Koplen Phir Phoot Aayeen #9

A single cup shattered both illusions.
The drunkard went to the mosque, the sheikh to the tavern.
About what we call life, and the values we pride ourselves upon—how many delusions there are in them, and how many truths! If you just open your eyes, you will not be able to avoid being startled.

All over the world, in the name of democracy, such lies have been propagated—and for so long—that we have forgotten there is a need to reconsider that propaganda. It is said that democracy is of the people, for the people, by the people. But even the biggest lies, when repeated again and again, start to look like the truth.

Adolf Hitler used to say: I have found only one difference between a lie and the truth—and that difference is repetition. A lie is a new truth that has not yet been repeated; and the truth is an old lie, traditional, repeated for centuries, generation after generation.

There is a little truth in what he said. Because in no country is there rule of the people, nor rule for the people, nor rule by the people. But these lies are very dear. They are very sweet. Certainly they are poisonous, yet hundreds of millions drink them with delight. And those who can propagate these lies are the ones who rule. The rule is theirs, by them, and for their own interest. Of course, they say they are servants of the people. But what a strange world this is: those who call themselves servants of the people sit as the people’s masters. Yes, once in five years they do have to repeat their lie. They must come again to the people’s door and say: We are your servants. Once your vote has fallen into their bag, the peons at their gate—where they had come like beggars—will shove you out. You won’t even get a chance to meet them.

What a strange kind of service to the people! The people starve to death. Day by day the people are filled with sorrow and pain. Yet these servants of the people are making merry, living it up, throwing parties. Let them make merry, let them indulge—about that I have no objection. My objection is to their lies.

And my lifelong experience says that freedom of thought exists nowhere. I have just been around the whole world. There is no country on earth where you are free to say what has arisen in your heart. You must say what people want to hear. Many countries wanted me to become a resident, because they thought that thousands upon thousands of sannyasins would come because of me and their country would gain economically. They had no interest in me; their interest was that the influx of thousands would increase their wealth. But all of them had conditions. And the surprising thing was: the conditions were identical! Every country said, “We would be happy for you to live here, but you must not speak against the government, and you must not speak against this country’s religion. Just these two promises—fulfill these two conditions—and you are welcome.”

It is the same situation in this country as well. All my life I have been receiving summons from offices and government courts to appear. Because someone petitioned the court that something I said had hurt his religious sentiments. It is a strange thing. Are your religious sentiments so flimsy, so weak, that if someone speaks against them they get hurt? Then throw away such flimsy, trashy sentiments. The religion within you should be strong as steel. Where did you pick up these rotting bamboo sticks!

And whoever goes to a court and says his religious feelings have been hurt—the court ought to try him and ask, “Why do you harbor such a religion within you? Can’t you find some stronger, more powerful vision of life? Can’t you find a perspective that no one can injure?”

I have never told any court that my religious feelings have been hurt. In fact I am waiting for the person who can hurt my religious feelings. I have roamed the world inviting someone—anyone—to come and hurt my religious feelings. Because my religiousness is my own experience. How will you wound it?

But people’s religious feelings are borrowed, stale; they belong to others, not to themselves. Someone whispered in their ears, gave them a guru-mantra. And on these borrowed, stale notions, on this sand, they have built their palaces. Give them a slight push and their palaces begin to collapse. They shake, they tremble. But the fault is not in the one who pushed. If you build your palace on sand, whose mistake is it? If you draw lines on water and they disappear, who is responsible?

And if it is true that speaking against any religion or any ideology is a crime, then Krishna committed a crime, Buddha committed a crime, Jesus committed a crime, Mohammed committed a crime, Kabir and Nanak too. All the thinkers the world has known have committed crimes—terrible crimes. Because they mercilessly broke whatever was false. And naturally, those who were tied to the false must have felt hurt.

If today Kabir could no longer be born in this world, if today Buddha could no longer be born, your democracy would be responsible. It is a strange situation. In a democracy there should be Kabirs in every village, Nanaks in every household, Socrateses everywhere, Mansurs everywhere. For the basic foundation of democracy is freedom of thought. When there was no democracy in the world and no freedom of thought, even then the world reached great heights. And now? Now to soar to heights is a crime; your wings will be clipped. Because your soaring to heights deeply hurts the hearts of those who sit in the lowlands.

