inauspicious. And God has made man so free that he has not even kept himself present before us. This too is a device of God’s freedom.

We often ask: “Why is God not right in front of us?” If God were in front, our freedom would be completely obstructed. You go to steal in a house and God is sticking right with you, standing at your side. In truth he is standing there exactly so. Therefore, for those to whom it becomes visible that he is standing there, their stealing becomes difficult. But since we do not see, there is freedom. We can steal and think, “No problem—I have deceived everyone.”

I have heard: Some young men came to a fakir and said, “We want to search for that unknown God—where is he?” Just as this friend has asked, “Where is that God, what is that Lord like?” they too asked. The fakir said, “Bring me a small proof first; then I will tell you.” There were four disciples. He gave each one a pigeon and said, “Take this away, and wherever no one sees you, quickly wring the pigeon’s neck and come back.”

One disciple went out onto the road. He looked both ways. It was blazing noon; no one was there; people were asleep indoors. He wrung the pigeon’s neck, came back and said, “Here—no one was watching.”

The second disciple went to the road. He thought, “Although there is no one on the road, there is bright light, it is midday; if I wring it someone may come, someone might peep from a window, someone might step out of a house.” So he went into a dark lane where there were no doors, only high walls—the strong stone wall of the village fort. In its shelter, when he was completely assured that no one could be seen for miles around, he wrung the neck and returned it to the master.

The third disciple thought, “In the daytime someone or other can see—light is the medium of seeing.” He waited until night. In the darkness of night, inside his house, after closing the doors, he wrung the neck and brought it to the master.

But the fourth disciple—one month passed and there was no trace of him. The master was very worried. He told his friends and disciples, “Go and look for him—where has that mad fellow gone?” After a month they caught him in a forest. He was almost in a crazed state. He was brought back. The master asked, “What happened?” He had the pigeon with him. He said, “You put me in great difficulty. I went to the darkest of places, but even in the dark, when I went and put my hand on the pigeon’s neck, I saw that the pigeon is seeing. Then I was in trouble. I devised many tricks. I tied a bandage over the pigeon’s eyes and went into an underground cellar where there was dense darkness—so dark that even from outside the bandage it would be impossible to see the pigeon. There, as I was about to wring its neck, I saw that I am seeing! I went into deeper caves, where you cannot see your own hand; and when I was about to press it, suddenly it occurred to me that God is seeing! You have put me in a fix. This cannot be done. Here—take your pigeon back. I have gone completely mad, searching for a place where God is not. I have roamed everywhere—jungle, hills, mountains—he is everywhere.”

The fakir said to the three who had killed their pigeons, “Run away. You will not be able to search for the Invisible. Your eyes are too gross; you will not be able to see the subtle. Go and refine your eyes a little and then come. This young man may be of some use. His eyes are subtle. He senses a certain presence. He feels the presence of the pigeon, and his own. And even when he blocks every side, he still feels some presence.”

God is wondrous in that he has withdrawn himself—far from us, separate, invisible—so that we can be utterly free; otherwise we could not be free. A son does not smoke a cigarette in front of his father; he goes into the next room to smoke. But if it becomes known that God is present there too, then which room to go to, where to hide, what to do? Then it becomes very difficult. And if it becomes continuously felt that two eyes are always peeping—everywhere, in every corner, in every darkness—then it would be very hard. Freedom would become impossible.

So that man can be completely free, God has become invisible. God’s invisibility is one of the foundational reasons for the complete freedom given to man.

But what is meant by God? Some person, some man, some personality, someone sitting hidden somewhere? No. Just because we have thought in that language, great difficulty has arisen. Thinking in that language we have built temples, made idols, rituals of worship and hymn-singing are going on—none of which has anything to do with God, nor can it. These are our fabricated gods, the ones we have created out of our imagination.

God means: the Whole, the Total. That which is the sum of all that is—the entire world, all of life. We see in fragments: one man, one plant, one patch of earth, one moon, one mountain, one ocean. In fragments, separate. But the being of all is interconnected; at depth, the existence of all is linked and unified.

The sun is a hundred million miles away, but if it were to go cold right now, then by morning we would not know where we had gone—we would have gone cold with it. That which is a hundred million miles away—its rays are giving us life, keeping us warm. It is not that if you measured with a thermometer after the sun grew cold, the thermometer would tell you your body has cooled. No, the thermometer would also already be cold. It too would show no warmth. You too would be cold. And there would be no one left to know that anything was ever warm. All our warmth is flowing from a hundred million miles away. From a hundred million miles away, we are bound.

A flower blooms on the earth; it is bound to the sun’s rays. A seed germinates; it is bound to the sun. But not only to the sun; deeper, farther—we have relations even with the most distant stars. We are bound to them too. There is an infinite web of existence in which all are threaded.

Someone places around my neck a garland of flowers. You see the flowers; you do not see the thread within. But had the flowers been separate, there would be no garland. There is a thread within that strings them—therefore there is a garland. This whole existence is strung together. In this whole existence we have entered into one another. It doesn’t occur to us!

You are—and have you ever thought that within you the existence of millions upon millions of years is threaded? A small child is formed in the mother’s womb: twenty-four atoms come to him from the father; twenty-four atoms come from his mother. In the father’s twenty-four atoms are twelve from his father, twelve from his mother. In the father’s father’s twelve atoms, six are his father’s father’s, and six are his mother’s mother’s. And this journey of atoms is going on endlessly. You have not appeared just today, suddenly. You are a link in a chain of thousands upon thousands of years—a link in a long chain that is joined. And it is not that you are only connected to the past; the linkage will continue into the future as well. The journey will continue there too. The flower that has blossomed today in your garden has not blossomed suddenly. The journey of its seeds is infinite.

And now scientists think that someday, when for the very first time a seed arrived on the earth, how would it have been born here at all? Surely it must have flown in from some other planet or satellite—or it must have come along with some traveler from another planet or satellite. Our travelers have gone to the moon; when they returned we examined and tested them for a month to make sure they hadn’t brought back any germs from the moon. But they must certainly have left some germs on the moon—for which no examination was ever made. And it may be that our relation with the moon now gets cut off, does not continue further, and those germs keep developing, and in millions of years a living being may be born there. Someday, in some beginningless time, on this earth too, some first stages of life must have come in this very way from another planet. We are connected to that as well.

There is an endless chain—to which we are linked. This chain spreads in many directions, multidimensional. Backward and forward, on all sides, below and above—everywhere. In as many directions as there are, we are linked. At the junction of all those directions sits our tiny point of being—and this being we call “I.” The right to say “I” can belong to none other than God. Because even as we say “I,” the moment of dispersal will arrive. But while all goes on dispersing and all goes on being made—That in which it disperses and That in which it is made, is. That does not disperse, nor is it made.

There is an ocean; waves are forming upon it. A wave rises now—how proudly, how stiff with ego, with the courage to touch the sky, with the aspiration! Leaping so high it has looked around the ocean and must have said to the smaller waves nearby, “Do you see—who I am?” But just as it is saying, “Do you see—who I am?” its disintegration has already begun. It has begun to fall back. It has not even been able to finish saying it and the falling has begun. The other waves may not even hear it, and the wave will be lost. On the sea’s breast, waves go on rising and vanishing.

You can think that the ocean might be without waves—sometimes it may be calm, with no waves. But you cannot think that a wave might be without the ocean. You cannot think this. On the ocean’s breast waves go on arising, forming, deforming. If we keep looking wave by wave, we will not get any clue of the ocean. Only when we see all the waves together do we get a hint of the ocean.

God means: that if we can learn to see the infinite waves of existence in their togetherness, in totality, then there is a glimpse of God. And if we cannot see the Whole and keep looking at one fragment after another, then we may come to know of humans, of plants, of stones, of mountains—but we will not come to know of God.

God is the sum, the yoga—the togetherness of all. If the entire existence of the whole universe could be added up, the total at the bottom would be God. But it will never be fully added up. It cannot be fully added—because it is endless and infinite. Therefore we can only conceive it; we can only feel that total in the heart. But someday we will not be able to present its sum with a formula and say, “This is the amount.” We cannot say that. There are reasons we cannot; it will be useful to think a little about them. They will be foundational to understanding God.

We can never think that any thing could be infinite. Our imagination comes to a stop at a boundary. However far we push the boundary, still the boundary moves ahead; it does not vanish. If we think the universe is infinite, all we can do is say: very, very far away—millions upon millions, billions upon billions of miles—there will be a boundary. But the mind cannot grasp a universe without any boundary at all. We will say, “A little further… a little further… a little further,” like small children listening to a story who go on asking, “And then? And then?” They keep asking because it does not fit in their understanding how a thing can end just like that—there must be something more ahead.

So when we ask, we can think only of “a little further, and a little further.” But we cannot think that there could be such a universe whose boundary simply does not exist. To try to think it makes the head spin. It is good to try sometimes. Sometimes one should let the head spin—so that the stiffness of the head loosens a little. Otherwise the head is very stiff; it thinks it can think everything. It cannot. We cannot think the innumerable.

Even the greatest mathematician, if he thinks, can think only of a very large number—he will say, “Add this much more, and this much more, and this much more.” But when someone says “innumerable,” for us it means: such that cannot be counted. Yet inwardly we think, “If one worked hard enough, it could be counted.” If someone asks you how many hairs are on a person’s head, you will say, “Innumerable.” But that does not mean innumerable. Hairs can be counted—and some wise ones have, with great effort, counted them. Some wise ones do undertake such foolish labors.