Democracy could have been a tremendous experiment in the growth of the human soul. But it did not happen. The reverse happened: big names, small substance. Lofty words, and behind them a filthy reality. There is no freedom of thought anywhere. Yet each person must have the courage for freedom of thought. This is inviting trouble. This is taking on hassles with your own hands. But it is worth taking on. Because passing through this challenge will give an edge to your life, a sharpness to your intelligence, an aura to your being. Even while carrying the finest thoughts of others you are only a donkey, laden with the Gita, the Quran, the Bible, and the Vedas. But you remain a donkey. Don’t start thinking, “All the scriptures are loaded on my back—what more do I need? At the gates of heaven the angels will be waiting with bands and drums; it won’t be long now.”

Your own small experience, a tiny thought born of your own realization, a little seed—will fill your life with so many flowers you won’t be able to count them. Have you ever wondered what capacity lies in a tiny seed? A small seed can cover the whole earth with flowers. But the seed must be alive. A thought is alive when it is born in your own life-breath, when it carries the heartbeat of your heart, when your blood flows in it, when your breath moves within it.

All my life I have had just one device: to shake you awake, to rock you, to say to you—how long will you remain filled with borrowed, stale thoughts? Have some shame! Enough shamelessness. Let something be truly yours. Let there be some wealth that belongs to you. And in this life, there is no wealth greater than the wealth of experience—of your own direct knowing.

There is a sweet story. Buddha was coming to a village. Those were delightful days, the days when this land saw the heights of Gaurishankar, Everest—not climbing mountains, but touching the highest peaks of consciousness. Buddha was entering the village. The aging prime minister of that kingdom said to the young emperor, “You should go to welcome him. The whole village is going to receive Buddha. It will be an insult to us if Buddha comes to our village and the emperor does not go to welcome him.”

The emperor said, “What nonsense are you speaking? Have you grown senile? I am an emperor; Buddha is a beggar. If he must come, he can come to my gate to meet me. Why should I go to welcome him?”

Tears rolled from the old minister’s eyes. He said, “Please accept my resignation. I can no longer work under you. It is not right to work under a man so low.”

The minister was greatly needed—he was the wisest man in that realm. The emperor could not afford to lose him. He said, “You too are mad—resigning over such a small matter?”

The minister said, “Either you will walk on foot and place your head at Buddha’s feet, or my resignation is set in stone. What will people say when they hear it? What disgrace—that the emperor of this land lacks even the sense that when someone, self-illumined, fragrant with his own fragrance, has come to this village, the emperor could not walk a few steps to touch his feet. And what do you really have? The wealth and kingdom because of which you think yourself an emperor and Buddha a beggar—don’t forget that he too was once an emperor, greater than you. He too had a kingdom, greater than yours. He kicked it away. His beggarhood stands far above his emperorship—it is the next rung. He is no ordinary mendicant. He is an emperor who has renounced empire. You are still far away.”

The emperor had to go. There was truth in the words. He had to place his head at Buddha’s feet. Buddha even said, “You troubled yourself for nothing. I was coming anyway. I would have passed by your palace. And besides, I am a beggar, you are an emperor.”

But when he saw Buddha he realized that sometimes it happens that the beggar is the emperor and emperors are beggars. You may possess everything outwardly, but if you have no inner realization, if no lamp is lit within, if the inner lamps are extinguished while outside it is Diwali, then you are poorer than the person in whose heart a single lamp is lit though outside it is the darkest night. Because the outer lamps burn and they go out; the inner lamp, once lit, only burns—it never goes out.

We need freedom of thought. But no one is going to give it to you; you will have to take it. Drop the illusion that just because you have called your constitution a democratic constitution, freedom of thought has arrived. What will you think, even if freedom is granted? Whatever you read in the newspaper will keep circling in your skull. A constitutional guarantee of freedom is not enough to make you a thinker. Freedom of thought is a very unique experiment. First, you must be free of thought. Because right now all you have are other people’s thoughts. First this junk of others’ thoughts must be cleared away.

In this land we have called that clearing meditation. Meditation means freedom from others’ thoughts. Become a blank sheet of paper; the simple, innocent mind of a child on which nothing is written. Then from your inner being they begin to arise, to awaken, to blossom—the ones that can rightly be called free thoughts. They do not come from outside; they sprout from within you. And when you have a thought of your own, whether governments talk of democracy or not, that thought will give you such courage and strength that you can stand up to the greatest of governments.

The power of your own thought is not less than any nuclear bomb—it is greater. After all, the nuclear bomb itself is the offspring of a human thought—of people who could think for themselves. Its power cannot exceed the power of thought, for it is born of thought.

Democracy will arrive in the world the day the discipline of meditation pervades the whole world. Without the discipline of meditation, democracy is impossible. You may talk endlessly of freedom and free thought, but you do not even have the capacity for free thought. That is why I want to teach you, from the very roots, the science by which—whether democracy arrives in the world or not—at least freedom arrives within you. And when the lamp is lit in one heart, from that lamp it becomes very easy to light the lamps of others.

Do not give others thoughts. If you can give another meditation—if you can share a little love, a little compassion—then you have given something worth giving. Thoughts will be born in him on their own.

Democracy has failed all over the world because its first stage has not been completed. The first stage is the discipline of meditation. Only meditation—and only meditation—gives your eyes that sparkle, that depth and that quickness; it gives your seeing the sword that cuts through untruths. And even if truth is hidden in the deepest depths, it exposes it, discovers it. And if thousands of people become adept in meditation, there will be freedom of thought. From that freedom of thought, democracy will be born.

Freedom of thought cannot be born from democracy. Who will create it? Two-bit politicians write your constitutions. Then these two-bit politicians, in the name of democracy, bleed you dry. A funny game is going on in the world. They claim to serve you. The old saying is quite apt: those who serve get the sweets. Service is nowhere to be seen, but the sweets are certainly being eaten. For the sake of those sweets, people are even ready to do “service.”

I have heard about a politician who was running for election. He was going door to door telling people, “This is my symbol. Your vote must go to me.” A woman was strolling in a park with five or six children. He kissed all the children and begged the woman to remember his symbol and not forget it. “And your children are very sweet,” he said.

The woman replied, “Forgive me, I am their nurse, not their mother.”

The politician said, “Blast it! I’ve been kissing them for nothing, and their noses are running, and… but what won’t one do for votes! And you too—why didn’t you say at first that they aren’t your children, you’re just the nurse? Some nurse you are, with six children’s noses running! But don’t go away now. The other candidates are coming behind me. Let them kiss each one. After everyone’s done, at least their noses will be wiped.”

There is a joke about American President Hoover. In America there are many indigenous people—the land is theirs. It’s quite something: America is called the world’s greatest democracy, and those to whom the country belongs, the Native Americans, have been confined to reservations. Those who rule—none of them are truly American. Their anger at me was for this very reason: I challenged the American President that if you consider me a foreigner, I have been foreign for only five years; you and your forefathers have been foreign for three hundred years. Tell me, who is more foreign? And I am not an invader. You and your forefathers are the invaders. If anyone has committed a crime, it is you. And the way America has tricked the people to whom the land belongs is beyond imagination. They have been broken into small bands and kept in the wilderness. Each is given a pension so they won’t ask for work, so they won’t need to come to the cities. You can travel all across America and you won’t even notice the original inhabitants. Those to whom the land belongs lie drunk in the reservations—because they get money for free. They gamble, drink, brawl, land in jail—what other occupation is there? When money is free, what will you do? With money they are kept intoxicated, jailed, enmeshed in crime—the very owners of the land. And this country is the greatest land of freedom, the greatest democracy.

About President Hoover there is this story: during an election he went to a group of Native Americans to ask for votes. So he did what politicians everywhere do: “If you elect me, we will open schools.” All the Native Americans cried, “Hoo-hoo!” and burst into laughter. This made Hoover even more enthusiastic. He said, “We will open hospitals.” They said, “Hoo-hoo!” with peals of laughter. His excitement kept rising: “Don’t worry. If I become President, I’ll even build a university.” And they said, “Hoo-hoo!” clapping, laughing, shouting “Hoo-hoo!”

Hoover was delighted. When he came out of the meeting, he was so pleased he said to the Native American chief, “Let me look around your area. I have a lot to do for your people. They are very sweet.”

The chief said, “Everything is fine. I have no objection to showing you around. But they have one bad habit. Walk carefully on the paths—because they sit anywhere and do ‘hoo-hoo.’”

Hoover said, “They do ‘hoo-hoo’?”

The chief said, “Just look—along the path, everywhere you see, there are piles of ‘hoo-hoo.’”