The hairs on a man’s skull can be counted, the stars in the sky can be counted. But we cannot think that it could be such that the sequence of numbers simply never ends—nowhere, nowhere, nowhere does it end. Then the head reels. A limit we can understand; the limitless we cannot. A beginning we can understand—something started and something ended. What we cannot understand is that something never began at all, and never will end at all. If we go to measure with the intellect, God will never come into our grasp. Because the intellect can think neither the infinite, nor the whole, nor the endless.

But to try to think the infinite is also a kind of meditation—a form of dhyana. Think the infinite, and go on thinking; keep pushing the boundaries further and further and further, and ultimately try to erase them altogether, so that there is no boundary. Where the boundary disappears there, the intellect within will also disappear. Both disappear together. There, boundaries gone; here, the intellect gone. There, beginning and end gone; here, the intellect gone. There, number gone; here, the intellect gone. And the moment the intellect dissolves, the sensing of the limitless, the infinite, the whole, begins. That sensing is the knowing of God.

God is not a person; “God” is the name of the total togetherness. But even that total is not any mathematics of our intellect; it is the failure of our intellect.

And finally let me make this one thing clear: where the failure of intellect is total, from there religion begins. Where the intellect becomes completely unsuccessful—completely! Mind you, if even a little is left, it will say, “Wait—we can still try a little more.” Total failure—where complete failure has arrived.

I was speaking with a friend the night before last. I said to him: When a man’s thinking becomes utterly unsuccessful, then thinking comes to an end—and then knowing begins. Where thinking ends, knowing begins. Where thoughts cease, knowing starts. He said to me, “Then there must be great melancholy, a depression in the mind.” I said, “If melancholy is felt, the failure is not yet complete—because some hope of success is still left in the mind; hence the melancholy. Complete failure means that even the hope of success no longer remains. No despair, no hope. Failure is complete. And it has become clear that this could never have been done—it cannot be done.”

The infinite cannot be known, thought, or understood by the intellect. Then, as soon as this becomes clear, the intellect halts and stands still.

How often we say that the mind is very restless. Restless it will remain—because you put it to such petty things that it will remain restless there. Try placing it on the infinite, and you will find the intellect comes to a stop. There, restlessness is no more. You put the intellect on such trivial things that it is bound to be restless—bored, it jumps to a second and then a third. Place it upon the infinite and you will suddenly find it has failed. It stands stunned—no more anywhere to go. Nowhere to go. Because it is the infinite—where to go? No boundary, no end.

And where the intellect is applied to the infinite, there the intellect breaks and scatters—like an explosion, the intellect falls apart. What remains then is God. It is not that God will be standing before you and you will stand apart. No: when your intellect has scattered, then what remains—within you, outside you, near you, far, inside, outside, here, there—what remains everywhere, that is God.

God cannot be seen as an object. It is not that you will someday have a vision of him and bow down. Yes, Ram can be met, Christ can be met, Krishna can be met, Buddha, Mahavira can be met—these can all be met, because you can produce them out of your own imagination. But God is not produced by your imagination. Where imagination is defeated and grows tired and begins to rest, there the experience begins. And I am saying that only if the presence of this God remains, can a real revolution happen. Because then we descend to the very roots of existence—and transformation happens from the roots.

Other than living in God, there is no revolution.
Other than relating to God, there is no mutation, no transformation.
Other than relating to God there is no revolution, no change, no transformation, no experience, no bliss, no light, no truth, no liberation. That is why I am emphasizing God.

There are friends who say to me, “There is no need to bring God into it.” If it could work without bringing him in, fine. But he is there. If he could be removed, fine—but he cannot be removed; he is. Yes, those who do not see cannot tell that he is.

It is like a village of the blind saying, “Unless we bring light into it, nothing will work,” and the one with eyes saying, “I am not bringing it in—it is already there. That you cannot see it is another matter. And even though you are blind, you are still moving in the light.” Those blind ones say, “Take the talk of light out of the discussion altogether.” Even then the one with eyes will say, “Taking it out of the talk will make no difference—the light is there. And it is better we come to know it, because it will save us from bumping into things. Let us recognize it, because once we recognize it, it will become a companion on our path. Let us see it, because only after seeing it can we walk rightly and arrive rightly.”

The blind cannot see light; we cannot see God. Surely, in some sense, we are blind. The method to break that blindness is meditation.

Many questions have been asked regarding meditation; I will take all those questions in tomorrow morning’s session.

You have listened to my words with so much love and peace; I am deeply obliged. And in the end, I bow to the God seated within everyone. Please accept my salutations.