Hoover said, “This is too much! So those rascals—while I was loudly giving them assurances, and they were laughing and shouting ‘hoo-hoo,’ what did they mean? I thought it was the first syllable of my name—Hoover. Were those scoundrels talking about this ‘hoo-hoo’?”

The chief said, “What can I tell you? Every politician makes the same promises. Every year it’s the same. No schools ever open, and the politician is never seen again. These are simple people; they figured out that all these words are ‘hoo-hoo’—they carry no meaning, the same as ‘hoo-hoo.’ So don’t be offended. They don’t do it only to you. Whenever any politician comes to speak here, these fellows clap and go ‘hoo-hoo.’ And whoever hears their ‘hoo-hoo’ gets pleased, thinking they are praising him in their language. But ‘hoo-hoo’ is their dirtiest curse.”

Democracy will not descend from above. You can write it into laws, discuss it in constitutions, yet it will not descend from above. Otherwise, by now it would have descended. I want to tell you: if democracy ever comes, it has only one path—it will come from within you. When hundreds of millions of people on earth develop the capacity for independent thinking, then the collective flowering, the ultimate result of that capacity, will be democracy.

So instead of saying that democracy is founded on freedom of thought, it is more accurate to say: cultivate freedom of thought, and the foundation of democracy can be laid. Independent thinking is a million times more valuable than democracy. Democracy is a small consequence of independent thought. There will be a thousand other consequences too. The greatest consequence will be that you will reach God. The smallest consequence will be that democracy will be created around you. The capacity for free thought is limitless—but before that you must pass through the health-giving medicine of meditation.

The matter is a little complex. And it is not just between you and me; it is as old as humankind itself. Because your so‑called saints, sadhus, mahatmas have followed you—accepted what you said. It was a bargain. It was business. If the sadhu went along with your demands, you gave him respect. If he wanted more respect, he had to comply even more. Whoever didn’t comply would not be honored. That was the price of your respect.

And man is ravenous for ego. The greatest hunger in this world is the hunger of the ego—it never gets satisfied. However much you try to quench it, whatever you feed into it becomes ghee poured into the fire; the flames only rise higher. However foolish the thing may be, if it brings respect, you will immediately find people ready to do it. Look into the lives of your so‑called great men.

Among the Jains there was a highly reputed monk. A man who lived with him for fifteen or twenty years wrote his biography and came to present it to me. I began idly leafing through the pages. The monk was over seventy. Some fifty years earlier, when he would have been around twenty, he had left his wife and taken sannyas. By birth he was a Hindu, a goldsmith. Goldsmiths are counted among the Shudras; in the Hindu order they have no respect. But he became a Jain. Whenever someone leaves one religion and enters another, as a matter of business there is great profit. In the new religion he gets a prestige that was impossible in the old—because the new religion gains prestige through him. The new religion can say: Look, if there were nothing in us, no secret here, why would people leave their religions and come to us?

His becoming a Jain was enough to earn respect. Then came strict observance of Jain rules—and, as you know, a new mullah prays a little too much, at least for a while. He outdid the Jain monks themselves. If a Jain monk ate once a day, he ate only once in two days. His prestige was huge. And when he was seventy, his wife died. In those fifty years that poor woman survived by grinding grain, scrubbing utensils in others’ homes, washing clothes—somehow earning her bread. He had left her with a small child; she raised the child. In that biography there is an incident: when the news of his wife’s death reached him, he said, “Very good—one burden is gone.”

The wife he had left fifty years earlier—leaving her was a crime. On whose support had he abandoned that helpless girl? There was no one. She had no education, no training. And he had left her with a child. For fifty years that woman looked toward him only with respect. She always thought, “Let me bear whatever hardships; at least he is scaling heights on his path. At least he is reaching closer to God. I will remain standing far away, but is it not fortune enough that the man who was once my husband has reached such heights?” Even when she came for his darshan, she would stand far back in a crowd of hundreds of thousands and just look. That alone felt like great good fortune. And when that woman died…

I asked the author, “This is beyond my understanding: the woman he had abandoned and fled from fifty years ago—without even asking her, without telling her, slipping away in the dark of night—what ‘burden’ of hers was he carrying? And if, after fifty years, she was still a burden, then what had he left? She was still his wife. That son was still his son. The ‘leaving’ was only on the surface; inside the bonds remained deep. And perhaps shame hid in some corner, because it was an escape. It was running away, not sannyas.”

In Jainism there are five rungs of sannyas. He had crossed four; the fifth is a bit difficult—because on the fifth you must be naked. He was ill, near death. While alive he had not the courage. Only one sheet remained to renounce. At the time of dying his speech began to fail. He wanted to say something; the disciples couldn’t understand. But the writer who had been with him for twenty years was there, writing his life. The monk beckoned him close and indicated; the disciple understood. They removed his sheet and made him naked. The moment he was unclothed, his breath stopped. But he died very pleased at heart. And among the Jains his honor reached its ultimate peak—because he had reached the last rung of renunciation, beyond which there is no further step. Beyond it lies only the gate of liberation.

Now here is the irony. The body would have dropped anyway—whether the sheet was on it or not, what difference does it make? Sheet or no sheet, death would have come. Yet, even at the moment of death, a desire lingered in the mind: “Let me grant people their final satisfaction; let the ego receive its last worship.” He had no strength in his hands to remove the sheet; others removed it. But as soon as it was taken off, tears of bliss began to stream from the eyes of thousands. People were filled with reverent awe.

Satisfy people’s craving—whether or not there is any meaning in it—and they will honor you. This has been going on for centuries. If people honor a man sleeping on a bed of thorns, then sleep on a bed of thorns. And it’s no difficult feat. Even having someone take the sheet off you at the time of death is no great difficulty. Sit at home and ask your wife to prick your back here and there with a needle. You’ll be surprised: in many places she will prick and you won’t feel a thing—because the entire back is not equally sensitive. On some parts you will feel the needle; on others you won’t—there are no sensory nerves there. The bed of thorns is contrived so that the thorns touch those spots where pricking cannot be felt, where you cannot sense the thorns. To the onlookers it appears you are sleeping on thorns. But the real joke is this: even if you did sleep on thorns, what attainment is that? Yet thousands gather, and if you ask why they worship, “Because Maharaj sleeps on thorns.” Maharaj is a good-for-nothing—and these thousands are good-for-nothings too—but they complement each other.

But you have come to the wrong man. I do what I have to do. And if I even slightly suspect that you want me not to do something, then I certainly do it. In the beginning, people would come to me and say, “Please don’t say this,” and I would be sure to say it; “Don’t do that,” and I would be sure to do it. Then they stopped coming to me—too much trouble. Better to keep quiet and watch; let me do whatever I do. Now what can they do, poor fellows! They sit together among themselves and decide things. I don’t even get to know what they intend. Because they know perfectly well that I live in my own ecstasy, I walk in my own delight. I don’t care for your respect, nor am I anxious about your disrespect. If the whole world praises me, it makes no difference to me; if the whole world condemns me, it makes no difference to me.

I trust my own innerness. Beyond that there is no other source of command for me—not in any scripture, not in any person. The formula of my life is in my own silence, in my own peace. So I understand the trouble of those who came to me. They are the kind who go to others as well—and there they see that the holy men obey them. They say, “Stand,” and the saints stand; “Sit,” and they sit. They cannot make me do their drill. Their difficulty is that both their respect and their condemnation are meaningless to me.

So, slowly, a certain kind of people gathered around me on their own. Those who could not live without sticking their leg in tried for a few days, ended up with a fractured leg, and took the road. I don’t let anyone’s leg get in between. Now those who remain with me are people with whom my relationship is not of respect or reverence, but of love. It’s your old habit—no harm: you sit, you discuss, even knowing it’s a waste of effort. If it gives you some pleasure, even then—no harm. I don’t even come to know now. Gradually only lovers, drunkards, have gathered around me. This is a tavern, not a temple.

And don’t put me in the category of sadhus, saints, siddhas. I am a madman. Call me crazy—that’s closer to the mark—but never call me a mahatma. You’ve called so many wrong people “mahatma,” I refuse to stand in that line.

And it’s good that such people slowly drifted away and fell away on their own. Now a different kind of juice flows between you and me.

Not in the harem, nor in the panegyric, nor in the idol-house,
If there is peace anywhere, O cupbearer, it is only in your tavern.

This is a tavern. And I hold that whenever religion is alive, taverns come into being; and when it dies, taverns slowly turn into temples, mosques, churches. Then no songs arise there, no joy, no dance; no anklets ring. No one plucks a sitar, no flute resounds. There are only dreary sermons, dead words, rotting scriptures. Entering all that, you become part of a graveyard. This is no graveyard. Here, life is God. Here, dance is prayer. Here, to laugh with an open heart is worship.

So it’s up to you. Sit around sometimes—no harm. But you are wasting your time.

In my life I have never done anything on someone else’s advice. And I have never felt any regret because of it. On the contrary, there is a fulfillment, a rare contentment—that I lived in my own way. And in a crowd where everyone wanted me to live in their way—those who loved me, revered me, respected me, friends, elders, teachers—all with the same desire: their way—in that great crowd, I lived in my own way; and for that I am supremely delighted.

In my reckoning, whenever you begin to walk on someone else’s support, you start missing yourself. Whenever you catch hold of someone else’s signal, you begin to lose yourself. Slowly a crowd pulls you in every direction. You are torn to rags. Your life never becomes a flower.

Sing your own song! You cannot beat with another’s heartbeat, you cannot breathe with another’s breaths. Then why take life from another’s life? I want to give each person his individuality. And if this world were a world of individuals, not of crowds—not a herd of sheep but a world of lions—its beauty would be beyond measure. For each person carries such a treasure! But he never reaches it. There are so many advisors, such a crowd—giving free advice. Good advice; their intention isn’t bad. But the result is very bad: the whole world has become hollow. No one is in their own place. Where you are, you are not. What you are, you are not. Who knows where you have wandered—how far from yourself! And in between, who knows how many advisors, how many gurus, how many “mahatmas” who will not let you return to yourself.

I say religion is a revolution. And by revolution I mean: the individual living free of the crowd. Don’t worry—sometimes you will fall into holes. Mistakes will happen. But there is a way out of every hole. Find it yourself; don’t ask another. Then even falling into a hole becomes a learning. You will fall, you will rise. Slowly, this is how maturity comes in life. But your advisors say, “We will not let you fall.” And since they won’t let you fall, they will never let you learn.

I have heard: A big car stopped in front of an American hotel. A woman got out. Four waiters came running and pulled out a ten- or eleven-year-old boy—who looked less like a boy and more like a baby elephant. The four waiters lifted him and carried him off. A small crowd gathered, wondering: what’s going on? The boy is handsome, healthy. Someone asked, “What’s wrong with the poor child?” The woman said, “Nothing is wrong with him. But we have so much money that our sons don’t need to walk on the ground.”

Good intention—but she killed the boy! Whether he was born or not, it comes to the same. She won’t even let him walk. Eating and eating, he is becoming not a man but an elephant.

In America, thirty million people are confined in hospitals because they have eaten themselves so obese that it is difficult to manage them at home. A strange world. Exactly thirty million people in America are dying of hunger on the streets, and thirty million are locked in hospitals. Doctors are needed, nurses are needed. They can’t be kept at home because no one can stop them from eating. They know nothing except eating. All the Charvakas seem to be born there.

Listen to yourself, weigh yourself. If someone else gives advice, thank them, consider it—but don’t set off like a blind man. The more inwardness you can give to life, the better. Other people’s advice leads you into great difficulties.

A man’s wife was getting fatter and fatter. As a man’s safe grows, the wife grows fat—an odd connection between safes and women. Finally the man panicked. He was drying up, killing himself earning; she was such that all the sofas were growing small. He asked doctors, he asked a psychiatrist, “What to do?”

They said, “Do one thing.” The psychiatrist gave him a very beautiful nude woman’s photograph—proportioned, shapely, every limb lovely, no fault to be found. “Go and stick this inside your refrigerator. And here is glue. Once stuck, the photo won’t come off. So whenever your wife opens the fridge to get something to eat and sees this nude woman, she will feel ashamed. Inwardly she will blame herself: ‘What have I done to my body! This no longer looks like a body; it looks like a sack stuffed with goods.’”

The husband said, “That’s a point.” He paid the fee and stuck the photo inside the fridge.

Two months later the psychiatrist met him early in the morning on the beach. “What happened? You never came back!”

He said, “Come back? I’m trying day and night to pry that picture off—it won’t come off.”

The psychiatrist said, “But why do you need to remove it?”

He said, “The reverse has happened. I go again and again to look at the picture. And whenever I see it, the mind is the mind—sometimes a sweet, sometimes ice cream… Never give such a picture to anyone again! Can’t you see my condition?”

The psychiatrist said, “That I can see. Two months ago you looked like a mouse; now you look like a mountain. But tell me—what about your wife?”

He said, “Don’t ask about the wife. That wretch won’t even look at the picture. Her eyes see only the food.”

Advice and consultation—everyone is giving it everywhere. People are handing out advice for free. You will find Aristotles and Platos at every corner, ready to give such wisdom that its shock will awaken you forever. But they themselves have not awakened by their own shock, and they are waking you. Their own advice didn’t work for them; now they are distributing it to others.

Listen to all, even try to understand, but let the decision always be your own intimacy. And in your own silence, in your own peace, decide responsibly—thinking: I have decided. Whether it turns out right or wrong, whatever the outcome, I am responsible; I will not thrust the responsibility onto another. Then a refinement will begin to come into your life.

So don’t sit idly discussing me. I am so far gone that your discussions can no longer reach me. There is a limit; beyond that, it becomes difficult. So, I’m off. And don’t, by discussing, end up coming along with me. Think of yourself. Life is short. Time is very little. There is no guarantee of tomorrow. And the work is great: to make life luminous, to taste the nectar. Let the useless babble be done by the many—mind your work, and then God is not far.

The more you drink the juice of life, the more the thirst goes on increasing. That itself is the proof: the more you receive, the more the heart longs; the more you spread your wings, the sky goes farther, and farther, and farther… it feels as if with these two wings one could enfold the whole sky. But patience you must keep. In impatience, even what has been gained can be lost—because impatience is restlessness, and with impatience come complaint and grievance. Become blessed for what has been given; feel a sense of grateful wonder for it. If there is gratitude in the heart for what has come, more will come.

And once this key is remembered—that gratitude—then that which you cannot reach even by wanting and by searching suddenly, from you-know-not which doorway, pours down like a waterfall: who knows how much nectar.

There was a Sufi fakir, Al-Hallaj Mansur. People always saw him laughing—laughing even on the gallows. Someone from the crowd asked, “Hallaj, are you mad? Earlier it was understandable that you laughed, were joyous, were tasting samadhi. But now you are on the cross—what is there to laugh about?”

Hallaj said, “Now I laugh for this very reason—that this too is wonderful! When there was no joy in life, no flowers, not even a stone-thrower came. And now, when there is everything in life, when within there is nothing but grateful awe, they bring a gallows. His play is strange indeed! But what does He think? Our play is strange too. If He can arrange a cross, we can die smiling. And after all, the arrangement is His. Those who have come to kill have all come at His gesture.”

Hundreds of thousands had gathered, come to stone him, because Hallaj was saying things they felt were against religion, against Islam. The truth is: what he was saying was Islam itself, and what they were clinging to as Islam was only a rotten tradition. He was a living spring, and the well beside which they sat had long since dried up. But when they saw Hallaj’s laughter, the hands raised to throw stones stopped. Hallaj said, “Throw without worry—another chance will not come. And even if it comes, you will not find a man like Hallaj. Throw your stones. Take strong courage; don’t be afraid. And let me also test my courage—whether, in the rain of your stones, the laughter remains, whether it is not lost.”

And his last words before dying are worth remembering. He said, “I have known much bliss in life, but the bliss I have known on the cross… unfortunate are those who die without ever being crucified.”

He turned even the cross into gratitude—made it too a gift from God.

So I say to you: if sannyas has brought peace to your life, joy, a certain intoxication… thirst will come too. Do not suppress that thirst, and do not misunderstand it. When nectar is being given, thirst is bound to arise—and it will go on increasing. It will keep growing until you dissolve and become one with the nectar.

But impatience can become an obstacle. Therefore keep patience, and keep the flavor of gratitude. For what has been received—thank you. For what will be received—thank you. If in every fiber of you there remains only this one mood of gratitude, then much will come—unweighed, unmeasured, without end.

Everything will be given. Everything is ours. Only our awakening is needed, our recognition. Whatever comes is not anyone else’s; it was asleep within you, hidden within you. So what is the hurry? And even if there is a little delay, learn also to relish the joy of separation. Separation has its sweetness too—and sometimes it happens that the sweetness not found even in union is found in separation. That which is not gained even by attaining is found in the yearning to attain.

Thank you.